Sea Change (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 1)

by T'Gracie Reese

  “Bring him in a little more; can you still handle him?”

  “Think so!”

  “Need me to help?”

  “No, my arms are ok.”

  “Keep the rod tip up. Look! There he goes again!”

  FLASH! SPLASH!

  “How big is he?”

  “Eight pounds! Maybe ten!”

  “That’s a monster!”

  “You’ll eat for two months.”

  “You’re coming over, of course!”

  “Try and stop me!”

  They fought the fish for five minutes more, Nina’s wrists and arms aching too much to fight a great deal longer, and her heart pounding when they saw two other objects enter the scene.

  These were dark brown shapes that seemed to be tearing at the mass of red.

  “––!” said Penelope.

  “What is it?”

  “Sharks.”

  “I thought you said there weren’t any sharks in two feet of water!”

  “I said there were no great whites. These are dog sharks. They’ll steal that redfish!”

  “What can we do?”

  “This.”

  Penelope opened a compartment in the side of her boat. She reached in, and pulled out a handgun, which gleamed oily-metal against the huge orange that was the rising sun.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Watch.”

  “Be careful with that––”

  BLAM!

  BLAM!

  The water exploded in two volcanic atom bomb blasts of sea spray, shark meat, and brown kelp, which rained back down on an otherwise calm bay surface, in which, Nina could see, her redfish was still floating.

  “That’s better,” growled Penelope, putting the still smoking gun away.

  “What kind of gun is that?”

  “Forty five automatic. Sometimes it’s good for sharks.”

  “So I see. How did you keep from hitting the redfish?”

  “Practice. Hey. I think you can pull him in now. He seems to be weakening.”

  “He’s just scared to death, I think.”

  “Maybe. Anyway, let’s try to land him now.”

  Nina tugged, and, her forearms, like spaghetti, finally succeeded in getting the fish within two feet of the boat.

  ––where Penelope gaffed the thing and stowed it safely in a compartment half filled with water.

  “Whew!”

  Nina dropped the rod and reel to her side, unlocked the belt, and threw herself on the bottom of the boat, metal side a nice support for her aching back.

  What a wonderful boat this was!

  It looked like a child’s portable swimming pool; two feet deep, completely square, as was Penelope, and utterly devoid of dash and romance.

  But it was perfect for shallow water fishing.

  It could chug safely along in water no more than a foot deep, water disdained by tourists out for high adventure on the deep blue sea.

  The redfish remained in her mind—along with various possibilities for frying it, broiling it, having it with just a bit of lemon and basil, etc., etc., until Penelope’s flat skiff—for what else was it, really?––had chugged its way around Beauforth Beach, skirting the coast and heading toward a sun that had just risen enough to clear the smokestacks of the oil refineries outside of Biloxi and Chicot Island—

  ––when Bay St. Lucy came into view.

  “What in heaven’s name is going on?” she asked.

  “––,” answered, Penelope, the relative mildness in her tone stemming from astonishment and not conciliation.

  She did not, in short, understand what she was seeing enough to be properly obscene about it.

  For there, a mile before them, was a cross between a circus and the landing at Normandy Beach, with a bit of Turkish bazaar thrown in.

  Huge trucks, small trucks, long black automobiles, fifty-foot-tall cranes, moving vans, and people scurrying like ants around rotting fish heads, all surrounding what had been the Robinson mansion, and what was now simply ground zero in the world’s largest construction project.

  So that was it.

  That was the first step.

  “Y–– ––?” asked Penelope.

  “I don’t know,” answered Nina. “But I think our town is meeting Eve Ivory.”

  “Who the ––, and ––, ––?”

  “It’s all very complicated. Let’s dock. Then we’ll go over there in your truck and see what’s going on.”

  The boat harbor of Bay St. Lucy was quite small, with slips for no more than a dozen vessels. Most of them were sleek blue and white outriggers, cabins polished and redolent of mahogany deck work. Penelope’s boat did not so much fit in with them as hide among them, and many charter customer’s expression could be seen to change from joy to astonished disappointment when, upon passing The Golden Eagle and walking just a bit farther down the plank sea walk, he spied the craft that he was actually going to be riding in.

  He generally said little, frightened enough by the aspect of Penelope to keep his thoughts to himself—and by the time of his return, the dozen or so game fish he had succeeded in landing outweighed his misgivings about the vessel he’d been in while landing them.

  The two of them moored and battened down Sea Urchin, which was the craft’s name, loaded the Vespa into the back of Penelope’s pickup truck, left the catch of the morning under ice for later cleaning and filleting, and drove off down Breakers Boulevard.

  “I knew something would happen,” said Nina, quietly, as Penelope wove in and out of traffic, cursing each vehicle softly, inaudibly almost, since none of the other drivers were doing anything wrong, except existing on the roadway and moving from one spot to another.

  “Clearly, whatever it is, it’s going to start with the mansion.”

  And start it had.

  They parked as near to the place as they dared, walked across the Boulevard, and began to make their way through cables, trunks, vans, and electric wires.

