Frame Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 5) (13 page)

“Just let us come inside!”

The crowbar arose now, and found itself being pulled back, as though Penn having become taken over by the spirit and form of Captain Ahab, it could have been launched at Moby-Tom Broussard.

“Nina, why did you let this------------------------------------------------------------------------------------!!”

“I don’t know, Penn!”

“He’s ruined me! He’s--------------------------------------------------------. Nina, how could you----------------------------------------------------------------------?”

“I don’t know, Penn!”

“But why did you even---------------------------------------------------------------------------?”

“I don’t know!”

“How-------------?”

“Don’t know!”

“Why -----------------?”

“Don’t know!”

“Then how---------?”

“Don’t know!”

And with that answer, the crowbar fell clattering on rain-spattered concrete, and Penelope buried her face in her hands, her body wracked with seemingly inconsolable sobs.

Within a minute, Nina was hugging her.

And within two more minutes, the three of them were inside the building, in what passed for both living and bedroom, Penn sitting, sobbing, on the bed itself, Tom and Nina in massive sponge cloth objects that at first glance seemed creatures of the deeper reefs, but upon closer analysis must surely have been once manufactured as chairs.

“Now,” Nina found herself saying, somewhat calmly, “will one of you two tell me what’s happened?”

Both of them shook their heads.

“Penn, please. Whatever Tom has done…”

More head shaking, and low, quiet, murmuring:

“That………….! How could he……………….?”

“All right, then. Tom, you tell me.”

“I’m sorry, Penn,” he said, more to his wife than to Nina.

It did not seem to help.

She merely went on murmuring:

“How could you let this happen? How could you do such a thing? What did I ever do to you? Why did I deserve this?”

He could only shake his head.

“I don’t know, honey.”

“DON’T CALL ME THAT! YOU…..!!! DON’T EVER CALL ME THAT! NOW HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

Silence for a time.

The beating of the rain.

The buzz of a dim electric light bulb hanging from a single, precarious wire in the center of the room.

Nina:

“All right. I’m going to ask you both one more time. Whatever this is, it can be dealt with. Whatever Tom has done, Penn, there will be a way around it. You both will find a way of dealing with this thing. Now, Tom, I’m going to ask you again. We have to put it into words. We have to get it out there. Tell me: what is it?”

He looked at her.

He took a deep breath.

Then he said:

“Nina—Penn’s pregnant.”

CHAPTER NINE:
  
BREAKTHROUGH!

It has been noted earlier in this series, that certain towns and villages prepare for communal events such as weddings, births, and deaths by giving showers. Or, if they do not give showers (there being no such things as funeral showers), they at least bring food and say gracious things to and about each other.

This was not the case in Bay St. Lucy.

Bay St. Lucy, filled with shops and gifts and curios and fruit baskets and cute hats and non-abstract art and absolutely nothing of any practical use—did not give showers.

Bay St. Lucy
was
a shower.

It never stopped unwrapping and opening itself, and every turn around every corner in every one of its establishments elicited the breathless and wonder-filled statement/question:

“Ohhhhhh! Isn’t that darling?!”

Penelope’s pregnancy was the purest sort of just the kind of fuel the town ran on.

Word of it took some time to spread itself around Bay St. Lucy, of course, and by four o’clock the following afternoon there were still a few inhabitants-shut ins, gunshot victims and the sort—who had not heard of it.

But in the case of normal Bay St. Lucyans, it was pretty much standard fare and grist for the gossip mills that never ceased churning and generating life-giving information to THE PEOPLE!

A baby!

Penelope Royale and Tom Broussard were going to have a baby!

There were perhaps a few problems that had to be glossed over.

First, the source of the information, Nina Bannister, had been judicious in her reporting of it, leaving out Penelope’s immediate attitude, which was not so much matricidal as homicidal.

This would pass, Nina knew.

Second, there were obviously going to be some things that this particular couple still needed, as opposed to more conventional couples.

A house.

Those kinds of things.

But that could all come later.

The thing that had to be dealt with now was:

The shower.

THE BABY SHOWER!

WHAT FUN!

So, of course, Nina found herself in the late afternoon, sitting in Elementals, and listening to the rain (which had not stopped, and which showed no sign of stopping).

She’d been hard at work for an hour, and sheets of paper lay beside her on the writing desk beside the cash register.

The sheets all bore the heading Elementals: Treasures from the Earth and Sea, written in Algerian script with small pictures of Neptune and The Earth in the upper right and left had corners respectively. They were filled with names, dates, gift ideas, and suggestions concerning shower themes.
 

It was late October.

The baby would arrive, probably, around late August of the following year.

No time to waste in planning.

Nina had wrestled for a time with the date choices. August 27 was a Friday night. But that was a little late in the month. If the baby came on the fifteenth, which was a possibility, then Penn and Tom would have to go for two weeks with no clothing to put on the child, no toys for the child to play with, no crib accessories for the baby to goo goo at.

No diapers.

Not a good risk to take.

So the decision was made: either the twentieth or the twenty-first, depending on whether the town preferred a Friday or a Saturday.

