Frame Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 5) (25 page)

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t
think
so?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Do you know what Carol Walker looks like?”

A pause.

“Do you know what Carol Walker looks like?”

“Well. Not really.”

Another pause.

Nina looked around.

No Carol Walker.

She flipped open her cell phone and dialed a number.

Buzz.

Buzz.

“Sheriff’s office.”

“Give me Moon Rivard. And quick.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE JOYS OF CROSS COUNTRY SKIING

Swissssh.

Swissssh.

Snow had continued to fall through the day, and the trails were perfect. Loose but dry. It was quite cold—Beckmeier had no idea exactly how cold––but he knew that if he did not keep moving, keep working quite hard, he would begin to lose feeling in his extremities, despite the extra warm woolen socks over his ski boots, despite the thick gloves, despite the added layers of sweaters and scarves and whatever else he’d been able to wrap up in.

Swisssh.

Swisssh.

Left pole, right pole, alternate stride, alternate stride––the darkened forest slid by.

His
darkened forest.

God he loved it here.

And he was not in bad shape.

Tomorrow, he’d have some of his men re-open the ski lift—a private lift he’d constructed for intimate parties of those close friends who did not care for the crowds that thronged each winter to Innsbruck and Salzburg—and he’d see how much rust his downhill abilities had accumulated over his period of absence.

He did not think there would be much rust.

He was still as active a man as ever.

Swissssh.

Swissssh.

Yes, by God, he was active.

He’d proven that last night with the opera singer.

She’d been impressed, both by the paintings—she had especially loved the three Correggios—and by his own performance.

Of course, this was the kind of life that international beauties deserved. They deserved to be supported by royalty. That was the way great European art had come into existence in the first place. The patronage system. Great books, great paintings—these were done at the behest of The Duke of Something or Other, or the Baron of Buxtehude, or…

…or the Graf von Beckmeier.

Damn the modern world.

Damn the bourgeoisie.

There, just to the right, twenty feet away, almost hidden in the dark pine boughs—a deer, probably a buck, its horns magnificent, its eyes shining like little points of starlight. The animal stood perfectly still, looked at him for an instant…

…just long enough to get a shot away, if that was his intent on this snowy evening…

….but it wasn’t.

Perhaps tomorrow.

God, there was so much to do.

So many pleasures to resume.

And, as he thought these things, the buck disappeared, simply dissolving in a haze of snow and pine brush.

And he began his homeward trek again.

Swisssh.

Swisssh.

Yes, it certainly was quite cold.

He could see the faint haze of what would have been the full moon straight above him, would have been, had the clouds dissipated, would have been and almost certainly would be tomorrow night, for snow storms seldom lasted long in the southern Fischbachers in December.

January was another matter.

By January, the entire castle would be snowed in.

Narrow mountain roads almost impassable.

Trips to Graz or even Moorbach on the lake difficult at best.

So for the next week they would carry in stores of supplies and become a fortress.

As in the old days, when they were a fortress permanently.

He glimpsed an opening in the woods before him and knew that the trek was done. Good. He was tired. Not exhausted but tired. Tired enough so that he was perfectly prepared for the dinner that awaited him. First a glass of champagne in the library, with its massive windows letting him watch snow fall on the front lawn, letting him enjoy the statuary––the Diana and Achteon done in bronze by Klaus of Innsbruck.

Then the table itself, his dinner table, graced last night by one of the great Violettas of the modern stage, but quite empty tonight, save for himself and bottle of St. Emilion and a pheasant, shot this morning.

Swisssh.

Swissssh.

He swept out of the forest and glided effortlessly across the opening, drawn as if by a second source of gravity to the black RV that sat waiting, patiently as a hunting dog, as he skied up to it.

“Whew! Mein Gott!” he whispered to himself as he reached the vehicle. “Mein Gott ist es kalt!”

He stopped, put a hand against the fender of the vehicle, propped his ski poles securely, and caught his breath.

Even as he did so, he could feel his fingers begin to grow numb.

He needed to get inside the RV, get the engine going, get some warmth circulating.

He’d almost finished the job of taking off the skis and securing both them and the poles to the rack on the vehicle’s roof when he heard the sound.

Rrrrrrrrr.

An engine.

There, in the distance, between him and the lake.

He opened the door, climbed inside, turned the key, and enjoyed the comfortable soft roaring of his own motor.

Then he turned on the heater, took off his gloves, and waited.

The sound grew louder.

