“What?” Blanche choked. “He’s on speaking terms with Denzel?”
“Who’d a figured.” Becky’s mouth was open in a dopey smile.
It was true the great movie star had visited Santa Maria and loved the Jamaican cuisine at the Cabana. They loved him. That didn’t mean they had to pave the sidewalk with stars.
“It’s about time we showed off this beautiful island!” He held up an admonishing index finger. “Now, let’s get Denzel and company back here for more of those conch fritters!”
They chuckled and clapped.
Blanche was appalled.
“Before the invitations go out, we have work to do!”
There was that we again.
Sergi pointed to the drawing of a huge condo-like structure perched on an easel. It rested among an assortment of fancy watercolors and line drawings with stands of palms and globs of greenery and flowers. He’d spent a fortune on the posters. Money. A flood of it already.
“Just for starters. Here’s something along the lines of what we propose…A real beauty.” Langstrom tapped the rendering of a house that had crept through the permitting process and gone up almost overnight—a light tan stucco monolith with orange shutters and a green barrel-tiled roof, Tiffany glass and brass coach lamps. It was finished off with white filigreed arches and balconies facing the Gulf. Hideous. At the end of the deck, the builder had attached a purplish-grey guesthouse. Like a wart.
Somehow, the developer had snuck in under the radar and put up the monstrosity of a model.
It set off Blanche’s alarm. She knew the location well. The house, as big as a hotel, was plopped beach side on Sycamore Avenue, cutting off the view for several modest cottages that stretched between Fir and Elm. It put them all in the shade where there had once been sun. And now Langstrom was proposing more of the same—an abominable disconnect from Santa Maria Island. She could only fear what such a plan would do to Tuna Street—if they got their hands on it.
No one moved. It was as if they were hypnotized, watching a dazzling infomercial, or a train wreck from which they could not look away. He smiled, flourishing the pointer like a magic wand.
We are doomed…
“We are prepared,” he said, “to offer large sums for your homes.” His index finger circled an orange shutter. He drew dollar signs in the air.
“What if we don’t want large sums for our homes? How ‘bout we like things just the way they are!” It was Jess Blythe, who owned the gas station and was famous for the chicken salad in his deli. “In case you haven’t noticed, our island suits us fine, thank you very much.”
Langstrom’s expression cracked.
Would he dare slice Jess’s objection to ribbons?
Jess didn’t let him in. “I want to keep my place. Just the way it is.” Each word ticked up until he was shouting. He checked his neighbors. They nodded. “I don’t get your motivation, unless it’s to make money off our backs.”
He balled up a fist in his faded baseball cap and tilted back on his heels. His business had grown from a driftwood lean-to into a booming car repair and towing service, and he and his wife, Sue, were not about to let it go. They lived next door in a bright yellow stucco ranch, built in the early ‘20s, a tangle of purple verbena and firebush blazing up the crushed shell path. The buildings sat right on the edge of Langstrom’s first stage of development in the center of Santa Maria.
Now Jess didn’t budge. He had a lot to lose, should the plan be approved. He’d be dwarfed by six-story condos and eight-thousand-square-foot houses, cut out of the sun and view in the shadow of monsters. He shifted from one boot to the other.
Langstrom flashed those white teeth again. Blanche was reminded of a shark, the one that snatched a three-year-old in about a foot of water. Tragic. Unexpected.
“Well, I understand,” he said. “What did you say your name is, sir?”
“I didn’t.”
Langstrom put a fist in his chin.
“Name’s Jess Blythe.”
“Well, Mr. Blythe, let’s look on the bright side, why don’t we. What’s best for everyone? Are you aware of eminent domain and…”
That was as far as he got.
Jess yanked up his jeans with his forearms and gave his baseball cap a whack. “I don’t want to hear about your ‘eminent domain.’ You can put that where the sun don’t shine. And don’t talk about the bright side of this because there ain’t none. You’re not very bright if you think tearing down our houses is going to improve paradise.”
The grumbling started up. Blanche had the slender hope they might run him out of town right now.
