“Bertie tell you that?” she asked.
Red nodded. Bertie had written a lot of things in her letters that he’d never realized before—about her dreams of living on a farm and having kids, of maybe someday having her own guesthouse like his mother’s.
He’d also learned how much Bertie admired Lilly—and Red. It was a funny thing about Bertie—when they were growing up, Red had treated her about the same way he treated all his buddies. Like a guy. Never took much notice of her any other way until they were nearin’ high school. Then he’d struggled for years to come to terms with his feelings.
Even when the war hit, spurring him to finally ask her out on a real date, they’d never talked about feelings and such, not the way she wrote about them now. They’d talked baseball scores and fishing, and, of course, they’d talked about the war.
“Joseph never says anything about how he’s doin’ alone out on the farm,” Lilly said. “Used to be he wouldn’t even let me bake him a pie, but lately, he’s helped me out with a few things—like when Mildred got lost—and he hasn’t minded when I cooked a few things up. He’s still as stubborn as a mule.”
“His daughter has some of his stubbornness,” Red said, unable to keep his thoughts from settling on Bertie, same as they’d done throughout the war—same as they’d done for nigh on twelve years or so.
“Soon as he heard about the brick in the window, he came to town and helped shore up the hole,” Ma said. “Then he went looking for signs of the scoundrels.”
“Maybe he’s figured something out by now,” Red said.
“Could be the two of you need to put your heads together.” She nudged him. “Seeing as how he’s practically your father-in-law.”
Red noticed that his mother’s teasing grin didn’t reach her eyes. She was worried about that, he could tell, and he could almost hear her unasked question.
Joseph Moennig and his daughter weren’t the only stubborn ones. Ma could be hard to live with when she wanted something she couldn’t get. Like a certain young lady for a daughter-in-law.
Also, that brick and the missing cow had scared Ma worse than she would let on, but Red knew if he pushed, she’d clam up. Best to talk about other things for a while. And so they did, throughout the hour-long ride back to Hideaway.
Chapter Seven
The dirt road to Hideaway from Hollister skirted the southern ridge of hills that formed bluffs above the James River. Simply named the Hideaway Road, it continued on from Hideaway to Cape Fair, where it was called the Cape Fair Road. The Moennig farm was barely a quarter mile from Hideaway.
Being near town was the reason the Moennig place had electricity, while most of the farms in rural Missouri didn’t. For the last few years, the Moennigs also had indoor plumbing and hot and cold running water, another rarity around these parts. Before that, they’d pumped their water out back of the house, heated it on the wood cookstove in the kitchen, and bathed in a tin washtub, like most other folks out in the country.
As Seymour kept up a steady trot down the road, Ma chattered about the young men coming back home from the war, about who’d been discharged early, and hinting that some of the discharges hadn’t been honorable.
“You mean like Hector Short?” Red asked. No wonder Drusilla was so mean. Her own son was a scoundrel, bringing embarrassment to the family.
“I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of him around here,” Ma said. “If I had, I’d’ve suspected him of throwing that brick through the—” Her voice broke off. “Would you listen to me? I’m getting as bad as Drusilla. I need to wash my mouth out with lye soap.”
Red turned Seymour in at the Moennig driveway and kept going until they reached the corral gate. Then he stopped the horse and frowned.
“The gate’s open. Did you notice that when you came by earlier?” he asked.
“Nope, you can’t see this gate from the road.” She gestured back toward the tall hedge around the front of the yard. “That isn’t like Joseph, even if he didn’t have cattle in the corral.”
“Hello!” Red called as he reached for his cane. This time of day, Joseph would usually be out in the field, working the hay, or in the garden.
Ma gasped, then put a hand on Red’s arm, gripping him hard. “Charles Frederick.”
He turned to her, startled at her use of his full name. She was staring at something out in the cattle lot behind the barn. Red saw a patch of blue. A human shape, red-checked shirt and blue overalls.
Red tossed the reins to his mother and scrambled from the buggy, then reached back for his cane. Without a word, Ma pulled it from beside her on the wagon’s running board, passed it to him, then gripped the railing beside her to get out.
“You stay right here,” he said.
For once, she did as he told her.
As he hobbled along the rutted driveway toward the back fence, he felt chilled to the bone. If only this was just another nightmare he’d wake up from any minute.
But it was real. He’d seen too many images like this.
He felt sick as he stepped into the cattle lot and got a close look of Joseph Moennig. The side of Joseph’s face was so white it seemed to reflect the hot, late-morning sun.
Red dropped awkwardly to his good knee next to his friend and gently rolled him to his back. Joseph stared without sight toward Heaven—his new home.
“Roberta Moennig.”
Bertie caught her breath, and looked up at Franklin.
“Yessir,” she said, taking care to turn off the lathe and keep her hands away from the moving parts. Her wound was beginning to ache as the pain killer wore off.
Franklin’s broad face didn’t have the usual scowl she’d come to know and dislike. When she met his eyes, he looked away. Then she realized he’d called her by her real name instead of hillbilly.
“You want something?” she asked.
“Your injury doing okay?” he asked, his voice still gruff, but sounding almost sincere.
