Saving Tuna Street

by Nancy Nau Sullivan

  A hurricane was not completely unexpected this time of year, but it was most unwelcome. What they needed to do was rebuild sanity. They did not need more destruction of any sort.

  Blanche put her worries about the weather aside. Not now. If Wilma were to be a bother, she’d give them plenty of warning before she washed over Santa Maria and wreaked havoc. She hoped Wilma had the decency to do that.

  In the meantime, Blanche hurried off to see Liza.

  I

  Liza sat behind the desk, the phone propped on her shoulder as she talked and took notes. She looked up when Blanche walked in the door. She held up two fingers and wiggled them. Blanche marveled at her friend, who seemed to have rebounded. The blond curls were tamed, makeup fresh, and her grey pencil skirt and medallion-print silk blouse were straight out of a Sarasota boutique. One taupe patent leather heel dangled from her foot. Liza had a way of covering the gamut of fashion, and the profession. She ruled it all. She’d ended up teaching one of her real estate classes after she told the instructor she just loved the “software.” He thought she’d said “underwear” probably because his mind was elsewhere.

  Blanche landed in a nearby chair and put one foot on the waste basket. Liza appeared to have entered the angry mode, leaving the grief-stricken sobbing phase behind. She stabbed at the note pad and knit her eyebrows. She squeezed the pen until it broke in half, and then she threw it against the wall.

  Blanche couldn’t decide if this were progress. She peeked at Liza’s scrawl but it was hard to read upside down. She made up her mind to be patient, which involved grinding her teeth. They should have been stumps by now.

  At least Liza had been busy around the office. She’d re-organized the file cabinets, pushed her desk closer to the window next to an azalea Blanche had given her. And she was working. A lot. The calendar had a number of appointments and open houses penciled in—a duty Mrs. Blankenship had given up because those Sunday afternoons conflicted with her quilting bees. She had never been one for the real estate game. Her father had owned a grocery store, and she’d hoped Bob would have been more interested in tomatoes and peaches—and not the Liza variety.

  Bob’s corner remained untouched. A brown suit jacket hung over the back of his chair. If only jackets could talk. Blanche thought she could almost hear him: “Now, you listen to Liza…She can melt the frost off of a Michigan buyer, point out the obvious advantages of having a small kitchen or tiny bathroom. Less cleaning, especially when you’ve come all the way down here to rest! Why, Liza can pin a sale on a northern donkey faster than anyone.”

  The voice in her head faded. Bob was gone and he wasn’t coming back. The finality of it hit her all over again.

  Liza held up a perfectly manicured index finger and mouthed, “One more sec.”

  She grabbed a pen and took notes furiously, punctuating aloud as she wrote, words like… permit… Langstrom… email. Whatever was happening on the phone had something to do with the whole mess.

  Liza slammed down the receiver. Blanche flinched.

  “Ouch,” she said. She was developing a strong allergy to phone calls. Lately, they’d been worse than hives.

  “I knew it.” Liza stared back at her friend, her hand still on the receiver, which, miraculously, was in one piece.

  “Well, that was one hell of a conversation.”

  “I think I’ve opened Pandora’s box of….snakes and worms!”

  “Do tell!”

  Liza stood up and put her hands on her hips. She seemed about to explode, and then she did. “I traced some of Bob’s phone calls and the notes he made. I think he might have been onto that Langstrom. That blue-eyed, carpet-bagging, deep-dish-pizza-eating son of a bitch.”

  “Really?” Blanche bounced out of her chair. “But pizza?”

  “I love pizza. I love you,” she sank back down. “Thanks for coming over, Blanche.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Those dweebs in Tallahassee. That’s what’s going on.” She leaped up and started pacing. “They won’t tell me much, but apparently Bob found out that Langstrom was paying off someone to demolish the park and cottages on the north end. For starters. This bit of information turned up in the latest emails, and I confirmed it. I told Duncan right away. He didn’t seem too interested but he did say he’d get back to me.”

  Liza leaned over the desk. “And get this. Langstrom called and asked me to list that awful orange and green colossus on Sycamore they built on spec. Can you believe it? The nerve. Mel can have it, or it can fall down into a pile of multi-colored trash. Wish Wilma would take it with her.”

  “So that’s what you were talking to Duncan about. I mean, the emails, not that awful place on Sycamore.” Both feet hit the floor.

  “Yes, of course. Blanche, we need to get after this. There is a connection between Bob and Langstrom. Bob knew he was crooked.”

  She picked up the pen, and Blanche ducked. She was stunned. Her ears were ringing.

  “We have to do something about this right now, but I’m not sure what,” Liza said. “Those developers are moving fast. It’s almost a done deal where that park is supposed to be. You were right about the group on the bridge. Those shady bastards were up there surveying the point!”

  She wilted back into her desk chair. Blanche planted two fists on the desk and leaned over.

  “This couldn’t be better that he showed himself for the damn hairball he is.”

  She smiled at Blanche, her voice a whisper. “It’s just so depressing. I feel like I’m slogging through a mile-high sand dune over here.”

  “That would be difficult given your choice of footwear.”

  “Ha!”

  “Slogging. One high heel and one sandal at a time.” Blanche looked back at Bob’s computer and thought of the clues that might be revealed there. Liza circled the office again.

  “The smooth delivery.” She slapped those slim hips. “Their promises to dole out a fortune for the homes. Their plan stinks, and it’s all for that corporation, not for the island. And Bobby knew it.”

  Her red-tipped fingers went to her cheeks. Blanche expected waterworks, but instead she saw grit. Liza went to the cooler and gulped a paper cone of water. They were both on the same track: the money trail. Bribes and lies littered the way.

  Blanche could hear Gran now: Money. Nothing. But. Trouble. Nature is what lasted, and its profusion was glorious on Santa Maria Island. The combination of money and nature was oil and water. It just didn’t mix.

  “Liza, they’d love it if we rolled over. But we won’t.”

  “We need to dig into those emails, Blanche. We can get back to Duncan soon enough. But for now, we have to do this.” She turned to Blanche, pleading. “He doesn’t have the personnel over there, or the will, it seems. He’s dillydallying with county now. I can’t wait a minute longer.”

  Blanche kept hearing—let Duncan do it, stay out of it. She pushed the words out of her head. “It’s pretty clear Langstrom’s going to stick around. We don’t have a choice. And that’s a good thing. We’ll make it a good thing.”

  Liza nodded, twisting a handful of curls into a bun. She stuck a pencil in it.

  “I hate to say it,” said Blanche. “I can’t stop thinking about him.”

  “Oh, jeez, not him. What are you saying, girl? Those dimples and blue eyes don’t fool you.”

  “That’s not it. There’s just no peace. The thought of him ruining the island, and that he could have murdered Bob. Or know who did.” There was the “m” word again. She shuddered. “He’d been so concerned when I cut my toe. So earnest. That day I met him on the bridge he looked me right in the eye, and I almost believed him.”

  “Well, he’s a liar. And a conniver. We know that. I don’t think we can believe a thing he says.” Liza glanced again at the computer.

  “I’m going to have to meet him again, and the next time, I’m not going to let him off. He has to own up.”

  They heard thunder and moved to the window. A line o
f silver-rimmed black clouds rolled over a ten-foot-high sand dollar on the roof line of the gift shop; and to the north, a blue sky still. “Wow, look at that,” said Liza.

  “Just what we don’t need. More bad weather.”

  Blanche said, “Let me get over to the cabin and lock it down. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  Blanche was becoming averse to surprises, natural and otherwise. Lately, none of them had been good. But, now, another was just around the corner.

  Sixteen —

  Jack Be Quick

  Blanche headed down Gulf Drive toward Tuna. She had to get back to Sunny Sands. But now, she’d have to put it off a bit. A powder blue Cadillac convertible was parked in front of the cabin. Look what’s blown in from the North. He wasn’t in the car. Keys were in the ignition, top down. No sign of Jack.