But Sergi’s voice dipped. Coaxing. “We don’t want to tear down paradise, Mr. Blythe. We want to grow it!”
“Huh,” said Jess. “I guess we’re pretty much all growed up.” He plunked the cap back on his unruly hair. “That’s what I’m thinkin’.” Sue patted his arm.
Heat crept up Blanche’s neck. She sprang from her seat and caught her sandal on the bottom rung of the chair. It clattered out from under her. The chair came to rest on the toes of a startled resident.
“Ouch!” It was Marietta Gantley.
“I’ll say,” Jess shouted.
Langstrom didn’t move, except for one eyebrow.
Three —
Hush, Money
“I’m so sorry.” Blanche peered at Marietta’s foot and recovered her balance. She was already making a mess of it, and she’d lost the thought. She squinted at Langstrom. Hot determination rushed through her veins.
He folded his arms. She caught the hint of a smile.
“Eminent domain can mean only one thing.” Her voice screeched. “The rich will benefit. They’ll buy up those properties along the beach and get richer in the bargain. And who will benefit then? You, and that bunch of hairballs from Chicago?” She sucked in her breath. She hadn’t meant to call them what they were, but she couldn’t help herself. Her filter often malfunctioned.
Langstrom grinned, somewhat tightly. Or was that a smirk? “Well, Ms…?
“Murninghan. That’s M-U-R-N-I-N-G-H-A-N. Blanche Murninghan, pronounced Monahan, if you wish.”
“I wish.”
Now what is that supposed to mean? Is he serious? Flirting? Blanche didn’t know what to think because rage burned a hole in her brain. Those two little words: I wish.
“What is so amusing?”
“Nothing, really, but I understand how you might…”
“Please. Enough with the sales pitch! This plan of yours will kill animals. Trees! Just about everything on this island! Killers, that’s what you people are.”
What the hell is wrong with me? I can’t stop.
Langstrom turned a shade paler. The crowd whispered, and the room closed up around her. She needed to get out of there. Her mind escaped to the sunset at the north point and the manatees at the pier, the circling gulls, and Tuna Street. She wanted the night to end. But she was trapped, and she had put herself right in the middle of it.
“No. That is not our intention, Miss Murninghan. We are not killers. Thou shall not kill, nor steal—We won’t kill anything, or anyone.”
The biblical reference infuriated her. “Yet you want to risk it.”
“Improve, not destroy. We want to bring jobs to Santa Maria. Infrastructure. Broader tax base. Large sums for your homes and businesses.”
“Large sums.” That reference to money again. It sent an odd current through the room. She could feel it like she’d touched the short in her old living room lamp. It took only minutes, and then she realized the horror of it: They were mesmerized at hearing that their property was gold. The murmuring stopped. Silence spun through dead air with not a sound of protest.
Money, especially the doling out of it, made people think about how they could spend it even before it became a reality. She wasn’t willing to take Langstrom’s word that they would be paid fairly for what they had to give up. She was with Jess on that one. To begin with, she couldn’t put a market price
on Tuna Street, nor could she endure the cost of losing it.
“Whoa.” It was Bob. He was on his feet. Blanche’s mind was a jumble, her insides wrung out, but here was Bob. And in her head, she heard her beloved grandmother, Maeve Murninghan of Santa Maria Island—long dead: Stand up straight, Blanche. Speak your mind. But her knees wobbled.
Bob gave her a thumbs up and looked around the room. “We have a number of items on this agenda.” His hands tamped down the air of contention. “You have a considerable hurdle or two, Mr. Langstrom. We are not likely to back down.”
Langstrom ducked his head and rubbed his hands together. Blanche wanted to strangle him right there. “You know, we appreciate your views,” he said. “We really do. But let me say, the company will make generous offers to facilitate the removal of dilapidated properties to improve the well-being of the island community.”
Dilapidated properties? Whose? Mine? Could he be serious?
