Brigands Key Page 8

  Carla’s, the little café, had grown on him. Food was good, especially breakfast. The waitress motioned him to a table nearest the town chatterers. He walked straight past it and settled into the booth in the far corner. The quiet corner.

  He ordered scrambled eggs and pancakes and stared at his food when it arrived. It had lost its appeal. He stabbed the pancakes and took a tiny bite. His stomach lurched and he pushed the plate aside. He asked for a glass of orange juice with lots of ice. The waitress brought it and he took the flask of Dinsmoor vodka from his pocket and measured in two shots. The waitress frowned and left, saying nothing. He stirred the screwdriver and drank it down and closed his eyes.

  “Join you?”

  Artie Blount, the realtor, was standing over him, smiling amiably.

  Grant nodded. “I’m not great company this morning.”

  “Under the weather?” Blount took a seat.

  “I feel like crap. Thought I had a return date with malaria, but the symptoms are all off. It’s something else.”

  “There’s a bug going around. Half the town’s got it and indeed, I’ve got a touch myself.” He waved an arm about the restaurant at the empty tables. “It’s usually packed in here for breakfast. In Brigands Key, you’re not late for work or church if you’re eating breakfast at Carla’s.” Blount stretched casually, made himself at home.

  The waitress approached, beaming. “Why Artie, you come here to sweep me off my feet?”

  “I can only hope, Maria. How about my usual this morning?”

  “Two eggs over easy, two sausages, two pieces of toast. It’s already on the grill.” Maria tapped him on the head with her pencil. “Stay out of trouble.”

  Blount watched Maria walk away, smiling. “Got to love it here, Professor. How you liking paradise so far?”

  “Paradise is relative. I’ve seen a couple you can keep.”

  “We like our version. Most of us, anyhow.”

  “Some don’t?”

  “Some think it can get better. Of course it can, but how we get there is a touchy subject.”

  “I gather you’re at odds with the mayor on the doings of Susan Walsh’s company. That’s what I’ve been reading in the local paper, anyway.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. Johnson, he’s an okay guy. Sometimes the bluster obscures that. Like a bunch of small-town governments, ours is habitually a few nickels above bankruptcy. Expenses keep going up but our tax base stagnates. Hell, I know what a pickle the City is in. I’m a civic-minded guy. I perform several services for the City, gratis. The dock? I pay for trash pickup. The lighthouse? I do routine maintenance on it, even on those pitiful lights. The Coast Guard is supposed to maintain the light but they’re at the mercy of a shrinking budget themselves. They don’t get out here to check on the light but once a year, in April. The Historical Society makes clucking noises but they don’t step up with money to maintain the lighthouse. So I do.

  “These are our budget realities. Johnson struggles with it every day. He sees Bay View as the answer. He may have a fiscal point, but I see it as a quality of life thing.”

  “Why? You’re in real estate. Big land rush like they’re talking about will make you a rich man.”

  “That’s not what life’s all about, is it?”

  “I’ve never figured out what life’s about. Clue me.”

  “Doc, it wasn’t so long ago I’d have been Bay View’s biggest cheerleader. Real estate values are going to skyrocket and I could make a bundle. But you know what? I took in a little sightseeing down the coast a couple years back. Wall-to-wall condos and hotels. The coast is gone, man. When I got home, I had an epiphany. This is it, old Florida’s last stand. You’ve seen this town. Have you seen the thunderclouds pile up over the Gulf after the sun slips below the horizon? A sky that’s cobalt, crimson, pink, orange like fire? Takes your breath away. But have you watched it from a skiff, knocking back shots of bourbon, grilling mullet and snapper and shrimp right on the boat on an old camp stove, fish you caught that day, so much fish that the getting of them makes your muscles ache, the dripping juices filling your senses? That, my friend, is living. And that will be lost if Bay View goes in.

  “I’m a cautious man, Dr. Grant. I’m not impulsive. Things have to add up before I act. On that day, things added up. I swore then and there I wouldn’t let us lose what we have.”

