Sea Change (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 1) (10 page)

“You need to come with me, ma’am.
 
Your home has been vandalized.”

She rode back to her place with the officer, who invited her to sit in the front seat.

“I thought I was supposed to be in back.”

“No, Ms. Bannister.
 
You can ride up here with me.”

“ I thought you were supposed to put your hand on top of my head and press me down.
 
So that I don’t hit my head getting in.”

“No, ma’am.
 
You’re all right the way you are.”

“What happened?” she asked, as the car wove its way through traffic.

“It’s not very serious.
 
Really.
 
It’s not very bad at all.”

“But what happened?”

“One of your neighbors heard it.”

“Heard what?”

“Some sounds.
 
And he looked out to check.”

Nina glanced into the rearview mirror; Jackson, Edie, and Margot were following close behind them in Jackson’s town car.

“You’re sure it’s only minor?”

“Oh yes, ma’am.”

“I just really don’t understand why—oh!”

They turned the corner.
 
She could see down Beach Lane to her house.

There, in her small parking area, flashing electric blue, was a squad car; young policeman with a flashlight creeping around the side of her house.

“What in heavens’ name is happening?”

“I wouldn’t worry, Ms. Bannister.
 
It’s only––”

“I know.
 
It’s only minor.”

Her house, she was relieved to see, was still intact.

The car stopped and she got out, looking up, partially blinded by the glare of flashing lights.

How long, she found herself wondering, before the helicopters begin arriving?

She looked at her bungalow.

The stairs seemed all right.

And one of the windows was completely all right.

It was the other one that had been shattered.

Well.
 
Fifty percent––

And then, of course, there on the wall between the good window and the ex-window, was that word, scrawled in black paint, slathered on by what must have been a thick brush, and shining radiantly in the glow of the flashing illumination.

She stood, open mouthed, wondering if someone had gotten the wrong house.

Several people were now beginning to converge on her.

The first was Margot, who, like she herself, was staring at the word, and said:

“Nice job.”

“Well,” she found herself agreeing, “at least you can read it.”

“They used a special kind of paint. Artists use it sometimes.
 
It glows.”

“It certainly does.”

“And that particular word is—well, it’s an old standby.
 
Something one can depend on.
 
Something unchanging.”

She could find nothing to say to that.

Margot was shaking her head now.

“It so reminds me of college days in Haight Asbury.
 
If I had a nickel for every time I wrote that word––”

This reverie was interrupted by the convergence of a second person, the town’s police chief.

“Nina Bannister!”

She turned and took the outstretched hand of Moon Rivard.

“Moon.
 
How nice to see you!”

“And you, Miz Nina.
 
Been a long time since we chatted.”

“It has, hasn’t it?”
 

“I think it was like two months ago at that thing the Methodist Church put on.”

“The pot luck.”

“Oooohh, yeah! Did you have some of that gumbo?”

“I don’t remember, Moon.”

“Well, you didn’t then. ‘Cause if you had, you’d have remembered. I kept trying to find out who’d made it, so’s I could get me the recipe.
 
Never could though.
 
Best shrimp gumbo I believe I ever eat.”

Bay St. Lucy was inhabited by a tripartite group of beings, each equally important to the town’s welfare and personality, each co-existing with great conviviality, none understanding the slightest thing about the other.

There were the sea people.

There were the artists.

And there were the pure Cajuns, who belonged properly in Lafayette, Eunice, New Iberia, and points west of New Orleans, but who had somehow drifted over here, much as flotsam and jetsam ebb back to the ocean in the wake of a tsunami.

He was no more than five foot eight, and seemed much shorter when standing beside Margot, who was continuing to gawk admiringly at the graffiti—but he had a thick, powerful chest—and his eyes gleamed gleefully when he spoke of the things all Cajuns love.

Food, women, drink, women, food, drink, women, dancing, music, food, drink—

––etc., etc.

A few neighbors had gathered, and were standing just outside the pool of lights thrown by the various vehicles. Two large dogs had banded together under her floor, which was a good twenty feet off the ground.
 
They were standing between the freezer and the charcoal grill, and were baying alternately and terribly, either at the meat stored in the freezer, or at Furl, who was trapped on the deck. Two policemen were now coming out of her house, speaking quietly to each other and writing things on small note pads that each carried.

“So how is retirement treating you, cher?” he said, breaking the silence with that comforting Cajun ‘cherie.’

“I certainly am, Moon. It’s not been as difficult adjusting as I thought it would be.
 
I walk on the beach and I work down at Margot’s shop. And then, of course, I’m on the City Council—the time goes by pretty fast.”

