Set Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries) (19 page)

“You have too much to live for.”

Then Helen smiled at her.

“You misunderstand. I don’t wish for my death. I wish for his.”

“Helen…”

“Somebody needs to kill him.”

CHAPTER 12:
 
THE SOUP KITCHEN

Friday, August 1, the opening day of
Hamlet
, Hurricane Deborah’s western edge brushed over Bay St. Lucy. Clouds were low and would have been gray/black had they been visible at all and not obscured by horizontal sheets of rain.

The entire community looked like a 1950’s film, viewed on a broken TV.

There were no people, cars, dogs, birds—

––there was only static, punctuated by the occasional fleeting image of a living thing running as fast as possible toward a structure that could not be seen.

By six a.m., rain had begun pouring against Nina’s window; it drummed, rattled, drove, and spattered, as though a group of malicious little boys were standing just below with a fire hose, which they had trained upon her deck and house.
 

The wind howled like a large sick dog.

The ocean was directly beneath her, lapping happily at the base of the long poles upon which sat her precarious little shack.

She did not mind it, though.

She knew that the water would be no more than two or three inches deep, and she had, ever the experienced coastal dweller, taken pains to tie her freezer, her barbeque grill, and a couple of other storage boxes, fast upon solid ash platforms that had been built for just this purpose.

And so she would have been able to sequester herself in the bedroom and read more novels, had she not been forced, every half hour, to go to the door, open it, and talk to people.

Moon Rivard arrived at seven thirty a.m.

“Ms. Nina?”

“Yes!” she shouted, barely able to make herself heard above the expiring beast that was actually a nicely maturing wind.

“What is it, Moon?”

Howl!
 
Howl!
 
Howl!

Spatterspatter!
 

Roooooarrrrr!

Moon just outside the door, drenched in black oil slicker; she just inside the door, drenched in the spray of his black oil slicker.

“WHAT IS IT, MOON? HAS SOMETHING HAPPENED?”

“STORM, MA’AM!”

“YES!
 
I CAN SEE IT!
 
WHAT ABOUT IT?”

“I CAME BY!”

“YES, YOU DID!”

“I NEED TO KNOW IF YOU’RE ALL RIGHT!”

“I’M ALL RIGHT EXCEPT I’M A LITTLE WET NOW!”

“HOW’S THAT? NOT SURE I UNDERSTOOD WHAT YOU SAID, MS. NINA!”

“I’M A LITTLE WET BECAUSE OF HAVING TO OPEN THE DOOR!”

“YOU OUGHT TO GET BACK INSIDE!”

“THAT’S TRUE, MOON!”

“YOU SURE YOU’RE ALL RIGHT?”

“ABSOLUTELY!”

“BECAUSE I CAN…”

“GOOD BYE, MOON! THANK YOU FOR COMING BY TO CHECK ON ME!”

“IT AIN’T NOTHING AT ALL!
 
NOW IF I CAN…”

“GOOD BYE MOON!”

And she closed the door, careful not to catch his nose in it.

At eight fifteen, Jackson Bennett came by.

Jackson was larger than Moon, and so she was forced to open the door a bit wider to talk to him.

He had on the same kind of raincoat Moon had been wearing, but there was more of it, so more water sprayed off it and, first, onto the half open door, and, then, onto her.

“NINA!”

“JACKSON!”

“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”

“YES, I’M FINE!”

“ARE YOU SURE?”

“YES, I’M SURE!”

“THEY SAY THIS IS GOING TO LAST ALL DAY, MAYBE INTO THE EVENING!”

“I KNOW!”

“YOU’RE SURE YOU’RE ALL RIGHT!”

“I’M SURE!”

“DO YOU HAVE ENOUGH FOOD?”

“YES I DO, JACKSON!”

“YOU HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED?”

“ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING!”

“YOU HAVE COFFEE?”

“I DO.”

“MILK?”

“JACKSON…”

“ANYTHING YOU NEED, YOU JUST TELL ME!”

“I WILL!
 
I DEFINITELY WILL!”

“YOU HAVE MY NUMBER?”

“I DO.”

“DO YOU WANT ME TO WRITE IT DOWN FOR YOU?”

“NO, I’VE GOT IT.”

“YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO EAT FOR LUNCH?”

“LUNCH, DINNER…GOT EVERY THING I NEED.”

“THEY SAY IT’S GOING TO LAST ALL DAY.”

“I THINK YOU TOLD ME THAT, JACKSON!”

“THEY SAY THE PLAY IS STILL GOING ON TONIGHT, THOUGH.”

“GOOD!
 
GLAD TO HEAR IT!”

“NOW, ONCE AGAIN—IF YOU NEED ANYTHING…”

“HAVE A GOOD DAY, JACKSON!”

And she shut the door on him.

A little before ten o’clock Alana Delafosse came by.