  The mansion loomed before them, red-clad workers already clamoring out on balconies, up on roofs, and around on porches.

  “There must,” Nina whispered, “be a hundred men here.”

  They continued to walk through the carnage that was the result of an effort to combat forty years of decay with a trillion dollar, four-nation, simultaneous destruction-construction-remodeling cataclysm.

  They walked over pipes, through tunnels, around mud puddles, and between huge shipping crates. Finally they found themselves in the center of group of workmen, burly beasts, their sweating heads wrapped in pirate bandannas. These men, cigarettes hanging from their lips, would have given them no notice at all, had not Penelope called attention to them by shouting:

  “Hey! What––! And why ––c––da––!”

  They blanched as one, stepping back, horrified.

  They looked at each other.

  Then they ran.

  After two seconds, Nina and Penelope found themselves alone with a shipping crate filled with Carrera marble bathroom fixtures.

  “Maybe it would be better,” Nina said softly, “if you went back to the landing and started filleting the redfish.”

  “––?”

  “I’ll snoop around here for a while; maybe I can get some idea of what’s happening.”

  “OK.”

  Nina watched the figure turn and walk away from her, surprised to have heard a complete syllable come out profanity-less mixing with her curiosity concerning a hearse-like town car pulling up into one of the mansion’s driveways.

  The only driveway, actually, that was not now littered with debris of construction.

  She watched it come to a halt.

  The door opened and Eve Ivory got out.

  It was like the sun had come up again, only this time better.

  Not that the original sunrise an hour ago had been bad. Clear cool day, no storms approaching, it had done its best with saffron robes and golden cherubs for clouds. “The rosy fingered dawn�
� it had indeed been.

  It simply had too much to compete with.

  Eve Ivory had far more radiance. There was more of a life-giving quality about her. She exerted, simply by existing, more claim to being the center of the universe. Things orbited more naturally about her. She tanned things better (not only her own superbly tanned skin, but the skin of those who bathed regularly in her rays).

  She was, in short, just too much competition for the stupid regular sun.

  The workers who knelt before her as she made her way through them should, Nina found herself thinking, have been wearing not sunglasses but Eve Ivory glasses.

  Every instant of this woman’s being was a complete and dazzling eclipse.

  “Nina!”

  And now she had spotted Nina.

  “Nina! Over here. Wait! Wait, let me come to you!”

  How did one react, Nina found herself asking, to the approach of pure solar energy?

  And how surprising was it, that this celestial body-woman would have even remembered her name!

  “It’s so good to see you again!”

  Eve Ivory was dressed in tan, but not as tan as she herself. A purple scarf curled around her neck, and her cheekbones angled down at the world in precisely the same angle as the brim of Fred Astaire’s hat.

  “I’m so sorry I’ve not been in contact!”

  “It’s all right. We did wonder about you.”

  “I know, I know.”

  She wrapped her superbly muscled arms around Nina, who now knew what it must have been like to be a sunspot.

  Could she now interrupt radio waves?

  “There has been so much to do!”

  “I can imagine.”

  “No, no, the legal complications have been perfectly horrid. So many times I wanted to contact you, or at least come over to visit—but every time I was told by this lawyer or that, ‘Just wait! Just wait until we have the proper financing in place, or until these attorneys have done their job or we hear from this holding company or that state bureau or’—well, you just can’t imagine.”

  “I’m sure I can’t.”

  “Things are not completely sorted out even now. But we’re farther along. And we’re able to begin with—well, what you see here! I’ve been in the house all morning. The rooms are unbelievable. There’s even an old tunnel leading from the wine cellar outside to the greenhouse. It’s so mysterious and romantic.”

  “That’s incredible.”

  “Isn’t it? Look—can we go somewhere and talk? I did so want to get to know you last month in New Orleans—but there was simply no time. I hope you understand.”

  “Of course.”

  “My attorneys have, in the mean time, corresponded with Mr. Bennett—but again, we’ve not been able to be completely specific.”

  “No, Jackson has told me as much.”

  “There is simply so much to say, though—and so many people I want to get to know. Nina, I wonder if––”

  “Yes?”

  “Well—is there some place we can go now, this morning, so that I can at least introduce myself and begin setting people’s minds at ease about what’s happening—and what will be happening?”

  “There’s The Lighthouse. It’s just down Breakers.”

  “The Lighthouse?”

  “A coffee shop. It’s not much, but––”

  “Oh that would be fine! Coffee then! My treat!”

  I wonder, thought Nina, watching as forty or fifty men struggled to unload what was either a muddy football field or an obscenely huge black leather sofa, whether you can afford it.

  “Can we walk to this shop. I have a car here if––”

  “No, no, it’s just right down the Boulevard. Hundred yards. Look. Right over there!”

  “Oh, I see it.”

  And so they made their way across the immensity that was the Robinson yard, Nina still conjuring memories of lush camellia bushes and gazebos, all forbidden to her and the rest of the town.

  Was that, she wondered, about to change?

  The Lighthouse was so named because of a ten-foot tall replica of a lighthouse that sat squarely on the middle of its roof.