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

  “They say they’ll protect the mangroves on the south end of the island and the grass flats everywhere else. I beg to differ. Sure, by law they can’t bulldoze those wild places. But what they can and will do is flood the south end with high-end homes and a golf course. Bob and Betty High-End will look with envy upon the lush carpet of grass the Joneses have just committed. They’ll do theirs even better. Pump the water, pump the fertilizer. That shit’s got to go somewhere. Where it’ll go is into the mangrove and grass flats. In a few years, we’ll change our name to Silty Key. The nurseries for fish will collapse and we’ll all be eating frozen fish sticks.”

  “Why exactly did you join me for breakfast, Mr. Blount?”

  “You see how the town is dividing, right? It’s not haves versus have-nots. Hell, we’re all have-nots here. It’s the have-nots versus want-mores. Public opinion is solidly against Bay View, but the Council is going with it anyway. Brigands Key is about to lose its soul.”

  “What makes you think I can save Brigands Key’s soul?”

  “I’ve heard how the town fathers talk about you. You’re what every small town loves and hates, the outsider with brains. Everyone’s watching you. If you come out against, it may just sway one or two votes back our way.”

  “Bay View owns most of what they need already. They’ll build it now or they’ll build it later.”

  “Wrong. If there’s enough pressure, the Council and Mayor Johnson will stall the project. I’m talking years. After a while, Gulf Breeze will get tired of carrying the debt to fund this monstrosity. They’ve got other projects; they can’t afford to tie up money and pay interest to keep a project afloat that may sink anyway. They’ll take their ball and go home.”

  “Although some might argue, I’m a scientist, Mr. Blount. You may not know my history. Shit has hit the fan more than once and stuck to me. I have a nasty feeling it may stick to me again with this unidentified dead guy I found. You’ll forgive me if I sit this one out.”

  Blount cocked his head sideward and tapped a finger nervously on the table. “All right, Doc. But think about what I’ve said. You think fence-sitting suits you, but I’m a good judge of character. This is one of those moments a man picks a path. I have a gut feeling you’ll pick the right path.” Blount reached for the check. “I’ve enjoyed our chat. I’ll get this.”

  Grant pushed his hand away. “Uh-uh. One thing I’ve learned, when someone wants something from you that you don’t want to give, always buy your own meal.”

  * * *

  Susan Walsh closed her email and snapped the laptop shut. It was getting late, twilight gathering outside her fabulous Morrison Motel accommodations.

  Pierce’s emails had taken on a different tone. The company was about to screw her.

  Enormous fortunes were going to be made off this island and Gulf Breeze would let nothing stop that. They might endure setbacks but they’d win out in the end. They always did. But this whole thing had turned rotten in a hurry.

  Small-town quirkiness, she thought. What a load of rubbish. For such a tiny place, Brigands Key sure wallowed in its share of stupidity. The mayor and his staff, all empty suits. The realtor, Blount, typical small-town gadfly and shit-stirrer. Sanborn, too much time on his hands. Hammond, a chip on his shoulder, unable to make it in the big city. Denton, the two-bit newspaper publisher, smelling something big.

  This place was the bastard child of Peyton Place and Green Acres.

  Corporate wanted results, and soon. Susan had lain awake last night, trying to cobble together something resembling progress. Yet all she could
see was a fractious little town cracking up as the big issue of their lives, the Bay View project, loomed over them. Blount was banging his drum, claiming that the John Doe murder had something to do with her project. Now he was tying the illnesses to the development projects in nearby towns. Toxins in the water, that kind of thing, and although he hadn’t produced one iota of evidence, he’d managed to get others nodding in agreement. They, of course, didn’t give a hoot about the environment; they just didn’t want outsiders horning in on their island paradise.

  Susan had put on a smiley face for the good of both the townsfolk and her evil bosses back in Tampa. Things were going well, in spite of it all, she reported. She didn’t need to make everyone here happy; she just needed to make three of five council members happy. And she had that. Three of five. Majority rule.

  Now a council member was dead, another missing, both against her. She wouldn’t mourn their loss. Things happen, right? That harmless old tree-hugger, Emma Watterson, hadn’t inspired the opposition. And Roscoe Nobles had gone on some gay holiday. Or had he? His disappearance was of concern to the company.

