Sea Change (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 1) (20 page)

No one moved.

He opened the door and came into the living room.

Then he stepped through the broken window, bent, and offered a hand to the prostrate security guard, whose neck was still connected to the pointed toe of Tom Broussard’s boot.

“Tom, you might want to move your foot a little, so this boy can stand up.”

Tom took a step back.

“Officer, you might want to get up off of Miss Nina’s porch here.”

The man got to his feet, glaring at Tom Broussard, who glared back.

Moon Rivard stood between them for a time, then moved back into the living room, where he addressed Eve Ivory.

“Miss Ivory, if I was you I’d go back home now.”

“I’ll go,” she said, squirting syllables out in a short thick mixture of arsenic and sputum, “wherever I want.”

“Well you have that right.”

“You’d better know I have that right!
 
Now will you put this hoodlum in jail?”

Moon Rivard shook his head:

“Which one?
 
The one that was on the floor or the one over here ready to pull a gun?”

“That handgun is licensed.”

“I’m sure it is, ma’am. Now will you please go home?”

She was silent for a time, then said:

“By tomorrow afternoon you will be fired; I promise you.”

“That’s as it may be, ma’am. But I ain’t fired tonight.”

“And what is this idiot talking about, concerning the yacht and the marina?”

“There’s a situation, but we’re taking care of it.”

“What kind of a situation?”

“Like I say, it’s under control.”

“Do you know who owns that yacht?”

“As it happens, I do know.”

“One of the richest men in the world.”

“Well, he’s certainly welcome here in Bay St. Lucy.
 
Just like everybody else is.
 
Now gentlemen––”

He looked at the security officers:

“Now gentlemen, we Cajuns have a saying that we use sometime, not very often, but when we do use it, it’s on occasions like this.
 
Wanna hear it?”

No movement, no answer.

“I’m gonna tell it to you anyway. Goes like this.
 
Listen.”

He paused for an instant and then said:

“Go home.”

Eve Ivory fumed.

Furl continued to hide.

“If that yacht, or anything on it––”

“Go home.”

Silence for two seconds more.

Then she stalked out of the room, the two guards following her.

Nina, Tom, and Moon watched them descend, watched as they entered their car, and watched as the car pulled away.

“That window,” said Nina, “just keeps getting broken.”

“Sorry about that.”

“It’s all right, Tom.
 
I thought you were great, by the way.”

“Could have gotten shot,” he said.

“Well, there’s that.”

“Miz Nina––”

“Yes, Moon.
 
And by the way, you were pretty great too.”

“Just doing my job.”

“It’s a little harder tonight, I guess.”

“Yes, ma’am. But Miz Nina, it might be good if you came along with me.”

“To the harbor?”

“Yes’m.”

“What’s going on?”

“There’s a war.”

“Between who?”

“Well, the Coast Guard is on one side.”

“Who’s on the other?”

“Penelope Royale.”

“So it’s kind of even.”

“Yahh, for now. I’m afraid if it gets any worse though, some of dose boys gonna get hurt. Dey spend all the time fighting against drug runners and pirates and bomb terrorists and the like; but they ain’t never come up against Miss Penelope.”

“Why do you want me there?”

“She askin’ for you.”

“Well, every day has its little surprises.”

“Yes, Miss Nina.”

“Can Tom come, too?”

Moon Rivard looked at Tom, and smiled:

“If he promise he won’t hurt nobody.”

“I’m harmless,” Tom replied.

Moon clapped him on the back.

“Sure you are! Just a big ‘ole Cajun boy. What did you do to that ‘security’ man, anyway?”

“He slipped.”

“He did?
 
Well how about that?”

“The rain.”

“The rain, sure, de rain! Miz Nina, you ought to keep your porch dryer. Somebody gonna get hurt out there!”

“I’ll try to remember.
 
Now let’s go save the Armed Services from Penelope.”

They walked down the stairs.

CHAPTER TWELVE:
 
BACK TO BATAAN!

“I must go down to the sea again....”

John Masefield

“We may not all have come over on the same ship, but we’re all in the same boat now.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

The trip from Nina’s to the harbor was like driving not through a movie but through the “coming attractions.”

Avenue E, between Lee and Eustace, was
The Night of the Living Dead.
 
People were walking like zombies, here or there, sitting on benches, waving flashlights, and, as far as she could see, killing dogs and eating their flesh.
 
Stonewall Jackson Avenue, where it crossed Lula Lane, was
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
 
There was a great circle of people, and somebody stood in the center of the circle. He was wearing a United States flag like a banner and waving a handgun. Anemone Lane and Worthington Boulevard was
Elmer Gantry
. There was a similar circle of people, with a similar man in the middle.
 
He carried a Bible instead of a flag, but he also carried a gun.

Nina sat in the front seat, noting with surprise Moon’s complete indifference to all these groups.

“Should these people all have guns?”

“Dis is America, my sweet.”

“Yes, it is.
 
Yes, it is.”

“Besides, you want to go out dere and take de guns from those folks?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

“How much damage so far, Moon?” asked Tom Broussard from the back seat.

Moon shook his head:

“Not as bad as you might think.
 
