Bitter Tide

by Jack Hardin

  “But we just did all this on a shoestring,” Ellie said.

  “Don’t I know it. And it looks like that’s the way it’s going to have to stay for at least the next six to nine months. So for now, run your Ringo angle and anything else you think will get you somewhere. But, and I can’t stress this enough, keep me up to speed every step of the way. If I get questions, I need to have answers. I don’t want to hear that you’ve known or intuited something about Ringo without letting me in on it. Clear?”

  Ellie stood. “All right. I’ll get with Mark, and we’ll figure out the best way to move forward.”

  Garrett said, “I won’t be in on Friday, but call me if you need anything. Angela’s coming into town tomorrow night. I got us tickets to go see Les Misérables up in Tampa this weekend.” Garrett’s wife spent most of her time in New York City. She had created a fashion line that was getting off the ground and came down to see her husband a couple weekends a month. Garrett had expressed a wavering hope that the tiring arrangement wouldn’t have to go on much longer.

  “I should probably meet her one of these days. Don’t you think?” Ellie said.

  “I do. Maybe next time she’s down we can have you over for dinner. You both would get along well, I think.” His desk phone rang. He grabbed it up, and Ellie stepped out.

  Chapter Five

  The top step of the footstool jiggled a little, and Ellie grabbed a rafter to steady herself. She ducked and reached to the string of Christmas lights hanging across the inside ceiling of The Salty Mangrove’s tiki hut. A red bulb had blown and caused half the run of lights that followed to go out as well. Gloria and Fu Wang sat with their backs to the marina, he wearing shorts and a red p0lo, she stuffed into a black one-piece swimsuit that looked as if it had reached the manufacturer's limits on stretchability.

  Ellie unscrewed the small bulb, replaced it with a fresh one, and the dark lights came to life, restoring the funky, tropical ambience that Major, the bar’s owner and Ellie’s uncle, liked to maintain around Pine Island’s favorite bar. Ellie stepped down and tossed the old bulb into the trash before putting the footstool away. “That’s much better,” Gloria said, looking up at the lights. Her husband nodded approvingly, leaned in, and mumbled something to her. She nodded, said, “I’ll ask. Ellie, what was the name of that champagne we all had at the ceremony last week? Fu liked it and wants to get a bottle to celebrate our anniversary next week.”

  “Your anniversary?” Ellie replied, stepping up to the sink behind the bar and filling a glass with ice. “How many years?” Fu and Gloria were as odd a couple as one would find. And yet, in some strange way, they seemed right for each other. They lived on a Gibson houseboat not two hundred feet from The Salty Mangrove—where they spent most of their passive income and drank enough alcohol each day to fuel a small jet.

  “Six years,” Gloria beamed. “It still feels like we’re on our honeymoon.”

  “Congratulations, you guys.” Ellie held her glass under the spout, filled it with water, and squeezed a lime wedge into it. “As for the champagne, I don’t remember what it was. I can text Major and ask him.”

  Last week, after completing repairs on the Norma Jean pier, Major had held a rechristening ceremony. Council members, local business owners, members of the Rotary and Lions Clubs, and a couple hundred other people from around the island had come for a quick celebration. Six weeks prior, a small amphibian airplane carrying nearly a ton of cocaine had crashed into the southern end of the pier, not a hundred yards from where they were now sitting.

  Sharla Potter sat a couple stools down from Gloria. “You two met on a boat tour, didn’t you?” she asked.

  “We did,” Gloria blushed. “Providence sat me right next to him. You know, with as large as I am sometimes I get nervous about who I’ll be seated next to on a plane or a boat. But Fu,” she turned and smiled at her husband, “he liked me being pressed into him. It’s been nothing but good times and fireworks ever since.”

