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

by T'Gracie Reese

  The table breathed heavily and reeked of malice.

  There was no other movement in the room and no other smell.

  “How did you do this, Hope?”

  “Hope, I have to tell you…”

  “It’s all right, Jackson.”

  “Grandmamma, if you’ll just wait for…”

  “It’s all right, Helen.”

  “Hope, shut up,” said Nina.

  Hope looked at her, smiling, and said:

  “No, dear.”

  Well, Nina thought, so much for trying.

  The table continued to look up at them and laugh, soundlessly.

  “How did you murder him?”

  “I gave him an overdose of the pain killer Percodan.”

  “How did you do this?”

  “I came up to his and Helen’s room just before they were to go to bed. I pretended to say good night to them, wish them well, etc. But before I entered the room I waited until I heard Helen go into the bathroom. I went in. Clifton greeted me. I said I’d simply come to congratulate the two of them one last time before turning in. He smiled. This pleased him. Helen was in the bathroom, and she laughed. But then I told Clifton I thought I heard some drunken people down on the pier, or out in the garden. I asked him if he’d go look out the window, and try to see if anyone were there. He did so.

  But while he was looking, I simply walked to the bed, where a glass was sitting with his medication on it. He always was in the habit of taking, as I’d learned in the previous days while he was a guest in my house, a small dose of Percodan for back pain and Pitocin to help him sleep. I had in the pocket of my robe a small vial of concentrated Percodan and I was able to pour that into the glass. The glass was half full, and I hoped he would not notice. He apparently did not.”

  “Concentrated Percodan…”

  “I am, Ms. Towler, a pharmacist’s wife. It’s very much stronger that what I’m sure he was using. The overall effect was that he would have been drinking six times his normal dosage. With Pitocin, and after several strong drinks of Scotch…I am, I repeat, a pharmacist’s wife. I know my husband’s business.”

  “Helen…”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you remember this happening?”

  Helen looked at Jackson, who shook his head, saying:

  “I can’t advise my client to say more at this time. Either of my clients.”

  But at that moment, Hope leaned forward, dared to put her forearms on the table, and seemed to press it six inches into the carpet, which sighed upon receiving the weight.

  At that time, then, Hope Reddington was the strongest presence in the room.

  “Tell the truth, dear.”

  It may have been the only time those words had been both said and meant in any government office.

  “No,” Helen replied, looking down. “No. This did not happen. Nothing at all like it ever happened. Grandmamma, why are you lying like this?”

  “I’m not lying, Helen. You know I’m not lying.”

  “Helen…”

  This from Edie Towler.

  “Helen what is your version of what happened?’

  “Grandmamma was never in the room. Clifton prepared his medication, then he drank it. Immediately afterwards he complained of feeling dizzy, then, within a few seconds, he was asleep.”

  “All right. Well. We have to decide what to do. Hope…”

  “Yes, Ms. Towler?”

  “Why did you do this?”

  “Because the man deserved it.”

  “Why did he deserve it?”

  “He was about to ruin the life of my granddaughter.”

  “You do realize that this is not a justification for murder?”

  “I realize nothing of the kind. It’s every justification for murder. Do I not have a right to protect my family? If the man had entered with a gun, and I had possessed another gun…would I not have had the right to shoot him?”

  “But he didn’t have a gun.”

  “No, he had a lawyer.”

  She looked at Jackson.

  “I’m sorry, Jackson. No harm intended. Nor to the memory of your husband, Nina.”

  “It’s all right,” Nina found herself answering.

  Jackson, for all the horror of the situation, seemed to be attempting not too successfully to suppress a smile.

  Edie continued:

  “Hope, you’re well past eighty. Is it possible, just possible, that what you are telling us…well, you could have imagined it?”

  “You mean, am I insane? Do I suffer from dementia? Early Alzheimer’s?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Hope smiled, then looked at Nina and said:

  “I am but mad north north west; when the wind is from the south, I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

  She then said:

  “You are not the only one, dear Nina, who knows her Shakespeare.”

  Nina also found herself beginning to smile.

  The smile was beginning to grow as she answered:

  “No. No, I guess I’m not.”

  “And yes, I knew it was Polonius, all along. As I’ve known these long sixty five years since––as a school girl––I first read the play. I had a good teacher too, though not as good as you. “To thine own self be true,” she taught us—or rather Shakespeare through her taught us—and “it shall follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.’ Can you, Nina?”

  “No, Hope.”

  My God, Nina realized.

  I’m crying.

  “No, you can’t, Hope. No, you can’t.”

  The meeting broke up.

  Then Nina broke up, sitting there for a time, hands pressed against her face, sobbing.

