Judy swallowed her panic as she heard him grunt through the shirt he rammed over his head. “Oh, no, you’re not,” he said. “Look, you and Pancho stay here. Guard the house, okay? I can’t be worrying about you right now.”
She clutched her maternity jeans to her chest, feeling her heart jump with tension. “But I want to be with you!”
“I know, sweetheart.” Hart stopped and rubbed her shoulders, breathing hard. “I’ll be as quick as I can. Barry already called Bryce. I suspect Ardyth will be here soon. You can keep each other company.” He headed for the door, clawing a hand through his tousled brown curls. “Just go to work like usual if I’m not back.” Then he was gone.
Hart’s solar powered battery designs were all he’d talked about for the past two years. It was the most important project he and his engineering partner had for their fledgling satellite firm. What would he do if they were lost? Oh, Lord, you can’t let anything happen to him. Not now. Not so close to the baby. Please, protect Hart and Bryce and all the firefighters out there.
Judy squared her shoulders. If Ardyth was on her way she had better be ready.
After dressing and going downstairs to put the kettle on, she sat at the chrome kitchen table to wait.
The screen door crashed open as Ardyth, wrapped in an orange floral satin quilted housecoat, rushed in, flapping her pink and gray plaid scuffs.
“Oh, my dear one, how dreadful! Are you all right? You’re not in labor or anything, are you?”
“Ardyth. Come in,” Judy said with dry exasperation. “We’re fine. I’m worried about the men. I feel so useless. What did Bryce tell you?”
Newly-wed Ardyth Edwards, at seventy-eight, had the spunk of Judy’s fifth-grade pupils. She heaved a sigh and plunked herself down on one of the red padded chrome kitchen chairs. “Just that their workshop, their very life was in flames. How could that happen?”
Judy set a cup of strong coffee in front of her friend. Ardyth untied the lime green chiffon scarf she’d placed over her curlers. “Thank you, dear. You are planning to go to school this morning, aren’t you?” Ardyth sipped. “What’s left, a week or two? You’re awfully strong to keep going like that while you’re expecting. I’m sure I wouldn’t have. Well, what can I do? What do you need? Something to eat? Here, let me look…”
Judy settled herself back onto her chair. “Let’s wait breakfast for a while, see if the men come back. I guess I’d better feed Pancho.” She heaved herself up again. “Hart said I should go to work. I have enough sick leave saved to take off, but I still have work to do on the Harriet Tubman program. I’ll go get ready after I finish my tea.”
Judy’s stomach rumbled. The piece of leftover strawberry pie she’d not had room for last night beckoned. No, be good. Stay good. You’re doing fine with your weight, Judy, girl, no reason to ruin it now. Judy watched Ardyth make herself at home in the big farm kitchen.
Ardyth spoke with her back toward Judy. “Imagine! Those men last night, coming all the way to Wisconsin to your workshop only to gripe at the last minute. I asked Mack if he was interested in being the first to show off a brand new invention at Robertsville Harvest Days on Labor Day. Now he may not get to. That John Harding is just plain trouble. Knew that from the start.”
“You didn’t tell Mack about Hart’s solar battery, did you? That’s company information!”
Ardyth folded her arms, making the loose skin above her elbows wiggle. “Of course not.”
Judy took as deep a breath as the baby would let her and willed her blood pressure back toward normal. “Hart said Harding’s job was to make sure everything worked right.” Judy didn’t know why she was defending the hateful company project manager. Except that she had no business hating him. She didn’t even know him. But he had hurt her husband.
While Hart had stumped her body language reading skills when she first met him after her great-aunt was poisoned to death, it didn’t take an expert to read disappointment, and maybe a little shell shock, in the slump of his shoulders and droop of his lips last night.
Ardyth set the kettle on and got out mugs. She looked in the refrigerator next, telling Judy, “That battery of ours is going to revolutionize farm machinery operation. Mark my words!”
“Ours?”
