“I can’t.”
There was a rustle of covers as Edith pushed back the blankets and stepped into her bedroom slippers. She padded across the floor to Bertie and placed an arm across her shoulders.
“How about some nice, warm milk with honey? That works for me when I can’t sleep. Of course, it takes more than milk and honey to get a woman over a man.”
Bertie grimaced. “Meaning?”
“Red isn’t exactly welcoming to you right now, is he?”
“He’s grumpy as a bear in the springtime, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at.”
Edith squeezed Bertie’s shoulders, chuckling. “When Harper and I were dating, we had an argument about college. I wanted to go, and he didn’t want me to. He thought a woman’s place was in the home.”
Bertie rolled her eyes. “How’d you two ever end up married, then?”
“It took a while. I told him a woman’s place was anywhere she wanted to be, and if he didn’t like it, he’d better tell me before we got more serious, because I wasn’t about to play second fiddle to anyone, much less a man who didn’t value me as a human being.”
“What happened?”
“We stopped dating for about six months.”
Bertie caught her breath. She’d been alone for nearly three years already. If she and Red had that kind of fallin’ out now, would they ever get back together again?
Of course, it couldn’t get much worse than it was right now.
“Then what happened?” she asked.
“I started dating someone else,” Edith said. “Don’t get me wrong, I loved Harper, but I knew that if he didn’t respect my wishes before we were married, he sure wouldn’t respect them afterward. I knew the kind of life I wanted, and it included a college education.”
Bertie leaned her head against the window sill. “I don’t know if I could date someone else. Red’s the only one I’ve thought about for three years.” She hesitated. “In fact, Red’s the only man I’ve ever wanted in my life.”
Edith gave Bertie’s shoulders another squeeze, then released her and stepped to the window. “Harper was the only man I ever wanted, too. I still dated other men. And I started college.”
Bertie knew this. Edith had been in her third year when Harper Frost was killed. Then she’d quit. She’d never returned.
“You must really miss him still,” Bertie said softly.
“I do, but I’d go through all of it again, even knowing he would be killed. What we had was worth the heartache.”
Bertie looked up at her friend, whose strong-yet-beautiful features were outlined by the bare dawn light that stretched across the eastern horizon, turning the river below the house to a silver stream of mist.
Edith had dark brown hair, dark eyebrows and eyes that sometimes seemed to reflect the night sky.
That pretty face turned to Bertie. “We both have our whole lives ahead of us, Roberta Moennig. If you want to be a wife and mother, then you need to decide now that you will be the best wife and mother you can be. If you want to be a business woman, like Lilly, then you learn all about the business, and don’t let anyone tell you what you can and can’t do. Not even Red Meyer.”
“That’ll be kind of hard. What I want to do is find out what happened to my father, and Red’s being awfully bossy about it right now. Thinks he’s protectin’ me.”
“Red strikes me as the kind of man who can get the job done if anyone can, and he seems determined to take care of that job, himself. I still think we should tell him about what we found at the farm yesterday.”
“I’ll tell him later today. There’s nothing he can do about it now, anyway.”
Edith gave an impatient sigh. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into this secrecy. So what else do you want in life?”
“To get Red well, back to his normal self,” Bertie said, frowning down at her hands. “Not so broken. That’s what’ll be hard.”
“But that’s exactly what you need to do,” Edith said. “No matter what it takes.”
With a nod, Bertie turned from the window. She threw her arms around Edith and hugged her. “I don’t know why God blessed me with such a good friend, but I hope this friendship lasts for a lot of years.”
Edith chuckled and patted her back. “I do, too. Now, you need to get to bed for a few hours. Can’t go without sleep forever.”
Bertie did as she was told, snuggling beneath the covers, feeling calmer than she had in days. It would work out. God had brought her this far, and He would see her through everything.
But as she drifted off to sleep, she once again saw those words scrawled across the kitchen window. Nazi gas chamber.
Who in the world would ever believe the Moennigs were Nazi sympathizers?
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Friday morning sun had barely begun to peer through the trees along the hillside above Hideaway when Red saddled Seymour and headed into the valley. He used to ride the horse bareback, but he couldn’t jump nearly so high with this blasted gimp leg, and so he had to use a saddle now to get on the horse. Besides, he needed someplace to tie his cane.
Aside from the cane and the saddle, Red could close his eyes and just about feel like a man again. He could almost pretend he wasn’t lame.
The fresh June morning air cooled his skin as mist drifted above the James River, swirling around the trees and hiding the water. The scent of lilacs drifted around him like the finest perfume. The sun crept higher, making a red background against the black-lace pattern of the treetops. Seymour’s hoofbeats echoed against the cliffs.
If he could forget everything but this moment, he could convince himself the world was right again.
But the memory of Bertie’s touch on his lips kept intruding—and the look of hurt in her eyes that came and went, as if her very heartbeat depended on him. He felt squeezed in a vise, and the nasty situation with Joseph’s death turned the crank. He’d done the right thing with Bertie, and yet it had hurt her bad—the very thing he didn’t want to do.
Why’s it got to be so hard, God?
