Death is Semisweet Read Online Free PDF

hands. He was a big, handsome man, still with a full crop of wavy, gray hair. His brother, Claude, was pacing in front of Junior’s desk. Claude was as tall as his brother, 6’ 2” or so, but he had never filled out, didn’t have the broad shoulders of a football player like Junior. Now in his sixties, Claude’s suits wore him, hanging vacantly over his body. His hair was thin and limp and colorless, and this morning, in his nervousness, he kept pushing it back although nary a strand had crept down to his forehead.
    “The insurance team from the company that owns the airship is on the way. I have a car picking them up at the airport and taking them to the police warehouse where the blimp’s being examined,” Claude said. “Our insurance guys are going to meet with the Plaza this morning. I don’t think we hurt their damn building a bit and I told our guys to not take any of that crap about it costing them holiday business. I bet the damn place is packed today with crime scene nuts.”
    “What about the pilot’s family?” Junior asked morosely.
    Claude nodded, indicating that that was under control. “He works for the airship people, not us. We’re just renting the thing for three months. He had benefits through them. He was driving the Goodyear blimp two months ago; they’re like chauffeurs. We don’t owe him. I told the guys in Communications to make some calls, find out if he had ten small children or was a Vietnam vet or something else that elicits pity. Also to call the widow and send flowers. You know someone in the press will do a story about the pilot. But I think we’re covered.”
    “I can’t believe this happened. Do you think—”
    “Junior, don’t try to make this more complicated thanit already is,” Claude said sharply. “This is just some nut. I think they killed the pilot when all they probably wanted to do was take down a blimp. The world is full of nuts.”
    Junior drew his body up into a more businesslike position. He had to get a grip and then he had to tell his brother the bad news, not this inexplicable problem of the blimp being shot down. This bad news he, Harold Russell Foster, Jr., had in a sense created. The really bad news. Why had he been so ambitious? He was sixty-seven years old. If he didn’t own his own company he’d be retired by now; instead he’d started a big expansion of the business, an addition that was already threatening to destroy everything he’d worked for. “How are we looking for the press conference on Friday?”
    Claude Foster grinned. Now they were back on familiar territory. “I’ve got something in my office to show you,” he said and went next door to his own office.
    Junior got up and stood by the window, looking out at the workmen running in and out of the newly built addition to the plant, the addition that was the reason for the press conference on Friday.
    The company had some corporate offices in downtown Kansas City, but Junior and Claude had always kept their personal offices in the plant. They’d been right here to oversee all this expansion because that’s how they liked to do things. Why, Claude had even moved to Texas for three months in 1995 when they had built the plant there. “If you don’t pay attention, no one else will,” Claude always said.
    Claude walked back in with a ten-pound block of chocolate in his hands. It was wrapped in hot pink tin foil and then covered with a paper wrapper with the Foster’s logo. “Oh, I know we may tinker with this somemore, but we’re making up enough of these to give away at the press conference. What do you think?”
    Junior Foster, as he had always been called, turned around to see the prototype in his brother’s hands, hearing the pride in his brother’s voice. “It looks great. I’ll be sure to call Janie and tell her they did a good job on the design.”
    Claude nodded. “They did do a good job, didn’t they? I told Janie that this design is to launch our step into