Frame Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 5)

by T'Gracie Reese

  So all right then, she would read. But read what? Nina had graciously made a nice little library of paperbacks available to her, but the titles were mostly mysteries, punctuated by high school literature fare, and neither seemed right for this particular moment. Janet Evanovich or Emily Dickenson. What a choice. All right then, she would…

  There was a knock on the door.

  She crossed the living room floor, opened the door, and found herself looking at a perfectly nondescript man. He was of average height, wore average wire-rimmed glasses, smiled an average smile, stood balancing himself carefully on average light brown shoes, and looked like he had no distinguishing marks at all except for his fingerprints, which, she decided immediately, had probably been burned off.

  “Ms. Walker?”

  All traces of accent had probably been burned off too.

  “Yes?”

  “I have a picture for you. It’s a gift from a friend.”

  “All right.”

  He had propped the painting against the wall. It was carefully wrapped in brown paper, and was approximately two feet square.

  He picked it up and handed it to her, saying quietly:

  “Your friend wishes you well.”

  “Tell him, ‘thank you’.”

  “I shall.”

  “Do you want to…”

  “No, I can’t come in. Other errands to run.”

  “All right then.”

  “Good luck.”

  He turned, descended the stairs, got into what surely must have been a rental car, and started the engine.

  By the time the car had reached Breakers Boulevard, Carol was already on the deck.

  It had been well prepared for the coming of the painting.

  Four of Nina’s pictures leaned against the rail of the deck. There were Old Red Lighthouse #2, Storm at Sea #3, Morning at Sea #5, and Little Red Barn #6 (Nina’s favorite of the four, except that the cow was too large and thus out of proportion.)

  The tools Carol would need, and which she had bought yesterday in one of Bay St. Lucy’s surprisingly well-equipped art supply shops (well, Carol found herself realizing, not so surprising really when one realized that this was a town full of painters––amateurs, true professionals, and all shades in between). These tools she had stacked neatly in the living room beside her couch, having warned Nina beforehand that she intended to change some of the frames the painting class had provided.

  First was the corrugated board. She wiped it clean with a towel she found in the bathroom, then carried it out to the deck and placed it carefully on the glass topped table, which she also carefully wiped clean.

  Then a second trip: screw driver, linen tape, wire, and acrylic cleaner.

  She placed them all carefully on the board, lifting her head slightly to watch the porpoises, whose daily passing Nina had warned her about. She greeted them mentally and imagined that they sang back to her, as Homer’s sirens might have done.

  Third trip.

  Foam core backing. Mat board.

  The instructions she’d received as a docent some months ago repeated themselves in her mind: “Prepare your acrylic. Peel one side of the protective liner off the side that will be touching the art work. Place that side face down on the art assembly (boards and picture), then peel off the other side. If you have ordered the acrylic with UV or Non–glare properties (she had), the side that should face up will be indicated on the packaging.”

  She looked.

  It was.

  So now…

  So now…

  She took a deep breath, returned yet again to the living room, lifted the brown paper package as though it were a new born child, and carried it out to the deck.

  Carefully, carefully, carefully—she unwrapped it, the light paper falling in shards at her feet, hissing softly as it did so.

  The paper shed itself, leaving the painting there before her in her hands.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, trying as hard as she might to stop her hands from trembling.

  “Oh, my God.”

  St. Sebastian, Tended by Irene and Her Maid.

  She had expected one of several paintings Michael had mentioned.

  And she had prepared herself for the coming of each individual work, much like a foster mother might prepare for the coming of an adopted—even if only for a short time—child.

  So here was her child.

  And there were the initials of the child’s real father, the child’s creator, subtly imbued in the dark, shadowy, lower right hand corner.

  H.B.

  Hendrick Tenbruggen.

  She had admonished herself for knowing so little of the man, and for needing to do research.

  Which she had, of course, done.

  Tenbruggen. Ghent School, late Baroque, this painting finished last 1625.

  She’d also done research on St. Sebastian, and the words stuck in her head:

  “St. Sebastian. Died circa 288 AD. An early Christian saint and martyr. Killed (it is said) during the Roman emperor Diocletian’s persecution of Christians. He is commonly depicted in art and literature tied to a post or tree and shot with arrows. This is the most common artistic depiction of Sebastian; however, according to legend, he was rescued and healed by Irene of Rome. Shortly afterwards, he criticized Diocletian in person and as a result was clubbed to death.”

  Words, words, words.

  “For the depths,” someone had written, “of what use is language?”

  What use indeed.

  Her hands continued to tremble.

  The painting seemed to move in her grip, like a living thing.

  Which it was, of course.

  The figures, muscular and full bodies, circled the center of the canvas in the typical Baroque manner, but the face of Irene, staid and immensely calm, held the entire creation in quiet repose, as though nothing, not the emotions nor the pain nor the immensity nor the enormity, of the things depicted, were going anywhere without her say-so.

  “Edle Einfalt,” she found herself whispering, “Und stille Grosse.”

  Lessing’s great description of the statue of Laokoon, a Trojan who tried to warn his countrymen about the Trojan Horse.