“I’m fine.”
She started to return to her work, but then he spoke again. “You need to report to the front office. Talk to Charlotte.”
She stared at him as a chill traveled across her shoulders and down her arms. “What’s she want to see me for?”
He avoided her look. “You’ve…got a call.”
“What kind of a call?” Had he actually followed through with this morning’s threat to dismiss her?
It couldn’t be. Franklin enjoyed firing people, didn’t he? Right now, he didn’t look as if he was enjoying himself too much.
“Just get to the office,” he muttered, turning away.
She nodded and left her worktable. She refused to beg. If she got fired, she’d find another job easily enough. Hughes Aircraft wasn’t the only place in town that could use a trained machinist.
Still, she wished she’d watched her mouth a little closer with Franklin this morning. Sass and vinegar weren’t always a good thing.
Minutes later, she stepped into the business office, abuzz with so many typewriters clattering and telephones ringing. Most folks in the plant wanted an office job, but not Bertie. Give her a machine over a typewriter any day. Machine work made more sense to her, and she loved operating a lathe, forming the parts that would be used to build the airplanes that would help win the war. She felt she was doing something useful. Of course, the people working in the office were useful, too.
If she couldn’t work with machines in the shop, give her a barn full of milking cows rather than a typewriter in a stifling office. In fact, she’d pretty much prefer anything over being cooped up in an office all day.
A woman with dark hair tied severely away from her face was the first person Bertie encountered when she walked through the door. The woman didn’t stop typing, didn’t even look up, when Bertie approached her desk.
“Help you?” the woman asked.
Bertie paused, waiting for eye contact.
When the woman finally looked up, her fingers continued their clattering acro
ss the typewriter keys. “What do you need?” she snapped.
“I’m Roberta Moennig, and I was told to report to Charlotte. You care to point her out to me?”
The woman’s eyes widened, and she stopped typing. The sharpness vanished. “I’m Charlotte,” she said in a voice suddenly gone soft. She paused, eyeing Bertie. “Why don’t you have a seat, Roberta.” She pointed toward the chair in front of her desk, then picked up a telephone receiver from the desktop and handed it to her.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, placing a hand on Bertie’s shoulder before rising from her chair and walking away.
Bertie stared after her in confusion, aware that others in the office had stopped their work and shot glances toward her. Something wasn’t right.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Hello?” she said into the telephone receiver. “Who is this?”
“Bertie? It’s me. It’s Red.”
Her mouth dropped open, and she gasped. It was him! Here she’d been thinking about him and…“Red! Where are you? I’ve not heard from you in so long I was beginning to wonder if you were okay. What’s…why are you…” She frowned. “Are you okay? Why are you calling me in the middle of the—”
“I’m…home.” His voice was gentle, uncommonly soft. “I’m back home in Hideaway.”
“For good? You’ve been released?”
“I’ve been discharged.”
“I wondered if they’d send you home after Germany’s surrender, but since I never heard a word from you in six full weeks, I couldn’t help wonderin’—”
“Bertie, we’ll have a long talk about that later, but I didn’t call to talk about me right now.” He paused. “Ma picked me up at the train station, and we stopped by your Pa’s place to check on him.” Another pause.
Bertie leaned forward. She hated the solemn sound of Red’s voice. “What is it? Is Dad all right? Is he sick?”
“Bertie, I’m sorry. I…” He cleared his throat. “I found him…he’s gone.”
Chapter Eight
For a moment, Bertie didn’t grasp what Red meant. She was dreaming—or this wasn’t really Red. It was some kind of practical joke.
“I don’t understand,” she said, hearing the tremor in her own voice. “H-how can you find him if he’s gone?”
“I found his body.”
She shook her head, unable to let the words sink in. It couldn’t be…She’d been worried about him last night when he didn’t answer her call, but this?
“Bertie? You there? You okay?”
She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Red, I didn’t—”
“Your father’s—he’s dead,” Red said. “I found him myself, out in the cattle lot behind the barn.”
She gasped, and her vision went dark for a moment. She became aware of someone standing beside her with a hand on her shoulder, placing a glass of water on the desk in front of her. She looked up to see her friend and roommate, Edith Frost, looking down at her, dark hair mussed, dark eyes narrowed in concern.
“What’s the water for? And what’re you doing here?” Edith should be home asleep. Her shift wouldn’t begin for a few more hours.
“Charlotte called me,” Edith whispered. “She wanted me to be here for you.”
“Bertie?” Red said, his voice growing gruffer. “You okay?”
“Yes, I’m…I’ll…”
“What’s happening out there?” he asked.
“Would you just…give me a minute?” She closed her eyes. “Oh, Dad,” she whispered.
It was true. It must be. But reality clashed hard against denial. “No, this can’t be,” she whispered. “Not Dad. He wasn’t fighting in the war.”
“He’s been fighting a war, all right,” Red said.
“How?” she asked. “What happened to him?”
“I wish I knew for sure.”
“What do you mean? Was he sick? What happened?”
“There looks to be a…an injury to the side of his head.”
