Set Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries)

by T'Gracie Reese

He rose as she ascended the stairs, looked down at her, and asked:

  “Did he hit her?”

  Nina hesitated for a second.

  John asked again:

  “Did he hit her?”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  He walked past her down the stairs, got into his vehicle, and drove away.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” she whispered.

  She found herself wondering if she had any gin.

  CHAPTER 9: THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER

  Nina spent most of the rest of the evening and all of the following day waiting to hear that John Giusti had assaulted Clifton Barrett.

  This news did not come.

  Clifton Barrett was in fact assaulted.

  Just not by John Giusti.

  The assault took place in the following manner:

  The new income pouring into the town, plus news of its soon-to-be status of The French Riviera reborn into The Southern Mississippi Cannes Summer Festival—had lured various art entrepreneurs to attempt new ventures, some of which only a few months earlier might have been deemed imprudent, unwise, or just ridiculously stupid.

  But people, Nina had surmised upon hearing of the plan, often did stupid things, and if a young man from somewhere in New Mexico wanted to open a coffee house/wine cabaret/cinema playhouse, featuring foreign films (especially French foreign films) in the upstairs portion of The Stink Shoppe (two hundred yards down the street from Margot’s own emporium)—why, that was his business.

  It might even have been a good idea.

  At any rate, people such as she and Margot were the kind of citizens who needed to patronize French films, if such films were ever to gain their rightful place in the hearts of the people of southern Mississippi; and so they planned to go together to the Wednesday evening performance of Claudel Desmoulins’ Le Renouvillier, a work which purported to be fabulous entertainment for anyone who enjoyed the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

  Nina had always enjoyed the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

  Dial M for Murder.

  North by Northwest.

  Psycho.

  (Well, Psycho was a little scary, and there was that scene in the shower, which had caused Nina to take only baths for several years…but which was now stored far enough back in her memory bank that it did not directly affect her life, except for the troublesome fact that she almost had a heart attack every time Furl nosed open the bathroom door and came in to use the litter box while she was taking a shower, making her expect a tall shadow to appear outside of the shower curtain, and an otherwise prim churchgoing woman to start hacking at her with a butcher knife and screaming: “EEEEEEEEEEEE! EEEEEEEEE! EEEEEEEEEE!”

  So 7:30 on the evening in question found the two of them at their tables. There were no rows and no theater chairs, just small circular tables that might have come from the Rue Montparnasse and upon which had been placed the small glasses of Chardonnay they had ordered.

  They had not talked a great deal during the course of an afternoon spent selling some of the newer purchased items that now graced the walls and nooks and crevices and porticos and junctures and door jambs of Elementals: Treasures from the Sea and Earth.

  There were, when one thought about it, only two things to talk about.

  They learned about the less important thing at 3:30 in the afternoon when Officer Moon Rivard (head of Bay St. Lucy’s police department) parked his squad car in the parking lot, waddled up the driveway (Moon was not an obese man, although he had a kind of barrel chest; it was just that his short and powerful legs resembled parentheses rather than human limbs, and turned what would have been ‘walk’ for most people into ‘waddle’ for him)—and approached the shop.

  He smiled broadly upon entering. He bent as he passed through the doorway––a fact which always surprised Nina, since the top of his head was two feet shorter than the door itself)––and he made his announcement somewhat like a father who’d just learned of the birth of his healthy child.

  “Did you ladies hear?”

  Oh God, thought Nina.

  She hated it when people said that.

  One of the possible answers was always: ‘Hear what?’

  But that sounded so dumb.

  And, whatever it turned out to be, whatever it was, she had not in fact heard of it.

  So why bother with that answer?

  The better answer was the one she gave Moon Rivard now.

  “No.”

  His smile became broader, and the wild, iron gray- eyebrows which sat atop his gleaming blue eyes like barbed wire protecting beach fortifications, seemed to glow somehow, as though the excitement inherent in BRINGING NEWS had electrified it.

  Anyone who touched it during this one instant would have been shocked.

  “Hurricane!”

  Well, Nina found herself thinking, that’s just the hell what we need.

  A hurricane.

  Helen Reddington’s husband beats her.

  John Giusti is probably going to kill him for it.

  It’s her fault, for having told John Giusti about it.

  And we’re having a hurricane.

  That’s just the hell what we need.

  Margot took a step forward and placed the object she was holding—a thing that was golden and black, but had no function that Nina could recognize—on a thing that Nina could not recognize either, and said:

  “This is the first we’ve heard.”

  Moon nodded.

  “Just got word from the Weather Service. Named Deborah. Hurricane Deborah.”

  “It’s coming here?”

  “Naw.”

  He shook his head and stared at the things around him, much like a diver might look at the long sunken artifacts of a lost civilization.

  “Naw, they think it will hit over by the Florida panhandle. They’re warning Pensacola.”

  “I see. When?”

