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

“Why do things like this happen, Jackson?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t know. Look, Nina, if you want to come with me, I was able to drive almost to the foot of the jetty. I can take you back to your place.”

She shook her head.

“I think I want to stay out here for a while.”

“All right. I just…you’re sure you’re all right?”

“Yes. I’ll be fine.”

“All right, then. Call me in a few hours. I’d like to go over and see Mrs. Ramirez too. Maybe we can go together.”

“Sure.”

And with that, he was gone.

She crept back down into the niche she had found, and peered into the pool.

No crabs visible now; just clear water.

She let her eyes wander toward the beach; it was filling up with tourists, with children running headlong into the surf, screaming with wild joy.

Out farther in the water sail boats had begun to appear.

The town was celebrating summer.

She took the book of poetry out of the pocket of her slicker.

She opened it to the section labeled W. H. Auden, and found “Musée des Beaux Arts.”

She read:

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

It’s human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

And she continued to read:

In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

She put down the book and looked around.

There was the expensive delicate ship, perhaps two hundred yards out from her.

There was the sun, shining as it had to.

She thought of Mrs. Ramirez, who had learned, perhaps an hour ago, that her oldest son was dead.

The plowman may have heard the splash, the forsaken cry…

“Who heard the splash, Edgar?” she whispered. “Who heard your forsaken cry?”

A boy falling out of the sky.

She had somewhere to get to and she walked on.

CHAPTER THREE: TEACHER, TEACHER…

By early afternoon the sky had become sticky-bright, and the town lay puddled in the aftermath of rain. Dogs, snakes, and drunks sunned themselves on benches and sidewalks, while children careened along the beach, oblivious both to the two hundred-percent humidity factor and the supplications of their parents regarding the need for everyone to take a long, quiet nap.

The small parking area fronting Olivia Ramirez’ bungalow was overflowing.

Nina could barely find a crevice to wedge her Vespa in, and, as she took off her helmet and untied the big glass bowl of chicken salad from the passenger seat behind her, she was aware that even that small space had been blocked in by a pickup truck that had arrived carrying yet another family of mourners.

She began walking toward the house, picking her way carefully between still dripping fenders, windshields, door handles and bumpers.

People crossed her path, looked up at her—for otherwise everyone seemed to be looking down at the gravel in the driveway, or up at the fleecy clouds that were making their way across the sun.

“Nina”

“Chester.”

“Ms. Bannister.”

“Hello, Tommy.”

“Oh, Nina…”

“I know, Betty.”

“This is just…”

“I know. I know.”

She did not, of course, but for some reason age seemed to allow her to pretend that she did.

The door to the house stood open, and Hernando Alvarez stood in it, patting the backs of all those leaving, and shaking the hands of all those arriving.

There are men in every neighborhood who assume such duties. No one has to ask them; no one has to write out their instructions. It is a duty assigned to them by dint of their white and perfectly combed back hair, their face browned not with a tourist tan but with hours weeks days months years’ exposure to a much more hostile sun, and with a quiet dignity of movement that promised a calmness if not a cure.

People like Mr. Alvarez—who, as far as Nina knew, was still a cook at Sergio’s By the Sea—made it possible for those who had to do so to sit in one place and cry, especially during those times in life when that was the only thing that could be done.

“Ms. Bannister. Thank you for coming.”

“Of course, Hernando.”

“They are all in back, in the living room and in the yard.”

“Yes. I brought…”

“It looks very good. I think the dishes are all being lined up on the counter, in the kitchen.”

“Good. Thank you. Is Olivia…”

“She is very brave.”

“I know. I know she is.”

The surge of people behind her had begun to build, and she let herself be carried by humanities’ grief-momentum in through the entrance vestibule and on farther into the living room.

The house was redolent of smoke, incense, and candle wax. There were small alcoves in the walls where statues of Christ and Mary stood supplicating, their arms extended either to each other or to the world beyond their wall.

She nodded and murmured as she made her way through the crowd, marveling at the gallery milling about her, and about the ability of bad news to sift down into a village, through chimneys and ventilator shafts and half open windows and half charged cell phones.

There, in the bedroom just to the right, stood Alanna Delafosse. Behind her, just entering, was John Giusti. In the kitchen before her stood Tom Broussard and Penelope Royale. She could see on beyond, out in the small back yard, that Paul and Macy Cox were bent forward in earnest conversation with Father Gonzalez.

There, here, over there farther, dotted about the small rooms, were the basketball players she had coached only a few months ago. Alyssha, Hayley, Amanda…

How had everyone heard so quickly?

What time was it, exactly?

One thirty.

A bit over six hours since she had…

…it still was not easy to think about it, to remember it.

The way the bright red jacket had looked in the oily, sluggishly circulating sewage.

And yet she had to remember it.

Strange. She had the absurd idea that the whole thing was her fault. For if she had not gotten up to run, had not driven to Gerard Park, had not made her way back through the serpentine driveways bordering the coulee and bisecting the honeycomb of apartment cages—if she had not done these things, perhaps no corpse would have been found.

And Edgar Ramirez would still be alive.

She was in the kitchen now. An acquaintance, Pamela Donaldson:

“Nina…”

“Pam.”

“We heard that you were the one who…”

“Yes.”

“Oh God, it must have been awful. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. I just called the police. They took care of everything after that.”