Then, for a few seconds, neither of them spoke.

Then, she said, gesturing at the broken window—

“So––little trouble, I guess?”

He reacted as though he were seeing both the window and the obscenity for the first time, and shrugged.

“Yeh.
 
Dey broke dat window, and dey painted dat word.”

“They did.
 
They certainly did.”

“You gonna have to get de window fixed.”

“And,” she added, “I guess I’ll probably have to find some way to get the word off of the wall.”

“If it’s the kind of paint I think it is,” added Margot cheerfully, “it can’t be removed.”

Moon nodded his assent:

“Oh yeh, de kids, dey teenagers you know, dey use dat stuff a lot when dey wan to paint up the water tower.
 
We can’t hardly get it off.
 
Usually just have to paint over it.”

“It’s good to know,” said Nina, “that people care enough about you to use good materials.”

Everyone looked at her.

No one said anything.

Her sense of humor, her sense of humor—

Of course it was astonishing, she told herself, that she still had a sense of humor.

How long would it last?
she found herself wondering.

“Any idea,” asked Jackson Bennett, who had now joined the group, “who did this thing?”

Moon nodded:

“Oh yeh.
 
Always de same.
 
Kids.
 
We have a lead on dem.
 
One of the neighbors saw de vehicle drive away.
 
And we had a car not far away.”

“You need to catch these kids. This is not funny.
 
Nina might have been inside.”

“Why sure.
 
Why sure.
 
Well, we gonna catch dem.”

“And,” Jackson added, “make them pay for all this.”

“Dey won’t pay demselves.
 
But de parents will.”

Another officer approached him.

Nina found herself surprised at the number of police officers who were employed by the city.

He listened as the officer whispered to him.

“What is the news?” asked Jackson to Moon, who had emerged from his brief meeting.

“You know anything?”

“Yeh we know something.
 
We caught ‘em.”

“You caught
 
the kids?”

“We caught de ladies.”

“The what?”

“The two ladies. Dey housewives. Dey had just come from this meeting at the gymnasium, and dey was mad.”

No one said anything.

“Did they have anything to say for themselves after you caught them?” asked Jackson.

“Yeh.
 
Dey say dey sorry.”

“Well that’s at least good to know.
 
They’re sorry for breaking her window, for painting this foul thing on her wall?”

“No,” answered Moon. “Dey say dey sorry dey didn’t burn de house down.”

Again, no one had anything to say.

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MANSION ON THE IVORY COAST

“A bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work.”

Author Unknown

“A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror.”

Carl Jung

For some time after that, nothing happened, except the town forgave Nina for not having done anything wrong.

The families of the two women who had vandalized her bungalow, being quite well to do, repaired the damage and paid to have the wall re-painted.

And that, for some time, was all that happened.

Then a great deal happened.

It was early November.
 
Nina had succeeded, as had most of the town, in putting the entire matter of
The Robinson Estate
not so much out of her mind entirely as in a small mental attic compartment, much as one used to store sweaters in warm weather.

One has not forgotten about them.

But there is always the possibility that, just this one year, winter will not come at all.

And so, at five thirty A.M., on a crisp pre-dawn in late autumn, she was taking her accustomed once-a-month fishing excursion with Penelope Royale.

Penelope Royale was the most ill-named woman in the world.
 
Her name was perhaps the most feminine and delicate one imaginable. Royale would have connoted British First Family, had not the accent fallen on the last syllable, which made it call to mind exotic casinos and tall women with cigarette cases, as well as kings, queens and ermine robes.
 
The name ‘Penelope’ was—well, it was simply ‘Penelope.’
 
Enough said.

Penelope. Wife of Odysseus. Soul of faithfulness and domesticity.

This woman, though, was not quite what the name implied.

She was a square block of granite, except harder.
 
Everything about her was square.
 
She was five feet tall and five feet wide and five feet deep.
 
Her mouth, the wrinkles on her forehead, the wrinkles on her chin, were all perfectly horizontal, like lines of latitude.

Nowhere on her body were there lines of longitude.

She was a latitudinal human being, with no use for the ups and downs in life.

She had flaming red hair, done in the manner of materials used in packing crates.

“Hold the––tip of the––rod higher in the––air.”

Penelope was also the only woman Nina knew who spoke only in obscenities.

It was a remarkable thing, when one thought of it, given the relative scarcity of dirty words in the language, as opposed to the overwhelming abundance of acceptable terms.
 
In the latter group, one had such things to choose from as “chair,” “the,” “obsequious,” “tuna fish,” “very,” “thunderstorm,” “run,”—

––there were really quite a lot of them.

