“Must be ’cause I know the signs! So, how is Charleston and what’s up with that thing you’re doing?”
“Developing Bulls Island. And Charleston is hotter than the hinges on the back door of hell. The bugs! And it’s muggier than the—”
“Okay! Got the picture! But other than the tropics, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”
“Oh, shoot. Adrian? It’s a rough project. Unpopular because Bulls Island was always this pristine little oasis. Now it’s gonna have homes for multimillionaires and the radical environmentalists are flipping and—”
“Sounds like a battlefield.”
“Pretty much.”
“Hey, Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever happened to that guy you were seeing? The one that sent you all the flowers?”
Now, for the first time ever, my right eyelid began to twitch. I had a regular duo of Judas Iscariots harmonizing smack in the middle of my face.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Envelope, Please
It was Monday morning and I was back in Charleston. Sandi had been e-mailing me like mad to let me know that Louisa Langley was waiting for me in the office. She had been there for an hour. And the prior Friday, while I was having my confession heard by Bruton in New York, she had parked herself in my office, not believing Sandi that I was gone for the weekend, and in the process making Sandi a nervous wreck. When you realize that Sandi was something of a female fortress to begin with, you get some idea of how relentless the imperious Louisa Langley could be given the opportunity to bare her fangs.
I e-mailed her back: Throw her a raw piece of meat. I’ll be there in ten minutes.
I wasn’t looking forward to starting my day with a confrontation with Louisa Langley, but I wasn’t afraid of her either.
Just after nine o’clock, I pulled into the office parking lot to discover that Louisa’s big old Benz wagon had commandeered my spot. Good grief. She was worse than a male dog marking the neighborhood and just as childish.
I pulled into the visitor spot, turned off the ignition, and took a deep breath. What would I say to her? And what accusations of transgression would she hurl my way? I got out and went inside.
There she was in her navy-blue-and-tan Lilly Pulitzer print dress and jacket, wearing pearls and embalmed in makeup.
“Good morning, Sandi. Messages? Good morning, Louisa.”
Yes, I took the liberty of calling her by her first name.
Sandi handed me a stack of pink sheets with various names and phone numbers on it. I made my way toward my office, talking over my shoulder.
“Do you want to come in, Louisa? Have something on your mind?”
She followed me in a bluster and dropped her purse on my desk. I went around to my side of the desk and silently stared at her purse and then at her. She picked up the offending Gucci and put it on a chair adjacent to the desk. I inhaled, admittedly puffing myself up over the small victory.
“Would you like coffee? A cold drink?”
“No, thank you. I don’t drink coffee.”
“Neither do I.”
“One of the very few things we have in common, I’m sure.”
“Indeed. Won’t you sit down?”
She sat, shifting around in her seat until her bony rump was comfortable.
“So, what can I do for you, Louisa?”
“Well, you can go on back up to New York City and get out of our lives, for starters.”
I looked at her and smiled the same serene smile I had given Bruton’s secretary.
“Can’t do that and I won’t do that. Is there anything else?”
“You certainly have become a brazen thing, haven’t you, now?”
“I’m not sure what you mean by brazen, but it surely sounds accusatory and very impolite, considering that you burst in here—and not for the first time—uninvited and unannounced.” I said this to her in the detached tone I reserved for the Dennis Bakers of the world. Another point for me.
“Betts? My son has enough to deal with without you sashaying in here like something from a bandbox and turning his head.” Half point.
“‘Bandbox’? ‘Turning his head’? My, my, Louisa. I didn’t know you found me so attractive.” Full point.
Her face and neck turned scarlet and I knew I was winning.
“You had better just listen to me, Betts McGee. There are greater forces at play here. An oath taken before God, a very sick wife, and a hound dog for a son. Did you know my son has announced his intentions to marry you? Did you know he has asked his wife for a divorce? Don’t you feel any remorse?”
That was all news to me. But…remorse? I leaned back in my chair and just looked at her, thinking loudly enough for her to hear, I feel no more remorse than you did for being the indirect cause of my mother’s death and I don’t really care what you think.
What I said aloud was: “For your information, not that it’s any of your business, J.D. and I are not involved.”
She pulled the newspaper article from her purse and slammed it on the desk in front of me.
“Perhaps,” she said, “but any fool can see it won’t be long before y’all are involved.”
“What do you want from me, Louisa?”
“I have given this a great deal of thought and it is a complicated and terrible situation all around. I think many things. First, it’s patently obvious J.D. still cares for you. Loves you, in fact. Second, his wife, his good and loyal wife of many years, is dreadfully insecure and appears to have some rather serious health problems. I would like to see J.D. help her get back on her feet and then you all can go fly to the moon on a wooden horse for all we care. It’s not right to kick Valerie in the teeth while she’s in this precarious situation. It’s not nice.”
“You of all people have some nerve to decide what’s nice and what isn’t nice.”
“That may be true, but Lord in His heaven, Betts, the poor girl is a disaster and your presence has simply exacerbated her problems. She is saying and doing all manner of crazy things. I am afraid for her mental health, and to tell you the truth, I am afraid for her life.”
