Game Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 3)

by T'Gracie Reese

  “You’re joking.”

  “No. It’s been proven. Not just on the MACE exam but on various others that have been given around the country.”

  “That’s astonishing. You mean, no matter what the subject matter might be?”

  “No matter. Math, English, History—always choose “C” when in doubt. Have our teachers been letting the kiddoes know that?”

  “I don’t think so. I wasn’t aware of it.”

  “Well, you’ve been ‘out of the loop,’ for a while, so to speak.”

  “I have. I truly have.”

  “Don’t worry about it; we’re going to get you current as soon as possible. Now, though, as I told you, I’m very glad you were able to free some time to come by this morning.”

  Did I have a choice? wondered Nina.

  No.

  But don’t let yourself be intimidated, Nina.

  Go on the offensive.

  “April, I got a call last evening from Alanna Delafosse.”

  April’s expression withered.

  The uncertain glory, Nina found herself thinking, of an April day.

  “Alanna had received your letter. She’s…well, she’s upset.”

  “I see.”

  The wind had changed.

  The words ‘I see’ drifted across the desk in temperatures significantly cooler than the previous half minute had seen.

  Nina bent forward, shivered slightly, and proceeded.

  “A number of artists had come to the Auberge. The program seemed a success.”

  “Nina, did you know about these visits?”

  “Not originally. I wasn’t a part of the planning process. But I did learn about them last week.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “They seemed a good idea.”

  “To send students off-campus, halfway across town—during class time?”

  “They were meeting professional artists. Painters, writers…”

  “And these people were being paid by public school funds?”

  “Yes, from what I understand.”

  “From what I understand, too. Nina, such a thing is simply intolerable.”

  “The sums were quite small.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Small, large—money is money, and the school doesn’t have an infinite amount of it.”

  “No. That’s true, of course.”

  “The point is, we have no time for artsy-fartsy.”

  “For what?”

  “For artsy-fartsy. We have serious work to do and we can’t be bussing our students halfway across the state to subject them to Greek opera.”

  Nina said nothing.

  “But I also made it clear that in the future all dispersals of funds, as well as all decisions on curricular matters and the use of time meant to be spent in classrooms, would be made by proper authorities.”

  You, thought Nina.

  “I understand,” said Nina.

  April continued:

  “I’m glad we’re clear on this, then. Now. There was another matter. The actual reason that I asked you to come. I wanted to make a––well, a ‘social suggestion,’ if I may call it that. I hope you won’t take it amiss.”

  “I’m sure I won’t.”

  “I’ve been able to make several good friends in the short time I’ve been in Bay St. Lucy.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. We’re a friendly town.”

  “Yes, you are. Do you know Bill Kreisler?”

  “I know of him. He’s involved in real estate.”

  ‘Yes, he is. He’s made a lovely home available for me. It’s over in the Berkshire section of town, on Fairway Drive.”

  “Yes, I know that area. It’s very nice.”

  “Oh, I love it. Nice sidewalks, tree-lined driveways.”

  “And a golf course.”

  “Yes. In fact, my home overlooks one of the greens. It’s very pleasant. But at any rate…”

  What’s coming here?

  Was April van Osdale inviting Nina over to play golf?

  Probably not.

  Then what?

  “Well, the long and short of it is that Bill has a couple of nice condos—also overlooking the golf course, I might add—that are currently available. The question is, would you consider moving into one of them?”

  “Would I what?”

  “Like to live in a new condo. I haven’t seen them, but they’re supposed to be fantastic.”

  “I have a place, April.”

  April sighed.

  “I know, Nina, but…”

  April sighed again.

  “It isn’t really appropriate, is it?”

  “It isn’t what?”

  “Appropriate. For the position you find yourself in at the present.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You are a principal, Nina.”

  “So?”

  “You’re living in a shack. This would be fine for a beach bum…”

  “It’s been fine for me. And for Furl.”

  ‘Oh, is Furl your cat?”

  “Yes.”

  “What an adorable name!”

  “Thank you. Furl and I like it.”

  “I’m sure you do, but, back to the main issue…your husband died some years ago, I hear.”

  “Seven years ago.”

  “I’m not sure what your financial situation is.”

  “I have a little money. Not much. The firm didn’t do too well in Frank’s last years. He was ill for a while. That cost money.”

  “Of course, it did. And now you’ve been living only on teacher retirement.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’ve not been able to afford anything much better than where you are now. That’s understandable But your salary is going to increase, Nina. And, as I told the teachers at the high school yesterday, I’m going to have some discretionary funding available to dispose of as I see fit.”

  “Bonuses.”

  “Yes, bonuses. The bottom line is, we can afford to upgrade your—well, your living standard.”

  “My living standard.”

  “I suppose that’s the best way to put it. You’re going to want to entertain, Nina. That’s what people in your position do.”

  “You mean parties and such.”

  “Of course. There are various people in town who—well, who don’t really know you very well.”