“Of course. Haven’t we sweated and supported our men while they designed it?”
“Not everyone agrees that green energy is the way to go.” Judy held her breath in preparation for Ardyth’s response.
“Ha! If I was in Tim Crawford’s shoes, I’d be sleeping with a gun under my pillow.”
“Oh, Ardyth.” But Judy wondered if Ardyth had a point. Did everyone at the company have as much loyalty in producing equipment to meet new government standards as her husband and his partner? How about Harding? Could he have wanted to see the new design fail?
Hart’s only comment had been, “Harding couldn’t drop work issues after our afternoon meeting. It doesn’t make sense to me. The man stood right out there in the field and watched the battery power up that old tractor of yours. But, we are a team. We don’t want to do anything to jeopardize the company.”
“I see your piece of pie is still in here. Would you like it?” Ardyth asked, holding the plate in front of Judy.
Well, strawberries were a fruit, and fruit was good for you, and the crust was sort of like bread…Judy reached for it. “Of course. I’m glad you kept the strawberry patch going out by the office.”
A little later, while Ardyth set out more leftovers from last night, Judy prepared for work.
She heard the men tramp in while she was in the bathroom, brushing her hair. Their voices sounded deep and excited. Kitchen chairs scraped.
Judy set the brush down and went out to meet them. Ardyth must have started another pot of coffee. “Well?” Judy asked. “What’s happening? Is everything okay?” She wrinkled her nose. “Whew! You smell like smoke.”
Hart answered. “They found something in the wreckage.”
“Oh no! Wreckage? Your office? The barn? You don’t mean—”
“Calm down, Judy,” Bryce said. “It was the barn, not the office. We’re insured.”
“But—”
“There was a body.” Stunned, Judy watched Bryce put his hands on his wife’s shoulders. Ardyth turned her face up to meet his faded blue eyes.
They knew something, but what? Judy searched her husband’s grim, exhausted face for answers. “Body? As in dead person? Who—”
“John Harding,” Hart said. “That—”
“Hart. The man’s dead,” Bryce said.
“John Harding? Who argued right here at dinner tonight?” Judy swallowed the squeak in her voice. Hart’s direct contact at the home office of InventivAg had invented a whole new meaning to the word “pest” last night. She’d nearly spilled the gravy on him just to shut him up when he lost control of himself earlier that evening at what was supposed to be a pleasant meal for company representatives. He’d vehemently argued that Hart and Bryce’s invention could not possibly work in mass production, even after he watched the battery power up Bryce’s old tractor perfectly fine. All her efforts to impress Hart’s boss had been wasted.
“I know why he was there,” Hart said.
“The police are going to question all of us,” Bryce said. “You can’t go speculating, Hart.”
“He came back here, last night,” Judy said. “After you two left, Bryce. To apologize.”
She watched Bryce’s knuckles turn white as he squeezed his wife’s shoulders. Judy poured her husband a cup of coffee and went to stand with him at the window where the golden rays of sunlight arrowed across the fence on the other side of their driveway.
That rude man had sat right at her dining room table last night. Now, he was dead. Judy ought to feel something other than relief. She rubbed her baby belly. But could Harding, even dead, prevent the production of Hart’s battery?
Chapter Two
Hart decided there was no sense in worrying about something he had no
control over. He said goodbye to Bryce, who hustled Ardyth away before she started cooking more food. He’d continue with his usual routine until…what? He got fired? Proved to be a terrible designer? What if his battery did have flaws? Stop it, Hart. In all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. My designs have been for God’s purpose.
Encouraging Judy to finish getting ready for school by telling her he would fix breakfast, he opened the refrigerator and plucked out the bowl of brown eggs Judy bought from a neighbor, and set to work. While he heated the griddle, Hart heard the shower running where Judy sang in a slightly off-key contralto. “This is the day, this is the day…”
He grinned as the toast popped up.
Judy appeared in the doorway. “I’m still starving! I only had fruit so far.”
