Set Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries) (27 page)

She did so.

They sat for a time, before he finally shook his head and said, more to his desk than to her:

“What a mess.”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks for coming up.”

“No problem.”

“The Reddingtons, Helen especially but Hope, too, insist on you being kept in the loop.
 
You’re kind of like family.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“So I’ll tell you where we are, at least as far as I know it now.”

“All right.”

“I’ve been on the phone since I got back to the office about 10:30.
 
I’m trying to learn what I can about this.”

“So what have you learned?”

“To begin with, the Reddingtons are at home. There were still some people from the crime lab going over…well, the room, and the bathroom, all of that.”

“Of course.”

“But there’s no place else for them to go. They can’t go back out to Giusti’s.”

“No.”

“And, Nina, Hope is eighty years old. They’re not just going to throw her into a holding tank like they might a drunk college student.”

“So what happens now? Is Helen still denying everything her grandmother said?”

“Every word of it. But of course Helen might be lying to protect her grandmother.”

“So what do we do?”

He shrugged.

“Hope has to be arraigned. She has to give a formal statement.”

“What can happen to her?”

“She committed murder, or at least she says she did. Not only that, but she committed first degree murder. She planned it out to the last detail.”

“So what can happen to her?”

“I…I just don’t know.
 
We have a couple of choices.”

“What are they?”

“Well, we can plead insanity and cite mental instability.
 
But Hope insists on quoting Shakespeare fifteen verses at a time, and sounding like the most rational woman I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“Which she may well be.
 
So what’s the second choice?”

“We make public all the financial records—and other things—that Tomlinson had been forced to hand over to me, and which I had consigned to the strongest safe in the city.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. We have to show now that this man was about to ruin the Reddingtons. Every slimy little detail about money.
 
And every slimy little detail about the affairs Helen may or may not have had. That all goes to motive. Every mother—and grandmother—in the courtroom, will be on Hope’s side. We won’t actually be saying she’s insane. But we will be trying to lay the basis of a justifiable homicide defense. She felt, literally, as though her granddaughter’s life was on the line.”

“Can you make a jury buy that?”

“I can do my best. I read the stuff Tomlinson gave me.
 
The man was a crook and a child molester. Mississippi jurors don’t like those things.”

“No.”

“But the downside…the huge downside…is that it has to start now.”

“What do you mean?”

“We have to arraign Hope Reddington, charge her, and begin her defense now, right now.”

“Why?”

He leaned forward:

“Nina, the same scandal reporters we’ve been so worried about have got to be seen now as our biggest allies. I’m not sure we can blow up the sex scandal stories, but the money stuff is right there.”

“You’d leak it.”

“In a New York minute. Excuse the reference. Every group in the country that cares about the welfare of women—and every other group that has a dime’s worth of self-respect—is going to be camped out here, advocating the cause of Helen and Hope.”

“But?...”

“Helen’s private life is over. And John’s. She’s a tabloid queen. It’s the one thing Helen didn’t want.”

“I can’t believe this is happening.”

“I can’t either. We do have one thing in our favor, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Hope’s story is so detailed, I’m inclined to believe her.”

“And that’s good?”

“What’s good is knowing the truth. If she did it, she did it. Now we can set about preparing a defense. We just don’t need any more surprises.”

The phone rang.

“Hold on a second, let me get that.”

“Sure.”

He lifted the receiver and growled into it.

“Yeah.”

Silence.
 
A crackle of static from the other end.

Another growl.

“Yeah, I got it.”

He hung up, then rose, ponderously, gesturing to Nina that she should do the same.

“Come on.”

“Where?”

“The Reddingtons. Helen Reddington just confessed to murdering her husband.”

CHAPTER 18:
 
FAMILY SQUABBLES

By two o’clock in the afternoon, a film of heat shimmered over Bay St. Lucy. The town appeared behind a scrim, as though all buildings and trees in it were the face of a fading movie actress a year or so too old to face the harsh camera. The outlines of everything—cars, roofs, trees, Spanish moss, truth—especially truth––had begun to blur and waver, somewhat picturesque but completely impossible to pin down.

