Just Deserts (Hetta Coffey Series, Book 4) (20 page)

As the owner of new snazzy wheels, and a newly minted Arizona driver’s license, I was pretty jazzed.

We stopped at the Second Amendment gun store in Bisbee, where I found the perfect truck accessory, a gun rack. I also bought more ammo, in case the five hundred rounds I had at the house were no match for drug cartel thugs.

Jan was in front of me as we entered the drive, and she suddenly slammed on the brakes. I almost rear-ended Craig’s Porsche, but managed to stop inches from his extremely expensive bumper. Shaken, I made a mental note to get more insurance coverage, pronto.

We both got out of our cars and descended on the problem. Parked next to Aunt Lillian’s blue tank, blocking the garage, was another leviathan, this one a shiny black Cadillac the size of Dallas and sporting Texas plates. A skinny dude about a hundred years old, wearing a hat bigger than the rest of him, sat on the fender. What now?

Closer up, the man’s eyes sparkled like bright blue marbles, twinkling at me from a face resembling a cabbage patch doll that was left out in the sun too long. He whipped off his Stetson, revealing a surprisingly thick patch of curly white hair with that pink tinge suggesting he was a former redhead. He gave us a polite tip of his head and said, “I come fer Lil as soon as I got out.”

Got out? Jan and I exchanged a glance. “And you would be? ” I asked.

“Oh, pardon, ma’am. Name’s Fred.”

Ah, Mexico Man. I’d spent a little time trying to track him and my aunt down the year before, when the lovebirds headed south of the border and my mother was worried about them. I knew why she’d worry about poor ole Fred, but Aunt Lillian? Puh-leeze.

But, didn’t mother tell me Fred dumped Aunt Lillian, then rechecked himself into rehab at the same Texas VA hospital where my aunt finds all of her prospective hubbies? As a retired nurse, she volunteers at what my dad calls the drunk tank, and there seems to be a cadre of over-indulged veterans who, to my mind, must be damned desperate for a wife. Or, in my aunt’s case, dying for a wife.

Four of her five husbands called it taps after a short period of wedded bliss. My father said they sobered up, saw who they married, and died of fright. My mother, bless her kind heart, insists my aunt married men who needed a nurse in their last few months or years on earth. If you ask me, though, checking a guy out of rehab, then taking him on a drunken spree borders on manslaughter, at best.

This man seemed way too nice, and sober, for Lillian, but who am I to judge? Even though I just did.

Jan and I introduced ourselves.

“Oh, I’d know you anywhere, Hetta. Your aunt told me all about you.” Fred’s demeanor spoke volumes as to what he’d been told. I half expected him to whip out a crucifix and brandish it in my face.

“Aunt Lillian is not here,” I told him, not planning to expand upon that statement.

Jan expanded for me. “She’s in Mexico.”

I thought about backhanding her, but then had an epiphany. “Yeah, Mexico. Come on in, and I’ll draw you a map where you can find her. You can be there before dark if you leave now.”

Jan gave me a look of admiration. We had worried for two days that the auntie from hell might return, but now we’d dump her on Fred, who actually seemed to want her. I felt a little guilty about sending him to his ultimate fate at the hands of my aunt, and for fobbing him off on Ted and Nanci unannounced, but Chino and Craig were still down there in case there was a ruckus, so where’s the harm?

“Pure genius,” Jan said as we watched the sun set. She tossed Blue a cookie.

“It’s a gift.”

She looked at her watch. “Fred should be there. Whaddya bet the phone rings right about,” the phone rang, “now. You gonna answer it?”

“No way. I’ll check caller ID later. Better yet, let’s go listen to the answering machine.”

We reached the office just in time to hear the end of a sentence that must have been a doozy. “...never see a cent of my money, you ungrateful little shit,” caterwauled Auntie Lil.

“Looks like you’re out of the will again, Hetta.”

“I’ve been in and out of her will so many times I could qualify as an executioner in Imperial China.”