Hart had anticipated his wife’s hunger. Judy plopped down on a kitchen chair. “Madam. And miss.” Hart placed the warmed plate in front of her with a flourish. Judy giggled.
They held hands and prayed before Judy stuck her fork into his concoction of scrambled eggs and mushrooms sprinkled with fresh parsley from the window box. She should have taken some maternity leave from school, Hart thought as he watched her tuck the food away. But he knew she would go stir-crazy if forced to stay home. Selfishness aside, he would love to have her stay home to take care of the baby, but he respected her gift of teaching too much to ask her to do that.
And now, if something happened with the mess Harding caused by getting himself killed, Hart’s job might be in jeopardy. Not to mention his career and reputation, if Harding’s accusations kept his battery from production. They might have to count on Judy’s job for income, at least until he got back on his feet. But what would he do if he couldn’t be an engineer? The shame would be more than he could bear. They might have to move. And Judy…she loved this place. The farm had been settled by her pioneering ancestors. She wanted their child to know her heritage.
“Hart, about last night…”
He expected Judy might want to talk. He didn’t know what to tell her. But her next statement surprised him.
“Who’s Hugo?”
“What?”
“A couple of the men, um, I can’t recall their names. I heard them say Hugo. Something about Hugo’s people were going to die last night when they were driving away.”
“You must have heard wrong.”
“Well, I heard the name.”
“You probably heard someone talking about Hugo International. You know about them, Judy,” Hart replied. “They make four of the components we use in our engines. And they sell their own line of specialty equipment—backhoes and that kind of thing. But I don’t see how a company’s people could die. The company, maybe. They’re not doing so well.”
Judy had another question. “I was pretty mad at Harding last night, especially for what he said when he came back after supper.”
Pancho Villa crawled out from under the telephone stand and hissed.
“Pancho, buddy, what’s up? Judy already filled your bowl,” Hart said, stalling. “So, he made some comments about my battery.”
“And called the baby a project.”
“He didn’t mean anything. Like he said, we’ve all been under a lot of stress.”
“You tested your battery in front of him and it worked fine. Why was he against it?”
“He has—had the company’s best interest at heart.”
“How long have you put up with him, anyway?” Judy asked.
“He wasn’t always like this.” Pancho’s cat door flapped in the mud room that led outside. Funny, Pancho seemed to take offense lately any time Harding’s name was mentioned. “For the past six months, he’s acted like a different person. Crawford made him get a physical and everything, but Harding swears—swore he was stressed, nothing else.”
“The company’s doing well, though, isn’t it? They aren’t going to announce lay-offs, are they? Why would your boss put off the debut of a new product?”
“InventivAg is holding steady. I suppose they worry the product might tank.”
“Your battery could never tank!”
Hart took a deep breath and went to hug his wife. She needed to watch the clock if she planned to get to work on time. So did he. “We’ll be okay, don’t worry.”
Judy leaned against him, the bulk of their baby resting between them. “Sorry. I’m just too charged by everything: the end of the school year, this program we’re doing next week, your job, the baby—”
“Shh.” Hart wrapped his arms around her and wished they could stay home. “I can’t delay time, but I can tell you to stop worrying. My job is safe. Bryce and I can go out on our own, even if InventivAg stops contracting with us. I will always take care of you.” He pulled back to soothe her stomach. “And this little girl.”
Judy responded to his continued teasing, which started the day they found out for sure they were expecting. “Boy.”
“You, however,”—he tapped her nose and held her firmly away—“should have taken some maternity leave. And we’ll see soon enough whether we have a Horace or a Hortense.”
“No way! Hildegard or nothing. And we’re fine. One more week of classes to go.” She put a hand on her back. “Could you hand me my bag?”
“Now Little Harriet’s keeping you from bending over?”
“Little, nothing! And, um… Henry’s keeping me from reaching the floor. So, your mom’s still planning to come next week, right?”
