Oil Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 4) (31 page)

“Yes, I remember.”

“You still have it?”

“I have. I keep in my room.”

“Excellent. And you haven’t called anybody with it, or received any calls?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then please go and get it for me.”

“Do you think…”

“I don’t know exactly what to think, Hector.”

He walked toward the house, but turned at the door, and said:

“But I know what to think.”

“Yes? What?”

“I think nobody get over on Ms. Bannister.”

Then he entered the house.

Within a minute, he was back with the cell phone.

He handed it to her, and she left with Liz.

Five minutes late, they were at the far end of the wharf, where Penelope’s boat The Sea Urchin was moored.

Penelope, to her great relief, was sitting in the boat, eating a small carton of fried chicken.

“Penelope,” she said. “I want to hire you for tonight.”

Penelope put down the red and white box, looked up, and said:

“Where are we going?”

It was a strange thing. Penelope spoke only in obscenities.

Unless business was being discussed.

Specifically, the business of fishing.

“Where are we going?”

“You know of the Aquatica?”

“Sure I do.”

“Can you get out to her?”

She nodded:

“I go out there every now and then. Ten miles or so. I’ve got her coordinates plotted into my navigation system.”

“How long would it take to get out there?”

“Maybe an hour and a half.”

“Okay. It’s five thirty now. We should get there at seven. That should work. Why do you go out there?”

“Sharks. They vent a ton or so of garbage off that rig every week or so. Lots of sharks.”

“You fish for them?”

She shook her head:

“Naw, I just like to go out there at night and shoot at them.”

“You go out to Aquatica and shoot sharks with a pistol?”

“It’s fun.”

“Don’t they mind?”

“I go at night. They never know I’m there.”

“And you do this with fishing parties?”

“Nope. Just by myself.”

Liz, hearing all of this, shook her head and said:

“God, I like this woman.”

Nina nodded:

“The two of you have a lot in common. Penn, there’s something I have to tell you before we go.”

“All right.”

“The rig is filled with explosives. It may blow up.”

Penelope nodded, thoughtfully, then said:

“We’ll need more beer.”

“That’s possible.”

“And the two of you?”

“Yes?” answered Nina.

“There’s a locker over there about fifty yards up the quay. I use it to store stuff. Take these keys, if you will, and open it.”

“What are we looking for?”

“A forty-five automatic.”

“We’re not going to be shooting any sharks tonight, Penn.”

Penelope simply shook her head:

“I get these feelings sometimes. I’m getting them now.”

“What kind of feelings?”

“Just…there are things to shoot besides sharks.

Yes, there are, Penn. Yes, there are.”

She and Liz went to the lockers, while Penelope went half a mile or so in the other direction to buy beer.

They opened the locker and took out of it a big black oil-glistened automatic, which Liz examined, thoroughly, cocking and uncocking it, checking its chamber.

“Loaded, well oiled, and ready,” she said, quietly.

“You know how to use one of these?”

She nodded.

“Combat zone coverage.”

“Afghanistan?”

“Flushing.”

In five minutes, they were back in the boat.

“Never doubt that a small group of dedicated women,” began Nina, “can change the world.”

“Indeed,” added Liz, “that’s the only thing that ever has.”

“All right, ladies,” said Penelope, starting the boat’s engines, “let’s go fishing.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: BACK TO AQUATICA

There was a small chop for the first two miles out, but otherwise the sea was calm. Nina and Liz sat on cushions in the bow of the rectangular craft, while Penelope steered from the back.

“I think,” said Nina over the roar of the outboards, “that we must have missed something all along.”

“What?”

“I can’t pin it down. It’s just…what he said…”

“What who said?”

“It’s not important. Or maybe it is. I’ve just got to piece it together in my mind.”

She then turned and shouted back to Penelope:

“Penn, do you think they’ll let us board?”

Penelope shook her head and answered”

“Either they’ll have to let one of us come up, or they’ll have to send somebody down.”

“Why?”

“We’ll be out of gas by then.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I’ve only taken on enough gas to get us out there. Rule of the sea, though; they have to help us.”

