Climate Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 7)

by T'Gracie Reese

  It was a tall white candle, and it was carried, of course, by Margot the Capable.

  Whose voice resonated over the room:

  “All right everybody, be calm. We have all the candles you need. Some of my people are bringing them now. The storm must have…”

  But she was interrupted by another voice.

  A voice that seemed to be piped in from speakers in each corner of the dining hall.

  A voice which said:

  “Please don’t worry about the candles, Ms. Gavin. You won’t need them for some time.”

  And at precisely that moment, the screen lit up.

  Except on it was not the face of Jessica Fletcher.

  It was the face of Molly Badger.

  The image was in black and white, and showed no background, only the sad Badger face that Nina had come to remember from the small hideaway cubicle at Candles and the motel in Abbeyport.

  The image was perfectly clear, however, as was the concerned voice:

  “Margot?”

  How could she see Margot?

  “Nina?”

  My God, thought Nina. She must be able to see the entire room!

  Where was she?

  How was she doing this?

  And then, of course, the answer came: she could do this—whatever it was—because she was a genius at electronics.

  “Margot! I can hear you—tell me what you’re doing there!”

  Margot stared at the screen, hesitated for an instant, and then said:

  “Molly?”

  “Of course, it’s Molly! But tell me: why are you and Nina still there?”

  “You can see us?”

  “Yes, I can see all of you, and the entire hall. But don’t worry about technical matters: just tell me what you two are doing there!”

  “But Molly, where else would we be?”

  “Out on the Abbeyport Road, where Officer Thompson told you to be.”

  “But how did you know––”

  “Molly Badger, this is Nina. You didn’t listen in on any call, did you? You made those calls!”

  The image on the screen smiled slightly:

  “Yes, that’s correct. Nina, I’m so sorry that both of you are there. I wanted you to be somewhere else.”

  “Like out on the Abbeyport Road?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s why you were able to fake a call to Thompson and his men. And then a call to us. You somehow made him think—and Margot think—that you were the woman in the dispatcher’s office.”

  “It wasn’t hard, Nina. Not with my expertise. But you still have not told me: why did you not go?”

  “We did go, Molly. Or at least we tried to. But the bridge washed out before we could get across it.”

  Silence, then a shake of the head:

  “That’s too bad. I’m genuinely sorry to hear it. I didn’t want you to be in the hall. I didn’t want you to see what may be going to happen next.”

  More silence.

  Ominous silence.

  It was Margot who spoke up:

  “So there’s no beast roaming the countryside, is there, Molly?”

  The smile looming down on all of them changed slightly, though in precisely what way Nina would have found it hard to say.

  The voice filtering down was softer, somehow.

  “There are many beasts.”

  The storm roared.

  Another lighting flash lit the hall.

  “There are beasts almost everywhere. Some of them in us. Some we carry around with us.”

  Nina took two steps toward the screen:

  “Molly, where are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You were not kidding this afternoon at the motel, were you? You really did commit the murder of Garth Amboise.”

  “No, I did not.”

  “All right. You did not. But you were responsible for it. It and the murder of C. R. Roberts.”

  “Yes. The body builder. I didn’t truly hate her. I didn’t hate the man Amboise, either, although he was in many ways a hateful man. But I felt nothing against them compared to the viciousness that has been directed at me. And now I must come to my main point.”

  She was silent for a time and then pronounced:

  “Harriet Crossman.”

  It might have been the Voice of God, calling one of the sinners to judgment.

  It repeated itself:

  “Harriet Crossman.”

  Harriet, to her credit, did not appear cowed or terrified. She stood straight, in the middle of the room, and spoke up to the face staring down at her:

  “I’m here, Molly.”

  At the precise instant she said this, a figure crossed the room and stood beside her.

  It was Professor Brighton Dunbury.

  He took Harriet’s hand and held it firmly.

  Then he said:

  “We’re here, Molly. Harriet and I. We stand, together, before you. What do you wish of us?”