––and for the former group there were only, well, the
a
word, the
b
word, the
c
word, the
d
word—and, when one thought of it––not even so many as all that.

The
e
word for example.

There was no
e
word.

Not even all of the letters in the alphabet had dirty words that could be attached to them.

So how was it possible for Penelope to be a continual cusser, a linguist incapable of admitting the acceptable to her verbal repertoire?

It must have taken, Nina had decided long ago—for she had known Penelope for years, since the woman’s expulsion from elementary school, and her expulsion from middle school, and her expulsion from high school—a special kind of dedication.
 
There were pilots who thought only of flying, and who could be seen walking around with their hand held out in space before them, turning and lifting and falling, palm up, palm sideways, palm level, palm falling––imitative of the motions of an aircraft, the mental pilot imagining updrafts and crosswinds and sea squalls and the like.

And in just such a way must Penelope have viewed the possibilities of expression. She saw cursing as pilots saw flying or baseball players saw hitting or loose women saw—well, no matter.

Suffice to say, it was her life.

“You’d––better keep the––rod tip in the––air!”

There were, of course, in almost every one of her sentences, words that, coming from someone else, might have seemed unobjectionable. The one just uttered, for example.
 
But it was Penelope’s genius to render, perhaps with the addition of a simple guttural ‘cluck,’ or the hardening of the line that was her jaw, or the squinting of her anthracitic eyes—to render once normal and rather boring words instantly obscene.

“You,” coming from her, had the same effect as the most vicious epithet coming from the most hardened Marine drill sergeant.

“Did you––hear––?
  
B––it! –– and ––
 
Or
 
G––will h––you!”

“I’m sorry.”

“––
 
––!”

“Ok, I’ll try.”

There were those who found this habit of Penelope’s to be rather off-putting—as Penelope herself was said by some to be rather off-putting—but Nina liked her, and had always done so, even when she’d been accused of savagely beating three members of the high school football team’s offensive line, only days before a District Championship Game.

She must have had, Nina always told herself, sufficient cause.

And if not, well, no matter.
Somebody
needed to beat up the offensive line, if only because of general principles.

So here they were, in something between a marsh and a bay, the water no more than two feet deep beneath them, trolling for red fish or trout or even the occasional flounder.

Penelope’s great passion in life, apart from cursing, was fishing.

How fortuitous
, Nina had always thought, that the two could have been so closely connected.

“––!
  
P––, ––, o, ––!
 
U––!”

“Okay,” Nina answered, reeling in a bit, then lowering the tip of the rod.

She could not help thinking, of course, about Eve Ivory. Events from more than a month ago had reminded her of letters received from the IRS.
 
“We are reviewing your returns; we will be in touch shortly with our findings.”

Nothing good to come of that.

And now Eve Ivory was the IRS of Bay St. Lucy.

Of course, there was the fact that the woman had seemed gracious in New Orleans, at the law firm.

What had she said?

“I wish only the best for Bay St. Lucy.”

Something like that.

But that was a terrible phrase, wasn’t it?

It was always the final sentence on letters of rejection.

“We wish you only the best.”

It was said to be—thank God, she did not know from personal experience—the final parting line of the middle aged man divorcing his now stranded at age fifty five wife:

“I wish you only the best, dear.”

Yeah.

Right.

A much better line––more appropriate for almost any occasion––would have been, “Hey let’s go out drinking!”

But, of course, Eve Ivory could hardly have been expected to say that.

“N––!
  
––, ––, ––, and G—Y––, don’t ––!”

“Ok, sorry.”

She turned a bit in the boat, watching the dot of a line disappear some sixty feet beyond the small wake, and, far beyond it, a ring of palm trees that outlined Broadwater Beach.

For it was within Broadwater Bay that they now found themselves.

“––?”

“Yeah.”

“––”

Now, back to thinking.

Jackson Bennett had been busy, of course.
 
Phone calls daily, letters of inquiry, attempts to find out as much as possible.

But his communications with Nina—over coffee, by phone, in chance encounters on the street—all sounded the same.

“We just don’t know anything yet.
 
All we can get from her attorney is mumbo jumbo.
 
‘Many matters to look into.
 
Complex legal situations.
 
Finally, ‘We will be in touch.’”

Which was pretty much the same as saying:

We wish you only the best.

Right.

If only––

––and she got a bite.

“Hey!”

The rod bent in her hands while the spinner hummed and line disappeared into the ocean.

“Where is he, Nina!”

“There!
 
Out there!”

