The Big Blast Read online

  “Last one bein’ legit don’t mean this one is,” he said.

  “True.”

  We were in my car, driving down Grace Avenue on our way to pick up Lauren. Once we were out of downtown, there was no traffic at all. The day was clear and cool, sunny, but the temperature was dropping.

  “And I ain’t puttin’ Miki in danger even if it is,” he said.

  I nodded. It went without saying that I felt the same way about Lauren. And though Clip wouldn’t know it, not only did some things go without saying, but I actually left some of them unsaid.

  The plan was to pick up Lauren and have her accompany us to the USO to get more information about Joan and to see if anyone saw which way Orson headed after we left last night.

  “We gots enough to do as it is,” he added. “Missing girls and whales, tailing the unhappy wives of unhappier husbands.”

  “I know,” I said. “We’ve got more than enough to do. It could be a setup. But I think we need to do it anyway. If it’s a real threat . . . think about the lives that would be lost, the damage that could be done, the impact on the war.”

  He seemed to be thinking about it.

  “Look,” I said. “You don’t have to do anything. Just keep it in mind. You hear something, see something . . . let me know.”

  “I can do that,” he said. “Now back to our real work. We lookin’ for the girl or the whale?”

  “We look for the guy, we might find him,” I said. “We look for the girl, we might find them both.”

  He nodded.

  Lauren was ready and waiting when we arrived.

  As if a choreographed routine we’d done a thousand times, Clip and I quickly got out, and as I rounded the front of the car, he slipped into the backseat. I then kissed Lauren and helped her into the car, closing my door just a few seconds after closing hers.

  “Miki just called,” Lauren said. “Orson’s grandmother called the office and said he was home. Asked if you’d come talk to him.”

  “She say anything else?”

  “Says he can’t remember much of anything from last night and doesn’t remember driving home.”

  I nodded.

  “Why don’t you drop me at the club and I’ll ask around about Joan while you two go talk to him?”

  Which was exactly what we did.

  “Something’s wrong with my head, Jimmy,” Orson said.

  He had met us when we pulled up and we were now leaning on the car talking.

  My guess was he didn’t want his grandmother hearing what he had to say.

  The late afternoon light made everything glow softly, imbuing everything with a gentle golden beauty. The cool air was thin and crisp, pleasant and easy to breathe, and the slight breeze stirred things about, tousled my hair—Orca’s and Clip’s were too short for such an effect—and caused the palm fronds to flap intermittently.

  “It’s all messed up.”

  “Whatta you mean?”

  “I keep losing time,” he said. “Keep comin’ to and can’t remember where I been or what I been doin’.”

  He had just met Clip for the first time, but if he minded talking in front of him he gave no indication.

  “What do you remember about last night?”

  “Runnin’ into you at that little bar. What’s the name of it?”

  “Nick’s.”

  “Yeah, Nick’s. Bopping that asshole on his head. Drinkin’ with that girl.”

  “What girl?” I asked.

  He squinted then shook his head. “Was that last night?”

  “We walked outside and talked,” I said. “Remember?”

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “That’s right. We talked.”

  “Then what’d we do?”

  His huge, round face narrowed in focus.

  “We went somewhere,” he said. “Where’d we go? Oh yeah, I met your girl. Laura.”

  “Lauren.”

  “Lauren, right.”

  “Do you remember where that was?” I asked.

  “Under the flagpole.”

  “That’s right. Where?”

  “Near the water,” he said. “The USO club.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Then Lauren and I left. What’d you do then?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t . . . I just don’t know. What did I do? Why can’t I remember? What’s wrong with me?”

  He hit himself on the head with his closed fist.

  “Just relax,” I said. “No pressure. No big deal. We’ll figure it out. How often does this happen? When did it start?”

  “Just since I been back— The USO Club. I went inside. After you and Laura left I went inside. I asked around about Ernie’s girl, Joan.”

  “That’s good. See? You’re doing good.”

  “Nobody knew nothin’,” he said. “Or if they did they weren’t spillin’.”

  “Then what’d you do?”

  He thought about it for a while, then shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. Wait. I wanted a drink—a real drink.”

  “Where’d you go for that?”

  He thought about it some more, the furrow of concentration just above and between his eyes a puffy, pronounced ridge with two deep lines on either side.

  Eventually, he shook his head. “I just . . . don’t know. Where . . . wait. The same place we had been. What was the name of it?”

  “Nick’s?”

  “Yeah, Nick’s. I had a drink with that girl.”

  “What girl?”

  He shook his head. “That’s . . . all I . . . got. Need to . . . lie . . . down.”

  I pressed him a little more, but got nothing else.

  “Get some sleep big fella,” I said. “Call me when you get up and we’ll see if we can’t figure out what else happened last night. And we’ll find Joan.”

  “Joan,” he said, as if he had forgotten. “Oh no. I can’t rest. I’ve got to find Joan.”

  “We’re going to look for her right now,” I said. “You go get some rest. I’ll call if you we turn up anything. If you don’t hear from me, call me when you get up and you can join the search.”

