Climate Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 7)
Page 17
It was the first time she’d seen James Thompson smile.
“Don’t give it another thought. I’m sure you were upset.”
“At least we know,” said Margot, “that it wasn’t a demon. Although, Nina, you can be kind of demon-like at times.”
“Damned straight.”
Thompson:
“I can take all of that palaver. But when those two women started on about demons––”
Margot merely nodded:
“We heard the same story a little earlier in the day.”
“I’ll go back—I’ll listen to all of them, because they’re potential witnesses, and I’ve got to hear them out. But I have to take a little rest, I really do.”
They merely sat for a time as the storm grew louder, and the entire house, despite its size, seemed to be shaking.
“I don’t like all these people being holed up out here like this,” said Officer Thompson. “I’d feel a lot better if they were all in town.”
“They won’t go, though,” said Margot
And that was true.
So there was really nothing to do
Thompson finally continued:
“Since the two of you are already involved in this, I thought the least I could do was keep you informed on what we’ve learned.”
“Thank you,” said Nina, quietly. “We appreciate it.”
“We were able to get someone from the city hospital to go out and talk to Ms. Badger at the motel. He’s not exactly a registered psychologist, but he does have some credentials along those lines. We’ve used him several times in the past to get his feelings on whether someone is actually mentally ill or not, especially in cases where we feel the suspect might be a danger to self or loved ones.”
“So what,” asked Margot, “did this man think?”
A shake of the head:
“Well, before I get into that, I should let you know what we’ve dug up concerning her background. She’s a genius, in a way. Great grades in college, especially in science courses. She worked for some years at a major communications corporation. But she was let go.”
“Why?” asked Nina.
“We haven’t been able to find out. The records are not clear. It may be the corporation just wanted to put the whole thing behind them.”
“What whole thing?”
“Again, hard to say. But when an employee needs to be let go, well, sometimes there’s no more than an amicable parting of the ways. Maybe an under the table final settlement. No risk of a lawsuit that way.”
“All right. So she was let go,” said Margot, “and we don’t know why. Is she crazy?”
A shrug.
“All of these people seem crazy, as far as I can tell. But she apparently had a nice, lucid conversation with our man. When the subject of the murder came up, she refused to discuss it, saying it was not ‘the proper time.’ Otherwise, she seems quite calm, and he feels she’s at no risk to hurt herself. Nor does she seem anxious to leave town.”
“You don’t think you should arrest her?”
A shake of the head:
“I can’t see doing it. She’s admitted to a crime she couldn’t possibly have committed. Her version of things is no wackier than the Thornwhipple woman’s, and we aren’t going to arrest her. Or you because of her. No, I just want this damned storm to pass. Then I want to have a complete battery of lab tests done. Then I want these damned people out of here. Well, I’ve got to go now. I’ll try to keep you apprised as to what’s going on.”
“Thank you, officer,” they both answered as one.
And so James Thompson left the room, returning to his duties of hearing confessions, or at least alternative theories of the case.
He was replaced almost immediately, however, by a weary-looking Sylvia Duncan, who entered and said:
“I’m sorry to disturb the two of you. I’d just left a few of my notes over there on the desk. If I can get them, I’ll get out of your way.”
“That’s all right,” said Margot, gesturing toward the chair vacated by the officer. “Sit down, and join us.”
“I don’t want to be in the way.”
“You’re not in the way. In fact…wait a minute. I have an idea. Let me go get some things.”
Margot rose and crossed the small library, while Sylvia Duncan sat and smiled at Nina.
“Ms. Bannister, we haven’t really had a chance to talk.”
“No, you’ve been busy.”
“And so have you, murdering that man.”
“So you’ve heard about that.”
“Of course. In fact, Ms. Thornwhipple pitched it as her series proposal.”
“Wow. Who’s going to play me?”
Sylvia Duncan smiled:
“I don’t know. Maybe Jennifer Anniston.”
“In her dreams.”
“Yes, you may be right. At any rate, I was very excited once I learned that you were here.”
“Excited?”
“Yes, I’m a great fan of yours. I was and am a great supporter of the Lissie movement.”
“Oh! Well, sometimes all of that, Washington and the rest—it seems like another world. I can’t believe it all happened to me.”
“But it did. And we have a good many new women in Congress because of it.”
“I’m just––”
She was interrupted by Margot, who was re-entering the library with a bottle of wine in one hand and a small black box in the other.
“We’re three hard-working women, and we’ve had a tough day. And we deserve these things.”
Nina:
“What have you got there?”
