Woman in Red

Woman in Red by Eileen Goudge Page B

Book: Woman in Red by Eileen Goudge Read Free Book Online
Authors: Eileen Goudge
Ads: Link
if it was bad news, he’d have been an odd sort to deliver it, smiling like he was, as if in pleasant thought, his face tilted up to catch the sun. As he made his way up the front path, she noticed that he walked with a limp. From the practiced way he hitched the leg along with scarcely a break in stride, it appeared to be an old injury.
    She let out the breath she’d been holding and forked a hand through her hair, which only made it crinkle into a halo about her head, hair the reddish brown of the madrona tree under which the man was now pausing to look around. Then a new thought occurred to her: If it wasn’t bad news about Joe, it might be official business of a
different sort. In a panic, her eyes flew to the barn, which had been converted into a kennel with an outdoor run enclosed in chicken wire, where at the moment all six dogs were barking madly at the stranger’s approach. Catching a movement in the window of the small, furnished room off the dogs’ quarters, she wondered if her visitor had noticed it, too. Was that why he was taking his sweet time? Her heart lurched at the thought as a knock sounded.
    Putting on her slippers and tightening the belt on her robe, she went to answer the door.
    “I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t wake you,” the man apologized, noting her attire. “I saw the smoke from your chimney and thought . . .” He craned his neck to look upward.
    “I keep a fire burning at night,” she said. With the wartime ban on oil, even coal was scarce, and the old house Joe’s father had built was so poorly insulated that even in the spring months she had to maintain the fire ’round the clock.
    “William McGinty,” he introduced himself, touching his brow in a jaunty two-fingered salute. “And you must be Missus Styles.” She nodded, thinking the name sounded familiar—had they met before? No, she would have remembered that face. He was around her age, thirty or so, tall and whippet-lean, with startlingly blue eyes and a shock of black hair that didn’t seem to want to stay put. He looked harmless enough, but that did nothing to put her mind at ease. He could be one of Sheriff LaPorte’s henchmen, for all she knew. As captain of the home guard, LaPorte had made it his business to mercilessly hound anyone suspected of being an enemy agent. Like poor Otto Haller, the town’s elderly German druggist, who’d been forced to sell his pharmacy and move off the island, his life had become so intolerable. What would LaPorte do if he were to ever get his
hands on a real fugitive? she wondered, feeling an icy chill pass over her.
    “What can I do for you?” she asked. Her tone was pleasant, but she kept a hand on the doorknob and an eye on the shotgun propped just inside.
    “I was driving past and happened to notice your sign. I was wondering if you had any puppies for sale.” The man named William gave her a wide smile that engaged his whole face, a face that might otherwise have seemed austere in its stark angularity.
    Some of the tension went out of her shoulders. “Not at the moment, but I have a litter due any day. Was it a male or a female you were looking for?”
    “Either one will do. I don’t really have a preference.” He shifted from one foot to the other, favoring his good leg. Glancing past him, she could see the clothesline hung with yesterday’s wash, which she hadn’t gotten around to taking down: a sheet billowing in the breeze, a red-checked tablecloth with a burn mark where she’d gotten a bit too assiduous with the iron one time, a corduroy pinafore of Lucy’s, a flannel nightgown, several slips, a blouse.
    And a pair of men’s skivvies.
    A jolt went through her. Oh God. How could she have been so careless?
    Had he noticed it, too? He might not have thought anything of it, but if he were to learn later on that her husband was off fighting overseas, he’d wonder what she’d been doing with men’s underthings on the line. And if he should happen to make mention of

Similar Books

Losing Hope

Colleen Hoover

The Invisible Man from Salem

Christoffer Carlsson

Badass

Gracia Ford

Jump

Tim Maleeny

Fortune's Journey

Bruce Coville

I Would Rather Stay Poor

James Hadley Chase

Without a Doubt

Marcia Clark

The Brethren

Robert Merle