Sea Change (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 1) (14 page)

Then, seemingly having made a decision, she would whirl and retrace her steps to the car, kneeling in precisely the same pose she had assumed before, and beside the same tire.

It was as though she had expected the tire, this time, to have been made whole again, to have been cured, restored to its former rubbery health.

But finding that it was the same tangle of black strips that it had been a half a minute earlier, she resumed the routine.

Police officers from the first two prowl cars—one of them the young woman who’d come to the restaurant and informed Nina of the earlier vandalism—had no luck communicating with Eve Ivory, who clearly did not deal with underlings.

“Ma’am, if we could just––”

“Where is your boss?”

“He’s been called. But if you could just tell us how––”

She would say nothing more, but she did, after the first two such encounters, walk two or three steps closer to the ocean.

Under the beach house itself were five figures:
 
the clothes washer, the clothes dryer, the meat freezer, Margot, and Nina.

The only sound or motion that came from any one of them was a slight humming from the meat freezer.

After a couple of days, Nina’s reckoning, forty five minutes Mean Greenwich Time, Moon Rivard arrived, parked beside the ventrally mangled MG, got out of his squad car, inspected the four tires, and confronted—or rather was confronted by—Eve Ivory, who said:

“How could you let this happen?”

It was as though a mother had left the house in charge of her teenage son, who, out of pure negligence, had allowed wild animals to come in and eat all of the drapes and furniture.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry about this.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Officer Rivard.”

“You’re the head of police here?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, you look like a bum.”

There was complete silence after she said this.

Then Moon Rivard—who did, when one thought objectively about the matter, look a little bit like a bum—ran his fingers through his exploded iron-shard hair, and said quietly:

“You don’t know who done this?”

Eve Ivory glared at him:

“Of course I don’t know who ‘done’ this, you buffoon!”

Another moment, but there was not quite complete silence.

A kind of gasp escaped from the circle of spectators, who, it could be seen, were weighing the relative disadvantages of having rival Hispanic gangs move into the village, or Eve Ivory.

“Well, it might be kids. It’s a new car, and something they ain’t seen.
 
So––”

“Kids?
 
Kids?
 
You’re saying children did this?”

Another vehicle arrived about then, this one a tow truck, for, clearly, the car owner’s seaward incursions and excursions would not cure it, and new tires would have to be installed.

“I’m not sure, ma’am.”

“Then when will you be sure?”

“It’s just––”

“Just what?”

Moon Rivard shook his head. He had apparently forgotten Eve Ivory’s gross insults to him, and, in what Nina took to be a rather stunning display of professionalism, was actually thinking about the crime itself.

“Just that, looking at the tires––”

“Talk, you idiot!
 
What are you trying to tell me!”

“These tires were slashed by somebody, knew what he was doing.”

“What?”

“You can’t just take a knife to a tire and ruin it.
 
You got to know where to cut. This whole job was done in—like a minute or less. Drunk kids, out to ruin something—don’t sound right.”

Eve Ivory was silent for a second.

Then, ignoring Moon Rivard, she walked under the beach house, to where Nina and Margot were standing.

Ignoring Margot too, she breathed deeply and said to Nina:

“I’m very sorry this has happened.”

“I am too, Eve.
 
I can’t imagine––”

“No. Don’t worry. It’s not your problem. This simply underlines the importance of the subject you and I were discussing.”

“Yes.
 
I can see that it does.”

“I cannot believe that this—well, I won’t use the proper word to describe him. I’ll simply say that I doubt his ability to find out who did this thing.
 
I will say this, though.
 
A great deal of money is coming into Bay St. Lucy.
 
And the things bought with that money will be properly looked after. From this moment on, I will have my own security people here. They will not interfere with Officer—whatever his name is. But neither will they allow acts of wanton vandalism to take place.”

“I understand.”

“I’m sure you do, Nina. In fact, I’m sure you understand a great many things. The problem is, the same can be said for so few of your neighbors.
 
Again, I’m sorry this had to happen.
 
And good bye.”

“Good bye.”

The MG, whose tires had now been rendered as completely convertible as its top, had been towed to the garage in Bay St. Lucy that had the best chance of getting four antique British tires before New Year—some New Year if not this one—and Eve Ivory had been deposited by The Bay St. Lucy Police Force—in what was to be one of their last official acts, Nina was certain of that—at her mansion.

The circle of spectators had broken up.

Leaving Nina and Margot sitting on the deck, where Margot was actually smoking a real, and not an imaginary, cigarette.

“I cannot tell you,” she said, “how exhilarated I feel.
 
But I’m so sorry about your carving knife.
 
If it doesn’t wash ashore in a few weeks, I shall certainly replace it.”

“Moon had nothing but praise for the job you did.
 
He called it very professional.”

