Oil Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 4) (32 page)

“Again. My compliments.”

“You never read Faulkner at all. You couldn’t have. You just went to Wikipedia and memorized ten or so quotes. I did it myself today. They’re right there on the screen. The problem is, Wikipedia doesn’t attribute the quotations. It doesn’t say where they came from. So you just found a list of Faulkner’s novels—there’s one of those in Wikipedia too—and memorized them. Then you put a novel with a quote. Just at random.”

She shook her head:

“I don’t know what your name really is. But, whoever you are, did you really think you could misquote William Faulkner to a high school English teacher––IN MISSISSIPPI?”

The man who had pretended to be Brewster Dale shook his head.

“I apparently underestimated you, Ms. Bannister.”

Nina shook her head.

“You underestimated Faulkner. You might try reading him sometime.”

“I shall. I certainly shall.”

A recording was playing on Nina’s cell phone:

“The number you have called is not available. Your call has been forwarded to an automatic message system…”

Etc. etc., etc.

“You may hang up, or….

“I’m going to leave you a
 
message,” she said.

Then into her phone:

“You killed Edgar. He thought you were a security officer. We all did. In fact, somewhere back there in time there probably was a Brewster Dale. And he probably did like Faulkner. And he probably did work in security, even maybe for Louisiana Petroleum. But he’s dead now, isn’t he?”

And then, magically, the southern accent of the man sitting across from her disappeared. The gracious glint in the laughing eyes hardened. And the back stiffened as the man in the white sport jacket leaned forward slightly and said:

“Yes. That man is dead. He was, unfortunately, in the wrong place. And at the wrong time.”

Tom Holder leaned forward also:

“I’d like to bleedin’ know what’s going on here! You’re talkin’ to me about bloody semtex..”

“It’s exactly where I said it was,” Nina continued. “And it’s going to blow up in….”

She looked at her watch.

“Fourteen and a half minutes.”

“My God,” said Phil Bennington, “we’ve got to get it out of there!”

Nina shook her head:

“No you don’t. Not right now, anyway.”

Then she looked back at the man who had been known as Brewster Dale:

“It’s not going to blow up,” she said, “until you detonate it, is it? That’s how plastique works. It gets detonated by a remote control device. ”

The man nodded:

“You’re a very perceptive woman.”

“Just a little slow. Like Edgar was. How did you kill him?”

“That hardly matters now, does it?”

“No. No, and I pretty much know anyway. He thought you really were a security officer. You met him somewhere in Bay St. Lucy. You got him to drink something, maybe a little coffee from a thermos. The drug you put in it made him groggy, but he was still able to swallow the whiskey you poured down him against his will. Once he had passed out you took him to the coulee and put him in it, face down in the water. He must have drowned in a minute or so.”

“An admirable sleuth you are. I did wonder though: how were you able to penetrate our little ruse?”

“Annette Richoux came by and told us.”

“Did she now?”

“No. But somebody who had pretended to be Annette Richoux did.”

“How naughty of her.”

“She’ll be dead too, in a week or so, I guess.”

“Well, disloyalty always has its price.”

“As does blowing up Aquatica. Who’s paying you? And how much?”

The figure smiled an ice smile and said:

“Oh, that would be telling. And we don’t tell. But alas, tempis fugit. Time flies. I must have leave to check the full message you left me.”

So saying, he opened his sport jacket pocket, reached in, and pulled out a smart phone, which he laid on the table in front of him.

“That’s the detonator, isn’t it?” asked Nina.

“Just another ‘app.’ Camera, detonator…it’s a useful device. I have another useful device though…”

He reached into the other side of the jacket…

…and produced a small, black, oil-shiny handgun, which he levelled at Bennington.

“I’m now in the rather difficult position of dealing with the five of you.”

“You are going to leave Aquatica on the next helicopter, aren’t you?” asked Nina, surprised at how calm she was, given that a gun was being levelled at her.

That had never happened before.

Surprising.

The Robinson Affair. The Reddington murder.

No gun being levelled at her.

But there it was, nevertheless, the end of its barrel a small metallic circle moving slowly around the table as the man holding it got slowly to his feet.

“Yes. It is unfortunate. But I must miss the gala.”

“The rest of your ‘crew,’ the ones who helped you plant this stuff…they’re already gone.”

“The ebb and flow of talent. Some are already out of the country. It’s a shame. They won’t be able to see the explosion. And quite a sight it will be.”

He was now backing toward the door of the room.

“So what,” asked Sandy, ashen-faced, “are you going to do with us? Just leave us here while you go flying off?”

The man shook his head.

“No. That would not be the best course of action.”

“He’s going,” said Nina, again astonished at her own calmness, “to shoot us.”

“No!” Sandy screamed.

“How are you going to get away with that?” said Bennington.

A shrug.

“There will be five shots. Please don’t worry; every shot will be perfectly on target. None of you will know what hit you. Then Brewster Dale will run out onto the deck, calling for help. While help runs into the room going one way, he will be making his way against the current of humanity, going the other way.”

“Then you,” said Nina, “will make your way down to the landing pad, commandeer a helicopter while the pilot is not in the craft…”

“I am, it is true, a man of man skills, helicoptering being one of them.”

“How far from Aquatica will you be when you press the detonator switch?
 
Just curious, you understand.”

“I would say half a mile should do it,” came the chilling reply.

There was silence of an instant.

The gun came up.

“Then, sadly, I must…”

“I have one thing to ask,” said Liz, who had not spoken.

The figure in the door looked at her:

“Then ask.”

“Can I light a cigarette and at least have one drag? Even prisoners about to be executed have that right.”

He nodded.

Be quick about it.

“All right.”

She reached into her purse.

From which she pulled the forty five automatic, cocking it as she laid it on the table pointing directly at the man standing in the doorway.

“I have,” she said, quietly, “a forty five automatic. You have a thirty eight.”

Silence for a time.

“My gun is bigger than your gun.”

Another pause.

Then Holder:

“Shoot the bleeding son of a bitch! Do it! Shoot him!”

Nina shook her head:

“Don’t shoot, Liz!”

Liz was ice cold.

The combat journalist.

“Why not, Nina? It will make a big splatter. But we can clean it up.”

Nina continued to shake her head:

“He’s got that detonator in his hand.”

What? Had Brewster Dale smiled?

“Yes, I do. And my finger is on the detonator.”

“Shoot the bloke! Shoot him!”

“Don’t, Liz,” Nina supplicated. “We can’t let him push that thing.”

Bennington rose.

“Look, we have to be able to make some kind of a deal. You forget this scheme, and we let you go!”

“Oh, I shall go. But the ‘scheme,’ as you put it, must regrettably be carried out. Otherwise a great many people would lose patience with me completely.”

“But think of what’s going to happen here!”

“A great deal is going to happen here, Dr. Bennington.”

“The oil from this explosion will literally destroy the Gulf of Mexico!”

“Yes, but there are other bodies of water in the world.”

“Shoot him! Shoot him now!”

“Don’t, Liz!”

“I’m going to leave now. I’m going to back out of this door, then descend the stairs to the main deck. If
 
anyone tries to stop me, I shall press this button and blow up Aquatica.”

“You’d be killing yourself, too,” said Nina, rising, as was everyone else in the room.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“You wouldn’t dare do it.”

“Can you be certain of that? Go ahead, Ms. Cohen, pull the trigger. Then say goodbye to your life, and your world!”

He backed out through the door. They, as though hypnotized, followed him.

It was a bizarre parade of people.

A stalemate.

He could not shoot them; Liz could not shoot him.

And outside there was the chaos of two hundred guests, one hundred and twenty or so workers, all drinking plastic glasses full of champagne and milling around each other, the celebrities and athletes signing autographs on everything in sight, everyone taking shelter under metal roofs and covers from the spattering rain, which seemed to be intensifying.

The parade made its way down a rain slickened stairway.

Nina could see a helicopter on the landing pad below, its two great fore and aft rotors revolving slowly.

A voice at her shoulder:

“What the----- is----g---------the-------!”

Penelope.

Penelope!

“We can’t let that man get onto that helicopter,” she whispered. “We’ve got to stop him somehow.”

“---------?”

“Yes.”

“---------?”

“No.”

“Ok.”

And Penelope was gone, slipped off down a smaller stairway, and vanished into the rain-slickened shadows.

One step after another.

The man with the detonator now on the main deck of Aquatica; Liz ten feet away from him, her forty five pointed at his chest.
 
Then Holder; then Sandy…

No one seeing them.

The helicopter, empty, having just disgorged a final load of celebrities, its pilot swigging a plastic bottle of mineral water forty feet away.

Phil Bennington stepped forward:

“Please. For God’s sake, don’t do this!”

His plea was followed merely by a shake of the gunman’s head.

“Give me the damned gun!” Holder bellowed at Liz. “I’ll shoot him if you don’t have the guts to do it!”

Liz simply shook her head.

And the parade continued.

Ten feet from the helicopter.

Five feet.