Sea Change (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 1) (21 page)

“Miz Nina––”

“Look, there are five policewomen, all from here in Bay St. Lucy, all surrounding Pen. If you could promise to keep them all here, all keeping guard on her––”

“I don’t know if I have the authority, Miss.”

“Try! And I promise that I’ll stay here too. Five local police officers!”

“Well. I do know that Head Fed. Him and me go coon hunting together.”

“And you guys have priority over the military, don’t you?”

“Yeah.
 
Far as that goes.”

“Please, Moon. Just let us all stay here with Pen tonight.
 
And we’ll bring her in tomorrow.”

“Well––”

“We’ve got to stick together now, Moon. All of us in Bay St. Lucy.”

“Ok, I’ll go and talk to him.”

He was gone, and in an instant Nina was in the circle of policewomen and Penelope.

“Nina, don’t let them take me.”

“They won’t.”

“I can’t go to jail.”

“You’re going to stay here tonight. We all are.”

“Are you sure.”

“Yeah.
 
Moon and I have fixed it up.”

“Thank you, Nina.
 
You’re still my teacher.”

“Yes.
 
Well.”

“I’m sorry I broke that thing in the fifth grade.”

“It’s ok.
 
It was just a swing set.”

“Miz Nina––”

Moon Rivard.

Let this be good news.

“Miz Nina, we probably all gonna get fired.
 
But he says, long as we keep the five officers here tonight—we gonna let her stay here.”

“Moon, I love you!”

“Well, dey’s another reason, I gotta be honest wid you.”

“What’s that?”

“The damn jail is full.
 
No place to put anybody.
 
We got to promise to bring her in first thing tomorrow though.”

“You have my word.”

“I know I do, ma cher. I know I do. Wait a minute.
 
Getting a call here.
 
Gotta answer this.”

He took his call, and Nina turned to give the good news to Penelope.

She took a deep breath, and, watching Moon’s face illuminated green by the light from his walkie talkie, kept trying to force from her mind the words Tom Broussard had told her weeks earlier:

The story is not over until it has taken the worst possible turn of events.

The story is not over until it has taken the worse possible turn of events.

Moon Rivard closed his walkie talkie, took two steps toward her, and, in a voice like Hamlet’s gravedigger, said:

“We may have to rethink a few things.”

“What?”

“We may have to do things—different now.”

“Why?
 
Moon, you can’t take her in! You promised!”

He shook his head.

“It don’t matter no more about her.”

“What are you saying?”

“It don’t matter no more about Miss Penelope.
 
Stay here or go there; ain’t nobody studying up on Miss Penelope no more.
 
Not tonight.
 
Not tonight, anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because, Miz Nina, I just got a call:
 
Eve Ivory is dead.
 
Murdered.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
 
THE STORY IS NOT OVER UNTIL––

“I hate small towns because once you’ve seen the cannon in the park there’s nothing else to do.”

Lenny Bruce

With the death of the Wicked Witch of the West—or East or South or North or wherever it was that Eve Ivory had come from—the spell that had inebriated Bay St. Lucy, turning it, for at least some rogue hours into a standing yelling cursing dancing bacchanal, was broken.

No one knew precisely why.

News of the murder was kept strictly confidential.

Moon Rivard knew some details, which he steadfastly refused to share with either Nina or Tom during their somber ride back from the wharf, where Penelope Royale had been embedded, under house arrest, for the night, with only two young women officers in charge of her.

No one else seemed to know anything.

And yet the streets had become deserted.

Nina looked at her watch:
 
twelve fifteen AM.

It was as though the midnight chiming of St. Mary’s cathedral bells had lifted the curse.

Everyone had come to whatever senses remained, and begun to skulk home.

No more rallies with flags and Bibles. No more shouting and running about.
 
No more dancing.

Just the pale moon overlooking the town and the quiet bay, and just the occasional flash of blue as local patrol cars crawled along the streets.

Nina remained persistent in her attempts to learn something, anything.

“How did this happen, Moon?”

But he, grim faced as she had never seen him, hands gripping the steering wheel, merely shook his head:

“Can’t say anything right now, Miss.”

“Is she dead?”

“Yes.
 
That’s the report.”

“How?”

“I can’t talk about it.
 
I don’t really know.”

“Where did it happen?”

“I can’t tell you that, Miz Nina.”

“Who did it?”

“Can’t say.”

“Do they know who did it?”

By this time the squad car had traversed most of the three miles between the wharf and Nina’s shack. She could see the light glowing in her living room, just behind the now permanently––it seemed––broken window, as Moon growled his rejoinder, or more like his supplication:

“Ms. Nina, we got a tough night in front of us, I think.”

