Sea Change (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 1)

by T'Gracie Reese

  I wonder, she thought, what I must have said.

  “Come on into my office for a minute. Macy will be down in a second to get you. Besides, there’s something I want to show you!”

  But I want to stay here, she thought.

  “Come on!”

  She followed, amazed that the two of them were not trampled.

  The office was, as usual, filled with sullen teenagers who’d missed something or forgotten something or done something or not done something and thus were all standing by the counter waiting to be dealt with.

  Only after she and Paul were in the office itself, door closed securely behind them, could she feel safe.

  How had she done this every day for forty years?

  Paul was not a big man, but he exuded confidence. Perhaps that confidence, and not pure muscularity, explained why he’d been one of the best quarterbacks in the high school’s history. Did the confidence cause this greatness, she wondered, or result from it?

  No matter.

  The main thing was he simply represented “PRINCIPALDOM” in its purest form. Starched white shirt, navy blazer, superbly tied club tie—the principal is your pal and such he was to everyone.

  “Look at this! We can unveil it now!”

  She followed him toward a tripod standing beside one of the paneled walls, a towel hanging over it and covering what seemed to be a painting of some sort.

  There was something birdlike about Paul Cox’s movements, she found herself thinking. A delicate quality almost. His high cheekbones, aquiline features, bright and inquisitive eyes—this was more an artist than a football player; yet somehow he’d managed to become both, as well as a visionary leader for the school.

  “Look!”

  He took the cover off.

  “Oh my—Paul!” Nina exclaimed.

  “Our new physical plant! Elementary, middle, and high school, all conjoined.”

  The scene painted before her seemed almost something from a science fiction novel. There were the trees, sidewalks, dedicated and happy young people, and blue skies always associated with model developments as depicted by optimistic engineers working with good painters, fanciful planners and—on occasion––ruthless bunko artists.

  But here laid out before her was much more. This was not a school but a spaceport, with glass and chrome buildings sprouting high above the city, strange train like vehicles linking porches and archways, windows opening onto the brightest of ocean views, and light, light, everywhere light.

  “Paul, this is fantastic!”

  “I have,” he said, “been keeping it under wraps. It was designed by a firm in New Orleans.”

  “Is it a moonscape? Or the next Disneyworld?”

  “It’s our new school.”

  “How could it be, Paul? This thing would cost a billion dollars.”

  “Not at all. We can get it at bargain rates: a hundred and forty million. And we’re going to have that much, from what I hear.”

  She was silent for a time, wondering how many seconds after Arthur Robinson’s demise it had actually taken for everyone in Bay St. Lucy—from adults to children to senior citizens to pets and porpoises—to know the old man was dead.

  “You’ve heard then.”

  “First thing this morning.”

  “Just out of curiosity, who told you?”

  “One of the janitors.”

  “So you knew it to be true.”

  “Of course. I don’t spread rumors. Good luck in New Orleans.”

  “You know about that, too?”

  “Not much. Just the sketchy details I’ve heard.”

  “Which are?”

  “You leave from here by private car at eleven fifty eight tomorrow morning. The city’s private jet flies you from Biloxi to New Orleans. You view the body at McWilliams funeral home sometime around noon. You hear the official dispensation announcement at Raymer Peabody and Fontenot Law firm at two tomorrow afternoon. And after you sign some documents, acting as the city’s representative, we’re all rich. That’s just the basics that are going around town. None of us really know any more details.”

  “Well, thank you for telling me. I wasn’t as yet certain about the proper spelling of “Raymer.”

  “It’s with an ‘E.’ I checked.”

  “One can’t be too careful with such things.”

  “No. So how are you and the rest of the city council going to divvy up the dough?”

  “We’re planning on keeping it all for ourselves.”

  There was a moment’s panic in his eyes, making her wonder if her sense of humor had become too subtle in her old age, or whether it actually was a sense of humor at all.

  What if no one else in the world thought funny the same things she thought funny, and, instead of becoming charmingly eccentric, she was simply going insane?

  But the panic disappeared from his face an instant after its inception, and his smile broadened.

  “You wouldn’t be very popular.”

  “We are now, though, going to be very popular, I suppose.”

  “You are with me; and with the rest of the school board.”

  “Where would this school be, Paul?”

  “Right here. We have the land. We just tear down what’s here now, and start from scratch. It would all be state of the art, from the classrooms right down to the lunchrooms. People would come from all over the country to look at it.”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s a marvelous conception, Paul. You should be proud that you had this done.”

  “We need it, Nina. What we have now is…”

  “I know. What we have now is what we had when I started teaching. It wasn’t much, even then.”

  “And now it’s about to fall down. It will fall down, some day, and I don’t want to be under it when it does. Nor my teachers. Nor my kids.”

  She liked the way he thought of them as his teachers, and his kids.

  He saw them, she could tell, not as his underlings but as his responsibilities.

  There was a difference.

  “I wish I could promise you, Paul, that the city will choose to go this way. I can’t, you know. Not everyone in town views education as the highest priority.”

