Game Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 3) (4 page)

“Oh, my God.”

“The pay is obscenely high. But Paul wants to do it because of the reforms he’ll be able to make. There’s an obsession with standardized testing, for example; he’s going to fight that. As well as a lot of other things.”

Nina nodded, simultaneously thrilled for the two of them and depressed that they would be going.

“But how does this—how does this depend on me?”

“It depends,” said Paul, “on whether or not you accept your present.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Open it.”

She did so, the paper rustling as she tore it back.

“Here,” said Paul, turning the desk lamp toward her.

The light glowed yellow on a metal plate that had been affixed to a walnut, triangular box.

It was name plate.

On it were inscribed the words:

NINA BANNISTER:
 
PRINCIPAL

CHAPTER 2: ADVICE FROM A FRIEND

“If a story is in you, it has got to come out.”

––
William Faulkner

What a night.

She had gotten home around midnight with a thousand contradictory thoughts buzzing around in her brain like a nest of psychedelic bumble bees.

Going back.

And not just going back to teaching, which was her first love. No, going back into administration.

Principal Nina Bannister.

She’d only spent four years as a principal––the last four in her thirty year career in the schools—and they had, by all accounts, been good ones. She’d been thought of by the town, and by the students, and by the parents, and by the state authorities, as being competent.

No horrible disasters, budgetary crises, student riots, or money laundering scams, had taken place on her watch.

But, oh, the innumerable headaches!

Hamlet: “And who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life…”

And what was a ‘fardel,’ anyway?

(She’d always meant to look that up.)

Who would go back?

She’d spent half the night asking herself the question.

The other half of the night had been spent feeding Furl, and petting him, until finally he’d grown disgusted with her unwanted attention and hidden in the clothes hamper; she’d made cocoa, and drunk it; she’d read the fourth chapter of an Agatha Christie novel (not quite remembering which one. A Poirot? A Miss Marple? Who knew?); she’d toasted and eaten an Eggo.

And she’d paced, wondering whether to go down to the beach and pace there and deciding ultimately against it, for fear of disturbing teenagers who might have wanted to neck.

Real sleep never came. There was a period of dozing that must have taken place during three and five AM by her best reckoning, but that was worst of all. “For in that endless sleep of re-principalization what dreams may come?”

Why was she always associating going back into the schools with
Hamlet
? That was not a good sign; not a good sign at all.

So she’d tossed and turned for a time on her little bed, visualizing all of the fights she’d have to break up, and preferring even the most savage of them to one parent conference dealing with the fact that Susan or Johnny had been found stashing condoms in a locker, or had been suspected of smoking marijuana behind the ag building.

There was no hope. She would simply have to get up and face the day.

So she did, resolving how best to confront this “To be or not to be a principal”––

Shoo Hamlet! Shoo, shoo!

––crisis.

She would, as soon as sufficient light had spread over the isthmus of Mississippiland, wander into town and do some pastry shopping at Bagatelli’s bakery.

There she’d meet Margot Gavin, who always bought croissants at precisely seven AM.

Margot was always curious about anything going on in Nina’s life—despite the fact that nothing very interesting ever was going on in Nina’s life, except when she was solving murders, which had happened twice in the past year, go figure—and would pump her for information, would grill her about this decision she now had to make, would carefully, in great detail, go over the pros and cons of the matter (were there any pros, really?), and would, by midmorning, have presented her with a concise summary of what she should or should not do.

That was the ticket.

Bagatelli’s, then back to Elementals: Treasures of the Earth and Sea (Margot’s gift shop, where Nina spent most of her mornings these days anyway) and then home by lunch, having soaked in the careful counsel of a dear friend, and what did dear friends exist for anyway if not to give such counsel?

At six fifty, she wrapped herself in a scarf, donned her heavy winter coat, pulled on a toboggan, slipped into her winter, fur-lined gloves, and, secure in long underwear and two sweaters as well as thermal socks, lurched out into the frigid air of Bay St. Lucy, air which, overnight, had been chilled to a temperature as low as (at least rumor had it) thirty eight degrees.

The snow, she noted, was all gone.

Darn.

But the crisp air actually felt good as she walked, and the sight of lights going on in various coffee shops and boutiques heartened her.

She’d have to give up her morning walks if she became a principal again.

Ridiculous!

She turned the corner of L Street and Archie Manning Boulevard and rejoiced to see the little frame house that was Bagatelli’s Bakery a hundred or so yards in front of her, its brick chimneys emanating gray smoke and succulent aromas.

She entered the shop to find the Bagatellis shouting at each other.