“Now let’s wait one momentito.” It was Bob again. “The plan is ambitious and costly, and devastating to the flora and the fauna.” At this, several heads bounced in agreement, mostly because that’s what everyone did when Bob spoke. “Do you have state and local permission? You know, it’s quite a lengthy and expensive process to get permits to build within the coastal zone. And, normally, you’ll only be able to rebuild within the footprint of the buildings you, ahem, destroy.”
Blanche’s mind was racing. All he had to do was go to Tallahassee with a ton of money, and he’d get those approvals in a heartbeat.
“No, we don’t have all the permits,” Langstrom said quietly. “But we’ve taken the first step. To get the residents of Santa Maria on board with improvements to their economy.” Cool with just a dab of blasé. “And by economy, I mean each and everyone’s personal economy.”
She couldn’t hold back.
“Excuse me. Just where is Tuna Street on that board? Is that it? With a different name? Royal Palm Drive? And what about Bertie’s house on Tuna next to my cabin, and Jess’s place?” Blanche was pointing like crazy. As if the awful green roof and orange shutters on Sycamore Avenue weren’t enough, a mall in a weird, complicated design, all fretwork and balustrades, splashed a garish shade of turquoise, cut across the tip of the island and ate up most of the park land.
“By the way, something else is wrong here,” she said. “You seem to have forgotten a very important part of Santa Maria. I don’t see the pier at all.”
Sergi glanced at the drawing and jotted something on a clipboard. He smiled at Blanche. “That pier. Really, so quaint. Maybe a marina instead? With warehousing for boat storage?” He fumbled with the posters and held up a drawing of an elaborate dock with coach lights, a glassed-in restaurant, and Onassis-size yachts.
“I don’t believe this.” She steadied herself. The murmuring started up again, but no one came forward.
Blanche stumbled into the aisle and headed for the back door, anxious for a breath of air. Suddenly, she was suffocating. She leaned in the door frame, her back to Langstrom and the crowd. Outside, the geckos skittered up the wall, the palms rattled as the wind picked up off the Gulf. She turned toward the breeze and the shelter of the western sky where a patch of fluorescent orange glowed in the dark. It was a relief, knowing that at least no one could take away that sunset and the Gulf of Mexico.
But then she turned back to the disaster. Langstrom leaned against a long folding table, then bounced toward the crowd.
“Hear me out. Please,” he said. The buzzing stopped.
“Don’t you see what he’s doing?” she yelled. She’d been holding her breath, her voice tinny. The back row looked up at her.
“Believe me.” Langstrom ignored the outburst. “Santa Maria will be better than ever. We’ll plant native species, including live oak and sabal palms. Get rid of those Australian pines.” He drew out every word like he was announcing the creation of Eden, the pointer hitting various round dots on the board that Blanche guessed were the “native” plantings.
She was dizzy from the thought of losing the pier, most of the park land, and now this? How do I defend a tree? The pines wove a carpet of long needles on the broken shell and hot sand. They whistled and provided shade, and bright green parrots raised a joyous ruckus in the branches in March. Those trees had a life of their own, and they were part of their lives. Langstrom didn’t know a thing about them. How could you trust someone who dismissed the trees as a non-native nuisance?
And did he know anything about palms? There were nearly eighty varieties, and the island had quite a number already. Did he know that they bent in hurricanes and popped back up, and that they were amazing transplants? She was not against bringing in more palm trees, but he wanted to make the place look like a Florida postcard. More Fake Florida. Just what Santa Maria Island did not need.
“Hear, hear.” It was Bob again. He reached in his pocket and drew out a small piece of paper. A check. “You have some good ideas there, Mr. Langstrom, but I’m afraid these plans for development just don’t jibe with our plans for historical preservation. Plain and simple.”
He pivoted to the group, showing off the check. “Ten thousand dollars says the park and wetlands at the northern end will not be uprooted, paved over, nor built upon. It’s the first donation, and we’ll raise more.”
Blanche was stunned. Cheers went up around the room. The historical society was coming through.
The handouts fluttered in front of faces, and the buzzing started up again.