  She knew where she’d find him—in the water. He had to be part fish, and Blanche still had trouble imagining him in the big city. “It’s a living, Blanche,” he’d told her. “A good one, and it lets me get down here whenever I can.” Where he got the wheels when he’d suddenly appear, she never could figure. He had connections. She just wished he’d use them for more than a car rental.

  He was wading in the Gulf, wearing expensive pants, probably part of a fine light-wool suit. Blanche sighed. He had a key. He could have gotten into the cabin to put on some shorts.

  She came up behind him and threw her arms around his back. He must have heard her tromping over the sand because in an instant he scooped her up, and Blanche found herself in about three feet of water, the waves splashing them both. Jack laughed. “Jeez, it’s like bathwater. How you doin’, Bang!”

  He splashed her again, and Blanche gave in. “Now look at what you’ve done to my outfit,” she yelled.

  “Some outfit. Where’d you go? Goodwill?”

  She flopped about, trying to gain footing—his foot—to pull him under. He was quick. He splatted a wave at her. But she caught him off guard, grabbed one slippery ankle, and he went down. The two of them were soaking wet and right back where they were twenty-five years before, two kids splashing around at the beach.

  “B, let’s swim out.”

  “You’re crazy. Look at the sky. Didn’t you hear a hurricane is coming?”

  “It’s not here yet, won’t be for at least a day or so.” The water was lightly capped, the blue sky streaked white to the north, the bottle-green Gulf capped in silver to the south. Blanche thought of the day they’d almost drowned, the current between the point and Gull Egg Key deceptively calm.

  “Jack, remember that day we swam out to the key? Thank God I talked you into a life jacket.”

  “Yeah, and I had to pay you a dollar. I still can’t figure that one out,” he said. His shirt was plastered to his chest, his tie ruined, the trousers now rolled up and hopeless. “Oh, damn, my wallet.” He pulled it out of his pants pocket and squeezed the salt water out of the leather.

  “No harm done. It’s all plastic.”

  “Except for the picture of your mom.” They both stood up. Jack opened the wallet and carefully removed the photo of Rose Murninghan—Blanche’s mother, Jack’s aunt. Rose had cared for Jack like a son when his mother disappeared—“with the circus,” his dad always said. They knew it wasn’t true, but the family mystery was never solved, and Rose and Maeve took care of Jack until he was eight. Until her accident.

  The Jacks. The story was never resolved. Jack’s dad had been in the merchant marine and was gone for most of the time. And then he all but disappeared; last the young Jack heard, his father was in Polynesia working in import-export. Jack Senior, Maeve’s brother, was a pirate of sorts who finally never made it back from sea. His was a nebulous occupation, maybe fishing, maybe guiding fishing charters. Maybe making deliveries he shouldn’t be making. Maeve had always been vague on the subject of the Jacks. She would tousle Jack III’s black curly hair and say, “Maybe we finally got it right.”

  She was devoted to Blanche and Jack III and forgave them everything—their truancy, beer drinking, and swimming in dangerous current. Duncan had rousted them more than once from their hideouts along the beach and from the neighbors’ pools. “Stick together. And when you make mistakes, make them right,” she’d say. She didn’t dwell on the past.

  But Maeve did look back to a time she had her beloved daughter, Rose. “An angel. That’s what she is,” said Maeve, who never got over Rose’s death in that senseless car wreck. She kept her memory alive. It was about the only concession she made to the past.

  Jack held up the damp picture of Rose in one hand, and with the other, pulled Blanche into a hug.

  They looked at Rose’s black curly hair, her laughing eyes, and the wide smile. It was the same photo that Blanche hung on the wall next to the fireplace. Next to a painting of a Miccosukee chief, the origin of which was never completely clear to Blanche. Gran would get uncharacteristically misty over that picture, and Blanche didn’t push it. Gran told them fragments of stories, but the truth remained buried in the lore of Santa Maria, and in the dunes and grasses of the keys along the coast. Blanche always wondered, why?