“Yeah. She’s excited by the program you were gabbing about.”
“Which reminds me! Imagine—Harriet Tubman come to life. There’s the only Harriet for you. The kids will have a good time and not even realize they’re learning something. This program will be a good finish to the year. You know we’ve been talking about U.S. history, expanding on the fourth grade Wisconsin curriculum.”
“Mmhmm.”
“The program brochure says she plays the character like she’s in her own time, so the kids have to interact with her and explain things in a way she would understand. You’re coming, right?”
“I plan to.”
“There! I think I’ve got—oh, wait, I need some more of those pencils, you know, the ones I give—”
“Yeah, right here.” Hart handed over the new package he had picked up for her the other day. He liked the way she looked in her flowered jumper, her soft brown hair flowing around her shoulders and her luminous gray eyes shining.
She accepted them while staring at him, a line between her brows. “Hart, what’s going to happen today?”
He kept his tone light. “Bryce, Tim, and I will meet with the sheriff’s people. Maybe with some of the home office staff who are coming up.” He grimaced, despite his attempt to tamp his emotions. “Damage control.”
“Oh, Hart, what can we do?”
“We can’t do anything yet. Hang in there until we hear the official report. You better get going. Try not to worry too much, and have a good day.”
“Thanks!” Judy stuck the pencils in her bag and kissed him.
He walked her out of the door to the garage. “See you this afternoon,” he said and bussed her freckled nose, hand lingering on their child. He watched until she waved and backed her green compact out for the drive into Robertsville.
What on earth would happen, he wondered, if he and Bryce had wasted the past three years on a project the company might scrap? His battery wasn’t the only thing InventivAg had on the drawing board, but considerable time and expense had gone into the design. He did not know how much longer his partner and mentor, Bryce, would go on working. Ardyth nagged her husband of four years to get good and retired already so they could travel before they got too old. May he and Judy feel the same way when they got within sniffing distance of eighty.
After cleaning up the kitchen he packed his case and drove the quarter-mile to the office. Bryce had already arrived. But whose car was parked behind his?
“Good morning aga
in, father-to-be,” his white-haired colleague greeted him.
“And to you, sir,” Hart replied. “Who’s here?”
Bryce wrinkled his nose. “Crawford, with Maura Fergusson.
“Wow, boss got the company spokesperson up here quick, didn’t he? How bad does it look?”
“So-so. We’ll find out. How’s Judy holding up?”
“She’s worried. We all are. But she’s doing pretty well considering all the commotion. I can’t imagine having my insides kicked around by a baby. I’m glad Mom’s coming down tomorrow.”
“There’s a reason the good Lord did not bless men with that particular gift.”
“Do we need to talk to the boss and Maura ahead of time?”
“No.” Bryce stared at a fax.
Hart read over his partner’s shoulder. “What’s that?”
“Fax. I wonder why this was delayed two days. Look, Jacobs from assembly has this question.”
“Assembly?” Hart studied the pages. “So Crawford already talked about setting up production? And this is the final design. See? I told him about the new steel.” He looked at his partner. “Why did Crawford waste so much time on Harding’s complaints if he thought we were ready?”
Bryce put a hand to his chin while he stared at the fax machine. “I don’t know. We’ll have to ask him. But I assume everything’s going to be on hold during the investigation.”
“I wonder what Harding was up to, coming back here.”
“Hopefully we’ll be able to figure that out. Hart, I’m not going to bring this up, but in case anyone says anything, Ardyth drove back out this way last night.”
Hart’s mouth went dry. “Why?”
“She says she forgot her pan and wanted to make another pie. When she saw your lights were out, she thought she’d see if we still had one here in this kitchen.”
“Well. That sounds like Ardyth. I don’t think we need say anything, either. Are we still expecting the sheriff to come at nine?”
“I assume so. There was no message indicating otherwise, after we talked last night. Er, this morning. Ardyth insisted on coming to make coffee.”
Healing Grace Page 28