Read Game Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 3) for Free Online

coffee, more probably bourbon or some unknown brew even stronger, was his wife of not quite a year, Penelope Royale.
    Penelope had recognized that, as the town’s most obscene speaker—she spoke only in obscenities––she shared kinship with Tom, the town’s most successful dirty novelist, and the two had married.
    Before the marriage, each had lived the most disreputable lifestyle imaginable. Penelope had a small living space down by the boat docks, and apparently, as far as anyone could tell, survived by eating bait. Tom’s place was worse, and no one knew how he survived.  
    After the marriage, nothing apparently changed for either of them.
    They each lived precisely as they had before.
    Penelope kept her shack; Tom kept his.
    And now they were here like everyone else.
    Honoring her.
    Penelope stepped forward and announced:
    “Nina, we––––––but––––––if we don’t––––––and you––––––deserve it!”
    Laughter, applause—
    And then they were upon her.

    The party lasted until well after midnight, and involved the consumption on Nina’s part of at least two glasses of champagne.
    Perhaps three.
    At any rate, too many for a hard working woman on the eve of a scary day.
    It did end, though, as all deliciously evil things must, and slightly before one AM, she found herself in yet another car, being taken home, not by Jackson Bennett, who had been forced to leave early, but by Paul Cox.
    His car meandered through the deserted streets, and his aquiline, almost birdlike, face reflected in the glow of the dashboard.
    “Well, this is it.”
    “This was wonderful, Paul. I can’t tell you how thrilled it made me feel. Thank you for organizing it.”
    “I didn’t organize it. Your friends did. And you have a lot of them.”
    “I know. I’m lucky.”
    He nodded and slowed the car, as they turned onto Beachfront Boulevard, which would lead down to the sea and her shack.
    “We’re the ones who are lucky. The whole town.”
    “I hope I’ll do okay.”
    “You’ll do fine.”
    “There are so many things to remember, so many things that come up every day.”
    “Just trust the people working around you. And trust your judgment.”
    He was silent for a time.
    The orange-lighted square windows of her shack loomed up before them.
    The car stopped. Even though the windows of Paul’s van were tightly closed, she could still hear the roar of the surf.
    And there was Furl, outlined in the window, looking down.
    “Nina…”
    “Yes, Paul?”
    “There is one more thing I need to tell you.”
    She stared at him across the seat.
    “What is it?”
    “Something I just learned today. We all just learned it today.”
    “All right. Go on.”
    “Well––”
    “Let me have it. Get it over with.”
    “I’d heard that something like this might happen. Politics being the way politics always are. And of course, it’s all politics.”
    “What’s happened?”
    “Nina, there’s been a new appointee.”
    “What kind of an appointee?”
    He shook his head.
    “You know that the world in Jackson—like pretty much the whole country—is divided in its way of looking at things.”
    “Yes. Go on.”
    “Well, my appointment as educational consultant to the governor reflects one of those ways of seeing the world. I’m viewed as a reformer.”  
    “Who is the appointee?”
    “A woman I don’t really know, and haven’t met. She’s to be the new ‘Commissioner of Educational Excellence for Southwest Louisiana,’ based in Hattiesburg. She has broad ranging powers.”
    “Over me?”
    “Over pretty much everybody. She answers to people who oppose the governor. But those people have a lot of power—and so does she.”
    “Power to achieve what goal?”
    “Get the test scores up.”
    “Oh God.”
    “Yes. And keep the schools running like—well, like these people want the schools to run.”
    “Oh God.”
    “There’s still time to quit.”
    She felt herself laughing softly as