  To which the visage answered, funereally:

  “Then I speak to both of you. And to all the other cozy writers. The seeds of your destruction surround you.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Harriet.

  “There is no place for you to go. The police are no help to you. And if you try to leave, you will be ripped to pieces, just as your colleagues have been ripped to pieces. Yes, they were indeed PUBLISHED AUTHORS. But that was little help to them, was it?”

  Harriet bowed her head, stared at the floor, and said:

  “No. No, it wasn’t.”

  “Well, the same fate awaits you. And all of the rest of the writers.”

  Silence.

  Only the sound of breathing.

  Finally Molly:

  “You will all be ripped to shreds. You will see your destruction coming. But that will be no use to you. For the forces that are to destroy you are those which you have brought to Candles with you.”

  The Smathers Sisters rose as one and said:

  “It’s a demon, isn’t it? We’ve known all along: you’ve unleashed a demon!”

  But Molly Badger merely shook her head and said, quietly:

  “I am a demon.”

  And then, again to Harriet:

  “I’ll give you fifteen minutes. Then it will be midnight. If you are indeed true mystery writers, you should appreciate the scene, the timing. You will hear the clock strike twelve times. And that will be the last thing you hear.”

  Professor Brighton Dunbury took a step toward the screen and said, supplicating:

  “Surely, my dear lady, there is something we can do––”

  Molly Badger merely nodded:

  “Yes. You can die.”

  And then the screen went black.

  Leaving them all there.

  Trapped in a huge house.

  Escape impossible.

  Police nowhere near.

  All power gone.

  Nina thought of Macbeth, and the witches’ lines, the ones that had been quoted only that morning at the pond by Dunbury himself:

  ‘By the pricking of my thumbs,

  Something wicked this way comes.’

  Something wicked was coming.

  Coming to get all of them.

  For a time no one said anything.

  They were merely looking at each other.

  Finally, Harriet said to the man still standing beside her:

  “Thank you, Brighton.”

  “Why, for what, my dear?”

  “For standing by me. For holding my hand like you did.”

  “I’ve always stood by you; and you by me.”

  “No. I let you down. I fell for that megalomaniac Amboise. You probably hate me now.”

  “Of course I don’t hate you.”

  “I’m so thankful for that. And, Brighton?”

  “Yes, my dear Harriet?”

  “If we both have to die, I’d like it to be together.”

  “And it will be. Whatever furies this strange godd
ess sends to torment and ultimately devour us—they can never devour our love.”

  But, upon hearing this, it was Nina who stepped forward.

  “That’s very touching. I’m sorry to tell you, though, that you don’t have to die. None of us do.”

  Everyone looked at her.

  “I think,” she said, “I’ve got it figured out!”

  A voice asked:

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I know how she did it!”

  Silence for a time.

  Finally, Harriet Crossman stepped forward and said:

  “But Ms. Bannister, how could you know?”

  “The boxes.”

  “What boxes?”

  “The ones that came from the publishers. The ones that were lying there in the entranceway, the reception office. One of them didn’t have an address. It had a return address, but not a mailing address.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Just listen: the question is, how could the box have been delivered if there was no address? And the answer is, someone must have brought it in by hand and set it down among the morning’s mail.”

  Silence for a time

  Then Nina:

  “I think I know who delivered that one strange box, and, more importantly, what was in the box. The murderer wanted us to think that the box came from HBO—but Sylvia, to the best of your knowledge, did HBO send a box of shirts or anything else out here as a gesture of good will?”

  Sylvia Duncan shook her head:

  “Not that I know of.”

  “No, of course you don’t know of it—because it didn’t happen!”

  Harriet Crossman:

  “Nina, are you saying that Molly Badger actually committed these two murders, by using what was in a box that she brought in herself?”

  “Yes. Except, she didn’t commit the murders herself. She had them done for her.”

  “Murder for hire? She paid someone to do it for her?”

  Nina shook her head:

  “No. It wasn’t done because of money. It was done because of insanity.”