“Yes, wasn’t that nice of him?
 
But really, it’s much like blowing up a building; once you learn, you never really forget.”

“That’s ‘riding a bicycle’ that you’re talking about.”

Margot stared at her.

“What do bicycles have to do with it?”

“You had a very difficult childhood, didn’t you, Margot?”

“Nonsense; I had marvelous childhood, both years of it. My only regret is that I didn’t destroy the woman herself.
 
In the first place, it takes much less work on an actual human being than on tires. Two nice quick thrusts will do a human, as opposed to sixteen or seventeen on tires. In the second place, the tires, as opposed to human beings, haven’t really done anything wrong, have they?”

“No, they haven’t.
 
And you probably shouldn’t joke about this thing, Margot.”

“I’m not joking. I haven’t joked about anything in years. I’m simply outrageous. They’re different things.”

“You’re talking about cold blooded murder. That isn’t a funny subject.”

“It seems to me you’re adopting a very provincial attitude.”

“Margot––”

“Cold blooded murder is the very centerpiece of Western Civilization. Without it we would have no literature, no visual art, no drama, no government worth mentioning—and certainly, certainly, no sense of fashion at all.”

“Margot, I don’t know what this woman has planned for Bay St. Lucy.
 
But we just got a look at what she’s really like. She can be brutally insulting. And to someone who’s done nothing bad to her at all.”

“I know.
 
I was appalled.”

“Poor Moon:
 
she called him a buffoon.”

Margot quashed her cigarette, then lit another:

“I thought you were referring to her calling me a ‘secretary.’
 
That’s the word she actually used, wasn’t it?
 
‘Secretary’ or something like that?”

“Yes.”

“My heavens, where does one acquire such language?
 
And the damage it does to the soul.
 
Nina, did you ever imagine me as a secretary?”

“Not for an instant, Margot.
 
And certainly not after I first saw you try to make out a receipt.”

“Ugghhh.
 
Horrid little things.”

“So.
 
What do you think these ‘security’ people will be like?
 
The ones she’s going to bring in?”

Margot rose.

“Oh that’s easy. And by the way, thank you for a perfectly wonderful morning.
 
If the ocean were behind us, we could be in California, and I in my youth again.”

“So tell.
 
What will they be like?”

“They’ll be like what her parents and grandparents were.
 
Thugs and gangsters.”

And she left.

CHAPTER NINE:
 
THE GIFTS OF THE MAGI

“The best time for planning a book is when you’re doing the dishes.”

Agatha Christie

“Handmade presents are scary because they reveal that you have too much free time.”

Doug Coupland

Winter reached Bay St. Lucy early on the morning of December 19 at precisely two
 
A.M.

A north wind came roaring in, bringing surges of small rain and winds in excess of twenty miles per hour. The few remaining leaves still hanging, brown now and not golden, to the sycamore and oak trees, were ripped from their spindly stems and sent spinning into yards, alleyways, and parking lots.

Nina awoke to a new world.

Grayer, more windswept.

No cars prowled the streets.

No tourists walked the beach.

The schools, she knew, would remain in session, but Chief Maintenance Engineer Jack McCorkle—who’d once been called a janitor but now was a Chief Maintenance Engineer––would have dreamed his annual dream of purchasing a snow plow, but since one was never needed, he dreamed in vain. Students may have been given some leeway for late arrival.

 
“Brrrr.”

She Furled, watching sympathetically as the shivering animal made its way inside, trying to warm itself on what now seemed rather threadbare carpeting.

She made herself some oatmeal and a cup of tea.

In the closet were two thick blankets. She got them out, unfolded them, shook the dust and spider webs off them, and laid them delicately on her bed.

Next, she ferreted through a box of emergency books:
 
those which, read on a summer day with ice cream wagons passing merrily and balloons floating above the sailboats, were merely wasted.

Here.
 
This would be a Dorothy Sayers day.

Strong Poison.

The Nine Tailors.

Five Red Herrings.

Gaudy Night

The Unpleasantness at The Bellona Club

Have His Carcass

She made two delicate little piles of them, which she placed on the nightstand beside her bed.

She had nothing to do at all, nothing that would force her out of doors, until Macy and Paul’s wedding shower, which was to be held at Margot’s garden at 7:30 tonight.

“God,” she whispered, “How I love retirement.”

She went to her closet and found the pink fluffy robe––which resembled an elephant as it would have appeared in a scratch-and-smell children’s book––hurled it above her and dived beneath it, so that, after a few seconds of subsummation, she was either wearing it or it was wearing her.

Matching slippers.

The elephant’s feet.

Shuffle into them.

Now back into the kitchen.

Another cup of tea, but use the larger cup.

Some lemon. Ah, there, behind the milk, several slices left over from yesterday afternoon.

