Death in the Baja
Death in the Baja
A San Amaro Mystery
Marnie J Ross
Death in the Baja
A San Amaro Mystery
Marnie J Ross
Editor: Leighton Wingate
Cover: Bart Hopkins
© 2022 by Marnie J Ross
All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, businesses, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidence.
ISBN 9798986007106 eBook
For Sharon, who made this possible
Contents
PART 1—Missing!
Chapter 1—March 8, 2018, San Amaro, Mexico
Chapter 2—March 8, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 3—March 8, 2018, Desert Southwest of San Amaro
Chapter 4—March 8, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 5—March 8, 2018, Desert Southwest of San Amaro
Chapter 6—March 8, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 7—March 9, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 8—March 9, 2018, Desert Southwest of San Amaro
Chapter 9—March 9, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 10—March 10, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 11—March 11–14, 2018, Desert Southwest of San Amaro
Chapter 12—March 15, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 13—March 15, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 14—March 15, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 15—March 15, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 16—March 15, 2018, Four Miles North of San Amaro
Chapter 17—March 15, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 18—March 15, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 19—March 15, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 20—March 16, 2018, San Amaro
PART 2—What came before . . .
Chapter 1—August 21, 2016, Pleasant Valley, Arizona
Chapter 2—August 23, 2016, Glendale, Arizona
Chapter 3—September 6, 2016, Tempe, Arizona
Chapter 4—October 3–November 29, 2016, Phoenix Area
Chapter 5—December 7, 2016, San Amaro
Chapter 6—December 21, 2016, San Amaro
Chapter 7—December 31, 2016, San Amaro
Chapter 8—January 16, 2017, Tempe
Chapter 9—January 21, 2017, San Amaro
Chapter 10—February 14, 2017, Four Miles North of San Amaro
Chapter 11—February 15, 2017, Tempe
Chapter 12—February 16, 2017, San Amaro
Chapter 13—March 8, 2017, San Amaro
Chapter 14—March 12, 2017, Tempe
Chapter 15—May 10, 2017, Tempe
Chapter 16—July 17, 2017, Kingman, Arizona
Chapter 17—November 23, 2017, San Amaro
Chapter 18—December 29, 2017–January 19, 2018, Tempe–San Amaro
PART 3—Conclusion
Lead-Up to the Hike . . .
Chapter 1—February 17, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 2—March 3, 2018, Pleasant Valley
Chapter 3—March 5, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 4—March 6, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 5—March 6, 2018, San Amaro
After the hike . . .
Chapter 6—March 16, 2018, Mexicali
Chapter 7—March 17, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 8—March 18, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 9—March 18, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 10—March 19, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 11—March 20, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 12—March 21, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 13—March 23, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 14—March 23, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 15—March 23, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 16—March 23, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 17—March 23, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 18—March 23, 2018, San Amaro
Chapter 19—March 23, 2018, San Amaro
Acknowledgements
About the Author
PART 1—Missing!
“She had the right idea, old man, don’t you think—to disappear before it gets too late?”
Patrick Modiano, Rue des Boutiques Obscures
Chapter 1—March 8, 2018, San Amaro, Mexico
The sunrise over the Sea of Cortez washed the near-white desert sand a fire red. Through the bedroom window, Stella saw a shimmering line of pure silver where the sky met the sea. Above that line, a vivid orange and red sky announced dawn in the Baja. A perfect start to the adventure ahead, she thought. In the desert, both sunrises and sunset are typically very colorful. Her excitement for the day ahead was tempered by a slight anxiety. That was not uncommon when taking an off-road trip through the wilds of the Baja desert.
But today felt different.
She had just finished tying the laces of her aging leather hiking boots when Simon called from the front door. The Jeep was ready with gas, water cans, and the myriad safety items wise desert adventurers pack. He also informed her Molly and Jaime were just driving up. She was glad for her well-broken-in boots, as she hoped they would protect and comfort the two black-and-blue toes of her left foot for the hike. Today, the group was going to see the petroglyphs and wall paintings in Cañon Del Demonio. At age seventy-four, today was her and Simon’s first wedding anniversary, and they, with four friends, had been planning this hike for a couple of weeks as the start of the day’s celebration.
She had layered her wiry five-foot-four frame in a zipper-fronted hoody; light, long-sleeved, white-and-red-striped shirt over a tank top; sports bra; and shorts. She knew even though it was a cool sixty degrees now, it would be in the low eighties by the time they got to the area from which their hike would begin. She’d lived in the Baja desert and sea town of San Amaro for nine years, which, because of its proximity to the US border, was a very popular vacation spot and retirement location for Americans wanting the Mexican experience with nearness to United States. She was well acquainted with the vagaries of the desert and this hike in particular. It was one she had done almost every one of those nine years.