  “A lunatic?”

  “Not one lunatic. That wouldn’t have been enough.”

  “These people were killed, mutilated, mauled, by a group of lunatics?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But that’s impossible!”

  “It’s not impossible. It’s simply all that remains when we’ve eliminated all the things that are impossible.”

  “Janet Evanovich.”

  “P. D. James.”

  “Josephine Tey.”

  “Tony Hillerman.”

  “Sherlock Holmes,” Nina said. “But remember what Molly said: There are beasts almost everywhere. Some of them are in us. Some we carry around with us.”

  Then she looked at the entire group and said, quietly:

  “You’ve all brought your own beasts here. Now you have to tame them. And I think I know how you can do that.”

  Margot stepped toward her and asked:

  “Nina, I never seem to know what you’re talking about when you’re solving murders. But this time I have to tell you: you’re not making any sense at all.”

  “It will all come clear in a very few minutes, Margot. Once I deduced WHAT WAS IN THE BOXES AND WHO BROUGHT THEM—and once I really thought about what the professor said down by the pond––and once I realized that the way Molly would get her revenge—and prove her genius and GET PUBLISHED was to go after everyone’s pride, the very emblem of what must have seemed to her to be their arrogance—then I knew the answer. I knew how we will tame the beasts within us––and then we will wait for Molly Badger’s call.”

  And she did.

  And they did.

  It was not a ‘call,’ precisely, but a reappearance, and it happened just as the standing clock in the corner of the dining room struck the first of twelve chimes.

  The screen lit up, and there was Molly Badger’s image once again.

  Her face had no expression on it, as she stared across the room below.

  She waited until the twelfth chime had sounded.

  There was a scarcely audible rasp of static, and then came the voice:

  “It’s midnight. I hope you have all prepared yourselves.”

  Harriet Crossman:

  “Yes, Molly, we have prepared ourselves. With Nina’s help that is.”

  “How unfortunate that Nina should have to perish with you. She and Ms. Gavin are the only ones who’ve always accepted me despite—despite what I am.”

  Nina stepped forward:

  “What you are, Molly, is a human being.”

  “But a self-published one.”

  “Self-published writers are still human beings.”

  “Not to Amazon.”

  “There is more to life, Molly, than Amazon.”

  “Yes, there’s Barnes and Noble. But it doesn’t matter now, dear Nina. None of it matters now. What will happen, what was fated to happen—will happen. And the time for that has come. I’m only regretful that you and your friend will have to suffer.”

  “No one is going to suffer. It’s like Harriet said: we have prepared ourselves. We know of the furies you’re planning to let loose upon us.”

  At this time, Brighton Dunbury stood up in the center of the room, and said firmly to the image:

  “We know of these furies, my dear Ms. Badger. We had our own Athena here to tame them, just as the goddess tamed them in the myth.”

  A shake of the head on the screen.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, professor. I’m simply too ingenious. I’ve proven it twice already; now I plan to do so again. In a kind of Grande Finale. When they find your bodies—and they will find them, sometime tomorrow, when I call both the police and the news media and the storm subsides enough for the cameras to get in—I will be recognized as having committed not only THE PERFECT MURDERS, but THE PERFECT MASS MURDERS!”

  Nina:

  “And then what will happen to you, after you admit all of this?”

  A smile:

  “I’ll be taken away, probably. But I’ll be written about. And I’ll be famous.”

  “But you’ll be in jail!”

  “Iron walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.”

  Several voices in the room exploded as one:

  “Tony Hillerman!”

  “Simenon!”

  “It’s Richard Lovelace!” shouted Nina, losing her patience for an instant while someone from across the room shouted:

  “Yes, it’s Richard Lovelace! I met him once at a conference in Boston! He writes the Becky Althorpe mysteries! Becky is a retired female auto mechanic who lives in little seacoast village of––”

  “Richard Lovelace is one of the seventeenth century Cavalier poets, you idiots! And he died fighting against the Puritan armies of Oliver Cromwell!”

