Frame Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 5) (7 page)

The world stopped for a second.

The sea froze.

A flock of gulls that had been thinking of flying overhead and defecating on the deck, petrified and remained thirty-five feet above, awaiting instructions on what to do next.

Margot’s mouth was open; Nina’s mouth was open.

Furl crept onto the deck, looked up at Carol, who had not changed expression, and asked:

“What?”

(This was asked in cat, and so it came out something like ‘rrrrgggghhh?’ But everyone pretty much understood it.)

Margot, having heard her cue, repeated:

“What?”

“I’m fired.”

Now, for the first time, Nina could see tears shimmering behind the black horned-rim glasses.

“That’s impossible!”

A shake of the head.

Now the glasses off, being wiped by the napkin on which the wine glass had sat.

The gulls, released from their spells, continued on across and up into the inky night sky.

“That––that simply couldn’t happen!”

“It did.”

“Who…”

“Rebecca.”

“That chicken! That, that…”

“Margot,” said Nina, quietly, “remember you’re not Penelope.”

“I can when I want to be!”

“No. It doesn’t become you. You curse like I paint.”

Margot glared at her:

“
Never
say such a thing to me again!”

Nina shrugged.

They sat for a time.

Nina poured more wine.

Carol drank hers and attempted to smile:

“Thank you. Thank both of you. It’s the first time I can remember smiling for several days.”

“Why,” asked Margot, “did you not tell me before, child?”

“I guess I just didn’t feel like talking about it on the phone. And I wasn’t sure you’d want me to come down here, if you knew I’d been fired.”

“How ridiculous! Of course we’d have wanted you to come! But the question is now, what to do about your firing?”

“I’m not sure there’s anything to do about it.”

“There has to be! I know I’ve been gone for more than a year, but I still have some influence. There are still certain measures I can take.”

“Like writing a letter?”

Margot shook her head:

“I was thinking more in terms of murdering Rebecca Simpson.”

“You could do that?”

“Oh heavens, yes! Or Nina could. We’ve had several murders here in Bay St. Lucy in the past year. And Nina always seems to be able to solve them.”

“I don’t commit them though,” said Nina, thoughtfully.

“Yes, but you could if you put your mind to it! And then it would be much easier to solve them.”

“I think,” said Nina, “that we’re getting drunk now. It certainly sounds like we’re getting drunk.”

“We’ve each,” said Margot, “had a glass and a half of wine.”

“But it’s strong wine.”

“Carol––Carol, this is simply incomprehensible. What reasons did the woman give?”

“Factual errors in my presentations. Poor scholarship.”

“Oh, pooh! You bring to life an entire world of paintings, and she’s worried about whether something happened in 1871 or 1872?”

“That seems to be the case.”

“And what about the director?”

“Powerless, apparently. Rebecca has been working behind the scenes for months. Apparently several members of the Board are on her side.”

Silence for a time.

Finally Furl asked:

“Rrrgggghhh? Reeghhh? Arg?”

It was the question that had to be asked, of course. Nina herself would have waited to ask it, but she knew Furl to be both impetuous and undiplomatic, and so she was not surprised that he had blurted it out.

The summer air translated it as diplomatically as possible, but it still came wafting over the table harsh and crimson in the Mississippi breeze:

“So what are you going to do now?”

The question that always seems to be coming up in life, usually dead on the heels of what had only moments earlier appeared absolutely certain about what we were going to do now.

And Carol Walker looked it straight in the eye, shook her head, and gave a perfectly clear answer, which was:

“I don’t know.”

Furl, seemingly satisfied, padded off the deck and into the living room.

Carol continued, trying to hold back tears, and succeeding partially.

The sobs were a different matter, and so the next few sentences came out sounding in English the way the earlier questions by Furl had come out in cat.

“I have––a little money.”

Margot shook her head:

“I know you’ve always lived in a thrifty way, Carol. You don’t do the things a good many young people do. Eat or drink. Things like that.”

“No.”

“But given what they paid you, you could not have saved much.”

A shake of the head.

Then:

“I don’t think I’m going to get hired as a docent again. Not after what they’ll say about me.”

“Teaching?”

“Maybe. But not until the fall, and then only as an adjunct. There’s a little money in that, but…”

She pursed her lips:

“The worst thing is the situation at home, on the farm.”

“You are,” Nina interjected, “from…”

“Georgia. East of Atlanta. North of Athens.”

“I remember Margot telling me that.”

“Yes. The farm has been in our family for a long time. The longest time. But my mother died prematurely some years ago, and my father is now in ill health. Whether we can keep the land or not…”

From somewhere in the center of town, the wail of a siren could be heard.

“Well, anyway, I’ve got to do something. The only possibility is to go back to Chicago and look for something secretarial. I don’t have too much experience at that sort of thing, but surely if they see my background they might…”

“Stay here,” said someone seated at the table.

