Oil Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 4) (11 page)

“All right. I’ll be there.”

And thus it was determined.

She was first going to take Edgar’s cell phone back to the Ramirez home and ask Hector to take care of it.

Then she was going to Lafayette.

CHAPTER EIGHT: ALLONS A LAFAYETTE!

The flight from Bay St. Lucy arrived in New Orleans at two. There was a connection to Lafayette leaving at four fifteen. Shortly before six, the Delta jet touched down at the Lafayette Regional Airport.

She took a small travelling bag from the overhead compartment, made her way up the aisle and out into air that was heavier, more ponderous and liquid-sweet than Bay St. Lucy—yes, she remembered now, what the swamplands here were like, remembered them from drives she and Frank had taken through the Cajun prairie.

“Nina!”

A striking young woman was striding across the tarmac, waving her arms.

“Are you Nina Bannister?”

She was a tall woman, five seven or five eight, and her flaming red hair washed about her shoulders as she walked.

“I’m Nina!”

“Annette Richoux! A student of Professor Narang. Like Edgar.”

The woman was wearing dungarees and a short sleeve white shirt that showed the muscles in her lithe arms.

Nina began making her way tentatively down the ramp.

“Can I help you with your traveling bag?”

“No, I’ve got it.”

“Any trouble with your connections?”

“No. Everything went fine.”

“You’re going to stay at my place while you’re in town. Hope that’s all right with you?”

“Of course. I hate to put you out.”

“No, it’s no bother. It’s just…is it true what the professor told me, about Edgar?”

“Yes. It is.”

“I can’t believe it.”

They looked at each other for a time.

Then they cried for a time.

Then, shaking their heads, they walked together toward the parking lot, with Nina saying:

“I don’t know if what I’m doing is right. About this disk.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Maybe the information on here is not…”

“We’re not even going to talk about it, ma chere. It’s Friday night, gettin’ to be seven o’clock. And I might as well let you know right now—I’m a Cajun girl. Born and brought up not too far from here.”

“If you want to go straight home, I’ll understand.”

“Home nothing. We’re going dancing.”

And they did.

Within minutes, the two of them were winding their way through the streets of Lafayette, Annette Richoux laughing as she drove.

“Naw, nobody can make head nor tail of me. I was born up in Eustace. My folks were ranchers. They’re gone now, God bless ‘em. I grew up as a tall drink-a-water nerd, always reading. Nothing to do with boys. Never did have anything to do with boys. I discovered men sometime in my early twenties and I haven’t looked back. I’m brilliant, by the way, but I don’t let anybody notice, at least not socially. No way to tell you how I got interested in geology, and then the oil part of it. I guess it has to do with the fact that I was always around drillers, growing up where I did.”

Nina, settled back and told herself that this entire thing was absurd.

She was here because of a murder..

What was she doing going dancing?

“It’s been a little while since I danced.”

“How long?”

“Forty-three years.”

“That’s nothing. It’ll come right back to you.”

They swerved onto a street called Johnston Avenue, which, Nina could not help noticing, had the traffic density and speed of an interstate highway and the engineering features of a ditch.

They talked casually and perilously as sixty miles per hour in-city traffic shot beside them and around them like so many harmless multicolored lights, and they negotiated the nonsensical and directionless turns of downtown Lafayette.

Finally, they pulled beneath a massive live oak tree that overhung the front porch of an establishment whose battered sign pronounced: “The Blue Gator.”

“Annette! My favorite young genius student from the great university!”

“Hello, Pierre!”

A man as massive as the tree itself rolled out of the clapboard door and down a wooden walkway that was certainly destined to collapse at any time, allowing him to submerge on his own.

“Nina, this is Pierre Boudin! He owns The Blue Gator!”

“Hello, Pierre.”

“And hello back to you, Miss Nina! You’all come right on in! Guests of honor at the Blue Alligator!”

His face was a combination of ripe tomato and under-inflated basketball, and his eyes—mere slits now—had not existed for years as actual openings. But the vines that tangled and sprouted from the white shirt barely covering his chest certainly were organic in nature, and thicker, healthier, more deeply-rooted, than human hair could ever have been.

“Abidas?”

“Yeah, Amber for both of us. Red Stick Ramblers playing tonight?”

He nodded:

“You know it!”

“The Red Stick Ramblers, Nina,” said Annette, “are the best Cajun band there is.”

They followed the tree man up the walkway…which sunk appreciably but did not overflow…and, with Pierre standing behind and holding the door open for them, entered the Blue Gator.

It was, observed Nina, a great deal like Pierre himself. Not so huge, nor bulky, but certainly tangled and completely untrustworthy. Immediately to their right was the bar, lined with bottles of Abida Beer. To their left was the dance floor. It was perhaps fifteen feet square, and completely bare now, save for one solitary jazz musician, a tall black soprano saxophonist, who poured forth mournful and delicate tunes that absolutely no one was listening to.

