Oil Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 4) (22 page)

This was exactly the way it had been on the Aquatica.

She had expected villains. Stock ocean polluters, concerned only about making money.

She had found, instead, gracious and giving people.

One of whom she was now embracing.

Finally she was able to speak, her voice wavering, her eyes watering with tears:

“I’m…I’m so sorry if I’ve done wrong!”

Sandy smiled at her through an equally dense film of tears:

“It’s all right, Nina.”

And now Brewster Dale was laying a palm on her shoulder:

“If Mr. Faulkner were here, Ms. Bannister, he would repeat the words he wrote in
Intruder in the Dust
: “Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.”

“But…you’ve all been so nice to me. Somehow I feel ashamed for taking the disk!”

Again, the honey-soothing Mississippi drawl:

“And again, Mr. Faulkner would tell you: Unless you’re ashamed of yourself now and then, you’re not honest’ I believe that comes from
The Reivers
.”

“I just…I’m scared for you! All three of you! And everybody else out there!”

Sandy shook her head:

“Don’t be. We’re fine! Aquatica is safe, Nina!”

“But it isn’t safe! It can’t be!”

Phil Bennington put a palm on her shoulder:

“Ms. Bannister, it’s like I said yesterday on television. I’ve been in this business all my life. If any of those things
The New York Times
said were true, don’t you think I would know?”

“But I—I just…”

She could not speak for a time.

Finally, Sandy said:

“The only danger we’re in, Nina, is from boats that have come out to Aquatica, filled with protesters. A few came very close to the rig yesterday afternoon, shouting through bullhorns. And saying some pretty dreadful things.”

Tom Holder interjected:

“A couple of coast guard vessels have come out though. The blokes are giving us protection now.”

Nina took two deep breaths and said, finally:

“I’m so sorry that this is all happening. I don’t want to be anybody’s hero.”

Sandy took her hand and said:

“We know that, Nina.”

“But Edgar’s brother was terrified. He knew that Edgar had been murdered. And he was convinced that Edgar had discovered something terrible that had been happening on Aquatica.”

“Then why,” asked Sandy “didn’t you share all this with us when you came out?”

“I guess—I guess I just didn’t trust you. And still—still it doesn’t make sense to me. It’s all crazy. I found out that Edgar had been trying to call Narang, his old professor. So I got hold of the man. He agreed to look at the disk.”

There was movement from the other side of the table.

The tall, burly, dark-skinned man rose.

“Where,” he asked his voice tinged with a slight lilting accent, “did you meet Professor Narang?”

“In Lafayette. I flew there two days ago with the disk. A graduate student in the department—her name was Annette Richoux—met me at the airport. We went dancing…”

“Dancing?” asked the man.

“Yes, I know it sounds crazy. But I think she just wanted to get my mind—both of our minds, because she had been a good friend of Edgar’s too—off the things that had happened. Anyway I spent the night at her little house beside campus. The next day we went and met Professor Narang.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“In the geology building. There’s a projection room. He was already there. We put the disk in the room’s computer, and he started analyzing it.”

“Was anyone else there with you?”

“No, just Annette and the professor. The more he saw of the data, the more frightened he seemed to get. He told me that a complete analysis would take a long time, so I flew back home to Bay St. Lucy. That night he called me though. He said it was worse than he had initially thought. Something drastic needed to be done, or the whole installation might blow up.”

“And so he wrote the story that appeared in
The New York Times
.”

“Yes.”

“Saying that the entire Gulf Coast was in danger.”

“That, and that the explosion would be big enough to kill all of you. Instantly.”

She paused to get her breath.

Her heart, she realized, was pounding.

“But they wouldn’t run the story,” she continued, “without substantiation. They had to know where the disk came from. So a reporter flew down to Bay St. Lucy and I told her everything.”

“That was, I take it, Ms. Cohen.”

“Yes, Elizabeth Cohen.”

“And so,” he said, with a half smile, “the world came to know of Ms. Nina Bannister.”

“Yes. But again—I didn’t mean for it to be this way.”

He nodded.

“I understand. I think we all understand.”

“It’s just—I’m still terrified. I don’t want you to go back out there!”

Brewster Dale merely smiled:

“You cannot swim for new horizons,” we read in
Absalom Absalom
, “until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”

“Nina,” Sandy said, “like I told you. We’re in no danger. The gulf is in no danger. The only real danger now is all of these people who seem to hate the oil industry. Which is crazy, because all we’re trying to do is keep their cars running and keep them warm at night.”

“But Sandy—how can you know you’re safe? Professor Narang is absolutely certain of what he wrote. And he’s one of the leading authorities in the world on these matters!”

