Set Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries) (25 page)

He paused to get control of himself.

Then:

“…but I didn’t see him then. I left before the play was over. I drove home and spent most of the night just lying awake.
 
I got to Helen’s just after sunup. I wanted to get the confrontation over.
 
But the police were there, told me about Barrett’s death, and also told me Helen had been taken, with her grandmother, to the hospital for observation. I was able to speak to her just before they took her inside. That was when we planned that she should come out here.”

“I understand, John.”

“I know it looks bad, the way I acted at the courthouse, and how we had dated. Old lover, etc. But I let Helen go once in my life and I won’t do it again. Nina, if I had wanted Clifton Barrett dead, I’d have done it with my hands, not with drugs. And he would have known who was killing him. He wouldn’t have died the easy way, in his sleep.”

Silence for a time.

“You didn’t have to tell me all of this,” Nina said quietly.
 
“I believe both of you.
 
I know neither one of you could kill anybody.”

“It’s all right,” said Helen.
 
“We know we’re going to have to answer these questions.”

“That’s not necessarily…”

The only thing that followed Nina’s ‘necessarily’ was a symphony of barking, bellowing, yelping, screaming, and growling, all of which, she seemed to know instinctively, signified either the beginning of a Tarzan movie or the arrival of a visitor.

“Someone’s out there,” said John, rising.

He had crossed the kitchen and half the living room when the door swung open toward him.

Moon Rivard stood in the entranceway.

“I’m sorry to disturb you folks; Excuse me for coming in, but the door seemed to be open.”

An invisible and irresistible force pulled Nina and Helen to their feet and transported them to the far edge of the living room without their being aware of it; but the effect was the same, there they all were, Moon in the doorway, John in the center of the room, and Nina and Helen backed against a bookshelf.

“It’s all right, Moon,” John said. “And thank you for all the help you’ve given us so far.
 
We’ve had privacy.”

“That’s all right. Glad I could do it. But…well, I got to tell both of you. Things have kind of changed now.”

The autopsy,
Nina found herself thinking.
    

“How,” Helen asked, “have things changed?”

“Well. Dey was an autopsy. We got the results a little more than an hour and a half ago.
 
So I had to come out.”

“What were the results?” asked Helen.

“What they found was…”

He was interrupted by a figure coming through the door, peering up and out from under everything.

“Officer Rivard!
 
You’re here!”

Moon turned and watched as Hope Reddington crept by him like the gradual movement of the sun.

“Yes, ma’am.
 
How are you today, Ms. Hope?”

“I’m fine. I’m feeling very well. I slept wonderfully.
 
Mr. Giusti’s house is so lovely.
 
And one can hear the ocean.”

“I’m sure that’s true, Ms. Hope.”

“Grandmamma,” said Helen, “you might want to leave us, for a moment. I think Officer Rivard has some business to discuss.”

“Of course he has some business to discuss, dear. I was lying down on the beach, reading, and I saw him walking out the pier.
 
I’ve been expecting him.”

They all stared at her.

Finally Helen:

“Why were you expecting him, Grandmamma?”

“Because they must have had an autopsy by now; that would have been the thing to do. And after the autopsy, it would have been logical to expect to see him here, with us.”

“Why?”

“Because I murdered Mister Barrett, dear. Now if you will all wait, I’ll go to my room and put my things on.”

So saying, she disappeared into a doorway that had heretofore been invisible, while the four of them stared at each other and neglected to breathe.

CHAPTER 17:
 
FOUL DEEDS WILL OUT

A certain number of seconds, minutes, quarter-hours, etc., went by after Hope Reddington’s announcement that she had murdered Clifton Barrett. But since the announcement was one of those events so shocking that they’re able to stop time entirely, render it irrelevant, smash it and destroy it so completely that its very existence never was or could have been—those increments of chronology are irrelevant and will not be discussed here.

Time only resumed its flow after Hope, dressed now as she might have been for church, with the same immaculate white sports jacket and coral reef sequined Capri pants, the same huge-loop silver earrings the diameters of which amounted to precisely one half of her height—reentered the living room, and beamed at Nina.

