Sea Change (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 1) (25 page)

Something that did not belong.

And yet did.

Nina knelt beside it.

“Look, Moon.”

“Aw, man.
 
Why you have to show me that?”

“Because it’s probably a witness.
 
It may be the only witness.”

It was a rag doll, with button eyes, and a candy stripe dress.

On one of the white strips, visible in the beam of the flashlight, stenciled in black, were the letters:

E.R.

“Do you want to take that doll with us?”

She shook her head and put the doll back where she had found it.

“No.
 
No, Moon, let’s let it stay buried here.”

“But what do we do now?”

She straightened up.

“We go back.
 
And hope Margot’s calendar is right and that we haven’t missed Christmas. And then we wait for Tom Broussard.

She turned, began making her way back toward the entrance to the tunnel, and said softly:

“It’s time for the town to meet its past.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:
 
DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT MEANS, TO MISS NEW ORLEANS?

“If I didn’t know the ending of a story I wouldn’t begin.
 
I always write my last line, my last page, my last paragraph, first.”

Katherine Anne Porter

She arrived back at her house at five P.M.

There was nothing to do but wait.

This was easier than she had expected it to be.

It was not like the morning, when the thing had struggled to be born, had fought to come out of her.

It was out now.

She knew precisely what had happened.

She knew what had happened two nights ago.

She knew what had happened thirty years ago.

And here she was, Tiresias.

The blind prophet.

“Mine is a terrifying gift. For what use is knowledge, if it only breeds misery?”

Still, this did not bother her as she made her customary salad, poured the glass of white wine, and turned on The Metropolitan Opera Broadcast.

Turandot.

She checked the clock.

Five forty.

There was no way Tom could be back before ten.

Someone did come, though, around six, or just at the beginning of Act Two.

Two ponderous sedans this time.

So many cars, she found herself musing, all wanting to come see poor little Nina Bannister.

Normally she would have risen, run over to the landing, and opened the door, happy to receive visitors.

That was not the case now.

She did not dread their coming, either.

There was just a kind of numbness about the whole thing.

Edie Towler entered first, Jackson Bennett behind her.

In short order they were all seated around her living room table.

Like the group last night, that she had thrown out.

She could not throw these people out, though.

She did not, on the other hand, have to offer them coffee.

Strictly speaking, Edie ranked higher on the municipal scale than Jackson did.

Jackson, strictly speaking, was not on the municipal scale at all.

So it was only right that Edie spoke first.

“Nina, what in God’s name have you been doing?”

Nina actually knew nothing to say to that, and so she simply shrugged, and sipped from what was, she realized, her second glass of wine.

Edie continued.

“I mean this, Nina. We need to know what’s is going on.”

“Yes,” she answered.
 
“We do.”

Silence.

Then Jackson:

“Tom Broussard showed up at the airport in Biloxi a few hours ago, with orders, signed by five city councilmen and women, that he was to be taken to New Orleans and escorted, with all due speed, to The Quarter.”

“Yes.”

“Nina, were you behind this?”

“I was.”

“Who is going to pay for that trip?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t––”

Edie now:

“Nina, are you all right?”

“No.
 
Yes.
 
I’m not sure.”

“Do you need a doctor?”

Again, no answer forthcoming.

They were asking such hard questions!

“You know, Nina––”

Which one of them was talking now?

Or did it really matter?

“—we were attempting to have the psychological examination of Macy Peterson this afternoon at three o’clock.”

“So I had heard.”

“Macy refused.”

“Really.”

“She said she wasn’t crazy.
 
She said she was quite rational. That she remembered everything that happened that night. And that she would so testify, when the time came.”

“Good for her.”

“Good for––”

Edie now leaned forward:

“What do you think you’re doing? You are in no position to advise this woman!”

“Well.
 
Somebody needs to.”

“I take that,” Jackson Bennett said quietly, “as an insult.”

“Take it, Jackson, any way you want.”

Silence for a time.
 
Then Edie:

“You still believe, Nina, that Macy Peterson did not commit this murder?”

“That’s what I believe.”

“Then who did?”

“Someone else.”

“Obviously.
 
But who?”

“I’m not quite ready to say.”

“Why not?”

“Because you wouldn’t believe me. You already know who committed this murder. It’s all snug and tucked away in your minds. And since you can ‘see nothing that does not answer,’—well, who am I to waste your time? You’re very happy with the truth as you see it. It fits the town’s needs.
 
And if it means poor Macy has to be locked away as a homicidal maniac––”

“That’s not what anybody’s calling her!”

“Oh really? What do we call people who go crazy and commit murder?
 
High strung?”

“You’re being unfair to everybody.”

“Which is so much harder, isn’t it, than being unfair to one little insignificant person.”