She was quiet for a time, watching the streetlights crawl by, and becoming aware of what seemed a curious green glow that had spread over town, as though the deserted streets were now the result of some foreign gas settling on the pavement and not merely the onset of social sanity.

“I know we do, Moon.”

“So I gotta give you some orders now.”

“All right.”

“You and Tom go back and stay inside tonight. Do you both understand that? Whatever happened, has happened.
 
Ain’t nothing neither of you can do about it. Tom, you think you might stay here tonight, with Miz Nina? I mean, maybe sleep on the porch or something?”

“Sure.”

“It’s not that I think anybody’s gonna try to come round here.
 
But all kinds of crazy things are happening out there.
 
I ain’t seen nothing like this in Bay St. Lucy since––”

He did not have to mention the shootings at the mansion, all those years ago.

“—well, since a long time.”

“Moon, you really can’t tell us anything?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. Maybe by tomorrow we’ll all know something. So. Here we are. I’m gonna say good night to both of you now.”

“Goodnight, Moon.”

“Goodnight, Moon.”

She found herself thinking, stupidly, of a children’s book.

“You both gonna go up there and try to get some sleep, right?”

They watched him drive away.

They waited two minutes, pacing in a tight circle beneath the street light outside Nina’s porch. Then they got on her Vespa, with Tom driving, and puttered their way out toward Breaker’s Boulevard, heading for the sheriff’s office.

She had her arms tightly around him, her chin jutting up against his jacket.

She could still talk though.

“Tom, slow it down!
 
Slow it down!”

“All right!
 
I’m sorry!”

She could feel the pace decelerate.

Finally, she could hear better, and asked:

“How fast were you going?”

“I had gotten it up,” he said, “to twenty five.”

“Are you crazy?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Do you want to get us killed?”

“No.”

“I don’t want to be a vegetable!”

“I know.
 
It’s all right now, though.”

“How fast are you going now?”

“It’s around fifteen.”

“Okay, but keep it there. Do you think she’s really dead?”

He shook his head:

“I can’t see how.
 
She had fifty armed security police surrounding her.”

“Who could have done it?”

“Watch out—turning here!”

“Oh my God!
 
Be careful!”

“It’s all right.
 
I got it.”

“I’m getting dizzy. You shouldn’t take those turns at more than ten miles per hour.”

“I know.
 
It’s just my old gang days coming back.”

“I should have driven.”

“I’ll try and keep it down.”

“Who do you think could have done it?”

“Well, everybody would like to have done it. As for who actually did—your guess is as good as mine.”

There was a strange, somber scene at the sheriff’s office, which was located in the exact middle of downtown Bay St. Lucy.

It was the World of Late Night Revelry inverted.

Because prisoners, rather than being arrested and booked into the cells, as they might have been after a night’s drinking during early morning hours—were being disgorged from the jail, which vomited them forth at regular intervals, into the waiting arms of embarrassed family members, who stuffed them into station wagons and pickup trucks and drove them away.

Tom parked the Vespa at the edge of Magnolia Park, some fifty yards from the entrance to the jail itself.

They sat on a bench, secure behind one of the spreading live oak branches which, huge, ninety years old, and crawling along the ground, served as a reminder of as much permanence as Bay St. Lucy was likely to get this night.

They could, in short, not be seen.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“They’re letting prisoners go.”

“What prisoners?”

“Probably people they picked up earlier tonight.
 
All those gatherings, shouting matches, you know.”

“Yeah.
 
But why are they letting them go?”

Tom shrugged:

“They want the jail empty.”

She nodded.

They waited.

It took perhaps ten minutes.

It was a non-descript patrol car, that pulled to the glowing doorway of the jail. Only one car.

“Wouldn’t they have needed more people involved in this thing, Tom, if it was a murder?”

“They wouldn’t want to call attention to themselves.
 
They don’t want a parade.”

“No.”

The car door opened.
 
Two officers exited either side of the front seat.
 
One opened the rear door, bent down, and emerged leading a hooded figure, so completely wrapped in a bright orange jump suit as to be unrecognizable.

“Who is that, Tom?”

“Can’t tell.”

Within ten seconds the figure was inside.

The building remained implacable.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“We could go home, back to your place.”

“Yes.”

“There’s probably not much good we can do here.”

“No.”

“Moon told us to stay home.”

“Yes.”

“We probably should have listened to him.”

“Yes.”

There was silence for a time.

“So what,” she asked, “do we do now?”

“I don’t know.”

“We have to,” she said, “find out who they’re holding.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she said, “right now, the way it is, we don’t know.”

He nodded.

“I guess that’s logical.
 
Look!
 
Who’s that?”

Another vehicle arrived, this one a large white van.

Jackson Bennett got out and walked into the jail.

“All right,” whispered Nina. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“What do you mean?”

