Oil Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 4) (21 page)

“What film?”

“I thought perhaps ‘Norma Rae’”

“Alanna!”

“Or something else. Whatever.”

“That all sounds fine, Alanna,” said Jackson. “But Nina…”

She perked up.

“Yes?”

“At some point, we’ve got to make you available.”

“Available to whom, Jackson?”

He shook his head:

“That’s the question, of course. And I’m going to spend this afternoon trying to find an answer. My best guess is this, though. There will need to be a meeting some time tomorrow. They’re maybe going to want that meeting to be in Lafayette, or New Orleans. Maybe Jackson.”

“Who will be there?”

“Attorneys for LP.”

“That sounds like fun. Are they going to charge me with anything?”

“They would, but, like you we said earlier, you don’t have anything they want. Except…”

“Except what?”

“Nina, they’re going to want you to apologize.”

Alanna interrupted:

“Why should she apologize? She’s done a courageous thing; the whole nation is applauding her.”

“Yes,” Jackson continued, “and that’s what LP hates. The more they love Nina, the more they hate big oil. They are continuing to insist that none of these claims are true. Now they’re going to want you to substantiate that fact.”

“How can I substantiate it, Jackson? I don’t know what all that data means!”

“I know.”

“If they have a problem, it should be with Narang. And I’m sorry; I just don’t think he’s going to back down.”

Jackson shook his head again, and rose.

“Like I said, I just work here.”

“Oh, and by the way: I’m not going to be able to pay your bill.”

“You’ve never paid any of my bills. As far as I remember, you still owe me fifty thousand dollars or so for the Reddington Case.”

“I can give you five at the end of the month.”

“Or maybe you could just come over and do the windows.”

“In addition to the five?”

“Let’s not worry about it now. You get some sleep. Then do a little gardening. Then get some sleep again. I’ll send the kid for you tomorrow morning. But I will say this: if I find out anything this afternoon, I’ll be sure and give Alanna here a call. Whatever happens tomorrow morning…”

“It would be nice if I had the night to worry about it.”

“Well, now that you put it that way…”

“No, Jackson, please do call. I want to know what’s coming.”

“All right then. So have a nice rest of the day, Nina.”

And, so saying, he left.

The rest of the day was indeed nice. She was taken to a small but exquisite bedroom where she buried herself under thick but exquisite comforters and listened to the soft chiming of a wrong (at least as far as time goes, given the questionable truth of the assertion that any clock can be wrong about its own specialty, that being chronology) but exquisite Dresden alarm clock, and dreamed an exquisitely incomprehensible dream which she did not, alas, remember any of upon waking.

Which she did around four PM.

Then Alanna outfitted her in rags, took her out to the garden, and abandoned her there.

Bliss.

The afternoon sun dropping lower and lower in the summer sky, the clouds becoming golden-tinged, the dirt porous, cool, and sticky in her fingers, the green tomatoes ranging from bb size to huge, pale green, and globular—she forgot everything but a drizzling hose and a six inch trowel.

By dinner time, she was covered in dirt and sweat, and her legs were beginning to cramp from bending low and crawling on the ground.

The dinner was wonderful, of course, as she knew it would be. Alanna had turned the Auberge des Arts into a kind of fine restaurant/bed and breakfast, with the sole difference that, instead of random tourists, the clientele tended to be writers, musicians, painters, and storytellers, who stayed for some days and lived sumptuously, in return for the community service of doing school readings or private workshops.

These people paid nothing for their meals, the fare being bought with money left in coffers from the sale of the vast Robinson estate.

And so: fresh oysters, asparagus, pate de foie gras, and lobster.

Plus cold, dry Chardonnay.

Nina had showered and changed, and was able to watch the sky darken through vast picture windows in the dining room as she chatted with Alanna about this or that completely irrelevant subject, munched the food that was set in front of her, and tried to keep from her mind the fact that vast forces were preparing either to vault her to the top of the universe or chew her up and discard her like so much garbage.

It was only over cheesecake and coffee that Alanna added:

“By the way, dear, I did not tell you: we shall be having one other guest over tonight.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’m sure a great many of your friends would have liked to dine with us, if for no other reason than to offer you their support. But Jackson and I felt that, given the particular circumstances, confidentiality was the best policy.”

“I agree.”

“There will be one exception, though. Ah. Here it comes now!”

The same prim, white-jacketed young girl who had served the dinner now served a laptop computer, which she placed carefully in the center of the table.

“Our guest is a computer?”

“Our guest will be arriving through means of the computer.”

The screen lit up. Alanna’s fingers played on the keyboard for a time.

And there, indeed, was the guest.

Nina exulted when she saw the familiar image:

“Margot!”

For there before her, courtesy of Skype, was Margot Gavin.

