Diana and the Three Behrs Read online

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Praise for Fleeta Cunningham

  Diana and the Three Behrs

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Note from the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Diana’s Glossary of 1920s Slang

  A word about the author…

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  “Modern women. A flock of guinea hens,

  most of them, trying to play a man’s role in a man’s world.” He glared at Diana, then shrugged. “As you said, Archibald, it’s your project. Do as you like.” He snorted. “Flappers.” He picked up his hat and turned to go. “I suppose hiring a woman would save you some money, at least. You wouldn’t have to pay her as much,” he added over his shoulder.

  Diana cleared her throat. “Excuse me? I know it’s common to pay less to a woman, but does that seem reasonable?” She drew herself to her full five feet four inches. “Do you think my boarding house charges me less because I’m a woman? Does the streetcar that takes me to work discount my fare because I’m wearing a skirt? Does the little café where I sometimes get dinner cut the price of the blue plate special for the women who eat there? Gentlemen, I work in order to live, and my expenses are no less than a man’s.”

  The Horned Owl glared again. “Then go home to your family. Isn’t that where a young woman should be until she marries? Not trying to compete with men who have households to support.”

  Of all the obstinate, old-fashioned attitudes! “This is 1925, not 1825, sir. A good many women have been working, making their own way, since the war, and doing pretty well at it.”

  Praise for Fleeta Cunningham

  “It has been a very long time since I read a Western/Historical Romance as well-written and enjoyable as MALE-ORDER CATALOGUE. And despite the amusing title, the book is not a romantic comedy; there’s serious romance, mystery, and suspense along the way.”

  ~Sensuous Reviews

  ~*~

  “I enjoyed the wit and lightheartedness of this story and am hoping to learn more about Matt and Lavinia. This is a great read…a small town feel, lots of chuckles throughout.”

  ~Coffeetime Romance

  ~*~

  “Well-crafted story… exciting plot… interesting characters.”

  ~The Romance Studio (5 Stars)

  ~*~

  “COWBOY AFTER FIVE is wonderful, absorbing, and tender. Love the character development of all protagonists. I cried through the last chapter….”

  ~T. Noel Osborn, PhD

  Diana and

  the Three Behrs

  by

  Fleeta Cunningham

  Flapper Follies, Book One

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Diana and the Three Behrs

  COPYRIGHT © 2018 by Fleeta Cunningham

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Rae Monet, Inc. Design

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Vintage Rose Edition, 2018

  Print ISBN 978-1-5092-1858-5

  Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-1859-2

  Flapper Follies, Book One

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To Kayleigh, my Millennial New Woman,

  and all the wonderful adventures ahead.

  Oh, to be 23 and on the brink of life.

  Love you, Tutu

  Please Note: A glossary of 1920s slang has been included at the end of the book in case some of the words and phrases used in the story are puzzling.

  Chapter 1

  Interrogated by a parliament of owls? Diana Woods regarded the eight sets of eyes, all but one framed by some sort of spectacles, and drew a long breath. The broad-shouldered gent at the end of the table focused on her, his sharp, hooded eyes conveying the notion he could see quivering prey a mile away. That one could pass for a Great Horned Owl looking over his territory for a plump rabbit within range. Not this little bunny, sir. I’m not scurrying off into the woods to hide. I need this job.

  “Gentlemen, I believe your advertisement indicated you were in need of a competent secretary. I come with excellent references. I can do forty-five words a minute on my machine. I take dictation at ninety-five words a minute. I am familiar with academic citation and manuscript requirements. For the last three years, I’ve been teaching typewriting, shorthand, and office skills at the Bradford School for Young Ladies. I believe I meet your qualifications.”

  The Great Horned Owl—his name escaped her, but he was the only one without glasses—glared down, a predatory gleam in his eyes. “The advertisement specified a male secretary.” Swoop! “You certainly don’t meet that qualification.” Snatch!

  One of the round, gray, quiet ones, the bald one at the end of the table, shifted in his chair and raised an interrupting hand. “Now, Adler, really. This isn’t your decision, you know. While we appreciate your help placing that advertisement for us, we do need to be flexible. We hadn’t considered it, but there’s no reason we can’t use a young lady.” A wave of murmurs flowed around the room. “We haven’t had a man answer the advertisement, not one, and our time is short. We must get on with the project. We’ll give Miss…” He looked down at the neatly typed sheet in front of him. “Yes, let’s give Miss Woods a trial, at least.” He pushed back from the table. “We aren’t getting anywhere recording our findings or organizing our notes by ourselves. She can scarcely do worse than we’re doing on our own.”

  That little barn owl has more authority than I thought. The others are nodding.

  “We must get on with it,” another concurred.

  “My thoughts, exactly,” a third echoed.