For an instant, there was complete silence in the room.

Then the tall man with the slight accent said, quietly:

“Ms. Bannister, there is no danger. Of that, I can assure you, having read all of the data available.”

“But how can you know?”

Silence again.

Then:

“Because, Ms. Bannister. I am Professor Daruka Narang.”

He then looked at everyone else in the room, pointed to Nina , and said:

“And I assure all of you: I have never before seen this woman in my life.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN: NOTHING THAT DOES NOT ANSWER

An enormous amount of time went by.

It might have been seconds. It might have been years.

But there are moments that cannot be escaped from, that cannot be used to jump forward. They are such quicksand that the foot one braces with sinks into them, and existence stops, it being unable to progress in time.

So that time, at least for all practical purposes, ceases to exist.

Somewhere in the vacuum of her mind appeared Jane Austin’s words—words that had been her guide and inspiration during the Robinson case, the Reddington affair, the bizarre twist involving April van Osdale. The words stood out quite clearly, as though they had been printed on the screen in the meeting room:

“A mind lively and at ease can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.”

Nothing that does not answer.

“Nina?”

What was that?

Someone was asking her a question.

Who was it?

Jackson.

She should answer Jackson, of course.

But they were all looking at her. Why would they be looking at her like that?

But she should answer Jackson.

“Yes?”

That was the appropriate thing to say, wasn’t it?

“Nina. What’s going on here?”

“I…I don’t know.”

The tall, burly, dark-skinned man continued:

“And I must tell you, Ms. Bannister..”

“Yes? Yes, what must you tell me?”

“Ms. Bannister, I know our department quite well. I am, in fact, its chairman, and have been for some years. There is no graduate student in our department named ‘Annette Richoux.’ This entire ‘meeting’ you have told us about. It simply cannot have happened.”

“But…but…”

“Ms. Bannister, I myself have been on sabbatical for the last three months. I have not even been on campus. I most certainly did not meet with you, not the day before yesterday, nor any other time. And the article that
The New York Times
accuses me of having written? It’s simply gibberish. I would never have written such a thing, nor would I have submitted it to a non-academic journal if I had.”

She knew nothing to say.

She had met Daruka Narang.

And Annette Richoux.

These things existed in her mind. Narang, with his perfectly trimmed goatee. Annette, wild Annette. Her cigar.
 

The Blue Gator.

“Now, Ms. Bannister. At what time of day did you have this meeting?”

“About eleven.”

“Did you go to the actual office of the man who saw this disk with you?”

“No.”

“Or to this Ms. Richoux?”

“No. We just…”

“You just met in a deserted hallway?”

“Yes. And then we went…”

“To a deserted lecture hall.”

She nodded.

All of the people around the table looked at her.

She looked at herself.

One Nina said to the second Nina:

‘But if that wasn’t Daruka Narang, then who…”

“Nina,” Jackson was asking, “Nina, did you give this man the disk that you took from Aquatica?”

“Yes.”

More glances.

Jackson’s voice continued, pouring over the table like syrup.

“All right.”

He rose.

“I want to make a suggestion to everyone in the room. I think it would be good if Nina and I could talk. I think we should go over to my office. I know there is a great deal of work to be done here. Steps to be taken. Mr. Robicheaux, I believe you are one of the lead attorneys for Louisiana Petroleum?”

A dark-suited man nodded:

Jackson continued.

“I hope you realize, we understand the difficulties of this situation.”

“We hope so.”

“But Ms. Bannister has obviously been deceived in some manner.”

“I think we can say,” said the attorney, “that is an understatement. She has been deceived indeed. And in a very costly way.”

“You’re going to want a statement…”

“We are. And we’re going to want it quickly.”

“Certainly. We just need some time.”

“How much time?”

“A couple of hours. Nina and I just need to talk.”

“That seems reasonable. All right.”

There was a pause.

Sandy, somehow managing a smile, stood and said:

“Let’s all go and have lunch.”

It was agreed that lunchtime was at hand.

And Nina left the room with Jackson.

Jackson’s office—Frank’s old office—was somewhat like a womb for Nina.

It was approaching eleven o’clock in the morning, and a bright, summery, Mississippi Gulf Coast morning it was. But the office still had something dark and cool about it. There was also an aroma that she had never been able to place. Frank’s office had the smell of ‘establishment,’

Out of deference to Frank, his old diploma still hung on the wall behind the desk, beside Jackson’s. There was the small window, which filtered everything distasteful out of streaming sunlight and allowed only inspirational lamination to enter the room, as though, rather than the cold hands of civil authority, seekers after the law found themselves in a kind of quiet chapel.

