Heart of Palm (26 page)

“Yeah, of course. When?”

“Maybe today? This afternoon? I know it’s short notice, and maybe you’re busy. It just sure would be nice to get her set up before tonight.”

Frank quickly cataloged the afternoon. Pies to deliver to Uncle Henry’s, but he could do that on the way to pick up Elizabeth. Thirty minutes down to St. Augustine, to Carson and Elizabeth’s house, and then back in time for the first dinner crowd. And maybe he’d just be a little late for dinner. Maybe he would.

“No problem,” he said. “I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”

“Thank you, Frank.”

“Elizabeth,” he said, realizing, when Susan picked up her head and looked at him, that he’d blown his own cover, “I have a question about your house.”

“Yes?”

“Is Carson going to be there?”

She hesitated, then gave a little snort that could have been a chuckle or a sob.

“Do we care?” she said.

He hung up the phone and walked back into Mac’s office. Susan’s leg was still jiggling like mad, but when Frank entered, she stood up abruptly.

“You can take it from here, Mac,” she said. “Just send me over the closing statements when you’re finished. I’ve got to go. I’ve got a showing.”

She cast an annoyed glance at Frank.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“What did I do?”

“It’s not what you did. It’s what you didn’t do,” she said. She brushed past him, and her hair smelled like apples. She was lovely, really, and he hated to have her annoyed at him.

“Oh, come on, now,” he said. He looked back at Mac, who shrugged his shoulders. Frank followed Susan out the door and walked with her to the red Mazda. “Susan, don’t be mad at me,” Frank said.

She sighed. “You said you’d call me, like, two weeks ago, Frank. I thought we were going to go out for drinks. And I
hate
this.” She opened the passenger door of the Mazda, tossed her purse onto the seat, and slammed the door again.

“Hate what?”

“Hate being the kind of woman who whines to a man who doesn’t call her. I don’t want to be that woman, Frank.”

He didn’t know what to say. “Well, listen. I’m sorry,” he tried. “It’s just been really busy. The restaurant, and my mother—”

“Oh, don’t,” Susan said. “This is making it even worse. Ugh. The two of us. I’m about to barf.” She walked around to the driver’s side, opened the door, and got in. She started the car and rolled the windows down.

Mac came out the back door and called for her to wait. “You can take these now,” he said. “I’m finished with them.” He reached into the Mazda and dropped the manila folders on the passenger seat, and as he did, too late, Frank saw the pencil sketch he and Mac had been working on, the one with Morgan’s, Uncle Henry’s, and Aberdeen lined up along the rough rendering of the Intracoastal. The paper must have gotten caught up in Susan’s stack of folders. At the bottom of the sketch were Mac’s crude notes: “deep water,” “condos,” “marina,” and “Cryder.”

“What is this?” Susan said, picking up the paper. The Mazda was idling in the driveway, AC blowing at full blast, though the windows were wide open. She leaned over to regard Mac and Frank through the passenger window. “What the hell is this?”

Say anything you like about Susan Holm, Frank admitted, but the woman was not stupid. She put together the situation faster than he had, even with Mac diagramming it out in front of him and explaining the whole thing in detail. Susan got it, got it fast.

“You’re going to list with someone else. You’re going to sell the restaurant and Aberdeen,” she said. Amazing.

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, Susan—”

“This Cryder, he’s a Realtor?”

“Christ,” Frank said.

“No, no, Susan,” Mac said. “He’s not a Realtor. He’s a developer.”

“A
developer
?”

“Mac, you’re not helping,” Frank said.

“What?” Mac said. “I’m just telling her—”

“Mac. Shut up, please.”

“So you’re selling straight to a developer? Those people from Atlanta?” Susan said. “Well, isn’t that something. Isn’t that just wonderful for you. And do you have any idea what kind of a commission a sale like this could mean to someone like me?” Her voice had begun to climb in timbre, and tiny beads of perspiration had begun to appear on her chest, despite the valiant efforts of the tiny sports car’s condenser.

