Game Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 3)

by T'Gracie Reese

  Let’s see.

  Well, just find out what the questions were going to be, tell the teachers what the questions were going to be, and then instruct the teachers to, in turn, tell the students what the questions were going to be—and of course, what the answers were going to be—and what letters corresponded to the right answers.

  So it would sound like:

  “Students, question number 22 will be, ‘Name the author of the essay, ‘Nature.’ The answer is ‘Emerson,’ (Ralph Waldo but don’t bother with that because first names aren’t on the test nor is anything concerning the content of the essay), and the appropriate letter will be ‘b.’ So write ‘b’ as the answer to question number 22.”

  She could do that.

  And that wouldn’t be cheating, would it?

  Would that be cheating?

  Certainly not!

  Of course, the teachers could also just walk up and down the rows, looking over the students’ shoulders and going ‘tap tap tap’ with pencils on the appropriate answer circles, and it might be easier.

  There would be less chance of a mistake.

  “That wouldn’t be cheating, would it, Furl?”

  “Rrrrgggh.”

  “You think so?”

  “Rrrrggggh.”

  “Well, I’m not sure. I’m not sure; I think it’s a very gray area.”

  “Rrrrgggh.”

  “Sure, but that’s only if you see it in a Kantian way. You would see it that way because you believe in the CAT-egorical imperative. Get it? CAT-egorical imperative?”

  No sound from Furl.

  “Well, I thought it was pretty funny.”

  Still no sound.

  “Okay then, let’s have some salad.”

  She rose, turned, and opened the refrigerator.

  Fresh head of lettuce, nice and tightly wrapped.

  Around her, the tunes of Arabia frolicked and soared, dancing in the moonlight and glutting themselves with the smells coming out of the crock pot.

  There was a flash of light on the beach below, and then another in the parking lot.

  HONK.

  A car horn.

  Damn.

  Who would be visiting her tonight?

  NO!

  This was the one day when everything had gone relatively smoothly. And was it to be disturbed?

  She thought of all the possibilities, all the people who could have been down there blowing that horn. Moon Rivard? No, she didn’t want to see him. Jackson Bennett? No, she didn’t want to see him, nice a man as he was. Alanna Delafosse? No, she had nothing suitable to wear. Tom Broussard? No she had not enough to drink. Max Lirpa? No, for so many reasons that it was unnecessary to name any one in particular. Penelope Royale? No, because she didn’t want Furl hearing that kind of language.

  “Just a minute!” she shouted uselessly at the closed window.

  She made her way through the living room, reached the door that led to the stairwell landing, put her hand on the knob, and whispered:

  “Whoever you are, I don’t want to see you tonight.”

  Then she opened the door and looked down.

  “Margot!”

  “Nina!”

  And, hurtling down the stairs, she threw herself into the arms of her best friend, fighting back the tears of joy as she did so.

  An hour later, the three of them—Margot, Nina, and Goldmann Bristow, who was to be Margot’s new husband––had devoured the roast and were sitting in a tight circle in the living room, a candle glowing on the small table, the second bottle of Lindemann’s now sitting half full.

  There had been introductions, of course. There had been some shock in the realization that Mr. Bristow was a somewhat elfin man, fully six inches shorter than the decidedly non-elfin Margot; but then joy in the equally clear and powerful realization that he was a shrewd and witty man, too, and that he did not laugh at his own jokes, and that he did not make the kind of jokes that elicited a required and not natural laugh, and that he might have fit quite well in one of Jane Austen’s drawing rooms, and that Margot had—oh good for you, Margot, good for you indeed!—made a wonderful choice.

  Nina kept thinking, during all the hugs and all the kisses and all the “We just got back from Candles today!” and all the “I hope we’re not interrupting but Goldmann had to meet you’s”—about Emma, and Miss Taylor, and Mr. Weston.

  ‘Some sadness there must be…”

  For Miss Taylor, who had been Emma’s lifelong friend, had in fact married Mr. Weston, and was now to live at Randall’s, and no more at Hartsfield.

  A sad thing for Emma.

  But wonderful for Miss Taylor!

  And wonderful for Mr. Weston, who, after having made his fortune and acquired his wife (splendid neo-classical Jane Austen!) was now to experience the pleasures that an amiable and well judging woman could provide.

  Margot, amiable?

  Well, ninety percent of the time, certainly.

  And well judging?

  Yes.

  Or Nina would not have enjoyed her presence so thoroughly during the last two years.

  Would not be enjoying it so thoroughly now.

  Listening to Bristow reminisce:

  “I suppose the first time Margot and I ever met was at a fund raiser. It must have been in the late seventies.”

  “Nineteen seventy nine.”

  “How do you remember that, Margot?”

  “I marked it on my calendar.”

  “You did no such thing!”

  “No, but doesn’t it sound romantic, dear?”

  Margot saying ‘dear’ to someone.

  How strange it all was!

  “It sounds romantic. But the truth is, you hated me, Margot!”

  “I did not hate you! I didn’t even notice you!”

  “Are you certain? I could have sworn that you hated me!”

  “Not in the least! You were much too short to be worth bothering about!”