Langstrom’s pen lifted off the notebook, his expression taut. “You don’t say!” He eyed Bob and looked at the clock.
They were already scraping their chairs back. A dozen residents crowded around Bob. The assistant grabbed a couple of posters, and the mayor looked about to explode.
Langstrom snapped his briefcase closed. “Thanks so much for coming out tonight!” He pointed here and there, and his gaze lingered on Bob. “Hope I can buy you a cup of coffee at Peaches!”
But Bob was surrounded, his large head bent to Janet and Becky.
Confident and peppy, that’s Langstrom. Blanche couldn’t make his plans go away, but Bob’s check was a good start.
She stared at the posters and diagrams, globs of pink, turquoise, and coral. There should be a revolution, but there’s nothing like that. Are they resigned to it?
Sergi was at the side door, the smile gone. He didn’t seem to be paying the slightest bit of attention to them. They could have been telling him their grocery lists from the look of it.
Blanche studied her Tevas but then glanced toward the exit. He gave her a two-finger salute.
What? Victory? The meeting had settled nothing.
She spun around and watched them walk toward the parking lot and down the street. They needed each other if they were to turn things around. She had come in worried yet hopeful and now was about to leave, devastated. She was desperate to know what they were thinking: Where were the questions? Don’t you ask a lot of questions at a town hall meeting?
Langstrom could not just show up and take their homes. The idea was ludicrous. It wouldn’t be possible if people didn’t want it. She couldn’t imagine they would approve the plan. Some of them had rebuilt after storms many times, the way she and Gran did at the cabin on Tuna Street. They had fought to keep their community together—against water and wind and the endless confusion of the bureaucracies with their new building and zoning requirements. They tried to work within the constraints to preserve tradition. A bunch of developers from Chicago couldn’t run over them and change the island into a fake fantasy land.
Or could they?
The night had slipped through their fingers like sand. Many of the shocking posters remained propped on the easels, and Blanche looked around frantically for someone to come and take them down. No one came. Few residents seemed to have concerns and questions, and Blanche had plenty.
Liza hurried over, trailing a cloud of captivating White Rose Musk. She put her arm around Blanche, but she coul
dn’t feel the love, she was so numb. She stared at the fancy boards of dots and squares. Liza didn’t say a word as she looked back at Bob, but Blanche said just enough: “No.”
Four —
A Deadly Purpose
“Bob is dead!”
Liza hit Blanche with this awful news when she walked in the door of Sunny Sands Realty—the morning after the town hall meeting. She’d come to talk with them about Langstrom. They needed to form a plan, settle some loose ends.
Blanche stood in the doorway and stared at Liza. Her mouth open, but nothing came out.
What is she talking about?
Liza was hiccupping and choking through the tears. She lifted her arms and dropped forward on the desk.
Blanche had never seen her so….wild! She had the urge to turn around and run out of there and come back in again. She covered her ears.
“You called me, Liza.” She whispered, and her feet began to move.
Blanche managed to lower Liza into the desk chair though it was difficult to contain her, all silk and tears, shaking and crying up a storm. Her hands flew to her inflamed cheeks. Blanche held on. “Tell me. What are you saying?” Maybe she would take it back. Maybe she’d said Bob was late…not “daid.” Dead?
The look on her face said it all.
They huddled together, their fingers locked in a desperate tangle. Bob’s enormous grey metal desk loomed in the corner of the office. She pictured his wide grin. A lion in a brown suit. She longed for him to walk in and sit down next to them. Tell them it was all a hoax, a prank. A mistake.
Blanche dashed to the cooler for a paper cone of water. She held it under Liza’s chin until she took a gulp.
“Oh, my God, I can’t believe this is happening,” Liza wailed. Her mascara ran, streaking her make-up, and her hair stuck out in every direction. She swiveled from the phone to a pile of notes on a spike, back to a sheaf of manila folders, and then buried her face in the crook of her arm.
“What happened?” Blanche nudged her gently. “Tell me. Who told you this, Liza?”
Saving Tuna Street Page 2