Don Bruns - Too Much Stuff

It was about time we started treating this like a business and not a vacation.

We scrubbed. The streak of black paint spread maybe a foot across the door and with paint thinner, rags, and some steel wool the three of us worked on that stain. James stood back to comment on the effort more than we did, to admire our work. But, to be honest, he put in some serious time.

“Wax on, wax off. Breathe in through nose, out the mouth.”

Em gave him a scowl.

“ The Karate Kid , nineteen eighty-four,” I said. “Not the lame newer version with Will Smith’s kid in it.”

“That was lame.”

“James,” Em stared at him. “ Wax on . This is your truck, remember?”

He put some serious work into it.

Once we had the black scrubbed to a dull gray, James pulled out the can of spray paint we’d picked up at the Ace Hardware in town. They were getting used to seeing our faces. No more cracks about digging for buried treasure. Shovels, a flashlight, screwdriver, WD-40, and some spray paint.

“All right, everyone, stand back.”

He shook the can until the little steel ball was bouncing around inside, then aimed at the area and let go. The paint slowly covered the gray, running in tiny rivulets down the side.

“Get me a rag.”

I handed him one and he blended the rivers of white into the body.

There was light applause from above and we looked up to see Amy, with a smile on her face, clapping.

“Now do you have time to come up and keep me company?”

“You don’t.” I said it very firmly.

“Skip, there’s a time for-”

“I’ll drive back to Miami with Em, and you can sit here and deal with Mrs. T. and this entire fiasco by yourself.”

I was hoping he’d cave, because if she agreed to that two million this could be one really, really sweet deal.

James looked at Amy, then at Em, and never at me.

“Okay. What has to be done next?”

“We need new plates.”

He looked up at Amy again, dressed in a very brief bikini, or else colorful underwear. I had to admit, she looked very sexy. If it had been me-

“Can’t do it right now, Amy. I want to, but-” he spread his arms out as if overwhelmed by the entire situation.

I sincerely believe he was overwhelmed.

We found the truck behind a strip mall about two miles down the road. A white box truck very similar to ours. There are hundreds of them in the Keys. Delivery trucks, handyman trucks, plumbing trucks.

James kept a lookout on one side of the mall, Em on the other. They were both in my view, and I put the Ace Hardware screwdriver into the rear plate screw. It was frozen tight, so I sprayed some of the WD-40 onto the screw.

“Hurry up, man.” James said it in a hoarse whisper.

Trying again, I could feel the screw turn slightly. I turned, pushing harder, and it rotated again.

I saw him before he saw me. The skinny guy in cutoffs and a ragged undershirt as he exited the rear of the building. He looked straight at me, obviously confused.

“What are you doing, man?”

“Putting a plate on my truck.”

“That’s my truck, you son of a-”

He was racing toward me, head bent low. As he reached me, I politely stepped aside and he plowed on through into a hedge of shrubs. Prickly shrubs, apparently, from the sound of his screams.

James and Em were nowhere in sight, but I knew our truck was-had been-in front of the building. I ran at top speed around the corner of the mini strip mall and saw them both in the vehicle, the engine running.

Leaping into the seat beside Em, I shouted out to James. “Were you going to leave without me?”

“Only if there was trouble, dude.”

“Of course we weren’t,” Em spit out. “We were coming around to save you.”

As it turned out, I didn’t need any saving. But it was good to know that you can’t necessarily trust your friends or lovers when you’re in a dilemma like that.

We finally found another truck behind Woody’s. Woody’s was a strip club not even two miles from Pelican Cove. The sign said: LIVE NUDE GIRLS.

“Do some clubs feature dead ones?” Em asked.

She’d never been inside a strip club. I made a mental note to take her to one. She’d probably refuse.

This time I had James do the dirty deed. I watched from the privacy of the truck as he struggled with the plate.

Twenty minutes later, we drove our truck onto the street with a new plate and a new paint job. Pretty cool. We were finally acting like real detectives. The thought that rankled me was that someone else had to tell me where we were going wrong. Our employer.

“Let’s hope whoever owns that truck doesn’t realize we switched the license plate.”

“James, let’s head over to the vacant property.”

“In broad daylight?”

“We’ll park the truck a couple of stores down from the medical building, then one of us can walk back and see if the shovels are still there.”

“You told me you met a realtor with a motorcycle.” Em spoke up, wedged between us on the cracked vinyl bench seat.

“Yeah, we did.”

“Give her a call and ask her to go to the property and check it out for you. For her it won’t be a big deal.”

“Why her?”

She turned to James. “Who has unlimited access to almost every property in the area and no one will question them?”

She was right. For a natural blonde, she was pretty sharp.

So I called Maria Sanko, and we all met for coffee at a seaside bar and restaurant called Lorelei.

The day was heating up, but the breeze from the gulf was perfect. Living in our crummy apartment in Carol City, I sometimes forget how great Florida can be.

“So, we want to be totally open with you.” James could lie with the best of them.

A small boat puttered by, the engine stuttering.

“You’re not looking for somebody’s great-grandfather?”

“We are. Sort of.”

A great egret landed on the railing just in front of us, and the big bird hopped to a vacant tabletop. I looked up and a short-haired lady in a dirty apron was bringing a plate of scrambled eggs out from behind the bar.

She set the dish on the floor and the bird hopped down and started eating.

“A bird eating eggs,” said James. “It doesn’t seem right.”

“Only scrambled. He only eats the scrambled ones.” The woman watched the tall white bird for several seconds then disappeared behind the bar.

“Actually, Maria, you hit the nail on the head yesterday. You said you thought we were probably treasure hunters and we were looking for a wrecker’s camp. Well, Mary Trueblood’s great-grandfather ran a wrecker’s camp. He sacked treasure ships, so looking for the site of the camp is exactly what we’re doing.”

“I knew it.” She slapped the table, rattling the four coffee cups. “Well, I wish you luck. I always thought it would be neat to find some gold coins down here. I’ve known several people who have. They didn’t get rich, but-”

“We have an idea that his wrecker’s camp was located at the vacant property behind the doctor’s office. Where O’Neill and Malhotra do their business.”

It’s the best story we could come up with.

“Behind Malhotra and O’Neill’s building? The fenced land where the Coral Belle stood?”

“Yes.”

“But there was a hotel there. Not a wrecking camp.”

Obviously there were holes in our story.

“Well, the information is a little sketchy, but maybe the camp was there before the hotel was built.”

She nodded, thinking it through as a blue heron landed on the railing.

The pure-white egret looked up from his meal and squawked as the blue heron jumped down and paraded over to the plate of eggs. The egret flapped his wings and rose about six inches from the planked wooden floor as two seagulls swooped down, one landing on a chair, one on the floor. The egret and the heron both squawked, and I caught the dishtowel from the corner of my eye as it flew through the air, coming dangerously close to Em’s head.