  “You’re a real pal, Jimmy. A real pal. Always have been.”

  Without saying anything else, he turned unsteadily and stumbled across the small sandy yard, up the stairs, through the porch, and back into the house.

  We watched him as he did, and for a long moment after he was inside, we just stood there staring after him.

  “The hell happen to him over there?” Clip said.

  “We need to find out,” I said.

  “He wasn’t like that before?”

  I shook my head. “Not at all. That was like talking to someone who looks like my old friend, not my friend himself, not Orca. A stranger bearing a striking resemblance.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Joan Wynn lived with her aunt off Cherry Street in the Cove, not far from where I used to live in the Cove Hotel.

  The small block home was modest, but nice, and sported a fresh coat of paint—white on the blocks and yellow on the shutters.

  Inside, what little furniture there was had never been nice, and it had been decades since it had seen better days.

  “I’ve worried myself sick over that girl,” Lilium Wynn said. “I’ve got such a bad feeling.”

  Lilium Wynn, Joan’s dad’s sister who had never married or had kids of her own, looked like the flower she was named after—pale and frail, dainty and delicate. She must have been a good deal older than Joan’s dad, who had been killed along with her mother in a house fire, because she was quite elderly—perhaps as old as her midseventies. She was tall and thin, with light freckles largely hidden by makeup and sky-blue eyes largely hidden by glasses.

  Looking at her and thinking about the flower she was named after, I realized the exterior color scheme of her house also mimicked her namesake flower.

  “When’s the last time you saw her?” I asked.

  She glanced over at Clip again—something she had been doing wi
thout much subtlety since we’d arrived.

  “A week ago yesterday. She left in the evening to do her volunteer work at the USO and the next morning when I woke up she wasn’t here. I guess she could’ve come back during that time and left again. I just don’t know. But if she did, she left earlier than she normally did—and without a word to me.”

  “Does she have a car?”

  She nodded. “Her parents left her a little money and their old car.”

  “Do you know the make and model?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t. It’s black. A Ford maybe. I’m just not certain.”

  “Has she ever gone off before?” I asked.

  “She’s a good girl,” she said. “Just . . . a little impulsive. She’s gone to a girlfriend’s place before and forgotten to call until the next morning, but never more than that. Never anything like this.”

  “Do you have any idea where she might be?”

  “I’ve called everyone I can think of,” she said. “No one’s seen her. Like I said, I’ve told all this to the police.”

  “I know, and I appreciate you telling us again. It helps. It really does.”

  “Sure,” she said, nodding her head slightly, as if it were barely attached. “Anything for a friend of Ernie’s. Ernie’s got such good friends. That big one is very nice too. He’s also trying to find my Joan for me. Ernie and Joan make such a good couple. None of this would’ve happened if he was here. He helped keep her . . . occupied. A girl like her needs that. The firm hand of a good man.”

  I had never thought of Ernie’s hand as being particularly firm, but then I had never been his girlfriend either.

  “We’ve got to find her before he gets back,” she said. “No matter where she is.”

  There was something in that.

  “Whatta you mean?”

  “Pardon?” she said.

  “Whatta you mean ‘no matter where she is’?”

  “Just that. They’ll be so happy once they’re together. We’ve just got to get them back together. He’s gonna need her to care for him when he gets back, now that he’s injured.”

  She glanced from my missing right arm to Clip’s eyepatch.

  “Miss Wynn, all I care about is finding her and making sure she’s safe,” I said. “It doesn’t matter where she is. My associate and I are very discreet. We wouldn’t embarrass Joan or do anything to expose anything you or she might not want made public.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  “Okay. May we look in her room?”

  She looked at Clip again. “I’d rather you not.”

  “It would really help,” I said. “Could be the thing that helps us find her.”

  “It just wouldn’t be appropriate,” she said. “Two . . . men . . . going through her private things.”

  “My wife helps me sometimes,” I said. “Would it be all right if I brought her back and let her have a look around?”

  She thought about it.

  Lauren and I weren’t married, but that didn’t make her any less my wife—and though wife wasn’t a strong or significant enough word, it was a shorthand most people could understand.

  “I guess that might be all right,” she said. “If you really think it’ll help find her.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “He seemed real agitated,” Lottie Brusher said. “I tried to talk to him, see what was the matter, calm him down some, you know? But . . . nothin’ seemed to help.”

  Lottie Brusher, the young, wide-eyed, energetic wartime volunteer was talking about Orson, and how he had acted when he came to the USO club after Lauren and I left last night.

  We had found her in a lookout tower on the beach and climbed up to talk to her.

  “Any idea what had him agitated?” I asked. “He seemed fine when we left.”

  “He seemed fine when he first came in,” she said, “then out of the blue, all of a sudden, for no reason, he just grew real screwy.”

  The large wooden tower we were in resembled a lifeguard tower—only bigger. Four long telephone poles extended up some thirty feet from a cement pilings foundation to a square wooden platform atop which was a small wooden enclosure with a tin roof.

  The lookout towers had been constructed for spotters to watch the waters surrounding our peninsula for submarines, in particular the U-boats that kept taking out our tankers.

