Frame Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 5) Read Free Page A

though.
    “You don’t think in this case my painting is truly…”
    “No,” said Alanna.
    And that stopped the conversation for a time.
    It remained motionless until Margot, having half-finished the drink by now, said quietly:
    “I was, on the other hand, Nina, thinking about something you said when we were talking about the paintings.”
    “Something intelligent?”
    “No, something stupid.”
    “Damn.”
    “But perhaps useful.”
    Another pause.
    A pair of porpoises played and sparkled and leapt in the frothing ocean two miles to the east of where they would like to have been seated, and a tan Volvo pulled out of the parking lot fifty yards to the west of where they actually were seated.
    “You were talking about the Impressionist paintings in the Jeu de Palme.”
    “Yes, I thought that since we had all of our seascapes around on the walls…”
    “Hush.”
    “Sorry.”
    “But, listen, both of you. Alanna, do you have openings for cultural events to be held at the Auberge this summer?”
    “Yes, darling. We have a number of concerts and theatrical events, but…”
    “What about painting?”
    Alanna shook her head:
    “Nothing.”
    “Then I have an idea.”
    “Tell it, by all means.”
    “All right. It has to do with a young docent I hired just before leaving The Chicago Art Museum last year.”
    “A docent?” asked Nina.
    “Yes, all museums, or nearly all of them, hire docents. These people are a bit like graduate students. Their main job is to conduct tours showing the paintings to museum patrons, and explaining various facts about the works and the painters. At any rate, this particular docent was named Carol Walker. She was completely unimpressive during her initial interview, and, in fact, I was advised against hiring her. Something about her though…”
    Margot shook her head.
    “Something about her piqued my interest. It was almost completely intangible, but it was there, nevertheless. An ardent love of painting, and everything about it. Well, at any rate, I hired her. Within a few weeks, she had developed a method of lecturing about paintings that was—well, completely revolutionary. She connected a series of computers which she set up in the middle of a particular gallery with lights that she had somehow secreted around the room—and she was able to create a kind of holograph. A new visual world that engulfed the patrons as they stood there. I only saw a few of her presentations before I left to come to Bay St. Lucy. But I was completely overwhelmed by what I saw. At any rate, Ms. Walker apparently remained hated by some of the museum’s higher ups—unimaginative administrative types—but her following increased. I got word a month or so ago from various people that the museum had received a very large grant to help them explore the possibilities of multi-media presentations within the museum.”
    “It sounds fascinating,” said Alanna. “But how…”
    “Why don’t we invite Carol Walker to come here and give one of her presentations, say, in July? We can surely afford the multi-media apparatus. And the woman owes me her job. Surely she would come.”
    And thus the idea was hatched.
    Carol Walker would come to Bay St. Lucy.
    And the old Robinson mansion, erstwhile hangout of gangsters and thieves, would now become the home of Monet’s Water lillies.

CHAPTER TWO:   BOXES

    At approximately the same moment on a Friday afternoon that a plot was being hatched to invite Carol Walker to Bay St. Lucy, the young woman herself was preparing for a meeting with Rebecca Simpson, a museum administrator who’d never liked her.
    The office she was to report to was near the entrance to the Modern Wing.
    Carol entered a door that led off the main corridor and was engulfed in a series of smaller corridors, by a stream of men in white jackets pushing wheelbarrows in front of them. The men all had on blue caps. There was no writing on their uniforms. But she did note that the men walking toward