“Okay, set the drag—are you listening to me?”

“Yes!”

“Set the drag on three!
 
Make him work for it a little bit!
 
I’ll come around!”

And there it was, the miracle happening again.
 
For Penelope could not curse while she was actually chasing a fish.

The damnedest thing
, thought Nina.

All of time was obscene, save for these few blissful moments ahead of them.

Don’t,
she told herself,
lose the damned fish
.

Of course now she herself was cursing––

“Don’t fight him!
 
Let him go a little!”

The reel in her hand still whirled like a miniature propeller; she found herself pulled forward in the chair on the boat’s stern, her hips braced against the seatbelt.

Pull back
, she told herself, woozy as the boat turned and slowed.

“Now hit it a little!”

She jerked.

“Just a little, Nina!
 
We don’t want to lose him!”

“He’s on, I think!”

“Maybe.”

“No, he’s on good, I can feel him.”

“All right!
 
Flip the drag switch to one!”

She did so, the line’s screech softening a bit as the pressure on her forearms increased.

Could she do this?

“What do you think it is?”

She turned slightly; Penelope, one hand on the steering wheel, was squinting back against the sun.

“Can’t tell yet.”

“Could it be a Great White Shark?”

“Maybe.
 
But you don’t usually see them in two feet of water.”

“But nature always has surprises, Pen.”

“Fish.”

“Ok.”

“Fight a little now; he may be getting tired of this.”

“Shall I reel in?”

“No.
 
No.”

The fish jumped; a flash of red, a splash of ocean.

“Hey, look!” she shouted.
 
“What is it?”

“Redfish!”

“Are you kidding me?”

She loved redfish..

She began to have visions:

Watching Penelope clean the thing back at the dock; plopping the filets into her portable ice chest, and then depositing them thirty minutes later in the freezer which sat beneath her blue efficiency shack.

“Bring him in a little more; can you still handle him?”

“Think so!”

“Need me to help?”

“No, my arms are ok.”

“Keep the rod tip up.
 
Look!
 
There he goes again!”

FLASH!
 
SPLASH!

“How big is he?”

“Eight pounds!
 
Maybe ten!”

“That’s a monster!”

“You’ll eat for two months.”

“You’re coming over, of course!”

“Try and stop me!”

They fought the fish for five minutes more, Nina’s wrists and arms aching too much to fight a great deal longer, and her heart pounding when they saw two other objects enter the scene.

These were dark brown shapes that seemed to be tearing at the mass of red.

“––!” said Penelope.

“What is it?”
         

“Sharks.”

“I thought you said there weren’t any sharks in two feet of water!”

“I said there were no great whites. These are dog sharks.
 
They’ll steal that redfish!”

“What can we do?”

“This.”

Penelope opened a compartment in the side of her boat.
 
She reached in, and pulled out a handgun, which gleamed oily-metal against the huge orange that was the rising sun.

“What are you going to do?”

“Watch.”

“Be careful with that––”

BLAM!

BLAM!

The water exploded in two volcanic atom bomb blasts of sea spray, shark meat, and brown kelp, which rained back down on an otherwise calm bay surface, in which, Nina could see, her redfish was still floating.

“That’s better,” growled Penelope, putting the still smoking gun away.

“What kind of gun is that?”

“Forty five automatic.
 
Sometimes it’s good for sharks.”

“So I see.
 
How did you keep from hitting the redfish?”

“Practice.
 
Hey. I think you can pull him in now.
 
He seems to be weakening.”

“He’s just scared to death, I think.”

“Maybe.
 
Anyway, let’s try to land him now.”

Nina tugged, and, her forearms, like spaghetti, finally succeeded in getting the fish within two feet of the boat.

––where Penelope gaffed the thing and stowed it safely in a compartment half filled with water.

“Whew!”

Nina dropped the rod and reel to her side, unlocked the belt, and threw herself on the bottom of the boat, metal side a nice support for her aching back.

What a wonderful boat this was!

It looked like a child’s portable swimming pool;
 
two feet deep, completely square, as was Penelope, and utterly devoid of dash and romance.

But it was perfect for shallow water fishing.

It could chug safely along in water no more than a foot deep, water disdained by tourists out for high adventure on the deep blue sea.

The redfish remained in her mind—along with various possibilities for frying it, broiling it, having it with just a bit of lemon and basil, etc., etc., until Penelope’s flat skiff—for what else was it, really?––had chugged its way around Beauforth Beach, skirting the coast and heading toward a sun that had just risen enough to clear the smokestacks of the oil refineries outside of Biloxi and Chicot Island—