Game Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 3) (31 page)

CHAPTER 20: PETITE BOIS ISLAND

“And I will look down and see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of wind, and after a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the lonely and inviolate sand.”

––
William Faulkner
,
The Sound and the Fury

At eight thirty PM, Nina and Penelope approached Petit Bois Island, a part of the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve.

The moon was in the absolute middle of the sky above them; shallow grass water shimmered beneath it, as though the air were filled with phosphorescent particles.

“Is there anything out here, Penn?”

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.”

Penn, wearing a bulky fatigue jacket and combat boots, turned the keel slightly; she increased
 
power on the small outboard motor, which chugged and purred enough to disturb the water slightly, their wake flat after ten feet. Her nervousness could be measured by the fact that she’d refrained from cursing.

This almost never happened.

“Come here.”

“Ok.”

Nina stood carefully and made her way from the metal seat she had taken…as much for ballast as any other reason…back to where a black box in the stern was glowing green, flashing, going dark, then blinking again.

“Look at the radar screen.”

“It’s just a bunch of green splotches.”

“That’s land, islets and such. The dark is the water.”

“Where are we?”

“Here. We’re always in the center of the screen. Z653x…those are our GPS coordinates.”

“What about the others?”

“X869r. That’s where we’re going.”

“How far?”

“Half a mile more. There’s a narrow little river, not much more than a stream, that runs into the island.”

Soon they had gone from open water to what seemed little more than swamp, the boat slowing as they made their way under moss that hung down like spider webs, and Penelope navigating carefully through the white jutting knees that seemed to grow up through the water like stalactites. Overhead an occasional owl thrashed about in the tangled branches, and standing, sometimes no more than a few feet from them, herons and egrets, absolutely motionless, gazed into the water, hunting, waiting.

The island sang to them as they drifted. The marshes to her left were covered with blue radiance.

Penn said quietly:

“Gas. Nitrogen. Bubbles up through the reeds. They call it swamp fire.”

She watched its filmy curtain rise, quiver, and evaporate.

Finally Penn whispered:

“
We’re there.”

Nina looked around. They were in a lagoon, the swamp encircling them, shadowy and impenetrable. Here and there she saw logs, glistening in what was still a daylight bright night.

Double humps with yellow spots for eyes ringed the boat, half submerged in marsh water and cattails, croaking gutturally in a kind of unearthly syncopation.

“Frogs out here,” Penn whispered, “size of a basketball.”

Beyond the boat’s prow Nina saw, for the first time, a kind of man made structure.

It stood stork-like on spindly poles that seemed much too emaciated to hold anything larger that one of the monster frogs that kept croaking in anti-harmony, or one of the turtles that she could see floating like black and patterned dinner plates beside the boat.

“What is that thing?” she whispered, her voice sounding unnaturally loud.

“A kind of shelter.”

“Does anybody live there?”

“No. You see them sometimes on these deserted islands. They’re just fishing shacks.”

She focused more clearly on the structure now, on the clapboard room and its rusted metal roof. Nothing about it was straight, the boards themselves running at odd angles as though they’d been fixed to its precarious frame by nails in a hurricane

Penn killed the engine of the boat, which began to drift through eddying moss across the lagoon. She took Nina’s hand and whispered:

“When we get there, I’ll go up and see what’s in that shack. You wait here; stay by the motor.”

Penn stood, gazed up at the shack hovering ten feet over them, then sighed heavily:

“Okay, here goes,” she said, and started up the stairs.

They creaked and wavered with each of her steps.

Within a minute, she’d topped the stairway and pushed open what passed for a door. It’s screeching seemed to quieten for a second the marsh birds, crickets, frogs, cicadas, and, as far as she knew, bears that bellowed from the vines encircling them…but the sound disappeared with Penn, and, after only an instant, the swamp was the same singing chorus and the shelter stood dark.

In a second she reappeared and beckoned.

“Come on.”

“What did you find?”

“Not much. The stairs are ok, I think. So is the floor.”

Nina made her way out of the boat and onto a half rotted step. She touched lightly on it then moved on, gripping the banister to steady herself as she climbed.

“Come on in. Not much here.”

She entered the shack.

The room she found herself in was perhaps ten to twelve feet square, and empty except for one or two beer cans that lay against the baseboards. Dust was everywhere, floating in the air, covering the table on which Penelope had left her flashlight, thick on the soft boards beneath their feet, and weighing down even the spider webs that hung ponderously like gigantic fans from cracked boards on the ceiling.

Nina began to make her way around the room, wondering what had been planned, what was to happen here.

Then she glanced down at the seat of the chair.

There was a piece of paper.

“Is that trash?” asked Penn.

“Maybe. It’s been here a while. There’s dust on it.”

“Open it.”

“All right.”