  The Horned Owl shrugged. “Modern women. A flock of guinea hens, most of them, trying to play a man’s role in a man’s world.” He glared at Diana, then shrugged. “As you said, Archibald, it’s your project. Do as you like.” He snorted. “Flappers.” He picked up his hat and turned to go. “I suppose hiring a woman would save you some money, at least. You wouldn’t have to pay her as much,” he added over his shoulder.

  Diana cleared her throat. “Excuse me? I know it’s common to pay less to a woman, but does that seem reasonable?” She drew herself to her full five feet four inches. “Do you think my boarding house charges me less because I’m a woman? Does the streetcar that takes me to work discount my fare because I’m wearing a skirt? Does the little café where I sometimes get dinner cut the price of the blue plate special for
the women who eat there? Gentlemen, I work in order to live, and my expenses are no less than a man’s.”

  The Horned Owl glared again. “Then go home to your family. Isn’t that where a young woman should be until she marries? Not trying to compete with men who have households to support.”

  Of all the obstinate, old-fashioned attitudes! “This is 1925, not 1825, sir. A good many women have been working, making their own way since the war, and doing pretty well at it.” She drew a short breath. “As it happens, my only family is my sister. We have no one else. If we don’t work, we don’t eat. A simple matter of survival.”

  He looked back at the older man, apparently dismissing her response. “As you said, Archibald, this is really not my concern, and you do need help immediately. I’d look a bit more before deciding, but I do have meetings to attend, so I must go. The banking commission expects me this morning. Gentlemen, I’ve done what I can for your project. The rest is up to you. I’ll see you for dinner.” He looked back at Diana. “As for you, Miss Woods, if they choose to employ you, I trust you’ll give the professors no reason to regret their choice.”

  “I’ll certainly do my best, Mister…” The name still escaped her.

  “Behr, Adler Behr, Miss Woods. I certainly hope you’re better at organizing the professors’ notes than you are at recalling names.” He glanced at the other men in the room, shook his head, and turned away, marching out of the room with rigid back, leaving them to their folly.

  The plump, balding man came around the table. “Never mind Adler, Miss Woods. He’s a bit gruff, but once you know him, you’ll find he’s the finest kind of friend. He was a big help, posting the advertisement for us, but choosing the person to fill the position is our responsibility.” He glanced at his colleagues. “Getting all of us straight is a bit of a chore, isn’t it? Let me give you a better introduction and some idea of what we’re working on. I’m Dr. Pearce. Archibald Pearce. I work with Professor Simon Getty and Dr. Harold Holmes. They’re the two taking up residence in the armchairs. We study cultural influences, those customs and manners that come into common social use from the waves of immigration.” The two rotund, graying, older men, enough alike to be brothers, though one used a cane, relinquished their comfort, came forward, and shook her hand.

  “Glad to have you, Miss Woods.”

  “Kind of you to help us out.”

  With a quick press of her hand from each, they retreated to their chairs.

  “That’s Abelard Withers.” Pearce nodded toward a pale man with dark rings beneath his eyes. The self-effacing shadow in charcoal beside the window poured coffee and passed the cup to a ramrod-straight figure in a stiff collar and tight blue suit seated at the desk beside him. “Dr. Cairncross King. King is specializing in linguistics. That is, he’s studying the way our English language is changing as our society changes. Mr. Withers is his assistant.” Pearce drew her toward a stooped figure in a baggy tweed suit liberally dusted with pipe ash. “Then we have our historian, Dr. Junius Elmsford. He’s attempting to get verbatim accounts from the few people still living who remember how civilization came to the West.”

  Diana hid a smile to offer the local viewpoint. “Here in Fort Worth you’ll find a number of people who will insist we’re still not all that civilized.” She, herself, often found the city raw and unruly.

  The elderly man looked up as if suddenly realizing Pearce had been speaking of him. He removed his glasses to polish them on a white handkerchief and offered another thought. “More homogeneous than I’d expected, however. I’m hoping to find some of the people who recall the days when Fort Worth really was the gateway to the West. Perhaps they’ll be willing to tell me what went on, what they witnessed and experienced, especially in the area called—forgive the language—Hell’s Half Acre.”

  Diana shook her head at his suggestion. “Dr. Elmsford, a good many of those people are still living, of course, but getting them to talk about what happened during that time might be difficult. Sometimes people feel a little too vulnerable. Some of their experiences may have been a good bit outside the law. Is there something in particular you’re looking for?”

  A quiet chuckle behind her interrupted. Diana turned to see yet another “owl,” one she hadn’t actually met before, though she’d been vaguely aware of his presence. He came toward her, the afternoon light glinting on his round, wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Oh, El has his own little hobby horse, Miss Woods. El has an absolute fixation on the Wild Bunch. He wants to know exactly what happened in this town when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were here, before they hightailed it to South America.”