“Nina, I didn’t even realize that you were here! Please forgive me for not greeting you!”

“That’s all right, Hope.
 
Don’t worry about it.”

“You drove out with our things, didn’t you?”

“Some of them.”

“How thoughtful of you! But we won’t be needing them now.
 
At least I won’t.”

“Grandmamma…”

“Helen, you and John may want to go on staying here.
 
That’s probably for the best.”

“Grandmamma, you don’t need to go back into town.”

For a time it was impossible to tell which was brighter, the sun or Hope’s smile.

“Of course I must go back into town, dear. I must go with Officer Rivard.
 
That’s why he’s come.”

“Grandmamma, you’re confused.”

“No, I’m not.
 
John, I’ve packed a small suitcase.
 
It’s in the room where I slept last night. Will you please get it for me?”

John stepped forward toward the door to the bedroom, then back toward the door to the open deck, then sideways toward the door leading outside, and then back to the spot from which he’d begun, wobbling slightly as he went through these dance steps, as though he were a large bear high on marijuana.

He did not speak.

Helen did.

“Try to think clearly, Grandmamma.”

“I always try to think clearly, dear.”

“This thing that you’ve accused yourself of…you couldn’t possibly have done it.”

“But I did it.”

“No, no, and you must stop saying this.”

“Why? Why must I? Do you wish me to deny it? That would be wrong. It would be immoral, and I’ll not do it. It would be lying. And it would be unchristian. No. No, I’ll none of it. Now let’s get on with what must be done. I’m certain Officer Rivard has more things to do than stand around here and chat.”

Moon Rivard performed the same Latinate dance step that John had attempted, only in waltz tempo rather than cut time, the alternation springing from a cross between his increased confusion and his innate Cajun blood.

He did not speak either.

Nina was not in the room at the time, or anywhere else.

So there was no possibility for anyone to speak except Helen.

She said the first thing in a great while that seemed to make sense to everyone.

“Let’s go outside and sit on the deck. John, could you make some more coffee?”

The Great Coastal Bear that was John rocked back and forth in an affirmative gesture and turned back toward the kitchen, shuffling off to see if it might afford a hiding place.

It did not. There were no hiding places, and in two minutes they were sitting around the table, drinking coffee, stunned, trying to believe things were normal.

It was a splendid summer morning by the seaside.

Hope was in her element, making sure that cream was present, and sugar, but of course not sugar because now everyone used Splenda, and sugar was bad for us anyway.

“Isn’t John’s house beautiful?”

They all agreed that it was.

“If I lived here, John, I would never go anywhere else. I would stay in my house all day long, and probably just sit out here.
 
Do you spend a great deal of time here?”

“Yes, Ms. Reddington, I do.”
           

“I can understand that, dear. I really can. No, the fact is that I gave Mr. Barrett a fatal dose of Percodan.”

Most of the sentence would have hung motionless above the table, not knowing what to do with itself, but the word ‘Percodan’ went shooting off over the ocean, twisting, jumping, squealing, and flashing in the sun as though it had become a school of flying fish.

Something very difficult not to pay attention to.

“You what?” asked Helen.

“Percodan.”

“I know that’s what you said, but…”

“I am nothing,” said Hope, first sipping, then smiling, then earring tugging, then beginning the process again, “nothing at all, if not the dutiful pharmacist’s wife. Twenty-five years of working there in the pharmacy, helping out.
 
Nina, did you find that, after a certain number of years you felt as though you too were an attorney, just as Frank was?”

Nina attempted to say “Wadawadawada” but could not, all of her mental energies trained completely on the school of flying fish that was the word ‘Percodan,’ now circling gleefully in a patch of sky almost directly above them.

Hearing no answer to her question, Hope continued.

“Percodan is an effective pain killer, especially for problems with the back. But it should not be mixed with alcohol, and not with Pitocin, which I’m sure all of you know is a common sleep inducer.”

There!
 
Another flying object!

Look how it glistens in the sun!

Pitocin!

Fly, fly, little Pitocin, while we all watch you, absolutely astonished at the things one sees these days!

