Oil Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 4) (15 page)

She interrupted him.

“Yes. I understand. Listen, do you have to give them Edgar’s name?”

“I don’t know. But I fear, yes. He was the young engineer who originally downloaded the data. Without him…”

“I know. All right. Listen, you have to give me a little time.”

“Certainly. Certainly. If you wish to call me…”

“I’ve got your number.”

“Excellent. Now, as to how much time you will need…”

“Just a minute.”

She set down the cell phone, walked across the room, petted Furl, who said ‘rrggghh’, wagged his tail, and then, in a reciprocal gesture of affection, bit the back of her hand.

“Damn cat,” she whispered, wondering if the bite would draw blood.

It did. Just a tiny red spot. But blood, still.

Then she walked out onto the deck and looked at the ocean.

She remembered the way it had looked last night, just before she had gone to sleep on the beach.

And how fresh it had smelled.

Then she walked back into her living room and picked up the phone.

“Okay,” she said. “Use my name. Use both of our names.”

Static.

Then:

“This is very brave of you, Ms. Bannister.”

“Yes, well. I’m that kind of a gal.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. Just…go ahead and tell them. Tell them the whole story.”

“I shall. I shall, immediately. You understand, the newspaper may well wish to contact you.”

“I imagine,” she whispered, “that a lot of people may soon wish to contact me.”

“I’m sorry. I did not precisely understand you.”

“That’s all right. Write the story well, Professor. A lot of people are depending on you.”

“Oh, I shall. I shall indeed.”

“Good night, then.”

“Good night, Ms. Bannister. And all my best wishes.”

She clicked the phone shut.

She sat quite still for some time, wondering how she could have done such a thing.

She was admitting to being a thief.

Admitting it to everyone in the world.

And how could she have done this without consulting the Ramirez family?

What would happen now?

She had just finished mentally asking herself that question, when the phone rang again.

She flipped it open.

“Hello?”

“Hello? Nina Bannister?”

“Yes?”

“This is Liz Cohen of
The New York Times
.”

She looked at the back of her hand; a drop of blood was growing out of the small hole Furl had made in it.

It was, she surmised, to be the least of her worries.

The following afternoon she found herself in Jackson Bennett’s Mercedes Benz, heading out of Bay St. Lucy, driving toward a cabin somewhere in the forests of Mississippi, to meet with the writer she had spoken with the previous evening.

Elizabeth Cohen.

Feature journalist.

Who had asked her almost immediately:

“Are you the source?”

“Yes.”

“Is the information in fact valid?”

“Yes.”

And finally:

“Do you have a lawyer?”

She did.

And so Liz Cohen had called Jackson Bennett and arranged this meeting.

It had furthermore been decided:

The journalist was to fly out of New York at midnight, land in New Orleans at 3 AM, rent a car, and drive to the meeting place suggested by the attorney of Nina Bannister.

Because there was no question of holding this meeting at Nina’s house.

Or at Jackson’s office.

Or anywhere else in Bay St. Lucy, for that matter.

No, this had the potential to be one of the biggest stories of the…what? Year? Decade?”

This meeting had to be secret.

And so, accordingly, Jackson had suggested a cabin.

It was a nice drive. The radio emitted a bit of elevator music, which mixed with the murmur of the engine to have the same lulling effect that windshield wipers do during a long trip in rain.

The chain restaurants and filling stations came more sparsely as they left town. Finally, there were just pines and blue sky, the sun behind them getting multi-colored as its rays deflected through whatever layers of waste and garbage in the atmosphere made it look golden and magical.

“I had bought this cabin we’re headed to,” Jackson was saying, “several years ago as a kind of time-share venture with a couple of other guys. For the first year or two, I spent a good deal of time in it. Four or five of us would do a boys’ night out occasionally, playing poker and drinking beer until late Friday night, and canoeing off the hangover at whatever time Saturday we decided to get up.”

After a time, they turned off the main road and started meandering over the deep-rutted gravel lane that led through thick firs and balsams, getting just a glance here and there of a placid lake.

“Jackson, I want to thank you for helping me in this.”

“Nothing to thank, Nina.”

“I’ve probably messed this whole thing up. Going out there and getting that disk, without telling you—and now,
The New York Times
…”

He shook his head:

“Nina, whatever it is, I’ll hear about it when Ms. Cohen does. It would be very easy for me to say, you should have done this, or you should have done that. But the truth is, we wouldn’t have a Bay St. Lucy now—at least Bay St. Lucy as we know it––if you hadn’t been smart enough to do the right thing when everybody else was doing the wrong thing. Helen Reddington would be in jail if you had used bad judgment. You didn’t. You saw something nobody else could see. Hell, you almost won us a state basketball championship.”