Several vehicles had already parked in the Reddington driveway, and there was a small group of people gathered in the front yard, around a goldfish pond that Nina had completely forgotten existed.

She and Jackson Bennett walked across the lawn, shoes squishing in sod still moist from the storm of two days earlier.

The fish pond viewers rose as they approached.

Then everyone sat down, so that, for a few seconds, all present––Edie Towler, Helen, and a young police woman Nina had never seen but who appeared quite striking in her “Bay St. Lucy” navy blue uniform and her raven black Bay St. Lucy hair—simply stared at the foot long golden carp that made their way leisurely about their appointed duties, cruising the perimeter of the six foot diameter pool, making sure nothing was wrong with the brown stones that surrounded it or the alabaster surface that floored it.

Finally Edie looked at Helen and said:

“Please tell Mr. Bennett what you’ve told me.”

Helen looked at Mr. Bennett and did so.

“I killed my husband.”

The fish continued to do what they were paid to do.

Jackson leaned forward in his chair, which was a gaudy apparatus made of chrome piping, alternate blue and white cloth bands, and invisible baling wire.

Nina gave it perhaps a half-minute before collapse.

He appeared to think for a while.

Then he put his head in his hands, pressed his fingertips against his forehead, breathed, exhaled, breathed again, waited while the flow of blood to his scalp ceased entirely, and finally said, thoughtfully:

“What?”

“I killed my husband.”

Overhead an airplane droned. Nina looked up at it, grateful to have something to do that she understood.
 
It was the same vintage World War II airplane that she’d seen ten days or so earlier, in the statuary garden, when Helen was divulging to her what she at that time thought were interesting and disturbing things, but which in the light of present events now seemed to have been no more than fanciful musings.

The same banner trailed behind the airplane.

It read:

“Hot sausage!”

How strange! Nine found herself thinking. Again.

Edie rose, and gestured to the other officer to do likewise, which she did.

Then Edie spoke directly to Jackson, ignoring Helen entirely.

“Now. Let me tell you what the situation is. I have in my office the final autopsy report, which states conclusively that Mr. Barrett died of a severe overdose of the drug Percodan.
 
I have outside of my office the attorney Tomlinson, who, although he retains no legal status as the Barretts’ attorney, has in fact retained his equally significant status as Royal Pain in the Neck. I have surrounding him several thousand reporters—the last batch just flew in from The Maringue Islands, which I do not know even where they are—all clamoring that I release the results of said report.”

She paused.

No one looked at the airplane except Nina, who did so subtly, as though she were craning her neck in order to shade her eyes.

“Now, going on:
 
I’ve scheduled a press conference for nine o’clock this evening. Many television cameras will be present. Holding it that late is going to outrage all of the reporters and media hounds in town, but I don’t care. I’m going to barricade myself in the office and play one-person scrabble. It’s a game I’ve invented. Jackson, I’m sick of this.
 
I will not be made a fool of. I want the truth, and I want it damned soon. It may be that your clients, having read one dime-store mystery too many, may think that be confessing to the same crime, they can somehow get off scott free.
 
Unable to judge who the real killer is, the jury just lets everybody go. Well, that will not happen. I was, until an hour or so ago, quite willing to be as lenient as possible with Hope Reddington, simply because of her age. I was not going to let her be jailed, and I was going to do everything I could to help you in your defense of her, which I would have assumed took her age and health into account.”

“It would have.”

“But I no longer care. I’m leaving now. You stay here and talk to your clients. Tell them I want the truth. I don’t care what it is, but I want to know it, and I want to know it soon. Listen to me, Jackson: if both of these women continue to insist that they did the crime, then I’ll take them at their word and charge them both. We can sort out the details at trial, but I promise you, they will both be in jail tonight. Do you understand this?”

“Yes, Edie.”

“I hope you do.”

And, so saying, she left.

After a time, her car had pulled away.

Nina, needing to do something if only to verify her own continued existence, looked at Helen and asked:

“Where is John?”

“His clinic. He had to be there. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

“Does he know you’ve made this confession?”

“No.”

