Blanche picked up a marker and drew a web on Liza’s whiteboard. She began outlining what they knew so far. She stuck bubbles of names and bits of information on the board. Bob. Murder. Langstrom. The plan. They needed more names, dates, times, and places. It was all somehow connected, but she fought to reserve judgment. She didn’t have any idea how it all fit together. But as a visual person, Blanche could see that the web was starting to make some sense already. All she had to do was turn into Spider Woman and leap from one point to the next. And save the town.
The computer cast an eerie glow in the nearly dark office. Some light filtered through the wooden slats. Wilma thumped and cracked outside.
They raced against the storm. They still had electricity, but one well-aimed palm frond would end it. They’d be sitting in the dark, probably for a day or more. They needed a head start before fresh hell broke loose.
Liza swiveled back to the whiskey. She poured two more fingers into each glass. Blanche shrugged. “Drown the shamrock.” And she tossed it back. Liza took a sip and set the glass down with an emphatic clink.
Blanche’s throat burned but it was a false sense of warmth. The adrenaline and whiskey did not mix well.
“Look at these emails,” Liza muttered. “Where do we go from here?”
“Back to the beginning?” Blanche stared at the web, her mind wandering. How would I look in a blue and red suit with no hair?
“A lot of this mail is related to those calls.” Liza sipped again, her lips puckered. “I hate to think back. It must have been the beginning of a very bad time for him. It seems the phone conversations got worse. Sort of testy, and threatening. That would be about three months ago.”
Blanche noted the call pattern on the board. “We need to check the notes and see who he was talking with.”
“It’s here. Somewhere.” She scrolled through some pages. “I told Dunc about it, but he seemed so distracted.”
Blanche drew a large green circle for Chief Duncan and connected him to the early warning. He had his own special bubble in the web. “Duncan. You gotta love him. Mostly.”
“Well, I don’t want to wait on him. Acted like I didn’t know what I was talking about.” She waved at the computer. Big mistake for Duncan. They both meant to pursue this to the ends of the earth.
“I hear you. But if we find anything, we should bring it to him.”
“He’s checking with county.” Liza rolled her eyes.
“You said you shared some with him? How much? There’s a ton of stuff here.”
“I just couldn’t get into it, at first. I was so angry, and sad.” Liza frowned. “It was so ugly—the calls especially. Bobby had put his foot down about that development. Fortunately, he dated some of this, and I have notes on my calendar. Let’s put up what we can.” She pointed to the board.
Blanche paged through one of the notebooks, but it wasn’t making much sense. “Who was calling here? Looks like this happened a little closer to the meeting.”
“Some outfit in Boiling Brook, or something like that. Up in Chicago.”
“Bolingbrook?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“No name there.” Liza slumped and stared at the screen.
The sky was nearly black and the wind blew branches against the windows. Blanche cringed. They still had power.
“The flurry began about June, I’d say. Maybe later. He’d get angry—I never saw him so angry.” Liza took another swig of the whiskey. Blanche carefully moved the bottle to the floor. “Here, look at this, Blanche.”
The email read:
“Mr. Blankenship, it will not benefit your business interests, nor those of the community of Santa Maria Island, to obstruct the plans that Brecksall-Lam is proposing for the northern quadrant of the island in question…”
With that, Blanche felt her stomach lurch. “What? Liza, that’s the name of the headquarters for Jack’s new trucking business.” She made a special bubble for Brecksall-Lam. “Why didn’t he….well, elaborate?”
“Now why would he do that? I don’t think he has any idea about the extent of this.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe not, but I do remember hearing about these people. Jack’s been working for them for months now.” Blanche stared at the screen. No answers popped out at her. “You know Jack. He wouldn’t report back. He’s still vague on details about the new business no matter how much I press.”
“Blanche, you have to press. Jack is such a sweetheart, you just know he’d like to help.”
“Humf. Sweetheart.”
Liza looked quizzical. And Blanche wondered about this new business of his. What are we supposed to do with this piece of news? She considered the various bubbles of calls, names, and notes.
“All I can tell you is that Jack had the small freight office set up in San Antonio, and another in Chicago, and he kept getting more calls for cross-country work. I think Lam wanted to sell his part of the trucking division, and Jack heard about it through his connections and jumped in.” Blanche sat back in her chair. “He was cagey, all right.”
He had to have had some idea about the trouble on the island and a possible link to his business. He seemed to have eyes everywhere, and here was proof of it. Tenuous, but a connection nonetheless.
Be careful, he’d said.
Blanche felt betrayed, and she couldn’t help it. Was he lying to her? Or protecting her? Or both?
“Call Jack and find out what’s going on. Really, Blanche. You know he’d want to help. This is his home, and I’m sure he’d clear up some of this. He’s right in the middle of it,” she said.
“I’ve tried to get after him. But he’s not very receptive. And he certainly has not been cooperative. We talked about Langstrom. Jack said he knew him. Said to stay out of it. The usual.”
“The usual doesn’t get it. This business with those developers was building. Bobby had some cranks, and he could get riled up on the phone. At first, I thought that’s all it was. I didn’t see trouble coming. This Brecksall-Lam outfit went right over my head.”