…afraid for her life…
She had me there. Game, set, match. The horrible old biddy was right.
“Listen,” she continued. “I can see with my own eyes what’s happening here and so can the whole world. I’m just asking you to back away from J.D. until we can get Valerie under control…you know, stabilized, that’s all.”
“This isn’t a contest, Louisa. But I happen to agree with you. When you marry, you make a deal. He owes her that much, to try and help her overcome her problems, that is. I will tell him that.”
“Then we all have nothing else to discuss.”
I stood to let her know she could leave then, that she might have won the day, but that I was still someone to be reckoned with, not a coward, but a reasonable woman who would play fair in a time of crisis.
She stood and looked at me long and hard, relieved that her point was taken, but it was clear that to be spoken to in such plain words had disarmed her. No one spoke to Louisa Langley without a bow and a kiss for the ring first.
“I appreciate your candor, Louisa.”
“Well, I am relieved that you do. I imagine that soon the day will dawn when we will have to find our way to getting along again, won’t we now?” She spoke with such a long-drawn-out southern accent you would have thought she’d grown up at Tara.
“Yes, but not now. We can save our mutual admiration for another day.”
“Thank you, Betts. Big Jim always said you were a decent person.”
Decent person? That was the best she could manage? I let it slide. I wasn’t going to argue with her any more than I already had. It wasn’t worth it.
I watched her leave my office, and when I heard the front door close behind her, I went out to Sandi to collect the other messages that had come in.
“Holy cow,” she said.
“Did you hear what she said?”
&
nbsp; “Of course I did. But you have more drama to deal with this morning.”
“What now?”
“J.D. called. There has been a major disaster out on Bulls. Most of the big equipment has been damaged and one of the guys involved was seriously attacked by an alligator. Lost most of one leg and his whole arm. He almost bled to death, but somehow they got him out of there and to the hospital. Needless to say, he’s in critical condition.”
“What? Are you kidding? Oh no! Oh Lord! This is terrible! Who knows about this?”
“The immediate world.”
“Were the police called in?”
“Of course! It’s trespassing, destruction of private property—”
“Get J.D. on the phone.”
As Sandi started dialing she said, “He’s already called four times—”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Interrupt me?”
“Because I figured ten minutes one way or the other wasn’t going to change the facts, and you had your hands full with his mother.”
She was right, of course. There was enough madness in the air already; an interruption from J.D. would only have made Louisa more insane…and perhaps that was what Sandi had been thinking. It didn’t matter.
I went back to my office and dropped into my chair. It wasn’t even nine-thirty and I felt like I had worked a ten-hour day in the hot sun.
“J.D. on line one,” Sandi called.
I picked up the phone and somehow, the very second I heard his voice, I felt better.
“Got those public-relations folks on the payroll yet?” I asked.
“I wish. This is some mess,” he said. “These idiots took a sledgehammer to everything. You might want to come out here and bring a camera with you.”
“Did you call the insurance guys?”
“Of course. But the Post & Courier is here, and the State as well. Every local network affiliate is on its way with a crew—”
“I’ll be there as fast as I can.” Great, I thought. “I’ll be on my cell,” I said to Sandi as I sailed past her and out the door.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“I’ll call you…”
In my car, I looked in the rearview mirror before I backed out of the parking space. Wait! Was it the same man who had followed me before? Was that him across the street sitting in his car pretending to read a newspaper? Yes! What did he want? It occurred to me that he could be a friend of Vinny’s. Why would Vinny care what I did? What was the matter with him? Apparently, Vinny was not going to go quietly into the mists and disappear. I would have to call him and ask him nicely to call off the dogs. Yes, that’s what I would do. As soon as I had resolved the problems at Bulls Island and the endless stream of trouble this entire development was causing.
All the way out to Awendaw I worried. First of all, someone had to put a stop to these incidents of vandalism. Maybe we could put a guard or even two on the island overnight in a secure area, free of man-eating reptiles. Then there was the PR problem. Who would want to live in a multimillion-dollar house on an island that was infested with hungry alligators? I had thought most of them or all of them had been moved over to Capers Island. Clearly, they missed one or two.
I pulled into the parking lot and hurried to the dock. J.D. had the company boat there waiting for me with a captain. Three or four reporters were also on the dock, posted there to see who would show up, but I wasn’t talking to them until I spoke to J.D.
They recognized me.
“Excuse me!…Ms. McGee!…Do you have a comment on the break-in last night?…Do you know that the victim’s life is hanging by a thread?…Do you know if they successfully reattached his arm?”
No comment! No comment! No comment!
Even though we—Triangle Equity and Langley Development—were the victims here, we were going to have to endure more scrutiny and criticism and I knew it. Fine! Let the entire citizenry of the state of South Carolina come have a look!