Beyond, though…

…she could see, peering through the garish yellow light, was a crumbling garden, vines overhanging bare rafters, tables scattered here and there, some with tablecloths, some bare and reflecting in their green metal tops the half moon that peered mockingly though the places in the roof that were not roof.

“Nina,” said Annette, “maybe you can go back in the garden and find us some place to sit. I got this T shirt on, and these jeans. That’s nothing to go dancing in. I’m gonna change into something sexy; I’ll come and find you.”

So saying, she turned and disappeared.

Nina, left to her own devices, made her way back into a jungle of furniture and vine-tangles that seemed to keep opening out from itself, passing a bench here and there, and overhearing patches of conversation.

“Non, c’est…c’est bien trop…”

“Oui, je crois bien que…”

French. English. Cajun. Creole…all of it seeping out of the woodwork from people defying characterization: yes, that was a university group; there were three people who seemed to have come from a nursing home; and there was a family, along with an infant in arms and a two year old.

Finally, she found a rickety table and sat down, overhearing a conversation beside her as two men discussed fishing.

They were both talking at once, shaking their heads, agreeing, disagreeing, citing geographical features of southwest Louisiana, moving into and out of the feeding habits of the red bass, and culminating in a reminiscence of Earl Long.

Pierre brought two bottles of beer. She began drinking one.

Somehow the softness and gaiety of Lafayette began to wash over her.

How many days ago was it that she had come upon Edgar’s body?

Four? Five?

It was all a haze.

And then, the wake at Olivia Ramirez’ home; the strange encounter with Hector; the meeting with the oil executives; the bizarre helicopter ride to the equally bizarre carnival ride that was Aquatica; the inky waters of the coulee…

…and now this.

A different world.

Everyone was smiling here.

How long had it been since she had smiled?

And while thinking these things, she let another idea play in her head.

There would be any number of men here for her to dance with.

She could not dance; but she would learn.

There would probably be one man later in the evening.

He would be a perfect gentleman.

And she could, if she wished, go to bed with him.

This evening, for that matter. This very evening. She was of an age, as was he, when, at an appropriate time on the dance floor or in the back seat of the car returning home, she could simply say matter of factly:

“Let’s stay together tonight. I miss being with someone.”

And he, though perhaps a bit shocked, would have too much gallantry and pride, if not desire (since Nina still could not believe she was actually a woman who could instill sexual desire in men)…to refuse.

And tonight, for the first time in so many years, so many years…she could have sex.

Frank would not be standing by the bed, shaking his head.

She could have sex.

But she would not.

She had just begun to speculate concerning the reasons why not: this delightful sense of freedom in smaller things, the love of reading until whenever, (and of reading whatever without having to summarize it or explain it); the lessening of sexual desire (or was it there and simply being ignored?); and the simple and exquisite sense of self-reliance that, while probably illusory (because she did need love, did she not? And what about the ‘no woman is an island thing?)…was growing yearly more enjoyable…

…to speculate on all of these reasons why she would not have sex tonight or any other night in her future, when she was joined at the table by Annette, who undoubtedly
would
have sex tonight…

She wore a black dress bare on one shoulder, red hair glistening in whatever meager yellow light was dispensed by a precariously hanging single bulb, small cigar swinging at the end of an immensely long arm…

“The beer came,” Nina said.

“Good. Now…look across the room, over there, leaning against the bar. See that oily-haired on muscly guy?”

“I do.”

“That’s my boyfriend. Wait. I’ll go get him.”

Annette crossed the room, accosted the man she had been speaking about, embraced him quickly, laughed, embraced him again, kissed him lightly…

…and after two minutes or so, was back with him.

“This is Guidry,” she said.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

And so, for a time, Annette and Guidry talked about fishing while Nina simply listened.

Pierre Boudin, happy as a pig-clam, worked his hall. He brought them two more bottles of beer—ok, so they weren’t quite ready for more beer, but they would be––sat with them, agreed with them, laughed with them, folds of flesh rolling and tangled torso-growth sprouting in the warm, fetid air.

…until, the beer-clock above the bar inching its way to seven o’clock, they rose and made their way toward the dance floor.

It looked different now. The single melancholy saxophone player had disappeared, swallowed by the swamp upon which this entire precarious enterprise floated. In his place, still not attracting a great deal of attention, were scattered musicians, none of whom seemed to know each other, all of whom seemed unaware of their surroundings. A fiddle appeared, was scratched, then tuned, then set aimlessly aside. A bass joined it, huge, burnished, immovable, more like a piece of bedroom furniture than any possible musical instrument; and there, as much smaller as it should have been than the bass was larger…was the heart of the band, the box accordion.

Annette watched the Red Stick Ramblers set up like she would have watched a mother give birth.

Her eyes glittered, black and shining, star-scattered rhinestones on the strap of her dress.

“How long,” whispered Nina, “have you known Guidry?”

Annette stared back at her for an instant.

“What?”