  “Well, I’m with Ellie,” Sharla said. “Congratulations on six good years.” She nudged her wine glass toward Ellie. “Let me get another pinot, Ellie. If you would be so kind.” Sharla was the mango matron of the island, who, along with her husband Gary, owned The Groovy Grove, a fifty-two acre mango plantation in Pineland. She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, her straight gray hair hanging untethered behind her, her delicate nose turned slightly upward at the end. Sharla was loved by anyone who had the good fortune of meeting her and was the perfect embodiment of Southern hospitality and grace. The Potters, along with Ellie’s uncle, were pillars in this community, small business owners who gave back their money and time to ensure that Pine Island retained its slow, sequestered way of life and kept greedy industrialists, who would seek to build seaside penthouses far into the sky, at bay.

  Pine Island was the largest island in the state of Florida, its southernmost point sitting not three miles north of Sanibel Island, and stretched seventeen miles northward, its widest point no more than three miles.. The island had managed to keep a lower tourist profile than its nearby neighbors like Cayo Costa and Sanibel, in part because it was lacking their powdery beaches, a point that none of the locals viewed as a negative.

  Gloria jabbed her elbow into her husband’s ribs. “Honey, we need to go pick some mangoes up at The Groovy Grove sometime.”

  Fu nodded intensely. “Yes. Yes.”

  “We’d love to have you,” Sharla said. “Right now things are a little hectic, but plan on coming out after Mango Mania.”

  Mango Mania was a late summer festival that saw Saint James City shutting down for three days as thousands descended upon the southern end of the island to celebrate and enjoy the golden fruit. Dozens of local merchants and vendors would set up along south Oleander Street and spill out onto The Salty Mangrove’s boardwalk and halfway down the Norma Jean pier.

  “Ellie,” Sharla said, “I hear your sister and niece are coming back home. I am so glad to hear that. I’ve missed them more than my granny’s gravy.”

  “They are. I can’t wait,” Ellie said.

  “She’s renting the old house out, isn’t she? Are they going to stay with you?”

  “No, her renters just completed their lease and vacated last week. Katie and Chloe will be moving back in.”

  “Wonderful.”

  When their father died, Ellie was knee deep in an overseas career with the CIA, and Frank O’Conner’s will placed the home in his youngest daughter’s hands. When Katie moved to Seattle last summer, Major had convinced her not to sell it.

  Sharla took a sip of her pinot grigio. “I hate that Katie and Chloe are going to miss the festival again,” she said. “Chloe was only a little thing then, but that year before they moved she would stay at our booth and hold out a paper plate of mango slices to passersby. Of course, she would when she wasn’t busy helping herself to the actual samples.”

  “Well, the festival is my all-time favorite weekend of the year,” Gloria said. “Music, mangoes, and seeing everyone pack this place out.”

  Fu straightened up. “Fun,” he said. “Be fun.”

  Ellie froze and stared at Fu, her mouth nearly hanging open. “It will be fun?” she repeated. “Fu! Are you actually speaking English?”

  “Yes, yes,” he smiled.

  “I keep telling him he would have more fun if he decided to speak the native tongue,” Gloria said, and winked at Ellie. “I think he may be coming around.”

  “Well, what do you know,” Sharla muttered, stunned on her own accord.

  Fu, almost anticlimactically, muttered something in Chinese again.

  “Oh, yes,” Gloria beamed. “I completely forgot. Guess what we did last night?” Fu mumbled again, and his wife flushed. She smiled coyly and waved him off. “Oh, not that.” She looked around at their friends, still reddened as with sunburn. “We finally ordered a drone!”

  Sharla tilted her head. “You don’t say.”

  “It should be here in a couple weeks,” Gloria said
. “I can’t wait to use it. We’ll be able to fly it from right here and see this whole end of the island up close. The remote has a built-in color screen.”

  “Gary got one so he could fly it over the Grove and put it on YouTube,” Sharla said. “They sound like large mosquitoes. Drives me nuts.”

  “That’s why we chose this one,” Gloria said. “It’s nearly impossible to hear once its thirty or forty feet overhead. Something about a raked wingtip, but I don’t really know about all that. But it can go up to seven or eight miles out on a single battery if there isn’t a lot of wind.”

  “Fun,” Ellie said. Her phone rang, and she fished it from the pocket of her jean shorts. She noted the caller and answered. “Hi, Jean.”

  “Ellie, how are you, hon?”

  “Fine. I’ve got the painting all wrapped up. Major’s going to love it.”