  “Do you promise? Because I always felt you hated me!”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me? I would have asked you what your name was again, and you would have been utterly convinced that I had not noticed you!”

  “I would have been ecstatic, and I would have called you immediately.”

  “Oh, by then I would have forgotten you again; but I’m sure I would have appreciated the effort!”

  “And you are,” said Nina, realizing that she had no business in a Jane Austen novel, but feeling the need to be a hostess, “a psychologist?”

  The man across from her nodded, his coal bright eyes sparkling, and the tufts of silver gray hair circling tightly around his ears doing nothing at all, but still adding to a touch of leprechaunity that seemed to emanate from him.

  “Clinical psychology. I had a practice for a number of years.”

  “Goldmann,” said Margot, “was one of Chicago’s most eminent psychologists.”

  He laughed.

  “That’s complete rubbish.”

  “I know that,” Margot countered. “But Nina doesn’t.”

  “Then I was,” he said, nodding. “And you’re very lucky, Ms. Bannister, ever to have made my acquaintance. By the way, I love your bungalow.”

  “Thank you for calling it a bungalow. What do most people call it?”

  “Most people,” Margot interjected, “don’t come here, so it doesn’t become a problem. Nina?”

  “Yes?”

  “You going to ask about our wedding plans?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s time I told you.”

  “Tell me.”

  “May first.”

  “You’re celebrating spring.”

  “No, it’s Mayday and we’re celebrating Communism.”

  “Margot,” said her fiancé, putting a small and delicate palm over her rawboned and dangerous knee, “is not a romantic.”

  “I do love sex though,” she said, putting her own palm atop the one already lying there, and obliviating it. “Sex and Karl Marx. W
ill you stand with me as Best Woman?”

  “What?”

  “I asked, Nina, if you would stand with me at the altar.”

  Nina began to speak (because one had to speak quickly in these fashionable novels or one would not be read), found that she could not, gagged a bit to get the lump out of her throat, and then stammered:

  “I would love to be your maid of honor, Margot. I will be so honored.”

  “We,” said Goldmann Bristow quietly, “are the ones who will be honored.”

  And then April van Osdale arrived.

  The thing was so unexpected, so improbable, that it could only have coincided exactly with an equally improbable event, that is, the display of fireworks visible through Nina’s plate glass window, and originating, apparently, from one of the half mile distant off shore drilling rigs.

  There was no reason for the workers in such an installation to be setting off, at 8 PM on a cold useless night in late January, a fanfare of green, red, and golden rocket trails that exploded into the sky like rays in a peacock’s tale, hung there for a quivering few instants, and then began to dissipate into stubborn sticks of wistful smoke.

  But they had set off such a display, and there it was for all to see, and there its remnants would remain, until the cold night air swallowed them and they were left as a memory for small boys and offshore poets.

  There was, equally, no reason for April van Osdale to have parked her big dark limousine directly behind Margot’s outgunned and outshone Volkswagen, crossed the oyster shell parking area, made her high-heeled way up the rickety stairs of Nina’s shack—which could certainly not have been The Hobbit House by the Sea to her but simply the Nina-Unsuitable Shack—and knocked at the door.

  But there she was, as improbable and inexplicable as the skyrockets, differing from them not at all in color—for she was red and green and golden and orange too—but in her longevity.

  She did not dissolve in the sea air and hang up in the sea air a mile or so off shore.

  She stood right there, seemingly surprised that Nina had heard her knock and opened the door.

  Of course, Nina was surprised, too.

  “April!”

  “Nina!”

  Well, there was that, out of the way.

  “April, come in! What a surprise!”

  “Nina, I’m so sorry to come barging in like this!”

  “Not at all, come in, come in!”

  She did so, mincingly, staring at the hardwood floor to avoid stepping in something.

  Her long blonde hair still glowed radiantly, shining an obscene peroxide gold. She had begun her Bay St. Lucy sojourn dressed as a cake; then she had become a flower; then she had become a nebula; and now she was an image of the Great Coral Reef, all a twinkle with buttons that were fishes, and hemlines of aqua anemone.

  “You have guests; I should have called.”

  “It’s all right. April, this is Margot Gavin. She owns Elementals, the shop where I’ve been working.”

  “How do you do, Ms. Gavin?”

  Margot and her fiancé were standing now, neither open-mouthed nor gaping, since they could be these things later, but the pictures of social aplomb, acting as though they’d expected all along for the front door to open and The Great Painted Desert to come sauntering in.

  “I’m well, thank you. This is my fiancé, Goldmann Bristow.”

  “Mr. Bristow.”

  “Very happy to meet you.”

  “Dr. van Osdale,” Nina said, leading the natural phenomenon into her living room as fast as decompression procedures would allow, “is the Coordinator for Public Schools in Southwest Louisiana. She has offices here in Bay St. Lucy––as well as other cities—and she’s been working with us at the high school in an effort to raise our test scores.”

  She’s also a cheat and a homophobic bitch.

  “She’s also helping us with some budgetary matters.”

  Well, that was nice and weren’t they honored to have her here with them and if they or anyone else in Bay St. Lucy could bladeblah blahdeblah blahdeblah.