She had on enough rain gear to make her look like a small walrus.

“ALANA, WILL YOU COME IN?”

“NO, NO, I’VE COME TO TAKE YOU AWAY!”

“I DON’T WANT TO GO AWAY!”

“YOU CAN’T STAY HERE!”

“I’M FINE, ALANA!”

“PEOPLE ARE GATHERING AT THE CHURCH!”

“WHY?”

“WE HAVE A SOUP KITCHEN!”

“I DON’T WANT TO GO TO A SOUP KITCHEN!”

“YOU DON’T NEED TO BE PROUD!”

“I’M NOT PROUD!”

“YOU CAN TAKE FURL WITH YOU!”

“FURL IS HAPPY WHERE HE IS!”

“ARE YOU COLD?”

“I’M A LITTLE COLD NOW.”

“THIS IS HOW PEOPLE CATCH PNEUMONIA, NINA!”

“I KNOW.”

“WE HAVE ROOM IN THE BUS!”

“TAKE THE BUS AWAY!”

“I HATE IT WHEN YOU’RE LIKE THIS!”

“I HATE IT WHEN I’M LIKE THIS, TOO!”

“HAVE YOU HEARD THE FORECAST?”

“YES, IT’S RAINING!”

“AND YOU’RE SURE YOU WON’T COME TO THE SOUP KITCHEN?”

“I HAVE SOUP IN MY OWN KITCHEN!”

“YOU’RE NOT JUST TELLING ME THAT BECAUSE OF PRIDE?”

“I HAVE NO PRIDE, ALANA. I PROMISE I HAVE NO PRIDE.”

“YOU’LL BE AT THE PERFORMANCE THIS EVENING?”

“IF I’M NOT DEAD!”

“WHAT?”

“NOTHING!”

“DO YOU KNOW IF MARGOT HAS HAD ANY MORE TROUBLE WITH CLIFTON BARRETT?”

“NO, I DON’T KNOW IF SHE HAS OR NOT.”

“BECAUSE IT WAS REALLY IMPRUDENT OF HER TO…”

“ALANA…”

“YES, DEAR?”

“THE RAIN IS COMING IN THROUGH THE DOOR!”

“THAT’S WHAT I’M TRYING TO TELL YOU, NINA!
 
IT’S VERY DANGEROUS FOR YOU HERE.”

“IT’S NOT DANGEROUS, ALANA, WHEN THE DOOR IS CLOSED.
 
THEN THE RAIN DOESN’T COME IN.”

“ARE YOU CERTAIN THAT YOU HAVE ENOUGH FOOD?”

“I REALLY AM!
 
I REALLY DO!”

“DO YOU HAVE MILK?”

“ALANA…”

“BECAUSE DOWN BELOW, IN THE BUS, WE HAVE…”

“HAVE A GOOD DAY, ALANA!”

And she shut the door on her.

This went on all day.

No one would come in and sit with her and have a cup of coffee, because they were frightened that her shack would blow away.

She would not leave and go somewhere else, because her little place was warm and dry—except when the front door was open—and she did in fact have coffee and milk and innumerable other little items of food, so that she was fairly confident of her ability to get through the next six hours or so without having a sudden attack of starvation and dying from it.

Furl slept comfortably on the corner of her—now partially his—bed, and she envied him.

No neighboring cats came to the door and forced him to go answer it and get wet, while they pleaded with him to leave his dry little nook to go out in the storm with them and go to the basement of a cat church.

“Lucky Furl,” she found herself muttering.

Around noon she gave up trying to read in the bedroom.

She pulled a straight chair to within a foot of the front door, dragged a standing lamp to within a few inches of it, turned on the lamp, and tried to read there, close enough that she could reach out and answer the door after only one knock.

From time to time she would stand, glare out through the small window that had been made in the door, and say to whatever troop of well meaning Bay St. Lucy neighbors and friends who had probably gathered at the base of her stairway and were preparing to come up:

“It’s in Florida!
 
The hurricane is in Florida!”

Then she would sit down and be mad.

Seven people during the course of the afternoon offered her a ride to L’Auberge des Arts, to see the evening’s performance of
Hamlet
.

She agreed to go with all of them.

This was not absolutely fair, she initially told herself, but there was no other choice.
 
How could you turn down Moon Rivard, or Alana Delafosse, or Tom Broussard the Writer, or his wife Penelope Royale the Specialist in Obscene Languages, or Jackson Bennett, or Edie Towler, or blah de blah, blah de blah, blah de…

…how could you turn these people down?

So she said she’d go with all of them, and resolved actually to go with whichever one got there first.

This person, as it turned out, was a total stranger.

He arrived at her door at six thirty PM dressed in a nice charcoal gray suit, despite which he still looked like Ichabod Crane, noted that the rain seemed to be decreasing—which was true—and said that his wife had given him orders to come over and give her a ride.