  Otherwise there was little lighthouseness about it, and the few pictures scattered about its walls—pictures of fish mostly, with a few beach scenes—did little to make the customer feel that he was in an ocean storm, protecting great ships from dangerous rocks.

  No, mostly what the customer felt was that he was in a cheap coffee shop, black and white interior, tables rocking unsteadily on the tile floor, and a few stains on the counter.

  The two of them entered.

  “Hi there!”

  A young Cajun girl, slender and dark haired, smiled shyly at them as they sat on two stools at the counter.

  “Can I get y’all something?”

  “I’ll have,” said Eve Ivory breezily, “a mocha infusion cappuccino, with bitter twist and cinnamon extract, light almandine twirl and small brandy insertion.”

  The girl stared at her for a second, then said:

  “What?”

  There was silence for a second.

  Finally, Nina said

  “Two cups of coffee.”

  The girl brightened:

  “Oh. Cream?”

  “Yes,” said Nina.

  And the girl turned away, getting the coffee while Nina apologized:

  “We’re a little behind the times.”

  “Oh no matter! No matter at all! But listen, Nina, I—oh, I hardly know where to begin!”

  Two men came into the shop, stood in the doorway staring dumbfoundedly either at Nina or at Eve Ivory, Nina being pretty sure which, and then staggered to a table seconds before falling to the floor unconscious and dying.

  “There are, I’m sure, a great many things that the people of Bay St. Lucy do not know about me.”

  We don’t know anything about you, Nina found herself thinking. Who the hell are you?

  That is what she should have said, if she’d had any guts at all.

  What she did say was:

  “We’re not, it’s true, as knowledgeable about your background as we should be.”

  Wimp, she scolded herself.

  “Hopefully that will all change soon.”

  Ok, then, first really big question.

  Let’s get at it, Nina.

  “Do you plan to settle here?”

  “Yes, I do. I certainly do.”

  Well, Nina thought, that’s either very good or very bad.

  “I love this town. I want to come to love all the people in it—I wish only––”

  Don’t say it don’t say it don’t say it don’t say it—

  “I wish only the best for the town of Bay St. Lucy!”

  Well, that’s it then.

  Very bad.

  That evening Tom Broussard came to visit her.

  She was standing at the grill that she had set up below her shack, two filets of redfish hissing below her as she poured on each of them some drippings of lemon and red wine sauce.

  “Hey.”

  “Well, look who’s here; it’s Tom Broussard.”

  “You mad at me?”

  “Everybody in the writers’ group is mad at you, and has been for a month or so.”

  “Well. Sorry about that.”

  “They’re mad at me too, of course.”

  “Why are they mad at you?”

  “I don’t know. It would have been so easy, Tom. All you had to do was tell them a few anecdotes, a few clichés about writing.”

  “I know. But Nina, these people use ‘workshop’ as a verb!”

  “So what? They just want feedback from other writers. Didn’t you ever get feedback?”

  “I got rejection notices. They’re different things.”

  “What about writers’ workshops. Don’t you ever go to them?”

  “When I want to go to a writers’ workshop, I go to the library. And, Nina, if these people want a group activity, why don’t they just have sex to
gether?”

  “Tom––”

  “Sex is much more fun than writing, and it’s easier.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Are you hungry? Want some fish?”

  “Wow,” he said, coming nearer. “That looks great. Catch it yourself?”

  “Yep. Just this morning. Me and Penelope Royale. We were out in her boat.”

  “Penelope Royale,” he said. “That’s one strange woman.”

  She looked at him. He wore a vast white t-shirt, stained by road tar or cooking sauces, with the words “The Seven Dwarfs Suck” carefully stenciled in black across the front, and no pictures.

  And you, she thought, are calling somebody else strange.

  “How did you get here, Tom?”

  “Walked.”

  “That’s three or four miles.”

  “I don’t mind. Get a lot of ideas when I’m walking. Hey, listen, I brought you a book.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, here.”

  He handed her a hard-backed novel She took it, then looked at the cover, which depicted several decapitated corpses hanging from meat hooks.

  The title, Remembering Dismemberment, was splashed in red across the cover.

  “It’s dedicated to you.”

  “Thank you, Tom.”

  “Look inside.”

  She opened the cover and read:

  “To Nina Bannister: The source of all my ideas.”

  “That’s so touching, Tom.”

  “Well. It’s the least I can do. I’m sorry they’re mad at you over at the writers’ group. I really am.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. Friends can be such a bother. So please: will you join me?”

  “I don’t know. You have anything to drink?”

  “I have some wine.”

  “Too bad. That’s all right, though. I’ll eat with you anyway.”

  She told him how much she appreciated his generosity, scooped the fish filets onto a platter that sat upon the freezer—which chugged and sputtered dutifully, a few steps from her charcoal grill—and led him upstairs.

  Within a few minutes, they were seated on her deck; she ladling a bowl of Petersilian potatoes out to him, he scornfully sniffing his glass of Chardonnay as though it were urine.

  “I would have brought some whiskey if I’d known.”