Sea Change (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 1) by T'Gracie Reese, Joe Reese Read Free Book Online

it’s only right that you should represent us in taking back what’s rightfully ours.”
    “Thank you, Jackson.   It’s very gratifying that you should say that.”
    “I only wish Frank could be going with you.”
    “Yes. He’d want to stay at the Monteleone, of course.”
    Jackson Bennett’s smile became a grin:
    “And have a beer at Napoleon House.”
    “Yes.   With all their old opera records.”
    “So.   Will you go for us?”
    “I’d be happy to.”
    “The reading will take place in attorney’s chambers tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock. We can fly you over tomorrow morning.   Will that work for you?”
    “Of course.”
    “If you wanted to stay over a night, enjoy the city––”
    She shook her head:
    “No. That’s all right. I have a cat to feed tomorrow night.   But Jackson––”
    “Yes?”
    “I don’t know why but—it just seems that one of us should...I mean, someone from Bay St. Lucy should––”
    “Should what, Nina?”
    “Should pay last respects.   It just seems right.”
    He was silent for a time.   Then:
    “Most people here wouldn’t want to do that.”
    “I know.   But I do.”
    “And that’s probably why you’re the one to go to New Orleans.”
    “Perhaps.”
    “Ok.   I’ll find out where the body can be viewed.”
    “I would appreciate that.”
    “Glad to do it.”
    Silence for a time.
    Then Jackson Bennett, getting to his feet, said:
    “After   all those years, the town is free.”
    She nodded:
    “And that mansion.   Standing there, eroding, little by little––”
    “With the town powerless to tear it down; powerless to fix it up.”
    “A cancer, right in our middle.”
    “That’s all over now.”
    “I hope so, Jackson.”
    “Like I say, there’s nothing to worry about.”
    She herself stood, and walked in front of him to the office door, leading the way by a step, just as she always did with Frank.
    Frank, who seemed to be there with them now, smiling, but holding out two palms in a cautionary way, shaking his head, and saying:
    There is always something to worry about.
    So thinking, she said good bye, descended the stairs, and headed off to her ten o’clock appointment with Macy’s Beowulf class.

CHAPTER FOUR:   THE HIGH SCHOOL AND THE JETTY

    “Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective’s struggle to solve a problem.”

    Raymond Chandler

    “In literature, as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.”

    Andres Maurois

    She reached the high school at precisely ten o’clock, entering to find the normal scene of bedlam that occurs in any high school at the hourly bell that sends the students storming into the hallways.  
    “Darn,” she muttered to herself, miffed that she, a veteran teacher, had let herself be trapped this way.
    The first rule of teaching—at least high school teaching—was:
    Never be trapped in the hallway with the students.
    Frequently, she’d told herself that Tolstoy, and only in the most violent and dramatic portions of War and Peace (perhaps the beginning lines of the Battle of Borodino) could do justice to what actually transpired;   the football players hurling themselves against the lockers, bald-shaven coaches grabbing players, placing them in headlocks and, knuckles rubbing on their crew-cuts, shouting over and over again:
    “Whaddya think, Suggs?   Whaddya think, Suggs?”
    ––this, whether the player’s name actually was “Suggs” or not.
    She stood as clear from the mélange as possible, secreting herself in a niche she’d discovered years ago between the trophy case and a large paper mache anchor, which told the world that Bay St. Lucy’s denizens were “The Mariners.”
    “Nina!”
    Paul Cox, far handsomer and more efficient than any of the principals she’d ever worked for (all of whom either hid in their offices, or prowled the building getting in everyone’s way) approached