Just keep going.

Dirk was oblivious to it all. “Yeah, Henry Buchanan. Everyone knew they were doing the horizontal mambo.”

I snapped my fingers and pointed at him. “Dirk. You must be Dirk Picklebie, right?”

He tensed and his smile faded. “Why you askin’?”

I grinned and held up my beer. “Gloria talks nonstop about Dirk Picklebie. She had a huge crush on you.”

He stood up straighter, grinning from ear to ear. “You don’t say.”

“She says you were a supervisor at Atchison.”

A smug grin lifted his mouth. “I was. I was made supervisor less than a year after I started working on the line. Only a few months before the fire.”

“When I asked her what they made, she said she didn’t rightly understand all the details, but it was some kind of rivet for tractors.”

“Yeah, all kinds of metal pieces. They fit John Deere tractors and such. But the summer before the fire we switched mid-stream to producin’ some hush-hush parts.”

“Oh really?” I asked. “Do you know what they were?”

“They didn’t give us too many details, but I heard Dora telling one of my linemen they were components for airplane parts.” He leaned closer and I got a whiff of cigarettes mixed with BO. I fought the urge to wave my hand in front of my face.

“Airplane parts. Who for?”

His smile wavered and a strange look skated across his face. Crappy doodles, I’d gotten to him. He knew. A war waged in his eyes—his desire to impress me versus his self-protective drive to keep it to himself. I decided to switch topics.

“Why’d you have to hear it second-hand from Dora? It seems like someone as important as you would have known about it.”

“There were all kinds of hush-hush things goin’ on toward the end. She and Buchanan were the only ones who knew about it all. I think she was trying to impress Gardner by telling him. Gloria said Dora and Buchanan had been fighting in his office, so we figured she was on the prowl for her next man before she cut Henry loose. Hell, he was twice her age anyway. Everyone knew what she was after, but Henry would never have left his wife.”

My heart sank and I realized that while I’d been telling Neely Kate I was keeping an open mind, I had never for a minute thought it possible Dora had carried on an affair with Henry Buchanan. Despite the suggestive journal entries. But here was a second person who believed it to be true. Yet, I knew from first-hand experience that you couldn’t believe everything you heard, no matter how many people agreed on it. I needed more proof.

The smug expression on Dirk Picklebie’s face only confirmed that he knew more than he was telling. I just needed to appeal to his conceited side.

“You must have been quite young,” I said. “You don’t look a day over forty now.” I winked. “I thought they had child labor laws back then.” I took another sip of my beer and glanced at the bar. Jed was on the phone now, but his gaze was glued on me. The usual friendliness he showed me wasn’t there. He looked pissed. Could he really believe I was flirting with Dirk?

Dirk laughed and preened, flexing his biceps. I could practically feel Neely Kate’s disgust rolling off her as she took another shot, sending a striped ball just about as far from any of the pockets as was possible on the table.

“I’m a few years older than that, but I was a young supervisor back then and a lot of men resented it.” He winked. “But sometimes it helps who and what you know, if you catch my drift.” He finished his beer and I glanced at the bartender, who threw his hands up in the air before he went to grab another.

“You don’t say,” I said with interest. This could be the break we needed.

“Your turn,” Dirk said, motioning to the table, and I noticed his feet were stumbling a bit. Thank God. We were finally getting somewhere.

The bartender brought over Dirk’s new drink and handed it to him. “Can I get you ladies anything else?”

I shook my head, but Neely Kate said, “Yeah, bring me another.”

Raising my eyebrows, I gave her a look, but she didn’t respond. Neely Kate rarely drank, and I’d never seen her drink this early.

I purposely missed my shot and waited for Dirk to put down his beer. “So why do you think the plant changed to producing plane parts mid-stream?”

He shrugged as he circled the table. “The place had started losing profits and ol’ Henry was talkin’ layoffs, but I heard we got an influx of cash that summer. Because of the new parts.”

“Is that common?” I asked. “Would a plant get paid in advance for something like that?”

“The whole thing was fishy from the beginnin’ and bein’ the smart man I am, I started diggin’.” He leered at me and winked.

I gave him a coy smile. “And bein’ the smart man you are, I’m sure you got to the bottom of it.” I leaned forward. “Out of curiosity, what did you find out?”

He hesitated before turning his attention to the table. “We sure got a nasty wet and cold spell, huh? I hear it might snow this weekend.”

The fact that he was resorting to weather talk meant we’d definitely struck a nerve, and a deep one at that.

Neely Kate caught my eye as he leaned over and sank the last ball. He stood and grinned. “And that, ladies, is how it’s done. How about another game?”

Jed brought over Neely Kate’s beer, but she’d never seen him before, so she didn’t give him a second glance. No longer hiding his interest, he took a seat at a nearby high-top table close to the back door.