  He nodded.

  “I know. But I talked to several people on the school board. We all thought it good to proceed with a drawing, a conception. I assume there will be a meeting when everyone in town makes various proposals.”

  “More than one meeting. I think we can all be sure of that.”

  “Then we’ll get our chance.”

  “Of course.”

  “And when we do, we’ll have this to show you.”

  “Yes. And it’s truly impressive, Paul, it really is.”

  “Can we count on your vote?”

  “Of course. You know that.”

  “Good. Because––”

  “Nina! Nina!”

  Through a door suddenly flung open, rushed Macy Peterson completely out of breath.

  “I’m sorry I’m late! We had a few crises! Are you ready? Sorry to interrupt, Paul! Oh gee! Did you show her? What do you think of it, Nina? Isn’t it great? I know already where I’m going to be teaching! Right over there, in that tallest building, the one with a view of the ocean. So when do you think the money will be available? Paul says the construction could start next spring! And we wouldn’t have to have it all up front! Just, what was it, Paul, twenty percent? And the rates they’re willing to give us are phenomenal. Also, the state may be willing to kick in a certain percentage, given how the elections turn out next month. But Paul is optimistic.”

  She took two or three more sentences to run completely out of breath, but she had such little control of them that they made no sense at all. They did have the positive aspect of emptying her lungs, and for a few instants, while she was filling them again, there was sufficient time and space for Nina to say:

  “Good morning, Macy.”

  Unable to answer, she nodded, smiling broadly.<
br />
  Finally she was able to gasp:

  “Good Morning!”

  But by then, her principal, arms around both of their shoulders, was ushering them out of his office, through the reception area, and into a suddenly vacant hallway, saying all the time:

  “BEOWULFBEOWULFBEOWULFBEOWULF!

  With a light shove, he sent them both scampering on their way to class.

  “Isn’t he a great principal?” said Macy.

  “You’re lucky.”

  “Do you think we’ll get the new school?”

  “I don’t know, Macy.”

  “What are our chances?”

  “Well, I––”

  She had no idea what to say to that, and was thus greatly relieved at the realization that the classroom lay before them.

  They entered, she was introduced, and she made the points she’d made for decades; asked the same questions; received essentially the same answers––

  ––while the other half of her mind mused, remembered, feared, wondered—in short, fantasized.

  This continued for the rest of the day. Through the lunch given gratis to her in the cafeteria as payment for her morning’s services. Through the Vespa ride home, through the hour’s closet shuffling necessary to plan for a trip—a mourning trip plus a business trip—to New Orleans, plus the tired beginnings and groggy awakenings from an afternoon nap—

  ––what time was it? five o’clock now?

  ––plus her daily run/walk on the beach, bare feet deliciously sensitive to the cool, packed, wet and squiggly sand as she attempted to follow a silver sliver of foam that showed the farthest advances of the gentle swell that was now receding––

  ––through all of these activities it speculated.

  What must have happened in that house?

  No one had ever known precisely.

  Now no one ever would.

  The Robinson’s. An immensely wealthy family. Roots quite shady. Not a creole name, nor even a well-known Mississippi one. Homer Baron Robinson, the autocrat, standing solitary on the front balcony, looking out over Breakers Boulevard, and over the sea beyond, a sea which must have looked that evening in—what was the precise year? She could never remember—the same way it looked now.

  She and Frank, not long married, would take walks on the beach, and she would see him standing there.

  He never waved.

  That house. Magnificent then in splendor as it still was in decay. The great yard surrounding with its spreading live oak trees, branches two feet in diameter, spread across the ground as though they were spokes of an upturned umbrella. Branches that could be climbed upon and sat upon and hidden within and leapt across by children ecstatic with youth and the ocean breeze—

  ––but no such happy children had existed in the Robinson house.

  In that huge sepulcher of a house, silent ghostlike children had existed.

  Hardly appearing.

  Privately educated.

  And where had all that money come from?

  Various people she’d known during her life had claimed to hear the gunfire, which, later accounts verified, must have come at around two A.M.

  Some people said two limousines had pulled into the circular driveway.

  Gangsters from New Orleans?

  Or from Chicago?

  But who in Bay St. Lucy would have been awake to see them?

  She remembered sitting down to breakfast, and Frank, solemn as a monk, saying: “Something very bad has happened; nobody is sure what.”

  And, yes, something very bad indeed had happened.

  She finished her run, sat on the beach for a time watching lightning trace its golden maze-like slivers through a dark blue thunderhead that billowed far beyond the oil platform.

  Then, quite hungry for dinner—the chili dog “au jus” had not been bad at school, but the tater-tots “du jour” were not up to the chef’s usual superb performance and the banana pudding was rancid—she made her way toward her shack.

  The days were getting shorter. There was a dim gray light in her kitchen as she turned on the small Bose radio, decided against whatever music and banter seemed to be coming out of it, put a disc in the cd player, and listened to the opening strains of Verdi’s I Vespri Sicilliani as she Furled and Unfurled her cat.

