A Flash of Green by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

out sooner or later, didn’t I?”
    “Yes, but I think we were all hoping it would be later thanthis. Dear, do you want me to ask Burt what he thinks he could do about selling your house?”
    “Not for a while, I guess. I think I’m going to be too busy to think about it.”
    Kat walked slowly home along the dark street. She could hear distant music over the tinny little speaker at the Pavilion, half lost in a soft sound of the waves against the beach. A meager breeze made false rain sounds in the palms. A whippoorwill, far away, made his sound of weary astonishment. A nearby mockingbird made repetitive improvisation, with a silvery clarity and an undertone of anxiety. Bugs skirred and grated in the unsold lots of Sandy Key Estates.
    Frosty gathered up her books when Kat walked in.
    “They didn’t make a sound,” Frosty said. “I had a Coke. Gee, thanks a lot, but I couldn’t take any money, Mrs. Hubble. I told my mother I wouldn’t. Anyhow, it’s hardly been more than a half hour. Well … thanks. Thanks a lot. Gee, any time you want me to sit for you …”
    After the girl left, Kat went to the phone and called Colonel Thomas Lamson Jennings, A.U.S., Ret., the president of Save Our Bays, Inc. Colonel Jennings lived further north on the Key, on the bay side.
    “Tom? Kat Hubble. I know it’s an odd time to phone, but I have to tell you this. That Grassy Bay thing is going to open up again.”
    “Again? Are you kidding me?”
    She quickly explained what she had learned and said, “I got it from Sally Ann Lesser, but that’s not for general distribution.”
    “Katherine, I could have used you as a staff G-2 in a couple of wars. Those idiots obviously thought they were going to catch us off balance. Can you come here at five o’clock tomorrow?”
    “Let me think. Yes, I can make it.”
    “Good girl. I’ll see if I can track down some more information on it tomorrow. I’ll call a meeting of the Executive Committee. The big question now is to find out exactly when they’re going to make their first move, and then we’ll know how much time we have.”
    “Maybe … we can’t stop it this time.”
    “Why not?”
    “These are local men, Tom. They’ll have things pretty much all their own way.”
    “Don’t be such a defeatist, Katherine. Of course we’ll whip them, just as we did before. Last time we whipped them in the very first round, the public hearing. We’ll try to do the same thing this time, but if we don’t, there are a lot more things we can do. Remember? We’ll get it into the courts and we’ll stall them until they give it up as a bad job. All we’ll have to do is maintain a united front. I imagine there’ll be some new pressures on our membership this time, local in origin, so it’ll be up to us to keep the membership in line. I promise you one thing, Katherine, I’ll never look out this window at Grassy Bay and see dredges out there.”
    After she had hung up it took almost a half hour for the hearty confidence of the colonel’s voice to lose its persuasion. She recalled Van’s sour comment on Tom Jennings. “That’s the type who’d lead the Light Brigade up the wrong ravine, yelling ‘Charge!’ and grinning like an idiot.”
    But at the end Van had to admit Tom had organized it well.
    It seemed a pity it had to be done all over again.
    She finished her letter to her sister in Burlington, sealed it and put it where she would be certain to see it on her way out in the morning. She read two pages of a book and put it aside. Sheturned the television set on and searched the channels and turned it off. She walked back and forth through the silence of the house in a restlessness all too familiar.
    When she went into her bedroom the arrangement of her cosmetics on the top of her dressing table did not look quite right to her. She examined it more closely and saw that several jars and bottles were not as she had left them. It had been Frosty, of course. She examined a lipstick