  They don’t hang out, Nina found herself thinking, with curio shop owners. Or beach bums.

  They hang out on golf courses.

  “I guess I have been rather limited in my social contacts.”

  “And that’s completely understandable! It really is!”

  It’s really understandable because I hate those people.

  “I’m very sorry, April, if my living situation embarrasses the school.”

  “Oh, that’s putting it much too strongly. You are, as I told you earlier, clearly one of the most respected people in Bay St. Lucy. But it’s for precisely that reason that, if I or Bill or any of a number of contacts that I’ve been able to make recently—well, if we can help you out a bit—we’d all be happy to do so.”

  “That’s very good to hear.”

  “So you’ll consider it?”

  “I certainly will.”

  “Good! Well, if there’s nothing more…perhaps you’ll allow me to walk you out?”

  “It’s fine, April. I can make it by myself.”

  “You’ll be going back to school now?”

  “Yes. Have to eat lunch with the kids. Fish sticks today.”

  “It’s such a shame. I’d ask you to have lunch with me at Gambrelli’s but some of the senator’s staff are flying in from Jackson…”

  “I understand.”

  “In the meantime, do you want to take these mock tests over to the school and distribute them to the various teachers?”

  “Sure.”

  “I had meant to have a courier bring them over later in the afternoon, but…”

  “…but as lo
ng as I’m here. We can’t get started too soon!”

  “That’s the spirit, Nina!”

  “Well, then. Bye bye, April.”

  So saying, she took the cumbersome manila envelopes in her arms and walked from the building.

  “A condo,” she whispered to herself as she made her way through the parking lot.

  “I could have a whole new set of friends. I wouldn’t have to live like bum anymore.”

  She opened the door of the school van and put the MOCK MACEs carefully into the back seat.

  “Furl’s life would change too. I could get him a collar. Maybe even a diamond collar. And a little red vest that he could wear while we were out walking.”

  She went round to the front of the van, pulled the sliding door open, and got in.

  “I wouldn’t be an embarrassment to the school any more. And I could entertain.”

  She started the engine and backed out of the parking lot.

  Have to be careful. Not on your Vespa any more.

  She threaded her way along Avenue E and turned onto Breakers Boulevard.

  “And, then, there are these tests. Probably should give them out this afternoon. April will be over in a day or so to be sure we’re practicing with them. She’ll probably want to actually see the students practicing with them.”

  A mile on Breakers Boulevard, then left onto Pelican Drive.

  Finally, she had arrived at the wharf area.

  First along the main quay, where nicer craft were kept.

  Then farther down, where more modest craft were kept.

  Then to the end, where Penelope Royal’s flat bottom fishing boat lay gently rocking in the waves.

  “Penn!”

  She got out of the car and waved to Penelope, who was stashing canned goods of some kind in the bow of the boat.

  “Hey, Penn!”

  Penelope saw her and waved back, then shouted a convivial and amiable curse.

  “Nina! Y---! How ---?”

  “I’m fine, Penn! I’m fine!”

  She walked around the van, slid back the door, and gathered the manila folders up in her arms.

  Then she walked to the side of the wharf, high fiving Penn, who scowled and said:

  “The other ---night, that ---Max Lirpa and that---of a---Moon Rivard, if I ever---!”

  “I know, Penn. How is Tom?”

  “He’s fine, poor guy, but those two-----almost-----and if I hadn’t-----it would have been their-----!”

  “Well, I’m glad he’s okay.”

  “-------.”

  “Look, I’ve got a favor to ask.”

  “------.”

  “Do you have a charter this afternoon?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got-----and-----.”

  “How far are you going out?”

  “Oh, at least about-----if we don’t-----.”

  “Good. Do you have a sack of some kind and a weight that you could put in it?”

  “---!”

  “Wonderful. Would you mind to take these manila envelopes, put them in the sack, put the weights in the sack, tie up the sack, and dump it in the ocean?”

  Penelope stared at her:

  “Course I -----wouldn’t-----mind.”

  Then:

  “What’s in the envelopes?”

  “A bunch of -----,” answered Nina.

  “Who gave them to you?”

  “A -----!”

  Penn, amazed, shook her head and said:

  “I’ve never heard you use that kind of language.”

  “Well,” said Nina, handing over the mock tests, “Maybe I’m -----learning.”

  “Maybe you-----are.”

  The two women high fived, and Nina walked back to the van.

  Once back at the high school, she parked the van, entered the building, and opened her cell phone.

  She dialed city hall.

  “Dr. van Osdale, please.”

  Pause.

  “This is April van Osdale.”

  “April, it’s Nina.”

  “Nina? You barely caught me; I was just going out to my luncheon.”

  “Something’s happened.”

  “Happened? What is it?”

  “We had a theft.”

  “Oh, my God. At the school?”

  “Well. In the parking lot.”

  “A car was stolen?”

  “No. But someone apparently got into my van. I have to tell you, April. I may have forgotten to lock it.”

