Climate Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 7) (32 page)

BOOK: Climate Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 7)
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Gifts from publishers.

Bribes.

All of the boxes lying there before her, with professionally-written return addresses on them.

O’Donnel Press.

Black Cat Press.

Leinart Press.

Except for one.
       

HBO.

Except that box, the one from HBO, had no address on it.

“Margot?”

“What are you waiting for? Come on!”

The return address was there all right:
 
HBO, Los Angeles, Street Address, etc.

But no address.

“Margot, that box––”

“Come on!”

“That box has no address on it.”

“Who cares?”

“But how did it get here?”

“I don’t know!”

“And what was in it? Margot, what came in that box from HBO?”

“Some of the gifts, I suppose, maybe sweatshirts. But it doesn’t matter now.”

“Yes it does. I don’t know why. But it’s odd.”

“Of all the odd things going on around here, an empty box is the one you choose to worry about?”

“I’m just––”

“Come on!”

And, so saying, Margot pulled Nina toward the door, somehow shucked her into a huge ill-fitting yellow slicker, and forced her to don massive overshoes.

“You ready?”

“Yes, but it’s just so strange that––”

“Forget it and come on!”

Margot kicked open the door, and the two women lurched out into the midst of the storm.

The porch, the trees, the roofs, the outbuildings––everything was night-black over, obscured, rendered invisible by the rampaging winds, sheets of rain, and low-scudding clouds.

“This is awful!” screamed Nina, who was almost being blown backwards.

“Come on! It’s not far to the car!”

She could hear rumbling thunder, and, from time to time, the world was illuminated by lightning flashes.

“There’s the car! Come on! Just a little farther!”

“Margot, what could he have found that we need to see?”

“I don’t know. But when the police call me and tell me to do something, I do it. I’m not like I was in the sixties!”

“It just doesn’t make any sense. Like the boxes don’t make any sense!”

“Will you forget about those damned boxes?”

“But how could that one box have gotten here without––”

“Forget it! Here—go around to the other side of the car, while I unlock the door!”

Nina did so, her feet overrun by a flood that was running through the driveway.

Margot pushed open the door from the inside and Nina stumbled in, wondering how the two of them were going to manage to navigate through sheet after sheet of driving downpour in the blackest of nights.

“All right, here we go!”

She turned the key; the engine sputtered, then started.

She gunned the accelerator, threw the gearshift into reverse, and, tires spinning in the mud puddle that had been solid gravel a day ago, jammed the car backward, turning it as she did so.

“Can you see, Margot?” screamed Nina.

“What did you say?”

“Can you see?”

“No, but I think I know where the road used to be.”

“Maybe we should go back in the house!”

“With the writers?”

“Okay you’ve made your point. It can’t get much worse.”

“Hold on.”

The Volkswagen lurched onto the driveway, then spun and careened its way into the surrounding forest, headlights boring a narrow tunnel of light through the pines and brambles that were now closing in on them, and the deluge that was pouring down around them.

“I don’t know,” shouted Margot, trying desperately to keep the car in some kind of path, “what kind of a panther they’re going to be able to shoot in this storm.”

“It’s a goose,” replied Nina.

“A what?”

“It’s not a panther. It’s a goose. A wild one.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They’re on a wild goose chase.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because my mind was lively and at ease. All of our minds have been lively and at ease. Especially Officer Thompson’s.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“No. For the first time, I am making sense. Oh my God, look!”

In front of them was the bridge, now overtopped by fast flowing water, but still barely visible.

“Can you get over that?”

“I’m sure I can. We had it worked on, remember?”

“Sure, I remember that’s what you said, but––I can barely see where the bridge stops and the creek starts!”

“I know. When the rain gets hard enough, the river floods, and then everything else floods.”

Nina could see that they were ten yards from the creek, which was roaring louder than the storm and the thunder.

Then five yards.

Then the bridge washed out.

It did so with a sucking sound, and then there was nothing but planks breaking apart, their jagged edges biting at the air above them and the water below as though they were sharks’ teeth flashing in the Volkswagen’s headlights.

“Oh my God!” shouted someone in the car.

It could have been either Nina or Margot.

No matter.

They were both thinking it.

“Back up, Margot! Back up!”

“I’m trying!”

But it was no use; the tires merely spun in water that was obviously deepening as the swollen creek reached out for them.

Then it was Margot’s turn to scream:

“We’re floating!”

“Get out of the car!”

Nina pushed the handle down and lurched against the car door, wishing she was heavier. The door opened with a sucking sound, and cold, swirling brackish water flooded into the passengers’ side, covering her yellow galoshes, which peered back up at her as though they were faint yellow carp.

“Come on!” she heard Margot yelling from the other side of the car.

Then she was out of the car, shocked by the water that was now tearing at her, and soaking her jeans up to the knees.

“Get away from the car, Nina! Get away from the car!”

She was barely able to do so, grasping at the slender pine branches that, in turn, tore at her face.

She turned and watched, as the Volkswagen began to move, slowly at first, then faster, becoming after several seconds no more than a part of the rubbish and driftwood that was eddying fast toward a sharp bend in the creek.

“Come on! We’ve got to get away from here!”

“I’m trying, Margot!”

But it was almost impossible, for the water was getting deeper from second to second, and the downpour was so thick that it felt as though she were swimming. Rain and flood and creek water all became one, and would have swept her away along with the car had the trees not formed a kind of rescue net that she could pull herself along with.

Five yards back toward the house.

Ten yards.

Finally she could tell that the water was well below her knees now, and that the tall straight object she lurched toward, and finally grabbed, was not a tree trunk but Margot.

The two women held each other for a while, gasping, trying to get their breath.

“Your car, Margot!”

Margot, she could see, was shaking her head:

“To hell with the car! A couple of seconds more and we could have been in it!”

“Well, they say Volkswagens float!”

Another shake of Margot’s head:

“I don’t think ‘they’ know much about the Mississippi River when it floods. Look!”

Nina did so, just in time to see the roof of the car, now almost fifty yards downstream, disappear beneath the swirling waters.

There’s very little to say, Nina realized, when watching a car one has just gotten out of, as it disappears beneath the swirling waters.

“Wow!” was all she could manage.

Margot was more practical:

“We’ve got to get back to Candles! Can you walk now?”

“I think so! We’re farther away from the creek, and it’s only ankle deep here!”

Each woman now had her arm around the other’s waist, and, having no idea where any sign of a road was, they simply forced their way through the flooded forest, ignoring pine needles that tore at their faces and various scraps of flotsam and jetsam that pricked their ankles.

Finally there was a break in the undergrowth.

“There! There’s one of the old barns! We’re coming out of the woods and into the west pasture. The house is not more than a couple of hundred yards to the left! The worst is behind us!”

“Are you sure about that?” cried Nina.

“Yes, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Look up! Look up at the sky just in front of us!”

“Oh my God!”

There was a lot of that being said these days
, mused Nina.

For directly in front of them, out of the gray scudding clouds and frothing sky, a vertical black tube was dropping, as though it were a snake falling out of the sky.

Watching it created the same kind of effect as watching the car drown.

Very bad, but somehow fascinating.

The Nature Channel.

She had come to The Candles for a few days of rest and relaxation.

And she’d found herself slap dab in the middle of the Nature Channel.

Watching cats fornicate with intense passion.

And watching them fight, which was even worse.

Strange
, she found herself thinking,
that standing here in this tempest, seeing a tornado about to strike the ground only a few hundred yards away—she was thinking about the vicious intensity with which cats fought each other.

But those thoughts left her mind quickly, driven out by Margot’s screams:

BOOK: Climate Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 7)
4.78Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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