“She’s great. And that’s what I’m here about.”
“Ok, how can I help you?”
“I want to buy one of Nina’s paintings for her. I think it would make a great pre-pre-shower gift. I went over to Elementals today, though, and she told me she’d sold the last one, but there were a couple here that she’d finished.”
“That’s true. Nina and I just finished Owl today. I was going to leave it out on the deck, but the air is so cold and wet I put it in the bedroom.”
“Could I see it? I don’t have my truck with me—I’ve just walked over here from my place—but if it isn’t too big, I could give you a check for it and just carry it down to the wharf.”
“Sure, come on it.”
He did so, then made his way through the living room and into the bedroom.
The painting rested on the floor, leaning against Nina’s bed.
“It’s an owl all right. I like the way it’s kind of hidden in that green leafy background.”
“Yes,” answered Carol. “Nina worked hard getting the colors right. It’s a small painting, too, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble carrying it.”
“How much is she asking?”
“She always sells her paintings for the same price: three hundred and fifty dollars.”
“The way the things are selling, she’s going to have to start asking more.”
“Yeah, I know. Well, if…”
There was another knock at the door.
“We seem to be popular these days. Look, Tom, there’s some wrapping paper over in the corner, if you want to make the painting look like a present.”
“Good idea. You get the door; I’ll wrap the thing up.”
“Right.”
She turned; left the bedroom, crossed the living room, and opened the door again.
A very well dressed—charcoal gray business suit, red tie superlatively tied—tall blond man with ice blue eyes, was standing in front of her.
She’d seen only a few people dressed so well in all her life, and they were all doing the same thing.
He was, she could remember thinking later, selling bibles for Jehovah’s Witnesses.
“Carol Walker?”
“Yes?”
“May I come in?”
She almost automatically took a step back into the living room.
Then a second.
Soon they were both standing in the middle of the room.
“How may I…” she began.
But he interrupted her, saying simply:
“Lorca Reklaw.”
Then, very carefully, and with all circumspection, as though he were retrieving his sunglasses from the inside pocket of his Armani jacket, he took out a gun.
It was a small gun, hardly bigger than his hand, which was not a small hand.
It shone, oily and black, the light overhead reflecting upon its cylinder.
She remembered thinking it might have been a toy gun.
She also remembered thinking that she was not at all frightened. That she was watching a film. That she was watching an action scene in a made-for-TV movie starring actors very few people recognized, except that one of them was herself, Carol Walker.
The man stepped forward so that he was hardly a good stride away from her. Then, crossing his chest with his right arm, he removed the gun from its shoulder holster, and began to cock it.
She sensed movement behind her.
At this moment, Tom Broussard hurtled like a missile across the room, almost knocking her down and barreling into the gunman. The two bodies shattered against the wall just beside the door, cracking the plaster and then falling to the floor in what immediately became a writhing tangle of thick limbs, clutching hands, bellowed obscenities, and shoes—black shiny ones on the assailant, combat boots on Tom—scuffing the floor boards.
A part of her wanted to turn and escape onto the deck, but another part prevented movement at all, and so she merely stood, fixed as a statue while the gun slid across the floor and came to rest at her feet.
She stared at it while the two men fought.
Its hammer, she noted, was cocked and ready.
The fight could not have lasted more than fifteen seconds, and it was soon over, for, although Tom was big and brawling, and had obviously been in bar room scuffles for most of his life, his opponent was trained.
And had a knife.
She did not even see where it had come from, nor out of what secretive pocket it had been slipped.
She only heard the click, saw the blade flash open, and saw the hand holding it, free for an instant from the grasp that had held it, crawl upward toward Tom’s throat, which pulsated red and vein-laced beneath it.
Six inches from the throat.
Now on the throat.
She could see Tom’s eyes bulging wide.
The gun was cold in her palm.
She took a step forward, bent down––as though to pick up off the floor a coin she had inadvertently dropped—then pressed the barrel against a sweaty lock of straw blond hair hanging from the man’s forehead, and squeezed the trigger.
Everything was going around and around.
Going around and around were: the Vespa’s tires, which hung awkwardly a foot or so above the grass lawn fronting Clay Creatures; her running sneakers, but how could they be going around and around because they were securely tied to her feet, which extended a few feet away from the rest of her, and were lying quietly on the ground? The street lamp, glowing and buzzing golden on the other side of the street, and just going around and around in its merry way and orbiting like a planet the post on which it was supposed to be attached.
There were other lights though, of course, and they were going around and around too, especially the red ones, the ones that came attached to the sirens, and which were not only orbiting but approaching, as she lay there in the grass watching them.
She watched them and the fire.
It was spewing out of Elementals now, Elementals whose front wall could not be seen for the billowing black smoke.
