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

by T'Gracie Reese

“I can’t believe that.”

  “Well, she is. And we’ve talked the whole thing through. In some ways we might not appear to be the most conventional parents…”

  She made her way into the porch, stepping on piles of toxic clothing and kicking aside sixteen to twenty beer cans.

  “I don’t know what makes you say that.”

  “Well, we’re a little different. No house. No dog.”

  “Tom, there are a dozen dogs just hanging out underneath your house here. I’m sure they’re all very nice. Just grab one, put a collar on him, and feed him raw meat.”

  “You know what I mean, Nina. We’re not exactly PTA material. Penn’s out fishing all the time and I’m here in this shack writing dirty novels. It might be better if I had a real job.”

  “Oh? How much money did you make last year, Tom?”

  “Two and a quarter million dollars. Something like that. But I think we’re supposed to pay taxes so it may turn out to be less.”

  “So what job would you rather have?”

  “Maybe I could teach.”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “Naw, you’re right. Anyway, though, a couple of nights ago, after you left, we went over all the problems. And there were a lot of bad things, of course. But we had one good thing going for us.”

  “Which was?”

  “We just asked ourselves, ‘Who’s gonna mess with our kid?’ And then it all seemed ok.”

  “See? Now that’s what good parenting is all about.”

  “Yeah, maybe it is. So come in, sit down.”

  She did and she did, always glad to find a chair in Tom’s main writing room, where she could sit and be absolutely motionless, so that something would not see her and attack her.

  “Want a beer?”

  “No, thanks. By the way, I pretty much have your baby shower planned. Mid-August at Elementals. Do you have any toys already?”

  “We have fishing nets and harpoon gaffes that the kid might want to play with when he’s older.”

  “You know he’s going to be a boy?”

  “Look at Penn; look at me. How could it be a girl?”

  “Well, I guess that’s one way of looking at it. Tom, I wanted to come see you because...”

  She paused.

  How could she say this?

  She still did not exactly know; but she knew that, however it got said, Tom Broussard would have to be the first to hear it.

  “Tom, do you remember how it felt, when you sold your first novel?”

  He had smiled slightly before, but now the sun exploded in his face, causing a seismic grin so cosmic and nuclear in force that she felt its heat.

  “Do I? Oh, Nina. A writer always remembers that.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I was living here. Had just gotten out of jail. I’d started writing when I was behind bars. The other guys gave me a hard time about that, of course. I got in a few fights a week.”

  “Must have been tough.”

  “The writing was tough. I didn’t really know what I was doing.”

  “I mean the fights.”

  He shook his head:

  “Actually the fights were the only fun I had. Without them, I might have gone crazy. But they kept me going. Anyway, by the time I’d been here a month, I had collected twenty or so rejection slips from New York and LA. They weren’t really ‘slips.’ They were just cards saying they were overwhelmed with other submissions and couldn’t look at my manuscript. They wished me every success, though, in what seemed a promising young career.”

  “But you kept on.”

  “Yeah, you have to do that. Finally—it was late one summer day, and the sun was going down. I was hung over, of course, and hadn’t gotten up in time to check the mail when it arrived. I remember there was a phone bill, an electric bill, and a letter of some kind. I thought at first it was from some law firm telling me I was sued and had to go back to jail. I didn’t want to open it. Finally I did, thinking that I might have to get out of the country, and, if I did, it would be better to do it that night.”

  “But it wasn’t from a law firm.”

  “No. It was from a publisher based in New York. Croft and Sons. Small company, but…well, your first kiss might come from a small girl but you aren’t complaining.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “The first line read, ‘Congratulations, Mr. Broussard.’ I just hung fire there for a while, not believing it. It went on, ‘We here at Croft and Sons have had a chance to review your manuscript, and we are highly impressed, both with your command of plot and your use of language.’”

  “You remember it, word for word?”

  “Oh, you never forget it. No real writer ever forgets the first acceptance.”

  “What was the novel?”

  “It was a different kind of thing than what I’m turning out now. A lot more idea-oriented, intellectual stuff.”

  “The name?”

  “The Entrails Trail.”

  “Oh, yes. I remember that. I was very proud of you, being one of my old students. I remember thinking it was the dirtiest book I’d ever read. I still think that.”

  “Well, you’ve always encouraged me. And believed in me.”

  “Yes, I guess I have. Anyway, I got some news today, Tom. And I wanted you to be the first person I told the news to.”

  “What news?”

  “Tom, I sold a painting.”

  “You what?”

  “I sold a painting.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “Yes. Isn’t it unbelievable?”

  He rose, crossed the room, and embraced her.

  “Nina, I’m so proud of you! And Penn will be, too!”

  “I’m just…I’m just still blown away. The woman who bought it—well, I can remember her words, exactly, just like you can remember your acceptance letter. She said, ‘It masquerades as a primitive, but I think it has a modularity that is paradigmatic of vascularity.’ Then she said, ‘The interchange of color and structure envisages something Dovanesque,’ and she said it had a scintillating aura of abstract clarity and then she thought better and said it really had a quality of perfuntoriness and then she went on to say it had scintillating viscera.”