  “So what actually was taken?”

  “The mock tests.”

  “Oh no.”

  “I’m so sorry, April. I know they were valuable.”

  “Extremely valuable. And it’s going to take some time to get replacements here.”

  “That’s the worst of it, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. We were all ready to start Mocking by—tomorrow actually. Now it’s going to take at least another week.”

  “Everyone here will be devastated.”

  “Of course the question is, Nina, where are those tests now? Where will they be by, say, this afternoon?”

  “That’s anybody’s guess, isn’t it?”

  “It certainly is; but I can promise you, by five o’clock today someone will be pouring over those mocks.”

  “Flounder,” Nina whispered, despite herself.

  “What?”

  “Found her. School cat went missing and we—we found her.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s something, I suppose.”

  “Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Once again, April, I’m so sorry for my negligence. And you have a good lunch at Gambrelli’s.”

  “I’ll try to. You enjoy your meal also.”

  “I will. Good bye.”

  She flipped shut the phone.

  “And an entire school of fish,” she said, quietly, “will soon be moving from ‘good’ to ‘exemplary.’”

  She smiled to herself, left the office, walked to the lunch room, and chowed down on fish sticks.

  CHAPTER 10: A FEW MOMENTS WITH TIMOTHIES

  “The sun, an hour above the horizon, is poised like a bloody egg upon a crest of thunderheads; the light has turned copper: in the eye portentous, in the nose sulphurous, smelling of lightning.”

  ––William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

  On Saturday morning, Aurora, Goddess of the Dawn, came sweeping across the cove and into Bay St. Lucy.

  She appeared first as a slight lightening in an octopus-ink black sky that had blanketed the town. Then she slipped an aquamarine-clad arm through the crack of the doorway that leads from earth to heaven. Then, opening the door, she stepped through it.

  The eastern sky exploded into all the colors—saffron, red, gold, purple—that were her robes, and Nina, who had been sitting on her deck watching since five AM, felt the urge to fall on her knees and worship.

  She thought of Timothies, the mortal who had loved the goddess of the dawn so deeply that he’d been granted a wish by her.

  Any wish.

  “Eternal life, so that I might rise each morning throughout eternity and sing your praises.”

  Wrong wish, of course.

  Should have included eternal youth, Timothies.

  What were you thinking?

  Things had gone all right, of course, for fifty years or so.

  Then age began to have its effect.

  And Timothies had begun to shrink, and shrivel, and harden, and blacken.

  “Let me die! Let me die!”

  But the gods cannot take back the wishes they have granted.

  And so Timothies remains until this day, haunting the basements and the curbsides and the wet cold grasslands, his tiny blackened body screeching out in piteous miniature cries:

  “Let me die! Let me die!”

  Incomprehensible to all that are not aware of his presence, of his story.

  Audible only as:

  “Creeech! Creech!”

  The chirp of the cricket.

  Which is what Timothies had become.

/>   A dangerous thing, making deals with the gods.

  But one could always watch them!

  She continued to do so, beginning to sip another cup of coffee as the sun itself, a flaming orange peel appearing as if by magic—which is, of course, what the whole spectacle was—over the perfectly flat line that was the sea.

  Then she spotted the porpoises.

  They greeted her every morning, of course, and why should this morning be unlike any other? Black, glistening, and perfectly synchronized, they came bounding into her field of vision as far to the left as she could see—then they made their way before her, continuing to leap and submerge, leap and submerge, first one and then the other, one and then the other, until they finally faded from sight and let sea air and distance extinguish them.

  Now the sun was all the way up.

  It was absolutely perfectly exquisitely circular. It was globular and fruitlike. It was—was—

  Oh, just look at the damn sun, Nina, and stop trying to be a poet.

  Or look at––look at that, look at that! Two, now three pelicans sweeping low over the surf, one dives, another dives, whap into the water then out again and look at the fish, look at the fish just squirming half in and half out of the beak and now jerk with the pelican head and SLURP down goes the fish!

  But there are more fish! Look at the fish!

  The waves are full of them!

  Whitefish, their foot-long bodies glistening in the arch of the green waves.

  Fish jumping, now twisting and turning their black glistening backs over and over, white black, white black.

  Here come the gulls!

  “Hey everybody! It’s what all of us gulls have been waiting for! A billion fish! Let’s fly low and circle and screech and caw like crows and bark like dogs and drop excrement all over the beachcombers and get ourselves some SEAFOOD!

  Which they were now doing.

  This was not a chance, Nina decided, to miss.

  She set her coffee cup aside on the small deck table.

  She looked reassuringly at Furl, who, not moving at all in his corner of the deck, saw no reason why she should do so.

  Then she made her way into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took from a carefully taped white package four shrimp that she had bought two days earlier from one of the bait shops in town. She crossed the living room, shuffled out to the stairs, and made her way down to the dew-wet concrete slab that spread out fifteen feet below the shack’s floor.