Sea Change (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 1) (6 page)

CHAPTER FOUR:
 
THE HIGH SCHOOL AND THE JETTY

“Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective’s struggle to solve a problem.”

Raymond Chandler

“In literature, as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.”

Andres Maurois

She reached the high school at precisely ten o’clock, entering to find the normal scene of bedlam that occurs in any high school at the hourly bell that sends the students storming into the hallways.
 

“Darn,” she muttered to herself, miffed that she, a veteran teacher, had let herself be trapped this way.

The first rule of teaching—at least high school teaching—was:

Never be trapped in the hallway with the students.

Frequently, she’d told herself that Tolstoy, and only in the most violent and dramatic portions of
War and Peace
(perhaps the beginning lines of the Battle of Borodino) could do justice to what actually transpired;
 
the football players hurling themselves against the lockers, bald-shaven coaches grabbing players, placing them in headlocks and, knuckles rubbing on their crew-cuts, shouting over and over again:

“Whaddya think, Suggs?
 
Whaddya think, Suggs?”

––this, whether the player’s name actually
was
“Suggs” or not.

She stood as clear from the mélange as possible, secreting herself in a niche she’d discovered years ago between the trophy case and a large paper mache anchor, which told the world that Bay St. Lucy’s denizens were “The Mariners.”

“Nina!”

Paul Cox, far handsomer and more efficient than any of the principals she’d ever worked for (all of whom either hid in their offices, or prowled the building getting in everyone’s way) approached like a vapor through the French and Russian troops dying on The Battlefield of High School Hallway and took her hand, smiling as he said:

“Macy tells me you’re talking to one of her classes!”

She shouted something as loud as she could, but couldn’t hear herself over the tumult of what seemed to be dozens of identical girls screaming into each other’s faces at the same time.

He nodded.

“Good.
 
Good.
 
Thank you so much for doing this!”

“–––––––––––––––––––,” she screamed.

“Yes, I think so too!”

I wonder
, she thought,
what I must have said
.

“Come on into my office for a minute.
 
Macy will be down in a second to get you. Besides, there’s something I want to show you!”

But I want to stay here
, she thought.
 

“Come on!”

She followed, amazed that the two of them were not trampled.

The office was, as usual, filled with sullen teenagers who’d missed something or forgotten something or done something or not done something and thus were all standing by the counter waiting to be dealt with.

Only after she and Paul were in the office itself, door closed securely behind them, could she feel safe.

How had she done this every day for forty years?

Paul was not a big man, but he exuded confidence.
 
Perhaps that confidence, and not pure muscularity, explained why he’d been one of the best quarterbacks in the high school’s history. Did the confidence cause this greatness, she wondered, or result from it?

No matter.

The main thing was he simply represented “PRINCIPALDOM”
 
in its purest form.
 
Starched white shirt, navy blazer, superbly tied club tie—the principal is your pal and such he was to everyone.

“Look at this!
 
We can unveil it now!”

She followed him toward a tripod standing beside one of the paneled walls, a towel hanging over it and covering what seemed to be a painting of some sort.

There was something birdlike about Paul Cox’s movements,
she found herself thinking. A delicate quality almost.
 
His high cheekbones, aquiline features, bright and inquisitive eyes—this was more an artist than a football player; yet somehow he’d managed to become both, as well as a visionary leader for the school.

“Look!”

He took the cover off.

“Oh my—Paul!” Nina exclaimed.

“Our new physical plant!
 
Elementary, middle, and high school, all conjoined.”

The scene painted before her seemed almost something from a science fiction novel.
 
There were the trees, sidewalks, dedicated and happy young people, and blue skies always associated with model developments as depicted by optimistic engineers working with good painters,
 
fanciful planners and—on occasion––ruthless bunko artists.

But here laid out before her was much more. This was not a school but a spaceport, with glass and chrome buildings sprouting high above the city, strange train like vehicles linking porches and archways, windows opening onto the brightest of ocean views, and light, light, everywhere light.

“Paul, this is fantastic!”

“I have,” he said, “been keeping it under wraps.
 
It was designed by a firm in New Orleans.”

“Is it a moonscape?
 
Or the next Disneyworld?”

“It’s our new school.”

“How could it be, Paul?
 
This thing would cost a billion dollars.”

“Not at all. We can get it at bargain rates:
 
a hundred and forty million.
 
And we’re going to have that much, from what I hear.”

She was silent for a time, wondering how many seconds after Arthur Robinson’s demise it had actually taken for everyone in Bay St. Lucy—from adults to children to senior citizens to pets and porpoises—to know the old man was dead.

“You’ve heard then.”

“First thing this morning.”

“Just out of curiosity, who told you?”

“One of the janitors.”

“So you knew it to be true.”

“Of course. I don’t spread rumors. Good luck in New Orleans.”

“You know about that, too?”

“Not much.
 
Just the sketchy details I’ve heard.”

“Which are?”

“You leave from here by private car at eleven fifty eight tomorrow morning. The city’s private jet flies you from Biloxi to New Orleans. You view the body at McWilliams funeral home sometime around noon.
 
You hear the official dispensation announcement at Raymer Peabody and Fontenot Law firm at two tomorrow afternoon.
 
And after you sign some documents, acting as the city’s representative, we’re all rich. That’s just the basics that are going around town. None of us really know any more details.”

“Well, thank you for telling me. I wasn’t as yet certain about the proper spelling of “Raymer.”

