Game Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 3) (21 page)

Nina nodded.

She knew, of course, that there would be this moment.

So why not just get it over with?

“Meg has been administratively suspended for the time being.”

“So, fired?
  

“Yes.”

“That sucks.”

“Yes.”

Questions were coming from all the players now, while what had been youthful expressions of joyous exuberance only moments ago were growing into the dark, threatening, and ultimately dangerous scowls that would mark their passage into adulthood.

“What did she do?”

“Is this really about that dinner at Dee Tee’s?”

“We went back on the bus…so what?”

“Is that really the reason she was fired?”

Have to put a stop to this, obviously.

“Ladies…”

Nina held up a palm. The ladies quietened.

“Ladies, I know you have questions about what happened to Meg.”

“Just one thing, Ms. Bannister…”

This from Alyssha
 
Bennett:

“Did this new administrative some thing or other, this Dr. van Osdale fire Meg?”

“Yes.”

“Can we kill her?”

“No.”

“Can anybody kill her?”

“No. And this really isn’t very funny.”

“We didn’t,” said Haley, or Stephanie, or Megan, or Taylor—or maybe all of them at once:

“….mean it to be funny.”

And they didn’t.

Nina’s first practice session went surprisingly well, probably due to the fact that she had to do nothing at all more than sit in the stands and watch it. The players knew that they were supposed to do laps, then bleachers, then layups, then free throw drills, then dribbling practice, then five on five, and finally wind sprints.

By the time they’d done all of these things it was precisely five PM.

So there would have been nothing left to do except be sure no belongings had been left in the locker room, but that was a chore handled routinely by the student manager, Clancy Gail, or be sure the gym was locked, but it wasn’t and didn’t need to be, because the men’s team had begun arriving at five o’clock, since this was one of the days when they practiced late.

No, there would have been nothing to do except go home and fix dinner.

Except that Moon Rivard had arrived.

She saw him as he appeared in the doorway.

He waved at her, all gray uniformed an unkempt and hair sprouting out of everywhere on him and blue eyes a twinkle.

She waved him up to the spot in the stands she’d singled out for her coach’s lair, and she watched him approach while she watched the players disappear into the locker room.

“Ms. Bannister!”

“Hey, Moon!”

“Our new coach!”

“Looks like it!”

“How’s it going?”

She gestured for him to sit down, and he did so, looking at the papers spread out beside her.

“It’s going well. We just finished the first practice.”

He beamed.

“Wonderful! Is that your play book?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Know anything about it?”

“No, I don’t.”

He laughed.

“Well, it’ll be all right. You just tell them to put the ball in the basket.”

“I think I can do that.”

“Bet you can! Bet you can!”

He watched the court below them, as it began to fill with slender, gawky, gangling, guffawing young men.

Finally he said:

“Nina, this thing yesterday. I was real sorry to hear about it.”

“Well. It wasn’t handled very well.”

“The State Patrol…I don’t know how that could have happened.”

Nina shrugged:

“There were a lot of committees meeting in Jackson,
 
I guess. Somebody decided that Meg had to be removed quickly, before an incident took place. And so an incident happened.”

“I know. I feel like it was my fault somehow.”

“I don’t see how it could be your fault, Moon.”

“If I could have been there first, I could have broken it to her easier, gotten her out of there by a back way or something.”

“Well, don’t beat yourself up.”

“Anyway, a lot of people are upset by it.”

“Yes, they are. That and a lot of other things. The players just asked me if they could kill April van Osdale.”

Nina smiled as she said this.

Moon Rivard did not.

They sat for a time.

The men’s team began its layups.

“Is there,” Nina finally said, “something I should know?”

“Yes, ma’am. You probably should know it.”

“Okay. What is it?”

“The town is very upset. Up until two weeks ago they didn’t even know this what’s her name woman existed. Now apparently people are worried about losing our money for the school. Kids are getting told they’re retarded. The coach gets fired…”

“And?”

“Well, this van Osdale woman came to see me a couple of hours ago.”

“Why?”

“She’s been getting some letters. Bad words. Even a few threats.”
 

And so there it was again.

The old semi-nauseated feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She had it upon meeting Eve Ivory for the first time; she had it upon seeing Helen Reddington slapped viciously by her husband.

Someone is going to get hurt, it warned her.

Someone is going to get killed.

And they come in threes, don’t they?

Movie stars die in threes.

Sports figures die in threes.

There had been two murders in Bay St. Lucy…

…but no.

No, that was crazy.

The Eve Ivory affair involved huge sums of money, and the very existence of the town was threatened; and besides, Eve Ivory was killed by the sins of a horrid and violent past. Helen Reddington’s murder involved passion, affairs of the heart, cruelty and villainy and morbid passion.