  “Couple of days, the way it’s looking now. I thought I might drive around town and let people know though: if it follows the path it seems to be on now, and grows a little—they think it will—we might get some heavy rain on Friday and Saturday.”

  “Flooding?”

  “Don’t know. All the shops that have basements, though—well, be good not to have something too valuable down there. If it’s two, three inches of rain, there’ll be lots of runoff. You might want to warn your boarders. Shouldn’t panic or have to leave town. Nobody’s evacuating or nothing. But it won’t be very good down on the beach, and the fishing boats will be moored up tight. Those are two days when folks might want to rent a movie, maybe just stay in their rooms.”

  And so there was that bit of news.

  It produced little conversation between Margot and Nina, neither of whom knew anything to say about hurricanes and both of whom avoided mentioning the weather except to say “A tornado is coming!”—which it clearly was not.

  As for the other bit of news—

  ––it was, of course, the fact that Clifton Barrett had struck his wife.

  Nobody knew how this information had leaked out.

  Nina had thought it might remain a “Production Company Secret” until John Giusti had questioned her about it the previous day.

  But of course that would have been too much to expect.

  Somebody had talked.

  Or maybe not.

  Maybe ‘news’ was like late-spring pollen, which, try as you might, could not be kept out of people’s hair and off their breakfast tables.

  But the strange thing about this ‘news’ was that it had not been allowed to turn into gossip.

  There were, even in towns as inquisitive as Bay St Lucy, untouchable subjects.

  No one, incredibly, talked about it.

  It was as though the minister’s zipper were down.

  It must be noticed; could not be missed; was horrible to contemplate; and foretold dire consequences.

  But there was simply no appropriate time in which to talk about it, and no words with which it could adequately be ex
pressed.

  No one was going to stand up during the scripture reading from Second Timothy and shout: “Zip up!”

  Anyone who had, during the first minutes of The Fellowship Hour, started a conversation with the words, “Did you notice that Brother Daniels had forgotten to…”

  …would have been stared down, and would have been forced to return home for the afternoon carrying an unopened bowl of green beans and French onion sauce.

  And so, time had hung on their hands.

  And so they found themselves here, waiting for Alfred Hitchcock to begin speaking French.

  The film began.

  A few characters, two at first, then two more, entered an apartment.

  They sat down on a couch where they began smoking cigarettes and talking.

  They continued to talk for twenty minutes.

  After thirty minutes Nina went to sleep.

  She awoke to find Margot punching her in the knee.

  “Wake up.”

  “What?”

  “Wake up.”

  “Where am I?”

  “The Cinema Verite.”

  “The what?”

  “The Cinema Verite.”

  “There is no such thing.”

  “Of course there is; we’re in it.”

  “Doing what?”

  “We just watched a movie, Nina!”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, it’s over now and we have to go.”

  “What was it about?”

  Margot was tugging and pulling and hauling at her now, and so she rose.

  “What was it about?”

  “I don’t know, Nina.”

  “Why don’t you know?”

  “I was asleep.”

  “You too?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you were just concentrating.”

  “I was concentrating for a while, then I went to sleep.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I thought you were concentrating.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Ten-thirty.”

  “Ten thirty? We slept for two hours?”

  “Well. We had a hard day.”

  They were descending the stairway now leading down into the ‘foyer,’ which was really The Stink Shop, which sold bizarre dresses the size of handkerchiefs, and which was now closed.

  They made their way outside, moving slowly in a line of movie-watchers who were all rubbing their eyes and looking at their watches.

  “That was the worst thing,” said Nina, “I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  “You didn’t see it; you slept through it.”

  “Yes, but I could hear it in my sleep. They just kept talking and talking and talking…”

  “Don’t think about it.”

  “Why did you make me do that?”

  “Me? You’re the one who suggested it!”

  “Did not!”

  “Did so!”

  “What,” asked Nina, feeling somewhat faint and wishing that the hurricane had struck some two hours ago and abolished the building, “can we do now?”

  Margot’s response was immediate.

  “Let’s go get drunk.”

  “Where?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  And so they went to get drunk.

  (This meant, invariably, that they would allow themselves two drinks apiece, and that Nina’s would consist mostly of papayas or strawberries or crème de menthe or apple strudel or whatever needed to be added to mask the unpleasant taste of alcohol, while Margot, sipping a martini or a Scotch on the rocks, would make fun of her.)

  But the phrase, ‘Let’s go get drunk!’ was such an enjoyable thing to say that it invariably made her wish she’d been a ‘bad’ girl in high school, and had done more than spend innumerable nights studying, so that she could now be a retired English teacher.

  They decided to drive out to McGee’s Landing, which was an improbable place on the ‘Bay’ side of the community. It lay on the far side of a great earthen levee which kept the Bayou Fourche out of the town, and it tripled as a slightly disreputable bar nights, an unhealthy restaurant afternoons, and the Center for Swamp Tours! mornings.

  It had very little fame except for its drink menus.

  It offered a remarkable variety of alcoholic beverages, a fact which delighted the fruit loving Nina and appalled Margot.