She frowned. “And he was in the cattle lot? Could be the bull got him, but ol’ Fester’s never been a mean—”
“Not Fester. Not an animal…not a four-legged one, anyway. It looks like…like something small hit him in the side of the head, Bertie.”
Bertie nearly dropped the phone. “Something like what?”
“I’m not sure yet. The sheriff’s out there now, along with the mayor.”
She heard something in his voice, some thread of doubt, as if he was hiding something from her, unwilling to say what was on his mind.
“You’re saying somebody killed my father?” she heard her own voice, loud with shock, saw the surprised faces of the people standing around her, and felt as if the floor was buckling beneath her.
“I’m not saying anything yet.”
“Oh, yes you are. That’s what you’re thinking, I can tell.”
“Now, don’t go putting words in my mouth. I’m gonna find out what happened,” Red promised. “You hang on out there, you hear?”
Bertie took a few deep breaths and managed to keep her hands from trembling. “What are you thinking, Red? Talk to me!”
Edith slid a handkerchief into Bertie’s hands and placed an arm around her shoulders, but Bertie wouldn’t let tears fall.
“Don’t you worry, Bertie,” Red said. “We’ll see to it your father has a good, Christian funeral.”
She took a few more breaths. “Red Meyer, what aren’t you telling me?”
“I don’t know, yet, okay? I don’t know what happened. Give us time to figure things out on this end, and I’ll call you. You stay put, though. You don’t need to be traipsing back here. We’ll take good care of your pa’s body.”
“Don’t make any plans until you know how soon Lloyd and I will be able to get there. I’ll have to call him right away.” Her brother would be working on his in-laws’ family farm in Kansas this time of day, but someone should be able to get to him.
There was a short silence, then Red cleared his throat. “Bertie?”
Again, the tone of his voice alerted her. “What?”
“I don’t think you oughta come to Hideaway right now. Lloyd neither.”
“Of course I’m coming. You can’t call and tell me my father is dead, then think I’m not coming home as soon as I can get there.”
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t grieve, Bertie, I just think you need to do it out there in California. It’s safer there.”
Her grip tightened on the telephone receiver. “What do you mean, safer?”
“I already told you, I can’t say for sure what happened to your father, but it might not be safe here right now for you or Lloyd, not until we know for sure what happened.”
She waited for him to continue.
“Could just be my own reaction to the war,” he said, “expectin’ trouble when there isn’t any, but I can’t help thinking the war’s brought out some enemies we didn’t know anything about, even here in Hideaway.”
She felt a chill down her spine. She wasn’t sure she wanted him to explain more, wasn’t sure she could take much more information today. Oh, Lord, someone might’ve killed my father?
“You hear what I’m saying?” Red asked. “You stay put and stay out of trouble right where you are.”
“I can stay out of trouble, but I’ll be in Hideaway while I’m doing it,” she said. “That’s where I’m going to be as soon as I can get there, and don’t you try telling me different. I’m not some helpless little thing who can’t take care of herself.”
There was a quick grunt of irritation over the line, then, “Bertie Moennig, you might cause more trouble than I can handle if you come traipsing into town right now. I never said you was helpless, but don’t be daft, either. Stay put!”
The sharpness of his words pierced her anger. But even though part of her could see the wisdom of his words from his point of view, she wasn’t him. She couldn’t do what he wanted her to.
“Don’t you worry about a t
hing, Red Meyer. I won’t be a burden to you.”
“Now, Bert, you know that isn’t what I meant, I was only trying to—”
“You’d better give me some space when I get there, because I’m comin’. Don’t you dare treat me like I don’t belong.” She returned the phone receiver to its base, and pressed her forehead to the cool desktop for a few seconds.
A hand touched her shoulder. “Are you okay, sweetie?”
Edith’s voice was soothing, but it also cautioned her. Sorrow and self pity too often formed a partnership, but it wasn’t going to happen this time. Not with Bertie Moennig. She couldn’t afford that weakness.
The door opened, and she looked up to see Franklin walk in, his beefy shoulders grazing the sides of the door frame. For once, his presence didn’t threaten her.
“I won’t be back to work today,” she told him, bracing herself for an argument.
“I know. I’ve already got someone on your job.” He glanced around at the office workers who hovered near. Though he wasn’t their supervisor, they scattered back to their desks.
He crossed the room and leaned over Bertie. “I’m sorry about your father. Are you going to be okay, hillbilly?”
The sudden, unfamiliar note of gentleness in his voice surprised her. “Thank you. I’ll be fine, but I have to catch a train to Missouri.”
He nodded. “Any idea how long you’ll be gone?”
She hesitated. She may not be back. Yes, she was needed here, but she would be needed on the farm at Hideaway with Dad gone. Cows would have to be fed and milked, the crops gathered, and she couldn’t expect Lloyd to leave his in-laws in the lurch so he could tend to everything.
“Hillbilly?” Franklin said sharply. “When do you think you’ll be back?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve got a farm to run now, and the troops need food as badly as they need airplanes.”
“Not sure I can keep your job open for you.”
“I’m not askin’ you to.”
He ran a thick palm across his forehead. “I’ll tell you what, you give me a call when you decide.”
She gave him a wry look. “I thought I was about to get fired today.”
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