They were always the same, always in their bakery, he always covered in flour, she always bustling around with the same absolutely perfect blue-striped apron, both of them yelling at each other at the top of their lungs: ‘ADEPENTO! ADEPENTO, DECCOLATERI, SOPALIUSCIA!’ or some such gibberish, that nobody in town could ever understand—

––and it was so strange, because they were the most amiable, the most outgoing, the most loving and giving and caring and caressing and smiling and hugging and ‘We love life and everybody in it-ing’ couple in the world, except when they happened to be addressing each other, which they did only in terms of seemingly bitter hostility and with words of Italianate hatred.

‘MOSCOTARI! NON-CIALENTO QUATORCE! NON SPOSE SENTURURARI COME NUNCIO ADUE!

‘ANDENTO CONMIUS NON SCENTE!”

Who knew what it all meant?

But after a few moments of it, Senora Bagatelli would appear at the counter with sacks of wonderful things, beaming that star-white smile that seemed to explode out of her every time she opened her mouth and scream deliriously:

“Questo!”

HERE IT IS!

Nina stood for a time and marveled at the effect of flour floating in the air, mixing with both sunbeams streaming through the great windows in the back of the shop and baking aromas hanging so densely about the ovens that they could almost be seen as well as smelled—and ordered, expertly, as she always did:

“I’ll take one of that, and three of those things, and give me maybe a half of that thing—no, no, the whole thing—and then—oh, I don’t know, a dozen of those doohickeys over there.”

Which would send the Bagatellis rolling into action.

“ADEPENTO!”

“NON SCOLARSI PARMIENTO!”

And while this chaos was going on, Margot Gavin walked in—as Nina knew she would—and asked: “Want to go on a trip?”

“What?”

“A trip. I’ve got to go on a trip, be gone a little over a week, and I’m wondering if you want to go with me.”

“I can’t go on a trip right now, Margot. I’ve got a big decision to make. Last night––”

“Oh, you can make decisions any time. You need to come with me. It’ll get you out of the house.”

“I don’t want to get out of the house. I like being
in
the house. It’s just that––”

“It’s just that I need to do some shopping and get my morning croissants. Then we’ll go back to ‘Elementals’ and I’ll tell you about this trip.”

“Okay, but I need some advice. This is kind of a big thing, Margot. You’re always so good at taking things apart and putting things together so that they make sense. You’re analytical.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Well, all right, if you say so. But we’ll do the analyzing back at the shop over some hot coffee and cinnamon croissants.”

“Good.”

And so they made their purchases and returned to Elementals:
 
Treasures etc. etc.

They had seated themselves comfortably in the garden area and were chowing down, butter melting evilly and fatteningly before them in two croissants that lay like prehistoric pastry-monsters, when Nina said: “Okay. So last night Paul and Macy Cox asked me…”

And Margot, not hearing at all and letting her eyes play across a new series of Ramoula Peters seascapes that hung on the south wall—

––and, improbably, not lighting a cigarette—

––for Margot was attempting, if not to give up smoking, at least to keep her consumption levels under thirteen or fourteen packs a day

––said: “I have to go check out a plantation house and I want you to go with me.”

Margot not smoking. What a bizarre thing!

What was happening?

Nina’s brain, out of sheer mental muscle memory, began to supply the smoking gestures usually made by SMOKINGMARGOT—and it was fine, because she was now able to enjoy the elegance of Margot Gavin Smoking with none or the smells.

“Where is the plantation house?”

Margot did not lift a cigarette to her lips, did not inhale deeply upon it nor let the thick gray smoke escape from her mouth and rise swirling toward the ceiling.
 
But she
did
say: “Mississippi.”

“We’re already in Mississippi.”

“Different part.”

Then she did not lay her cigarette on an ashtray that sat on the table between her and Nina, since none existed there. But she did continue: “I have a kind of––well, a kind of commission to do.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m to look into buying a plantation house.”

“A whole plantation house?”

“Yes.”

“For whom?”

“I’ve been asked to look at it by a group of colleagues from Chicago. People I used to know from my days in fundraising.”

“All right; and why does this group want to buy a plantation house?”

“They’ve conceived a plan to offer singers, painters, writers, etc., a kind of retreat.”

“Retreat?”

“Yes. Artists spend their lives charging. Administrators such as myself and the group I’ll be meeting at the plantation spend our lives retreating. It’s what
we
do. We’re always looking over our shoulder to see if someone is coming up behind us to hit us over the head with the fact that we have no actual talent.”

“You retreat.”

“Constantly. And so this group has conceived a place where artists from the North can come to the South and be anesthetized.”

“They can rest.”

Margot shook her head.

“Artists never rest. But they can come here and be warm, and stroll across the grounds, and suffer in a more comfortable climate than might otherwise be possible. Also, they can perhaps meet some people from Mississippi, which will give them something to make fun of when they return home.”

“Do you have to put any money into this venture?”

“No. It’s all from other sources. Mostly places where there is money and nothing to do with it.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound too difficult. It should be an easy thing for you to do.”