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

continue: “I have a kind of––well, a kind of commission to do.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “I’m to look into buying a plantation house.”
    “A whole plantation house?”
    “Yes.”
    “For whom?”
    “I’ve been asked to look at it by a group of colleagues from Chicago. People I used to know from my days in fundraising.”
    “All right; and why does this group want to buy a plantation house?”
    “They’ve conceived a plan to offer singers, painters, writers, etc., a kind of retreat.”
    “Retreat?”
    “Yes. Artists spend their lives charging. Administrators such as myself and the group I’ll be meeting at the plantation spend our lives retreating. It’s what we do. We’re always looking over our shoulder to see if someone is coming up behind us to hit us over the head with the fact that we have no actual talent.”
    “You retreat.”
    “Constantly. And so this group has conceived a place where artists from the North can come to the South and be anesthetized.”
    “They can rest.”
    Margot shook her head.
    “Artists never rest. But they can come here and be warm, and stroll across the grounds, and suffer in a more comfortable climate than might otherwise be possible. Also, they can perhaps meet some people from Mississippi, which will give them something to make fun of when they return home.”
    “Do you have to put any money into this venture?”
    “No. It’s all from other sources. Mostly places where there is money and nothing to do with it.”
    “Well, that doesn’t sound too difficult. It should be an easy thing for you to do.”
    “It wouldn’t be difficult, except for one thing.”
    “What thing?”
    “The place is haunted.”
    “It’s what?”
    “It’s haunted.”
    “Who haunts it?”
    “Ghosts haunt it. Or at least ghosts are going to be haunting it, when I will be there.”
    “Ghosts are not real, Margot.”
    “They’re as real as paintings. And if it weren’t for paintings, I wouldn’t have had a career.”
    “I suppose there’s a kind of twisted logic there, somewhere.”
    “The logic is not twisted. It’s perfectly reasonable, and in line with common sense. Also—there will be other ghosts. The group of people that is going to be there. Several of them will be ghosts.”
    “How is that possible?”
    “It’s possible because these people were alive to me once, in another life, quite another life entirely—and then they were dead to me, to my existence. And now I’m sure I don’t know which they will be when I see them: dead or alive. So do you want to go?”
    “And why do you want me to go?”
    “Because of the ghosts. They’re real, and I need protection from them. I’m going to a haunted house, Nina. It’s HAUNTED HAUNTED HAUNTED AND THERE ARE GHOSTS GHOSTS GHOSTS EVERYWHERE AND THEY TERRIFY ME!”
    “I can’t go.”
    “Why not?”
    “Last night Paul and Macy Cox asked me to come back to the high school and be the new principal.”
    “They asked you what?”
    “To be the new principal.”
    Margot stood up.
    “That is absolutely the most ridiculous, fantastic, utterly unbelievable thing I’ve ever heard.”
    And, not stubbing out her cigarette, Margot walked out of the garden.

    So the plan to discuss, at length, the entire matter with Margot, did not exactly work out.
    There was, of course, another option, for Nina had at least one more friend she could confide in.
    It thus happened that the following conversation took place along a stretch of beach some half mile distant from her shack, in the early afternoon, with the wintry disc of a washed out sun playing ragtag with the shreds of clouds, and the mournful bray of an oil tanker serving as bass backdrop for the screeching of what seemed an abnormally large number of seagulls.
    “I’m not sure what to do about this.”
    “So what’s your initial thought?”
    “That it’s crazy.”
    “Then turn it down.”
    “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not that crazy.”
    “Why isn’t