Now he could see the vehicle’s lights, hazed beneath a floating cloud of snow, moving slowing toward him.

It was another Landover, a vehicle from Eggenburg.

One of his own men.

He sat and watched it approach, sat and warmed himself as it stopped, sat and savored the meal to come and the champagne and the wine and the music he would play afterward on the sound system in the music room and Amontillado he would have on his night stand while drifting off to sleep even as this snow was drifting over his forest…

The door of the second vehicle opened and one of his men got out.

A hatchet-faced man, eyes barely visible behind the black toboggan that covered most of his face and neck.

The figure approached.

He pushed a button; the window opened.

“Mein Herr.”

“Ja?”

“Es ist wohl Zeit.”

It is time.

He felt his heartbeat quicken.

“Wie meinst du?”

What do you mean?

Although, deep within, he knew quite well what the man meant.

“Red Claw. His people are close by.”

“Schon gut.”

There was nothing else to say.

Eight o’clock at night in Austria meant one o’clock in the afternoon in Bay St. Lucy, where chaos reigned.

Sirens were going off everywhere as police cars raced toward and away from the city hospital as though they were taking part in a re-filming of The Keystone Cops.

Everyone was yelling at everyone else.

The primary care physician of Carol Walker was yelling at the nurse at the reception desk, who was yelling at the nurse in charge of the third floor, who was yelling at an orderly, who was also being yelled at—for some reason—by two other nurses, who were listening while Jackson Bennett, having just arrived, was yelling at Moon Rivard, who did not have time to respond, because he was yelling at the young officer he’d assigned to guard the hospital, who was simply repeating the words:

“Yes, sir.”

And:

“No, sir.”

And:

“I don’t know, sir.”

…over and over and over, so that he did not have time to yell at any body at all.

Nina was simply running in circles, her hands alternatively covering her face and balling themselves into fists that went up and down beside her like little pistons while she yelled at anybody who’d come close to her:

“What were you
thinking
about? Is this a hospital or a lunatic asylum? You can’t simply
lose
people here, can you? What is this, a supermarket? Do you think somebody shoplifted her out of here like she was can of asparagus?”

“Ms. Bannister…”

A good many people—Moon, the doctor, the head nurse, the assistant head nurse, Jackson—were calling her this, trying to calm her down, but it did no good, of course.

She was near tears.

This could not be happening.

And it all swept over her: the explosion, the tale of what had happened to Carol, the vision of what had almost happened to Carol…

After a while, she found herself simply sitting on a chair in the main hospital waiting room, a copy of
People
magazine sitting opened on the gray chair beside her.

She cried like a baby, tears falling on the bare abdomen of Celine Dionne.

This went on for a time.

Finally, through a window that opened out onto the hospital parking lot, she spied Jackson Bennett and Moon Rivard standing beside a squad car shouting at each other.

The only way she had to stop crying, she realized, was to start shouting herself, and so she rose, tore the picture of Celine Dionne out of the magazine, crumpled it up, hurled it viciously into a wastebasket, and left the building.

Moon, when she reached his squad car, had stopped yelling at Jackson Bennett for a moment, and was yelling into the two-way radio:

“I don’t care. No, I don’t care; I want you to find that girl! No, put everybody on it. Get hold of Hattiesburg! Yes it’s a Code Four; that’s what I’m trying to tell you! No. No! We don’t know anything, don’t you understand that? Of course, she could be in a car! She could be in a damned pick-up truck for all we know! The only thing we
do
know is that she’s not in the damned hospital.”

Jackson, spying Nina, hugged her—it seemed like she was being hugged frequently by Jackson these days—and whispered:

“I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!”

She shook her head:

“How could this have happened?”

“I don’t know. Nobody knows.”

“It’s not like she was getting her tonsils out, Jackson!”

“I know.”

“Somebody’s trying to kill her! We put her in the hospital so she could be
observed. Observed.
Doesn’t anybody know what that means?”

“Nina, I can’t tell you how…”

“It means
watched
!
Watched!
And so what does Moon do? He puts Dobie Gillis at the door of the hospital and then goes fishing!”

“He wasn’t fishing, Nina.”

“Well, he just as well could have been fishing!”

“I know. I know. I’m as furious as you are…”

“No, you’re not! If you were, somebody would be dead!
Damn!
Why do I have to be so little? I can’t break anybody’s head; I can’t beat anybody up—I can’t even break anything! But look at you! You’re huge, you’re tough! Why aren’t you
hitting
somebody!”