Frame Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 5) (29 page)

And then left.

Gellert stayed where he was for another half hour.

Then he climbed the spiral staircase which led to his room on the fifth floor.

He slipped the key into the lock and opened the door.

The room had been freshly made up, the down comforter lying two feet thick on the bed beneath as if it were a hibernating polar bear.

He threw himself on it, made his mind be blank, set a mental alarm clock for five o’clock, and immediately went to sleep.

The mental alarm clock did not go off.

It did not have time.

He was awakened, instead, by a knocking.

He was groggy for a time.

Then he rose, crossed the room, and opened the door.

Nina Bannister stood before him.

“I’m insane,” she said, “but I’m here.”

“Well, there’s a lot of insanity going around.”

“What do we do now?”

He shrugged.

“We go see the Red Claw.”

And they left the room together.

Michael negotiated the narrow banks of the parking lot concrete with more ease than she’d expected, and within minutes, Nina found herself watching the Mur River and its traffic of coal barges more closely than the traffic lights and turn signals that she’d expected to worry about.

They passed the city administrative buildings, then paralleled the Number Eight streetcar tracks which skirted the train station.

The traffic began to lessen. Villas began to dot the lush hills mounding around them, and wisps of fog hovered over the forest as the sun began to set.

“All right. This is how I read the map. We turn in two miles. Turn left, to the west. The road is 465. We follow the arrows. We go to Althofen. In the town is an ossuary. Just beside it is a tavern. Go there. Sit outside and wait.”

The world was darkening, as the sun had dropped below the range of mountains to their left.

No snow was falling now, but limbs in the surrounding forests were white,

At approximately quarter mile intervals, there were street lamps along the side of the country road. These lamps were beginning to turn themselves on, and could be seen shimmering a translucent blue.

“How was your flight?” Michael asked.

“Ten hours in first class, direct from New Orleans to Graz. Thanks for the ticket.”

“My pleasure.”

“What airline was it? The plane wasn’t marked.”

“Not all planes,” he said, “belong to airlines. How was the food and drink?”

“I’m sure it was wonderful. They served lobster and champagne.”

“It was good?”
        

She shook her head.

“I’m a little off my feed right now.”

“I’m sorry. A little…”

“Off my feed. It’s how your digestion gets to be when you’re about to be murdered.”

“I see. I did warn you not to come.”

“I know.”

“How did you explain Carol’s disappearance to the authorities in Bay St. Lucy?”

“I told them to forget it, and that it wasn’t any of their business. Which is what I told them about my trip.”

“And they accepted this?”
   

“I’m a school teacher. They do what I tell them.”

“I see. But, Ms. Bannister, I still must insist that you…”

“Nina. I want to be on a first name basis with people I get killed with.”

“All right. Nina. I still must insist that you…”

They drove on, as the world darkened around them.

What a strange thing
, Nina found herself thinking.
 
The great trip she’d never taken with Frank, and that she had planned so eagerly with Carol
.

It was merely a dark, frightening and somber thing.

She was too exhausted to be frightened.

Why was she here?

This was not her business.

And yet, of course, it was her business.

Carol was her business.

She could not sit idly in Bay St. Lucy, and walk along the coast.

Which she had done with Carol.

And putter about in Elementals.

Which she had done with Carol.

And plan a wonderful trip to Austria.

Which she had done with Carol.

And so…

...and so, she was taking a terrible trip to Austria, a dark and horrifying trip to Austria.

But it was the only thing she could do.

At seven o’clock, they entered Althofen.

The village proved to be the postcard that does not quite exist in real life, except that it did exist, below a massive gray castle-fortress, and abutting a lake that was a black sheet of water set in snow white hills.

She could see Michael braking as the road leading down into the village became steeper.

Beside them on the right, just outside the village limits, were farmhouses. These were half-timbered structures, also half barn, in which the open haylofts gave out onto courtyards where chickens squawked and panicked their way between and around troughs of water, and massive mounds of decaying compost.

