She was in a bad mood when she returned to her office.
Stuck in the mail slot was yet another standardized test.
“Who left this damned thing here?” she shouted at no one.
No one answered.
She opened the office door, fuming, and took inside the manila envelope containing what she assumed was yet another mock test, this one also having come from the inscrutable April van Osdale.
She sat down, ripped it open, and read:
OFFICIAL EXAMINATION DOCUMENT
NOT TO BE OPENED UNTIL DATE OF ADMINISTRATION
ANSWER SHEET IS TO BE COMPLETED WITH NUMBER 2 PENCIL ONLY
TIME LIMIT: FIFTY FIVE MINUTES
MARK CLEARLY ONE AND ONE ANSWER ONLY
“Okay, okay,” she said to herself.
Then she read further:
PART ONE
ANSWER THE QUESTIONS IN PART ONE TO THE BEST OF YOUR ABILITY. YOU ARE TO READ THE QUESTION CAREFULLY, FORMULATE YOUR ANSWER, AND THEN MOVE ON. YOU ARE URGED NOT TO TAKE AN EXCESSIVE AMOUNT OF TIME ON ANY ONE QUESTION. PLEASE NOTE THAT EACH SECTION OF THE EXAMINATION IS STRICTLY TIMED.
DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE BEGIN THE EXAMINATION BEFORE THE OFFICIAL MONITORING AGENT SIGNALS YOU TO DO SO.
WHEN GIVEN THE APPROPRIATE ‘START’ COMMAND, YOU MAY BEGIN.
GOOD LUCK!
Then the questions:
Dr. April van Osdale is:
a) Dead
b) Alive
c) Missing
Nina stared at the document in her hands:
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
There was a knock on her door.
“What?” she said, automatically.
The door opened; a student assistant stuck her head in:
“Ma’am?”
“Yes?” her voice still on automatic pilot.
“Are you busy?”
She looked up and said:
“What?”
“Are you busy right now?”
Then she looked down at the examination, which lay upon her lap like a flat, white, cobra.
“I think,” she whispered, “that I’m going to be busy for some time.”
“All right. I’ll see that you’re not disturbed.”
The whisper continued, almost automatically.
“Thank you.”
The door closed.
The examination refused to go away and continued to hiss, silently.
She read the first question again:
1. Dr. April van Osdale is:
a) Dead
b) Alive
c) Missing
She found herself continuing to whisper, and she wondered who might be listening.
“Statistics show that if you don’t know,” the whispering said, “you should choose ‘c’.”
The questions continued:
2. If you show anyone your work, or share the questions with your neighbor, you will be:
a) Not practicing good citizenship
b) Failing to comply with the stated rules and regulations pertaining to The Mississippi Academic Skills Examination, Regulation 4298-Part B.
c) All of the above
…and the last question:
3. Your next step should be:
a) Act rashly and impulsively
b) Panic
c) Act prudently, go home, and wait to hear from a friend.
…then:
THANK YOU FOR COMPLETING THIS PORTION OF THE MISSISSIPPI ACADEMIC SKILLS EXAMINATION.
PLEASE PASS FORWARD YOUR NUMBER TWO WEIGHT PENCILS, OR GIVE THEM TO THE PERSON MONITORING THE EXAMINATION.
YOU WILL RECEIVE THE RESULTS OF YOUR EXAMINATION IN SIX WEEKS OR LESS.
IF YOU FEEL YOU HAVE BEEN DISCRIMINATED AGAINST IN TAKING THE EXAMINATION, YOU MAY REQUEST, IN WRITING, THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE TESTED AGAIN.
THANK YOU AGAIN FOR YOUR COMPLIANCE.
And that was that.
Nina thought for a time.
Then she carefully put the test back into its folder.
Then she went home, without speaking to anyone.
The next ten hours were pure hell.
She could do nothing but sit in her bedroom and look out of the window.
Her cell phone remained in her hand. She should call Moon Rivard; should call the state police; should call somebody!
But whoever had put this thing in her mailbox would know it.
And what could Moon Rivard do?
Begin a search for April van Osdale?
Who had probably been abducted?
It was too chancy, was it not?
And when had April been abducted? The only answer was, Friday night, just before Nina had arrived at Fairway Drive.
She had been told to go to her shack and wait: a friend was to arrive.
What friend?
She waited. And waited. And waited.
At 7:00 PM, just after sundown, Penelope Royal drove up in her jeep.
She went downstairs just as Penelope was getting out.
“Nina?”
“Penn, what’s up?”
“I got this letter. Got it about an hour ago; don’t even know where it came from.”
“Yeah, that’s the way things seem to be happening. Let me see.”
She read:
“Dear Ms. Royale. Please take Ms. Nina Bannister to the following GPS coordinates as soon as possible this evening. You will find a five hundred dollar bill enclosed as partial payment for your services. As soon as you and Ms. Bannister have returned to Bay St. Lucy, another thousand dollars will be forthcoming.”