“Still, I’m so sorry you had to see it.”

“It’s all right.”

And move along, say a final something or other to Pam and go over to the counter.

Is there room?

Maybe not.

Here are deviled eggs on a platter; tuna salad; what seemed to be Caesar Salad; more deviled eggs; rolls; a platter of cold meat slices; several coffeemakers; condiments of various kinds;

The Restaurant of the Dead.

But there, there was a spot.

And in it, carefully, she placed her dish of chicken salad.

“Coach…”

Sonia Ramirez grabbed her, gently, from behind, and turned her half-around.

“Sonia…”

The two women embraced for a time, tears on Sonia’s face wetting Nina’s cheeks.

“Sonia, I’m so sorry.”

There was no answer to this, just a tighter embrace, the girl’s body shaking softly with sobs that seemed to come in rhythm with her heartbeat, and her voice spilling out birdlike and trembling.

“He was…so good. He was such a good brother.”

“I know.”

“He was…the best of us, you know? He was our hope!”

“I know, Sonia.”

“Why does this happen?”

“It happens for a reason, Sonia,” she said, knowing all the time that she was not at all sure that it happened for a reason. “We just don’t understand it.”

Well. That part at least was true.

“We don’t understand it, honey.”

“They don’t even know what happened to him!”

“They will. They’ll find out.”

“They say he was drunk, maybe.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“It
isn’t
true! Our Edgar did not drink! Not ever! He was so good…”

“I know, Sonia. I know.”

“It’s so terrible. It’s terrible for me and for Mama…”

Sonia gestured at a spot farther back in the living room. Her mother could not be seen, covered as she was by a knot of people, all bending over her and sobbing.

“…but it’s worse for Hector.”

Another gesture, another spot.

This spot not filled with people, though. This spot merely a place on the pale green wall, where a young Hispanic boy with olive skin and sad cave deep eyes was sitting in a straight chair, staring out at what seemed to be nothing at all.

“Hector is only a freshman in high school now.”

“I know.”

“He
needs
his big brother! There are all these drugs and bad people everywhere, and…”

She could not go on.

“Hector’s a good boy, Sonia. I know that. I heard the teachers talk about Hector all last year. They had nothing but good things to say about him.”

“I know, but…Edgar came into shore whenever he could, from the rig. And he spent time with Hector. ‘Don’t take drugs,’ he would tell him. ‘You can do anything you want! The world is out there, and it is waiting for you! You have a fine mind!’ And now…”

“I know. I know honey.”

“It is not right that Edgar should be…”

“Sonialita?”

This from a heavy set Hispanic woman, who had crossed the room and was now letting her palm rest on Sonia’s shoulder.

“Sonialita…tu madre te quieres.”

Sonia nodded.

“My mother is asking for me.”

“I understand. You go to her. And Sonia…things happen for a reason. You have to believe that. And know that Hector will be all right. All of Bay St. Lucy is on your side. We’ll be his big brother.”

Sonia nodded and moved away into the crowd.

Nina made her way outside.

The grass, the shrubbery, the concrete bird bath—it was all dripping and shining and radiating heat.

“Nina…”

She turned.

John Giusti stood before her.

“Nina, we only heard, just an hour or so ago. I felt like I had to come over. Helen is on the beach. She didn’t feel like she could deal with it right now. I think she’ll be coming later on in the afternoon. But now…”

“I know.”

“Nina, you found him just after you left us?”

“Yes, John.”

“Oh my God.”

“I know.”

“We got to the park just a half hour before you did. Whatever happened to him might have been happening just about then.”

“Yes. But no one knows. Not now, anyway.”

“Here. Let’s sit down.”

There were two folding chairs that sat facing the bird bath.

John dried them with his handkerchief; she sat opposite him.

“I heard he was a superb student.”

“The best Bay St. Lucy has produced, John, since you were winning all the science prizes ten years ago. As soon as he graduated they were onto him, the big oil companies out of Lafayette and Houma. They paid for his education at UL-Lafayette and they were right there with job offers on the day of his graduation.”

“So where was he working when…”

“The Aquatica. Huge rig offshore. He was just beginning, but still making pretty good money and giving a lot of it to his family.”

“Nina! John!”

She had been interrupted by the outward edges of the social amoeba that was Bay St. Lucy.

Alanna Delafosse, dressed in a onyx outfit that was black as coal, and thus only a few shades less lustrous, less mysterious, than the skin of her own bare and slender arms.

“You two dears! You were both near the park this morning!”

John nodded.

“Yes, we were.”

“And it was Nina who found the body?”

It was Nina’s turn to nod.

“I did.”

“Oh you poor thing…you must let me….”

And so began a string of sympathies and ‘you must let me’s’. Paul and Macy Cox came by, Penelope Royale and her husband Tom Broussard. Edie Towler.

She learned nothing from these people, except that, yes, the body had been taken directly to the morgue and, yes, an autopsy was planned and might well have been carried out even as they spoke and no and yes and no and yes and…

Finally, Nina, beginning to feel that more sympathy was being directed at her than at Olivia, her daughter Sonia, and her brother Hector—simply left.

Or rather, that is, she simply left but did not leave simply.

There was an ornate ritual of ‘good byes’ to be gone through, and there was standing in the mourning line that led to the seated Olivia Ramirez, whose upward gaze, iron grip handshake, and firmly uttered: