Sea Change (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 1) (7 page)

––but no such happy children had existed in the Robinson house.

In that huge sepulcher of a house, silent ghostlike children had existed.

Hardly appearing.

Privately educated.

And where had all that money come from?

Various people she’d known during her life had claimed to hear the gunfire, which, later accounts verified, must have come at around two A.M.

Some people said two limousines had pulled into the circular driveway.

Gangsters from New Orleans?

Or from Chicago?

But who in Bay St. Lucy would have been awake to see them?

She remembered sitting down to breakfast, and Frank, solemn as a monk, saying:
 
“Something very bad has happened; nobody is sure what.”

And, yes, something very bad indeed had happened.

She finished her run, sat on the beach for a time watching lightning trace its golden maze-like slivers through a dark blue thunderhead that billowed far beyond the oil platform.

Then, quite hungry for dinner—the chili dog “au jus” had not been bad at school, but the tater-tots “du jour” were not up to the chef’s usual superb performance and the banana pudding was rancid—she made her way toward her shack.

The days were getting shorter.
 
There was a dim gray light in her kitchen as she turned on the small Bose radio, decided against whatever music and banter seemed to be coming out of it, put a disc in the cd player, and listened to the opening strains of Verdi’s
I Vespri Sicilliani
as she Furled and Unfurled her cat.

She made and ate dinner, then went out on the deck to watch the ocean.

The tide was coming in. The swells grew, and seemed to be coming closer, closer to the pier posts holding her up.
 
Beyond these swells, lightning became sharper and brighter, the clouds more mammoth, huge cotton balls that had somehow been drenched in ink.

It was eight thirty when, dishes washed, she got into bed and opened the mystery she was reading.

It was nine o’clock when she heard the pounding on the front door.

Was she dreaming?

It continued.

What in heaven’s name?

“Yes?” she found herself shouting.

“Ms. Bannister?”

A boy’s voice.

A teenager.

What was a teenager doing at her door at nine o’clock in the evening?

What had happened?

“Yes?” she repeated, rather stupidly.

“Ms. Bannister?
 
It’s Tommy Boyd.”

“Yes, Tommy?”

“Ms. Peterson sent me.”

“Macy Peterson?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She got out of bed and opened the door:

“Hello, Tommy.
 
Now what is this about?”

“Ms. Peterson sent me.”

“Why?”

“She said to tell you she’s sorry to bother you, but she really needs to see you.
 
She’s down at the rock pier fishing for crabs—and she says she’s got something really important to tell you.”

“All right.
 
Hold on, and I’ll be right with you.”

There was nothing left to do but go back inside, get her windbreaker—because the breezes had freshened now with the approaching storm—and follow Tommy whatever his name was, down the stairs and into his Volkswagen.

“Is Ms. Peterson all right?” she asked.

“I think so.
 
I don’t really know.
 
I sometimes run errands for her since she doesn’t have a car.
 
She bikes to school you know.”

“Yes.”

“She just called our place about an hour ago, asked my dad if he would mind me coming to get you and take you to the pier.
 
He didn’t mind.”

“No, of course not.
 
And you say she’s crabbing?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Curiouser and curiouser.

“Did she seem—all right when you talked to her?”

“Well, actually––”

“Yes?”

“—actually she seemed kind of upset.”

Oh damn, Nina did not say.

What was going on now?

She was dropped at the foot of the stone pier, which was just what its appellation described and could not have been described more accurately, no matter how many words were used to do so—except that one could have added its length, over a quarter of a mile, and the fact that it was buttressed on each side by huge red slabs of rock, upon which and through which the great waves roared and sifted.

Bay St. Lucy lacking a wooden fishing pier, this jetty—which is what the townspeople called it—was the only access for fishermen without a boat, to the slightly deeper reaches of the sea.

Nina slipped slightly on the moss-covered cement, feeling spray douse her face and watching somewhat regretfully the receding tail-lights of Tommy’s car.

“What in heaven’s name is Macy doing out here?”

The great rocks did not answer, nor did the waves crashing against them, nor did the pole-lights marking fifty foot intervals of cement and making the sea glow green beneath them.

“What is going on with her?”

Macy had seemed fine today. More than fine.
 
Bubbly with enthusiasm.
 
What could have happened during the afternoon that—

––well, no need for further speculation.

––for there was Macy herself, huddled in a yellow plastic raincoat, sitting not on the jetty itself but in a niche between two of the great rocks.

“Macy!”

She looked up as Nina approached.

“Oh Nina!” she shouted, trying to make herself heard above the combined roaring of wind and breakers.
 
“I’m so sorry to bother you!
 
Were you ready to go to bed?”

“No,” Nina said, not lying, since she had in fact been
in
bed.
 
“But what is happening?”

“I sent Tommy for you!”

“I know.”

“He’s a wonderful boy; he and his family help me sometimes, when I need things.”

Well, wonderful
, thought Nina.

And enough of that.

Now what the hell is going on?

“What has happened, Macy?” Nina asked, in lieu of asking, What is going on?
           

“I come out here, sometimes.”

“I can see that.”

“It’s just—well, sometimes it seems like the only thing to do.”

“Well, when you really think about it,” replied Nina, crouching near the edge of the jetty, her clothes quite drenched now, whether from the splashing of the waves or the first thin but relatively effective sheets of rain from the squall making its way shoreward and straight along the rock pier, “when you really think about it, most people never do think of anything to do in their lives, in the world whatever, except sit outside at night in a thunderstorm two or three hundred yards from shore on a huge rock pier getting soaked to the skin and catching crabs.
 
I mean, what else
could
one do?”

“Are you mad at me?”

“Too wet.”

“I know.
 
