Game Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 3) by T'Gracie Reese, Joe Reese Read Free Book Online Page A

neglect, as certain areas do, for no discernable reason. It had been home to prosperous middle class families (though never to wealthy ones); these had been replaced by a certain economic level of off-shore oil workers who lived in the homes only sporadically and thus allowed them to decay; these had been replaced by painters, curio makers, and postcard writers, who lived as artists do and there needed nothing more to be said about that; and these last had been replaced by nothing at all except the novelist and drunkard Tom Broussard, who inhabited a shack that was safe to live in merely because the area had become feared by the town’s criminals and was inhabited only by stray dogs that had gotten poisoned somewhere else and had come there to die.
    Somehow, improbably, in the mix of all this, was the shell of an ancient Dairy Queen, its red neon sign crumbling, the pavement of its parking lot cracked and weed infested.
    The sun hung low in the winter sky, a dusky plate covered by the volcanic ash that passed for cloud cover over southern Mississippi in this somehow simultaneously benign and threatening off-time of year.
    She got out of the minivan.
    A rabble of students stood before her looking like zombies, but staring at her as though she was the zombie.
    In many schools this was something coaches would have taken care of.
    Big coaches, their heads shaven bald, whistles dangling around their meaty necks.
    But Nina was—well, not the kind of principal to leave things to other people.
    “Afternoon, everybody.”
    Silence.
    Faces looking down.
    A few nervous giggles.
    The zombies getting together at the dead Dairy Queen to bury onion rings and disembowel hot dogs.
    “What’s going on?”
    No answer of course.
    Small conversations.
    Snide remarks.
    An indeterminate and chirpy voice from somewhere in the crowd:
    “Good afternoon to you, Ma’am!”
    Laughter.
    She stepped forward.
    She was now in the middle of a circle of students.
    Chuckles, animal noises, more giggles, and the imitation of various body parts.
    “Who’s fighting?”
    Silence.
    Even the giggles stopped.
    “Who’s fighting?”
    Finally one gawky red-headed boy appeared, having taken one step into the center of the circle of onlookers. He’d taken off his shirt.
    “Tom Baxter,” she said.
    She knew him, of course, from church; and from the fact that she’d taught both his parents.
    “Yes, Ma’am.”
    “Who are you fighting today, Tom?”
    Nina sensed movement behind her and turned.
    Another boy, a bigger one, a swarthier one, a more menacing one, a living boy who would have been less menacing had he in fact been a zombie and thus to some degree decayed—stepped forward and said nothing.
    She stared at him for a second or so, then said:
    “Tony Zerrapini.”
    Tony Zerrapini nodded.
    The center of a hurricane hung over them; air pressure dropped by fifty points or so and Nina asked herself the question that had often formed in her mind: namely, which was more terrible despite its romantic and completely deceptive veneer: violence itself, or the moments preceding it?
    “Tony, your father is working on an oil rig right now. Fifteen miles offshore. Your mother’s cleaning fish down at the wharf. Tom, I’ve taught both of your parents. Years ago. I’ve known all of you for more years than I remember.”
    Then:
    “This is Bay St. Lucy. We’re a community here. We work together: always have.”
    Dead silence for a few seconds.
    Ten seconds.
    An eternity.
    “We’re not in school now,” came a voice from the back of the crowd.
    To which Nina, in something like a split second, replied:
    “Yes you are.”
    More silence.
    She repeated:
    “Yes you are.”
    From somewhere in the distance came the wail of a siren.
    It grew louder, then faded away.
    “Shit,” said somebody.
    The crowd began to disperse.
    Somehow the two antagonists had disappeared.
    Within two minutes she was standing by herself.

 
    CHAPTER 5: THE OXFORD MAN

    On Tuesday morning