A few drops in the tea––

Should she go, one last time, out on the deck?

Yes!

Dare to be brave!

Dare to be Beowulf!

Glass door slides open––

“Brrr!”

She spit the syllable into the north wind, which must have been over twenty five miles an hour now.

She went to the rail, peered over and looked to the right, southward, so that the wind did not blow into her face and make her eyes water. House after house seemed deserted, flower boxes shuddering against slate-gray walls, hanging bird feeders swinging like pendulums in precarious four foot half-arcs, and tightly closed window panes rattling against a fine spray of dust and seawater.

The lines came into her mind:

When icicles hang by the wall

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail––

She turned back into the wind, padded back across the deck, and forced herself to look at a digital thermometer that hung on the wall, just beside the door:

Forty four degrees.

“Brrr!” she whispered.

Then she went to bed and stayed there all day.

By early evening, the temperatures were expected to drop into the high thirties, but the bridal shower was not postponed.
 
It was too important.
 
If Nina was perhaps the town’s most respected and soon to be dead citizen—she suspected that many citizens had already planned her funeral, elegies, and flower arrangements—Macy Peterson was Teacher of the Future, vibrant, loving, creative, and a maven favorite in a town full of dowagers.

Everyone adored her.

And unexpectedly brutal weather such as this was not about to keep the town from showing its feelings, especially since those feelings extended equally to the perfect fiancé, Paul Cox.

So Nina had slipped out of bed at five thirty, still a bit uncertain why Harriet Vane’s lover had been poisoned—even though this was to be her fifth reading of
Strong Poison
—made herself a scrambled egg, gulped down a small glass of milk, imagining it to be mead taken in preparation for her grand Sea Voyage into the Northern Seas of Downtown Bay St. Lucy—

––dressed, and went downstairs.

“I must go down to the sea in ships,” she found herself whispering, as she unchained the Vespa, made sure her two sweaters fit tightly beneath her heaviest suede winter jacket—the brown one that had needed dry cleaning since the day Furl had spent sleeping on it, all fault in this matter being of course hers for leaving it spread out on a chair—slipped the thick goggles on, these goggles protecting her from flying gravel shot back by speeding semi-trucks––pulled on the black football-style rider’s helmet, fastened it securely—turned on the ignition and sputtered out into the driveway.

Within a minute, she’d reached fifteen miles an hour and might go faster, given the fact that there was no other traffic on the streets.

The weather had turned Bay St. Lucy into a veritable winter wonderland, a marvelous kind of mini-jewel all clothed in white.
 
Cables had been strung across the streets, and innumerable streamers of silver aluminum hung down halfway to the pavement. The streets had been bathed in a film of fake snow. There were snowmen in almost every yard, huge figures consisting of two globes of white fur all shining with Velcro accessories.
 
She counted three Santa sleighs, one in a store window but two on actual yards, with the jolly old elf himself at the helm, completely motionless as though awaiting the big day of his take-off; except at Treasures by the Bay, in whose window he was actually moving, both mouth and arms, the whole effect of which possibly seeming, had it not been so close to Christmas, somewhat ghastly.

Signs saying “Bay St. Lucy Wishes You a Merry Christmas” were everywhere, hanging from power lines, pasted on shop walls, wrapped around telephone poles, and lying on the pavement, having been torn loose by the day’s winds.

She was now within half a mile of Margot’s shop.

Gradually, during her voyage, she had ceased to be Beowulf and had become William the Conqueror, off to invade England.

There behind her, riding on the small elliptical rack where she had once carried her backpack, were a hundred horses.

She and her men would need those horses.

But it all depended on this wind.

It could not change.
 
Bitter, savage, as it was, it must not change direction.
 
For it was only 1066 and she had not yet learned how to tack, to sail against it.

If it altered, she and her loyal Norse warriors were dead.

But, so far, it had remained constant.

Putt putt putt––

Putt putt putt—

One more turn and—yes!
 
She could see the lights of Margot’s shop, just a little in front of the great beaches of Hastings, and a few feet behind The Stink Shak.

It happened.

She made it.

No sea change, no wind change.

And here she was, not Beowulf at all, nor William the Conqueror, but simply Nina Bannister, walking up the steps to Margot’s, and opening the door.

“Nina!”

“Nina!”

“Nina!”

“Nina!”

“Nina!”

“Nina!”

“Nina!”

“Hi,” she replied.

Then, of course, she was engulfed with people, some of whom she had not seen in—

––how long?

Two weeks?

“Nina you look wonderful!”

“Thank you!”

“I
love
your sweater!”

“Thank you!”

“Is it Alpaca?”

“Rayon and cotton.”

A bit more conversation––

––while Nina looked around the shop and the garden beyond—

––and felt awed.

It was a remarkable scene.

