And You Will Find Love

She told them what she had learned from her partner.

"Russ said that later on the night Chet tried to take me, his dog Scrub began barking and woke him up. Scrub must have heard someone prowling around outside. Russ got out of bed to take a look around with a flashlight and saw a man outside one of the hangars. When he flashed his light on him, the man began to run away. But not before Russ got a glimpse of his face. The man's face was disfigured. Scrub began chasing after the man, but Russ called him back, afraid the man might hurt his dog."

Barbara then told Edna about No Face. Leila already had heard about him from Barbara.

"It must have been No Face who Russ saw at the airport that night," Barbara said. "Maybe he was looking the place over, but Scrub and Russ scared him off. Chet might have hired him to set the airport fire. He might have been planning to do it that night."

Leila couldn't help but say what she was thinking. "Too bad Chet's such a stinker. You said he looks like Errol Flynn and has all that money. But he's a pervert, like you say Moose called him."

"Why would he do such a terrible thing... set those fires?" Edna asked.

"Chet's mad at me, for not giving myself to him," Barbara replied, then surprised herself for being able to make light of it and even kid herself. "God knows I can understand I'm driving him crazy. I'm such a ravishing beauty. Jean Harlow and Joan Crawford all rolled up in one!"

Her friends laughed and were glad to see Barbara still had a sense of humor.

"Sometimes I think Chet's gone crazy. And he's probably just as crazy mad at Moose Mondrowski, for humiliating him the way I told you he did, just a few nights before the fires."

While they talked on the front porch, Buck sat in his rocker, staring off into the night. He didn't even look up when the three of them were laughing. That too saddened Barbara; seeing the man who was like a father to her drift out of their lives. He was living in some other world they could not reach him in.

"Have you told anyone you believe you know who set the fires?" Edna asked.

"No, but Moose also suspects who it was," Barbara said.

"I'm afraid he'll go find Chet, even though he's probably back in Chicago by now, and try to kill him. Not that Chet doesn't deserve it. I'm sorry I have to say that, but right now it's how I feel about him."