Game Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 3) (22 page)

“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. Will 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: