Oil Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 4) (34 page)

…but before she could do so, something huge and gray erupted from the surface beside her; it convulsed, shook its mammoth body, and bared a gaping hole filled with teeth.

“AAAAHHHGGGH!”

There was time for one scream.

Then the shark and what had been Brewster Dale were gone, disappeared, nothing remaining of them but black, rain-pelted ocean and a small pool of blood.

“Help! Help me!”

She looked again.

Hector.

Hector!

He was swimming manfully, gasping, choking..

...but closing the distance.

“Come on, Hector! Come on!”

And make it he did.

She reached over the side and grabbed his collar.

Within ten seconds, they were huddled together, shivering, crying on each other’s shoulders, and laughing.

“The shark, Hector. The shark just…”

He nodded.

“I know. I see.”

“It could have gotten you!”

“No. It had to take that man, the shark. It had to take that man. He killed Edgar. And we could do nothing. But when he tried to kill the sea…well, the sea killed him, instead.”

She nodded, then said:

“But you, the way you dived in…sometimes a man is needed, Hector. Sometimes a man is needed.”

For the first time, she saw a smile in his sad, olive eyes, and he said:

“And sometimes, Senora…sometimes a woman.”

EPILOGUE

The Blue Gator was just as Nina remembered it. Peering through the garish yellow light, she saw the crumbling garden, vines overhanging bare rafters, tables scattered here and there, some with tablecloths, some bare and reflecting in their green metal tops the half moon that peered mockingly though the places in the roof that were not roof. The garden was a jungle of furniture and vine-tangles that seemed to keep opening out from itself, passing a bench here and there, and overhearing patches of conversation.

“Non, c’est…c’est bien trop…”

“Oui, je crois bien que…”

French. English. Cajun. Creole…yes, just as it had been those strange weeks ago…

.. when she was here with a woman who did not exist.

Now she had come back to celebrate. She, Liz, Hector, Penelope—all of the heroes who had saved the Aquatica, and a great deal more.

They had been feted all day, had met the top officials of Louisiana Petroleum and had been offered an evening anywhere in town—at the company’s expense, of course.

Nina had chosen The Blue Gator.

Now they all were seated at a large table in the back, the gang from Aquatica—Sandy, Phil Bennington, Tom Holder—interspersed with them, everyone drinking Abita Beer, everyone anxious for the dancing to start.

But, dancing notwithstanding, the conversation kept coming back to those last minutes on Aquatica.

“How did you learn to operate a crane, Penelope?” Nina asked.

“I---. Then I ---. But I can operate any kind of ---machine! Also, it’s great---fun to destroy things. Especially that ---helicopter!”

A mixture of laughter from those who had heard Penelope before, and those who were experiencing these obscenities for the first time.

Tom Holder to Liz:

“I kept telling you to bleedin’ shoot, Ms. Cohen.”

“Liz.”

“Okay, Liz. I kept telling you to bleedin’ shoot. Thank God, you didn’t.”

Liz shrugged.

“Maybe I should have. Maybe he wouldn’t have had a chance to press the button.”

Holder:

“Yeh, but maybe he would have.”

Liz nodded, then leaned over and whispered in Nina’s ear:

“He’s such a hunk. I want him. Tonight.”

Nina smiled:

“The Blue Gator has that effect.”

Upon hearing which Liz merely shook her head:

“Blue Gator be damned. I’d want him in a Dairy Queen. So I may be a bit late coming back to the hotel room tonight. Like maybe eight o’clock in the morning.”

“Suit yourself, girl. You earned a night on the town. I’ll never forget your sitting there, hard as steel, not moving an inch, that huge forty-five automatic just resting on the table: and that great line, “My gun is bigger than your gun.”

“Well. It was.”

“So what about
The Times
? You going back to work for them?”

Liz shook her head:

“Don’t know. Have to think about that one for a while.”

“My invitation is still open, you know.”

“I’m thinking about that too. It’s just that, right now, I’m thinking mainly about the Tool Master. I want to see his…”

“Don’t say it.”

