The Dreeson Incident(165)

"You'll have to deal with it some day, you know," Chad said. "My business. Businesses. Chip certainly isn't going to."



She put her hand on the corner of the piano.



"Nothing urgent," he said. "Nothing to interfere with getting your education for the next few years. But eventually. That's something to tuck away in your mind. Fit into your schedule as time goes on."





"Damn it, Tino! No." Ed Piazza was close to exploding.



"The county board had to do something about replacing Henry. We couldn't just let it hang. Not with everything else that's going on. I got the most votes in the county board election last year, so they picked me as interim mayor. I'll finish out his term."



Chad Jenkins stood up. "You will not fill out his term. The county charter provides for a special election. That's what we'll have. Whether you and Frisch like it or not."



Tino stomped out. Chad tuned to Ed. "I'd feel happier about it if we had any idea who ought to succeed Henry. I've talked to Willie Ray and to several others. All we come up with is blank minds. The Crown Loyalists will nominate either Tino Nobili or Hartmuth Frisch, I suppose. I just can't predict what our caucus will do."





"The meeting will now come to order." Willie Ray Hudson, as local party chairman, banged the gavel.



He looked around. The auditorium at the middle school was packed. There must be fifty copies of Robert's Rules of Order in the room. At least three-quarters of them in German.



"The floor is now open for nominations."



About a hundred hands went up.



One of them belonging to Orval McIntire. The rest of them belonging to a caucus of women all sitting together over on the left side.



Well, the majority rules. Especially under these circumstances.



He motioned. "Inez."



She didn't stand up. She couldn't. She was still in a wheel chair.



"We're together," she said. "All of us. Ronnie's going to speak."



Veronica got up.



"Not everybody's going off to Bamberg," she said. "Somebody's got to take care of this town. We've got a candidate. She was the executive assistant to the Emergency Committee, right after the Ring of Fire. She was executive assistant to Mike Stearns when he was president of the NUS. When he went off to Magdeburg and Ed Piazza took over, she stayed here in town and she's been working for Ed ever since. She knows how things work."



"Not to mention," Veleda Riddle muttered, loudly enough to be heard by almost everyone, "where all the bodies are buried."



Ronnie was still reading her prepared speech. "She is civic-minded. She has been an active member of the League of Women Voters ever since it was founded. Her husband's business is here, so she's going to have to quit her state job. So, we . . ." She stopped and waved at the group. "All of us. We nominate Liz Carstairs to run for mayor of West Virginia County on the Fourth of July Party ticket."





"Well, I'll be damned," Ed said. "If that didn't come at us right out of left field."



Chad Jenkins nodded in agreement.



Annabelle and Debbie looked at each other, wondering once more at the innocence of the male of the species about so many things.



"Not," Annabelle said, "if you really sit down and think about it."



"Can Liz win?" Joe Stull asked. "Against Frisch?"



"Yes," every woman in the room said at once.





Veda Mae Haggerty was sitting in the Willard Hotel dining room again—for lunch, this time—when she said what she said about Veronica Dreeson. Again.



It was pretty much what she had read in the pamphlet. About how all Krauts were anti-Jewish and Ronnie hadn't been there with Henry when he was shot, so she had probably been a supporter of that mob of Krauts who were attacking the synagogue.



She said it very loudly. A lot of other people were listening.



The popular disapproval was general. Except, of course, among those people who thought there might be something in it.



She gave her lunch partner a copy of the pamphlet and assured her that Jacques-Pierre Dumais could explain what it all meant.



Pam Hardesty had not realized, in advance, how many incredibly boring, unpleasant people an apprentice spook had to be nice to. She went home, wrote up her longest report so far, even longer than the one about the garage, and sent it to Cory Joe.





Don Francisco was pleased. It was so nice to know more or less what one was looking for. It enabled one to concentrate on the needles and ignore most of the haystack.





"That's the best description that I can give," Minnie said.



"It is admirable," Don Francisco said. "You should not criticize yourself."