The prayer of complaint slipped from his mind before he could catch it. What was the use? God sure wasn’t listening to him.
He let Seymour have the lead, sighed and sat back, willing the early morning beauty of his hometown—the home he’d longed to return to for so many months—to soothe the ache inside him.
Though Hideaway was a tiny town, far off the beaten path and on a gravel road except for the bricked street that surrounded the town square, it had a goodly share of visitors. The James River was great for fishing and floating, and Hideaway was built high enough above it that even the worst of flooding could never reach the town. There had been some lollapaloozas in past years.
Besides the fishing and floating, there was a lot of good huntin’ in the woods around here, and Red knew the best places to find everything from coon to deer to wild turkey. He even knew where to find wild honey, and had supplied his mother with plenty of the sweet stuff over the years.
Before the war, the grocery and dry goods store had been well-stocked for such a small, out-of-the-way place, and the weather was so good the merchants catered to tourists three seasons of the year. Red knew these things well, since his livelihood for so much of his life had depended on those tourists.
He passed the Jarvis home and heard Mrs. Jarvis calling the chickens out back. Her husband, Homer, stepped out on the front stoop, letting the screen door slap shut behind him at the same time Red reached the gate.
Red gave him a polite nod. The Jarvises had never gotten on well with Dad when he was alive, but after he died they’d helped Ma out as much as they could, like the rest of the town.
“What you doin’ out so early this morning, young soldier?” Homer asked, settling onto the porch steps with his spittoon can and a plug of tobacco.
Red didn’t stop the horse. “Just checkin’a few things out.”
“You heard any more talk about that dam the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is pla
nning for Branson?” Homer asked.
That made Red pull back on Seymour’s reins. He stopped in the middle of the road. “I thought they scrapped that idea.”
“Only ’cause of the war. Now that it’s almost over, I hear they’re getting interested in it again. There’s talk, anyhow.”
“War’s not over yet.”
“I said almost. My sister and her family live down along the White River. A dam like that upriver from them would sure change things. It’d stop all the floodin’. Can’t beat that.”
Seymour jerked on the reins, eager for a good morning walk. Red pulled back. “You hoping to live on a lake?” he asked Homer.
“Cain’t say that I am.”
“If they build that dam, the whole holler below us’ll be flooded.” All that hunting, and the good fishing would be wiped away. There’d be different fish altogether in a lake, with the warmer, sun heated waters.
“Don’t see how you figure that.” Homer ripped off a little plug of tobacco and slid it between his lip and bottom teeth. “They’re damming White, not James.” He’d become so good at talking with his mouth full of tobacco, he didn’t even slur his words.
“James runs into White, and that dam’s gonna be bigger than you and I ever dreamed,” Red told him. “It’ll reach this far, easy.”
Homer shook his head. “You know how many miles we are from Branson?”
“Not far enough to avoid the lake,” Red said. “It’ll cut us off from Hollister. In fact, it’ll cover the whole road. We’ll have to drive twice as far to get anywhere.”
“Who told you that?”
“I know how to read maps.” Red shook his head. “Guess it’s okay for some, but it’ll sure change things for us around here.”
Homer spit into his can. “I can tell Joseph’s been talkin’ to you. He and Earl Krueger thought the water would flood their fields.”
“Joseph was right,” Red said. “Can’t blame a fella for wantin’ to protect his livelihood.”
“Well, if they was to have lakefront property, it’d probably be worth a pretty penny.”
Red knew Joseph hadn’t been interested in having lakefront property. All he’d ever wanted was his farm. Red had been relieved when the plans for the dam were scrapped. He wasn’t one to take to change. Seemed like the whole world had changed too much in the past few years, and he couldn’t help wonderin’ if it’d be destroyed completely before the war ended. Folks who hadn’t been in the front lines of the war—who hadn’t seen Italy or Germany or the rest of Europe—didn’t know what destruction was.
He waved to Homer and nudged Seymour on, passing by the Moennig farm this time. He’d investigated all he could there. He’d stop and count the livestock on his way back home, but first he wanted to do a little more investigating. He had a hunch that kept sinkin’ its teeth into him, and he couldn’t shake it.
The Krueger family had lived downhill and across the road from the Moennig place. By the time Red reached their farm—a flat plot of land with good dirt for crops—the sun had begun to warm the air.
This was the farm where Earl and Elizabeth and their five kids had a victory garden so big they’d supplied enough vegetables to keep Hideaway in produce all summer long. Before the war, when the depression was weighing down the rest of the country, the Kruegers had followed Joseph Moennig’s example and grown fields of tomatoes for the local canneries.
Red had heard later, though, that they’d still come close to losing their farm a time or two in the past years.
Using his cane so he wouldn’t have to climb down from the horse, Red unlatched the front gate to the Krueger place and rode on into the yard. The family had apparently taken their two yappy little dogs with them. Their cattle and chickens, interesting enough, had ended up in the farms of their closest neighbors. If Red hadn’t started seein’ to Joseph’s livestock, he had no doubt they’d’ve ended up with the neighbors, as well.
Finally, Red reached the porch and slid from Seymour’s back. He tied the horse to the front post and limped around the side of the house. Straightaway, he saw something that stopped him.