Of course, what if Penn were late?

Why then…

“Excuse me?”

What was that?

Someone was actually in the store.

What a terrible distraction!

Was there no respect for simple privacy anymore?

There was a SHOWER to be planned here!

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

Oh, well…

“Yes, how may I help you?”

“I’d like to buy a painting, if it would be possible. I do hope it’s for sale. I just found it, over on the far wall. It’s quite lovely you know.”

The person making these comments was a young slender woman dressed in zebra striped pants (the pants were black and the diagonal stripes white), with close-cut raven hair covering one eye (the left), and an English accent.

She might have been in her late twenties, early thirties.

But she was English.

What was she doing in Bay St. Lucy?

Didn’t the English have their own beaches?

“Of course, of course—let’s go and take a look. We just got some seascapes in yesterday, painted by Ramoula Peters. She does terrific work. And we sell a lot of paintings done by her. Or you might have been looking at the abstract that Paul Donovan brought in last week. Usually his stuff doesn’t stay around very long—he’s in great demand.”

Nina rose and followed the woman across the room, making a note as she walked that two of the ferns needed watering.

“I’m sorry, but I failed to note the name of the painter.”

“That’s all right. I’ll know who it is.”

Also, there was a sterling silver set that someone had apparently looked over and not put back in the proper place.

Work work work all the time.

“Is this your first time in Bay St. Lucy?”

“Yes, yes, it is.”

“Well, I hope you’re enjoying yourself.”

“I am, immensely! What a lovely little village you have! It reminds me of Cornwall.”

“You’re English?”

“Yes, from Sheffield originally.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m actually in the import/ export business.”

“Based in…”

The woman smiled:

“Quite a few places, actually. I tend to move around a great deal, or be moved, I suppose, if one were to put it accurately. Mostly larger cities, though—which is why I love occasionally to visit the smaller towns. Ah, here we are: this is the one.”

“Which? I can’t quite…”

“This one.”

She pointed.

Nina looked, then looked again.

It was her painting.

Her
painting!

“Yes, this is the one: I believe the note here beside it says, ‘Old Red Lighthouse #6.’ And the artist’s name is ‘N. Bannister’.”

This could not be happening.

She was going to sell a painting!

She felt faint, unable to speak.

“This note says the price is $350. Is that accurate?”

“I––I...”

“That is quite a reasonable price, I must say. Can you tell me something about the artist?

“You’re sure you want
this
painting?”

“Oh, yes, definitely! All of the works hanging in your shop are quite charming, really they are. But this one has…”

Nina waited.

What
did this one have?

“It masquerades as a primitive, but I think it has a modularity that is paradigmatic of something more—how shall I say it? More vascularity than the primitives are able to conjure with. Don’t you agree?”

“I…maybe.”

“The interchange of color and structure envisages something Doyanesque. And although there’s a truly scintillating aura of abstract clarity—no, no, ‘clarity’ is not the right word, maybe ‘perfunctoriness’—there’s this scintillating viscera, there’s also something that eviscerates its own rubric even as it overshadows it.”

“You don’t think the dog is too big?”

“Oh, no, no, that seeming disparity is quite purposeful, and allows the force of the painting to, as it were, circle its own centers of gravity, becoming a kind of double star enhancing its own gravitational field, for want of a better phrase. Yes, it is, in short, quite wonderful. Do you know the artist?”

“Yes.”

“Does he or she live here in Bay St. Lucy?”

“It’s a ‘she’.”

“I’m not surprised. There’s something definitely feminine about the entire conceptual framework. Men are more celestially tuned, women more ‘of the earth.’ And that quality emanates quite clearly from this.”

“It’s me, actually.”

The woman stared at her.

This was,
Nina found herself thinking,
the happiest moment of her life.

She was celestially tuned.

She viscerated.

AND SHE WAS GOING TO MAKE THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS!

TAKE
THAT
MARGOT!

And who really cared about the stupid old Chicago Art Museum anyway?

Did the paintings hanging there enhance their own gravitational field?

Did they possess perfunctoriness? Real, true honest perfunctoriness?

You’re damned right they didn’t!

“You painted this?”

Yes. You see, I took this class, and I…”

“Oh, my God. I’m so excited!”

“I’m not sure it’s really…”

“It’s
wonderful
! Please tell me: whom have you studied with?”

“Well, the class was taught by Emily Peterson…”

“Peterson. Peterson. Out of London?”

“Ruston, Louisiana, I think. Originally. Her husband owns a hardware store.”

“Do you have other works?”

“Yes. They’re out on my deck. There were five other paintings of this barn, but the colors weren’t right.”

“Will you be offering them to the public?”

Not if Margot Gavin has anything to do with it.

But to hell with Margot!

Down with Margot, up with Carol!

“Yes. Yes. I’ll probably be replacing this one with, oh, I don’t know: maybe “Old Red Fishing Boat #2.”

“And when will it be hung?”

“Probably…”

As soon as I can get home, get it, and bring it back here.

But why appear too eager?

If the paining was actually a double star creating its own gravity, and that kind of stuff—maybe I could price it higher?