It roared as it spewed, chewing up everything that had been part of the entryway, having eaten, she thought absurdly, The Bannister Canister, her little message tube, of which she and Margot were so proud.
The Bannister Canister.
It was gone now.
“Ms. Bannister!”
What was that?
People.
People were going around and around, and they were shouting, and they were all dressed in bizarre black and golden uniforms, and they getting closer to her.
Now they were all around her.
“Ms. Bannister! Ms. Bannister, are you all right?”
She watched herself try to answer the question and fail, laughed inwardly at herself for failing, enjoyed the show, all the round abouts, everything circling the way it was…
“Ms. Bannister, can you talk?”
“I…”
There it was, a word.
“I don’t…”
Two words
The fire continued to roar like a freight train.
“Can you move your arms and legs, Ms. Bannister?”
“Can I…”
What a question.
Of course, she could move her arms and legs.
She tried.
One leg moved and one arm.
She knew they moved because she saw them.
Well, that was pretty good, wasn’t it?
“Ma’am, can you understand us? We’ve got to get you into an ambulance, if you can stand up.”
“I––I don’t know. I just…”
“Are you in pain, Ms. Bannister?”
“I don’t––I don’t think so.”
“Can you take deep breaths?”
Could she?
She tried.
“Good! Good! Just slow, deep breaths. That’s the girl!”
How many of them were standing there in a circle around her? Three? Four!”
They were firemen.
“Ma’am, can you tell us if you’re in pain?”
Now she was shaking her head.
And now she was back into her own head, and could talk, not just watch herself try to talk.
How strange it all was?
“I’m––I think I’m all right.”
“Can you sit up?”
She tried; she succeeded.
Now she was upright at least and not lying on the grass.
“Good job, Ms. Bannister! Can you tell us where you’re hurting?”
“I don’t hurt.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. I think I’m all right.”
“We need to get you into the ambulance, ma’am. We’re going to put you on this stretcher.”
“I don’t think I need…”
“Just be real calm now. We’re going to lift you, and put you on the stretcher.”
And now she was floating, and more faces hovered over her—and now she was descending, slender cloth belts wrapping themselves around her wrists, faces bending down close over her chest, metal circular things cold against her skin.
“Just hold on––we’re going to put you in the back of this ambulance...”
“I’m all right. Really, I am.”
“Yes, you are, dear. Yes you are.”
A woman’s voice.
“I’m Judy. I’m a paramedic.”
“Hi, Judy.”
Laughter from the faces circled above her.
That was good sign.
“Hi, Nina! You probably don’t know me. My daughter is a high school junior. She loved having you as principal last year.”
“What’s her name?”
“Tricia Sherwood.”
“Oh, Tricia. She made the honor roll every six weeks I was there.”
“Yes, she did.”
“I talked to her a few times in the hallway, between classes. She told me she wants to go to med school.”
“And you remember that?”
“Of course, I do!”
“Of course, you do. You do, dear, because that’s just the way you are. Now, hold on: we’re going to lift this stretcher into the back of the ambulance now. Just lay your head back on the pillow. You might even close your eyes if you can…”
They did, and she did.
And the world became a warm dark place where she could think about Tricia going to medical school.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE BELLS, THE BELLS…
At midnight in Bay St. Lucy, all of the bells in the city went off simultaneously.
Bells of the Lutheran Church, bells of the two Methodist Churches, bells of the three Baptist Churches, Bells of the Evangelical Church, and, of course, the truly big and sonorous bells of the Catholic Cathedral, which was located in the dead center of downtown.
There had been some talk of quieting the din, of letting the proper people—pastors, music directors, etc.—know that the sound of church bells in an evening was edifying, of course, but…
…but midnight?
…and every evening?
Still, nothing was done about the matter, because to have done so would have seemed distinctly sacrilegious, and because it was better to be awakened in the middle of the night than to be labeled Ebenezer Scrooge by one’s fellow citizens.
And so, the bells continued to chime, not The Bells of St. Mary’s but The Bells of St. Lucy’s, and that is what they were doing this particular night, and that is why Nina Bannister could hear them as she sat shivering and no longer quite shocked, on the end of a gray table in Observation Room 204 of Bay St. Lucy General Hospital.
People had been coming and going for what seemed to have been hours, but what had in reality been forty-seven minutes.
For that was the precise time—eleven-thirteen PM—that a bomb had detonated in Elementals: Treasures from the Earth and Sea.
“Can’t I at least get my clothes on?”
The young doctor nearest to her looked at the older doctor farthest from her, who was standing in the way of the middle aged nurse who was trying to get out of the room with a chart she was writing on, and thus had almost run into a very old but still spry looking nurse who was shaking a thermometer.
