Sea Change (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 1) (12 page)

The title,
Remembering Dismemberment,
was splashed in red across the cover.

“It’s dedicated to you.”

“Thank you, Tom.”

“Look inside.”

She opened the cover and read:

“To Nina Bannister:
 
The source of all my ideas.”

“That’s so touching, Tom.”

“Well.
 
It’s the least I can do.
 
I’m sorry they’re mad at you over at the writers’ group.
 
I really am.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it.
 
Friends can be such a bother.
 
So please:
 
will you join me?”

“I don’t know.
 
You have anything to drink?”

“I have some wine.”

“Too bad.
 
That’s all right, though.
 
I’ll eat with you anyway.”

She told him how much she appreciated his generosity, scooped the fish filets onto a platter that sat upon the freezer—which chugged and sputtered dutifully, a few steps from her charcoal grill—and led him upstairs.

Within a few minutes, they were seated on her deck; she ladling a bowl of Petersilian potatoes out to him, he scornfully sniffing his glass of Chardonnay as though it were urine.

“I would have brought some whiskey if I’d known.”

“I know you would have.
 
Believe me it’s better this way.”

“You don’t drink whiskey?”

“I’m sure I have on occasions; I just never seem to be able to remember the occasions.”

“Yeah, but that’s the point.”

“Not sure I follow you there.”

“So what’s going on at the Robinson place?”

“Lots.”

“I can see.
 
Some woman’s remodeling it, I hear.”

“Yes, and when you say, “some woman,” you’re quite accurate.”

“What’s her name again?”

“Eve Ivory.”

“That’s what I heard. I just couldn’t believe anybody would be named “Eve Ivory.”

“Well, she exists.
 
And that’s what her name is.”

“So what’s she aiming to do?”

“She’s aiming—or so she told me this morning—to come and live here.”

“That’s bad.”

“Why do you say that?”

He munched his fish, looked at the wine again, decided against it again, and said:

“Her name for one thing.
 
Sounds like she came out of a book.
 
I write novels; I don’t want to live in one.”

“Well, anyway, that’s what she said.
 
She also said she loved the town, and that she wanted everything good for it.
 
She wants to have a series of meetings with the town council, the school board, the library board, the zoning commission, everybody.
 
She’s got a ton of money to invest, but before she does it she wants everybody to hear everybody else’s proposals.
 
Then we’ll all decide how the money gets invested, and how it can help Bay St. Lucy the most.”

He nodded.

“Uh huh.”

They ate in silence for a time

Finally Nina asked:

“So what are you thinking, Tom?”

He shook his head.

“Something a German writer wrote. I forget his name.
 
He said, “The story is not over until it has taken the worst possible turn of events.”

“That’s encouraging.”

“The only good thing about this, is that we know the next to last chapter.”

“What happens in the next to last chapter?”

“You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You really don’t know?”

“No.
 
What happens?”

“Eve Ivory gets killed.”

He rose.

“Thanks for the dinner.
 
I gotta go.”

“So what happens in the last chapter?”

“The worst possible turn of events.
 
That means, we find out who killed her.
 
Bye.”

And he left.

CHAPTER EIGHT:
 
WISH LISTS

“Word has somehow got around that the split infinitive is always wrong.
 
That is a piece with the outworn notion that it is always wrong to strike a lady.”

James Thurber

Another case of vandalism was to take place on Nina’s premises, this one equally disturbing, and differing from the first only in that it was never solved.

The events leading to the crime were these:

She and Margot Gavin were sitting in the living room of her beach house, the seas choppy with a brisk wind out of the south, and pelicans skimming like vultures with dump truck mouths low over the outer breakers.
 
Nina had no idea what she was wearing, but she assumed it to be a colorless sweater of some sort, since that was about all she did wear these days.

Margot wore the Modern Wing of Chicago’s Art Institute, and sandals.

It was ten A.M., on a Thursday morning.

They were playing scrabble.

“I think,” said Nina, sipping coffee and drawing two tiles, “that we should be in your shop.”

“Nonsense. What on earth would be the use of that?”

“You might have a customer.”

“All the more reason for staying closed. All that will happen is that Ms. Wilson will descend from her apartment, rattle around in the garden a bit, make herself a cup of coffee—which she now knows quite well how to do—and sit in the garden, reading.”

“How long is she going to stay?”

“Two more weeks, she says.
 
She wants to see New Orleans, which she’s never visited; then she’s going abroad.”

“Lots of money, I guess.”

“Her husband left her quite well off, apparently.
 
What are you doing?”

“Tripling the ‘q.’ That’s—what?
 
Forty seven points, I think.”

“But what’s that word you’ve made?”

“Quires.”

“I can see that, darling, but there is no such word.”

“Of course there is.”

“Do you mean ‘choirs’?”

“No. ‘Quires.’ A ‘quire’ is a set of twenty-four sheets of paper of the same stock.
 
It’s one-twentieth of a ream.”

“Well, of course it is.
 