“No one is saying Macy is insignificant!’

“Really? So are both of you planning to visit her when she’s locked away in Bedlam?”

Silence for a moment.
 
Then:

“Macy is going to be well taken care of, Nina.
 
But she has to co-operate.”

“She is co-operating.
 
She’s telling the truth.”

“She’s saying that another person killed Eve Ivory!”
  

“Yes, she is.”

“But Nina, that theory simply does not,” Jackson thundered, “hold water!”

“It’s not supposed to hold water. It’s not a damn.
 
It’s a cave.”

“What does that mean?”

“It starts down under the house, under all the houses, under the town itself.
 
It starts way down deep, where all the ladders go. We were just never willing to go down there.”

“I don’t understand,” said Edie, “what you’re talking about.”

“No.
 
You don’t.”

“But, if you wouldn’t mind being serious for a minute––”

“I’m being serious.
 
I’m being very serious.”

“Then tell us, how did this phantom person come to have Macy’s letter opener?”

Upon hearing which, Nina rose, sipped the last of her wine, and said:

“From us.
 
Right in front of us. And under our very noses.”

Then she went into the kitchen and started washing dishes.

She listened to the door bang shut as Edie and Jackson left.

The opera ended at nine o’clock.

Rain began at 9:30.

Tom Broussard arrived at ten.

He had on a black slicker.

She could see by his expression as he entered that he had found out what she needed to know.

“Do you want some whiskey?” she asked.

He sat down, shaking his head.

“No.
 
Wouldn’t help.”

They were both quiet for a time.

The rain drummed harder on the tin roof of the shack.

“You found out, didn’t you?”

He nodded.

“Yes.
 
I found out.”

“How?”

“Two guys I was in with, were in The Family.”

“Which Family?”

“It doesn’t matter. Not really.
 
Those kind of guys, if you do time with them, if they get to trusting you.
 
Sometimes they’ll help you out.”

“Did it take you long to find them?”

“Half hour.
 
The Quarter is small.”

“How long would it have taken you in Chicago?”

“Half hour.”

“Ok.”

There was only the rain, and the sound of Tom, “breathing like dolphins,” as Dylan Thomas wrote, and looking at the wall, without seeming to see it.

“It wasn’t big crime, was it?”

He shook his head:

“No.
 
It wasn’t big crime.
 
It was little crime.”

“So it was––”

“Yeah.
 
That’s who it was.”

“And now she’s––”

“Yes.
 
Yes, she is.”

More silence, and then:

“Do you have a car, Tom?”

“Yeah.
 
Rented one.”

“We have to go to Margot’s.”

“I know.”

“We can call the police from there.”

He nodded:

“Well.
 
Let’s do it then.”

Nina put on her rain gear, turned out the light, and followed Tom Broussard down the stairs.

Margot’s shop was aglow, but about to close.

She was huddled in a colorless robe as she opened the door.

“What is going on?” she asked.

“Call the police.”

“What?”

“Call the police.”

“Why, Nina?
 
Nothing is wrong here!”

“That’s not true.
 
Call the police.”

“Nina, you’ve been so strange these last days.”

“I am a prophet new inspired.
 
Call the police.
 
Call all the police. Call them now. Call them right now,
 
Margot. And call Jackson Bennett. And
 
call Edie Towler.
 
Call them now.”

So saying, Nina walked into the garden and sat down to wait.

The shop filled slowly. First came one of the deputies; then Moon Rivard himself, then another deputy, then Edie Towler, then Jackson Bennett.

Then assorted others.

They were all there in the garden, candles burning in the corner vases, rain drumming ever heavier.

It was
, Nina thought,
like a midnight mass.

There had been rumblings, mutterings.

What does she think she—

She’s gone crazy, or at least she—

She won’t talk to anybody, and, since this afternoon, she—

But they were all there in the shop.

All the police and all the authority anyone could want.

There simply out of respect for her.

For Nina Bannister.

And now it was time.

She looked at her watch.

Eleven o’clock.

Jackson Bennett approached her, looked down, and asked:

“Nina.
 
What is this?
 
Why are we here?”

She breathed deeply, took from the lining of her pocket a single sheet of paper that Tom had given her upon his arrival from New Orleans, and handed it to Margot Gavin, saying simply:

“Read this.”

Margot did.

Then she did again, and she began to understand.

“What is––”

“You have to go get her, Margot.”

“But does this mean––”

“Yes.”

“Oh my God!
 
All this time?”

“Yes.”

“But she was here, and––”

“—and she knew everything. Now go get her, Margot. She has to come home, to Bay St. Lucy.
 
Go up and get her.”

Margot disappeared into the staircase that led up to the apartments.

She was gone two minutes, no more.