We got the liquor stores closed early.
 
Dat helps.”

“What about all this woman’s ‘security forces’?”

“So far, ain’t none of them shot nobody. Can’t tell if that’s gonna last all night. But I think we got most of them out of town and back at the mansion. That’s where they belong tonight.”

They passed the corner of William Faulkner and Seaview Lane, which was
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
 
Nobody had a gun and nobody had a flag and nobody had a Bible.
 
There was an accordion player, a fiddle player, and a bass guitar.

Everyone was dancing.

“Now that,” Moon Rivard said quietly, “is what I like to see.”

They moved through the crowd, several people pounding the two step on the roof of the squad car, which whooped its siren intermittently to the beat of “Ma Jolie Blonde.”

“Tell me,” said Nina, watching the revelers disappear in the distance, “what happened down here at the harbor.”

The radio squawked; Moon picked it up, cackled something back into it, replaced it, and said quietly:

“I don’t know everything. First reports I got came half hour ago. I was trying to break off something over on the west side, don’t even remember it now. Apparently some damn fool from the government tried to serve some papers on Miss Penelope.”

“Tonight?”

“Naw, it happened this afternoon.”

“What kind of papers?”

“Far as I can made out, dey told her she couldn’t put her boat in the harbor no more. Told her it didn’t fit ‘regulations,’ whatever dose are.”

It began to make sense. The president of the richest holiday rental resort industry in the world is sailing in tonight on his private yacht. The sale is not yet complete, the papers not yet signed. If you are Eve Ivory, do you want Penelope Royal’s washtub creating a blight on the coastal view?

So call your lawyer, dig through the official town zoning laws—or create your own zoning laws for that matter—and evict Penelope.

Threaten to tow her boat off and sell it for junk.

This is the kind of thing, now, she reminded herself, that will be happening every day, until BAYWORLD opens the BAYS of its WORLD.

Something, she continued to tell herself, would have to be done.

This horrible thing could not be allowed to happen.

The only problem:
 
it was happening.

The scene at the harbor was pandemonium, and the brief previews of other movies had been replaced by the main feature:
 
War of the Worlds.
 

Helicopters swung low over the quay itself, and out into the breakers. They whooped and soared, rotors chopping and whapping and roaring, and threatening to suck in entire flocks of pelicans and seagulls, creating tons of GULLMULCH and PELICANIZER which would then be spread over the harbor.

Coast Guard launches plowed the shallow water, floodlights illuminating black-suited commandoes and divers, all of the crafts resembling PT Boats, looking to sink THE YAMMAMOTO.

THE YAMMAMOTO itself had anchored some two hundred yards offshore, disguised as Penelope Royal’s floating bathtub.

Another fifty yards beyond it was a magnificent sailing vessel, whose name, The Sea Breeze, was written in gold cursive letters that were clearly illuminated by lanterns filling the two breasts of a wooden lady who’d somehow gotten herself impaled by the ship’s prow.

It was this ship that Penelope Royale, standing upright in the middle of her own vessel and waving what Nina genuinely hoped would not turn out to be but of course did turn out to be, a forty-five automatic.

A shouting match between Penelope and a ring of bullhorns encircling her was in full force.

“MA-AM!
 
YOU MUST PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS!”

––said the bullhorns.

“––––!!”

––said Penelope.

The match was pretty even.

“Come on, Miss Nina,” said Moon Rivard, helping her out of the car.

The three of them climbed down to the wharf, slipping slightly on the moss-covered concrete as rain intensified.

Nina rebuked herself silently for not bringing rain gear, but, given the fact that one of her best and oldest friends was about to be blown apart by seven fifty-meter howitzers, she felt she could be forgiven.

“Here.
 
Down here.
 
Into the launch.”

“Ma’am?”

“Yes?”

“Are you Ms. Bannister?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I’m Lieutenant J. G. Brewster, US Coast Guard!”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Is that your friend out there?”

I never saw her in my life
, thought Nina.

“Yes,” said Nina.

“Do you realize she is in grave danger?”

Never would have suspected it,
thought Nina.
The torpedo launchers, assault helicopters, fifty-caliber machine guns, grenade launchers, and water cannons, gave me no hint at all.

“Yes, I do.”

“You realize she is armed?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know she was in the habit of carrying a handgun with her on her boat?”

Yes.
 
No.

She does carry a little, easily hidden, practically harmless, forty-five caliber automatic, like any lady might carry in her purse.

But she only uses it to blow apart dog sharks.

And anybody from the government.

Those were the precise, correct answers.

But maybe not the ones she needed to give.

What were those answers?

Well, actually there weren’t any, so it was good of Moon Rivard to intervene.

“Son,” he said.
 
“This lady has come here to try to de-fuse this situation.
 
Don’t you think you better stop interrogating her and let her get out there?”

“I don’t,” said the officer, “know that I’m authorized to do so.
 
That’s a very dangerous situation out there.
 
Ma’am––”

“Yes?”

“Are you certain you understand what you’re getting into?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“And you’re willing to do this?”

“Yes.”

