Ron and Missy formed a chair with their arms and carried Inez upstairs to where Clara was. Ron ran back down for the wheel chair.
Denise, spotting her motorcycle next to the front steps, grabbed the stacks of paper someone had stuffed into the sidecar, dumped them into the playpen that Weshelle had obviously outgrown, and headed for Leahy. If she couldn't get Kortney, she could get someone medical at the hospital.
Kortney, thank goodness, was there. Denise had a funny feeling that there wasn't much time to spare. Kortney picked up her own baby, loaded her into a chest sling, and grabbed the kit she used for home deliveries.
From the things Clara was saying, loudly, clearly, and entirely in German, it was obvious that she had a firm grasp on who she held ultimately responsible for the whole situation.
"Minnie," Veronica said, "Go downtown and find Wes. Get hold of Wes Jenkins, somehow. I don't care how. Legislative chambers, senator's office. Now."
To Minnie, the obvious solution was the other motorcycle. She dumped the second set of papers out of the sidecar into Weshelle's abandoned playpen.
Minnie braked to a stop. Thinking back briefly to the obvious ire with which several policepersons had viewed her motorized dash through the "pedestrians only" section of town, she decided to take the motorcycle into the building with her.
Its arrival was not greeted with a smile of welcome by the security guard.
To whom she said, "Stuff it, dimbulb. Make sure none of the law and order types haul it off, either. Mrs. Jenkins is having a baby right now and I've come to fetch her husband. Where is he?"
Leaving them both, man and machine, in the over-full hallway, she pelted up the stairs and right into the middle of a rather large meeting of political higher-ups before the guard could verbalize his protest.
Her arrival got their attention. Her statement riveted it.
"Clara is fully dilated according to Mrs. Wiley, she's at home because Lenore couldn't get anyone on the phone, and Mrs. Dreeson wants Mr. Jenkins to come before the baby does, so cough him up. Denise went off to Leahy to get Kortney Pence. Ron Stone and Missy Jenkins are helping Mrs. Wiley, since she's still in a wheel chair, and Chandra is chasing Weshelle."
Wes dashed out the door. Minnie followed him.
"Not exactly a cast of thousands," Ed Piazza grinned, "but it seems to be mounting up. Reaching, at least, a level equivalent to the number of extras in a Jesuit outdoor drama."
"I do believe he forgot his briefcase," Arnold Bellamy said. "First time in his life, probably. I've always enjoyed working with Wes. He's so methodical."
"Well, put it in his office so he can pick it up tomorrow," Ed said.
Arnold frowned. "Is this kind of thing getting to be a habit? First Anita Masaniello in the middle of a field, now Clara Jenkins in the middle of a phone outage? It can't be good for the public image of the Department of International Affairs."
"Fascinating," Francisco Nasi said. "Relevant information only, arranged in order of importance, and condensed into a terse report. And she's the same one who provided the splendid description of the assassin. Who is that girl?"
Chapter 62
Grantville
In the sidecar of Minnie's hog, Wes was having the first motorcycle ride of his life. He profoundly hoped it would be the last.
By Minnie's standards, it was quite sedate. Of course, because of the artificial eye, she had only limited depth perception. Even though she compensated very well, as Buster had told her when he was teaching her, it still added a certain something to the way she approached stop signs, other vehicles, and pedestrians. Especially after dark.
Half way there, she leaned over and said, as she slowed slightly for a stop sign, "By the way. You can forget that Holloway guy who beat up your daughter. He bought it."
"I should have done something, considering how he treated Lenore."
"You'd have blown a fuse if you'd caught him, Mr. Jenkins. Pardon my saying so. You'd have messed it up. Let it go."
"What happened?"
"You know he was mixed up in what happened at the synagogue? Or, at least, in what was going on at the hospital that pulled all the police away?"
Wes nodded; then realized that she couldn't see him. At least, he hoped she wasn't going to glance down at him while she was steering this mechanical beast through the dark at the speed to which she had now accelerated. So he said, "Yes."
"Denise didn't get mad. She got even. And he started it."
Wes nodded. Then he remembered again that Minnie couldn't see him and said "Yes."
Somewhere, back in college, he had read a play. The Furies. Three women. Bringers of retribution. Three of them. Gretchen Richter, so tall and blonde. Denise Beasley, so tiny and brunette. And one-eyed Minnie Hugelmair, who had started to sing.
"His chariots of wrath the great thunderclouds form,
And dark is his path on the wings of the storm."
He shuddered a little. He had sung that hymn a hundred times in the Methodist church. He had never understood it until now. It sounded different when Minnie sang it.
Bryant Holloway had been far from the only person "mixed up" in the events that had led to Henry Dreeson's assassination and Buster Beasley's death. He wondered how even Denise and Minnie intended to get.
"Thanks, Ron." The boy had enough lab training that Kortney had found him to be the most practical help of all the people here when she called for this and that out of her bag. Inez's mobility was still pretty limited. "That's it."
Kortney handed the baby off to Inez and, with Veronica's help, went back to taking care of Clara, who was still hearing and speaking only German. Veronica stubbornly repeated " gesundes Kind " and deftly evaded " ein Maedchen " until Kortney waved a little sponge under the new mother's nose. In Veronica's opinion, every new mother wanted to hear "healthy child," but "it's a girl" was the kind of news best delivered by the father. Who wasn't here yet.
Inez, who was no slouch herself and fully cognizant of the general speculation about the precise nature of Missy Jenkins' and Ron Stone's intentions toward one another, drafted Missy to help with the process of cleaning up the newborn. Once that was done, she literally left her holding the baby, with Ron peering over her shoulder with great interest.
"Hang onto her until Clara is ready," she said brusquely. "God only knows where they've put the cradle. It isn't in here."
"It wouldn't be in here," Missy said. "This is Chandra's old room, here right at the head of the stairs. That's why there's only a single bed. I wonder why Clara is in here. She must have been trying to go down to Lenore and then realized she couldn't make it." Suddenly, she fell into helpless giggles. Abruptly, she handed the little pile of blankets to Ron. "Take her. Before I drop her."
"What on earth?"
"On Thanksgiving." Missy was sputtering. "I'm sorry. I can't help it. On Thanksgiving, after dinner, Gran called me 'littlest granddaughter.' I told her that I'd outgrown it. That she'd have to promote one of her great-greats. But…" She giggled again, a little hysterically, reacting not just to this but to everything that had gone during the past week. Death and birth "Just look. I've got another girl cousin. Gran has a 'littlest granddaughter' again."
Wes came running up the stairs, ignored the rest of them completely, and headed straight for Clara.
"She's perfectly fine," Kortney assured him, all the while muttering technical things to Inez about hard contractions, pulse rates, the baby coming faster than was ideal for an elderly primipara, pulse rates again, and a little tearing to be sutured.