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

her.
    Nine o’clock.
    She took pleasure in knowing that the phone would ring soon, and it would ring several times in the following hour. Frank’s sister would call from Shreveport. It was always good to hear from her. Tom and Phyllis, a couple she and Frank had enjoyed many good times with, would call from Little Rock.
    And there were two or three others, old friends, even a few acquaintances from here in Bay St. Lucy.
    Alanna Delafosse would undoubtedly call.
    Always a pleasure to hear from Alanna, who seemed in a state of perpetual ecstasy, whether the occasion was Christmas Eve or some dreary Monday morning in late February.
    It was a game she enjoyed playing as she sat and watched the little phone.
    Nine fifteen now.
    Who would call first?
    What news would she be told?
    What cheery bit of business would further add to the quiet sanctity of the evening?
      A minute later the phone did ring.
    She flipped it open and said, excitedly:
    “This is Nina! Merry Christmas! Who is it?”
    “Moon Rivard down at the sheriff’s office. Some guy named Max Lirpa is here drunk. You need to post bail for him.”
    “I…”
    “He’s here with Tom Broussard. Broussard’s drunk too. Better get here quick before I kill one of them.”
    “All right.”
    Moon hung up.
    And there it was: Nina’s Christmas present!

    “No man can write who is not first a humanitarian”                                     –– William Faulkner

          
    Bay St. Lucy’s jail was not a nice place. It could not have been labeled ‘convivial.’ It exuded no sense of intimacy and it lacked the warmth that Nina had felt while sitting comfortably in her arm chair.
    No, rather it was dank, rusted, murky, dirty, cheerless, cold, cramped, and stinking of urine. Its walls would have been completely covered by the vilest known graffiti, had it not been for the fact that the bile green paint upon which this graffiti had been scrawled was constantly peeling off and disintegrating   in small pools of some kind of acid which continually collected on the concrete floor.
    She did not like it.
    She did not like having to visit it.
    Especially on Christmas Eve.
    And so she was in no better mood than Moon Rivard was when he let her into the sheriff’s office, offered her a cup of coffee (she did not accept), sat her down at a desk, gave her several papers to sign, and asked for a check for two hundred dollars.
    She wondered if there was that much in her account.
    Oh, well, what could they do to her if the check bounced?
    Put her in jail?
    My God, they could, couldn’t they?
    “What were they doing?”
    Moon scratched his iron gray hair and shook his iron gray head.
    “Fighting. Drunk as skunks and fighting. This Lirpa guy gave me your name, said you’d come down and get him out. Apparently he doesn’t know anybody else in town. How do you know him?”
    “He’s a teacher.”
    “A what?”
    “A teacher.”
    “The hell he is!”
    “I know, I know, it seems strange, but there it is.”
    “What does the damned fool teach?”
    “English.”
    “Is that what he’s speaking?”
    “It is when he’s sober; I don’t know what he’s speaking now. What about Tom, how is he getting out?”
    “I called Penelope down at the docks. She’s on her way over here now.”
    “Mad?”
    Moon rolled his eyes.
    “That woman knows words…”
    “I know. Maybe it would have been better to keep Tom in jail. He would have been safe, anyway.”
    “Yeah, maybe. Except I ain’t about to stay here all night with those two tomcats. I got a family to get home to. It’s Christmas Eve.”
    “Yes,” she sighed. “Yes, it is.”
    “Well. Let’s go down and get the English professor out of the can.”
    He led the way across the room, then opened a door which led down to the cells.
    The winding stairway was narrow, and pools of water glistened as her sneakers plopped and splashed upon them.
    Finally, the stairs opened into a small