  “Good. Good. Listen, would it be too much trouble for you to come over to my place later this evening? If you have some time.” Jean’s voice was heavy with worry.

  “Tonight? Sure I can. Everything okay?”

  “I don’t really know, Ellie.” She paused. “It’s about Ronnie. He called me earlier. Ellie, I think he’s in some trouble, and I don’t know the right thing to do.”

  Chapter Six

  Jean Oglesby’s home sat on two acres at the north end of Pineland, up against Big Jim Creek Preserve. She purchased the place five years ago after Teddy Baxter—a giant of a man who had pioneered blue crab fishing in the area—died and his big-time city kids had put it up for sale. At the time, Jean had been looking to upgrade from her small home in Saint James City, and she grabbed it up within a week of the sign getting jammed into the front yard. Unlike most local artists who still floundered about on the murky financial bottom of an artistic ocean, Jean had found a measure of stardom after making a painting based off Daniel Hagerman’s 1944 picture of Ernest Hemingway.

  Several years ago a big-shot winegrower from Spain, who also happened to be a fan of Hemingway, was visiting Matlacha and bought Jean’s Hemingway painting on the spot. When he took it back home to Spain, several of his friends decided they wanted Jean to make them custom paintings of their own, and, in the way that a cover band has that one song that garnishes a cult following, Jean came into a modest international following that continued to grow.

  Local sales at her shop in Matlacha represented only a fraction of what she brought in. She kept an office in Bokeelia, just a mile from her house. It was staffed by three full time people and, in the busier winters, a few more part-timers. Her renown and style had spread, and dozens of online orders for prints came in each day.

  Jean’s neighbors, like herself, were the island’s cultural gatekeepers of both past and present. Archie Holland’s lot was to her east. Archie was the president of the Chamber of Commerce and known by the locals as the Creative Coast’s charming bulldog. Charming, because he could groom just about any interested party to set up shop or business on the island. In his twelve year tenure, the area had blossomed with more artists, charters, and liquor licenses than ever before. Bulldog, because he could run off a big corporation intent on over-commercialization faster than you could say Matlacha.

  Gertie Fenwick’s house sat to Jean’s west. Gertie was the vice-chair of the Historical Society. She was vice and not chair because of her quick and flaring temper that would leave her opposition driving home with singed eyebrows. They kept her around because of her zeal. But the chair eluded her due to her inability to be winsome or polite.

  Ellie stepped out of her El Camino, walked past sixty-year-old oaks and a cluster of leather ferns, and went up the broad, wood-plank steps to the front door. She knocked and waited and caught herself smiling as she stared at the door. It was painted in a base color of bright yellow with tarpon and manatees stenciled across. The door stuck out from the rest of the exterior, which was clothed in a muted off-white and olive green. The door opened, and Jean motioned inside. “Ellie. Come in, hon. Thank you for coming over.” Jean’s eyeshadow was a cobalt blue and dusted with a fine layer of glitter. Ellie hadn’t seen her without the makeup extravaganza since she was in grade school and couldn't remember what she looked like without it. It would be strange if she did. Jean Oglesby without her gaudy face paint would be like seeing Dolly Parton without a wig. And no one was quite sure they wanted to see that. Jean was clutching a cane, and a surgical boot adorned her left foot.

  “How did your surgery go?” Ellie asked.

  “Fine, I just have to try and not be on my feet too much for the next couple of days. I have to wear this silly thing for the next couple of weeks.”

  Ellie followed Jean through the wide rotunda and into the kitchen. The kitchen boasted a large stainless steel gas stove with matching vent hood, a refrigerator built into the cabinetry, and white quartz countertops. Jean was one of the area’s most successful artisans, and her living arrangements were a clear testimony to that. The front of the cabinets matched the front door: palms, tiki huts, and dolphins painted over yellow.

  “You want a drink? Got plenty of just about everything.” Jean refilled a nearly empty martini glass from a pitcher on the counter.

  “I’m all right.”