“Whoever it is needs a lawyer. And he got Jackson.”

More vehicles began to arrive. First came a Megaventures' Security van.
 
Two men got out of it.

“Isn’t one of those characters the guy you beat up?”

“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head.
 
“They all look pretty much alike.”

Yet another car arrived, this one a dark blue limousine.

From this one a woman emerged, tall, bespectacled, beige-suited.

“Edie Towler,” whispered Nina.
 
“City Attorney.”

“This is all going kind of slow,” whispered Tom.

“Probably they’re being careful. If this woman was–

“—murdered.”

“I’m having such trouble saying that word.”

“Get over it.”

“Yes. Well, if she was in fact the
m
worded,
 
it’s a huge story.
 
Millions of dollars are at stake here.”

“Think again.”

“Why?”

“You’re too low.”

“More than millions?”

“Try a billion or so.”

“Are you sure about that, Tom?”

He shrugged.

“I have my sources.”

“Well. Anyway, they can’t let this get to be a water carnival.
 
Whoever did the killing has got to be booked, fingerprinted––”

“Arraigned first, then fingerprinted. You’re telling me my business here.”

“Yes,” she answered. “Well, anyway, they probably want to get this person out of town as quick as possible, so they can hold him somewhere safe.”

“Him?”

“I always think ‘him’ when something terrible happens.”

“Well, you may be right.”

“Anyway, when word gets out that somebody has killed Eve Ivory––”

“There’s going to be celebrating in the streets.”

“Why, Tom?”

“Why? Why? Because the town is saved, that’s why.”

“How do you mean?”

“Because the lineage ends with that woman! The situation reverts to what it was when you went to New Orleans!”

“But—but—a town can’t profit from a crime!”

“Of course it can! An
individual
can’t profit from a crime; but a town? Towns only exist in the first place because of crimes. If there weren’t crimes, there wouldn’t even be any towns. Our town is just committing its crime a little bit later, and with some poor proxy to act as a defendant, and, maybe, with a little bad luck, go to the gas chamber.”

“Tom, don’t––”

“Look!
 
Who’s that?”

The door opened and a tall, trench coated figure emerged.

“That,” Nina whispered, “is Jackson Bennett. Come on.”

“You think he’ll talk to us?”

“He’ll talk to us.”

They were halfway across Sans Souci Park before he saw them.

He stood, incredulous, as they approached.

“Nina?”

“Yes, Jackson.”

“What are you doing here?
 
And who is this?”

“This is Tom Broussard. He’s a writer and a friend of mine.”

“All right, but Nina, you shouldn’t be here!”

“What’s going on, Jackson?”

“I can’t tell you that!”

“Sure you can.”

“No, I’m an officer of the court! I’ll be disbarred if I talk about this!”

“Everybody’s going to know in the morning anyway.”

“But not from me!”

“Is it true, Jackson? Is Eve Ivory dead?”

“Nina, I just can’t––”

“Jackson, you remember that first year, when you didn’t think you were going to make it as a lawyer, and Frank kept encouraging you, and encouraging you?”

He was quiet for a time, and then said:

“Of course I remember that year, Nina. But even Frank wouldn’t––”

“We could go over to your office right now.
 
Nobody would know.”

“But––”

“Frank, I’ll be honest with you. A month ago, I wouldn’t have cared. A month ago I was just retired old Nina. And you invited me to your office.”

“Yes, I know.”

“And you persuaded me to go to New Orleans.”

“Yes.”

“The elder statesperson of the town, you wanted to call me, and didn’t, only because you didn’t want to say the word ‘old’.”

A smile played around his lips.

“You aren’t that old.”

“But I’m in this up to my neck now, Jackson. My house was vandalized; this woman stood in my living room no more than three hours ago, and told me I was responsible for everything that was happening around town.”

“That’s not true, of course.”

“Maybe not. But true or not, I have a right to know what’s happened.”

He was silent for a time.

In the distance, more sirens could be heard.

“I guess,” he said, quietly, “you may be right. The two of you be in my office in five minutes.”

Then he got in his car and pulled away.

The rain had begun again shortly before one A.M.
 
Nina could hear it softly pattering on the roof of Jackson’s office, and she could imagine in impinging with its little needle droplets on the December garden plots of Bay St. Lucy, readying them for spring plantings.

It was
, she found herself thinking,
so strange, to be seated in this same chair, the one where she had received her ‘commission’ to fly over to New Orleans and perform the ‘easy’ task of listening to a non will.

So much had happened since then—

The small office then had been bathed in morning sunlight; now it glowed in what seemed almost like candle light, the green-shaded lamps humming along with a scarcely perceptible buzz of central heating.

They were all seated; Tom beside her, Jackson, large and imposing, behind his desk.