The reply:
“A bottle of Chateau Margaux ’86. Not really named after me, but close enough. If you’ll reach into the cabinet drawer behind you, you’ll find glasses.
Nina did, and did.
The glasses were distributed around the table. Margot had already uncorked the bottle, and so nothing remained except to pour the dark red liquid.
“Well, this is a treat!” said Sylvia. “What shall we drink to?”
“Not so fast,” interrupted Margot, pointing to the small box, which she’d laid on the table.
“There’s more. If we’re going to be bad, why not be really bad?”
She opened the box, which revealed a dozen or so cigarettes.
“Oh, my God,” said Sylvia, giving a small shriek.
“I haven’t smoked in two weeks,” said Margot.
“And I,” added Sylvia, “in a year!”
“And I never,” said Nina.
Margot:
“Well, we’re not going to make a smoker of you, Nina. But you, Sylvia––”
“Oh, yes, yes, after today, definitely yes!”
And so the two women lit up, joyfully, conspiratorially, and blew out thick clouds of smoke which hung in the dark air of the library.
Then they all held the glasses of wine out over the table, while Margot asked:
“Now, what shall we drink to?”
Sylvia answered immediately:
“The end of the damned interviews!”
Both responded simultaneously:
“THE END OF THE INTERVIEWS!”
And they drank.
After which Margot asked:
“Were they really that bad?”
Sylvia shook her head:
“They weren’t really that awful. They just all seemed to run together after a while. If I hear about one more quaint New England village or one more clever librarian––”
“I know,” said Margot. “There does seem to be quite a lot of that floating around.”
“Have you made,” asked Nina, “your choice?”
“No, not quite yet. But I will. And I will soon, because I’m announcing it tonight after dinner.”
“That fast?”
“It has to be. The schedule is very tight. I’m flying out of Chicago tomorrow afternoon for the coast, and we’ll start initial production work later on this month.”
A shake of the head:
“I’ve narrowed it down some, but, to tell you the truth, no one clear winner steps out to me. It’s all like, been there, done that. There needs to be something unique about this show, and I haven’t quite felt it yet.”
“Well,” said Nina, “it will come to you.”
“Maybe. But now let’s talk about something else.”
And so they did.
In weeks and months to come, Nina was to remember the next moments, the next half hour, the next hour or more, as a kind of haze. She remembered that the storm raged ever harder outside and the walls could be heard shaking even more ominously; she remembered that the dim electric light in the library gave way to the glow of long white candles produced by Margot from some table or some desk; and she remembered that the first bottle of red wine gave way to a second, as the hours of tension dissolved into moments of lovely release, and the women poured forth their souls to each other, having found three islands of sanity in a cozy-sea of nuttiness.
The first to unburden was Sylvia.
She told about her early days in radio, and about the menial jobs she’d been asked to do, and which she’d performed with the earnestness and dedication that might be expected from any fresh-faced college graduate (She had, of course, mentioned which college, but, later on, Nina had never been able to remember it.). She went on to describe the slow growth of her career, the decision never to marry (though there had been offers), and the equally difficult decision to avoid as a matter of principle those sexual advances which might have meant faster promotions, but at dear costs. She talked about the move from radio to television, the first jobs of real responsibility, the thirty-hour days and nights, the pieces of pure luck, the men and women who were worth working with and why, the great moments, the not so great moments, and the terrifying moments which could have meant the end of everything––herself included––
––and that was the end of one bottle of wine.
The ashtray was beginning to fill up.
The storm raged outside.
Nina and Sylvia and Margot simply sat in the smoky and leather-colored library, surrounded by the friends that were old and musty books, sipping the old and musty wine, and, improbably, narrating their own lives as though it were a stormy night in the English countryside, and old Faversham was telling his favorite ghost story.
Next to come was Margot.
She described the youth of a privileged child, the years in private schools, the summers spent in Europe––
––and all of this took about a minute and a half.
Then her real life began.
It began at Berkeley, of course, and in the mid- sixties.
It began with the first protest marches, the rock concerts, the drugs, the arrests, the fervent hatred of authorities; then the affairs with various musicians, the harder drugs, the nights spent in jail, the visits by horrified parents, the decision to leave school, the decision to paint, the move to New York City, the loft apartment, the first wave of lovers, the second wave of lovers––
––and finally the first job at The Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Then the job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Then better and better jobs at the same museum, all of which Margot described with the brevity and casualness with which she’d talked of her youth.
Making Nina realize that her old friend, with all her ability and brilliance, would––if given a choice––still have preferred being transferred back in time, to the streets of Haight-Ashbury and the backs of vans painted with ‘Get Out of Viet Nam’ logos and the pot-reeking acres that were to house Woodstock.