  Noble simplicity and quiet grandeur.

  And the arrows.

  The arrows.

  “Oh, you poor man,” she found herself whispering, idiotically, since the poor man could not hear her.

  Or…?

  The arrows were small, seemingly no more than a foot or so in length.

  But one, sticking in Sebastian’s upper leg; and another, directly in his chest; and a third in his shoulder…

  …no blood at all.

  Sebastian’s shadowed face, turned down toward the ground…

  …and the stretching, almost writhing, body of the white-rag turbaned maid, as she attempted to untie him from the gnarled tree limb to which he’d been tied.

  And all of it illuminated magically by light of a sun that had already set, and was glowing enough to radiate off distant crosses where other martyrs hung, watching night come, as they died.

  “My God,” she whispered again.

  She was sobbing now.

  And she was praying.

  So were the figures in the painting.

  Three hours later—she had worked quite efficiently, and the job had gone better than she could’ve hoped for; she walked into Elementals, carrying Old Red Lighthouse #6.

  “Nina!”

  “Hey, Carol, how’s the morning been?”

  “Great!”

  “What have you got there?”

  “Your lighthouse picture! I changed the frame on it. I think it looks really good now. You need to hang it!”

  Nina walked toward her, shaking her head:

  “Carol, I tried one time hanging my paintings and Margot…”

  “I know all about Margot. But Margot isn’t here. She won’t see the painting.”

  “Alanna might.”

  “She won’t either. And if she d
oes, I’ll talk to her.”

  “And say what?”

  “That I know a few things about this business, too. Nina, this painting is really good. There’s a kind of vibrancy about the colors…”

  “Isn’t the dog too big?”

  “Don’t worry about the dog.”

  “But, I…”

  “Price it at $350.”

  Silence for a time.

  “What?”

  “Three hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “But no one will pay that much for one of my paintings!”

  “Trust me.”

  “But…”

  “Trust me.”

  And Nina did.

  So the painting was hung, just above a display of clay pots from Lucille Davis (who also sold her pottery in Vicksburg and New Orleans).

  And in this way, Tennbruggen’s St. Sebastian Tended by Irene and Her Maid, disguised as Bannister’s Little Red Lighthouse #6 With the Slightly Too Big Dog, was offered for sale, at the price of $350, in Bay St. Lucy, Mississippi.

  Four days later, at eight fifteen on the evening of October 25, Nina and Carol had finished their dinner, cleaned the dishes, and were deeply involved in a game of gin rummy. It was one of those strange games where no one could seem to win. The pile grew more and more slender, and, though Nina needed only a five, a seven, or a king—and God only knew how little it would take for Carol to win—no such card was forthcoming.

  Rain pounded on the roof of the shack—a cool front had blown into Bay St. Lucy at five PM and soft rain had started soon thereafter. Turning to harder rain, then turning to this.

  And so there was no possibility of walking on the beach, or strolling out on the stone jetty, or ogling the fall fishermen on the long pier as they attempted to hook hammerhead sharks or whitefish. No, there were only two things possible to do on such an evening: reading (which would come later) or card playing (which might extend until later, indeed for all eternity if these particular cards never showed up).

  Another draw.

  Six of spades.

  Damn.

  Discard the three of diamonds.

  Carol’s draw

  Four of clubs.

  Would that do it for her?

  No, apparently not.

  Her discard.

  The ten of diamonds.

  Damn.

  Rain rain rain.

  Spatter on the sliding deck door.

  Furl asleep beneath a cardboard box in the corner of the living room.

  Carol drew, furrowed her brow, shook her head, wiped her glasses.

  “Nina! Nina!”

  A bull horn voice from the parking area below.

  “Nina, for God’s sakes!”

  The voice seemed to grow more desperate.

  Carol put down her cards and stared:

  “What is that?”

  Nina shook her head while rising and walking to the living room window.

  “I have no idea.”

  She pulled the blinds back and looked outside, but for a time all she could see were shapeless gray forms through a film of rainwater.

  “Nina! Are you up there?”

  “Who is…”

  She went to the door. She could hear Carol’s voice from behind her.

  “Are you sure you want to open that?”

  She shook her head:

  “No, but we have to do something to end this damned card game.”

  And so saying, did open the door.

  Standing at the base of the stairs, dressed only in an impossible open-collared flowered shirt and stained white pants, was Tom Broussard.

  Tom, hulking and unkempt at his best, now (at his worst) hulking and unkempt and soaked, was Bay St. Lucy’s only genuinely successful pornographic novelist.

  “Nina!”

  His broad face upturned, his eyes gaping in horror, he reminded her of Stanley Kowalski, and if he’d chosen to shout ‘Stella!’ instead of ‘Nina,’ she would have thought herself in a play and would have attempted to remember her next line.

  What was that line, anyway?

  Everybody knew ‘Stella!’ Nobody knew the line that followed.

  She knew she was supposed to depend on the kindness of strangers. But Tom was no stranger. So she had no idea what to do, except to step out on the stairwell platform so that she too was now getting wet.