  Diana took a second look at the man coming from the other end of the room. Younger, better looking in spite of his glasses, and certainly more intriguing than his colleagues. He held out a hand.

  “Charles Chapman Carpenter III, Miss Woods, commonly called Trey, for obvious reasons. Happy to have you along for the ride. I drive, fetch and carry, and try to keep the boys out of trouble on their summer jaunts. The rest of the year I’m a lowly instructor of English lit at Havilland College near Philadelphia. If you need anything, from a newspaper to a jail break, I’m your man.”

  “I certainly don’t plan to break jail, but I’ll remember the offer.” She found it easy to respond to his breezy introduction. She looked back at the stooped professor, Dr. Elmsford, and felt her smile widening. An aging professor romanticizing that gang of outlaws? She did her best to quash laughter that tried to bubble free along with her words. “The Wild Bunch? They were here, of course. Local pride demands we claim them, but unfortunately they never did anything remotely noteworthy. Not like other places. No trains robbed, no banks held up. All they did was get their picture made, like a lot of other visitors. That picture got most of them sent to jail, eventually, but they didn’t commit any of their holdups here.”

  Elmsford nodded. “I know that. Still, they were here. They lived somewhere, they went around town, and people knew who they were. They had some reason for coming here. Surely somebody here can tell me about that.” She heard a note in his voice like that of a small boy about to be deprived of a promised treat.

  I hate to tell him how unlikely that is. “It was 1901, twenty-four years ago. Anyone who knew them will be getting on in years. I don’t expect you’ll find too many who will have much to say about Butch Cassidy and his friends. They aren’t forthcoming with what they know.”

  The man who called himself Trey shrugged. “Miss Woods, we’ve all tried to talk to El about this fantasy of his, but he won’t move off the subject. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were here, and El is certain somebody will talk about the reason they came. I suppose we can be relieved he’s the only one pursuing that topic. Thankfully, the others are researching areas with less inherent drama. They just want to track current customs and language that have been influenced by the cowboys, gamblers, and their ladies during the early years. Investigate the scene, as it were, and report the lingering results.”

  “Even that’s not a small project,” Diana suggested. “Hell’s Half Acre was real, it was wide open, and it wasn’t a place decent people admitted visiting or knowing anything about. It’s gone now. Reform and religion have pretty well tamed Fort Worth in the last twenty years. What wasn’t closed down completely went into hiding in dark corners of the town. Nothing of those days, well, not much anyway, survived Prohibition.” Nothing but places like Tommy Gunn’s, and I can’t see seven owlish professors going there. They won’t know to look for it unless somebody actually tells them. For certain, I won’t be the one to suggest they explore it.

  Pearce shrugged and gave her a fatherly smile. “We’ve run into roadblocks before, Miss Woods, and somehow we’ve found ways around them. I’m quite positive we can find someone who will talk about the cattle drives that ended here and the men who made those drives. King is convinced the cowboy brought new words, or adapted terms, to explain his world, words that are still part of the language. Getty and Holme
s agree with me that the Wild West influenced life in this country in ways we haven’t begun to appreciate. We want to study those effects. Even if Elmsford doesn’t find the connection to the Wild Bunch he thinks is here, he should find artifacts and documents to give him material for another look at modern history. You’ll help us collate and organize our findings. In that way, we will all gain from the investigation each one initiates. The final report will be a combination of everything we learn.”

  “My shorthand and typewriting will help you put everything together?”

  Trey laughed. “Your job at this point is to make your typewriting machine pour out concise versions of their ramblings, take notes of their morning discussions, and try to pull some kind of organization out of their individual passions.” He waved at the other six men in the room. “Each one of us thinks his project is the most important, the central point of the study. While they’re arguing, Holmes will keep explaining that he’s the only one who really understands the nuances of social change. El will come up with involved, complex reasons for the Wild Bunch to come here. King will issue directives, and Withers will scuttle around trying to clarify King’s ever-more-complicated instructions. I will diligently try to keep all of them from blundering into places where they could either start a riot or find themselves facing an irate judge. I suggest each morning you barricade yourself behind a locked door and ignore any noisy discussions coming from the other side. Academic deliberations can be mistaken for a full-scale brawl at times.”

  Diana studied the scholarly faces looking toward her. Professors all, and barring Trey, none of them under fifty. Fairly harmless academics. Trey was just trying to put her at ease and add a little lightness to the moment, she assured herself. “I’ll take a chance on them.”

  Trey grinned, his smile lighting up his dark eyes. “You were warned, Miss Woods. Like Fort Worth, they’re not as civilized as they seem.”

  ****

  “You have a job for a month or so? What this bunch of owlish professors is going to pay you will make up for the school closing for the summer? Well done, little sister.” Pamina, her bright kimono spilling over the sofa where she’d sprawled earlier, clapped her hands in approval. “That means you could take the rest of the summer off. What riches!”