Set Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries) (26 page)

It was a fact, Nina found herself musing, much like the table. No one liked or trusted it, but no one was about to mess with it, either.

“He told me some shocking things.”

“They should not,” said Hope, still dressed as a Mardi Gras parade, still smiling as though everyone in the room had just given birth and she was the grandmother, “be that shocking, to anyone who knew Mr. Barrett. I’m sorry, I cannot call him ‘Clifton,’ although he was my grandson in law.”

“Hope,” growled Jackson Bennett, “you must realize that the things you say are now said before witnesses. Ms. Towler is the county district attorney. If you make a statement to me, purely to me in my own office, why that’s privileged information.
 
But here—this is not a game, Hope.
 
As your attorney, I have to warn you to be very careful about what you say.”

“Is Hope,” asked Edie, “your client?”

“Yes, she is. I became Helen’s attorney yesterday, and just some half-hour ago I agreed to represent her grandmother.”

“Excellent. Hope, I have to advise you that I’m inclined to agree with your attorney. You should probably have several meetings with him before you agree to talk to me.”

“Why?”

“Because…well, because if what Mr. Bennett has told me is true, then you stand the risk of incriminating yourself.”

“I mean to incriminate myself.
 
I’m a criminal.”

“Well, that’s what we’re here to discuss.”

“I murdered Clifton Barrett.”

The table breathed heavily and reeked of malice.

There was no other movement in the room and no other smell.

“How did you do this, Hope?”

“Hope, I have to tell you…”

“It’s all right, Jackson.”

“Grandmamma, if you’ll just wait for…”

“It’s all right, Helen.”

“Hope, shut up,” said Nina.

Hope looked at her, smiling, and said:

“No, dear.”

Well
, Nina thought,
so much for trying.

The table continued to look up at them and laugh, soundlessly.

“How did you murder him?”

“I gave him an overdose of the pain killer Percodan.”

“How did you do this?”

“I came up to his and Helen’s room just before they were to go to bed.
 
I pretended to say good night to them, wish them well, etc.
 
But before I entered the room I waited until I heard Helen go into the bathroom. I went in. Clifton greeted me. I said I’d simply come to congratulate the two of them one last time before turning in. He smiled. This pleased him.
 
Helen was in the bathroom, and she laughed. But then I told Clifton I thought I heard some drunken people down on the pier, or out in the garden. I asked him if he’d go look out the window, and try to see if anyone were there. He did so.

But while he was looking, I simply walked to the bed, where a glass was sitting with his medication on it. He always was in the habit of taking, as I’d learned in the previous days while he was a guest in my house, a small dose of Percodan for back pain and Pitocin to help him sleep. I had in the pocket of my robe a small vial of concentrated Percodan and I was able to pour that into the glass. The glass was half full, and I hoped he would not notice.
 
He apparently did not.”

“Concentrated Percodan…”

“I am, Ms. Towler, a pharmacist’s wife. It’s very much stronger that what I’m sure he was using. The overall effect was that he would have been drinking six times his normal dosage. With Pitocin, and after several strong drinks of Scotch…I am, I repeat, a pharmacist’s wife. I know my husband’s business.”

“Helen…”

“Yes?”

“Do you remember this happening?”

Helen looked at Jackson, who shook his head, saying:

“I can’t advise my client to say more at this time. Either of my clients.”

But at that moment, Hope leaned forward, dared to put her forearms on the table, and seemed to press it six inches into the carpet, which sighed upon receiving the weight.

At that time, then, Hope Reddington was the strongest presence in the room.

“Tell the truth, dear.”

It may have been the only time those words had been both said and meant in any government office.

“No,” Helen replied, looking down. “No. This did not happen. Nothing at all like it ever happened. Grandmamma, why are you lying like this?”

“I’m not lying, Helen.
 
You know I’m not lying.”

“Helen…”

This from Edie Towler.

“Helen what is your version of what happened?’

“Grandmamma was never in the room. Clifton prepared his medication, then he drank it. Immediately afterwards he complained of feeling dizzy, then, within a few seconds, he was asleep.”

“All right. Well. We have to decide what to do.
 
Hope…”

“Yes, Ms. Towler?”

“Why did you do this?”

“Because the man deserved it.”

“Why did he deserve it?”

“He was about to ruin the life of my granddaughter.”

“You do realize that this is not a justification for murder?”