This was school.

This was
just school
!

Tests and records and a basketball team.

School
for God’s sakes!

Nobody was murdered because of school!

“So, Moon…what should we do about these letters?”

He shook his head and rose.

“Just keep your eyes open, Ms. Bannister.”

“Okay. I will.”

“I know you will. And good luck with your play book!”

He laughed.

She laughed.

He left.

“It’s school,” she found herself whispering to the play clock, which hung inert and lifeless across the court in front of her.

“Nobody gets murdered because of school.”

So saying, she rose and left the building.

CHAPTER 14: A TOUCH OF JANE AUSTEN, A TOUCH OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK

“You intend to kiss me and yet you are going to all this damn trouble about it.”

––
William Faulkner

The following evening was a special one in The Little Hobbit House by the Sea, which was the name Nina had invented for the place where she lived, Tolkien’s term being so much friendlier and so much more poetic than ‘the old shack where Nina lived.’

She’d awakened early to do her chores, but had included as one of those tasks the insertion of a pot roast—along with quartered new potatoes—into her crock pot.

The meat had been cooking all day, simmering in two cans of French onion soup.

So that when she arrived home at a quarter until six, rejoicing inwardly that for an entire school day no outraged parents had stormed the main office, no storm troopers had invaded the cafeteria, no athletic teams had been eliminated, no teachers had been fired, no new standardized testing ultimatums had been handed down, Max Lirpa had not started the French Revolution, and April van Osdale had neither been seen nor heard from…

…when she arrived with her mind filled only with these reveries, and opened the door, she was greeted, in fact engulfed, by succulent aromas and the prospect of an excellent dinner.

“Yes!”

Just what she needed!

“Hi, Furl.”

“Rrrggggh,” answered Furl, rubbing against her leg to re-establish territoriality.

“Anything bad happen today?”

“Rrrgggh.”

“Good. Any interesting national news?”

“Rrrggh.”

“I didn’t think so. What about domestic news?”

“Rrrgggh.”

“Well, that’s just the Republicans and Democrats for you. Smell the roast?”

“Rrrrrggh.”

“I thought so. We’ll make this a special meal.”

And she set about doing so. She took off her winter clothes and hung them up, lay her school papers on the desk that sat just inside the bedroom door, walked into the kitchen, turned on the light—for it was already growing dark outside—and flipped on the Boze radio/cd player.

What should she listen to?

An Evening with the Boston Pops

Hello, Arthur Fiedler!

And so, while she busied herself inserting the corkscrew into a bottle of Pinot Noir—she was going to have two glasses of red wine tonight despite her vows that she would not do so on a school night—the lush tones of Rimsky-Korsakov danced around her.

She turned the corkscrew, withdrew the cork, smelled it, tossed it on the counter, poured herself a large glass of Lindemann’s (the world’s most elegant bottle of wine for under five dollars), and sat at the kitchen table.

Furl curled (she liked the phrase ‘Furlcurled’) into an orange and white ball on the chair next to her.

Outside the sliding window, the lights in the offshore drilling rig had just begun to sparkle; a pale half-moon hung low over the ocean, and the great breakers roiled and crashed a quarter of a mile seaward before dissipating in eddying currents and frothing ashore as white tracery.

So what the hell was she to do?

How was she going to take arms against the sea of troubles that, like the sea that was The Gulf of Mexico, seemed to be rushing up to engulf her?

Well…

…the first thing to do was coach the Lady Mariners. Tomorrow night they were to go to Donaldsonville. Her first outing. But Donaldsonville was not that tough. The Mariners had won by twenty-three a month ago.

The girls knew what to do.

She would sit primly on the bench and watch. All she had to do was not run off to New Mexico and get married, and not let Jackson Bennett escort the girls home to Bay St. Lucy and then into Dee Tees, and not buy them dinner, and not tell April van Osdale that she had done these things, and not subsequently be fired and then led from the building by state troopers.

These were all things that she could pretty easily not do.

Couldn’t she? Not?

Of course she could not.

But then there were the other things.

There was the fact that she had pretty much promised to use the MOCKMACES to help get the school’s scores up.

One MOCKMACE per week.

The students would be MOCKMACED to death.

And there would be more MOCKMACES, and more still, until the school became ‘exemplary.’

A better idea? Why not just cheat?

How might it work?

Let’s see.

Well, just find out what the questions were going to be, tell the teachers what the questions were going to be, and then instruct the teachers to, in turn, tell the students what the questions were going to be—and of course, what the answers were going to be—and what letters corresponded to the right answers.