She came back down, opened the door wide before her—and ushered into the room her boarder, the woman they had all known as Mrs. Wilson—

––but who was really, of course, the elder Robinson daughter.

The daughter known as Emily.

The daughter who had not run away to New York.

And had not died of a drug overdose.

The daughter who had murdered her parents.

And the daughter who had murdered Eve Ivory.

“It’s time,” said Nina, staring straight into a face with no expression, “to tell us what you’ve done, Emily.”

Emily Robinson had no expression at all as she stared into the flashlight beam that Moon Rivard held trained on her face.

The only expression worth noting at all, for that matter, was Nina’s.

She was crying.

CHAPTER NINETEEN:
 
CHRISTMAS

“They can’t yank a novelist like they can a pitcher.
 
A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him.”

Ernest Hemingway

The following morning, Bay St. Lucy received itself back, as a Christmas present.

The day dawned startlingly clear.

Presents were opened at daybreak, of course, and by ten P.M.—all required relatives having been visited—the children had been let loose on the
 
streets, where the younger ones could show off their Micro-Blasters, Video-Blasters, GI Joe Cannons, Thermo-Nuclear Ray Guns and other gifts associated with the Spirit of Christmas.

The older ones had been given real guns, of course, and could pass them back and forth over the fenders of pickup trucks, while planning hunting trips.

Margot’s shop had transported itself magically back in time, and was now Bob Cratchet’s living room on Christmas morning.

Everyone was there.

Allana was there, crying; Tom and Penelope were there, crying; Jackson Bennett and his wife were there, crying—

––and precisely at ten o’ five, Macy Peterson and Paul Cox arrived, not crying.

Laughing.

For Macy, all charges against her had, one hour previously, been dropped.

As for what had happened, that was all a-tumble in the field of mass confusion.

Emily Robinson had apparently confessed everything, rants of bitterness against the town mixing with cries against the unjustness of life, her parentage, the horrible creature that had grown in her womb and then been taken away from her—and the fact that she would never see the immense amount of money she had spent most of her life expecting.

And Nina was a school teacher again, the entire shop having turned into her classroom.
                       

“But what was this humming thing that put you onto her?” asked Margot.

“Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?”
 
She didn’t. She told you, didn’t she, that she planned to go to New Orleans, because she’d never been there before?”

“Yes, she did.”

“But,” said Nina, “at the shower she talked about Maurice’s Antique Shop. As though she went there often.”

“Which she did,” Margot said, “growing up in New Orleans.”

“But what I don’t understand,” asked Macy, “is what she did as a young girl.
 
And how she could have been kept out of prison.”

“Tom explained some of that to me,” said Nina.
 
“What happened was this. Emily Robinson and her younger brother Arthur hated their parents, who must have made their life hell.
 
They tolerated it though until Emily became a teenager.
 
She took lovers, I suppose, probably sneaking through that old tunnel to meet them.
 
She became pregnant. Her father must have been outraged, and her mother, too––”
         

“—and so,” added Margot, “a horrible incident happened. She wound up shooting both her parents.
 
The servants, though, or someone else, made sure that no police were called.”

      
Two black sedans did come,” Nina continued.
 
“The one a hearse. The other to whisk the children to New Orleans. Where they continued to grow up as virtual prisoners. In the care of some relative or other, who knows?”

Margot kept up the tale:

“Arthur had seen the killings. And he was never quite right again.
 
His sister continued to live with him, caring for him.
 
Finally she was his nurse, as the other relatives died away.”

“A Rose,” Nina said softly, “for Emily and Arthur.”

“So tell about the legal matters,” asked Macy.

“It’s pretty clear,” said Nina. “Homer Baron Robinson had been a traditionalist, so he made his will out to Arthur and not Emily.
 
He wanted the money and land holdings to go to his male heir.
 
But Arthur could only inherit after his sixteenth birthday. By that time he had been adjudged insane.”

“Why didn’t Emily simply inherit at that point?”

“There was no “insanity” provision. Emily could not inherit until Arthur died. That was it. So the will remained in probate.
 
Emily waited, and waited. She may have thought about killing her own brother, but she never hated him the way she did her father. He did die of natural causes though, leaving her—finally, she must have thought—an immensely rich woman.”

“Except,” said Margot, “there was a fly in the ointment.”

“Eve Ivory,” chimed in Macy.

“Yes,” Nina continued. “After learning of Emily’s pregnancy, Homer Baron Robinson secretly amended his will.
 
The money was to go first to Arthur, and then to Emily’s child. The family attorneys knew this, but had been told to inform no one else.”

“Emily,” Margot added, “had her child and then had it sent away.
 
She knew nothing of it, save its gender.”