She avoided the real question, which was, ‘Did you do it?,’ but Jackson did not.

“Did you do it?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you let your grandmother confess?”

“I didn’t think you would believe her.”

Silence for a time. One of the carp flopped over on its massive sickly yellow side and decided to float that way for a few seconds, finally having second thoughts and whacked the water like a board as it returned to its perimeter watch.

“I thought she’d simply be regarded as a senile old woman.
 
But I was wrong. She isn’t senile.”

“No.
 
No, she isn’t.
 
So how did you do this thing?”

“Much as she herself described having done it.”

“She wasn’t there at all?”

“No.
 
She made that all up.”

“She didn’t come up to say good night?”

“No, she was too tired, and simply went to bed.”

“Where did you get the Percodan?”

“I used Clifton’s. He had a large bottle of it. He went to the window to look at something or other. I went to the bathroom, poured out the mixture he’d prepared, and…well, made a new one of my own. He drank it, complained of feeling dizzy, went to bed, and went to sleep.”

“I see.”

“I knew that there would be an autopsy, of course. I knew that Percodan—in a fatal dosage—would be detected. But I’m not naïve. I also know that in many such cases, especially those involving celebrities, it’s impossible to prove that the overdose has not been the result of carelessness on the part of the victim. I hoped this would be the case. How, in final analysis, could anyone prove that Clifton had not simply made a mistake, and taken too much?”

“You hoped the final verdict would be accidental death?”

“Yes.
 
And I’m convinced it would have been.”

“Except for…”

“Except for Grandmamma. And her startlingly real narrative.
 
She is, as she said, a pharmacist’s wife. She was quite aware of what drugs Clifton was taking, but I do give her credit for the detail of her story. She was quite accurate, without even having heard the results of the autopsy. No, Mr. Bennett, I’m convinced that my grandmother would cheerfully spend the rest of her life in jail, just to give me a…well, a second chance. A chance with John. But I’m not going to allow that.”

“All right. Now.
 
I’m going to be very frank with you.”

“Please do.”

“As far as I can tell, we have two versions of this crime.
 
Both are completely believable.”

“I understand that.”

“But it’s not going to go on that way. Edie Towler is a damn fine district attorney. And I’m no beginner at my job.
 
I will not be lied to, though, and one of you is lying. Where is your grandmother now, Helen?”

“She’s lying down inside, resting.”

“OK, Nina?”

Nina felt as though she’d been shot.

This was a movie she was watching, wasn’t it?

Now someone was reaching through the screen and grabbing at her.

“Yes?” she said, wondering what had happened to the popcorn.

“Nina, you know the house, don’t you?”

“Like my own.”

“Would you go and get Hope, and bring her out here?”

“Mr. Bennett, Grandmamma is…”

“Your grandmamma is coming out here, right now, and we are going to get to the bottom of this thing.
 
Nina, please go and get Hope.”

“All right.”

Nina rose, as Helen said:
 
“She’s lying on the day bed in the study downstairs.”

Nina entered the house.

There they all were again, dead people.

Astonishing, she thought, that they still seemed content.

Waiting.

The musty smell of the rooms was not really that; it was, she decided, not a musty smell at all; it was a musty memory.

She crossed the main living room, carpet sinking beneath her feet, clocks ticking, and the sound of an overhead ceiling fan that growled as though it were a retired airplane propeller.

Hope was in fact lying on the small single bed in what had been her husband’s study.

She rose on an elbow as Nina entered.

“Nina!”

“Hello, Hope.”

“You’ve come for a visit!”

“Not…not really.”

“There’s cucumber salad!”

“I can’t have any right now,” she said, feeling thankful that there was a murder and because of it she did not have to.

“Oh, just a bit?
 
It must be nearly dinner time!”

“Maybe a little later.”

“Then you can stay?”

“For a while.
 
Hope, Jackson is outside with Helen.”

“Jackson Bennett?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my, a party has begun!”

“Not really, Hope. It’s just…there are some questions about what happened.”

“What happened when?”

“Last night.”

My God,
Nina found herself thinking.
Was it only last night?