The Dreeson Incident(166)

It was admirable. The girl had recalled many nuances that an experienced observer might have missed. But how to record them, make them permanent, distribute them?



"I sure wish," Preston Richards said, "that Grantville had an Identikit setup. But we didn't."



Explanations followed.



"Lenore can do it," Wes Jenkins said.



"Do what?" Richards asked.



"Make sketches from Minnie's description. You should have seen the sketches she gave Clara for Christmas, that she did from Mom's old family photos."



"Lenore?" Don Francisco asked.



"My older daughter."



"Can you bring her here?"



"She is here. Well, not right here, but downstairs and in the other wing. She's a records transcriber for Chuck Riddle's setup. We can take Minnie down there."



"Someone take her, then. Not you. I have more questions about the Fulda end of things." Don Francisco looked around the room for a surplus participant in the meeting. "You do it, Stone."





Lenore understood almost right away. She listened to Minnie go through her descriptions, again and again. She produced a set of sketches. Not just a "mug shot" but also full length views of the sniper from various angles, showing what he was wearing and how he held his body. It was amazing what her idea of placing the railings and balustrades of the bridge behind him contributed. Height, set of shoulders, angle of the head.



It took quite a while. As Minnie and Lenore worked, Ron wandered around the office.



As they were getting ready to leave, he pointed at the prints up over Lenore's desk. "What are those?" he asked.



"A classical Greek temple. It's called the Erechtheum."



"I mean, the women who are standing there where you'd expect a column to be."



"They're called caryatids."



"Cool."



Ron looked at them again, more closely. "I've never seen anything of the kind, before. I'm impressed."



He was impressed. They were absolutely magnificent.



The reminded him of Missy. Hairdos. Faces. Shapes. Posture.



Maybe that was why she got to him so. What kind of a guy would make do with "cute" or merely "pretty" when, with a little luck, he could have stupendous?



Lenore was her cousin, but didn't look a thing like her.



"You know," he said. "I don't think I've ever seen Missy in a dress. She says she doesn't look good in dresses. But she would look wonderful in a dress like that."





Don Francisco was delighted with the sketches of the assassin. The etcher whom he employed to make the plates did an excellent job. The pictures appeared in every newspaper in the USE with facilities to duplicate them. Often as cruder woodcuts, to be sure, but still showing the essence of the man's appearance.



He hoped that Locquifier and Ducos would be profoundly annoyed.



He was quite impressed with the competence of the girl Minnie. Plus, he had that letter from Denise Beasley. The Grantvillers told him that the two were close friends.





Chapter 55





Haarlem, the Netherlands


Don Francisco sent Cory Joe Lang off to the Netherlands to try to deal with the various threads that led to Laurent Mauger.



In the course of gathering information, Cory Joe looked up his mother, even if reluctantly, and then went up to Leiden to talk to Jean-Louis LaChapelle again. He also met Mauger's half-niece, LaChapelle's half-cousin, Alida Pieterz.



Alida reacted to the tow-blond hair on top of Cory Joe's head much the way Jean-Louis LaChapelle had reacted to his half-sister Pam. A reaction which he fully reciprocated. Cory Joe wondered with some amusement whether there was actually a chemical reaction between members of the Mauger and Hardesty family lines—one that could be measured by someone like Bill Hudson if he had the chance and the proper set of calipers.



Jean-Louis had been delighted to receive the letter and lava lamp report from Pam.



Laurent Mauger was amazed and totally bewildered when the two young men announced that they wished to initiate marriage negotiations with the stated purpose of strengthening the business and personal ties in the new family alliance between Grantville and Mauger's enterprises.



He certainly had no objections, since this might ameliorate the objections that the children of one of his half-sisters and one of his sisters might raise in the future in regard to the inheritance status of the child that his adored Velma was carrying.



There were no guarantees of that, but it might help. Additionally, Lang was prepared to be most accommodating in the matter of Alida's nonexistent dowry. In fact, Lang said that he didn't give a damn whether she had one or not, if she was prepared to live on what he earned.