It was Nina.

Margot and Carol looked at her.

Then Margot nodded:

“Of course. Of course, Carol. Stay here in Bay St. Lucy.”

“But––but…”

“Child, it makes perfect sense. You can help Nina out at Elementals. I can’t pay you a great deal, but I’ll bet it will equal what you had been making. You can go back to earning a docent living.”

“But…but…where would I stay?”

Nina leaned forward:

“Stay here.”

Carol looked at her, in something like wonder:

“But you don’t have room!”

“I have a couch that makes into a bed.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“Of course, I won’t mind.”

“What about your cat?”

“Furl will hate you for a while, but he isn’t the one who makes the big decisions.”

More wine followed.

Then a second bottle.

And thus it was determined:

Carol Walker was to be a citizen of Bay St. Lucy.

CHAPTER FIVE:
 
GETTING TO KNOW YOU

The following weeks were idyllic ones for Nina. Carol Walker slipped into her life like a well-oiled bespectacled little piston, which chugged away quietly and efficiently as it worked within the machine that was daily life in Bay St. Lucy.

She took possession of the couch and made a bed of it, having at least six inches of upholstery to spare after stretching out her slightly more than five-foot frame.

She somehow made friends with Furl, an astonishing feat, but one which could not be doubted after seeing the animal stretched out and purring on her lap as she sat mornings with Nina on the deck above the beach, chatting about this and that, softly scratching cat dorsal hair with her small white fingers.

She made friends also with Signor and Signora Bagatelli, who, during her first few morning visits to their bakery, behaved in a manner so polite and courteous as to evince deep mistrust; but who, after slightly more than a week’s time and five trips’ worth of poppy seed bagels, began to ignore her completely as they shouted insults at each other and threw up their hands in the despairing gestures that were their morning routine.

She repeated some of the things Margot had already told Nina, but in more detail, and in language that painted portraits as she talked.

“I loved our farm. Still do, I suppose. My father raised sheep there. I can remember walking out in the pastures, very early in the mornings. There was always a blue mist rising up out of the valleys, and you could hear mourning doves cooing in the pine thickets.”

“Brothers and sisters?”

“No. Just me. A Daddy’s girl. I was a tomboy, always outside, always climbing trees. Sometimes in winters, the snow was pretty deep, and I would go cross country skiing. Not many real friends. Just a kind of loner.”

“College?”

“Three years at the university. Then I had a chance to study in Europe. My father cried when I left, but they knew it was the chance of a lifetime.”

“Where did you go?”

A big smile then, and slightly more animated petting of Furl, who seemed to be envisioning the life that was being recounted along with Nina.

“Arrrgghhh,” he said, meaning “Go on.”

“Vienna.”

“Aha.”

“From the most remote mountains of Georgia to the great city of Vienna. I remember arriving by train at the central train station. I went to the university and was shown my room. Then I ventured out into The Old City. It was about ten in the morning, I remember. My God, how fresh everything smelled, and how bright it all was! The shops and markets and street vendors and painting stalls and huge umbrellas springing up over little tables in the sidewalk cafés. I was just sucked into the city. One narrow little street after the other. I walked all day. But then, for that matter, I walked all semester and then all year. I took courses in German as well as painting. I picked up German quickly. Then French.”

“I loved,” said Nina, “your reading of the French poem.”

“Yes. I have a gift for languages, or so I’m told.”

“You have a great many gifts.”

And she did
, Nina told herself continually during those weeks.

One of the gifts she had was opening little cracks, through which Nina began to think that she herself might escape out into the vast world, of which she’d seen so little.

One morning, in particular—it must have been no more than ten days after Carol’s arrival—the two of them were in the kitchen, washing up the breakfast dishes.

“But Nina, the thing that surprises me: you love literature so much….”

“Well, I’ve spent a great deal of my life teaching it. Literature, and history…”

“But why have you never actually gone to Europe?”

“I don’t know. I suppose Frank and I had everything we wanted here in Bay St. Lucy.”

“But—not even the thought of a summer trip?”

“No. The law is a very demanding profession. Frank was able to take no time off during those first years. He even worked Sundays. Then the firm began to prosper. He took on one partner, then another. But that didn’t mean more free time. It meant less. The cases don’t go away just because it’s summer.”

“Then why don’t you go now?”

She could remember smiling, wringing out the wash cloth, and shaking her head.

“I’m too old now.”

“Nonsense! You sound like you’re an invalid!”

“Probably I soon will be.”

“Well, if you put it like that, we all will be some day. That’s the reason to live now.”

“I would be completely lost in a city like Vienna.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’d have a guide.”

“What guide?”

“Me!”

And from there, it had gone forward, the great plan of Carol Walker and Nina Bannister that, sometime, when the money was a little better, they would sail to Europe.