“So upon hearing of the will, and learning that Eve Ivory was the beneficiary,” Nina continued, “Emily was as shocked as everyone else.”

“All that waiting,” said Margot, “for nothing.”

“But by now, after all those years,” Nina continued, “she was desperate. Her daughter had never meant anything to her, except horrible memories of her parents’ hatred.
 
She decided to come here, and merely wait.”

“In my bed and breakfast,” said Margot, with a bit of pride.”

“Yes,” Macy continued, “because your bed and breakfast is the center of the city.”

“ She just had to,” Nina said, “plant herself in the garden like an ivy vine, and listen.”

“She let,” Margot went on, “her estranged daughter do all the tough work for her. All the zoning matters, the land matters—it took a month but finally it was all tied up in a neat blue ribbon, ready to be sold to Megaventures.”

“All she needed to do was murder her daughter, find a scapegoat to take the blame, and the will would finally revert to her.”

“And, as beneficiary, she could sell to Megaventures just as easily as Eve Ivory ever could have.”

“And that’s what she would have done,” said Margot.
 
“She was set to leave town on Christmas day.
 
She would have flown to the Azores or wherever else she wanted to, and sign the contract.”

“So the community would have been gone,” said Macy.
 
“Nina was right”

“If we had sold you out,” said Margot, “we would have been cutting our own throats.”

“But what,” asked Macy, “about my letter opener?”

“Very simple but very smart,” answered Nina. “Emily Robinson observed very closely at the night of the shower.
 
She saw the letter opener, realized that she could use it as a murder weapon, and also realized that the whole community had seen Penelope and Tom give it to you, Macy.
 
She also realized that the shower was chaos, as all showers are.
 
While people were milling around and handling gifts, as always happens, she slipped the letter opener out of its box and put it in her own purse. Then she just closed the box, figuring that you would take it home with you—it being one of the more special gifts—and also figuring that you wouldn’t open the box again until after Christmas. Which is the way it actually worked.”

But,” Macy asked, “how could she know that Eve Ivory was going to call me that night, to threaten me?”

Nina shook her head:

“Macy don’t you see?
 
That wasn’t Eve Ivory at all who called you. It was Emily Robinson. You, having never actually spoken with Eve Ivory, had no way of telling the difference.”

“My God.”

“And as for the tunnel, of course Emily Robinson knew about it.
 
She had played in it as a child.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“No one else could, either.
 
But it worked perfectly for Emily.
 
Having sat here for two weeks listening to the town gossip, she knew all about the possible affair between Eve and Paul. And she knew you would have been the logical suspect.
 
So she set you up perfectly.”

Then there was silence for a time.

Finally Margot said, quietly:

“Now we’ve escaped from absolute ruin.
 
From no longer being a community.
 
And, instead of looking for new places to live, we’re about to celebrate two weddings.
 
Yours and Paul’s, Macy, and Tom’s and Penelope’s.”

Cheering for Tom and Penelope.

Tom said:

“She is, I finally realized after spending time with her these last weeks, the only woman who knows more words than I do.”

General laughter.

Silence again, then, from Margot:

“You were the only one who believed, Nina.”

And from Macy:

“I wasn’t even sure myself.
 
I thought I was going crazy.”

“No,” said Nina, shaking her head.
 
“You’re just in love. It’s like the fella says:
 
“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, such shaping fantasies, that apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends.”

“We were dealing with madmen, all right,” said Margot, “but Macy wasn’t one of them.”

“No.
 
She wasn’t,” said Nina, quietly.

Margot continued:

“I remember that night at your house, Nina.
 
You threw us out.”

“Well.
 
I was too brusque.”

“No. I’ll never forget what you told us. And it was what we all needed to hear. We had stopped believing in each other.”

“You taught us, Nina,” said Macy.

“You taught us.
 
Like you always have.”

They were silent for a time, and then Paul Cox said:

“We’re going to get the school, Nina.
 
It’s a certainty now.”

“I’m glad, Paul.”

“There’s just one other thing:
 
I’m going to make a proposal to the school board next week. A proposal concerning the name.”

Silence for a time, and then:

“I’m going to propose that Bay St. Lucy’s high school be named Nina Bannister High School!”

“Here Here!”
         

General cheering, and then a general clamor for Nina.

“Speech!
 
Speech, Nina!”

“Speech!
 
Speech!”

She was in the circle of her friends.

The circle of her community.

What could she say?

For they were a community after all.

And she had helped them see that.

What could she say?

She got to her feet.

She looked at Bay St. Lucy smiling around her—and she said the right thing, of course.

A lady always does.

THE END

“Writing every book is like a purge; at the end of it one is empty…like a dry shell on the beach, waiting for the tide to come in again.”

Daphne Du Maurier