The village itself was perfectly white—partially this came from the fact that it was snow-covered, but it was white in any season, from the whitewashed walls of stucco cottages, to the white and gleaming needle-towered cathedral overlooking them as the Opel crawled over a cobblestoned main street.

The shops themselves were closed now, but the windows had, of course, just been washed, and whatever was inside looked as though it were sitting outside. She felt she could reach in and touch bicycles arranged as though they were beginning a race that would lead from the interior of the shop out into the main square itself; or ready-to-broil chickens hanging despondently, like victims of war, interspersed with hams and massive sausage cylinders, all reaching to within a foot or so of equally massive barrels of cheese.

They’d descended halfway down to the lake when they saw the tavern on the right side of the road.

Michael parked the car.

The building they walked into was tripartite.

Stretching before them was the garden, a few tables laid out beneath the carnival lights, their checkered tablecloths dotted with twigs and smaller leaves that had fallen from the massive oak overshadowing them.

Directly across from them was the interior of the tavern. They could see a bar, a few stool, two haggard women in black dresses and aprons, and ornate turn-of-the-century mirrors that invariably stood behind such bars, so that people could enjoy watching themselves get drunk.

Other than the two women and a bartender, no one was in the bar area.

Nor for that matter was anyone seated in the garden.

That was for summer.

Directly to their left though was another building, almost an addendum to the bar area itself. This was a plain structure, and might have been taken for a garage, had cars been parked inside it instead of people.

It was packed.

People squeezed themselves through the single entry, hung out of windows, pushed, prodded, and alternatively shouted and shut completely up, so that whatever event was happening in there provided alternatively the most intense moments of a tent show revival and a presidential funeral.

People had packed into this small house in order to die and go to heaven, or to reverse the process, except more often, and with more animation about them, than is generally the case.

“What are they doing over there?” asked Nina.
        

“Soccer. In a village like this, everybody comes to the tavern at night to watch soccer.”

One of the women came out of the bar carrying, balanced on one palm, a brown plastic platter with six steins of beer on it.
 

She skirted the two of them, then walked into the TV building, then returned.

There were cheers from time to time.

Finally, she came over to the table where they were seated.

“Was darf es sein?”

What will it be?

“Zwei Pils.”

“Jawohl.”

She left.

“What did you order?”

“Two beers.”

“I don’t think I can…”

He shook his head.

“You don’t have to drink it. Just let it sit there. We had to order something.”

“Ok. So. What happens now?”

“We wait for a call. If everything works out all right, there will be a boat.”

Silence for a time.

A few cheers.

The clink of beer steins from the adjoining room.

An hour later, the call came.

Michael Gellert clicked open his cell phone, listened for a few seconds, then shut it.

He looked across the table at Nina.

“Let us go,” he said, “and meet our Mr. Red Claw.”

The chandelier resembled a helicopter made of crystal and diamond. It must have been, thought Carol, ten feet high and at least as massive in diameter.

What was the rope doing…

“Oh my,” she whispered, almost to herself.

She’d never seen such a thing.

For the rope, taut now, led to a pulley on the ceiling, the entire apparatus designed to haul the magnificent sparkling and flickering monstrosity upward, where it would reign over the great dining hall, the heat of a thousand candles wafting through huge open windows which looked out over the lawns and showcased the peacocks.

There was, in this room, obviously no electricity.

So that the innumerable white candles that fitted into the gold holders sprinkled like bits of icing around the birthday cake of a chandelier, had to be lit, one by one, by the young men and women who were now busily engaged in doing so, forming a kind of candle-bucket brigade, taking a candle out of the box lying on the floor, passing it, watching it be lighted, and then repeating the action until the room grew lighter, as the smoke from the smoldering wicks eddied and swirled more densely beneath a baroque hunting scene painted upon the ceiling, and the pulleys began to squeak and groan more threateningly as the chandelier prepared, like a hot air balloon, to rise.