  “Do you know what any of those words mean?”

  “No.”

  “What was the painting?”

  “An old lighthouse.”

  “You painted a lighthouse that was paradigmatic of vascularity?”

  “Well, it was a red lighthouse. Maybe that’s what she meant. She didn’t even mind the dog being too big.”

  “How much did she pay for the thing?”

  “Three hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “Wow!”

  “I know, isn’t it wonderful?”

  “Nina, you have to go out and celebrate!”

  “But I don’t know how to celebrate! I’ve never had anything to celebrate before!”

  “You solved two murders, almost won a state basketball championship, and saved the gulf coast from complete destruction.”

  “I know but this is art! It means something!”

  “Right! So I’m telling you, you have to celebrate!”

  “How do I do that?”

  “You get drunk, of course!”

  “I can’t get drunk.”

  “You have to get drunk; you’re a painter.”

  “But I’ll be sick the next day. I’ll throw up!”

  “Throwing up, Nina, is just another term for ‘the interchange of color and structure.’”

  “Well. You may be right.”

  “Of course, I’m right. Now where are we going?”

  “You’re going to get drunk with me?”

  “Of course I am. This is a red letter day, a day you’ll never forget.”

  “Okay. Shall we all go to Sergio’s?”

  “We’ll begin at Sergio’s. But what did you mean by ‘all’? Penn, you know, can’t drink. Not in her condition.”

  Nina shook he
r head.

  Perhaps getting drunk wasn’t that bad an idea, after all.

  She already felt drunk, if it came to that.

  But there was somebody else who would have to come with them.

  Somebody else who would be oh so proud of her.

  And who might actually understand the big intellectual words that had been used to describe the lighthouse that she, Nina Bannister, brought to life on canvas.

  And, saying a brief good bye to Tom, a fellow artist—she went home to her own shack—to break the news to that person.

  Darkness had begun to fall on Bay St. Lucy, and, as Nina Vespa’d through the lengthening shadows, she struggled to keep her mind on driving and away from the thousand trains of thought it seemed constantly to want to be boarding.

  And speed. Keep the speed down.

  Twelve miles an hour, twelve miles an hour…

  …and there! Fifteen!

  Fifteen miles an hour on Stonewall Jackson Drive. What are you thinking Nina?

  She had a sudden vision of herself as the young Marlin Brando in a motorcycle cap.

  But—was that so inaccurate?

  He was an artist, she was an artist.

  Different métiers, but…

  Oh, and that was a good word, ‘métier.’ Perhaps she was allowed to use words like that now––French words, big three and four-syllable words like ‘visceral’ and ‘perfunctoriness’ and ‘scintillating viscera.’

  She was a painter!

  And she owed it all to Carol Walker.

  Perhaps she was talented, genuinely talented; but she would never have known it, never probably have even gone back to the painting class—would have always remembered the scathing comments of Alanna and Margot––Margo, who after all was only an administrator and not a genuine painter—had not Carol seen the paintings and also seen something, something, special about them.

  And so she found herself deliciously curious as she approached her shack, stopped in the oyster-shell driveway, locked the Vespa, unhelmeted the helmet, stowed it carefully, and looked up at the porch.

  What would Carol say upon hearing the news?

  ‘Congratulations?’

  ‘That’s wonderful news!’

  ‘I knew it all along!’

  ‘What did I tell you?’

  She climbed the stairs, unlocked the door, and pushed it open.

  Carol and Furl were both curled in identical positions on the couch, each reading the same book.

  Furl looked up; Carol looked up and adjusted her glasses.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “I just sold a painting,” Nina said.

  The response to that was immediate:

  “Let’s go get drunk.”

  I’m already learning, Nina told herself, about being a painter.

  Within five minutes, they were speeding (caution be damned! Fifteen miles an hour it is!) away from the sea and toward Sergio’s By the Sea, there to meet Tom, who was to drive there in his truck.

  Carol was sitting back on the passenger seat, her arms tightly wound around Nina’s waist, as Nina’s mind sorted through the wonderful drink menu at Sergio’s:

  “Digestif Spirits: Fernet Branca,” and “Liquore Strega;” “How Edward Drinker Copes,” which consisted of Speyside Scotch, Gran Classico, Blanco Vermouth, and Cranberry Bitters;” “Winter Cocktail: Rum, Fresh Ginger, All Spice, Lime, and Angostura;” “Feufollet, with Apple Brandy, Elder Flower, and Burnt Absinthe.”

  Margot, of course, would ignore these delicacies and simply say: ‘Gin. A lot of gin.’

  But what fun was that?

  When they arrived, Tom was already standing beside the front door of the restaurant, dressed as he had been some few minutes ago.

  And that caused a problem.

  They were seated at a dark, corner table. They were given their menus. They’d begun to study them carefully (after, of course, the ritual of sitting down and profusely congratulating Nina, the Guest of Honor)—when the waiter arrived again, asking:

  “I wonder—would Madam (this meant Nina, toward whom he was gesturing) and her guest (this meant not Carol who had the effect of disappearing into any room she entered and simply not existing until she decided to leave—but Tom, who was one of Sergio’s few guests dressed in oil-stained (at least Nina hoped it was oil), off-white pants and a sweat through undershirt—please come with me for a second?”