“Huh?”

“Death of a thousand cuts. It was a form of slow torture.”

“Kinda like creeping normalcy. You know, when something bad is slowly introduced so it isn’t perceived as negative?”

“Yep, the frog in cold water analogy. He doesn’t realize he’s gonna get boiled because the heat is turned up gradually.”

“I’d say you’re, once again, boiled. Dang, looks like we’ll have to keep working. I was counting on you becoming an heiress.”

“Aunt Lil doesn’t even have that much dough. She forgets that a few years ago, when she had just buried hubby number three, or was it four? Anyway, she asked me to help her with her finances. Of course, she had been on a two-week bender, so as soon as she sobered up she once again wrote me out of the will, this time for meddling in her affairs. She had maybe a hundred grand, and that little house on the lake. None of these guys she marries ever has any money, but they do have small insurance policies, so she sort of keeps an even keel, but my guess is she’ll outlive her money.”

“Not the way she puts away the booze.”

“Amazing, isn’t it? She’s never really sick, except when she has the VO flu. Every time she ends up in the hospital it’s because of overdosing on prescription drugs and booze. Being a nurse, she can always fake something else, and she keeps changing doctors, so no one ever calls her on it.”

We fell into silence, sipping our wine. My thoughts turned dismal. Was this my future? An old drunk, so desperate for companionship that I’d marry every dude who expressed an interest? Not if I could help it. Unlike my aunt, I had no intention of making the same mistake over and over again, expecting a different outcome.

I stood suddenly, pitched my wine, glass and all, into the desert, marched into the office, and called Jenks.

I regretted throwing away my wine almost immediately because Jenks didn’t answer. Not knowing what to say, I didn’t leave a message.

Back on the verandah, Jan grinned and pointed to my wine glass on the cart path, which, by some miracle didn’t break. Blue was lapping up Pinot Grigio with the gusto of a skid row bum.

“Wonder what PETA would say about you contributing to the delinquency of the wildlife?” Jan drawled. She’d already gotten me another wine.

“Or you contributing to my delinquency? I’m on the wagon.”

She guffawed.

Reformation is not my long suit.

To my credit, I drank water with dinner, but I was on pins and needles, hoping for a call from Jenks.

“You’re as jumpy as a prawn on a Teppanyaki griddle,” Jan told me. “Simmer down and eat your lasagna. It is your last indulgence for at least a week.”

“What do you mean?”

“South Beach Diet, remember? We start tomorrow.”

“Crap. When did I agree to that?”

“You don’t remember?”

“It must have slipped my mind.”

She grinned and I wondered if I really had agreed to the diet. The woman can be sooo sneaky. I sighed and stared at the phone.

“What’d you say when you called him earlier?”

“Nothing. No answer.”

“You didn’t even leave a message?”

“Nope.”

“Moron.”

On that sweet note of encouragement, I loaded the dishwasher, set the alarm, and went to bed. Jan watched a documentary on Animal Planet, not about whales. I was still reading when she turned off the TV.

I doused my reading lamp, but lay awake, gazing at the stars and listening to coyotes sing. One of them crooned with a distinctive warble I recognized as Blue’s. He was badly off-key, probably thanks to Pinot Grigio.

There’s a lesson there.

As I lay awake listening to Blue’s alcoholic croon, Jan’s comment about creeping normalcy niggled at me. What about my life, my situation, whatever, had become so normal to me, when others saw it otherwise?

Living on a boat is unconventional, but hardly abnormal. I take on less than traditional projects, but someone has to do it. Some of those jobs involve off-beat characters, but does that make me an off-beat character?

I guess the big question is, am I a frog in the heating water, unaware of impending doom if I don’t bail?

All of this profundity left me tossing long into the night, until I finally drifted off around two, which was five minutes before the burglar alarm shrieked a bajillion decibel warning.

I dove from the bed, grabbed my shotgun, flashlight, and cell phone that I always set up on the bedside table before going to sleep. I am not a graduate of the NRA’s Basic Personal Protection in the Home course for nothing.

The house phone started ringing almost immediately, but I took time to lock my bedroom door before answering it. I gave ADT my name and code, told them I wasn’t sure if there was an intruder, but that I was armed and prepared to defend myself if necessary.  Meanwhile, I dialed 9-1-1 on the cell and said basically the same thing. Only then did I grab my remote, turn off the raucous alarm, and call Jan’s cell phone. I knew for certain she would have locked her door when the alarm sounded. She answered immediately.

“H-hetta, what’s happening?”

“Your door is locked, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, stay on the phone. I’m locked in my room, the cops have been called, and I’ve got my shotgun. I won’t come out unless you need me to. Do you hear anything?”

“No, nothing except Loca raising all Billy hell.”

I cocked my head. Indeed Loca, the Rottweiler across the way was very agitated about something or someone. “I hear her. Did the security lights on your side of the house come on?”

“No.”

“Mine either. Hang on, I’m going to hit the master. Every one of the outdoor lights should light up at the same time.” I scooted to the bank of switches on my bedroom wall and, as the instructions said, flipped two of them off, then immediately back on. The desert and golf course lit up like a shopping mall parking lot.

“Are spots lit on your side? ”

“Oh, yeah. Like the city of New York.”

“Good. Go into your closet and shut the door. I’m going to do the same in my room. Again, if you hear someone messing with your bedroom door, I will come out blasting. Do not get in my line of fire, you hear me?”

“Okay, I’m in the closet. Now what?”

“We wait. I gotta call someone. Put your phone on vibrate and I’ll call you right back, okay?”

Living in the middle of nowhere has its drawbacks, one of which is a lag in response time by the authorities. The old saying, 'When seconds count, the cops are just minutes away' would certainly apply. I had no idea how long that delay would be, so I picked up my cell and hit speed dial for Tim Ramos’s personal number, hoping the Border Patrol agent was hunting down illegals in a nearby pasture. He didn’t answer, so I left a message, then hit the number the homeowner had programmed into the house phone for the local Border Patrol office. Of course, I got a recording, so left yet another message.

Later I would wonder at the wisdom of renting a home with the Border Patrol in phone memory, but for now I was glad to have it. One can never have too many heavily armed good guys around.

I slid to the floor with my back against the wall and called Jan back.

Even though the temperature outside was in the mid-forties, the closet felt like a sauna. My trigger finger was slimy with sweat, so I pulled a tee shirt off a hanger and wiped my palms. Sitting in the pitch dark of that closet, straining to hear danger, I was comforted by Jan’s breathing on the phone. Silly, I know, but one takes comfort where one can.

“Hetta,” she rasped, “someone’s jiggling my bedroom doorknob.”

“Shit.” I moved from the closet. One thing the NRA teaches you is to never stand on the other side of a door, so I leaned on the wall next to the doorframe and strained my ears, but any sound on the other side of the house was drowned out by blood pounding my eardrums.

“Jan?”

Her reply was a sob, followed by, “Oh, no. They’re trying to break the door.” I heard a pounding noise, but no splintering, then a curse.

“You stay put, I’m coming out.”

“No. No, you can’t.”

“I can and I will. Sorry, honey, I have to hang up now. Stay in that closet so I don’t shoot you.” With that, I dialed 9-1-1, put the phone on SPEAKER and chucked it onto the bed.

When the operator asked, “What is your emergency?” I yelled, “Whoever you are in my house, leave. Now! I am armed and will defend myself.”

I was now on record as fearing for my life, and warning whoever was scaring me that I was armed. In Arizona, a woman’s home is her castle, as it is in Texas, and she has a right to self-defense, and that of her friends and family within. But was the intruder armed? At that moment, it hardly mattered. He had broken into my home, and was battering down a bedroom door behind which a defenseless woman hid. I had to remember that for the judge.

Another loud crash, this time with the distinct sound of splintering wood, told me time was up.