Someone had scattered limbs at the far end of the enclosed porch. They were small, more switches than thick limbs.
He noted the color, the texture of the wood. Hickory switches. Like the ones Red had seen on the Moennig porch.
He shook his head and glanced around the yard, as if somebody might still be lingering this long after the Kruegers left.
With the aid of the growing sunlight, Red found something else he was looking for—familiar footprints, etched in the thick, congealing mud alongside the house. It had rained last night enough to moisten the earth, but not enough to erase these prints. They were probably made with the style of heavy work boots a farmer might wear, and they were like the ones he’d found in Ma’s backyard, and at Joseph’s house, and across the street from the barbershop.
The more he thought about it, the surer he was the crack across the left heel had come from an ax head. Someone who chopped wood might’ve stepped on one. That didn’t tell him anything, though. Everybody in the country had an ax.
He shook his head and gazed around the place. This made three homes of German immigrants that had been attacked in a week. Ma had suspected the Kruegers might’ve been threatened by someone, but Earl Krueger had always been a close-mouthed guy, a little too proud to let anyone know if he was having trouble. If he hadn’t been forced to visit the neighbors asking about his lost livestock, nobody’d have known about it.
Earl and Elizabeth hadn’t come to this country until a few years ago, when they could no longer ignore the Nazi threat to their peaceful little rural town in Southern Germany. They spoke with a heavy accent, but until the war began, they’d been treated with as much kindness and dignity as anyone else in town. Lots of folks had accents around these parts.
Other German families who’d recently come from the old country to America had been sent to detention camps. Could that be what had happened to the Kruegers?
But then, why wouldn’t anyone know about it? Whole families didn’t disappear in the middle of the night for no reason. And there were other German immigrant families in town. He’d not heard they were having any problems.
The switches bothered Red a lot.
Those nasty rascals, the Bald Knobbers used to bully men and teenaged boys into joining their vigilante gang by leaving switches on their front porches to warn them what would happen to them if they refused to join.
It was obvious why the Bald Knobbers did that. The more men who were involved in their terrorizing of the countryside, the fewer there would be to oppose them.
But how would anybody expect Joseph Moennig or Earl Krueger to even know about something like that? Joseph might have heard about it from elderly neighbors, but Earl wouldn’t have any way of knowing about it. Not unless somebody’d told him a little about this area’s history.
Red walked back around the house to the front porch. Unlike Joseph’s porch, this one wasn’t open to the wind, but had a rock wall enclosing it from the elements. Those limbs…
As he studied them again, a shape took form that froze his blood—something he should’ve seen sooner. Leaning heavily on the cane, he went up the steps and walked across the porch to stand over the switches.
There were eight of them placed together. At first glance, he’d thought they were scattered haphazardly, but these were not. He had a feeling Joseph’s hadn’t been, either, but the wind would’ve had more chance to scatter them out of order.
Someone had made a rough Nazi swastika with those switches. It surprised him that he hadn’t recognized the shape as soon as he saw it, even though some of the limbs were askew.
The symbol that had stamped his nightmares for three years had been used in an act of terror against these German Americans. He gripped the curve of his cane in anger. He wanted to stomp these switches, to break them into tiny pieces and burn them. He raised his foot…and then he put it back down.
/>
Never destroy evidence.
With shaking hands, he tested the front door of the house, found it unlocked, and went inside. In the kitchen, he found a couple of small, cracked saucers Mrs. Krueger had left behind, and he carried them outside.
Carefully, he scooped the familiar section of footprint into the saucer, and studied it. He figured it to be about a size ten, heavily worn on the outside, but the most helpful mark was that cut in the heel.
No telling how many men had been to the barbershop the past few days. The prints there might not tell him anything, and just because those prints were there didn’t mean the man had even gone inside the shop. Red had noticed Ivan had gotten a good haircut in the past couple of days, but then so had his dad, and John Martin, and likely half the town, freshening up out of respect for the dead at the funeral today.
Even tobacco-spittin’ Homer Jarvis looked as if he’d had his ears lowered recently.
The one person Red wanted to suspect, Gramercy Short, didn’t even go to Bernie’s barbershop. Those two’d had a falling out years ago over a fence between their properties, and Gramercy hadn’t forgiven Bernie yet. His wife Dru cut his hair, and it showed. On the few times a year he got a shearing, he looked like a shaved billy goat.
Red would have to start paying more attention to shoes for the next few days. One way or another, he was going to find Joseph Moennig’s killer and bring him to justice.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Bertie awakened several hours after dawn on Friday morning to the sound of a loud thump that jerked her up from her pillow. Morning sunlight streamed through both bedroom windows, the lace curtains throwing delicate shadows over the polished wooden floor.
The bedroom she shared with Edith was in the second story, front corner of the large guesthouse. It overlooked the road that skirted the front of the property at the edge of the bluff, and Bertie could see the James River from the front window.
She realized the thump had apparently been the slam of a car door. Noticing that Edith had already risen for the day—probably already working in the garden, an activity she loved—Bertie turned over and covered her ears with the pillow. Just a few more minutes of slumber…
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