I should have thought about the rain.”

“It’s all right. We’ll have plenty of time to think about it now.
 
What is it, Macy?”

“There was no one else to talk to.
 
Except you.”

Macy continued to crab.
 
She held, quite gingerly, a string in her hands. At the other end of the string, submerged beneath eddying water and creviced between the cracks of rocks, illuminated green by a torch shining from the jetty, was a chicken breast impaled upon a wire.

From time to time, crabs, hidden in the rock fissures, would make their way to the meat and fasten onto it, claw-forcing it into their horrid-monster like thing that was a mouth, oblivious to the fact that they were being pulled ever so carefully out of the ocean.

Nina found herself watching the meat, looking for the dark approaching shadow that would have been a crab.

Watching for a time as she’d always watched––

––even as a little girl, for she had always loved the jetty.

Though not so much in rain.

“Macy, are you crying?”

“I don’t know.
 
It might just be the spray.”

“What is it, Macy?
 
You’ve got to tell me.”

“Oh, Nina––”

There was not silence, one would have been dead wrong in saying that; but the complete cacophony of elemental sounds, wave roarings, rain poundings, mournful wailing of some huge tanker a quarter mile at sea—all of these things did lack, at least for a few seconds, a human voice.

Every other manner of audibility was there, and louder than normal.

“Tell me.
 
Tell me now.”

“All right,” Macy answered, not telling her.

“Tell me, Macy!”

“Oh Nina!
 
Nina, I’ve given up teaching!”

“What?”

“I signed my letter of resignation late this afternoon!”

“No!
 
No, Macy, I can’t believe it!”

“It’s true!”

The rain intensified, but neither woman was particularly aware of it, since Nina, having scrambled crablike herself down to where Macy was crouched, the two of them were now embracing.

They did so for a while; when Nina pulled away she could see, in the glow of the electric torch, that the tears behind Macy’s glasses had nothing to do with storm or breakers.

“What has happened?”

Macy was almost sobbing.

“It—it all happened this afternoon.
 
I never expected it!
 
It was such a shock!”

“What?
 
You’ve got to tell me!
 
Why are you resigning?”

“Because––because––”

“Tell me, Macy!”

“Because it’s in the rules.
 
The old school rules!”

“What is in the rules?”

“You can’t work for a principal—that you’re married to!”

“That rule went out decades ago, Macy!”

What had she said?

Oh.

Oh!

“What did you say?”

“We’re getting married, Nina! Paul asked me to marry him!”

“Then—then this is a
good
thing!”

“I think so!”

“I thought it was a
bad
thing!”

“No.
 
Good.”

“Oh, Macy!
 
How long has this been going on?”

“Since last April.
 
He asked me out to dinner one night, and we went over to Biloxi, so as not to be seen here in town.
 
And then he––”

“I don’t want to know.”

“Are you sure?”

“Maybe later. No. No, never. But—how did you keep it such a secret?”

“It was hard, Nina!”

“It had to be.”

“Oh, it was!
 
But—finally, he told me this afternoon, that it had to end. He’s a traditionalist.
 
We shouldn’t be a secret anymore; and we should set a date; and—and then he gave me this!”

She held up her non crabbing hand.

“A diamond!”

“Yes!
 
Isn’t it beautiful?
 
I’m sorry it’s so wet!”

“Diamonds are impervious to wet, silly girl!”

“And Nina—there’s something I have to ask you.
 
I don’t want to embarrass you, but it’s awfully important.”

“Ask, Macy!”

“Well—you know that both of my parents have passed, and I’m an only child.
 
But—well, somebody has to––”

“Give you away?”

“That sounds kind of—well––‘inexpensive’.”

“Sell you?”

“That sounds––”

“I know how that sounds.
 
Listen, don’t worry about what to call it.”

“Would you?”

“I’d be thrilled.”

“It’s not like I’m asking you to be my mother––it’s just—oh, look!”

Nina did, and saw a shadow passing over the chicken moon that was the breast in the water.

“I think I’m getting a crab!”

“Careful.
 
Let him get his claws into it.”

“I know.
 
One second, two seconds––”

“When will the wedding be?”

“Sometime in February, we think.
 
Do you want to help us plan?”

“What would be better? I’d love it, Macy. I’m thrilled about the whole thing.
 
But what you said about teaching––”

Macy nodded, beginning to pull the string up, and with it, the crab, whose shell reflected blue-brown in the watery torchlight.

“I’ll have to quit here. But there will be other places.
 
Paul knows I love teaching. Oh! There it is! He’s a nice big one!”

“Here, you want me to pull the bucket out?”

“Yes!”

Nina found the silver chain wrapped conveniently around a metal spoke protruding from the cement behind them.
 
She pulled up the crab bucket, yanked open the net wire top, and watched as Macy, with a shake, dropped the crab inside.

“He’s your only one!”

“I know, said Macy, smiling.
 
“I hadn’t been at it long, before you came.
 
But he’s special.
 
I’m going to name him Troy.”
        

“Why Troy?”

“I don’t know.
 
But he’s very important to me; he’s my engagement crab!”

“What are you going to do with him?”

“Eat him.”

“Oh!
 
That’s so special!”

“I know.
 
But maybe we should go now, Nina.”

“That’s probably true; the rain seems to be getting harder.”

“Can we go back on your Vespa?”

Nina shook her head:

“No.
 
I came with Tommy, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right.
 
And he didn’t stay, did he?”

“Nope.”

“We should have asked him to, I guess.”

“Yes, we probably should have, Macy.”

The two women clamored off the rocks, the crab bucket, Troy within, between them.

Clouds and pounding wave-spray had obscured the coast, a quarter of a mile inward from them.