“I realize nothing of the kind. It’s every justification for murder. Do I not have a right to protect my family? If the man had entered with a gun, and I had possessed another gun…would I not have had the right to shoot him?”

“But he didn’t have a gun.”

“No, he had a lawyer.”

She looked at Jackson.

“I’m sorry, Jackson. No harm intended. Nor to the memory of your husband, Nina.”

“It’s all right,” Nina found herself answering.

Jackson, for all the horror of the situation, seemed to be attempting not too successfully to suppress a smile.

Edie continued:

“Hope, you’re well past eighty. Is it possible, just possible, that what you are telling us…well, you could have imagined it?”

“You mean, am I insane? Do I suffer from dementia?
 
Early Alzheimer’s?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Hope smiled, then looked at Nina and said:

“I am but mad north north west; when the wind is from the south, I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

She then said:

“You are not the only one, dear Nina, who knows her Shakespeare.”

Nina also found herself beginning to smile.

The smile was beginning to grow as she answered:

“No.
 
No, I guess I’m not.”

“And yes, I knew it was Polonius, all along. As I’ve known these long sixty five years since––as a school girl––I first read the play. I had a good teacher too, though not as good as you. “To thine own self be true,” she taught us—or rather Shakespeare through her taught us—and “it shall follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.’
 
Can you, Nina?”

“No, Hope.”

My God, Nina realized.

I’m crying.

“No, you can’t, Hope.
 
No, you can’t.”

The meeting broke up.

Then Nina broke up, sitting there for a time, hands pressed against her face, sobbing.

By noon, downtown Bay St. Lucy had begun to empty.
 
In the winter it would have been completely deserted, because downtown businesses—government offices, insurance offices, and law firms—were frequented by true beach dwellers only in three distinct time periods: 1) mornings (grudgingly), 2) afternoons (belligerently and with great resentment), 3) during lunch hour (in a state of unconsciousness, with death near).
 
Still, during the warm summer days tourists wandered the streets unaware that boredom and bureaucracy existed in this paradise just as it did in their own home towns of Omaha and Little Rock, and always hoping to find something new, something to take another picture of. Accordingly, hastily-built ramshackle ice cream parlors and soda shops did a land office business at such unheard of times as 12:15 and 12:45, and curiosity shops—especially those catering to ten year olds and under—continued to sell plastic models of fish and sea turtles at a time when most seamen, painters, or pot-throwers would have been beginning a three hour nap.

Nina could not come downtown without feeling some nostalgia, nor could she look up and see the light burning in what had been Frank’s old law office without imagining that he himself was up there, “burning the midnight oil through lunch time,” as he had put it so many times.

As she stood before the front door, her Vespa chained and locked in precisely the same way she’d always done it, and secured to the same metal bicycle rack, she half expected to see him appear at the window, his face breaking into a smile as he gestured enthusiastically, mouthing the words:
 
‘Come on up, the door’s open!’

No face at the window now.

Jackson was, she knew, sitting in the office, burning Frank’s midnight oil at lunch time, toiling away not at this divorce agreement or that land settlement, but at the shocking case he’d just been handed.

He was expecting her of course, for she was here at his request; but still he might not hear her knock, or ring if the door were locked.

She pushed it.

It was not locked.

She made her way up the narrow and still ill-lighted stairs, wondering why neither Frank nor Jackson had ever heeded their wives’ advice to cover the slate gray walls with pictures, testimonials, shots of the two of them embracing governors or senators or presidents or babies or big, happy dogs.

It was simply not in the character of either man to do so, though, and so the narrow staircase remained bare as it always had, creaking underfoot, and leading to a nondescript door which pronounced merely “Law Offices” and let it go at that.

She stepped forward and knocked on the door.

She could hear someone rustling about inside.

There was the sound of soft music, soothing music.

It disappeared, replaced by the creak of Jackson’s chair and the heavy sound of his footsteps coming across the office.

The door opened and revealed his bulk, somewhat gone to seed now but still so imposing as to be almost frightening, had its effect not been dampened by the ever-present smile, which illuminated the upper part of the staircase, the few light fixtures having been attached for that purpose clearly not being sufficient.

“Nina.
 
Come on in.”

She did so, following him through the reception area, and into his office.

It glowed green, golden, mahogany and leather, just as it had in Frank’s day, just as any good law office, she had always told herself, should glow.

“Sit down.”