  They did.

  He led them to a quiet alcove set just off from the cash register, and said:

  “Madame should know, we here at Sergio’s are not unaware of the difficulties faced by the homeless. In fact, if madam’s guest would prefer to accompany me to an area we have designated in an alley behind the kitchen, we would be able to furnish him with a hot meal made from the left overs of the previous evening.”

  “Really?” Tom said, enthusiastically. “What kind of leftovers are we talking about?”

  “Tom!” Nina said, almost shouting. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s free food!”

  ‘No! Now come with me! We’re leaving!”

  The waiter was ashen-faced.

  “I’m truly sorry, Madame, if I’ve failed to…”

  “You certainly have failed! Now good night!”

  They discussed the situation in the parking lot. Tom said that he thought a lot of the restaurants Nina knew might have the same attitude, so maybe it would be better if the three of them went to a place he knew on the far side (his side) of town.

  They agreed to this and he drove them to the place, which was behind an abandoned Dairy Queen. But even a quarter of a mile before they approached it, they could tell that it had been surrounded by a dozen police cars, their blue lights flashing, their sirens wailing, and their bullhorns braying out the words:

  “Come out with your hands up!”

  This did not portend well.

  And so they thought further for a time, remembered that Penelope was sitting in her own metal-corrugated shack, alone, while preparing for motherhood, and that perhaps another night might be a preferable time for the drunken debauch they had—perhaps unwisely since Nina had never previously in her life drunk more than three glasses of wine at one time—planned.

  By the time darkness had engulfed Bay St. Lucy, Nina and Carol were sitting on the deck, watching the ocean reflect a second ocean of stars, a candle burning on the table, and two glasses of Merlot sitting in front of them.

  “What are you going to do with the money, Nina?”

  “I don’t know. Three hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “You could buy clothes with it.”

  “I don’t need any clothes. I have jeans and several sweaters and t shirts. And sneakers. That’s really all I need.”

  “A car?”

  “You can’t buy a car for three hundred and fifty dollars.”

  Carol sipped her wine, set the glass softly on the table, and leaned forward:

  “Nina, it’s not going to be just three hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “I mean it’s going to be more than that.”

  “How?”

  “Because you’re going to sell more paintings.”

  She could only stare across the table. A streetlight was reflecting blue in Carol’s glasses.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because I know it’s true.”

  “How is it true?”

  “It just is.”

  “But…”

  “We’re going to select one painting a week. I’ll work with you. We’ll freshen and intensify the colors just a bit, maybe change the perspectives here or there. Then we’ll take the painting down and hang it just where the last one was.”

  “You think this woman may come back?”

  Carol shook her head.

  “No, but there’ll be others.”

  “Other people who want to buy my paintings?”

  “Absolutely. Little Red Lighthouse #6 is just
the beginning. Next we’ll hang Little Red Fishing Boat #4.”

  “Number three.”

  “Whatever.”

  ‘And you think it will really sell?”

  “I know it will.”

  “But…but, Carol, my paintings just don’t seem that much better than the other people’s paintings. I mean, the other people in the class.”

  Carol took a deep breath then, shook her head, and said quietly:

  “You have to learn to look beneath the surface.”

  They listened for a time as the waves washed inward.

  Carol continued:

  “Not just paintings. A lot of other—well, ‘matters.’ Things just aren’t always what they seem to be. You have to learn to look below the surface.”

  And so they sat, and talked.

  They talked of the money, and how it would add up if put in a separate account.

  They talked of selling ten paintings; and how that would produce three thousand five hundred dollars—and with that they renewed their earlier talk concerning THE GREAT TRIP!

  THE TRIP TO AUSTRIA!

  IT COULD BE DONE!

  AND, BY GOD, IT WOULD BE DONE!

  And, after a time, the tide had come in. It was almost washing around the support posts now.

  The stars had moved and shifted their positions inexorably.

  Nina had finished her third glass of wine.

  They said good night. Carol lay down on the couch. Nina crawled into her bed.

  She felt like a ten year old on the night before Christmas.

  What was there coming up for her to see?

  A new life?

  What was coming up…for her to see?

  She was, of course, to find out all too soon.

  CHAPTER TEN: BAY ST. LUCY—DEN OF THIEVES!

  During an unusually cool, dark, and shadowy month of November, the equally shadowy world of international art theft shifted its center from New York, Istanbul, Cairo, and Paris, to the deck behind Nina Bannister’s shack.

  At that shack arrived, on Tuesday morning November 3, Vincent van Gogh’s Poppy Flowers. The work had been painted in 1887, three years before the artist’s suicide. It depicted a small vase of red and yellow poppies. Van Gogh had, reportedly, painted it as a tribute to Adolph Monticelli, whose work he’d come across in Paris in 1888.

  It was said to be worth fifty million dollars.

  It was reframed on that Thursday morning by Carol Walker (who used a dark oak wooden frame) and covered by the painting Little Red Fishing Boat #4, which is still thought to be the first work by N. Bannister that was not a depiction of a light house.