Penelope looked at Nina.
“Do you know what this is about?”
“No, Penn, I don’t. Not exactly. I know some things. But I can’t talk about them.”
“Do you want to go?”
“Where are these coordinates?”
“Petit Bois Island. Maybe ten miles from here. Have to go by boat. It’s wild grass and marshland, with a few trees and fishing sheds.”
“I think I have to go.”
“All right; I can use the money.”
“Penn—this may be dangerous.”
Penn approached Nina, laid a palm gently on her shoulder, and said:
“I’ll promise you something, Nina. And I mean this. I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“What?”
“I won’t hurt anybody.”
Nina thought for a time, then said:
“Well. If you’re sure.”
And the two women drove off.
CHAPTER 20: PETITE BOIS ISLAND
“And I will look down and see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of wind, and after a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the lonely and inviolate sand.”
––William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
At eight thirty PM, Nina and Penelope approached Petit Bois Island, a part of the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve.
The moon was in the absolute middle of the sky above them; shallow grass water shimmered beneath it, as though the air were filled with phosphorescent particles.
“Is there anything out here, Penn?”
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.”
Penn, wearing a bulky fatigue jacket and combat boots, turned the keel slightly; she increased power on the small outboard motor, which chugged and purred enough to disturb the water slightly, their wake flat after ten feet. Her nervousness could be measured by the fact that she’d refrained from cursing.
This almost never happened.
“Come here.”
“Ok.”
Nina stood carefully and made her way from the metal seat she had taken…as much for ballast as any other reason…back to where a black box in the stern was glowing green, flashing, going dark, then blinking again.
“Look at the radar screen.”
“It’s just a bunch of green splotches.”
“That’s land, islets and such. The dark is the water.”
“Where are
we?”
“Here. We’re always in the center of the screen. Z653x…those are our GPS coordinates.”
“What about the others?”
“X869r. That’s where we’re going.”
“How far?”
“Half a mile more. There’s a narrow little river, not much more than a stream, that runs into the island.”
Soon they had gone from open water to what seemed little more than swamp, the boat slowing as they made their way under moss that hung down like spider webs, and Penelope navigating carefully through the white jutting knees that seemed to grow up through the water like stalactites. Overhead an occasional owl thrashed about in the tangled branches, and standing, sometimes no more than a few feet from them, herons and egrets, absolutely motionless, gazed into the water, hunting, waiting.
The island sang to them as they drifted. The marshes to her left were covered with blue radiance.
Penn said quietly:
“Gas. Nitrogen. Bubbles up through the reeds. They call it swamp fire.”
She watched its filmy curtain rise, quiver, and evaporate.
Finally Penn whispered:
“We’re there.”
Nina looked around. They were in a lagoon, the swamp encircling them, shadowy and impenetrable. Here and there she saw logs, glistening in what was still a daylight bright night.
Double humps with yellow spots for eyes ringed the boat, half submerged in marsh water and cattails, croaking gutturally in a kind of unearthly syncopation.
“Frogs out here,” Penn whispered, “size of a basketball.”
Beyond the boat’s prow Nina saw, for the first time, a kind of man made structure.
It stood stork-like on spindly poles that seemed much too emaciated to hold anything larger that one of the monster frogs that kept croaking in anti-harmony, or one of the turtles that she could see floating like black and patterned dinner plates beside the boat.
“What is that thing?” she whispered, her voice sounding unnaturally loud.
“A kind of shelter.”
“Does anybody live there?”
“No. You see them sometimes on these deserted islands. They’re just fishing shacks.”
She focused more clearly on the structure now, on the clapboard room and its rusted metal roof. Nothing about it was straight, the boards themselves running at odd angles as though they’d been fixed to its precarious frame by nails in a hurricane
Penn killed the engine of the boat, which began to drift through eddying moss across the lagoon. She took Nina’s hand and whispered:
“When we get there, I’ll go up and see what’s in that shack. You wait here; stay by the motor.”
Penn stood, gazed up at the shack hovering ten feet over them, then sighed heavily:
“Okay, here goes,” she said, and started up the stairs.
They creaked and wavered with each of her steps.
Within a minute, she’d topped the stairway and pushed open what passed for a door. It’s screeching seemed to quieten for a second the marsh birds, crickets, frogs, cicadas, and, as far as she knew, bears that bellowed from the vines encircling them…but the sound disappeared with Penn, and, after only an instant, the swamp was the same singing chorus and the shelter stood dark.
In a second she reappeared and beckoned.
“Come on.”
“What did you find?”
“Not much. The stairs are ok, I think. So is the floor.”
Nina made her way out of the boat and onto a half rotted step. She touched lightly on it then moved on, gripping the banister to steady herself as she climbed.
“Come on in. Not much here.”
She entered the shack.