Having taught science to young teens during most of her career, she had developed a love of natural science and anthropology. The petroglyphs, ancient rock and cave drawings of deer, antelope, and people still fascinated her. It set her imagination free to picture the Cochimi tribe a thousand years ago documenting their lives on the rocks and caves of the region. The arroyo in the canyon where the drawings were found had a very rugged desert kind of beauty that she had grown to first appreciate and later love the longer she lived in Mexico.
She’d moved to San Amaro when she retired at sixty-five from teaching in Helena, Montana. Although she’d been an avid hiker all her life and loved the east side of the Rockies, she’d had more than enough of snow and cold to last five lifetimes. When she was sixty-two, years after she recovered from the pain of her husband’s death from lung cancer when he was only fifty-six, Stella decided to change her life and move to Mexico.
She’d found San Amaro, a tiny town on the Baja California Peninsula that is nestled between the Sea of Cortez and the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir mountains, after a month of research. She thought it sounded idyllic. She’d gone for a visit on summer break before her last year of teaching. Summer was hotter than she’d expected, but she fell in love with the quaintness, the beach, the nearby mountains, and most of all, the people. San Amaro was nothing like Puerto Vallarta, where she had spent Christmas the year after her husband died, and t
hat suited her fine. PV was just too big for her liking. In San Amaro, she’d felt an immediate sense of connection with the locals and met a few other gringos living in the area whom she liked greatly. Best of all for Stella, her best friend Molly, who had come along to make sure it was safe, also fell in love with the town and its people. They began making retirement plans at once to move together to this charming, beautiful, and out-of-the-way little town.
A double toot of the Jeep’s horn brought her out of her reverie and told her that her good friend Rick and his new boyfriend, Rob, must have also arrived. This new man in Rick’s life had previously been both a paramedic in the United States and an army combat medic in Afghanistan. Now that the Boys, as she called them, were here, they would be ready to head out.
Rob and Rick helped Simon carry the last of their supplies, packs, and walking sticks to Stella’s Jeep. Stella looked out the window and saw Rob was admiring her homemade walking stick before he put it into the vehicle. She smiled. She’d made it herself from a fallen branch of an ash tree she had in her backyard in Montana. She’d had it for years, and it had assisted her on hikes there as well as here.
Stella whistled the three-note trill she used to signal Juba, her three-year-old border collie, that they were leaving. Juba dutifully trotted up with her halter and leash in her mouth, excited to be included in the day’s activities. Simon, a relative newbie to Mexico and desert living, had taken his cue from Stella about how to dress and what to take, and that it was essential to include multiple vehicles in the plan to ensure safety. They hadn’t discussed taking Juba, however, and he was surprised when he saw the dog sporting her neon-orange harness.
“You’re taking the dog?” he asked, in a rather flat, but nonjudgmental, voice.
“Yes, she loves this hike, and she needs the exercise,” Stella said, smiling at her handsome “younger” man. Well, ten years didn’t matter much at their age, but they liked to kid about the age difference. Simon handed Stella her water bottle and smacked her on the bum teasingly as she and Juba walked past him and out the door to the waiting desert vehicles.
“Hang on a minute,” Simon called to the group as he ran back toward the house. “I forgot sunscreen. I’ll just be a sec.”
“Okay!” Stella said when he climbed behind the wheel. “Let’s get going. I can’t wait for you to see the beauty of the desert with everything in bloom.”
Chapter 2—March 8, 2018, San Amaro
Julia Garcia always tried to finish her morning run before it got too hot, and at this time of year, that meant starting out before six o’clock. Today, she’d cut short her favorite run. After heading down to the Malecon and running along the beachfront, she turned up Calle Guadalajara, the main road heading north to Highway 5, which eventually leads to the United States of America. Then, instead of going the extra kilometer out of town toward the gringo communities that lined the seaside north of San Amaro, she turned around and retraced her route home. She needed to be at work early today.
In an hour’s time with the sun fully risen, the sky and the Sea of Cortez would be matching azure and the sand, almost white. At this hour, however, everything was bathed in red as the sun rose out of the sea. With sidewalks existing on only a handful of streets in San Amaro, Julia’s morning runs were often obstacle courses of uneven terrain, littered not just with the detritus of Mexican daily life, but packs of three or four dogs running free and looking for food of any sort. They were rarely aggressive toward people, and Julia knew most of them by sight and had named them all. Today, she saw Gimpy, a brindle pit-bull mix with a bum back leg and Silly, likely Gimpy’s sister. They looked very similar, though Silly’s tongue seemed too long for her mouth. They were joined by a new recruit, likely a Lab mix, with short legs and an orange, shaggy coat, which she immediately dubbed Rudy. She kept a watchful eye on them during her runs. Feral dogs were just part of the landscape here. She was alert to any changes in their health or if a new litter of pups had been born. She was an active member of the San Amaro dog-rescue organization and did her part to help puppies get adopted and feral dogs get neutered or spayed and, if possible, find permanent homes.
