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

by T'Gracie Reese

  “It would have.”

  “But I no longer care. I’m leaving now. You stay here and talk to your clients. Tell them I want the truth. I don’t care what it is, but I want to know it, and I want to know it soon. Listen to me, Jackson: if both of these women continue to insist that they did the crime, then I’ll take them at their word and charge them both. We can sort out the details at trial, but I promise you, they will both be in jail tonight. Do you understand this?”

  “Yes, Edie.”

  “I hope you do.”

  And, so saying, she left.

  After a time, her car had pulled away.

  Nina, needing to do something if only to verify her own continued existence, looked at Helen and asked:

  “Where is John?”

  “His clinic. He had to be there. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

  “Does he know you’ve made this confession?”

  “No.”

  She avoided the real question, which was, ‘Did you do it?,’ but Jackson did not.

  “Did you do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you let your grandmother confess?”

  “I didn’t think you would believe her.”

  Silence for a time. One of the carp flopped over on its massive sickly yellow side and decided to float that way for a few seconds, finally having second thoughts and whacked the water like a board as it returned to its perimeter watch.

  “I thought she’d simply be regarded as a senile old woman. But I was wrong. She isn’t senile.”

  “No. No, she isn’t. So how did you do this thing?”

  “Much as she herself described having done it.”

  “She wasn’t there at all?”

  “No. She made that all up.”

  “She didn’t come up to say good night?”

  “No, she was too tired, and simply went to bed.”

  “Where did you get the Percodan?”

  “I used Clifton’s. He had a large bottle of it. He went to the window to look at something or other. I went to the bathroom, poured out the mixture he’d prepared, and…well, made a new one of my own. He drank it, complained of feeling dizzy, went to bed, and went to sleep.”

  “I see.”

  “I knew that there would be an autopsy, of course. I knew that Percodan—in a fatal dosage—would be detected. But I’m not naïve. I also know that in many such cases, especially those involving celebrities, it’s impossible to prove that the overdose has not been the result of carelessness on the part of the victim. I hoped this would be the case. How, in final analysis, could anyone prove that Clifton had not simply made a mistake, and taken too much?”

  “You hoped the final verdict would be accidental death?”

  “Yes. And I’m convinced it would have been.”

  “Except for…”

  “Except for Grandmamma. And her startlingly real narrative. She is, as she said, a pharmacist’s wife. She was quite aware of what drugs Clifton was taking, but I do give her credit for the detail of her story. She was quite accurate, without even having heard the results of the autopsy. No, Mr. Bennett, I’m convinced that my grandmother would cheerfully spend the rest of her life in jail, just to give me a…well, a second chance. A chance with John. But I’m not going to allow that.”

  “All right. Now. I’m going to be very frank with you.”

  “Please do.”

  “As far as I can tell, we have two versions of this crime. Both are completely believable.”

  “I understand that.”

  “But it’s not going to go on that way. Edie Towler is a damn fine district attorney. And I’m no beginner at my job. I will not be lied to, though, and one of you is lying. Where is your grandmother now, Helen?”

  “She’s lying down inside, resting.”

  “OK, Nina?”

  Nina felt as though she’d been shot.

  This was a movie she was watching, wasn’t it?

  Now someone was reaching through the screen and grabbing at her.

  “Yes?” she said, wondering what had happened to the popcorn.

  “Nina, you know the house, don’t you?”

  “Like my own.”

  “Would you go and get Hope, and bring her out here?”

  “Mr. Bennett, Grandmamma is…”

  “Your grandmamma is coming out here, right now, and we are going to get to the bottom of this thing. Nina, please go and get Hope.”

  “All right.”

  Nina rose, as Helen said: “She’s lying on the day bed in the study downstairs.”

  Nina entered the house.

  There they all were again, dead people.

  Astonishing, she thought, that they still seemed content.

  Waiting.

  The musty smell of the rooms was not really that; it was, she decided, not a musty smell at all; it was a musty memory.

  She crossed the main living room, carpet sinking beneath her feet, clocks ticking, and the sound of an overhead ceiling fan that growled as though it were a retired airplane propeller.

  Hope was in fact lying on the small single bed in what had been her husband’s study.

  She rose on an elbow as Nina entered.

  “Nina!”

  “Hello, Hope.”

  “You’ve come for a visit!”

  “Not…not really.”

  “There’s cucumber salad!”

  “I can’t have any right now,” she said, feeling thankful that there was a murder and because of it she did not have to.

  “Oh, just a bit? It must be nearly dinner time!”

  “Maybe a little later.”

  “Then you can stay?”

  “For a while. Hope, Jackson is outside with Helen.”

  “Jackson Bennett?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh my, a party has begun!”

  “Not really, Hope. It’s just…there are some questions about what happened.”

  “What happened when?”

  “Last night.”

  My God, Nina found herself thinking. Was it only last night?

