It was four o’clock. The water was warm and the sand cool and plush as wet suede under her feet as the sun shot a path across the Gulf toward the shore. The gulls circled in a frenzy—their happy hour—squawking in a terrific cacophony of bird talk before flying off to their nests. It was a signal to the last of the sunbathers to unfold themselves from their beach chairs and disappear with their novels and coolers. They’d be back for the sunset, but for now, it was the best time of the day. The cooling off. Quiet, and deserted.
She splashed along the same daily route, but every day was different. The only predictable thing was how it made her feel, and that was good. She welcomed this separation from reality. She was small, and everything else that was ever disappointing or troubling was small here, too, in comparison to what she saw on the vast and beautiful beach.
Blanche looked back at the cabin, and at the other cottages, with bright red-orange windows that reflected the flaming sun. On fire. Blanche shuddered. Destruction in Technicolor. She couldn’t get away from it. They were drowning in a sea of change. The animals were disappearing, the asphalt prevented water filtration to the aquifer, beach refurbishment was turning the shore to concrete, traffic clogged the roads and the air. Real Florida had been paved, clipped, pruned, and sodded over. It was losing all its character.
Again she thought of Langstrom. Whatever happened, that team of bandits couldn’t take the beach away from them. Or could they? Footage right on the edge of the water—and twenty feet inland—was already public domain, but what good would it be if they couldn’t get to it? If there were no place to park their cars and bikes? The developers would restrict the right of way. Their gates would limit access to those who couldn’t afford beach-front property. Blanche thought of all those condos on Lone Shark Key just south of Santa Maria. The island was so narrow, Cap had thrown a baseball across it from the bay to Gulf. Developers had sucked it up, like a noodle, and then greed was pushing them north to Santa Maria.
Bob had fought to preserve Santa Maria Island. Now he was dead.
Blanche picked up the pace, and she could sense she was not alone. Stingrays and sharks were close to shore, and, this year, trouble in the person of Sergi Langstrom—a shark if she ever saw one. What would Gran have said? Blanche didn’t need to close her eyes to picture her grandmother, her cloud of white hair and fierce green eyes. Her anger rare and spectacular. … Open yer mouth and tell all ya know. She was gone, but she was always there.
Gull Egg Key rose up out of the Gulf beyond the tip of the island. On the beach just ahead, the pedestrian bridge and sandy park came into view—the park that Bob had worked to preserve as a refuge, and Langstrom was planning to whack away.
Her feet pounded the sand through the tide pools. It normally thrilled her, approaching the north end of the island, where the bay met the Gulf and the Sunlight Skyway far off in the distance formed a metal-concrete rainbow to Tampa. Approaching the tip was like walking off the edge of the world. Now she looked up again and wondered what she was walking into.
Men in long pants, vests and hats, milled back and forth on the small wooden bridge. It was an odd sight, so late in the day at this time of year. They wielded equipment, lines and tripods, and poles, such as those used for tents at weddings, but this was no party.
She wanted to avoid this business, but she aimed for the bridge anyway. It was part of her routine to cross it from the beach, and she didn’t want to cut short the second leg of her walk back from the north end of the island. The display of flowers, rattling palms, bright birds that sputtered out of hedges. Jacaranda and trumpet vine, oleander and rose bushes blazed, and the orange and lemon trees bloomed with tiny green marbles that would turn to fruit by Christmas.
She ignored the buzzing in her brain.
She kept an eye ahead. Most of the men drifted off. All except for one person. It made her anxious, an emotion that was appearing with maddening frequency. She tried to control it, use it to push her. She walked faster still, eager to work off the fluttering in her stomach. The long-needled pines swayed in the breeze—the ones that Langstrom wanted to rip out. Her anger spiked. She was so distracted she didn’t see the broken conch hidden in an ebbing wave. She tripped and nicked her toe on the sharp edge of the shell. Blood trickled from her foot, but she kept walking through the salty water. A thin red stream ribboned away.
She couldn’t mistake the blue shirt. That lanky stroll. It was Langstrom at the head of that group. She could hear him shouting directions, his voice a loud baritone. That, and the shrieking of gulls. He pointed to a couple of trucks parked at the end of the street leading to the beach. She watched him pace along the arc of the bridge. Blanche’s heart sank. Her toe throbbed, but she shook off the pain.
He had his back to her, partly hidden behind a clump of sea oats. She could still get away, but she couldn’t deny the urge to confront him. The last of the workmen shouted and lugged away the equipment. Doors slammed. He was not going with them. Curiosity now propelled her over the sand. She had to get it over with.
Her legs were stiff, but she set her shoulders and trudged on, the anxiety expanding inside her. She wanted to talk to him again, and at once she dreaded it. The town hall meeting had ended in a battle of nerves, and not a single point of contention had been settled. Langstrom had clearly been under the impression that he was going ahead with the development plans. The nerve. She damn well wanted to learn more about what they had in mind, and cut them off. And yet, she couldn’t stand to face him. She wanted to walk past him and get home—to the home that he wanted to destroy. He was worse than a hurricane; he had intention, while nature did not.
Then, he was steps away.
“Hi,” he said, thrusting his hand toward her. She hesitated. He waited until Blanche reached for him. So sure that she would. She felt positively ill. Her stomach was churning, and she hoped it would be quiet. She bit her tongue.
His mouth curled into a slow smile.
She still held his hand. His grip was strong, and it anchored her to the spot. His eyes were even more startling blue up close, and friendly. “Hello,” she said. So loud she surprised herself. The word dropped like a stone.
She stepped back, away from his aura of self-confidence and control, but it was no good. His looks added to her confusion. The sky seemed sharper, the pines greener, her mood not so bleak. The shadow on his chin, the wave in his hair gave him a careless, rugged look.