No one had anything to say to that.

The boat plowed on.

At the five-mile mark the skies began to darken.

At seven miles it began to rain.

Penelope reached under a tarpaulin to get slickers out. The three of them put on the rain gear, and, at that point, something moved under a second tarpaulin.

“What was that?” asked Liz.

“I don’t know,” Penelope answered, but…”

Before she could finish, the tarpaulin seemed to rise by itself.

It then slid off to one side, revealing Hector Ramirez.

“Hector!” shouted Nina.

“Oh my God!” shouted Liz.

“----!” shouted Penelope, forgetting, for a moment, her rule about avoiding obscenities while fishing.

“Hector what are you doing here?”

“I know you are going out to the boat, to do something important. Something that is to do with Edgar.”

“But you can’t…”

“So I follow you tonight on my bike. I know you do not see me. When you leave the boat…”

“For beer and guns,” whispered Nina, remembering the five minute interlude when The Sea Urchin was empty.

“…when you leave, I sneak on.”

“You got something over,” Nina said quietly, “on Ms. Bannister.”

“We have to take him back,” said Liz.

“We can’t, Liz. We don’t have time. We’re going to get there at seven as it is. If we double back now…”

‘Okay, okay, I understand.”

“--------!”

“It’s all right, Penn. We don’t have a choice.”

Finally Hector spoke:

“Sometimes, Senora…”

“I know. I know. “

Then she smiled:

“Sometimes a man is needed.”

And they sailed on.

They reached Aquatica at ten minutes before seven.

The massive rig loomed even larger than Nina had remembered, since they came up below it now, and not from above, as she had done before.

The rain was harder now, but it had not become completely dark, and they could be seen easily by teams of orange-clad men lining the rail.

“Ahoy below! Who are you?”

“Sea Urchin!” shouted Penelope in reply. “We have some people who need to come aboard!”

“Can’t allow that! No security check!”

Damn,
thought Nina.
Maybe this is not going to work, after all.

“Get Sandy Cousins!” she shouted as loud as possible. “Get Phil Bennington. I know both of them!”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Nina Bannister.”

This caused a furor among the men who had heard it. Some laughed, some cursed, some gestured.

“It’s nice,” said Nina, quietly, “to be famous.”

“What do you want out here, ma’am? Do you still think we’re going to blow up?”

Laughter.

If only you knew
, thought Nina.

She could see now that there were helicopters hovering everywhere, some waiting while others landed to disgorge white dinner-jacketed men and gown-clad women.

“The best and the brightest,” said Liz.

“Nina!”

She looked up, at the rail directly above them.

Thank God.

Sandy Cousins.

“Nina, what in hell is going on?”

“We need to come up!”

“We got a call from the airport. One of the lawyers says you’re…”

“I know, I know. It’s all kind of crazy, Sandy.”

“We’re not supposed to let you on board!”

“Sandy, you’ve got to trust me! You’ve got to trust all of us!”

“I don’t have the power to…”

And then Phil Bennington appeared beside her at the rail, saying:

“I do have the power. It may cost me my job later on, but…all right. Come on up. We’ll send the platform down for you. You can moor your craft on the side of Aquatica. Then you can ride the platform on up.”

“Thank you! Thank you so much!”

“I have no idea what’s going on here, but…well, I don’t propose to leave three women and a young boy in a driving rain in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.”

And in this way, Nina, Liz, Hector, and Penelope were taken aboard the Aquatica.

A little over an hour, if they were correct, before the vessel blew up.

Within a matter of minutes, they had been dried off, offered coffee, and led through smiling crowds ever farther toward the bowels of the rig.

“We need to go,” said Nina,” to the control room.”

“That’s impossible,” said Phil Bennington. “We’re breaking security right now, by even having you on board.”

“All right. Where can we go?”

“Nina,” said Sandy. “You’ve got to tell us. What’s happening here? They said you were making some awful row at the airport, talking about explosions again. Are you both crazy? Haven’t we been all through this?”

“Just find us a room, Sandy. And get your Tool Master there.”