  Jean left her cane leaning against a barstool, took her glass, and walked across the dark wood floors into the living room. She took a seat on a pink loveseat and propped her booted foot onto an ottoman. Ellie positioned herself on the matching couch. “So what’s going on with Ronnie? Is he all right?”

  The older lady huffed and shook her head. “He swears that he is, but I have that motherly instinct that knows when your little boy is sneaking a cookie two rooms away and when that little boy grows into a man and is running around with the wrong people. Ellie, I know you’re not a mother yet, but when you are you’ll just know some things. Things that you have no explanation for. It’s like the hair standing up on the back of your neck, except somewhere deep on the inside. I know I’m not aware of everything he’s ever gotten himself into. But that tingling...it’s there.”

  “Did he say why he hadn’t been calling?”

  “I asked him. He wouldn’t say. Blamed it on a cell phone problem and said he’s been busy. But you don’t work Jean Oglesby that way. I’m not a nagging mother, never have been. That’s one reason why Ronnie and I are so close. But you’d better believe I pressed him. Ellie, you should have heard his voice. All I could do was picture him huddled down into a corner with his arms wrapped around his knees. He sounded scared if I’ve ever heard a scared man.”

  “Did he say where he was?”

  Jean took another sip of her martini, swallowed, then did it again. She set her empty glass down. “In so many words. I inherited a bit of land from my father out near Archbold. A dozen acres an hour and a half from here. Before my father died and before Ronnie left home, we used to go spend Christmas up at a tiny hunting cabin out there. Just the three of us. Ronnie and his Gramps would go hunting and brought back a deer more than once. Anyway….I’m rambling, Ellie, I’m sorry.”

  “Take your time, Jean. I’m in no hurry to be anywhere else.”

  Jean’s shoulders relaxed, and she settled further back into the plump cushions. “Thank you.” She sighed. “So I asked him where he is, and he tells me he’s celebrating Christmas. Ellie, that scares me. If he has to talk in code, then he’s afraid someone is listening. That cabin must be what he meant. He lived with his father up in Indiana, you know. I got him during the summers. His father gave him everything he wanted: an ATV, guns, trips to Central America for spring breaks, even a boat. But what Harry failed to realize was that what Ronnie really wanted was his father, not his father’s stuff, and he never did get that.”

  “Do you want me to go out there and try to talk with him?”

  “Ellie, I would. I really would. I’m just his mother, you know. If I go out there, he’ll just get mad at me and clam up.” She motioned toward her foot. “Plus, I can’t drive for the next couple weeks. Maybe you could get someth
ing out of him, I don’t know.” Jean rubbed her forehead and closed her eyes. “I’m sure I sound like a paranoid mother—an old mother at that—but I don’t know where to turn, what to do.”

  “Jean. You know I’m DEA.”

  “Sure, hon.”

  “I’m not saying I won’t help or that I won’t go out there. I’m happy to do that. I only want to be transparent. If I find something that I need to report, that will put me in a dilemma.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll tell you what. If I find out anything, I’ll let you know what it is and will keep in you the loop. Okay?”

  “Just help him, Ellie. Whatever this jam is he’s gotten into...just help him out.”

  “I’ll do my best, Jean. Does he have a number I can call him on?”

  She shook her head. “He said he’s keeping his phone off except for when he calls me.”

  Ellie stood up. “Get some rest. I’ll head out there tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll get all this straightened out.”

  Chapter Seven

  Ellie shot off her last five rounds in rapid succession, and they all pierced the paper target thirty yards down range, all within four inches of center. She pressed the magazine release, and it fell into her hand. She set it on the concrete counter and slapped in a fresh one. Fifteen more rounds. She raised the gun, found her sights, and got off three more bursts of five each: five at the head, five at the chest, and a final five to the head. All but two shots had entered the red spaces she had aimed for and those, just a couple inches out.

  She brought the gun down.

  “You missed two. I can’t believe it. What a letdown.”

  She smiled. She cleared the chamber and set down the weapon. She lifted her ear muffs, slipped them around her neck, and turned around. Tyler Borland came up and gave her a firm hug from the side. The hug was something new over the last couple weeks whenever they saw each other. Ellie found that she liked it very much.