It was a remarkable thing: the chiseled face, the gray outlandish hair, and equally outlandish baggy sweater—the two of them might as well have been sitting back in the vine-entangled garden of Elementals, having a first of the morning cup of coffee.

“Margot Gavin! I can’t believe it!”

“Nina! Oh my God, it’s so good to see you!”

“And you too, Margot! It seems like forever since we’ve talked!”

“Well, it has been!”

“Do you like being married?”

“Oh it was a bit of an adjustment for a while until Goldmann suggested we imitate the two leads in a Congreve play that he happened to be reading. ‘Good Mirabell, says wonderful Millamant––don’t let us be familiar or fond…let us be as strange as if we had been married a great while, and as well-bred, as if we were not married at all.’ And that is the lifestyle we’ve been attempting to achieve.”

“And Candles?”

“The plantation is most certainly haunted. We hear strange noises every night.”

“Have you seen ghosts?”

“Oh my heavens, no. There are always artists here from Chicago. The ghosts are too frightened to come out, and so they remain hidden within the woodwork. But enough of that. You, I hear, have succeeded in keeping busy.”

“I’ve been puttering around.”

“A little walking on the beach, a little fishing?”

“Yes, and I read this or that, whenever I can.”

“And you attempt to single-womanly destroy the world’s largest oil corporation.”

“I attempt to—oh yes, I’m doing that, too. Almost forgot, isn’t that amazing?”

“Well, you have so many other things on your plate.”

“Yes, it’s hard to find time for all of them.”

They smiled at each other. Finally, Margot said quietly, the smile having faded:

“So how are you, Nina? How are you holding up?”

“I’m good. I really am.”

“We were shocked to read
The Times
this morning.”

“Everybody was, I guess.”

“I won’t even ask you how all of this has come to pass. I’m sure you’re sick of telling the story.”

“I’m not sure I even remember the story. It all seems like a dream. And it has, for days now.”

“Then I’m sure you want nothing more than to keep the entire thing as far from your mind as possible. I only wanted to tell you one thing, and then I’m going to let you go. But this one thing is very important.”

“All right, Margot. Tell me.”

“Well, Goldmann and I have been keeping up with events that have been going on across the country all day. Across not only the country but the world.”

“Well,
The New York Times
gets around.”

“Yes, it does. At any rate, there are sit-ins, demonstrations, and rallies in every state of the union. People are gathering in front of office buildings and chanting “Down with Big Oil!” and “Save our Planet!” You’re causing destruction of property, Nina. Because of you, people are being carted off to jail. There is chaos everywhere, and everyone is smoking marijuana. And so, Nina, I simply had to tell you, tell you personally while I’m looking at you…”

“…yes, Margot?”

“…that I’ve never been so proud of you in my life!”

“Oh, Margot! That means so much, coming from you!”

“I’ve got to go now…”

“But I wanted to talk, I wanted to…”

“I’m going to cry! Good night, Nina!”

And the screen went black.

The following morning at nine AM, Nina was delivered to the Bay St. Lucy town hall.

No meeting in New Orleans. Or Jackson. Or Lafayette.

All parties had decided this was the best course of action.

And just as there was no flight to any of the major cities listed above, there was absolutely no publicity about the meeting that was to take place.

There would only be, Nina had learned from Jackson’s phone call two hours earlier, a few select people in the room, and they would have arrived under cover of strict confidentiality.

Sandy Cousins. Phil Bennington. Tom Holder. All from Aquatica.

All people whom she had met days earlier, and who were now being flown into town by helicopter.

One lawyer—and only one—representing Louisiana Petroleum.

Two other administrators, Jackson had not been able to ascertain precisely who.

And no—absolutely no—reporters.

And so, here she was.

A room she had seen a thousand times before, with its sterile white ceiling lights, its large, circular meeting table, its pull-down wall screen designed to display power point presentations.

She took a deep breath, nodded to Jackson who stood just behind her in the hallway, and opened the door.

Several people from LP were already seated at the table. There were two ‘suit’s’ almost certainly either executives or lawyers. There was one large swarthy man who seemed of middle eastern descent and who wore a dark sport coat and tie—and there were four people she remembered from the drill rig: Sandy Cousins, Tom Holder—or the tool master—Phil Bennington, rig master, and Brewster Dale, Faulkner scholar and head of security.

A man who was almost certain to be livid with her.

They were all, when she thought about it, almost certain to be livid with her.

All of the figures rose as she entered the room.

And Sandy Cousins circled the table.

She stood two feet from Nina.

The two women looked at each other, face to face, expressionless, for what must have been five seconds.

Then they fell into each other’s arms, sobbing.

Nina was aware of the other figures—at least some of them—encircling them.

And then she was aware of the utterly remarkable nature of the entire order of things.