  By noon, downtown Bay St. Lucy had begun to empty. In the winter it would have been completely deserted, because downtown businesses—government offices, insurance offices, and law firms—were frequented by true beach dwellers only in three distinct time periods: 1) mornings (grudgingly), 2) afternoons (belligerently and with great resentment), 3) during lunch hour (in a state of unconsciousness, with death near). Still, during the warm summer days tourists wandered the streets unaware that boredom and bureaucracy existed in this paradise just as it did in their own home towns of Omaha and Little Rock, and always hoping to find something new, something to take another picture of. Accordingly, hastily-built ramshackle ice cream parlors and soda shops did a land office business at such unheard of times as 12:15 and 12:45, and curiosity shops—especially those catering to ten year olds and under—continued to sell plastic models of fish and sea turtles at a time when most seamen, painters, or pot-throwers would have been beginning a three hour nap.

  Nina could not come downtown without feeling some nostalgia, nor could she look up and see the light burning in what had been Frank’s old law office without imagining that he himself was up there, “burning the midnight oil through lunch time,” as he had put it so many times.

  As she stood before the front door, her Vespa chained and locked in precisely the same way she’d always done it, and secured to the same metal bicycle rack, she half expected to see him appear at the window, his face breaking into a smile as he gestured enthusiastically, mouthing the words: ‘Come on up, the door’s open!’

  No face at the window now.

  Jackson was, she knew, sitting in the office, burning Frank’s midnight oil at lunch time, toiling away not at this divorce agreement or that land settlement, but at the shocking case he’d just been handed.

  He was expecting her of course, for she was here at his request; but still he might not hear her knock, or ring if the door were locked.

  She pushed it.

  It was not locked.

  She made her way up the narrow and still ill-lighted stairs, wondering why neither Frank nor Jackson had ever heeded their wives’ advice to cover the slate gray walls with pictures, testimonials, shots of the two of them embracing governors or senators or presidents or babies or big, happy dogs.

>   It was simply not in the character of either man to do so, though, and so the narrow staircase remained bare as it always had, creaking underfoot, and leading to a nondescript door which pronounced merely “Law Offices” and let it go at that.

  She stepped forward and knocked on the door.

  She could hear someone rustling about inside.

  There was the sound of soft music, soothing music.

  It disappeared, replaced by the creak of Jackson’s chair and the heavy sound of his footsteps coming across the office.

  The door opened and revealed his bulk, somewhat gone to seed now but still so imposing as to be almost frightening, had its effect not been dampened by the ever-present smile, which illuminated the upper part of the staircase, the few light fixtures having been attached for that purpose clearly not being sufficient.

  “Nina. Come on in.”

  She did so, following him through the reception area, and into his office.

  It glowed green, golden, mahogany and leather, just as it had in Frank’s day, just as any good law office, she had always told herself, should glow.

  “Sit down.”

  She did so.

  They sat for a time, before he finally shook his head and said, more to his desk than to her:

  “What a mess.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks for coming up.”

  “No problem.”

  “The Reddingtons, Helen especially but Hope, too, insist on you being kept in the loop. You’re kind of like family.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  “So I’ll tell you where we are, at least as far as I know it now.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ve been on the phone since I got back to the office about 10:30. I’m trying to learn what I can about this.”

  “So what have you learned?”

  “To begin with, the Reddingtons are at home. There were still some people from the crime lab going over…well, the room, and the bathroom, all of that.”

  “Of course.”

  “But there’s no place else for them to go. They can’t go back out to Giusti’s.”

  “No.”

  “And, Nina, Hope is eighty years old. They’re not just going to throw her into a holding tank like they might a drunk college student.”

  “So what happens now? Is Helen still denying everything her grandmother said?”

  “Every word of it. But of course Helen might be lying to protect her grandmother.”

  “So what do we do?”

  He shrugged.

  “Hope has to be arraigned. She has to give a formal statement.”

  “What can happen to her?”

  “She committed murder, or at least she says she did. Not only that, but she committed first degree murder. She planned it out to the last detail.”

  “So what can happen to her?”

  “I…I just don’t know. We have a couple of choices.”

  “What are they?”

  “Well, we can plead insanity and cite mental instability. But Hope insists on quoting Shakespeare fifteen verses at a time, and sounding like the most rational woman I’ve ever heard in my life.”

  “Which she may well be. So what’s the second choice?”

  “We make public all the financial records—and other things—that Tomlinson had been forced to hand over to me, and which I had consigned to the strongest safe in the city.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes. We have to show now that this man was about to ruin the Reddingtons. Every slimy little detail about money. And every slimy little detail about the affairs Helen may or may not have had. That all goes to motive. Every mother—and grandmother—in the courtroom, will be on Hope’s side. We won’t actually be saying she’s insane. But we will be trying to lay the basis of a justifiable homicide defense. She felt, literally, as though her granddaughter’s life was on the line.”

  “Can you make a jury buy that?”

  “I can do my best. I read the stuff Tomlinson gave me. The man was a crook and a child molester. Mississippi jurors don’t like those things.”

  “No.”

  “But the downside…the huge downside…is that it has to start now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We have to arraign Hope Reddington, charge her, and begin her defense now, right now.”

  “Why?”