Nina did so.

It had once been typing paper but had now begun to darken and crack.

The words, typed on what seemed to be word processor, were still clear, though:

APRIL IS THE CRUELEST MONTH.

“What does that mean?” asked Penn.

“It’s Elliot.”

“Elliot who?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

They walked around the room. Several of the window panes were broken. The jagged glass remaining was so deeply filmed by dust as to be impossible to see through.

“Nina, come here.”

“What?”

“Come here to the porch. Look down there, in the water. And tied here on the porch rail.”

Nina crossed the room, stepped out onto the porch, and looked own.

She saw a thick rope, securely tied, taut.
      

“There’s something down there.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. But I will.”

Penn grasped the rope and began to pull, hand over hand.

Finally she said:

“Bring the light here.”

She retrieved the flashlight, returned, and centered the beam on the spot where the rope entered a tangle of black moss.

Penelope continued to pull, hand over hand, hand over hand…

“There.
 
Look…”

“What is that thing?”

“Wire. It’s some kind of a cage. Here…let me wipe that moss off…”

The cage continued to rise from the water. Nina could see within it now: there were saturated rags that had once been clothes. There was also what seemed at first to be tangle of colorless hair.

“What are those things, Nina?”

“Those were,” Nina answered, “April’s clothes.”

“And that other thing? It looks like the hide of a cat that’s been skinned.”

“It’s a wig. A blond wig.”

“Look. There’s a little locket of some kind.”

“Yes.”

It was a locket. Circular and silver.

It opened easily, revealing a note, which said:

“This is the last of April van Osdale. RIP.”

The two women looked at each other.

After some minutes, they descended the stairs, made their way back onto the boat, and went back to Bay St. Lucy.

CHAPTER 21: THE WOMAN WHO WASN’T THERE

“...the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.”

––
William Faulkner
,
As I Lay Dying

There was no thought, of course, of further confidentiality.

Something had happened to April van Osdale, and the authorities had to be informed.

Nina chastised herself mercilessly during the boat ride back to Bay St. Lucy harbor, saying every five minutes or so to Penelope Royale:

“I should have gone to Moon the minute I got that stupid “standardized test.”

“But, Nina, if I understood you right, whoever wrote the test told you not to.”

“Yes, but whoever wrote the test must have done something to April.”

“That’s just the point, Nina. If you had told somebody, maybe April van Osdale would be dead by now.”

“She might be anyway, for all we know.”

“Maybe. But all we found were two dresses and a wig.”

“That’s not all we found.”

“We found a note saying ‘RIP.’”

“Oh. Well, there’s that.”

By nine o’clock, Nina was sitting in the office of Moon Rivard, who was studying the ‘examination’ she had received, the letter to Penelope, and the soaked garments and wig.

“Now what time did this, this ‘test’ come to you, Nina?”

“I got it about ten this morning.”

“How did you get it?”

“It was in the mailbox on the door of my office at school.”

“And you have no idea who put it there?”

“No. There’s so much hustle and bustle around a school principal’s office. I was in and out. Teachers come and go, and so do parents and students. We try to make sure that no complete strangers come in, but sometimes…”

“I understand. And you chose not to bring this thing to me immediately?”

“I know. It was stupid. I just thought, whoever left the thing seems to know everything I do, anyway. If I tell someone…”

“Yeah, well, that’s the way kidnappers usually work.”

“You think April has been kidnapped?”

“I don’t know what to think right now. You say you were invited over to her house for dinner on Friday night?”

“Yes.”

“She wasn’t there, and the door was open?”

“Just slightly ajar, yes.”

“You went inside?”

“I did, Moon, but nothing seemed wrong. No sign of a struggle or anything. April is––well, she’s got important friends, and she doesn’t care a whole lot about somebody like me. I just assumed she’d forgotten the dinner invitation, gone out with friends, and failed to close the door properly.”

“And you didn’t try to get in touch with her.”

“I did on Monday. Twice. I called her office here in town, her office in Hattiesburg, and her office in Jackson. No one had seen her.”

“That seems strange.”

Nina shook her head:

“Not really, considering that it’s April. She has friends in very high places. She’s on committees we don’t even know about. Most of the time her offices have no idea where she is.”

“I see. Well, the bad thing about this, is that she got all those angry letters.”

“There’s something else, Moon.”

“What?”

“April was at my place the other night. She talked about some man coming into her life.”
    

“In what way?”

“I don’t know. She was vague. But she said they had been in a relationship for a long time. A love hate relationship.”

“You didn’t see this man?”

“No.”

“Any strangers been hanging around the school?”

“Not that I’ve noticed.”

“Well, it’s like I say, ma’am, I don’t know what to think.”
 

“Moon, I have to tell you, Margot Gavin’s fiancé is a psychiatrist.”

