Jedidiah scowled. “Bandit is gone.”
Obviously he wasn’t at their house, but how long did Andrew intend to keep the dog away as punishment this time? She’d be happy to take Bandit to Washington again. Dogs bonded with people, so he shouldn’t be left with strangers.
“Gone where?” she pressed.
Jedidiah sighed. “I’m sorry to say that he’s gone for good. Andrew had one of the boys down at the stable shoot him dead.”
“No!” She stopped walking, too light-headed to keep moving. “No, I can’t believe it. Even Andrew wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“Believe it,” Jedidiah said. “Delia never liked that dog. Bandit sometimes brings fleas into the house, and you know how she is about that house. Andrew got to please his wife and punish his son, all with one bullet.”
Andrew had always been hard, but this went beyond the pale. Her gaze trailed down the street, where Andrew and Delia’s palatial house sat on a two-acre lot, the lights softly burning inside. How could someone who lived in such a picturesque home do something so foul?
“How did you learn this?” she asked.
“Andrew told me. He was proud of it.”
Marianne swallowed hard. Her grandfather’s memory was sometimes sketchy. Could he have misheard? Or misunderstood? In the past year, both Andrew and her father had grown increasingly insistent that Jedidiah no longer be allowed to play any role in the company. They mistrusted his judgment and accused him of forgetting details. Maybe this was more of the same.
Even as she stared at Andrew’s house, a few of the lights switched off. It was too late to call on her brother tonight to demand the truth, but she would find out in the morning.
Marianne decided to visit Andrew at his office to hear from his own mouth what happened to Bandit. She didn’t want to confront him at home where Delia could interfere, and Jedidiah insisted on accompanying her to the factory.
Magruder Food was located on the industrial side of town. A squat brick building housed the canning and bottling operations, while a separate warehouse stored their inventory. A small building for the business offices was built off to the side. The only ornamentation on the property was a pair of boxwood shrubs framing the door to the offices.
Andrew loathed the location of the business offices, but Jedidiah always insisted on thrift. It was significantly cheaper to keep the entire company located in this industrial area, even though it annoyed her father and brother to no end. They were eager to leave this gritty part of town, but since Jedidiah was still the majority shareholder in the company, there was nothing they could do. Andrew once told her that as soon as Jedidiah died, he planned to move business operations to the other side of town, where rents were sky-high but the location would add prestige to the family’s reputation.
Jedidiah held the door open for her to enter, his smile worried. “I don’t think confronting Andrew is a good idea. That boy has got a temper.”
“I need to look him in the eyes and demand the truth,” she replied, and Jedidiah gave a brief nod. He respected her decision even if he disapproved of it.
The hallway to Andrew’s office was shabby but clean, and the door to his office was open. He sat at a massive oak desk that had been Jedidiah’s first and only luxury once Magruder Food started earning a fortune decades earlier. Andrew had covered the floor with a fine oriental rug, but the rest of the office was filled with workaday filing cabinets, a few chairs, and a single window with the same moss-green draperies she remembered from visiting her father here as a child.
“This is a surprise,” Andrew said as he rose to his feet. “Come in. Have a seat.”
Jedidiah sat, but she felt too nervous to join him. Andrew’s congenial smile was so familiar. He’d played with her when they were little. He once stood up for her against some older boys who used to tug on her braids at school. She couldn’t believe he would order Bandit shot, and he deserved a chance to defend himself.
“I heard something bad about you,” she said. “I heard you had one of the stable boys shoot Bandit.”
Andrew’s face tightened, and his mouth turned into a hard line. “That’s right, I did.”
She flinched and looked away as the last hope in his innocence died away, but her gumption quickly came back. “How could you?” she demanded. “Bandit was a good and loyal dog. Eager to please . . .” Her voice trailed off because it hurt too much to think of him.
“Sam needs to know there are consequences for bad behavior.”
“Does Papa know?”
Andrew nodded. “He said it was harsh but fair. He doesn’t want the family name tarnished, and cheating can do that. He wants the problem nipped in the bud, and so do I.”
“It was badly done,” Jedidiah said. “I’d have stopped it if I’d known. That’s not how a man should handle things.”
“I’m Sam’s father, and you’ve got no say in how I raise him.”
Jedidiah wasn’t used to having anyone contradict him. He stood, anger darkening his face. “That may be, but this is still my company, and I’ve got say here. Look around you, boy! Everything you see here, I built. That factory. That warehouse.” He banged his fist on the desk, making the pencils in the cup rattle. “I bought this very desk with money I earned from the sweat off my brow, and I don’t like to see a man who would shoot an innocent dog sitting at my desk. I trained Clyde to take over the company, but now he’s got highfalutin ideas about Congress. I wish Marianne was a man. She’d be a worthy person to sit at that desk.”
Andrew stood. “Now, Grandpa,” he said in a placating tone that only ratcheted Jedidiah’s anger hotter.
“Or little Tommy, for that matter! I don’t care if the boy was born on the wrong side of the blanket. You let me down. That’s not how a man acts.” Jedidiah was shouting now, his face mottled with rage.
Bandit was gone, and there was no undoing it, but they were still a family, and she hoped Jedidiah didn’t say something he would regret.
She laid a hand on her grandfather’s arm and tried to speak calmly. “We’ve said our piece. There’s no point in belaboring the matter.”
Andrew looked grateful for her intervention. Jedidiah was so angry he might make good on his threat to throw Andrew out of the company.
Her grandfather’s eyes narrowed, but he was starting to calm down. “It’s all right for a man to have a little wildness inside,” he said. “That’s how the Lord made us.” He stood before Andrew and held up a clenched hand. “You see that fist? I’ve been fighting since I came out of the womb. I fight and claw and conquer because that’s how a man survives in this world, but don’t you ever turn that fist on a woman or a child or a helpless animal. Never again. Do you hear me, boy?”
“Yes, sir.” Andrew met Jedidiah’s eyes with his chin held high, but there was a hint of fear in his face. Jedidiah could fire Andrew, and there’d be nothing Andrew or Clyde could do.
“Then we’ll be on our way. Come along, Marianne.”
She obeyed, but Jedidiah still twitched with anger as he stormed out of the office. She glanced back to send a parting look of sympathy to Andrew.