Thirty-One —
Oh, Save Us from Hairballs

“This won’t take long,” said the woman.

“What won’t take long?” Blanche was looking for an opening that she could wedge some conversation into, some delay, so she could figure out how to talk them out of whatever awful thing they were planning. She wanted desperately to get the hell out of there.

“Our little talk.” This time one of the men spoke. The driver had disappeared, but then she spotted him near the water. The red point of his cigarette glowed brighter when he dragged on it; his white t-shirt took shape in the dawn. An evil ghost. Blanche hadn’t smoked in years, and suddenly she wanted a cigarette.

“OK. What do you want to talk about? The weather? The price of beans? Campaign finance reform?” The questions were ridiculous, but she was almost giddy with anxiety.

“We want to talk about you,” he said.

“Me?” Barely a squeak. “What would you like to know?”

“For starters, why are you snooping around into that little situation that happened over near Sunny Sands?”

“I don’t know what you mean. Bob and Liza are my friends. I always go over there and hang out.”

Especially in hurricanes. Downloading emails about suspicious payoffs that probably led to murder.

“We think you do. And you’ve been writing for that newspaper, articles that we do not view as favorable to our project.”

“Oh, that. That’s nothing! Clint is an old friend. You know, he’s always trying to get me to write a few features, an editorial here and there…” She rambled. “I used to work there. Full time. But now I don’t.” She felt a pang of guilt for getting Clint involved in the mix. She vowed to keep her yapper shut. Bob had been killed. This all seemed too worrisome. These people knew way too much about her comings and goings, and that wasn’t good.

“This will stop,” the woman said. “The snooping. And that newspaper job and those articles you’ve been writing up. We do not like the tone of your writing.”

“You don’t like my tone? What tone would you like me to use when you people come down here and start tearing up the place? Do you want me to be… fluffy? Sweet as cotton candy?”

Why can’t I just shut the hell up?

But she couldn’t stop. It was like they’d tripped a wire. The tone of this meeting did not bode well.

“Whoa, you’re no cop. You’re nobody making a lot of noise,” said the taller man. They started to advance. For some stupid reason, Blanche started walking toward them. Then her feet turned to bricks. Or a brain cell kicked in. “We’re telling you to back off. You’re meddling where you shouldn’t be,” said the man, and then he stopped. “Then, maybe, it might be a good idea if you went back to that rag and started writing stories about the opportunity Breck… the development has to offer.”

“That doesn’t fit my style.”

He took another step toward her. “Don’t you have an old grandpappy? Who likes to go fishing early in the morning? It would be a shame if all he catches is a hole in his boat, say, nine miles out.”

“You wouldn’t dare. He has nothing to do with any of this.”

“Well, you don’t either, and now you’ve made it your business, and that’s a bad business. For you.”

Which, of course, gave Blanche all the more ammo. And determination. She reserved her energy for thought, which was pretty rattled at the moment. She bit her tongue.

The three of them talked softly. Were they deciding what to do with her? One of the men turned to Blanche. “You won’t see us anymore,” he said. They all folded their arms at once, like they’d rehearsed the scene. They were chillingly in tandem.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” They were going to kill her, she just knew it.

“There seems to be no easy way to shut you up,” the man said. “You’ve been around that place too long, too mixed up with all that preservation crap. Like I said, you are bad for business.”

A bubble of anger rose up again, and it grew. If they were going to kill her, there was nothing she could do. But these hairballs—yes, it was the Corporation of Hairballs—were not going to stand there and dismiss her dreams, and Gran’s and Cappy’s—and those of the whole island, not the least of whom, Bob…. The world was full of them—stinking, puking hairballs, and Blanche was pissed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a news reporter. I’ve lived on that island all my life, and if you don’t like it, or you want to take issue with the fact that I’d like to keep things the way they are out there, then that’s too damn bad.”

She thought she heard someone chuckle, but Blanche failed to see what was funny. The bubble had burst. She was scared again.

“Get back in the van.” The smooth, cigarette-smoking driver was back.

He hurried her along. Here was this dance across the lot of crushed shell. He pulled her arm violently, hoisted her through the side door, and slammed it shut. At least her feet were untied. Free to go nowhere. But she considered this small advantage. She could walk away. Or sit there and wait. She had no alternative but to do the latter. He was still out there with her other captors, and she couldn’t decipher what they were saying.

“Shhh.”

Someone is shushing me? Really?

Blanche couldn’t believe her ears. The talking outside the van had faded, but the sound inside was unmistakable. “They are going to take you down Palmetto on to the other side of the park where the mangrove is most thick.”

Haasi!

“What the hell,” she hissed. “What are you doing? How did you get in here?”

“Quiet. I will tell you later. When he parks the van down the road, and I believe he will, you and I will leave here.”

“How do you propose we do that? Just tell him to let us off at the next stop?”

“You and I will wait until it is the right moment. When I say ‘now’ it will be now. Do you hear me? We are going out the back.”

“Oh, great.” Haasi gave her a poke in the ribs and disappeared amid the rubble. The van was a long one, crammed with a mess of barrels and buckets. Blanche decided it was an easy hideout for Haasi, but she couldn’t figure how they were going to get out.

It was dawn, and Blanche could pick out more detail. The driver slid behind the wheel and the van roared to life. Blanche peered into the rear amid the junk, full nearly to the roof with buckets, a ladder, cans, tarps. A shovel. Blanche’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. Haasi must be back there, crouching, so small she probably fit into one of those buckets. Blanche noticed the door in the back of the van—the would-be escape route.

The driver put one arm over the back of the bench seat. A sleeve of creepy tattoos snaked up his arm. He leaned toward the side mirror, then the rear view. Blanche was now certain it was the guy who’d hung around the crime scene, and it ground into her brain that he had to be the perpetrator. The murderer. She would be another notch. Business as usual. He didn’t say a word, nor did he look at Blanche, but somehow she knew.

Then she jumped. Quick little fingers worked the ropes off her wrists. For someone who put so much stock in listening, she certainly was soundless. And invisible.

Blanche knew Haasi was there, somewhere, but it was more important that the driver didn’t see her, or hear her. Blanche positioned herself upright to screen the back of the van, or tried to. She swayed and bucked with each turn. It was an older noisy model with a bad set of shocks, and it was giving Blanche a realignment of her vertebrae. She turned to see Haasi flatten herself against the carpeting and clear a path to the back door.

Blanche checked the rearview mirror. The malevolent expression of two black eyes concentrated on the road ahead, seemingly unaware of the untying of ropes and rearranging of the contents of the van.

She peered in the darkness for Haasi, but she was gone. Gone where?

And where were they headed now?

Blanche decided right then and there to let go of the fear. It was draining her acuity, and she had to be sharp. Clear her mind. If she knew one thing in her short association with Haasi, it was that she moved swiftly, and most likely she had a good lay of the land. Blanche had no thought as to how this would end, but the mix of fatigue and sheer terror was getting to her, and she had to let it go. She and Haasi would get out of this. Together.

The van rumbled, then stopped. They were parked somewhere out in the boondocks of Bradenton.

“Show time,” said the driver.

“I do not think so.” It was a whisper, and it came from the back of the van.

Blanche froze.