And all that took a second bottle of wine.
None of them had a clear idea of what time it was.
Late afternoon, probably.
Dinner would have to be prepared, but, of course, dinner was being prepared.
Everything that was supposed to be done was being done.
And so it became Nina’s turn.
And since she was now living The Wizard of Oz, she had no choice but to admit who she really was.
She was not really Toto.
Furl was Toto.
No, she was Dorothy.
She lived on a farm with Auntie Em and her uncle and some hired men and a dog.
She had the most uneventful, middle class, perfectly prim and proper childhood that anyone could ever have imagined.
She told briefly of Frank, of meeting him in high school, of their marriage, of her first years teaching, and then more years teaching, and Frank’s growing career as an attorney in Bay St. Lucy, of weekly bridge games with friends–
––and just as she was about to say, ‘There’s nothing more to say,” Margot brought up Eve Ivory and the tale of the Robinson Mansion.
Well, yes, of course there was that.
Three bottles of wine was too much.
That would mean each of them would have drunk a whole bottle apiece.
Can’t have that.
But maybe one glass out of the third bottle––
Which she accepted.
Then Margot brought up Helen Reddington and the Fabulous New York Hamlet production in little old Bay St. Lucy, and all of the things that had happened with that.
Well, yes, there was all of that.
Which Nina described in as much detail as she was able to remember.
But that did lead, of course, to the tales of Nina as basketball coach. And April van Osdale and the strange Max Lirpa and what had happened to the two of them.
Which Nina also described in as much detail as she was able to remember.
But that led to the tale of Aquatica, the huge off-shore oil drilling rig.
And Nina’s role in saving the Gulf Coast of the United States.
Of this story there was simply too much detail to remember.
But she did what she could.
Not another glass.
Oh, all right.
And then there were the adventures in international art smuggling.
She had to talk a bit about those.
And the wonderful city of Graz.
And, of course, Carol Walker.
Where, she wondered, was Carol now?
Still on her estate, still watching the flowers dance on the Monet?
But then something had to be said about Washington. And about the Lissie movement.
And, of course, it was.
And then the third bottle was empty!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: AND THE KILLER IS––
Five p.m. found her in her room.
She needed a nap.
She had needed a nap two hours earlier, but then there had been that letter from Molly Badger, and the ride into Abbeyport, and the strange interview.
Then she’d been accused of murdering Garth Amboise.
Then she’d gotten high on red wine with Sylvia and Margot––
––always something or other.
But now she was alone and exhausted, and there was nothing to prevent her from hurling herself, sweatshirt and jean-clad as she was, like a sack of wet cement on the wondrously thick bed comforter that subsumed her like a warm flannel bath.
There was nothing at all that could bother her now.
The storm raging outside.
The ticking of the standing clock.
THERE WAS NOTHING TO STOP HER FROM TAKING A NAP!
Except the knock on the door.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
For an instant she simply closed her eyes yet more tightly.
It would go away, wouldn’t it?
It was a dream.
Who would be outside her door? Who would be responsible for the sounds that kept coming.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
It would not go away.
So she flipped over, sat up, stared at the doorway, stared through the doorway, and said in telepathy:
�
��Go and hang yourself. Go and throw yourself into the sea.”
Hoping that the mental messages would penetrate wood, penetrate flesh, penetrate bone––
––death.
This did not happen.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
She would have to use a real voice.
This voice would say something so vicious, so cutting, so terrifying, that it would destroy whoever was standing out there.
And so she said:
“Yes?”
In a kind of lilting way that Nina had.
An answer came.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Ms. Bannister. May I come in?”
No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no No no no no no no no…
“Of course!”
And the door opened.
It was Harriet Crossman.
“I’ve disturbed your rest.”
Well duuuuh!
“Not at all.”
“I can come back later.”
“No, this is fine. Come in. Sit down.”
“If you’re sure––”
“Of course. I’ll join you. We can sit at that desk over by the window.”
And, after a moment or so, that is where they found themselves.
By the window and not by the bed.
Which had been so wonderful, so delicious.
But here she was, sitting in a chair, listening to Harriet Crossman say:
“I wanted to apologize for this afternoon.”
“For what?”
“Your being accused of murder.”
“Oh, posh. I’m always being accused of murder. Don’t think anything about it.”
“Our members have such fertile imaginations.”
“Well, that’s one word for your members’ imaginations.”
“I know quite well you did not go into Garth Amboise’ room this morning and have mad, stinking sex.”