So it would sound like:

“Students, question number 22 will be, ‘Name the author of the essay, ‘Nature.’ The answer is ‘Emerson,’ (Ralph Waldo but don’t bother with that because first names aren’t on the test nor is anything concerning the content of the essay), and the appropriate letter will be ‘b.’ So write ‘b’ as the answer to question number 22.”

She could do that.

And that wouldn’t be cheating, would it?

Would that be cheating?

Certainly not!

Of course, the teachers could also just walk up and down the rows, looking over the students’ shoulders and going ‘tap tap tap’ with pencils on the appropriate answer circles, and it might be easier.

There would be less chance of a mistake.

“That wouldn’t be cheating, would it, Furl?”

“Rrrrgggh.”

“You think so?”

“Rrrrggggh.”

“Well, I’m not sure. I’m not sure; I think it’s a very gray area.”

“Rrrrgggh.”

“Sure, but that’s only if you see it in a Kantian way. You would see it that way because you believe in the CAT-egorical imperative. Get it? CAT-egorical imperative?”

No sound from Furl.

“Well, I thought it was pretty funny.”

Still no sound.

“Okay then, let’s have some salad.”

She rose, turned, and opened the refrigerator.

Fresh head of lettuce, nice and tightly wrapped.

Around her, the tunes of Arabia frolicked and soared, dancing in the moonlight and glutting themselves with the smells coming out of the crock pot.

There was a flash of light on the beach below, and then another in the parking lot.

HONK.

A car horn.

Damn.

Who would be visiting her tonight?

NO!

This was the one day when everything had gone relatively smoothly. And was it to be disturbed?

She thought of all the possibilities, all the people who could have been down there blowing that horn. Moon Rivard? No, she didn’t want to see him. Jackson Bennett? No, she didn’t want to see him, nice a man as he was. Alanna Delafosse? No, she had nothing suitable to wear. Tom Broussard? No she had not enough to drink. Max Lirpa? No, for so many reasons that it was unnecessary to name any one in particular. Penelope Royale? No, because she didn’t want Furl hearing that kind of language.

“Just a minute!” she shouted uselessly at the closed window.

She made her way through the living room, reached the door that led to the stairwell landing, put her hand on the knob, and whispered:

“Whoever you are, I don’t want to see you tonight.”

Then she opened the door and looked down.

“Margot!”

“Nina!”

And, hurtling down the stairs, she threw herself into the arms of her best friend, fighting back the tears of joy as she did so.

An hour later, the three of them—Margot, Nina, and Goldmann Bristow, who was to be Margot’s new husband––had devoured the roast and were sitting in a tight circle in the living room, a candle glowing on the small table, the second bottle of Lindemann’s now sitting half full.

There had been introductions, of course. There had been some shock in the realization that Mr. Bristow was a somewhat elfin man, fully six inches shorter than the decidedly non-elfin Margot; but then joy in the equally clear and powerful realization that he was a shrewd and witty man, too, and that he did not laugh at his own jokes, and that he did not make the kind of jokes that elicited a required and not natural laugh, and that he might have fit quite well in one of Jane Austen’s drawing rooms, and that Margot had—oh good for you, Margot, good for you indeed!—made a wonderful choice.

Nina kept thinking, during all the hugs and all the kisses and all the “We just got back from Candles today!” and all the “I hope we’re not interrupting but Goldmann had to meet you’s”—about Emma, and Miss Taylor, and Mr. Weston.

‘Some sadness there must be…”

For Miss Taylor, who had been Emma’s lifelong friend, had in fact married Mr. Weston, and was now to live at Randall’s, and no more at Hartsfield.

A sad thing for Emma.

But wonderful for Miss Taylor!

And wonderful for Mr. Weston, who, after having made his fortune and acquired his wife (splendid neo-classical Jane Austen!) was now to experience the pleasures that an amiable and well judging woman could provide.

Margot, amiable?

Well, ninety percent of the time, certainly.

And well judging?

Yes.
 

Or Nina would not have enjoyed her presence so thoroughly during the last two years.

Would not be enjoying it so thoroughly now.

Listening to Bristow reminisce:

“I suppose the first time Margot and I ever met was at a fund raiser. It must have been in the late seventies.”

“Nineteen seventy nine.”
    

“How do you remember that, Margot?”

“I marked it on my calendar.”

“You did no such thing!”

“No, but doesn’t it sound romantic, dear?”

Margot saying ‘dear’ to someone.

How strange it all was!

“It sounds romantic. But the truth is, you hated me, Margot!”

“I did not hate you! I didn’t even notice you!”

“Are you certain? I could have sworn that you hated me!”

“Not in the least! You were much too short to be worth bothering about!”