The Hunt Ball

C H A P T E R 2 1

Thanksgiving vacation offered quiet but no relief from paperwork. Charlotte and Carter lived on campus in a lovely home, but try as she might, Charlotte couldn’t work at home. She needed to leave the familiarity of her needlepoint pillows and her two cats.

As she walked across the main quad she was surprised to see Knute Nilsson, blue cashmere scarf wrapped around his neck, walking toward Old Main.

“Knute, walking off your turkey?”

He smiled wanly, “I’d have to walk to Seattle and back.”

“See, if you rode, you’d burn off those calories.”

“The horse burns them. I don’t know about the human.” He fell in alongside her. “But I burn plenty of calories sailing.”

“Bill tore his britches yesterday, revealing more of Bill than anyone wanted to see,” she said cheerfully.

“Actually, there’s a lot of Bill, isn’t there? He can’t even claim that it’s middle-aged spread now that he’s on the other side of sixty.”

“How was your Thanksgiving?”

“Good, but five children in the house under the age of ten! I thought I would lose my mind or go deaf or both.”

“Maybe when we’re younger we don’t mind it. I don’t know.”

“Sometimes I look at my children and grandchildren and wish I’d been celibate.”

At that they both laughed.

Charlotte chided him, “You wouldn’t make a good monk.”

“No.”

“So coming to the office for peace and quiet?”

“Yes, and to crunch numbers.” He opened the large main door, the paned glass on the top half frosted. “Amy wants four new centrifuges. She said what she has is ancient and two are broken. My God, Charlotte, do you know how much a centrifuge costs? I told her she’d better not break any of those microscopes because that’s it for this year’s budget.” He paused. “Really, the security patrol is wreaking havoc with the numbers.”

“I know,” she commiserated. “What can we do, Knute? We have to have that presence to create confidence.”

“I don’t think the students are in danger. Whatever happened had to do with Al, himself, not any of the girls.”

“Let’s hope so. The problem is, we don’t know.” Her loafer heels clicked on the polished floor as they walked by the artifact case.

“We could reduce the number of security people. Shave two people off the payroll. I’m not sure anyone would notice.”

“No.”

He frowned. “We’ve got to do something. And I guarantee you the bill Professor Kennedy submits with her report will be as fat as the report.” He stopped when they reached the door to her office. “She didn’t give any kind of hint, did she? Like when and how much?”

“She said she’d have the report to us right after New Year’s. But she gave no indication of the final cost. She probably doesn’t know until she sits down and adds it all up.”

“I dread it.”

“I do, too, but I dread unrest more. We can’t afford that kind of publicity. At least belt-tightening doesn’t have to make the news.”

“Be sure to tighten Bill’s first.”