“Good. Thank you, for being so quick.” Sinor sounded genuinely pleased. “A couple of those people looked really good on their resumes, and I didn’t want someone else to hire them out from under me—or find out that they were only good on paper.”

Let’s hope one of the ones he wanted isn’t the guy who drinks his breakfast, she thought, but didn’t say. “Thank the modern computer environment,” she said instead. “If I’d had to type this the old way, you’d still be waiting for it.”

He laughed, and they said their good-byes. Jennifer put the envelope in a stack of mail to go to the post office by three.

Her watch read 2:15; that gave her just enough time to call Claremore and the old homestead while she sorted receipts. Claremore was a good forty minutes away from Tulsa; if there was anything someone needed she could bring it out when she and Grandfather came over for Saturday dinner.

The phone only rang twice. “Yo!” said a familiar young male voice.

“Yo yourself, creep,” she replied cheerfully to her youngest brother. “When did you get back from the lake?”

“’Bout fifteen minutes ago,” Robert Talldeer said, and paused to gulp something. “Didn’t take as long as we thought it would. Never recharged the A/C on an RV before, those things don’t take more than a pound. So what’s up in the life of Nancy Drew?”

“Same song, different verse, little brother,” she said, with a yawn. “Grandfather is fine, although I’m afraid one of the neighbor kids addicted him to Tetris. At least it’s better than soap operas, but I suspect he’s beating the kids out of their allowance money. Thought I’d catch up on family gossip before I went to the Post Awful.”

“I could get to like recharging air-conditioners,” Robert said, and paused, before adding scornfully, “Not!”

“Then be glad you’ve got a job to pay for college, Wayne,” she told him, making neat little stacks of receipts. “You’ll make a better engineer than a heating and A/C specialist. How’s Dad’s ostrich-fence project coming?”

Robert laughed, although she wasn’t sure why. She sorted out a couple more gas tabs. Then he explained. “Twice as many of the eggs hatched out as the guy thought would. He had to get a guy in from Tulsa to build more shelters, and Dad’s gonna have to weld twice as many fence lines.”