There was a special all-hands meeting scheduled at the start of the morning shift today. She cut her usual seven-kilometer run down to five kilometers so she could get home, shower, and dress. That would put her at the station thirty minutes early. Being one of only three women in the San Amaro State Police Force, and the only one having reached sergeant’s rank, she was always aware she had to be two steps ahead of the department’s male officers just to be noticed by the brass. She had every intention of following in her grandfather’s footsteps and becoming the station comandante one day. She was under no illusions that it would be an easy journey. She was also sure she was up to the task.
Her grandfather, her papito, Juan, was still frequently consulted on police matters by the current comandante. However, he had no insider information to share with her about today’s early-morning meeting. Julia ran and let her mind wander, playing with potential topics. She’d finally decided it must be related to the upcoming Semana Santa festivities, the Holy Week, between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday that was starting in ten days. In past years, upward of thirty-five thousand people descended on San Amaro for the week, an almost 200 percent increase from the normal population. Many of the visitors, almost all Mexicans, camped on the beach along the Malecon. The crowding and proximity to the Malecon’s bars always provided a potentially volatile combination.
Julia arrived at the station at seven thirty, freshly showered with her still-damp ebony hair pulled into a tight bun at her nape and her statuesque five-foot-nine body clad in a clean and pressed uniform. She dropped her purse into the drawer behind her active files. The only thing differentiating her desk from all the others in the open-floor-plan office was the fact that her desk surface was neat and tidy, occupied only by her computer keyboard and monitor, a phone, and her in-box. The latter contained an internal office memo reminding her of the eight o’clock meeting but giving no indication of the meeting’s purpose. Typical, she thought with a shake of her head.
Over the next fifteen minutes, she logged in and checked her email, which included an update on the robbery case she had been assigned the previous afternoon, and her work assignment for the day. She had desk-sergeant responsibilities starting at eleven o’clock for the remainder of her shift, leaving her only a couple of hours after the meeting to do what she considered her real work—investigating crime. Oh well, she thought. Being desk sergeant was an important rung on the ladder and brought her into contact with most of the incoming cases of the day.
The San Amaro State Police Station is located on the main north-south drag, Calle Guadalajara, about halfway between the Malecon and the north edge of town. It is a tan-colored, rectangular, two-story, concrete-covered cinder-block structure set back from the street. The fifteen-year-old building’s color blended into the desert sand surrounding the fenced perimeter of the station’s grounds. In many places, the building’s stucco had been damaged by rain, heat, and neglect. Gray cinder blocks peeked out from beneath broken concrete coating, and blotches of still-unpainted stucco showed some of the more recent repairs.
The simple station housed the nineteen officers of the San Amaro detachment of the North Baja California State Police, a two-cell jail, and a small, inadequately equipped forensics lab. Inside, the shabbiness of the building’s exterior continued with water-stained ceilings and grubby walls that at one time had been off-white. The main floor housed a reception area with a freestanding, brown-painted plywood reception desk, which was manned by the desk sergeant, the open area for officers’ desks, two interview rooms, a meeting room that doubled as the coffee station, a lunchroom, and the jail area. Upstairs were the senior officers’ rooms, another meeting room for the brass, the forensics lab, and a large record-storage area stuffed with aging and rusty gray, tan, and black four-drawer filing cabinets, which sat along one wall. Sagging plywood shelv
es containing moldering evidence boxes filled the remainder of the space.
Joining only three other officers in the room, Julia took a chair in the second row of the lunchroom/meeting room at ten to eight. No one ever sat in the front row at these meetings. A couple of minutes later, her friend, Sergeant Ricardo Hernandez, took the chair directly in front of her, his ubiquitous coffee in hand, and his height and broad shoulders completely blocking her view of the dais. A second later he swung around and gave her a wink, tossing a quick “¿Qué pasa, Lucy?” over his shoulder at Julia. What’s up? Then he moved to the chair beside her. She smiled brightly at him, punching him none too lightly on the shoulder. “No mucho, Ricky! ¿Y tú ?” she quipped back. Not much, and you?
Ricardo, while also a sergeant, was one level higher than she, a fact he liked to rub in whenever possible, as they had been in basic training together. They had developed a friendship while in training that had continued for the past seven years. Ricardo had tried to move it toward something more, but Julia had firmly maintained the friendship boundary. Julia was not concerned he had risen rank faster than she had. He was a man in this very man’s-world profession in Mexico. She was proud of her rank and felt confident that she, too, would get level two in the next year if she could find an opportunity to shine for the brass.
Because of their fast friendship and jovial, though constant, competitive bickering, and the similarity in looks of Ricardo to Desi Arnaz, their fellow cadets had taken to calling them Lucy and Ricky after the I Love Lucy show. It was popular in reruns Saturday mornings when they were kids. The two still used the nicknames in their banter with each other.
The meeting started about ten minutes late, and the room was full of uniformed and plain clothed officers, on and off duty. As she’d guessed, the focus was indeed Semana Santa crowd control and safety. Four members of the Federalis, the other police presence in Mexico, were also in attendance and spoke to the joint planning between the two police forces working in San Amaro to ensure a safe week for the locals and visitors alike.