  “Nina, you’ve got to come!”

  “Tom, are you drunk?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  He nodded, floridly, dramatically, the nods almost amounting to bows, but his voice was flooded with rainwater and deep sobbing:

  “Of course I’ve been drinking! But I don’t think it’s going to help!”

  “Come up here! Get dry!”

  He shook his head, water splattering from his tangled black mane as it would have from the tail of a black stallion that had just made its way out of a river crossing.

  “Can’t!”

  “Why not?”

  “We’ve got to get back to the boat!”

  “Why? What’s going on, Tom?”

  “It’s Penn!”

  “Is she all right?”

  “No, she’s––oh God, I’ve never seen her like this!”

  “Is she hurt?”

  “I don’t know, Nina, I don’t know. You’ve got to come!”

  “All right, Tom. But––do you want me to call 911?”

  “No, this is a genuine emergency!”

  “But what should we…”

  “Just come! Just come!”

  “All right! Let me get a slicker on!”

  The rain was beginning to roar now, and the ocean was beginning to roar, and Tom was down there roaring, and Furl had disappeared into the bedroom.

  Nina had half-finished the process of putting on the slicker when she heard Carol say, softly:

  “Gin.”

  She looked over at the table.

  Carol was laying down her cards.

  “I only needed a…”

  “Oh, the hell with you,” she said, and went out into the rain.

  It was toward an uncertain rendezvous with destiny that Nina found herself hurtling, the battered pickup truck Tom had somehow managed to find at an auction for scrap iron, splashing its way down Breakers Boulevard toward the mangy end of the harbor where Penelope kept her fishing boat, The Sea Urchin.

  “Can’t you tell me what’s happened, Tom?”

  “It’s just––I can’t believe it!”

  ‘What?”

  But he merely shook his head and gripped the steering wheel tighter.

  Dark shapes flowed past them on the left and they themselves flowed out of Bay St. Lucy proper and into Bay St. Lucy improper, the cheapest moorings of the cheapest boats. And so went the progression: yachts with stately mastheads, expensive pleasure boats, less expensive pleasure boats, scows, garbage haulers, and finally Penn’s Urchin.

  They pulled to a stop, the rain rattling harder now than ever, and the quays glistening with oil and water.

  She pushed open the truck door, which screeched in pain as metal tore against metal and the things that should have been oiled at some point in the vehicle’s existence and never were, cried out in their vengeance.

  She jumped from the truck’s running board down into a six-inch deep puddle of rain or seawater––it hardly mattered which, the saline content of the substance having less relevance to Nina’s existence at this particular time than temperature, which seemed something to be measured in Kelvin degrees rather than Fahrenheit.

  “Come on! She’s over here, in the shack!”

  Nina would have thought about cursing because her sneakers had gotten soaked; but she was approaching Penelope Royale, around whom all attempts at obscenities always seemed amateurish, and thus hardly worthwhile.

  They were running over the docks now, the square, flat-bottomed Urchin sitting tightly moored, rocking in the rain peppered waves, the equally square, flat-topped cor
rugated iron shed in which Penn and Tom incredibly and impossibly lived, now looming up before them.

  They had gotten to perhaps twenty feet of the building’s entrance when the front door burst open and Penelope lunged out. She was dressed in what seemed to be a torn and ragged sail from some schooner that had been washed ashore in a neap tide. No, thought Nina, that was not precisely accurate. Penelope was not ‘dressed’ at all in any conventional sense of the word. She was more accurately ‘fitted out,’ as though all of her limbs had become masts and crossbeams, and, having spent her entire life on the water, her entire being had finally evolved into more of a water craft than a human being.

  And the vessel that she’d become was storm-tossed now indeed.

  She filled the doorway.

  She glared.

  Then, her mizzen cannon doors opening, she let forth a volley of grapeshot and dirty words, all directed at Tom.

  “You ----------------------------------------------------------------------!!! How could you ------------------------------------------------------------------!!!! Don’t ever try to -----------! If I-----------ever -----------------------------!”

  As for Tom, he simply stood in the midst of the storm, big, vulnerable, and doomed, the Spanish Armada to Penelope’s quicker and far more deadly English fleet.

  He floundered.

  He moved his arms but seemed incapable of speech.

  From some half mile distant, one of the great tankers that frequently made its way whale-like along the coast let out a loud honking bray.

  Penelope stared at it, and would have sunk it had not the distraction from Tom proved too irritating.

  So instead, she let loose again upon him:

  “You-----------------------!!! You didn’t have the-------------------------- to-----------------------------! And if you ------------------------------I would have---------------------------------------------!”

  Nina noticed for the first time that Penelope held a crowbar in her hand.

  ‘She’s, she found herself thinking, ‘going to kill him. She’s going to kill both of us.’

  She flashed back almost ten years ago when Penelope, who’d been her student at the time—as had Tom––(How had she survived those two?) had almost single-handedly, dismantled a drinking fountain.

  But Penelope had been a girl at that time, a mere slip of a thing.

  She was a full-blown woman now, and much stronger.