  He leaned forward:

  “Nina, the same scandal reporters we’ve been so worried about have got to be seen now as our biggest allies. I’m not sure we can blow up the sex scandal stories, but the money stuff is right there.”

  “You’d leak it.”

  “In a New York minute. Excuse the reference. Every group in the country that cares about the welfare of women—and every other group that has a dime’s worth of self-respect—is going to be camped out here, advocating the cause of Helen and Hope.”

  “But?...”

  “Helen’s private life is over. And John’s. She’s a tabloid queen. It’s the one thing Helen didn’t want.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “I can’t either. We do have one thing in our favor, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Hope’s story is so detailed, I’m inclined to believe her.”

  “And that’s good?”

  “What’s good is knowing the truth. If she did it, she did it. Now we can set about preparing a defense. We just don’t need any more surprises.”

  The phone rang.

  “Hold on a second, let me get that.”

  “Sure.”

  He lifted the receiver and growled into it.

  “Yeah.”

  Silence. A crackle of static from the other end.

  Another growl.

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  He hung up, then rose, ponderously, gesturing to Nina that she should do the same.

  “Come on.”

  “Where?”

  “The Reddingtons. Helen Reddington just confessed to murdering her husband.”

  CHAPTER 18: FAMILY SQUABBLES

  By two o’clock in the afternoon, a film of heat shimmered over Bay St. Lucy. The town appeared behind a scrim, as though all buildings and trees in it were the face of a fading movie actress a year or so too old to face the harsh camera. The outlines of everything—cars, roofs, trees, Spanish moss, truth—especially truth––had begun to blur and waver, somewhat picturesque but completely impossible to pin down.

  Several vehicles had already parked in the Reddington driveway, and there was a small group of people gathered in the front yard, around a goldfish pond that Nina had completely forgotten existed.

  She and Jackson Bennett walked across the lawn, shoes squishing in sod still moist from the storm of two days earlier.

  The fish pond viewers rose as they approached.

  Then everyone sat down, so that, for a few seconds, all present––Edie Towler, Helen, and a young police woman Nina had never seen but who appeared quite striking in her “Bay St. Lucy” navy blue uniform and her raven black Bay St. Lucy hair—simply stared at the foot long golden carp that made their way leisurely about their appointed duties, cruising the perimeter of the six foot diameter pool, making sure nothing was wrong with the brown stones that surrounded it or the alabaster surface that floored it.

  Finally Edie looked at Helen and said:

  “Please tell Mr. Bennett what you’ve told me.”

  Helen looked at Mr. Bennett and did so.

  “I killed my husband.”

  The fish continued to do what they were paid to do.

  Jackson leaned forward in his chair, which was a gaudy apparatus made of chrome piping, alternate blue and white cloth bands, and invisible baling wire.

  Nina gave it perhaps a half-minute before collapse.

  He appeared to think for a while.

  Then he put his head in his hands, pressed his fingertips against his forehead, breathed, exhaled, breathed again, waited while the
flow of blood to his scalp ceased entirely, and finally said, thoughtfully:

  “What?”

  “I killed my husband.”

  Overhead an airplane droned. Nina looked up at it, grateful to have something to do that she understood. It was the same vintage World War II airplane that she’d seen ten days or so earlier, in the statuary garden, when Helen was divulging to her what she at that time thought were interesting and disturbing things, but which in the light of present events now seemed to have been no more than fanciful musings.

  The same banner trailed behind the airplane.

  It read:

  “Hot sausage!”

  How strange! Nine found herself thinking. Again.

  Edie rose, and gestured to the other officer to do likewise, which she did.

  Then Edie spoke directly to Jackson, ignoring Helen entirely.

  “Now. Let me tell you what the situation is. I have in my office the final autopsy report, which states conclusively that Mr. Barrett died of a severe overdose of the drug Percodan. I have outside of my office the attorney Tomlinson, who, although he retains no legal status as the Barretts’ attorney, has in fact retained his equally significant status as Royal Pain in the Neck. I have surrounding him several thousand reporters—the last batch just flew in from The Maringue Islands, which I do not know even where they are—all clamoring that I release the results of said report.”

  She paused.

  No one looked at the airplane except Nina, who did so subtly, as though she were craning her neck in order to shade her eyes.

  “Now, going on: I’ve scheduled a press conference for nine o’clock this evening. Many television cameras will be present. Holding it that late is going to outrage all of the reporters and media hounds in town, but I don’t care. I’m going to barricade myself in the office and play one-person scrabble. It’s a game I’ve invented. Jackson, I’m sick of this. I will not be made a fool of. I want the truth, and I want it damned soon. It may be that your clients, having read one dime-store mystery too many, may think that be confessing to the same crime, they can somehow get off scott free. Unable to judge who the real killer is, the jury just lets everybody go. Well, that will not happen. I was, until an hour or so ago, quite willing to be as lenient as possible with Hope Reddington, simply because of her age. I was not going to let her be jailed, and I was going to do everything I could to help you in your defense of her, which I would have assumed took her age and health into account.”