The Dreeson Incident(193)

This led to a foray up the stairs, as soon as Missy and Ron finished carrying Mrs. Wiley down, to see Grandpa and Clara. And the new aunt. Wes, who had taken a perch on the toy chest, showed them the baby.



That was an aunt? Mikey and Tom were sadly disillusioned. Aunts were, by definition, old enough to take kids to the park. Each of the three girls began to assume that defiant "I'm the baby" expression.



Kortney called for Ron and Missy to bring Inez' wheelchair back upstairs so they could move Clara and the baby into the master bedroom.



Chandra sighed. One of these days she would have to try to decide, in a methodical and analytical way, sensibly, practically, what to do about Nathan and their marriage. Some day when she had time. Probably about the same time the cows came home. She headed for the kitchen.





The phones were still down, which was only a mild hindrance to circulation of the news of the Jenkins' blessed event. Starting at Cora's during breakfast, where it was announced by Veronica on her way to work, with a secondary source at the administration building once the offices opened and Don Francisco confirmed the outcome, and tertiary sources at the middle school and high school courtesy of Minnie and Denise, it simply flew.



"Fifteen minutes" was designated as the winning bet. It had a flair that attracted bettors. The more academic conclusions reached by the health class at the high school were a distant third. They had been based on "fifteen minutes" as the starting point, anyway, which was part of the reason that Vic Saluzzo had been so annoyed by the project. This meant that there was no single large winner to take the pool. "Fifteen minutes" had been the most popular odds by far.



An intransigent coalition of Grantville wives obtained the book that Irv Sonderman had been keeping at the Thuringen Gardens and forced the winners to pay up to the Red Cross.



Outwardly, the happy grandmother accepted the donation graciously. It was a substantial amount of money and the organization had a lot of obligations.



Inwardly, Eleanor Jenkins ground her teeth.





Preston Richards looked at the rest of the people around the table. Politics. Politics was always a problem when it impinged on what should be straightforward police business. But here were Ed Piazza and Don Francisco Nasi, who said that Mike and Rebecca were waiting at the other end of the telegraph to put their two bits in. Arnold Bellamy. Not Wes Jenkins. Someone might need to express an opinion that it would be too hard for Wes to hear. Not to mention that he had a new baby at home.



The issue, once again, was how to deal with the Bryant Holloway situation. More specifically, how to handle his death. The death, obviously, had to be announced. How much of the circumstances had to be announced seemed to be negotiable. The only outsiders who definitely knew about it, Nasi said, were Nathan and Chandra Prickett.



In other words, the State of Thuringia-Franconia could attempt to minimize external interest in Holloway's role. Now that he was dead, to what extent would justice be served, Don Francisco asked, by making a federal case of it? Literally. Since the papers were safely in hand, his role could be perceived as entirely local. An unwitting dupe. A sympathizer who ended up holding the bag. That would be enough to explain why he headed out of town.



Which was why the other side of the table was occupied by Veronica and Inez. Also Christin George. The widows. Ed Piazza insisted that they should be asked, at least, whether they would find it tolerable if one of the guilty parties, being dead, should be allowed to escape with an, if not unscathed, at least only minimally scathed reputation. If there was such a word as scathed.



"Are you sure that Nathan and Chandra will keep their mouths shut about that chase down to Frankfurt?" Veronica Dreeson directed the question to Don Francisco.



"There is very little certainty in this world," Don Francisco admitted.



"The people who would be most harmed by puffing up Holloway's importance in it all are Lenore and Weshelle. I can't believe that Chandra would want to hurt them," Inez Wiley said. "And he really wasn't that important."



"I agree," Don Francisco said. "All the information that I have is that Mrs. Prickett's relationship to her sister and niece is close and loving. There does not seem to be any immediate reason to assume that she would not prefer to protect them."



"This doesn't cause problems from the perspective of your department?" Ed Piazza asked.



"No new data about the incident is likely to be gained by 'plastering the information all over the place,' as Mike Stearns said to me earlier," Don Francisco said. "It may in fact be preferable to let things rest and remain with the story that Holloway was shot by unknown hands while driving to Frankfurt to visit his brother-in-law. Without adding anything about why he was driving to Frankfurt. Possibly, someone else will become careless."