It had been dark for some time now, and lights in Margot’s were dimmed, most of the illumination coming from either candles, glowing sea shells, or phosphorescent fish.
 
Snow was falling everywhere and covering everything.
 
Not only was the snow ubiquitous but it was variegated. There was felt snow, cotton snow, corn flake snow, candy snow, turtle wrap snow, popcorn snow, hospital bandage snow, gauze snow, clothes remnant snow, fur snow, and discount clothes snow.

Then there were the presents.

The presents!

Of course, Nina admonished herself, the presents should hardly have been a surprise, at least not to anyone at all familiar with the village of Bay St. Lucy.

Most bridal showers centered around a theme.

There were dishware showers.

Lingerie showers.

Cutlery showers.

Cookware showers.

Themes such as those.

But such showers took place in normal villages, towns, and cities, across the nation.

Bay St. Lucy was by its very nature different.

Bay St. Lucy was not a place in which a shower was held.

Bay St. Lucy
was
a shower.

Going into Bay St. Lucy to buy a single shower present was somewhat akin to going into the center of the sun to buy a box of matches.

Approaching the matter differently:

It did happen that, some weeks earlier, elegantly written notices went to all people who might be interested in buying Macy Peterson and Paul Cox a shower gift, might want to be aware that the two were collecting a set of dishware, and that the various pieces might be purchased here or there.

These notices were immediately destroyed.

Why?

Because the people who had received the letters, the potential gift givers, were the proprietors of:

Clay Creatures, Expressions by Claire, Joyce’s Shells and Gifts, Maggie May’s, The Social Chair, Uptown Interiors, Bay Breeze, The Blue Crab Gifts Gallery,
 
Moore-Haus Antiques, Art Alley in the Pass, Let’s Make Up Gifts, Aloha Gallery and Frame Shop, Just Flowers, M&L Gifts, Tuesday Morning, Your Gift Cove, Gratitude, Inside Out, Amano, Stephanie’s Stuff, Cool Breeze (an offshoot of Bay Breeze), Bo Jon’s Surf and Gifts, Jaynie’s Novelties and Gifts, Charlie’s Treasures, Mike’s Treasures, Shirley’s Treasures, Obob’s Treasures, Maison El Jardin, Rustic Rail, and Barnes and Ed’s Hardware Store.

None of these people were about to be limited to a steak knife or a pair of underwear.

So that Nina saw, as she began to walk about the shop, an array of gifts that was truly astonishing.

Margot had laid them out with the kind of care that might have been expected from The Director of The Chicago Art Museum; so that they almost seemed to be a part of the store itself, their bows and wrappings as natural to them as the oyster to the pearl.

She began to be acclimated into a routine. She would take two steps, and then whisper to herself:

“Oh my God.”

Two more steps.

“Oh, my God.”

Occasionally:

“I’m doing fine, thank you! No, I’ve missed you too!
 
Yes, it’s beautiful!”

Two more steps:

“Oh, my God.”

For Nina was no judge of antiques.
 
But she was no dunce, either, and she knew names.

And she could read cards.

“Handmade clay sculptures by Jennie McCardill. who first opened her business in The French Quarter in 1980. Pieces are sculpted from white clay, hand painted and fired twice in a higher temperature kiln.”

And:

“Six assorted white-shell boxes from Joyce’s Shells and Gifts, along with Four Cyprian Moneta Center Cut Shells.”

And:

From Judy Trice at Tuesday Morning:

“Hummel Keeping Time; Hummel Little Miss Mail Carrier; Hummel Chimney Sweep; Hummel Forty Winks.”

And:

From Bay Breeze:

“Hermann Traditional Mohair Bear; Hermann Little Starlight Mohair Bear.”

And:

From Denise, at M&L Gifts:

“Limoges: Hinged Chef Hat; Hinged Delft Mini Duck; Swaroski Duck—Fancy Felicia.”

And—the names of the shops, the artists, the proprietors begin to fade, but the objects themselves continue:

“Pickle Casters. Meridian Basket. Pin Inverted Thumbprint.”

“Ruffled and Quilted Peach Bowl Art Glass Sweetmeat Server.”

There, farther along, out toward the garden, a slightly larger group of people.

She would wait until they moved on.

Patches of their conversation:

“…one of the best teachers my child has ever had.”

“…just loved her.”

“…so glad we had a chance to give her this…”

The group moving on….

What is it?

“Oh, my God.”

“Havilland Dinner Service in the Wheat Pattern with Gilt Trim, Eighty Pieces.”

So how many are they—

––all of them.

All eighty pieces.

Just a few of them here on display now, of course, but—

––all of them

Twelve each dinner plates, salad plates, cups and saucers.

Bread and Butter holders, four each platters and serving bowls…

All of them.