How stupid of me to have forgotten.”

“The verb form—I’m making the third person singular—means to fold into quires.”

“Which one does all of the time these days, of course.”

“I’m not bound to make frequently used words.”

“No, nor humanly used ones, either. What is the score at present?”

“I’m up a bit.
 
But you still have a chance.”

“What is the score?”

“Now?”

“No, I was inquiring specifically about Tuesday, September 14, in the year 1471.
 
But if you don’t have the statistics on that one, I suppose ‘now,’ the present, might be an acceptable substitute.”

“Well,
right
now, I’m two hundred eighty four, and you’re ninety seven.
 
But you can turn it around.”

“And there are three tiles left?”

“Yes.”

“The letters on my rack, Nina, are ‘a,’ ‘u,’ ‘u,’ ‘n,’ ‘r,’ ‘u,’ and ‘o’.”

“You’ll need a break or two.”

“When may I smoke?”

“After the game we can go out on the deck and look at the pelicans.”

“Good.
 
Let’s see then:
 
I don’t suppose ‘unquires’ is a word?”

“Of course not, Margot.
 
Once you had quired, why would you unquire?”

“Simply for want of something to do, I suppose.
 
Pass.”

“You can’t play?”

“No.”

“All right, then. Here. ‘Inquires.’ Seventeen points.
 
That puts me at––”

“Look.”

“Pardon?”

“Look. Out the window.
 
A toy car is coming.”

Nina looked over Margot’s shoulder. Sure enough, the approaching vehicle did seem to be a toy car.
 
It was green with a tan interior, the color obviously due to the fact that the top was down. It was crawling seaward from the main boulevard, inching its way down toward the beach.

It looked
, Nina found herself thinking,
like the car Donald Duck always drove––the duck kids, Huey, Dewey and Louie, all piled into the rumble seat.

There were no ducks in the car now, though.

Only Eve Ivory.

“What could this be about?” Nina whispered, as much to herself as to Margot Gavin, who, nonetheless, seemed to feel compelled to reply.

“I don’t know, Nina, but it’s almost certainly something bad.”

“How do you know that?”

“Just a good rule of thumb.
 
Why don’t you hide?”

“There are two rooms here, Margot.
 
Where can I hide?”

“Nowhere I suppose. Why didn’t you think about that when you moved in here?”

“What was I supposed to do, find a beach shack with a panic room?”

“I don’t know, they must exist.
 
Oh my heavens—so that apparition getting out of the car is in fact Eve Ivory?”

“That, Margot, is Eve Ivory.”

The crevasses in Margot’s face deepened, making her expression look all the more dangerous, like the south face of a secondary mountain range after a spring thaw.

“So there really is such a person.”

“Yes, Margot, there is.”

“I thought she was a myth.”

“She is ‘Myth’ Eve Ivory.”

“Please don’t do that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I can accept ‘quires.’ I cannot accept puns. What does the creature want here?”

“I don’t know.
 
Somehow she trusts me.”

“Whatever for?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you done anything to make her think she should trust you?”

“No.”

“Well then, it’s as Shakespeare said: ‘Trust unearned is as fragile as suspicion merited.’”

“Shakespeare never said anything like that, Margot.”

“No, I suppose not.
 
Look, she’s getting out.
 
She’s as tall as I am, but prettier.”

And she was, in fact, getting out, and she was in fact tall, and she was in fact beautiful. She slammed the door of the sports car—which identified itself with a ring on the trunk upon which the letters ‘MG’ had been emplated––then looked about her, obviously distrusting everything from the sand in the seashell driveway, to the rickety shacks lining the beach, to the ubiquitous pelicans and gulls, to the gray scudding clouds, to the turquoise ocean which was not bothering to pay her homage of any type—and especially to the stairs leading precariously up to Nina’s front porch.

“What could that woman want here?” Nina asked, getting to her feet and turning toward the door.

“Probably fashion advice,” answered Margot, following.

By the time Nina had opened the door, Eve Ivory had made her way gingerly to the base of the stairs.
 
She was dressed entirely in leather—black shining beret, black shining jacket with silver buttons, zippers and useless appendages—so that she
 
resembled, as she looked upward and trained her radiation factory of a smile on the two women peering down at her, the various sections of a sealskin tanning factory.

“Nina!”

“Hello, Eve.”

“Nina, I do hope I’m not bothering you!
 
I was able to get your address from Jackson Bennett.”

“You’re not bothering me at all.
 
Please come up!”

“If you’re certain—“

“Of course, I’m certain! Just be careful of the stairs—they’re a little rickety.”

Eve Ivory seemed to think for a second about whether to take her gloves off before grasping the driftwood stair bannister, weighing the relative value of her own skin versus the skin of whatever animal she was wearing, should the wood prove toxic.
 
She chose to risk the animal and launched herself onto the stairs, her voice grinning as broadly and falsely, thought Nina, as her mouth.