“Tom? Tom Holder?”

“Yes. And you probably want the head of security, too. He needs to hear this. Get Brewster Dale in the room.”

“But I don’t know where they…”

“I’m not insane, Sandy. Neither is Liz here. There’s something you’ve got to hear. And you’ve got to hear it soon.”

Sandy nodded reluctantly and said:

“All right. I’ll try.”

And she did.

The room was small but well insulated. It contained a round table.

Within five minutes, the people Nina had named were seated around the table.

They could have been seated at a board room in the Bay St. Lucy town hall.

At twelve o’clock, Phil Bennington. Two o’clock, Tom Holder. Four o’clock, Brewster Dale. Six o’clock, Liz Cohen. Eight o’clock, Nina.

Penelope and Hector were somewhere else, being fed and shown the hospitality of Aquatica.

There was a clock on the wall behind Bennington.

Seven thirty.

“All right, Ms. Bannister. Ms. Cohen. We’ve pretty much done as you asked.
 
The people you wanted are all here.”

“And,” said Brewster Dale, his face even ruddier than ever, “it has been done at great expense to my good name. Why, they’re going to have my head back in Lafayette for even allowing you two to be brought up on board. Why, you can’t go around shouting ‘bomb’ like that! Not in a crowded airport. And certainly not on Aquatica!”

“Yeh,” interjected Holder, leaning forward. “All the blokes think you’re both crazy! Talkin’ about a bomb that way! That’s a thing we don’t joke about, bombs!”

“But,” said Nina, quietly, “there is a bomb.”

Silence in the room.

“I think,” said Bennington, starting to rise, “we’ve all had about…”

“Do you know,” she continued, “what semtex is?”

More silence.

A dreadful kind of silence.

Except for the ticking of the clock.

Seven thirty-five

Finally, Holder.

The Tool Master:.

“Aye, lass. Every driller knows what semtex is.”

“It’s in your drilling tubes.”

Sandy:

“What?”

“There is plastique in your drilling tubes.”

Bennington:

“That’s impossible.”

Nina:

“From your central control panels, can you check the density of the cement in each tube?”

Holder:

“Yes. Of course we can. We have to be able to…”

“Check segment 642C tube number 4. Then check 789D tube number 2.”

Everyone in the room was looking at her now.

Finally, someone asked:

“How do you know all this?”

She ignored the question and said, simply:

“You have maybe half an hour to check those tubes. Then they’re going to blow up.”

Holder looked at Bennington and said:

“I’ll go and do it, Chief, if you want me to.”

But Nina interrupted:

“Not so fast. Just wait a second. Tool Master.”

And, as she finished speaking, she reached into her purse, put her hand around Edgar’s phone, flipped it open, and pressed the ‘call’ button.

Silence.

Then a buzz.

From the coat pocket of Brewster Dale.

Now everyone was looking at him.

Including Nina.

“Answer your phone,” she said, quietly.

Buzz.

Buzz.

The staring continued. Dale showed no expression at all. Finally, Phil Bennington asked:

“What’s going on here?”

“Your Tool Master,” Nina said quietly, “is not your Tool Master.”

Bennington:

“You’re not making any sense.”

Nina continued to look at Dale:

“All your quotations were wrong.”

Sandy leaned forward, but Nina ignored her, saying:

“Pouring whisky is like burning books,” is not from
Intruder in the Dust
. It’s from
The Hamlet.
All the rest of them are wrong, too.”

Finally, Dale bowed, slightly:

“My compliments, Madam.”

She shook her head.

“It bothered me a little bit while you were making all those mistakes. The quotes were always accurate, but you had them coming from the wrong books. At first, I just thought, oh let it go, he’s an amateur scholar. Then finally I realized: no lover of Faulkner would have a character from
The Sound and the Fury
saying something that only the narrator from
A Rose for Emily
could possibly have said. Or misquoted Flem Snopes, who speaks in a voice all his own. Or failed to give credit to Boon Hoggenbeck for saying “Unless you’re ashamed of yourself now and then, you’ve not honest.”