  “Some questions about what happened last night.”

  “I thought that I’d answered all of those things.”

  “You did, Hope, but…”

  “Was I not clear?”

  “You were. But maybe you should come outside with me.”

  “All right.”

  Hope rose, looked around the room, and said:

  “You must forgive my appearance. This old sweatshirt, and these baggy pants…”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Has Helen offered either of you something to drink? Tea perhaps?”

  “I don’t think we need anything, Hope.”

  “All right. Well, I shall ask, all the same.”

  The two of them made their way back through Reddington Mausoleum and out into the yard, above which the sky seemed to be exploding, small fragments of Blue Sky falling on everything in sight.

  “Jackson! So good of you to come!”

  “Thank you, Hope.”

  “Helen, you should have taken them into the back. It’s so much cooler by the bayou.”

  “Sorry, Grandmamma.”

  “And you’ve offered them nothing to drink or eat!”

  “Grandmamma…”

  “We really can’t,” said Jackson. “Mrs. Reddington, will you please sit down?”

  Hope did so, shaking her head and muttering:

  “I’m so sorry that the two of us have turned to bad hostessing.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “Its’ just that with all of the confusion…”

  “Grandmamma,” said Helen, leaning forward: “I’ve told them the truth. I’ve told them that I gave Clifton the overdose.”

  “What?”

  “You must take back your story.”

  “What story?”

  “The one about your coming up to our room, and pouring concentrated Percodan into Clifton’s glass.”

  “But
I did that!”

  “No, you did not, Grandmamma!”

  “Don’t tell me what I did or did not do! Do you think I’m addled?”

  “Of course not; I think you’re trying to protect me!”

  “Protect you from what, child?”

  Jackson Bennett leaned forward in the mangled parachute apparatus that had once resembled a lawn chair and said:

  “Hope, Helen has confessed to the murder of Mr. Barrett.”

  The transformer that been supplying electrical energy to several million of Hope’s brain cell apartments exploded, leaving her mental city completely dark.

  “What?”

  “It’s true, Grandmamma. I killed him.”

  “You did no such thing! I killed him!”

  Again, Jackson Bennett:

  “Both of you. You have to stop this. We’ve got to know the truth, and we must know it now, or you’re both going to be prosecuted. I can get you off from this, whichever one did it, by showing cause. But I can’t represent you if I don’t know the truth.

  Hope, though, was still staring at her granddaughter.

  “I will not allow you to confess to this, young lady. I will not tolerate it.”

  “Grandmamma, I’m not going to allow you to go to prison for something I’ve done.”

  “I will go wherever I wish!”

  “But you didn’t do this thing. You couldn’t have.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re not capable of murdering anybody!”

  “And why not?”

  “I don’t…I just…”

  Hope leaned forward, the shifting of her twenty-six or so pounds of weight having absolutely no effect at all on the chair, an inch or so above which she seemed to be floating.

  “You don’t think I’m smart enough to commit murder, do you?”

  “Of course you are. It’s just…”

  “Just what? That I’m too old?”

  “No! It’s just…”

  “Old people can do things too, you know!”

  “I know that, Grandmamma, but…”

  Hope rose, stared at Nina, stared at Jackson, and finally stared at Helen, hissing:

  “You’re just like your mother!”

  Then she turned and stomped back into the house.

  Jackson stared at the place where she’d been only a few second before, shook his head, and said:

  “Shit.”

  Then he got up and walked away.

  CHAPTER 19: A FEW THOUGHTS CONCERNING DRUGS, THEIR PROPER USAGE, AND THEIR LIKELY EFFECTS

  There was something about Margot’s shop that attracted Nina.

  Even now, in mid afternoon, empty and locked as it was, it seemed a kind of haven.

  She parked the Vespa, took the shop key from the Bannister Canister, walked inside, and simply breathed.

  Art and nature, art and nature.

  Beautiful paintings, lush and verdant ferns. Plants everywhere, water tinkling from the garden fountain.

  She sat at the table where she and Margot spent most of their time gossiping, and she luxuriated in the various colors of light making their way through the glass paneled ceiling.

  What could she do?

  How could she help Helen? Or Hope? Or John?

  This was simply a mess. One of her two favorite people in the world was a murderess, each denying it was the other.

  Helen was not going to let her grandmother go to jail; Hope was not going to let her granddaughter go to jail.

  The bottom line was, they were probably both going to jail.

  She winced as she thought of what the newspapers would say.

  When?

  Starting tonight. Press conference; nine o’clock.

  She found herself wondering if Hope and Helen were being arrested even now, but decided that was improbable, given the fact that the city jail was probably surrounded by reporters.

  No, Edie would be as good as her word.

  She would give Jackson Bennett a few more hours to get at the truth.

  Then, should he fail, she’d have no choice.

  She’d have both women picked up, brought to jail, and incarcerated, announcing that one or both of them had been responsible for administering a fatal dose of Percodan to one of New York City’s most famous stage stars.