  The beaches of Florida were littered with them.

  “Missy, you volunteer here durin’ the day and down to the USO at night?” Clip asked.

  She nodded as if it were no big deal.

  “People like you are the reason we’re gonna win the war,” I said.

  “Wow, thanks soldier, but you brave boys are the real reason we’re gonna win.”

  I lifted my right shoulder and what remained of my arm. “This happened here,” I said. “Never got the chance to go over and serve.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Lost my eye servin’,” Clip said.

  “Good for you,” she said. “I mean . . . I just meant . . .”

  “We know what you meant,” I said. “It’s fine. So Orson got agitated for no reason, then what?”

  “Well, like I said I tried to calm him down, but he was havin’ none of it. He didn’t stay long. Right in the middle of conversation—well, of me talking—he stood up and said he was going back to Nick’s for a real drink, did I want to go. I told him I couldn’t and that he shouldn’t either. He said something about Nick’s having real women too, then stormed out.”

  The temperature was continuing to drop with the late afternoon sun, which with the gusts of wind made the drafty enclosure we were standing in feel like a large ice box.

  The natural pause in our conversation provided the perfect place for Lottie to do what she was up here to do. Lifting the large binoculars, she stepped through the open doorway of the box and over to the railing surrounding the platform.

  We followed her out onto the platform and followed her gaze across the Gulf.

  Beyond the calm blue-green waters and the gently undulating waves patting the shore, the sun was sinking into the vanishing point of the horizon off to the west.

  We could see for miles and miles and I wondered how many German subs were beneath the surface of the waters visible to us at the moment.

  Glancing away from the Gulf, I looked down the beach to the east, back toward town. In the far distance I could see another tower like the one we were in. Between here and there, the naval horseback patrol strolled along the empty coastline, the sand so white the horses’ hooves appeared to be trotting in sugar.

  After finishing her scan of the Gulf, Lottie walked back inside. We followed.

  She replaced the big binoculars on the small stand, shivered a bit, rubbed her hands together, and pulled her jacket up around her.

  “Lauren said you knew Joan Wynn pretty well and could tell us about her too,” I said.

  Lottie shrugged. “Knew her a little. Not sure I can tell you much.”

  “Do you mind just starting by telling us your opinion of her, your impression?”

  “Well . . . let’s see. Joan . . . She’s not a bad egg, just sort of restless, you know? Like bored with life most of the time. Lookin’ for . . . I don’t know . . . somethin’, anything to occupy her. You know what I mean?”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” I said.

  “I don’t,” Clip said. “Must be a white people thing.”

  Lottie wasn’t sure how to take that. She glanced quickly from Clip to me, patted down her pin curls, pulled her jacket up around her again, and proceeded.

  “Like I said, she wasn’t bad, but . . . boredom can get you into trouble if you’re not careful. What’s that saying? Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

  “That’s it,” I said, nodding.

  “Jimmy here got less for the devil to work with these days,” Clip said.

  I smiled. “Smaller workshop but more efficient
,” I said.

  Lottie, uncertain how to take Clip’s comment—or Clip for that matter—smiled awkwardly.

  “I like Joan. I do. But she can be tiring. Always wanting something else, always looking for . . . a new something, a new anything. Lately, she wanted to be in pictures. I said you have to move to Hollywood for that and she said she just might do that. She’s pretty enough, kinda glamourous, but I don’t know if she can act or . . . I mean, you have to be . . . I mean to be in pictures.”

  “What did you think when she stopped volunteering at the USO?”

  She shrugged. “That she found something new to occupy her for a bit. I just hoped it wasn’t one of those fly boys who fawned over her.”

  “Know any of their names?”

  She shook her head. “I hoped maybe she started volunteering somewhere else or maybe her fella came home early. I thought maybe, just maybe, she really did go to Hollywood. She’s . . . I wouldn’t be shocked if she did. I wouldn’t.”

  “What about the guy who came in and stared at her? Know anything about him?”

  “Oh wow, I had forgotten about him. If it’s who I think you mean. Lots of guys stared at her. Lots of guys stare at Lauren. You’re a very lucky man. But, yeah, there was the one guy who only stared. Never did anything else.”

  “Know his name or anything about him?”

  “You don’t think he could’ve . . .”

  “Wants to have a little chat with him either way,” Clip said.

  “Oh I wish y’all would, but I don’t know anything about him.”

  “Who would?”

  “A couple of the fellas finally tossed him out. They talked to him more than anyone. What were their names? Oh Gosh, that was right before Joan stopped coming. Oh my.”

  “Their names?”

  “Who?”

  “The guys who threw him out?”

  “They were navy guys. Mom would know.”

  I knew she meant Mildred Wade, the most senior hostess of the USO and not her own mother. All the girls—the junior and senior hostesses—called her Mom.

  “Tell Lauren to introduce you. Talk to her. She’ll know. Oh Gosh, I hope he didn’t . . . I hope she’s not with him.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Later that afternoon, Clip and I picked up Lauren and went shopping.