Blanche bent to tighten the strap on her sandal. Still no running shoes. She had no interest in shopping and even less in rummaging through her closets. She wore the same t-shirt, rinsed and dried, and now more wilted and damper than ever. Liza had called. “I have a mess of stuff here, Blanche. Come over right away. Please. The hell with the storm.”
The timing was not good for detective work. But Blanche and Liza were of one mind: Make the most of a rainy day while the island hunkered down and before Wilma had her way with the utility poles.
The pines whistled; the Gulf roared. She loved the sun, but something about a good storm zapped her to the ends of her nerves. The wind abated and then started up again, fresh and terrifying. A scent of salt and fury in the air.
One neighbor was packing up to leave the island, but most of them didn’t see the point. Like Blanche. They had short memories and were willing to live with a beauty that would throw a tantrum once in a while. They would tie down like they always did and get through this one, and then another and another.
Cappy was expecting her later, but for now, Liza. She had news.
Blanche dashed across the parking lot, the backpack slapping her hip, just as a blast of rain and wind rattled the front door of Sunny Sands. Liza scurried past the window with a batch of papers. She seemed to ignore the palm trees bending outside her door, the boats tossing up and down like toys in the marina. The island floated in a cloud of mist. The first bands of the storm had arrived.
“Wow. Am I glad to see you,” said Liza.
“Same here, girl.” Blanche started to hug Liza and thought better of it. She dropped her wet bag in a corner.
A small television screen sputtered with flashes of white and green. A forecaster danced around, pointing to Wilma approaching from the south. The island appeared to be clear except for a darting weather pattern.
Liza finished pushing chairs and coat racks and wastebaskets into a closet, but she left the bare bones for them to sit on—and the computer against the far wall. She stacked some papers into a cardboard box as she clicked around the desk in her high heels, waving a cigarette. Liza reached for a hug, despite the rain cloud Blanche was wearing. She hoped it would put out the cigarette.
“What’s with the cigarette?” Blanche was a reformed smoker. She’d never seen Liza with a cigarette.
Liza looked at the Marlboro Light like it was a foreign object. “I don’t know. Haven’t had one in years.” She took a drag and made a face. “Tastes terrible. But I’m accepting the abnormal. Helps me cope.”
Again Blanche heard Gran. This too shall pass.
Liza tossed the last of the manuals, nudged a chair against the wall.
“Can I help?” She was anxious to see what Liza had in store and less inclined to rearrange the office.
“Oh, honey. I’m about done here. They say this storm won’t be too bad, but you never know. You can’t count on anything these days,” said Liza. She moved the azalea and a potted orchid away from the window.
“True. Is everything good at your condo? All tight over there?” Liza’s condo at Westbay Moorings was only two blocks away. Blanche peered out the window at the pathway disappearing in the rain.
“All set. Calvin has the shutters down, outdoor stuff in the storage shed. Thanks for worrying.” Liza had not forgotten her White Rose Musk and the curling iron. She dressed for every occasion, even for Wilma. She wore a tight purple top and black stretchy pants, a moon on one thigh, the sun on another. “He’s going to come by later and walk me over.”
“I’m dying to hear what you found.”
Liza gave Blanche a sly look. “It’s good, Blanche. Real good. Or real bad, depending on whose point of view.” She clicked over to a recessed counter and small fridge. “We have some digging and sorting to get to. And some drinking and eating. How about we have ourselves a little hurricane party while we plan what to do with Sergi!” She stopped abruptly, one hand on hip, one eyebrow lost in a curl. She waved the cigarette and sprinkled ash in her hair.
Liza spread a lacy napkin on top of the desk. Blanche was starving, and, drat, if she hadn’t forgotten Bert’s cinnamon bread! She started opening an assortment of deli cartons packed with pink and white seafood. “Crab Louie! Bet Marge made this.”
“Sure did. She had to close up early, and I was only too happy to take it off her hands.”