“We just want to be sure you’re all right.”
“I’m all right. I keep telling you: I’m all right.”
“You had quite a shock.”
“Yes, I did. But I’m all right. I fell off my Vespa. But I’m not even scratched.”
“You’re not having any problems breathing?”
“No. I’m just breathing right along, in out, in out, just like I learned to breathe a long time ago.”
“No dizziness?”
“No dizziness.”
“The room doesn’t seem to be going around?”
“The people in the room seem to be going around. But the room itself is just good old rock solid.”
This seemed to be the very statement that was necessary to make all of the doctors and nurses leave the room together, saying that they’d be back immediately, and for Nina simply to rest calmly.
So she was left by herself.
Wearing a hospital gown which opened, impossibly, in the back.
And which was cold.
The whole room was cold; the bed was cold, the ceiling was cold, the ventilator screen on the ceiling was cold.
She remembered a line from an Austrian play she’d read; during these last weeks when she’d been throwing herself into the literature of the country she and Carol were perhaps preparing to visit. The line had been delivered from a hypochondriac who was also fiercely afraid of being buried alive, and who explained his fears by saying:
“The doctors, even when they have succeeded in killing a man, are never quite certain that he is actually dead.”
She was fine.
She’d told them that.
She had been at least fifteen yards from the door of Elementals when the blast had gone off.
Then, true, it had been strange, as though someone had pushed the Vespa over.
This, she now realized, was a shock wave.
And, true, she’d certainly been dazed for a time, when the paramedics arrived and examined her initially.
But now she was fine.
Except for the possibility of getting pneumonia in this observation room.
She was considering making a break for it, when the door opened again and the man who had to be, she decided, the chief night physician of the emergency squad—she had recognized none of the people taking care of her, strange, she knowing every denizen of Bay St. Lucy, but indicative of the transient nature of midnight emergency crews, she decided—this man entered, nodded his head and said:
“Well, Ms. Bannister, the staff seems to be in agreement that the best advice might be for you to stay here tonight. Just for observation.”
“No.”
He shook his head:
“I understand that you want to go home, but…”
“I want to get dressed. I want to have my real clothes on. I want to wear garments that button in the front and don’t tie in the back. I want to put on those garments, stop shivering, and go home.”
“Well, we can’t keep you here against your will.”
“You are keeping me here against my will.”
He smiled.
“We hope you’ll forgive us for that, Ms. Bannister.”
“Only if you let me go right now. Otherwise, I’ll hate you forever.”
“We would regret that. But, since we can’t find anything wrong with you…”
“You’re letting me go?”
He shook his head.
Darn, she thought.
Too good to be true.
“It’s not quite that simple.”
“Somehow I knew it wouldn’t be.”<
br />
“There are a number of people who are waiting to see you outside. We’ve pretty much held them at bay. And we can do so all night. If you’d like for us to give you a sedative, something to make you sleep, then you can get a good night’s rest. You can have breakfast here tomorrow morning; we’ll arrange a place for you to meet with all these folks, and the whole thing might be easier.”
She shook her head.
“No. Let’s get this over with. Who’s out there?”
“Most of the town.”
“Well. That’s nice of them.”
“The word got out quickly.”
“It’s Bay St. Lucy.”
“Yes, it is, Ms. Bannister. And you’re––well, you’re Nina Bannister. Everyone wants to know you’re ok.”
She was suddenly aware of a tightness in her throat.
The doctor continued:
“As it is, we could get you out a back entrance. But, if you really think you’re up to it, the police seem to feel talking to you is urgent.”
“I’m up to it.”
“All right. Then why don’t you get yourself dressed—your clothes are there on the chair—and we’ll set up a room where you can talk to people.”
With that he left.
She dressed.
Then she waited.
All she could do was look at the charts and pictures on the wall.
THE HUMAN HEART AND INDICATIONS OF ARTERIAL SCLEROSIS.
TIPS FOR AVOIDING MENINGITIS
FIVE INDICATIONS OF INCIPIENT BONE DISEASE
“They need,” she found herself saying, Old Red Lighthouse #2.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in.”
The door opened and was filled with the form of Jackson Bennett, who flooded over her like an African-American tidal wave, hugged her for a few minutes, picked her up, looked carefully at her in what was not quite good enough light, broke a few of her ribs, and finally set her down, in the way that a tornado sets down a cow it has carried a few miles.
“Nina…”
She found herself crying.
Probably, she thought, because her chest had been crushed.
But for whatever reason, she just sat there blubbering.
“Nina, how are you?”
Blubber blubber.
She wanted to say fine, because she was.
But, seeing Jackson sitting there, and realizing half of the town had probably come to the hospital to pray for her…
Frame Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 5) Page 14