  She made and ate dinner, then went out on the deck to watch the ocean.

  The tide was coming in. The swells grew, and seemed to be coming closer, closer to the pier posts holding her up. Beyond these swells, lightning became sharper and brighter, the clouds more mammoth, huge cotton balls that had somehow been drenched in ink.

  It was eight thirty when, dishes washed, she got into bed and opened the mystery she was reading.

  It was nine o’clock when she heard the pounding on the front door.

  Was she dreaming?

  It continued.

  What in heaven’s name?

  “Yes?” she found herself shouting.

  “Ms. Bannister?”

  A boy’s voice.

  A teenager.

  What was a teenager doing at her door at nine o’clock in the evening?

  What had happened?

  “Yes?” she repeated, rather stupidly.

  “Ms. Bannister? It’s Tommy Boyd.”

  “Yes, Tommy?”

  “Ms. Peterson sent me.”

  “Macy Peterson?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She got out of bed and opened the door:

  “Hello, Tommy. Now what is this about?”

  “Ms. Peterson sent me.”

  “Why?”

  “She said to tell you she’s sorry to bother you, but she really needs to see you. She’s down at the rock pier fishing for crabs—and she says she’s got something really important to tell you.”

  “All right. Hold on, and I’ll be right with you.”

  There was nothing left to do but go back inside, get her windbreaker—because the breezes had freshened now with the approaching storm—and follow Tommy whatever his name was, down the stairs and into his Volkswagen.

  “Is Ms. Peterson all right?” she asked.

  “I think so. I don’t really know. I sometimes run errands for her since she doesn’t have a car. She bikes to school you know.”

  “Yes.”

  “She just called our place about an hour ago, asked my dad if he would mind me coming to get you and take you to the pier. He didn’t mind.”

  “No, of course not. And you say she’s crabbing?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  “Did she seem—all right when you talked to her?”

  “Well, actually––”

  “Yes?”

  “—actually she seemed kind of upset.”

  Oh damn, Nina did not say.

  What was going on now?

  She was dropped at the foot of the stone pier, which was just what its appellation described and could not have been described more accurately, no matter how many words were used to do so—except that one could have added its length, over a quarter of a mile, and the fact that it was buttressed on each side by huge red slabs of rock, upon which and through which the great waves roared and sifted.

  Bay St. Lucy lacking a wooden fishing pier, this jetty—which is what the townspeople called it—was the only access for fishermen without a boat, to the slightly deeper reaches of the sea.

  Nina slipped slightly on the moss-covered cement, feeling spray douse her face and watching somewhat regretfully the receding tail-lights of Tommy’s car.

  “What in heaven’s name is Macy doing out here?”

  The great rocks did not answer, nor did the waves crashing against them, nor did the pole-lights marking fifty foot intervals of cement and making the sea glow green beneath them.

  “What is going on with her?”

  Macy had seemed fine today. More than fine. Bubbly with enthusiasm. What could have happened during the afternoon that—

  ––well, n
o need for further speculation.

  ––for there was Macy herself, huddled in a yellow plastic raincoat, sitting not on the jetty itself but in a niche between two of the great rocks.

  “Macy!”

  She looked up as Nina approached.

  “Oh Nina!” she shouted, trying to make herself heard above the combined roaring of wind and breakers. “I’m so sorry to bother you! Were you ready to go to bed?”

  “No,” Nina said, not lying, since she had in fact been in bed. “But what is happening?”

  “I sent Tommy for you!”

  “I know.”

  “He’s a wonderful boy; he and his family help me sometimes, when I need things.”

  Well, wonderful, thought Nina.

  And enough of that.

  Now what the hell is going on?

  “What has happened, Macy?” Nina asked, in lieu of asking, What is going on?

  “I come out here, sometimes.”

  “I can see that.”

  “It’s just—well, sometimes it seems like the only thing to do.”

  “Well, when you really think about it,” replied Nina, crouching near the edge of the jetty, her clothes quite drenched now, whether from the splashing of the waves or the first thin but relatively effective sheets of rain from the squall making its way shoreward and straight along the rock pier, “when you really think about it, most people never do think of anything to do in their lives, in the world whatever, except sit outside at night in a thunderstorm two or three hundred yards from shore on a huge rock pier getting soaked to the skin and catching crabs. I mean, what else could one do?”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “Too wet.”

  “I know. I should have thought about the rain.”

  “It’s all right. We’ll have plenty of time to think about it now. What is it, Macy?”

  “There was no one else to talk to. Except you.”

  Macy continued to crab. She held, quite gingerly, a string in her hands. At the other end of the string, submerged beneath eddying water and creviced between the cracks of rocks, illuminated green by a torch shining from the jetty, was a chicken breast impaled upon a wire.

  From time to time, crabs, hidden in the rock fissures, would make their way to the meat and fasten onto it, claw-forcing it into their horrid-monster like thing that was a mouth, oblivious to the fact that they were being pulled ever so carefully out of the ocean.