“Grandmamma, you could not have…”

“Please don’t tell me what I could or could not have done. It does not become you, and, though I hate to seem harsh, it’s…well, all right, I have to go ahead and say it. It’s rude, Helen. It’s actually rude of you. You should apologize.”

“I’m sorry.
 
But how could you…”

“Oh, it was quite easy. On the evening after the performance, you will remember that I came up to your bedroom to say goodnight to both of you. Mr. Barrett was…”

She was interrupted by Moon Rivard:

“Ms. Hope?”

She looked up and out from under all of the coffee accessories, and up and out from under the words ‘Percodan’ and ‘Pitocin,’ which were now buzzing like flies around the sugar bowl, and smiled at Moon Rivard:

“Yes, Officer?”

“You probably shouldn’t say anymore now.”

“But I…”

To which Helen interjected:

“Officer Rivard, what did they autopsy show?”

Moon Rivard pursed his lips, then said:

“The man was killed by an overdose of…well, of what Ms. Hope has just said.”

“All right, then.”

Helen leaned toward Nina.

“Nina, do you have the number of Jackson Bennett?”

Surprisingly, Nina found herself able to compose an answer:

“Yes.”

“Please call him.
 
We’re going to need an attorney.”

After that the coffee klatch dissolved into murmurs, plans, whispers, and moving arounds, while Nina found herself searching in her purse for the notebook of important numbers, and saying to herself:

“My God.
 
She did it.
 
She really did it.”

She found the number, thought about calling it, decided that Helen should do that, then rose, and followed the others into the house.

The two words ‘Percodan and Pitocin,’ which now sounded like a vaudeville act, frisky as ever, brayed after her, as though they were making fun of her.

She wondered how long it would take for them to disappear.

Several hundred thousands of dollars had been poured into the new Bay St. Lucy City Administrative Center, which, in years past, would simply have been called city hall.
 
But if the old name had been somewhat plebian, so in fact had been the structure itself. Narrow corridors, old desks whose tops were imprinted with small curves made by digging fingernails, peeling paint on muted walls of not quite yellow and a little less than blue—and everywhere the aroma of boredom and repetition.

In the new structure, people walked on marble floors, leaned against thick and solidly built walls, sat at new desks, operated new computers, spoke quietly from office to office on newly installed intercom systems, and gazed upward at new fluorescent lights which crisscrossed the ceilings and buzzed less loudly than the old ones had.

The overall effect though was exactly the same.

It was a building constructed for the purpose of making everyone want to get out of it, especially the people who worked in it, and who spent a great deal of their time whispering to themselves, “Only eighteen more years until retirement,” and “Only thirteen years seven months until retirement,” and…

…etc., etc., etc., until death.

This was the building in which Nina found herself, having turned down a cup of coffee—which would have been her eighth of the morning—and studying the faces of the people seated in the office of Edie Towler, County District Attorney.

Nina remembered being in the courtroom—a space just down the hall––with Edie a bit less than two weeks ago.

That appearance had involved a slap.

This one involved a murder.

Could that be?

Could this even be happening?

And why was she here?

The ostensible reason she was here was that Helen had begged her to be here, exactly why she did not know. That and the fact that she must have become a comforting presence after the Robinson case, everybody in city service somehow looking to her for answers to questions involving life or death.

She, Nina Bannister, life or death.

She who was barely able to put Furl in his cat carrier.

There were seven people in the room, all seated around a menacingly dark table once probably an entire city itself, now eroded to table size, but far too heavy ever to be moved, and filled with evil stories and maleficent spirits.

Don’t touch me, the table seemed to say.

So the seven people––Edie, John Giusti, Helen Reddington, Hope Reddington, Moon Rivard, Jackson Bennett, and she, Nina—all sat deferentially spaced from it, a bit set back in their chairs, their forearms two or three inches above the deceptively smooth but actually poisonous surface.

“Hope,” said Edie, in the same tone and volume as the air conditioning system, “I received a call from Jackson Bennett a little over an hour ago.”

This was not a question, and so it was not answered.