“Okay. Let’s just say that I’ll let you know later about my plans.”

“Got it.”

Phil Bennington interrupted:

“Sorry to break in on your conversation,” he said, “but the music is going to start soon, and I want to propose a toast, to the one man here who can’t drink one.”

General laughter around the table.

“Here’s to Hector Ramirez. The bravest young man I’ve ever seen.”

Applause, shouting.

Bennington:

“You dove twenty feet into the ocean and wrestled a professional assassin to a draw, Hector.”

Hector shook his head:

“Not really. He was so much stronger than me. I just held him up for a little bit.”

“A little bit,” said Nina, “was all it took.”

“Yeah, Senora. And then the shark did the rest.”

Silence for a moment.

Then Nina to Phil:

“They still don’t know who he was?”

A shake of the head:

“They don’t know who any of them were. But the FBI is very grateful, Ms. Cohen, that you’re agreeing to keep this quiet.”

Liz nodded:

“I don’t want to write another story I know nothing about.”

“We’re glad you feel that way. Somehow, Aquatica’s security simply melted. The real Brewster Dale, we have learned, was, in fact, murdered over fourteen months ago. This man killed him, and simply ‘became’ him. Dale was a perfect target. A widower, coming off one job, having applied for the position at Aquatica—no one in our corporation had really met him.”

“And Annette?” asked Nina.

Again, a shake of the head.

“That woman could be anywhere now.”

“Or nowhere.”

Bennington:

“That’s right. I wouldn’t want to cross this bunch. And she did so.”

To which, Nina replied:

“And we’re all lucky she did. A spark of conscience. That was all that saved us.”

Liz:

“Well, not quite all. Your seeing through the Faulkner scam didn’t hurt.”

Nina simply shook her head in disgust:

“The very idea. He might just as well have misquoted the gospels to a Baptist preacher.”

General laughter.

“The bottom line,” Sandy said, “is that LP owes all of you a great deal. And any time you want to…”

She was interrupted by a general movement toward the dance floor.

“Come on, blokes,” said Holder. “Let’s go up there.”

They rose and made their way through the garden.

The floor itself looked just as Nina had remembered it:

The single melancholy saxophone player, the scattered musicians, the scratching fiddle, the bass…

…and of course, the box accordion.
       

Then the chiming clock:.

Bong. Bong…

And The Red Stick Ramblers, belting it out:

“GEAUX GEAUX GEAUX de GEAUX GEAUX GEAUX!

MEAUX MEAUX MEAUX de MEAUX MEAUX MEAUX!

The music pounded and throbbed, and, once more, as it had for decades or more, the Cajun dance floor filled.

Liz and Tom disappeared into it; then Sandy and Phil; then Hector; then Penelope…

Then:

“May I?”

And, precisely as had happened before, a man—a different man, but a man nonetheless––was standing just in front of Nina with his arm outstretched.

He looked…

Oh, hell, what did it matter how he looked?

“Do you wish to dance, Miss?”

“Sure.”
      

She took his hand,

And once again, all bad things, all evil deeds, disappeared.

OH OH OH, de OH OH OH!

“You a good dancer, Miss!”

“Thank you!” she shouted to the six faces closest to her.

All of them, as they had before, smiled back.

THE END

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Pam Britton (T’Gracie) Reese is an Assistant Professor in the Communication Science and Disorders Department at Indiana/Purdue University at Fort Wayne. Previously, she worked as a speech pathologist in schools in private practice. She was also a supervisor in communication disorders at Ohio University. She likes nothing better, professionally, than helping small, silent two-year-old boys start talking. She has also published books about autism with LinguiSystems for the last 15 years.
The Circle of Autism
was previously published on-line at ken*again e-magazine

Joe Reese is a novelist, playwright, storyteller, and college teacher. He has published four novels, several plays, and a number of stories and articles. When he is not teaching (English and German), he enjoys visiting elementary schools, where he tells stories from his Katie Dee novels and talks to students about writing. He and his wife Pam have three children: Kate, Matthew, and Sam.

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