“Susan. Stop. Slow down. I am not selling anything. This guy just called me and was talking some big talk, and I—”

“You thought your ship had come in, huh, Frank? And to hell with everybody else in Utina, isn’t that what you thought? What about poor Arla? What’s going to happen to her, Frank? And Sofia?” She was getting wound up now. Her blouse was growing damp, and her hands were tight on the steering wheel as she glared up at Frank through the passenger window.

“Susan, listen—”

“Does Arla even know about this?”

He hesitated.

“No! Of course she doesn’t! Are you
kidding me
? You are going to sell your mother’s home out from under her and she doesn’t even know about this! Oh, my God, Frank. Oh, I cannot believe it. Wait, yes, I can. I believe it. Come to think of it, I should have known.” Her face was turning red.

Mac had taken a step back from the Mazda. He looked at Frank, raised his eyebrows.

“Susan, you’re not even letting me explain. This is nuts,” Frank said. “Let me get in. Let me talk to you.” He put his hand on the door, but then his phone vibrated again, and he pulled it out of his pocket, saw it was Aberdeen once more.
Elizabeth
.

Susan watched him check the phone, watched him hesitate, and then she read his mind. It was the final blow. She slapped at his hand on the rim of the door.

“Don’t do that, Susan,” he said. “Let me get in.”

“Get away,” she said.

He reached for the door again, pulled up on the handle just as she flung the car into reverse. She stomped on the accelerator, and the car spun wildly for a moment on the sandy driveway. The spin shifted the Mazda’s back axle a foot to the left, so when the tires regained traction again, the car was set up very nicely to execute a freakish, exquisite propulsion that sent it on a diagonal trajectory and lodged it firmly, noisily, and horribly between the twenty-foot Sabal palm and the City of Utina utility pole that lined Mac’s driveway. Inside the car, Susan blinked rapidly, looking out the front windshield at Frank and Mac, who stood flabbergasted in front of the trapped Mazda. Frank’s phone vibrated once more, stopped.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Mac said. He and Frank jogged down the driveway. “Are you okay?” Mac said, leaning around the utility pole to peer in through the passenger window. Frank approached on the driver’s side, where a twelve-inch sliver of the car’s interior was visible through the window, the rest of the view completely obscured by the trunk of the palm tree. Susan appeared unscathed, and the interior of the car had, it seemed, sustained no damage.

“I’m all right,” she said quietly. She looked at the driver’s side door, pinned tightly against the tree. “I guess I’m not getting out this way,” she muttered. She hiked her skirt and climbed ungracefully across the stick shift to plop down into the passenger seat, which afforded a slightly wider swath of vertical opening through the car window. She grasped the door handle and pushed, but this side of the car was completely pinned against the utility pole, and the door didn’t budge. The openings through either window were clearly too small to squeeze through.

“Oh,
shit
!”
she said. She kicked her right foot against the door, started to cry.

“Susan, listen,” Mac said, a dangerous levity in his voice now that they could see Susan was unhurt. He leaned down on the passenger side, spoke into the narrow chasm of open window. “You’re going to have to move the car to be able to get out. Climb back into the driver’s seat.” He had begun to grin, and he pressed his lips together.

Susan climbed back across the shifter. Tip Breen walked across the street from the Lil’ Champ. He looked even worse than ever, Frank thought fleetingly—his doughy skin slick with sweat, his shirt damp and stained. Broken, he thought. In the dictionary under
broken
there should have been a picture of Tip Breen. “Holy sack of shit,” Tip said. “What have we got here?” And then Frank’s attention returned to the Mazda. Tip Breen was not his problem.

“Susan,” Frank said through the crack in the driver’s side window. “Start the car, and we’ll see if you can move it forward.” On the other side of the car, Mac covered his hand with his mouth.

Sniffling, sweating, Susan positioned herself behind the steering wheel again and turned the key in the ignition. The starter turned over, but the engine did not catch. She tried again, still nothing. She threw her head back against the seat.