  Great concern.

  Three-zip, a unanimous vote. But her hand was weakening. Johnson was backing out on her. If he changed his vote and Roscoe showed, there would be a tie vote. And a tie vote was a disapproval.

  She felt suddenly alone. She opened her laptop again, switched on the Internet, clicked open her favorite blog. On the Edge, a pimply, adolescent rant posted by one Charley Eff. The thing was laughably anonymous, and transparent as glass. Charley Eff was Charley Fawcett, the kid that worked for Roscoe. Charley suffered a persecution complex and a heap of teen angst. That was common enough, even out here in the sticks. Being a misfit sucked everywhere.

  Since Roscoe’s disappearance, the blog was bound to muddy the waters, once it got to be common knowledge. And that was only a matter of time, probably days or even hours. She’d found the blog two months ago, searching the Internet for local history she could arm herself with. She’d entered the phrase “Hammond Lighthouse.” Charley’s blog frequently mentioned the lighthouse. Wrote some rubbish about living under the watchful eye of Hammond Lighthouse. Thought he was being poetic.

  Charley’s boss was AWOL and the kid was talking about vampires, for crying out loud.

  She opened her email account and began typing.

  * * *

  Charley waited until his mother lumbered off with a load of dirty clothes to the laundry room by the trailer park office. She’d be back in a few minutes but seconds were all he needed. His dad was in bed, moaning and feeling sorry for himself. Charley swiped a beer from the fridge and cloistered himself in front of his computer.

  A slew of emails were waiting. He deleted the Nigerian Prince money, easy women, and penis enlargement ads and looked at the remainder. There was one subject line that caught his eye.

  Easy Does It.

  He didn’t recognize the email signature, but how can you ignore a tag like that? He opened the email.

  You have been spreading rumors in cyberspace about your lovely seaside hamlet. That may not be the wisest of pastimes. Listen to me, Charley. Stop scaring people. Nobles is missing and you know more than you’re telling.

  That was all.

  Charley read and reread the message, feeling his blood boil. It had been sent not more than a half-hour ago. He looked at the email signature. BrigandsKey54321. What a crappy sig. He typed a one-character response, a single question mark, and hit send. The delivery failed. No such address was recognized. He typed in a search for the address. Nothing.

  The email account had been created for a one-time usage and then wiped away. The perp must have figured that equaled blissful Internet anonymity. The perp was mistaken.

  “Okay, Charley, summon all your powers of geekdom.” He spent the next hour searching and hacking. At last he found the infamous BrigandsKey54321.

  It was that woman, the land developer everyone was talking about. Susan Walsh.

  Why was she zeroing in on him? It didn’t make any sense.

  Or did it? The high-powered only paid attention to the low-powered when they were after something. So what did he have? A drunken dad and a scared mom. A home in a trailer park.

  He had his blog and the attention of a handful of cyberspace losers. Very bankable, that. Maybe it was what he had to say. Plague. Vampires. Walsh was selling land and dreams, which is difficult when your product has gone into the toilet. The land was tainted and the dream becoming a nightmare.

  Charley was a beacon of truth. She would not be a big fan. Beacons of truth were bad for business.

  He had—maybe—a job on a fishing boat. He had a missing boss.

  Could she have a bone to pick with Roscoe? Worse, did she have something to do with his disappearance? It didn’t seem likely. She was this cosmopolitan superwoman. Roscoe was this anti-stereotypical, coarse, scruffy, gay fisherman. Yet he was on the City Council and could vote on her livelihood.

  But Roscoe had also been onto something big, if you believed him.

  She knew something Charley didn’t.

  * * *

  Susan Walsh squirmed on the stiff double bed in her room. The ancient air conditioner roared in the darkness, blowing a gale across her. She lay in the dark, spinning about under the covers, trying to find a comfortable position.

  There was none. The bed was a marble slab and the room smelled of disinfectant trying to mask mildew and other unknowable, unpleasant odors.