  It was dimly lit now as they entered it, walking beneath a huge stuffed alligator which had been clamped by massive concrete rods to the wall above the door.

  They were taken to a table by a window that overlooked the bay.

  The water was placid in the moonlight, and lamps glowed on various platforms or fishing huts that dotted the murky, moss laden, swamp surrounding them.

  Menus soon sat before them.

  “What are you going to drink?” asked Margot.

  “Let’s see what they’ve got.”

  Margot ordered a gin, which came immediately, along with a small glass of tonic water.

  She splashed a drop or so of the tonic water into the gin and then asked Nina:

  “So what are you ordering?”

  “I’m investigating the menu.”

  “I hate it when you do this.”

  “Oh, be quiet.”

  “You’re the worst person to drink with I’ve ever known.”

  “Look. I can get a Bacon Old Fashioned, with either Gran Classico or Curacao as an inversion.”

  “Nina, do you even know what an inversion is?”

  “Of course I do; it’s when you put one of the things over the other. Or I might want a Green Chartreuse. That’s served with either Strega or Branca Menta. And look, they have Dolin Blanc Vermouth.”

  “You may need to sit at a different table.”

  “There’s also…”

  She was interrupted by Margot, who was gazing across the room, at a corner booth.

  “Will you look at that.”

  “What?”

  “There. Over there.”

  She forced herself to look up from the menu which, had she been forced to admit it, had in fact begun to sound like dialogue from the film she’d just slept though.

  “What?”

  “Look who’s here.”

  Then she recognized the couple.

  The man was Clifton Barrett.

  The woman––blonde-haired and radiant and gorgeously attired, with diamonds or something else sparkly hanging around her neck and over her bosom—was Constance Briarworth.

  “His first Queen Gertrude,” whispered Nina, in a kind of awe.

  She’d seen the woman at the party in the Reddington’s garden.

  But that was from a distance.

  The effect was much more intense now.

  “How nice,” said Margot, “and they seem to be having such a good time.”

  They were in fact, Nina realized, sitting on the same side of the booth.

  And laughing.

  And laughing louder.

  She at whatever he was saying.

  He at whatever she was saying.

  And then they were holding hands.

  Then he had cupped his hands behind her neck.

  And pulled her head gently toward his.

  And kissed her, lightly on the lips,

  After which they began laughing again.

  “This is an excellent chance,” Margot said, “to get an autograph.”

  Nina stared at her.

  “What?”

  “Oh, I’m an inveterate autograph hunter.”

  “Margot, don’t…”

  “Do you have a pen?”

  “No. NO! Margot…”

  “Come on! I’ll get one for you, too!”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Come on; bring your drink! I’m sure they’re going to want us to join them. Oh, that’s right; you don’t have a drink yet, do you? Well, no matter, I’ll take mine over.”

  “Margot, sit down!”

  For M
argot was in fact standing up, her gin and tonic in one hand, a menu in the other.

  Worse—much worse—Nina was, inexplicably, standing up too, and now following Margot across the room.

  She found herself asking mentally how large the restaurant’s floor was, and how long it would take them, given the length of Margot’s storklike strides, to reach Clifton Barrett’s booth.

  Not long at all in fact.

  As it turned out, they were there now.

  With Margot beaming down and saying:

  “What an honor! Mr. Barrett?”

  Who looked up, half smiled, and said:

  “I’m sorry. I don’t believe I’ve…”

  “I’m Margot Gavin. Big fan of yours.”

  “Well, that’s fine. It’s just that…”

  “I wondered if I might have an autograph!”

  “I…well, certainly, if you have a …”

  “Where’s your wife?”

  Silence.

  Everyone in the restaurant was looking at them now.

  The smile disappeared from Clifton Barrett’s face.

  “I think it probably inappropriate to…”

  Then Margot threw the drink in his face.

  Swoosh.

  A small sound. A smattering of ice and liquid.

  Which now was oozing from his glasses.

  There was a gasp from the people who’d been customers of the restaurant, and now were spectators at the drama.

  He breathed very deeply, took off his glasses, and began to dry them with the napkin that had sat in front of him.

  Quietly, he said:

  “It would be best now if you would…”

  Then Margot slapped him three times. WHAP WHAP WHAP, forehanded backhanded and forehanded…

  …after which she leaned to within a few inches of his face and hissed:

  “You like to hit women? Hit me.”

  Silence.

  Clifton Barrett’s mouth opened and the tip of his tongue, like a lizard peering out from a cave, showed itself and disappeared.

  The restaurant breathed one time—as though it had been transformed into a single creature—then relapsed into silence.

  “Hit me.”

  More silence.

  “Stand up. Stand up and hit me. I’m a woman. You like to hit women, I hear. Okay. Stand up, and hit me. Please. I like to be hit. Show me how much you like to hit women. Right here.”

  She pointed to her right cheekbone.

  “Right here. You like to hit women. Stand up. Hit me right here.”