I boarded the boat as quickly as I could and escaped the inquisition of the stringers from the press. But more of them were waiting on the landing at Bulls Island. Maybe we needed to hold a press conference. I could feel my chest constrict, then my eye started twitching, and I just wished it would all go away. All I wanted to do was develop the island with sensitivity to the pertinent issues, make my money, and get the hell out of town. But then there was the matter of J.D. Well, I couldn’t focus on J.D., except that at some point we would have to have some discussion about Valerie. What was really going on with her? I wondered.
As soon as the work site came into view my priorities reordered themselves. First, somebody had to clean up the destruction. There was broken glass all over the ground and machetes hanging from the tires of earthmovers and backhoes with smashed windshields. Every piece of equipment had been spray-painted with peace signs, dollar signs, and slogans like stop the madness! kill gentrification! take back the earth! I sympathized with the sentiments, but the reality was that you couldn’t stop progress of this type. Moreover, the world was better off with someone like J. D. Langley in charge of developing Bulls Island than with any number of disreputable butchers out there who would do much more harm than good.
“Morning, Betts,” J.D. called out to me.
“Nice little disaster we’ve got here, huh? How’s the guy that the gator bit?”
“He’s in a medically induced coma. Lost half his blood, I heard. Can’t talk to him for a while.”
“Good Lord, that’s awful. Even if he is a criminal. They didn’t catch anyone else?”
“No. The three fellows who got him to the ER just took off and left his arm in a cooler filled with ice and vitamin drinks right in the middle of the admissions area.”
“Fortified with guava and pomegranate, but running like sissies?”
“Yep. Probably afraid of the cops. Maybe somebody got a plate number; I don’t know. We got a couple hundred thousand dollars’ worth of damage here. Maybe more. The foreman is trying to put some numbers together for the claims adjusters over there.” He pointed to two men in khaki pants and knit shirts with cameras, talking to one of the foremen and some other guys from Langley. “We’re supposed to be running power and sewage lines this week and this fiasco is probably going to delay that. How many barges do we have in Charleston that can get us new equipment on short notice?”
“Good question. Well, there’s just no good news anywhere, is there?”
“No. Apparently not.” J.D. took off his sunglasses and I took off mine. We looked at each other long and hard. Each of us was confident of the other’s ability to stay cool while we got everything straightened out.
“J.D., we need a plan to secure this place. Pronto.”
“Got one. My guys are bringing two trailers over on a barge. We were gonna do that anyway, for office space. But I got four of the guys to agree to start sleeping out here and they have shotguns. We’re gonna post signs and run fencing around the equipment with barbed wire around the top. And of course the SC Wildlife men are gonna do another gator roundup.”
“Yeah, I thought the gators were all gone to Capers.”
“They were, but somebody forgot they can swim.”
“Clearly. Right. Of course they can. Did you talk to the press?”
“I just told them that Langley and Triangle deeply regretted the terrible trauma caused by the criminal actions of the radical environmentalist group who destroyed our private property. And I told them that we had not decided whether or not to press charges. Personally, I think he suffered enough. What do you think?”
“I think it would be seriously lousy to put that guy in jail. But the ones that ran away? I say, let ’em hang.”
“Whoo! That’s cold, Betts. Better let me do the talking. You know, in the interest of public support?”
“You’re right. That’s probably best.”
Oddly, the press was not that interested in talking to us. I watched as the reporters spoke to their cameras, pointing to the spot where the alliga
tor had attacked the trespasser. Their eyes grew wide with excitement as they recounted the event, gesturing to the marsh and the birds of prey overhead. It seemed that they were more concerned with the human-interest story of the poor idiot who almost lost his life in the name of industrial sabotage. And they were clearly painting Bulls Island as a dangerous place. I had little doubt we would be thoroughly vilified in tomorrow’s papers and on the evening news. But they pretty much shot their footage, got back on the ferryboat, and left.
I took some digital pictures to send to Bruton so he would be in the loop before the story went out on the wire. I could have sent him pictures from my phone, but they wouldn’t have really explained the situation as well as an e-mail and a phone call outlining the steps we intended to take to correct the problem. I knew Ben Bruton well enough to know he wanted his problems to be delivered soaked in solutions.
J.D. was busy with the construction foreman for a while.
“How long is it going to take to clean all this up?” he asked.
“Well, we gotta get a barge over here. That’s gonna take a day, maybe two…”
“Then we have to wait for new backhoes and trucks?”
“Yeah. That’s not gonna be all that complicated. We already made some calls.”
I listened, and soon, when it was apparent there was nothing more we could do until replacement equipment arrived, it was time to leave. We got in a Langley truck for the short drive to the dock.
“Well, this is a setback,” I said.
“Yeah, but almost predictable. So, listen,” he said, “you haven’t told me anything. How was your trip to New York?”
“Almost as much fun as my impromptu get-together with your mother this morning.”
“What? Where did you see her?”
“She was waiting at my office this morning when I got there.”
“What did she want?”
“She wanted us to remain celibate until your wife is completely stable. J.D., what’s going on with Valerie?”
“Ah, shoot.” He cocked his head to the side, screwed his lips up, and I knew he was going to take a minute before he continued. “What did she tell you?”