  These were, by all accounts, the only accommodations in town. That would change. She made a mental note to push for a decent hotel in the development plans.

  Of the dozens of trips she’d made to the island over the last three years, this was the first time she’d spent the night. If she had any say, it would be the last. This was purgatory.

  Outside her window, the pink neon of the motel sign flashed. Morrison Motel. Vacancy. Air Conditioning.

  God, she’d never get a decent night’s sleep here.

  Where had Nobles gone?

  She checked the clock. It was after one. Brigands Key had shut down hours ago, everything but that blinking pink sign.

  Small-town life. Postcard stuff. Mom and apple pie. Quaint as could be. She could deal with this. The move to Tampa from Chicago was bad enough, but she’d managed. What was one more slip down the cultural ladder?

  She sat up and fumbled about the nightstand for a cigarette. At least in the sticks the Nazi notion of nonsmoking rooms had not yet taken root. She lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, the glowing red tip comforting her. The digital display on the alarm clock clicked and counted off minutes.

  At last she crushed out the cigarette and kicked the covers off. She pulled on jeans and a tee-shirt, found her keys, and slipped out.

  Her car was parked next to the archaeologist’s. His room was at the end of the building and he’d become a bit of a mystery celeb here. She wondered about him. Grant was cute in a tweedy, professorial way, with an appealing roughness just underneath. Not much earning potential. Still, he was educated and maybe worth talking to. She’d make an effort to bump into him soon.

  Except that she’d heard he was sick.

  The talk of a plague was a bit unsettling. Certainly something was happening, but the locals were seizing on anything as gossip fodder.

  Susan switched on the Mercedes and pulled out onto Main and cruised slowly through town. Quiet as a tomb.

  She put the windows down and let the breeze, fragrant with the sea, blow through her hair. That was something she could like about this place. You were never more than a stone’s throw from the water.

  The town fell away and she reached the north end of the island, nearly deserted, the old lighthouse towering above, its small lights blinking red and green.

  She turned the car about and headed south, rolling again down Main before turning onto Lee Street, the lane of grand old Victorians of the nineteenth century. The houses lacked the cute flourishes urban renewal hipsters fa
vored. The Lee Street Ladies were true to their original days, if you overlooked the satellite dishes.

  The Ladies gave way to a row of vacant lots, recently bought and dozed of their fifties block homes by Gulf Breeze. Standing at the end of the vacant lots and before the empty sixty acres just beyond was the weathered Victorian of Roscoe Nobles. Susan slowed to a stop.

  The timing of Roscoe’s disappearance couldn’t have been better or worse. Gulf Breeze had put in an offer to him, upped it, upped it again. Good money, more than his rattrap was worth. The guy hadn’t budged and the company put pressure on Susan to make the deal happen.

  She admired the old pile of sticks. The house was dark but its elegance came through even at night. It was the real deal and had withstood a half-dozen hurricanes in its century of existence. A shame it had to go.

  A flicker of light from within the darkened house caught her eye. She stopped the car and leaned closer to the window.

  There was nothing but blackness in the windows.

  Put it in gear and move on, she told herself. Nothing to see here. Several minutes passed, with no return performance, no flicker.

  Behind her, out over the Gulf, a slow thunderstorm drifted across the water, towering blackness, miles out to sea. Distant lightning sparked silently. That’s all it was, a reflection of faraway lightning on the black windows of Roscoe’s house. Smoke of a distant fire.

  She sighed with relief and shifted the car back into drive.

  She hesitated.

  Roscoe was still missing. If he stayed missing, it was only a matter of time before Sanborn came here and started rooting around in the old house.

  That would most certainly be bad for business. And career-ending for her.

  Certain correspondence between Roscoe and Gulf Breeze would be found and brought to light, correspondence that might not shine a favorable light upon the company and some of its more high-pressured tactics. So far, Roscoe had never brought that correspondence up, as it implicated him as well, but Susan had no doubt that he’d kept copies as insurance.

  A light rain, a wet edge of the faraway storm, began to fall. Light enough for cover, not hard enough to discourage her.