  Then all hell would break loose.

  Poor Alana: The Bay St. Lucy Summer Festival now something between a bad joke and a house of horrors.

  Poor Bay St. Lucy. Tabloid reporters for months to come.

  Not the fate that Eve Ivory would have had determined for the town.

  But almost as bad.

  Worse, in some ways.

  And of course poor Hope, John, and Helen.

  It would have been better if they’d let the man fly back to New York and do his worst.

  At least the three of them would have been here, together, and at least they would have had the community to support them.

  But now…

  She thought for a while, and then came to a decision.

  She would take the Vespa, in a few minutes, back over to the Reddingtons’ house.

  Jackson might be there, certainly, but he’d left in the kind of humor that made that seem improbable.

  He was probably back in his office, preferring the study of present legal options to the hearing of loud stubborn women.

  No, it was her place to go back.

  She was a calming effect, and both Hope and Helen respected her.

  She’d be able to talk to one of them at a time.

  One was going to have to admit to this murder; but the other, the one who’d no part in it, had to affirm that fact.

  Surely she could make them see that.

  And so, yes, she’d wait half an hour, and then go back.

  This was not going to be like last Christmas. She was not going to save the day, unmask a completely unsuspected murderer, and watch the town celebrate its salvation.

  That was the kind of thing that happened in cozy mysteries.

  But she did not have to be useless, either.

  She could at least help make the situation better.

  Yes, she could.

  So that’s what she would do.

  These reveries were interrupted by the jangle of the door opening, and Margot, dressed in a blend of German expressionism and The Wizard of Oz, taking off her great straw hat and laying it down carefully so that it covered the northern half of the shop.

  “Hi.”

  “Hello, Margot.”

  “Just get here?”

  “Yeah.”

  Margot joined her, staring intensely across the table.

  “Do you know anything?”

  Nina shook her head, then nodded.

  “Yes. No. No. Yes.”

  “So you do know something. How is it that you always know something, when none of the rest of us do and don’t realize it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well. I’ve just come from the Auberge des Arts.”

  “Doing what?”

  “The Community Theater Group is helping Alana and some of the other Arts Council people. The place is a disaster from last night. They haven’t even begun to clean the kitchen yet and glasses are everywhere.”

  “Well. When the news got out about Barrett…”

  “Yes. It was like a fairy tale but bad. Everything froze. Most of the actors have spent the afternoon over there, getting their stuff together. A lot are flying out tonight for Memphis.”

  “How are they taking it?”

  “Shock. Soft talking. Head shaking, that kind of thing. The truth is, I think, they all hated him. But of course they can’t admit that.”

  “No.”

  “So what do you know?”

  “Things I can’t tell you.”

  “Why is that always the case? Well, anyway, the gossip around town is that it’s a drug overdose. Reporters are going crazy, digging around like rabid dogs. A rumor has it that there�
�s going to be another press conference tonight. Anything to that?”

  “Maybe.”

  Actually, Margot, there’s quite a bit to that. There probably will be a press conference, and it will be called by Edie Towler, and it will be at nine o’clock, and it will be for the purpose of telling Bay St. Lucy that it’s most honored and respected citizen, Hope Reddington, and her granddaughter, Helen, are murderers. That they—one of them, God knows which––had put Percodan in Clifton Barrett’s medication, that he had drunk it, had gone to bed feeling dizzy, and had never waked up.

  “Maybe.”

  “Just can’t shut you up, can I?”

  “No, you just can’t…”

  Silence for a time.

  And there they were again, those two flying fish words, jumping out of the water and glistening in the sun and sporting themselves like truant children on the First Grand Day of May.

  Yes, there they were.

  Percodan and Pitocin.

  The vaudeville act.

  What great dancers they both were, old Percodan and Pitocin.

  Helen, saying, so definitively:

  “He took his medication; then he complained of feeling dizzy. Then he went to bed and fell immediately asleep.”

  Then Nina: “Margot?”

  “Yes?”

  “I want to ask you about something.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Do you know anything about drugs?”

  Some minutes later, when Margot had finished laughing, Nina was able to pose the question again:

  “Do you know anything about drugs?”

  “Of course I do, Nina.”

  “Well. I’ve just spent some time with a pharmacist’s wife.”

  “I,” Margot answered, “have spent a good deal of my time as a pharmacist’s livelihood.”

  “You know about Percodan?”

  “Of course. It’s a pain killer.”

  “Pitocin?”

  “Sleeping pill.”

  “You ever take them?”

  “You mean together?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me see, when might I have taken Percodan and Pitocin together? Oh. Summer of 73 in Colorado. Four times I think. But I moved on. High school was waiting for me.”

  “Could taking those things together kill you?”

  “Of course. Why else would one take them?”

  “Didn’t kill you though.”

  “I would have to check.”