“It’s with an ‘E.’
 
I checked.”

“One can’t be too careful with such things.”

“No. So how are you and the rest of the city council going to divvy up the dough?”

“We’re planning on keeping it all for ourselves.”

There was a moment’s panic in his eyes, making her wonder if her sense of humor had become too subtle in her old age, or whether it actually was a sense of humor at all.

What if no one else in the world thought funny the same things she thought funny, and, instead of becoming charmingly eccentric, she was simply going insane?

But the panic disappeared from his face an instant after its inception, and his smile broadened.

“You wouldn’t be very popular.”

“We are now, though, going to be very popular, I suppose.”

“You are with me; and with the rest of the school board.”

“Where would this school be, Paul?”

“Right here.
 
We have the land. We just tear down what’s here now, and start from scratch.
 
It would all be state of the art, from the classrooms right down to the lunchrooms. People would come from all over the country to look at it.”

She shook her head.

“It’s a marvelous conception, Paul. You should be proud that you had this done.”

“We need it, Nina.
 
What we have now is…”

“I know. What we have now is what we had when I started teaching.
 
It wasn’t much, even then.”

“And now it’s about to fall down.
 
It will fall down, some day, and I don’t want to be under it when it does.
 
Nor my teachers.
 
Nor my kids.”

She liked the way he thought of them as
his
teachers, and
his
kids.

He saw them, she could tell, not as his underlings but as his responsibilities.

There was a difference.

“I wish I could promise you, Paul, that the city will choose to go this way. I can’t, you know.
 
Not everyone in town views education as the highest priority.”

He nodded.

“I know. But I talked to several people on the school board. We all thought it good to proceed with a drawing, a conception. I assume there will be a meeting when everyone in town makes various proposals.”

“More than one meeting.
 
I think we can all be sure of that.”

“Then we’ll get our chance.”

“Of course.”

“And when we do, we’ll have this to show you.”

“Yes.
 
And it’s truly impressive, Paul, it really is.”

“Can we count on your vote?”

“Of course.
 
You know that.”

“Good.
 
Because––”

“Nina!
 
Nina!”

Through a door suddenly flung open, rushed Macy Peterson completely out of breath.

“I’m sorry I’m late!
 
We had a few crises!
 
Are you ready? Sorry to interrupt, Paul!
 
Oh gee!
 
Did you show her?
 
What do you think of it, Nina?
 
Isn’t it great?
 
I know already where I’m going to be teaching!
 
Right over there, in that tallest building, the one with a view of the ocean.
 
So when do you think the money will be available?
 
Paul says the construction could start next spring!
 
And we wouldn’t have to have it all up front!
 
Just, what was it, Paul, twenty percent?
 
And the rates they’re willing to give us are phenomenal. Also, the state may be willing to kick in a certain percentage, given how the elections turn out next month.
 
But Paul is optimistic.”

She took two or three more sentences to run completely out of breath, but she had such little control of them that they made no sense at all.
 
They did have the positive aspect of emptying her lungs, and for a few instants, while she was filling them again, there was sufficient time and space for Nina to say:

“Good morning, Macy.”

Unable to answer, she nodded, smiling broadly.

Finally she was able to gasp:

“Good Morning!”

But by then, her principal, arms around both of their shoulders, was ushering them out of his office, through the reception area, and into a suddenly vacant hallway, saying all the time:

“BEOWULFBEOWULFBEOWULFBEOWULF!

With a light shove, he sent them both scampering on their way to class.

“Isn’t he a great principal?” said Macy.

“You’re lucky.”

“Do you think we’ll get the new school?”

“I don’t know, Macy.”

“What are our chances?”

“Well, I––”

She had no idea what to say to that, and was thus greatly relieved at the realization that the classroom lay before them.

They entered, she was introduced, and she made the points she’d made for decades; asked the same questions; received essentially the same answers––

––while the other half of her mind mused, remembered, feared, wondered—in short, fantasized.

This continued for the rest of the day.
 
Through the lunch given gratis to her in the cafeteria as payment for her morning’s services.
 
Through the Vespa ride home, through the hour’s closet shuffling necessary to plan for a trip—a mourning trip plus a business trip—to New Orleans, plus the tired beginnings and groggy awakenings from an afternoon nap—

––what time was it?
 
five o’clock now?

––plus her daily run/walk on the beach, bare feet deliciously sensitive to the cool, packed, wet and squiggly sand as she attempted to follow a silver sliver of foam that showed the farthest advances of the gentle swell that was now receding––

––through all of these activities it speculated.

What must have happened in that house?

No one had ever known precisely.

Now no one ever would.

The Robinson’s. An immensely wealthy family.
 
Roots quite shady.
 
Not a creole name, nor even a well-known Mississippi one. Homer Baron Robinson, the autocrat, standing solitary on the front balcony, looking out over Breakers Boulevard, and over the sea beyond, a sea which must have looked that evening in—what was the precise year?
 
She could never remember—the same way it looked now.

She and Frank, not long married, would take walks on the beach, and she would see him standing there.

He never waved.

That house. Magnificent then in splendor as it still was in decay. The great yard surrounding with its spreading live oak trees, branches two feet in diameter, spread across the ground as though they were spokes of an upturned umbrella.
 
Branches that could be climbed upon and sat upon and hidden within and leapt across by children ecstatic with youth and the ocean breeze—