She could not help smiling at this.

“Whatever is going on here, you’ve earned the right to be given the benefit of the doubt. And I’ll help you in any way I can. Now…let’s just meet with Ms. Cohen, and see if somehow we can stay out of an all-out battle between the biggest oil company in the world and the biggest newspaper in the world.”

“They stopped at a grocery store Jackson went in, stayed for a time, then returned with a sack full of groceries, two bottles of red wine.

“There’s a little kitchen in the cabin. This interview might take some time. We might as well be eating while it’s going on.”

“What did you get?”

“Stuff to make stroganoff.”

“That’s as good a last meal as any.”

They kept going, deeper into woods, but still skirting the lake.

After about twenty minutes, they turned off the main road and started meandering over a rutted gravel lane that led through thick firs and balsams, getting just a glance here and there of the water.

The cabin looked as though it had always been there. There was a pier leading out to the green-glass still lake, the surface of which was dotted only by a few double-bump bullfrog heads and up-jutting logs that had once been willow trees. A swing and flier-chairs still sat placidly in the screened in porch.

They stopped and got out of the car.

The lake had begun to make its evening sounds. There were the tree frogs and humming mosquitoes of summer evenings, and crows still circling and cawing. Some kind of animal, maybe a deer, could be heard crunching quietly over the fallen leaves and decomposing twigs.

“I always carry a key to this cabin on my keychain. Never know when the place might be useful. Sometimes I ask key witnesses to stay out here, relax before their appearance in court.”

They walked across the porch, which overlooked the lake.

Jackson unlocked the door and pushed it open.

Nina had the bag of groceries in her arms. She took them inside.

It was a sparse cabin, but neatly made up. She could see dust particles floating in a shaft of light coming through the west window.

The cabin still had the musty smell of a place infrequently occupied, but, as she opened the window over the sink and felt the cool, pine-cone scented air float in, she felt the same sense of ease that the beach had given her two nights ago.

She looked through the window.

On the other side of the lake, two hundred yards or so away, a deer walked into a clearing. She could see him stop, raise his antlered head that was somehow not-brown not-gray but the exact color of the whole surrounding forest—then lower his head and meander away.

Twenty minutes later, Liz Cohen’s rental car pulled into the driveway, and the woman herself got out of it.

“Hey! Nina? Jackson?”

They both shouted back various greetings.

She beamed.

“Liz Cohen. Nice place you got here.”

“Thank you,” answered Jackson. “Come on up!”

“Will do!”

She bounded up the stairway.

Nina was uncertain whether the woman was so striking because she had NEW YORK written all over her, or because she was a little over six feet tall or because of her dense black curly hair, or because of the way she had of slightly leaning forward, not only into a room but into the world.

They all shook hands and then Liz Cohen said:

“So where is the booze?”

“Kitchen,” answered Jackson.

“What have you got?”

“Two bottles of red wine,” said Nina.

“That might not be enough. Given the story you’re going to be corroborating––hell, given your own story—that might not be enough.”

Jackson smiled:

“There’s a bottle of scotch underneath the sink. I always try to keep a full one there. Never hurts.”

“That’s what I like to hear. Can we go inside?”

“Sure,” he answered.

They did.

“Bedroom back here?”

“That’s right, Ms. Cohen. Just take your things back there and put them on the bed.”

“Liz,” she said, disappearing through the door. “Liz is fine.”

Within a minute she was back.

“Okay to smoke in here I hope.”

“Sure,” Jackson added, “but it will be more comfortable out on the porch. Why don’t you two ladies go out there, sit on those rockers, and look out over the lake while I make the drinks.”

“Great idea. Come on, Nina.”

They found chairs and sat down. Liz lit a cigarette, took a deep drag on it, held the smoke inside her for a cancerous amount of time, and then expelled it toward a stuffed owl that was sitting improbably on the far side of the porch.

“It must be fascinating to work with
The New York Times
,” Nina said. “How long have you been there?”

Liz looked at her through a haze of smoke and asked:

“Do you really care about that?”

Nina thought for a time and said:

“No, not really.”

“Good. No, I think I’m gonna like you, Nina. Now what the hell is going on?”

“Aquatica is going to blow up.”

“Well. I gotta say, that’s a story. There’s at least a Pulitzer in it. If you’re not full of shit, of course.”

Jackson arrived with the drinks.

“Nina is not full of shit,” he said, sitting down. “If she says it’s true, then it’s true.”

Liz nodded and produced a smart phone from her purse.

“Thanks for the Scotch. Tastes great.”