One expected organ music. Or incense.

Nina got none of these as she settled down in the old and thoroughly familiar green leather chair facing Jackson—but she got enough of the room’s solace, and languished in enough of its memories, that she was able to proceed as though she were a woman to whom the world still made some sense.

Jackson sat, stared at her, heaved a sigh, started to say something, thought better of it, and instead sharpened a pencil.

This process took half a minute or so.

It also allowed him to spend another half minute contemplating the point before putting the pencil in the desk drawer.

He was looking around to find a second pencil when Nina interrupted him.

“All right. What happens now.?”

He shrugged:

“Damned if I know.”

Through the bottom of the small window they could see the top of a delivery truck passing. Through the top of the small window they could see the bottom of a flock of birds passing.

They watched these things for as long as was acceptable to do so.

Then Jackson said:

“Nina, what the hell happened over there?”

“In Lafayette, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know.”

“You have to know!”

“Nope.”

“This man at the meeting just now. He is without question Daruka Narang.”

“I gathered that.”

“Then who did you…”

Suddenly she found herself standing, leaning on the desk, and looking down at Jackson, as though she were mad at him, which she was not.

It still, she realized as she watched herself pour out of herself, must have come across that way:

“Jackson, what am I supposed to say?
 
I told you everything! I told everybody everything! I flew over there, and Annette Richoux met me at the airport. She took me to her little house on the edge of campus. It was no more than a one-room place, with gray paint peeling off it. She’s as Cajun as oysters and alligators, and she said we were going dancing. We did, at a strange and kind of bizarre place called The Blue Gator. We danced all night, practically, until they were about to close around midnight and she went home with some guy she had picked up named ‘Guidry.’”

“You’re sure his name was ‘Guidry?’”

“They’re all named ‘Guidry.’”

“Ok, so you…”

“I got a cab to take me back to her place. She wandered in about two in the morning, I guess. I’m not sure, because I was asleep when I hit the bed. I woke up at first light. We had breakfast together. Croissants and beignets. Then later in the morning we walked together to campus. We went into the geology building, found Das—found somethehellbody in a big lecture hall with a computer all set up to show the images on the screen behind the podium.”

“And this man told you he was Daruka Narang?”

“Of course he did. You think he said ‘Frank Smith,’ and I just dreamed Daruka Narang?”

“I’m not sure what to think at this point.”

“Me neither, Jackson. I just…”

At that moment, the phone on the desk rang.

It was a real phone, black and solid and recognizable as a phone and not a camera or a blender—and it rang and did not buzz, and Nina loved Jackson for holding on to it, as one might carry the faded black and white picture of a frowning, bearded, long-dead great grandfather from somewhere on the plains of Kansas.

“Bennett here.”

And for a minute or so he rumbled, growled, scowled, muttered, and nodded.

Finally he put the phone down.

“Better and better,” he said, quietly.

“What?” she asked, wondering why she had let out of her head the word ‘what’ instead of the much more appropriate phrase, ‘I want to go home now.’

But ‘what’ she had said, and ‘what’ she would have to answer to.

“More information is coming in from the people over at LP. Specifically from Narang.”

“What?”

Damn it, Nina; stop that!

“‘I want to go home!’ is the phrase you want to hear!”

‘“What!’ indeed!”

“Ok, then, see what it’s going to get you!”

“The house you described? The one with the peeling gray paint?”

“Yes?”

“It exists all right.”

“
Of course
it exists!
 
Do you all think I’ve been cracking cocaine?”

Jackson could not help smiling.

“Anyone who uses the phrase ‘cracking cocaine,’ Nina, has not been doing very much with either substance.”

“What? Now I’m not even doing drug talk right?”

“Well, you have a few things to learn before you’ll be comfortable on the street. Anyway, the house does exist. Narang knows it well. It’s always been lived in by some graduate student in geological sciences. Somebody will live there for a semester or so, graduate, and kind of unofficially bequeath it to another. It’s cheap and close, so somebody always wants it.”

“Like Annette.”

He shook his head.

“There’s no Annette. The person living in that house now is named Nancy Broussard.”

“Who?”

“A young woman named Nancy Broussard. She’s in her final year.”

“But…”

She finished her spring course work two weeks ago, according to Narang, then went home for a while. She’s scheduled to be back on campus at the start of the first summer semester, June 15.”

“So the house was….”

“Empty.”

As was the air space following.

For some seconds or so.

Then Nina filled it with the word:

“Shit.”

And then it was empty again.

She sat down after a time.

Neither she nor Jackson spoke.