“I think I heard that somewhere around town.”

“He met April. Just briefly, but he met her.”

“And?”

Nina shook her head:

“He thinks she has some pretty bad problems. She’s a classic…”

“No, ma’am. Don’t tell me any of those big words.”

“Okay, but he held out the possibility that she might consider suicide.”

Moon shook his head.

“Maybe. But as far as I know, folks who want to commit suicide just do it. They don’t go sending people on treasure hunts to pick up their clothing.”

“No, I guess not.”

“But, Miss Nina, I got to say one thing to you.”

“Ok, go ahead.”

“It was really wrong for you to go out to that island. Anything could have happened.”

“I had Penn with me.”

“Well, that makes me feel some comfort. And of course, we have some people going out there now, just to search all that water around the little shack.”

“Again, Moon, Penn and I didn’t find anything wrong in the shack.”

“No blood, nothing like that?”

“Nothing. It was pretty dirty, like nobody had been there for a while…but no signs of a struggle.”

“This is the damndest thing I ever saw. It’s like the woman just disappeared.”

“Yes.”

“Ok, then you go home and try to get some sleep. We’re gonna treat this as a missing person’s case. We’re trying to get a lowdown on all the contacts that might know something about this.”

“I’ve given you all the numbers I have, all the offices, her secretaries’ name.”

“That’s good. Now we’re going to have a car take you back home. You understand: if anybody calls you again, or contacts you in any way, you don’t try to be no hero. Just call me immediately.”

“I understand.”

And so ended the conversation.

The following day meant school as usual.

It was hardly ‘as usual,’ of course, because Nina’s mind was filled with a thousand frantically working ants, all digging tunnels in the soft clay of reality.

She could not keep her eyes off the mail holder affixed to her door.

She knew that a statewide ‘woman hunt’ must be going on; that the senator had to have been informed by now of April’s disappearance; that all of her offices in the southwest part of the state were being gone through; that her phone records were being checked; that her car was being gone over; that her home was being examined with the utmost care; that neighbors were being questioned; that the writers of all critical letters were being interviewed…

…and yet she also knew that a strict blanket of confidentiality was being spread over the entire matter.

The press knew nothing.

The school knew nothing.

Occasionally, a teacher would ask Nina about the results of MOCKMACES. Nina knew of no choice but to reveal those results.

But she did not bring up the subject of April van Osdale’s reaction, and she simply changed the subject as soon as possible.

In short, whatever was being done about the disappearance of April van Osdale was being done without her knowledge.

This did not make the matter a great deal easier.

True, she did not like the woman.

But somehow, she felt she had failed.

There had been some attempts at fraternization.

She had done nothing to further them.

Perhaps, if the Friday night dinner had taken place, April would have confided in her.

But confided what?

No, the thing prayed on her mind and would not let her rest.

It prayed on her mind during Wednesday’s basketball practice.

It prayed on her mind during the school day Thursday.

And it was praying on her mind Thursday afternoon when the phone rang and Jackson Bennett said:

“Nina?”

“Yes?”

“There’s been a development in the matter of van Osdale.”

Ominous.

She almost did not want to continue with the conversation.

But she did, saying:

“What is it, Jackson?”

A pause.

“We need to talk about it.”

“Who?”

“Edie Towler wants to meet with you and me and Moon. Town Hall, her office, seven tonight. You can be there, can’t you?”

“Sure. That’s right after practice.”

“All right then.”

“Jackson, is April…”

“I’m not sure what it is; I’ll see you tonight, Nina.”

And he hung up.

Some hours later she entered City Hall.

The three others—Moon, Edie, and Jackson—were waiting for her.

Once all of them were seated, Edie said:

“We just got word about four hours ago…”

Silence.

Only the sound of the ventilation system.

Nina felt on the verge of tears.

Say it, Edie. Say it.

“Here.”

Edie passed around several copies of what appeared to be a letter.

Nina forced herself to look at it. It appeared to have been written out on an older typewriter.

It said:

“TO THE SENATOR:

IT IS WITH TRUE REGRET THAT I MUST RESIGN FROM THE POSITION TO WHICH YOU HAVE APPOINTED ME. THE CHALLENGES FACING OUR EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENT ARE GREAT INDEED; BUT AT THIS TIME I DO NOT FEEL CAPABLE OF MEETING THEM. I HAVE IN THE LAST DAYS SUFFERED A DECLINE IN MY HEALTH, AND I FEEL THE NEED TO GO AWAY AND ENTER UPON A PERIOD OF REST AND RECOVERY.

AGAIN, WITH TRUE REGRETS,

APRIL VAN OSDALE.

They looked at each other over the table.

“I’ll be damned,” growled Jackson.

Silence for a time.

Nina looked at Edie: