The Tea Drinker's Guide to Adventure by Andrée Jannette

Author:Andrée Jannette [Jannette, Andrée]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andrée Jannette
Published: 2022-09-19T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

At the police station, a ratcheting up of the noise volume was enough to wake up Peter. Even with the door closed, he could tell there was a change in the tempo of daily activity. He stood up, got dressed in the clean clothes he kept in his office for emergencies, and opened the door. Tom who had been sitting at his desk doing some paperwork stood up and walked over with a steaming hot cup of coffee.

“You are a lifesaver, Tom,” said Peter gratefully. He took a breath and inhaled the wonderful deep-roasted scent of coffee. “This can’t be from our machine.”

“No, I got it from the cafe down the street, along with a couple of donuts.”

“Fantastic,” murmured Peter as he took a sip.

“Smithy?” asked Tom.

“I have some ideas about that. Let’s go into my office.”

With the door closed, Peter relaxed back into his office chair. “OK, this is what I have in mind. I’m going to ask the judge for community service for Smithy. Thirty-five hours a week for three months. And I want him to report to you every Monday morning at 8:00 a.m. to get his assignment for the week.”

Tom said, “Oh great.”

“He needs contact with someone who’s responsible and dependable. I think being around you will have a positive impact on him. He hasn’t really had any kind of formal training and hasn’t been around someone who had a responsible job before. Growing up, his father was out of the picture. His mother worked a lot of menial jobs, trying to support them. They ended up living in the family van for quite a while.”

“Sounds like he’s someone that could use a couple of positive breaks in his life.”

Peter nodded. “Bring him up to the office, and we’ll talk to him about it and see if he’s willing to go along with the plan. If he is, I’m going take him out to the RV park and have him apologize to everyone and see if maybe we can get him started with Ben on community service. In the meantime, I also need to interview folks out there and make sure we have all the information we need on what happened last night.”

At the other end of town, Elizabeth poured herself a cup of coffee, sat down on the couch, and started skimming her phone messages. She glanced up occasionally to look out the big windows at the meticulously manicured lawn. It was a beautiful home, and she was grateful to her brother and his wife, Joan, for letting her stay there while she was in the area. She heard noises from overhead and smiled. Her brother sounded like he would be down shortly. She glanced over to see if there was enough coffee for him too. Within a few minutes, Benedict clattered down the stairs, at the same time fixing his tie.

“Good morning.” He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down near Elizabeth. He picked up a copy of the local paper lying on the table.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.