Free Climate Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 7) by T'Gracie Reese, Joe Reese Page A

madly scribbling.
    “Take that red Ford pickup over there. The keys will still be in it. You can drive a stick shift, can’t   you?”
    “I used to be able to. I think it will come back to me.”
    “All right then. Drive right into town until you cross Main Street. Take a right, go a quarter of a mile, and you’ll come to Jarrod Wilson’s General Store. Jarrod can get anything, and from any of the other stores in town, even the big Wal Mart on the Southside. He’s become a good friend of Goldmann and me. Give him this note, tell him to put everything on our tab, and tell him he’s got to hurry.”
    Nina looked at the note.
    “Oh,” she said, understanding now the importance of her errand.
    “You understand?”
    “I understand.”
    “Good.”
    So saying, Margot whirled and walked-ran toward the house.

    The truck was old and ramshackle, and the gear shift was a stick extending up from the floor. But she’d driven such a vehicle when she was teen-ager, and had delivered prescriptions from the pharmacy owned by her father. It took only a short time for her to remember how the thing worked, and memories of her childhood and her parents came flooding back to her as she and the truck rattled across the entrance bridge over a small stream, then made their way out through the dense woods and turned onto the highway into Abbeyport.
    She turned on the truck’s radio, scanned the various channels as she had the day before on the trip up from Bay St. Lucy.
    “What I hate—and I think the whole country hates—about the liberals is that––”
    “Marsha, I think what these right-wing conservative groups have forgotten to take into account is that––”
    Blaaah de blaaah de blaaah.
    Until:
    “One cautionary piece of advice for the people of south Texas and Louisiana:   Hurricane Clarence is picking up steam, but he seems to have altered his course slightly. Rather than heading for Matagorda Island south of Houston, he seems to be making his way farther north and east, with probable landfall 34 hours from now in the area around Beaumont. At this point wind gusts up to––”
    Keep scanning.
    Beaumont.
    That would be hard rain indeed for Bay St. Lucy.
    But Beaumont was Beaumont and not southern Mississippi.
    Nothing to worry about.
    Not really.
    And so she drove on, mind alternating between the hazy golden years of high school and the strange group that awaited her upon return to Candles.
    Cozy writers.
    Cats.
    Well, at least they were not, as Amidon Phillips had said, real writers.
    At least they were not Tom Broussard.
    Thirty Tom Broussards.
    No wonder the staff had quit.
    Of course, it must be said, this group did not consist entirely of little old ladies, either.
    But still, how much trouble could they be?
    So pondering, she pulled into the outskirts of Abbeyport, drove past the obligatory fast food restaurants, turned onto Main Street, parked, located the black and red neon sign that said “Jarrod’s General Store,” and walked into it.
    There was a musty air about it, and she savored the look and feel of the dark-stained hardwood floor, the copper ceiling, the slightly too close together aisles of disparate this and that, slightly related and barely useful but fun to look at that and this.
    Power tools.
    Plates.
    A small display of clocks.
    “Yes, Ma’am, how can I help you, Ma’am?”
    A white-haired older man with a white apron leaned across the store’s main counter and peered over his gold- rimmed glasses:
    “Welcome to Jarrods’!” he went on, smiling broadly. “Whatever you want, well, we probably got some of it!”
    Nina made her way around two aisles and approached the counter.
    She took from her pants pocket the note Margot had scrawled for her, opened it, and said to the counter-man:
    “I want four hundred and fifty pounds of cat litter.”
    He stared back at her.
    Finally, he asked:
    “I beg your pardon?”
    She repeated:
    “I want four hundred and fifty pounds of cat litter.”
    He