They talked of it, planned it.

Visualized it.

Carol gave Nina a book about the great Habsburg Empire.

And Nina, just as she had immersed herself in the intricacies of women’s basketball only a little more than a year before, began to travel back in time.

To 1278 when King Rudolf and the horrible Ottokar met in battle on the Field of Marchfeld, and Rudolf, victorious, became the first Holy Roman Emperor.

Then forward to 1477 when the young and fabulously handsome Maximillian journeyed to Burgundy to wed Marie, with whom he was to be head over heels in love, until her death a short year later in a fatal fall while the two were riding horseback.

She read:

“There is a story that some years later, when he had become Emperor, he begged the Abbot Trithemius of Wurzburg, a clever man known for his skill at working magic spells, to conjure up Marie’s spirit from the realm of the dead. The Abbot agreed to do so, on condition that Maximillian would on no account speak to her. But when the image of Marie appeared out of the shadows of the room, wearing, it was said, the same blue dress she wore on the day of her fatal fall, Maximilian could not restrain himself; he cried out a single endearing word and she vanished from his sight.”

What stories!
she found herself thinking.

And so she continued to read.

She read about Charles the Fifth, and about his interview with a stubborn and unreasonable monk named Martin Luther; she read about the defenestration at Prague, and how it led to the horrible Thirty Years War; about 1683 and The Great Siege of Vienna, when the armies of Suleiman the Magnificent were said to be spread around the city for miles, and the people panicked, and the walls were breached, and only bare mattresses stood between the Turkish forces and the destruction of all Europe—

––and Count John Sobieski of Poland arrived with his soldiers in the nick of time, September 13, and, after a fierce battle, saved the city.

Then knelt at the feet of Emperor Leopold and said:
 
“I am glad to have rendered you this small service.”

And day and night she read.

She read while having coffee, while puttering at Elementals, while waiting to doze off to sleep at night.

About the grand eighteenth century and Empress Maria Theresa and the prodigy child who sat on her lap and then astonished the people in the grand music salon of the Hoffsburgs who had no idea they were witnessing the phenomenon that was Mozart.

She read about Archduke Johann, and how beloved he was.

 
And, of course, she read about Sarajevo.

And how that signaled the end of it all.

So, more and more, she could talk with some degree of expertise about their trip.

These talks occupied more and more of their time, as they walked along the shore at tide’s end, as they wandered through the innumerable shops and stores that were the heart of Bay St. Lucy—as they met various of Nina’s acquaintances for lunch or brunch or early dinner or late breakfast or whatever—and as they puttered about in Elementals, hanging a painting here and moving a huge clay pot there.

So that the reverie of actually going to England with Carol did take shape more and more firmly in Nina’s mind.

As did another reverie.

A melancholy one, to be sure.

But a reverie nonetheless.

This little girl with the mousy bangs and the horned-rimmed glasses, and the quiet, easy demeanor…

…if Nina had ever had a daughter…

…that was one of the gentle sadness’s of her and Frank’s otherwise fine life together.

They had planned during the first years, of what life with children would be like.

It had not happened, of course.

And now, here was this younger copy of herself, sharing her thoughts, moving in and out of her mind as though a part of it.

A gentle reverie.

Then it would pass.

But she allowed herself to play within it while it persisted.

And there was, of course, another aspect of Nina’s new existence:
 
the world of painting. For, with only a little encouragement from Carol—she had resumed her lessons, only this time augmenting them with advice from her new roommate. Color, perspective—these were things that Emily Peterson had, of course, talked about, but not at great length... But, at any rate, there were now four easels standing around the deck, and on them:
 
Seascape #1, Little Red Lighthouse #3 (she had thrown away the first two, since they each contained a dog that, given the probable scale of the lighthouse, would have been approximately seven feet high), Old Fishing Boat #2 (Bad coloring on number one), and Field of Flowing Wheat #1 (her personal favorite).

This idyllic existence ended on a Tuesday afternoon.

It was a day that Nina was to remember for a long time to come.

She had spent the morning at Elementals. Carol had stayed home to finish the dishes and do a load of laundry.

Nina returned to find her sitting not out on the deck in the glorious Mississippi sunshine but in the living room, on the couch, Furl in her lap.

She had clearly been crying.

“What’s the matter, Carol?”

A shake of the head.

“I’ve just gotten word; a call on my cell phone.”

“Word of what?”

“It’s––home. Father is very ill.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“We’ve been expecting this for some time. But there are other problems. We may lose the farm.”

“My God.”

“I’ve got to come up with some money.”

“Carol, if there’s anything I can do––I or Margot…also, Jackson Bennett is a superb attorney. I’d be happy to introduce you to him.”

“No. It’s going to take a lot of money. A lot more than I could possibly borrow, or wish to borrow.”

“Do you have…”