  Silence for a time. Then another voice:

  “Who is Oliver Cromwell’s detective?”

  Nina shouted:

  “He doesn’t have a detective!”

  The she regained her composure and said to the flickering black and white image:

  “There won’t be any mass murder, Molly.”

  To which Molly smiled, saying:

  “Yes, there will. And it will start soon. No. Why wait? It’s time!”

  The camera panned backward, so that a small table appeared behind her, and on it a computer screen.

  She turned and typed in some kind of command, then turned back, smiled, and said:

  “Prepare to die!”

  Upon hearing which, Nina merely said quietly:

  “All right, Cozy Writers. Blow out your candles.”

  Everyone did so.

  The room was in darkness, save for the glowing image of Molly Badger’s face.

  It continued to stare, without changing emotion.

  Finally the image spoke:

  “It should begin now. The first should be arriving.”

 
; Nina merely shook her head:

  “Nothing will happen, Molly.”

  “It will happen! Just as it has twice before.”

  “No. Look.”

  Nina then nodded to Margot, who pulled the sheet off the large table in the middle of the room.

  A pile of objects were glowing yellow, as though a nebula of stars had spawned on the table.

  Around this nebula, spread across the room, more lights glowed yellow.

  These lights were the AGCW pendants hanging from necklaces that all of the AGCW members had been given, and were still wearing.

  Molly Badger stared at the room in horror.

  “What is that? You’ve not…”

  “Yes, we have. We realized, finally, what was in the box you left, Molly. It was the gold Guild pendants, and the matching pendants to hang on our cats’ collars.”

  “But the cats should be––”

  “The cats are here, Molly. All right, writers. Remove the shawls.

  All of them did.

  Revealing every cat that belonged to every writer.

  Ezekiel lay quietly in the lap of Sarah Trimball, who wrote the Judy Finch mysteries.

  Cardwin Cat lay quietly in the lap of Jessica Turner, who wrote the Celia McNaugton mysteries.

  Roscoe lay quietly in the lap of Pamela Jane Sidberry, who wrote the Sarah Jane Dewberry mysteries.

  And so on.

  All of the cats in the room peaceful, all lying quietly—their collars having been taken off––in the laps of their owners.

  Cozy, as it were.

  But Molly Badger was horrified:

  “Why aren’t they doing anything? They should be going crazy by now, and ripping you all to shreds, just the way they ripped Amboise and the bodybuilder to shreds!”

  “They’re not going crazy, Molly, because we took their collars off. That’s what you see there glowing on the table in the center of the room. Our pendants are glowing, too, giving out the signal that is supposed to be driving the cats wild, infuriating them, so they would attack whatever animal is wearing that wave inducer, or whatever you choose to call it.”

  “The transmitter.”

  “Yes. I should have put two and two together when Professor Dunbury told me about the device that had calmed down the plantation dog. An electronic device that sent waves into his brain, relaxing him. Of course, such devices could have the opposite effect. Of course, such devices could make cats go wild. Any human wearing the transmitter would be in terrible danger, because we all saw what a fight was like between just two cats. But you created something much worse. Amboise’s pendant—the transmitter—going off silently, so that he was not even aware of it. Or of the faint yellow glow that it gave off to show that it was doing what it had been designed to do: attract and infuriate cats. They were all drawn to it like a male would have been drawn to a female in heat, only with ten times the hatred. Whatever was wearing it, they would tear to pieces. And they would have easy access, of course, because of the cat doors. I can only imagine the horror felt by Amboise and C. R. Roberts, seeing the animals pour into the room in a single line, then lunging––probably at the eyes first. Finally, all thirty would be there, ripping and tearing. Then, after enough time had passed and the ghastly deed had been done, you had simply to turn off the transmitter. The cats were at peace again, and would simply leave the room by the same cat doors through which they had entered. The victim was dead, and any blood that might have been found on individual cats was chalked up as a wound gotten in a single cat fight. A fight such as we all had gotten used to seeing.”