  De blah.

  “So. Won’t you sit down, April?”

  “I can’t, I really can’t. I’ve got a late dinner with some of the folks from Seaway.”

  Nina was ashamed to admit that she had no idea what Seaway was—a steamship line, a hotel, a newly formed country, or a corporation of some sort—so she didn’t.

  “I just felt I needed to come by.”

  “Well. We’re glad you did.”

  Otherwise, we would have been forced to have a good time.

  “First, I should tell you that your contract as coach is ready to sign.”

  “I didn’t know I needed a separate contract.”

  “Well, technically you might not have; but I managed to squeeze a bit of a financial bonus into it for you.”

  “That wasn’t necessary.”

  “I know, but…well, it’s an admirable thing for you to do, after all, with your other duties.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “And also…”

  The woman was wringing her hands, Nina noticed.

  She also noticed that Furl, who’d been hiding behind a couch in the corner of the room, now was in the process of shooting like a bi-furred meteor out from his seclusion and, at speeds beyond that of light, into first the kitchen and then—the counters not providing enough protection––the deeper recesses of the pantry.

  “I…I hardly know how to say this.”

  “What, April? What is it?”

  “It’s just that I know the last days have been difficult for you. The matter of Special Education; the sudden termination of Ms. Brennan…”

  “Well, those things have been difficult for us all.”

  “I simply wanted to say that you have comported yourself admirably. And I appreciate it.”

  “It’s nice of you to say that. It truly is.”

  April’s glance—for she only glanced and did not gaze or stare, such actions presaging a quality of lastingness, of permanence, which she clearly would have no truck with—that glance hardened like a split second crystallization, and she said, too quietly to be ominous and too audible to be truly conspiratorial:

  “It saddens me that everyone in the community does not have your understanding.”

  Margot, who was not as impatient as April, gazed.

  So did her fiancé.

  “I have received certain letters.”

  I know, Nina did not say, because she’d learned her lesson, and would no longer say things around April that were, to put it one way, uncircumspect, and, to put it another way, dumb as dirt.

  So she said nothing, predicting in her mind that April would go on anyway.

  Which she did.

  First she pursed her lips.

  Her hands continued to wrangle and snake together in mortal combat like Sumo fingers.

  “I don’t mind the letters so much. There is another matter. A personal one. I shouldn’t be mentioning it.”

  “What is it, April?”

  “Well. There is, and has been a man in my life. He became a part of my life while I was still at university. The relationship subsided for a time. A long time. That was good, because we have always been…how shall I say it? Fire and water. Complete opposites. Often through the years I’ve thought myself rid of him. But he always returns in some capacity. I found out recently that he wishes––”

  She shook her head:

  “I don’t know exactly what he wishes. I never have, not entirely.”

  Nina knew nothing to say.

  This woman, this confection, this joyless being.

  It was hard to imagine her having a relationship at all.

  “I wanted you to know about it—if something should happen.”

  “I’m glad you told me.”

  “Yes. Well, at any rate, congratulations on your basketball position. It’s been so nice to meet you, Ms. Gavin. Mr. Bristow.”

  “The pleasure
,” said Margot, “is ours.”

  “And so, I’ll leave you now; good night.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  The door closing.

  The high heel steps descending.

  The oyster shells crunching.

  The front car door opening and closing.

  The engine starting.

  The limousine pulling away.

  Pause pause…

  Finally, Nina:

  “Well. That was April van Osdale. She’s…”

  But she was interrupted by Goldmann Bristow, who shook his head quietly and said:

  “I know who she is.”

  Both women in the room looked at him.

  “You know who she is?” asked Margot.

  He nodded, continuing to speak quietly.

  “She’s a classic paranoid schizophrenic.”

  Nina looked at him:

  “She thinks somebody may be trying to kill her.”

  Bristow continued to nod:

  “And someone is.”

  “Who?” asked Nina.

  “She is.”

  And for a time, there seemed nothing more to say.

  CHAPTER 15: THE THRILL OF VICTORY, AND…

  “Battles lost not alone because of superior numbers and failing ammunition and stores, but because of generals who should not have been generals.”

  ––William Faulkner

  The following afternoon at five o’clock, she arrived at the gym to board the bus for Donaldsonville.

  Most of the players—Alyssha, Sonia, Amanda, Sarah, Haley—were already there, and getting aboard.

  They all had bags of athletic gear.

  She knew what to expect. She’d ridden the band bus decades ago to Bay St. Lucy’s away games. There would be high spirits, singing, hand clapping…

  She had spent the day looking forward to it.

  NOW THIRTY NINE KIDS ALL CALL ME MAAAAAWWW

  FROM SIPPING CIDER THROUGH A STRAAAAAWWWW!

  And…

  CHEER CHEER FOR ST LUCY HIGH!

  BRING ON THE WHISKEY BRING ON THE RYE!

  She secured the Vespa to the metal bike rack in front of the main door, waved to the bus driver, made sure of the contents of her own bag, slung it over her shoulder, and boarded the bus.

  “Hi, ladies!”

  “Hey, Ms. Bannister!”

  “Hey, Coach!”