“Frank!” she said, wailing.

“She stuck in there?” Tip said, incredulous. “She actually stuck?” Mac leaned over, put his hands on his knees, lowered his head, and let out a long, controlled breath. Frank watched him, then quickly put his own hand over his mouth, but it was too late. Susan had seen the smile begin to form, and her tears instantly turned to rage.

“Are you laughing at this?” she said. She looked out the windshield at Tip and Mac, the former standing like a fat grinning ape, the latter now doubled over in laughter he’d given up trying to hide. “Do you all think this is
funny
?” Susan said. She looked back at Frank, and he cleared his throat, struggled to straighten his face.

“No, Susan. No. It’s not funny,” he said. And he
did
feel sorry for her, stuck in that hot sticky car, no way out, these three idjits not doing much to help her, himself included. “We’re going to get you out.”

“Just soon as I get my can opener!” Tip offered, and Mac roared, and Frank, he could not help himself—the laugh that came up through his lungs and ripped through his mouth was as unbidden as it was uncontrollable, and he surrendered to it, finally, spinning around to lean on the palm tree and gasp for air, laughing as he had not laughed in a very long time at the sight of the lovely, furious—no, nearly apoplectic—Susan Holm trapped in her satin blouse and linen skirt, sitting in the crumpled, pinched remains of what had once been her red Mazda.

Susan stared stonily ahead.

When Frank finally collected himself he looked at her and felt genuinely guilty. “Go call a tow truck, you jerks,” he said to Tip and Mac. “We got a lady in distress here.” Mac wiped his eyes and nodded, walked back to his office. Frank heard him say, “Oh, good stuff.” Tip made himself comfortable holding up the wall of Bait/Karaoke.

“Don’t you need to go back to the store?” Frank asked him.

“Nah, I got no customers,” Tip said. “I’m gonna set here, see how this plays out.” He chuckled again, and Frank was ashamed of himself, aligning himself with the likes of Tip Breen and allowing himself to see humor in Susan’s plight. Gooch, growing bored with all this, lay down on a cool patch of concrete in the shade of Bait/Karaoke.

“Susan, I’m sorry,” Frank said. He leaned down to the crack in the window again. “I’m sorry, Susan. I don’t know what came over me. It was just—I guess we were just so relieved that you were okay, and when Mac started laughing, I—”

Susan gave him a withering look. “Oh, is that it? You were so
concerned
about me you were just overcome with emotion? Huh,” she said. She turned to stare out the windshield again. “Save it, Frank.”

“All right,” he said. “Okay, you have a right to be mad. I get it. But listen, we’re going to get you out of here. Maybe we can push the car out. Tip,” he said. “Make yourself useful and come on over here and push with me.”

He and Tip positioned themselves behind the Mazda and pushed. Then they recruited Mac, who had returned from calling for the tow truck. Then they went into Bait/Karaoke and commandeered the counter help, a pimply boy named Seth who played running back for Utina High. But the Mazda would not budge.

“Tow said thirty minutes, best,” Mac said. He looked up the street, and then straight up into the sky. “Damn, it’s hot out here.” And it was only now, at this moment, that Frank realized something else—with Susan’s Mazda wedged tightly between the tree and the utility pole in Mac’s driveway, his truck was trapped in the back parking lot.

Elizabeth. Bell. The bed.
Jesus
.

“Seth, go get Susan a drink of water or something, would you?” Frank said. He walked over to join Gooch in the shade of the building and dialed Aberdeen on his cell phone. He hoped his voice would not carry to Susan’s ears when he explained the situation to Elizabeth. But there was no answer at Aberdeen. He hung up, tried again. Nothing. Probably out by the water, he thought. Or on the porch. Waiting for me.
Shit
.

Mac and Tip joined him in front of the building. “I gotta get my truck out,” Frank said.

Mac laughed. “You’re not going anywhere, friend.” Seth came out, passed a bottle of water into the car for Susan, then leaned against the building with the others.