I need to get off this bridge.
“Remember me?” His face was close to hers, his expression almost yearning.
She caught herself. “Yes, I remember you.”
“I hope there’s no hard feelings.” He scanned the waterline that ran like a silver thread sewing the sky to the Gulf. “It really is a beautiful place, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is beautiful. Just the way it is.”
He studied her. Forehead a spray of light freckles, black eyebrows sheltering deep green eyes. She didn’t turn away from the horizon. She made him see it for what it was: the real beauty of it. She wanted him to understand how strongly she meant what she said.
“Your foot. It’s bleeding,” he said, already reaching into a pocket. He pulled out a folded square of linen.
Blanche put the offending toe behind her leg. She was mortified. “It’s nothing. I stepped on a shell.”
“But look.” The toe was indeed making a small, red pool in the white sand. Langstrom bent down to dab her foot with the cloth. Blanche stood there frozen, unable to move.
“Thanks. That’s very kind. Doctor.”
Langstrom looked up at her, smile brilliant white. “Ha, doctor! I did think about medical school at one time, but I decided on law.”
“Yes, I know.” She yanked her foot from his grip. The handkerchief had worked fine. “It was a clumsy thing to do, step on a shell. I usually look where I’m going.”
“Really? Well, I guess you should. I’m sure you didn’t do it on purpose.” That was an odd thing to say—on purpose. Harm sometimes arrived out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, and sometimes it arrived on purpose, like murder.
She stepped back but he hovered over her. He was tall, and he still managed to be inches from her nose. “You better get some antibiotic cream and a clean bandage on that toe. You wouldn’t want to lose it. It’s a nice toe.”
This is absurd, Blanche thought. Yesterday I wanted to kill him, and today we’re all cozy.
“I’ve saved your toe and all, and we haven’t even met, formally, Blanche M-u-r-n-i-n-g-h-a-n. I’m Sergi Langstrom.” Once more the hand shot out and grazed Blanche’s arm. “Hello. Again.”
He remembered how to spell her name when most of the world did not. “I know who you are,” she said. Blanche didn’t want to sound so cold, but that was how she felt and she had difficulty hiding it. It was something she needed to work on when the occasion called for it—like now. She looked him in the eye. “And, yes, I’m Blanche Murninghan of Tuna Street and the Santa Maria Preservation Association.”
“Yes. Blanche.” She could see the town hall meeting reeling through his head and a switch of gears. “That’s curious. I’ve never met anyone named Blanche.”
“My mother had a crush on Marlon Brando.”
Why did I say that?
Her mother, long dead of the accident that Blanche survived, liked the name because it sounded clean and classic in one short sound bite. That was what Gran had told her.
Sergi was laughing, sort of a private, thoughtful laugh. “Well, I don’t know. You look more like a Stella. Stellar. Doesn’t that have to do with stars?”
“I suppose so,” Blanche said, a little miffed he’d laughed at her name. “What kind of a name is Sergi.” Sergi wasn’t an all-American moniker but, indeed, sounded rather strange and, Blanche hesitated to say it, Communist.
“I’m half Italian and half Swedish. Don’t ask me how that ever happened.” He had that laugh again that seemed to come up from his toes and right out the top of his head. He leaned close to her, and she could see the hair on his chest.
I really have to get out of here. “I have to leave.”
“Really? Don’t want to chat?”
“I have to go.” Blanche turned to walk off the bridge and then stopped. She wanted to know more, to satisfy that urge that wouldn’t go away.
“Where were you this morning?”
“Why?”
Blanche tried to decide what to make of him. Was he being coy? Why didn’t he answer the question? It really was none of her business for one thing, and besides, what could he possibly think she was driving at?
She didn’t care. That irritation began again. Something didn’t add up about Langstrom, and all those plans for the land development, and then Bob’s murder. He was everywhere, and he didn’t seem to know there had been a death—on purpose—on the island.
“Because they say Bob Blankenship was murdered. They found him at the marina in his car.”
Sergi hesitated. He didn’t look very surprised, nor sad, at the news. He just resumed his study of the skyline with an expression that said this bit of information was not of particular interest. He could turn one expression off and another one on at will.
“Well, you don’t look too broken up about it,” she said. “Where were you anyway?”
“I’m very sorry,” he said.
“Well, where…”
“What a sad thing to happen.” His face was in the shadow of a pine tree, his shoulder angled toward her. Blanche could feel the breeze lift the hair on the back of her neck.
“We need to find out who did this. What could possibly be the motive? Who would murder Bob?” She could feel the desperation in her voice, almost pleading.
“I have no idea.”
“Well, somebody does.”
“I suppose you’re right.” His tone clipped, he looked at his watch. No one wore a watch on Santa Maria. “I have to go. It’s really getting late.”
He turned and hurried down the far side of the bridge toward a black Escalade, its silver rims glinting in the sun.
“Do something about that toe,” he said over his shoulder, smiling back at her. “See you soon.”
She almost said—I hope not. But that wouldn’t have been quite true. Blanche wanted to see him again. What was she thinking? She had questions. A lot of them.
For one thing, who was this Sal character? And did Sergi know anything about him? Was Sergi sending emissaries door to door to entice property owners to give up their homes? She almost ran after him, but stopped. She wanted answers, and, at the same time, nothing more to do with Langstrom. That was impossible because she needed him. She didn’t trust her feelings. They got her into trouble. She had to be cool, and that was so un-Blanche.
She steeled herself and dashed off the bridge. Langstrom knew more than he let on. And so did Jack. She had to get both of them to tell what they knew. She needed to tie up the loose ends whatever it took. They both had to come clean, and then Sergi had to go.