Liza turned back to the screen and scrolled down through the emails. “Here’s another: Brecksall-Lam is prepared to draw up an offer to purchase certain parcels of land, which will be used to build the mall, tentatively named Silver Shells Emporium, between Hibiscus Drive and Gulf Avenue. We anticipate your cooperation, as arrangements have been settled in your favor. In the unlikely event essential cooperative efforts are not in place by October 1, representatives of Brecksall-Lam will find it necessary to seek appropriate action through their agents.”
“Appropriate action! Yeah, right,” said Liza. “There’s nothing appropriate about any of this.”
Now Blanche had bullet points to go with the bubbles, and her hands were shaking. She stood back and looked at the web of deceit. Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive…Gran again.
Liza stared at the computer. “What bullshit.” She took a sip of whiskey and reached absently for her cigarettes. They both hovered over the screen.
“They moved fast,” said Blanche. “But this is weird. Why would they be making ‘arrangements’ with Bob? What is that supposed to mean? Bob was against the development.”
“He was against it. I know he was. He shouted at that phone, something about not wanting any ‘arrangements.’ That they had come up with them at the last minute. He told them, most emphatically, that their plans, such as they were, would not be in the interests of the island. An original deal was supposed to include the kids’ park and the nature preserve, but Bob wasn’t buying their version. They never came through like they said they would. They had another agenda. A takeover.”
“Money. Somehow they got to him with cash, but he didn’t want it. He didn’t like their terms.”
Liza pushed off the desk. “Yeah. They did make some donations. He asked me to make the deposits to a special account: SMI Parks-Preserve, it’s called. Actually, I made a couple deposits of just under $10,000 each over a month or so. They had to be broken up into smaller amounts so there wouldn’t be suspicion about the origin of the money. In any event, Bob didn’t want any complications, or questions. He said the money was for charity, plain and simple, for the park and the kids. I know that for sure because I heard him talking to the commissioner and to the pastor at St. Joseph’s, telling them about the improvement fund and plans for the sports teams. That money is sitting in that fund.”
Blanche stopped scribbling dollar signs and connecting Bob and the “arrangements.” She stepped back. “My God. The check Bob produced at the meeting! They donated all that money?”
“No. That check was money Bob raised through the historical society and from residuals on sales from Sunny Sands. That money was one hundred percent Bob. But this other is not. Brecksall-Lam made donations, and they lied about what they wanted to do with the north end. They weren’t planning parks and playground equipment. I’ll bet Bob was backing out, trying to return their money.” Liza drained the last of her whiskey. “Something went wrong.”
“A lot went wrong.”
The two looked around the office, from the whiteboard to the pile of notebooks, and back to the computer screen.
Liza sat still as stone, but her wheels were going around. Blanche hurried over to the kitchenette and put a filter in the basket of the coffee maker.
“Liza, did you ever see a guy and a white van hanging around the marina? Parked in the lot? Someone who seemed new around here?”
Her gaze broke, she turned to Blanche. “I see a lot of delivery trucks. Pete’s Restaurant is near there, but I haven’t noticed anything, or anyone, new.”
“Strange.” Blanche measured out the French roast.
“Why do you ask?”
“I really didn’t want to bring it up, not yet, anyway. But this guy. He was definitely not a tourist or a snowbird. He looked so out of place, and suspicious. Hanging around, watching everybody at the marina. You know, that day.”
“Put him in a bubble, Blanche. Even if he doesn’t pan out, at least we have him up there where we can check on him.”
Lulled by the whiskey, suspended in the storm, they studied the tangle of information spread over the whiteboard. It was not a pretty picture.
“Bob, it seems, was a victim of corporate manipulation, to put it mildly. But what was behind the donations? And what went wrong?”
“Pretty simple.” Liza banged her fists on the table top. “He just wasn’t buying it. He resisted their plans, and they killed him.”
Blanche handed Liza a box of tissues and a cup of black coffee. “It’s awful, and it’s weird. But somehow, at this point, I feel kind of relieved, Liza. They are not going to get away with it.”
Liza’s eyes were blazing. “It’s dangerous, B.” She leafed through pages and checked Blanche’s board. She stacked the notes and notebooks, copies of emails, in chronology.
“Jack certainly has some explaining to do, whether he likes it or not,” Blanche muttered.
“In the meantime, here we have it. Evidence.” Liza pressed the print button on the computer, and out came dozens more emails. She pushed the desks together and spread the print-outs of emails, calendars, and notes and shuffled them in order. Blanche taped computer paper together, drew lines and notes, and kept filling in the board with details. They worked through the afternoon, oblivious to the dark outside while the office burned bright.
They had proof that Bob was operating outside the lines, and someone was out to get him. A. Smith in accounting signed some of the emails. It didn’t add up to a hit on Bob, but the recalcitrant exchanges were linked to Brecksall-Lam—and, unfortunately, to Jack, too. The question presented another disturbing twist. Blanche couldn’t deny that Jack was involved in the mess. But how? And how deep?
“It helps that Jack knows the territory,” said Liza.
“Helps or hurts. Who knows at this point? Could be bad. I’m mad as hell he didn’t level with me. Instead, he just tells me to be nice and go away. Like the whole thing is just going to go away.” That was exactly the problem. Way too much was going away.