He breathed deeply, sighed, seemed to weigh the prospect of utilizing Naval ordinance (guns) on a middle-aged woman and a middle-aged something-like-woman, as opposed to sending Nina out into the middle of The Battle of Guadalcanal—and finally decided on the latter.

“All right.
 
You can go.”

And so it was that Nina, with Moon Rivard on one side of her and some utterly harmless policewoman on the other, found themselves lurching through ever stronger swells, rain pelting them in the face, and helicopters swooping like eagles made from dysfunctional erector sets above them—

––heading out toward Penelope Royale, who stood just as she’d been for the last half hour––Captain Ahab in the face of THE GREAT WHITE RICHMAN’S BOAT.

Finally they were close enough.

Their own launch cut its engines.

Penelope saw them.

Gun still gripped tightly in one hand, she cupped the other around her mouth and yelled:

“Nina!?”

“Yes!”

“Nina, they ––!”

“I know, Pen.
 
I know.”

“I ––!
 
And if ––, then ––!”

The driver of the launch, young and inexperienced, blanched. His face had turned ashen, and was horror stricken.

“He hasn’t,” the policewoman said, “ever been around Penelope.”

Moon Rivard said grimly:

“There are some tough things you got to learn on this job.”

“Pen, can we pull up alongside? I have to talk to you!”

“––!”

“Yes, I promise.”

“Then ––!”

“I know.”

“––!”

“That won’t happen.”

“––.”

“No, I’m sure.”

“––!!”

“I’m coming aboard now, Pen.”

And, with Moon helping to steer the craft, they locked onto Penelope’s boat.

Boarding was harder than she expected, perhaps because of the increased rocking of the waves, perhaps because of a slight psychological alienation created by the repeated sound of the loudspeaker saying:

WE ARE PREPARED TO OPEN FIRE!
 
WE ARE PREPARED TO OPEN FIRE!

But after a while, there she was, standing now, right beside Penelope, arm around her waist, facing, as Penelope was facing, a complete circle of naval gunboats.

“So,” she said to the woman standing beside her, “How’ve you been, girl?”

Penelope, standing like a statue of George S. Patton, did not answer.

The bullhorns did, however, saying in an intimate kind way:

LOWER YOUR FIREARM OR WE WILL BEGIN FIRING!

“Nina––”

Finally Penelope was at least saying something.

“Yes, Pen?”

I’m sorry I asked for you—I just couldn’t think of
 
anybody else.”

“It’s all right.”

“I’m sorry for getting you into this.”

“No, don’t worry. The truth is, I had run out of something to read. I was going to spend the evening with a Ruth Rendall, but I realized I’d read it already.
 
So I thought, ‘Why not go out and stand in the middle of a ring of thirty five-millimeter bazookas?’ And just as I was thinking that, the call came that you were here.
 
Isn’t it funny how those things work somehow.”

“They can’t make me go, Nina.”

“I know.”

“They don’t have that right.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Who is this woman?”

“I don’t know, Pen.
 
None of us do, really.”

“They say she’s going to destroy the town.”

“Well, she can’t do that.”

“Who’s going to stop her?”

“We will.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, but we will”

“How can we stop her, Nina?”

“We can stop her, because we’ll fight her together.”

LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE!

“Oh, shut up!” shouted Nina.

Then she said to Penelope:

“They’re so intrusive. Just because they have all those torpedoes and machine guns and nuclear rockets and things, they think they’re All of That. Can you imagine?”

“I won’t let them move me, Nina.”

“No.
 
Nobody’s going to move you.”

“How can you know?”

“I know.”

“But look all around us.
 
Look at those guns.”

“Yeah, I see them.”

“How can we fight them?”

“We’ll find a way.”

Then she was aware of Penelope, looking at her:

“Will we?”

“Yes, we will, Pen. Because we’re the community.
 
As long as we trust each other, and look out for each other, and believe in each other—nobody in the world can touch us.
 
Not even the Big Bad US Navy.”

Penelope Royale looked at her for an instant, and Nina realized that either the rain was truly harder now, or that Penelope was crying.

She’d never seen Penelope cry before.

Of course a lot of things were happening tonight that she’d never seen before.

IF YOU DO NOT PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS WE WILL BE FORCED TO—

“ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT!” she screamed back, simultaneously waving for Moon to come pick them up and kicking the forty-five automatic, which Penelope had placed on the bottom of the boat, over to the side. ALL RIGHT ALREADY.
 
WILL YOU STOP BEING SO PICKY?”

And within minutes, they were heading back to shore.

Once there, they were met by several thousand people, all of them serious and all of them useless.

There were local policemen and federal policemen and military policemen and doctors and reporters and a lot of other people, all wondering what to do with Penelope.

“You can’t take her to jail, Moon.”

“I have to, Miz Nina.”

It’s Penelope.
 
She can’t spend the night in jail.”

“I got no choice.”

“Let me stay here with her, at her place on the wharf.”

“She pulled a gun on Federal officers.”

“No she didn’t. Well, technically she did, but it was only a forty-five automatic.”

“Miz Nina––”

“And look at what they had! Moon, she was fighting the whole US Navy! Doesn’t a woman have the right to defend herself? What’s she supposed to use against nuclear torpedoes, a can of pepper spray?”