Just Deserts (Hetta Coffey Series, Book 4) by Jinx Schwartz Read Free Book Online

reading. Getting my Spanish/English dictionary from the car, I worked my way through the confusing contraptions, ointments, and potions never covered in your average high school Sex Ed class.
    Deciding on a ham and cheese sandwich after all, I briefly considered the whirlpool, but thought better of it. Considering this room obviously normally rented by the hour, Lord only knows what was in the water. I took a shower instead.
    I’d had a long day and dozed off just after eight. Good thing, for I managed only a couple of hours sleep before business picked up. The bang of garage doors and sliding windows, creaking bedsprings, and vocally satisfied clients passed through the paper thin walls all night. I finally grabbed a few Z’s toward dawn, when the passionate returned to their dispassionate wives.
    I later learned that love hotels in Mexico are designed for maximum discretion and security. One’s car is hidden from the street, and a back exit affords the ever-changing clientele’s undetected egress, safe from prying eyes of wives, husbands, boyfriends, and the local clergy.
    Sleep deprivation does not set well with me, and I was on my second day. This, coupled with that long drive and an exhausting few days of putting the boat in the yard, took its toll. When the morning cadre of lovers catching a quickie before work arrived, I gave up on any more rest, packed up, and drove to the mine.
    The same old man and dog snoozed at the gate. I was beginning to suspect they were dead, stuffed, and placed there for effect.
    As Maria told me the day before, the office door was unlocked. I grabbed a pillow and blankie from the car, threw on a Mexican poncho to ward off the chilled office air, and curled up on a dusty leather sofa. I was dead to the world when Maria showed up at nine. I sat up and blinked, startling her.
    “Oh,” she gasped, then realized the poncho-clad person in her office wasn’t some kind of bandito. “Café, you are here.”
    “What, you didn’t expect me to live through the night?”
    “Your hotel was so bad?”
    “It depends on your definition of bad. Believe it or not, I’ve been in worse. Once in Sumatra, for instance.”
    Not getting my sarcasm, she smiled. “Oh, I am so glad. Señor Orozco was very upset with me when he found out where you were staying. He has instructed that I ask you to take today, and tomorrow if necessary, and find a place to live across the border. He feels you will be happier there, even if you have to drive thirty miles each morning.”
    Who was I to argue, especially since I had already reached the same conclusion?
    I rifled through a few file cabinets, took a couple of plot plans, packed up my gear, told Maria I’d call her, and drove to the Naco, Arizona, border crossing. At the U.S. checkpoint, I handed over my passport and asked the customs guy where I could get some decent food. He directed me to Turquoise Valley Golf Course, less than a mile away.
    Expecting a snobby atmosphere and exorbitant prices, I was delighted to find a clubhouse with cheap food and the ambiance of an old bay area yacht club, like the ones Jenks and I haunted. Even better, cowboys bellied up to the bar, half the early lunch crowd chatted in Spanish, and everyone was friendly.
    Had I taken a wrong turn and ended up back in Texas?

Chapter 7
     
    Seated at a table with a golf course view, I practically chugged one ice-cold mug of beer, then ordered another to wash down all five million calories of enchiladas, chiles rellenos , refried beans smothered in melted cheese, and tortillas. As stuffed as the rellanos I’d devoured, I waddled to the bar for a dessert beer, and to check out the local classified ads for rentals.
    Engrossed in marking mostly dubious possibilities—in my book buzzwords like cozy and charming are euphemisms for tiny and full of spiders—I was startled when the bartender asked, “Looking for a place to live?”
    “Yep, something preferably without black widow