“Things are coming wonderfully with the reconstruction of the mansion,” she broadcast, waiting a second to gauge the effect of her words on the ecosystem surrounding her.

There was no effect.

She continued climbing, the stairs creaking in unison with various invisible hinges on her pants and boots.

“We should be finished in about a month! I’m planning a gala on December 22!”

“Wonderful.
 
Here, come in!”

“Thank you,” said the woman, extending a hand, which Nina clasped while turning to Margot.

“I’d like you to meet my friend!
 
This is Margot Gavin.”

“Margot, so wonderful to meet you!”

“Likewise.”

“Come, come,” said Nina. “Let’s go inside. It’s breezy out here.”

“I’m so sorry to be breaking in on you both unannounced.
 
I know I should have called, but––”

“Nonsense!
 
Can I get you some coffee?”

“That would be nice.”

And in a moment, the remnants of the scrabble game were gone, replaced by a third cup of coffee.

A few more meaningless scraps of greeting had been exchanged; Furl had retreated to the farthest corner of the living room, and Nina wondered whether he was simply reacting to a stranger, or sensing evil.

She decided to reserve judgment, since her own feelings were similar.

“So, Margot—may I call you Margot?”

“Of course.”

“Are you a long time resident of Bay St. Lucy?”

“No, no.
 
Only a year.”

“Ah, I see.
 
And before that?”

“Chicago.”

“Chicago! Oh, what an exciting city!
 
I have friends there.
 
Were you there long?”

“Almost twenty years.
 
I worked there.”

“I see.
 
Were you a secretary?”

There was an instantaneous pause, which lasted a very long time.

It was a pause which allowed Nina’s heart to skip one, two three—now it’s going—beats, and her voice to find itself with enough composure to say:

“Margot was––”

That was all she had time to say though, before Margot, smiling archly, answered:

“Yes I was.”

“How wonderful!
 
With the same firm?”

“Yes.
 
Same place.”

“Do you like secretarial work?”

“I love it.
 
I have excellent typing skills.”

“I’ll bet you do!
 
You’re fingers are very long.”

Oh my God
, Nina found herself thinking. Or praying.
 
She was never quite sure which was which.

Margot held her hands out and examined them, then raised them with palms toward Eve Ivory.

“I do have very long fingers.”

She’s wondering, Nina mused, how long it would take her to strangle the woman.

Nina found herself wondering the same thing.

Thirty five seconds, she concluded.

“What do you do here in Bay St. Lucy, if I may ask?”

“Oh, I have a small shop.”

“Where you sell curios and such?”

“Yes. Just cheap baubles. Whatever I can lay my hands on.”

“It must be difficult, making ends meet.”

“A constant struggle.
 
But one does one’s best.”

“I’m sure.
 
Well, Margot, I don’t want to get your hopes up, but—and Nina, this is partially what I’ve come to share with you—there will almost certainly be major changes coming to Bay St. Lucy.”

“So we’ve all heard,” said Margot, taking out a cigarette, smoking it in one long drag, and crushing it out savagely, all invisibly and in her imagination.

“Yes, we’re not sure yet which way things will go.
 
But there will be many more opportunities here than exist now, that much I can promise you. And if you’re willing to go back into administrative work––”

“Secretarial work, you mean.”

“Yes, of course. We’re going to be needing people who can––well, do that kind of thing.”

“How thrilling.”

“It would not involve actually dealing with the public, you understand.”

“Of course not.”

“But—well, to put it bluntly, we’re going to need women who know their way around a keyboard. Are you familiar with Excel, or similar programs?”

“You mean the computer?
 
Oh no, those things are much too complex for me.”

“You’ve never worked with budgets, I suppose?”

“Heavens no. The men in the companies I worked for always took care of such things for me.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. We’re going to have opportunities for retraining. There may even be some extra in the kitty for wardrobe updates.”

“You’re joking!
 
Gosh it’s been so long since I was able to buy something truly nice!”

“A lot of people around here are going to
 
be buying things that are truly nice, Margot. Like I say, I don’t want you to get your hopes up quite yet.”

“Of course not. But obviously, anything you might know of that’s suitable.
 
For now though––”

She rose and turned to Nina:

“I’ve got to take my constitutional on the beach.
 
Eve, I come over to Nina’s every day and go for a two mile walk down the beach.
 
Sometimes I persuade her to join me, but today I’m running just a bit late.
 
I hope you two ladies don’t mind if I excuse myself.”

“Of course not,” said Eve Ivory, half rising while continuing to maintain the smile which had never left her face.

“Have a good walk,” said Nina, simultaneously aware first that Margot had never taken a constitutional in her life, and second that Margo also detested cooking, which made it strange that she was now fumbling through one of the kitchen drawers.

“I’ll be back in fifteen minutes or so.
 
You two have a good chat.”

“We will,” said Eve Ivory, to the disappearing back of Margot, who, Nina reckoned, was now going out somewhere to smoke two or three cigarettes and fume along with the tobacco.