Blanche fluffed the ash out of Liza’s curls. She kicked off her wet sneakers and curled up on the chair.
The cigarette dangled from Liza’s glossy lips. Blanche shook her head. But the smell of burning tobacco was nostalgic, tugging at her willpower. What if I just give up?
Blanche had seen some mania in her day, and Liza was a maniac. She yanked a chair closer to the desk. She dragged on the last of the cigarette and sizzled it out in the dregs of her coffee in a foam cup.
“Here’s to the storms in life.” She jammed the corkscrew into the top of a bottle of La Crema, not bothering to remove the foil.
Blanche held out a plastic wine glass. “To the end of them. Especially the murd… bad stuff.”
Liza poured the chardonnay. Almost to the top. She took a sip, and lit another cigarette. “Come on now. Perk up. We need our strength.”
Liza only picked at the seafood salad, but Blanche demolished hers. Margie’s homemade Thousand Island Dressing was delicious, the crab, plump and sweet. They sipped and the storm rattled away. But then Liza was up again. She crunched the cartons to a pulp and flicked open a garbage bag. “Now, you know what we need? Emails for dessert. Got some sweet ones!” she said. “To go with another bottle of wine.” She paused in her circuit around the room. She looked across the street to Decoy Duck’s Package Liquors, but the lights were out. “Oh, well.”
Blanche was a little fuzzy around the edges. She needed a water layer to dilute the booze, so she went to the cooler. She brought a cone of water to Liza, who seated herself at the silent gray computer. A doorway in the dark.
Liza plugged in Bob’s username and password. “Makes me feel he’s still here. Sort of. I just can’t give him up.” She leaned in and began clicking away through the pages of Bob’s emails. There were hundreds.
“When I go in there, I can almost hear him.” She looked near tears. “He always had such a good sense of things. What would he do with this?”
Blanche would never know. It was up to them now.
Liza’s forehead creased with concentration. “We know for sure Bob did not back that development. He wouldn’t cooperate with them. We can start there. At square one.”
“Whatcha got?” Blanche pulled a chair around next to Liza. A sign clattered past the window and flew across the parking lot to nowhere. They hunched over the screen as Bob’s email popped into view.
“Oh, yeah. This is going to take some sorting, Blanche. And connecting, one thing to another. I don’t feel much like a detective, but this’ll do.” Liza looked less like a detective and more like central casting. But she had a pen stuck behind her ear, the computer up. She waved at a stack of notebooks. “We need to cross-reference these emails. And I have notes Bob wrote about appointments and phone calls. I put them in a separate box.”
All Blanche could think was this: Evidence. In black and white. On paper. “Did you hear phone conversations, too?” She was positively gleeful.
“I did. Trying to think.” She looked again at the rattling windows. One high heel hit the ground.
“Phone conversations?”
“Yeah. Now let me see…” Liza pushed away from the desk. She went to a tiny alcove that served as a kitchenette and produced a bottle of Irish whiskey and two glasses. “Sometimes I think better when I drink. I need to maintain an altered sense of reality.”
“Reality could use a little bending.” Blanche poured.
Liza plopped a crate of papers on the desk. “Let’s have a look here. I need to check something. Something he wrote in one of these emails. I told Duncan about this. Haven’t heard a word.”
Duncan was plodding along, the definition of the wheels of justice grinding slowly. Maybe he knew more than was advertised, but he seemed unwilling to share it.
They hadn’t heard from Langstrom in a while. He seemed to have gone underground since the town hall meeting. Another was scheduled soon, but first they needed to get their act together. Blanche was leery about which boot the developer would kick them with next. They needed to kick back. The developers had a plan, and Blanche and the residents didn’t. Sometimes Blanche woke up in the middle of the night and felt like she was suffocating, helpless to do anything about it.
She looked over at Liza and hope niggled in the pit of her stomach. Just maybe they had something here. Finally.