The room she found herself in was perhaps ten to twelve feet square, and empty except for one or two beer cans that lay against the baseboards. Dust was everywhere, floating in the air, covering the table on which Penelope had left her flashlight, thick on the soft boards beneath their feet, and weighing down even the spider webs that hung ponderously like gigantic fans from cracked boards on the ceiling.
Nina began to make her way around the room, wondering what had been planned, what was to happen here.
Then she glanced down at the seat of the chair.
There was a piece of paper.
“Is that trash?” asked Penn.
“Maybe. It’s been here a while. There’s dust on it.”
“Open it.”
“All right.”
Nina did so.
It had once been typing paper but had now begun to darken and crack.
The words, typed on what seemed to be word processor, were still clear, though:
APRIL IS THE CRUELEST MONTH.
“What does that mean?” asked Penn.
“It’s Elliot.”
“Elliot who?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
They walked around the room. Several of the window panes were broken. The jagged glass remaining was so deeply filmed by dust as to be impossible to see through.
“Nina, come here.”
“What?”
“Come here to the porch. Look down there, in the water. And tied here on the porch rail.”
Nina crossed the room, stepped out onto the porch, and looked own.
She saw a thick rope, securely tied, taut.
“There’s something down there.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. But I will.”
Penn grasped the rope and began to pull, hand over hand.
Finally she said:
“Bring the light here.”
She retrieved the flashlight, returned, and centered the beam on the spot where the rope entered a tangle of black moss.
Penelope continued to pull, hand over hand, hand over hand…
“There. Look…”
“What is that thing?”
“Wire. It’s some kind of a cage. Here…let me wipe that moss off…”
The cage continued to rise from the water. Nina could see within it now: there were saturated rags that had once been clothes. There was also what seemed at first to be tangle of colorless hair.
“What are those things, Nina?”
“Those were,” Nina answered, “April’s clothes.”
“And that other thing? It looks like the hide of a cat that’s been skinned.”
“It’s a wig. A blond wig.”
“Look. There’s a little locket of some kind.”
“Yes.”
It was a locket. Circular and silver.
It opened easily, revealing a note, which said:
“This is the last of April van Osdale. RIP.”
The two women looked at each other.
After some minutes, they descended the stairs, made their way back onto the boat, and went back to Bay St. Lucy.
CHAPTER 21: THE WOMAN WHO WASN’T THERE
“...the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.”
––William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
There was no thought, of course, of further confidentiality.
Something had happened to April van Osdale, and the authorities had to be informed.
Nina chastised herself mercilessly during the boat ride back to Bay St. Lucy harbor, saying every five minutes or so to Penelope Royale:
“I should have gone to Moon the minute I got that stupid “standardized test.”
“But, Nina, if I understood you right, whoever wrote the test told you not to.”
“Yes, but whoever wrote the test must have done something to April.”
“That’s just the point, Nina. If you had told somebody, maybe April van Osdale would be dead by now.”
“She might be anyway, for all we know.”
“Maybe. But all we found were two dresses and a wig.”
“That’s not all we found.”
“We found a note saying ‘RIP.’”
“Oh. Well, there’s that.”
By nine o’clock, Nina was sitting
in the office of Moon Rivard, who was studying the ‘examination’ she had received, the letter to Penelope, and the soaked garments and wig.
“Now what time did this, this ‘test’ come to you, Nina?”
“I got it about ten this morning.”
“How did you get it?”
“It was in the mailbox on the door of my office at school.”
“And you have no idea who put it there?”
“No. There’s so much hustle and bustle around a school principal’s office. I was in and out. Teachers come and go, and so do parents and students. We try to make sure that no complete strangers come in, but sometimes…”
“I understand. And you chose not to bring this thing to me immediately?”
“I know. It was stupid. I just thought, whoever left the thing seems to know everything I do, anyway. If I tell someone…”
“Yeah, well, that’s the way kidnappers usually work.”
“You think April has been kidnapped?”
“I don’t know what to think right now. You say you were invited over to her house for dinner on Friday night?”
“Yes.”
“She wasn’t there, and the door was open?”
“Just slightly ajar, yes.”
“You went inside?”
“I did, Moon, but nothing seemed wrong. No sign of a struggle or anything. April is––well, she’s got important friends, and she doesn’t care a whole lot about somebody like me. I just assumed she’d forgotten the dinner invitation, gone out with friends, and failed to close the door properly.”
“And you didn’t try to get in touch with her.”
“I did on Monday. Twice. I called her office here in town, her office in Hattiesburg, and her office in Jackson. No one had seen her.”
“That seems strange.”
Nina shook her head:
“Not really, considering that it’s April. She has friends in very high places. She’s on committees we don’t even know about. Most of the time her offices have no idea where she is.”
“I see. Well, the bad thing about this, is that she got all those angry letters.”
Game Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 3) Page 21