  She looked at the photo of her mother. “You still carry her.”

  “Wouldn’t be without her. Neither would you.”

  “I always feel she’s around. Somewhere, watching. Maeve, too.”

  “And the Jacks?”

  “Oh, God, I hope not.”

  “Maeve’s probably working some magic juju right now. Somehow setting them straight.” She looked up at a bright cloud so like her grandmother’s fluffy white hair and imagined her lining up all three Jacks. What would she say? Would she ask, Where have you been in all this?

  Jack waved the photo in front of Blanche. “Earth calling.” He shook the picture of Rose in the humid Gulf air. “She’d understand. This mess we’re in. They all would, really, and they’d have our back. Now, let’s get dry and drink some cold wet beer.”

  He held Rose next to Blanche’s face. “Twins.”

  Jack and Blanche raced up the beach toward the cabin, Jack slightly in the lead. They carried pounds of sand in their pockets but happiness lifted their spirits. They were back at the cabin together. Rose ran along with them, just like they knew she always would.

  Seventeen —

  Hot Words, Cold Beer

  “‘This mess we’re in.’ You said it.”

  “Murder. Hairballs. You’re the one saying it, Blanche.”

  “It is a mess. You won’t believe all that’s happened.” She was bursting to tell him the whole story. Confide in him, just like the old days—when they hung out in the dunes, smoking and drinking orange soda, sometimes with booze they’d stolen from Gran or Cappy. Such times they never held secrets from one another.

  But times were different.

  Jack slumped in a wicker arm chair on the porch. He’d changed out of the wet trousers into old board shorts from high school. Times were different but he didn’t look it. He was tall and lean, a broad-shouldered athlete nearing forty who hadn’t lost his easy gait and casual grace. “This about the murder? And the development? You going to harp at me about how Chicago is destroying Santa Maria? Are you serious, Bang?”

  “Keep an open mind. Please.” She’d wrapped herself in a towel and sunk into a chair opposite Jack. On the table between them he’d placed a bucket of Modelos on ice. “I just want things back the way they were.”

  “That’s a big fat laugh. Nothing stays the same.” He opened a beer with his teeth.

  “Really, Jack? We’ll need to fix your teeth along with everything else.”

  He grinned. “Tell me.” So she did.

  She went over details of the murder—and the appearance of the guy and the white van, Cappy’s warning, and Chief Duncan’s lackadaisical reaction. It felt like just the beginning of a horror story.

  Jack’s eyes got wider, but he waited until she finished. He was chewing it.

  With a deep sigh, she stoppe
d just short of bringing up Langstrom.

  But she couldn’t avoid him. He was like an itch she couldn’t get at, and always there.

  “Jack, you know Sergi Langstrom, don’t you?”

  “Is that a statement of fact, or a question?”

  “Come on, Jack.”

  “Know him? I know of him.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Yeah, I’ve run across him. You did mention him in that phone call. Remember? And I know that meeting at the town hall didn’t go well. A lot of what you just told me lines up with what I heard from Ben and Josh.”

  “From Manatee High?”

  “They would be the ones. The murder, et cetera, is discussed far and wide. Except for this business about the guy and the van. Really, B? Do you have any idea how many guys with white vans there are in Florida?”

  “I know, I know. But this was different. He didn’t seem to fit. He was creepy.”

  “Have you been to the The Drift recently? Plenty of island creepy there in various stages of dress and drink.”

  “I guess. But who in the hell would kill Bob?”

  “You got me. He was our rock.” Jack tipped his beer and shook his head. “To Bob.”

  Blanche drew her knees up. Easy and nonchalant. “So, what’s the word on Langstrom?” She bit her tongue, and leveled her gaze at him. She’d take the gamble he knew more than what he was letting on.

  He seemed to measure the question. “Those development folks, including Langstrom, are involved somehow with my new trucking business, and they’re re-thinking their strategy down here. Brecksall and Lam. Their corporation has tentacles. I’m trying to stay out of it, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to entirely.”