The Last Government Girl. Ellen Herbert

the dining car, a colored waiter in an elegant burgundy uniform showed them to a table covered with a white tablecloth, decorated by a single rose in a bud vase. The splendor of it all rushed at her. This was a day of firsts.

      The car was filled with well-dressed diners, their voices rising in a pleasant babble accompanied by the silvery clink of knives and forks. The light above their table shone down as if they were on stage.

      “Here I am on the inside looking out,” Eddie whispered. “My luftschloss come true.”

      “Our sky castle, you mean.” Rachel adjusted the green ribbon holding back her long hair. “We did it, Bubula. We left Saltville.”Rachel shook salt from the shaker onto her palm and tossed it over her shoulder.

      Eddie did the same. After the waiter brought their dinner, Eddie said, “To us, Schatzi.” They touched glasses of lemonade and sipped.

      “You look like Veronica Lake.” Rachel lowered her voice. “Here we are Veronica and Elizabeth Taylor dining together. I hope some snoopy photographer doesn’t spoil things by snapping our picture for Photoplay.” She tilted her head, posing.

      Eddie giggled in a way she hadn’t since girlhood, taking in her reflection in the window. She had released her thick blonde hair from its roll, and it fell into a perfect page boy. “We’re the only women in here not wearing hats.” She wanted to be modern, not improper.

      “And the only women under forty.” Rachel rolled her eyes. “I meant to ask Pearl if she would be working for the Department of the Army, too.”

      Eddie cut into her chicken pie, steam escaping its crust. “Rachel, I need to warn you about Pearl.” She set her fork down. “I doubt she has a job in Washington.”

      Rachel arched an eyebrow. “Why don’t you ever trust people, Eddie?” Her voice had an edge. “Pearl wouldn’t say she had a job in Washington if she didn’t.”

      “Yes, she would. When Pearl was my student, I caught her in plenty of lies. And she was impossible to teach.” Pearl had made jokes behind Eddie’s back, which got the other students laughing at their nervous young teacher.

      Rachel leaned forward, her fingers rubbing her locket. One side of the heart contained Eddie’s photo, the other Rachel’s mother, who died four years ago. “You say you don’t want to be judgmental like your father. So don’t be.” Rachel’s voice gentled. “You’ve hurried through life, Eddie, finishing high school when there were only eleven grades, going through college in the wartime accelerated program. You’re only twenty. Slow down, have fun, and stop doubting everyone.”

      Her words fell on fertile ground. Eddie was tired of being a mother to her seventeen-year-old twin sisters, a housekeeper for her father, and worst of all, her mother’s caretaker.

      “You’re right. Off with mean Miss Smith, schoolmarm.” Eddie scrunched her features and pretended to toss away a mask. “From now on, I’m Eddie Smith sunny government girl.”

      “That’s the spirit.” Rachel hummed along with music drifting from the club car. “Let’s join them once we finish.”

      In the packed club car, the soldiers, sailors, and marines around the piano made room for them. They were singing a Rachel favorite, a silly song about mares and does eating oats.

      To Eddie’s surprise, Pearl stood on the opposite side of the piano, singing, her pointed chin lifted, bliss on her freckled elf face. Eddie’s embroidered blue sweater was buttoned over Pearl’s blouse. Rachel gave Eddie a pointed look and glanced down at Pearl’s feet. Pearl wore the saddle shoes Rachel had kicked off.

      Pearl glanced from Eddie to Rachel, as if she was afraid they would take their things. Eddie tried out a sunny, no-worry smile. After all, Pearl would be going her own way once they got to Washington. And good luck to her.

      Pearl came from a family of notorious bootleggers, who lived far out in the woods so their stills wouldn’t be discovered. Pearl must need to escape Saltville, too.

      Pearl shifted to stand next to Rachel, who rested an arm on Pearl’s shoulder and joined in the chorus. Eddie added her voice to theirs, and the three stood together singing as if they were the Andrews Sisters.

      “A blonde, a brunette, and a redhead,” a soldier said. “I must be in heaven.”

      With darkness pressing at the windows, they sang the miles away, really belting out Cole Porter’s, “Don’t Fence Me In,” their escape from Saltville anthem.

      As they sang, “I’ll be seeing you in all those old familiar places…” Rachel’s smile slipped. Eddie knew Rachel still grieved her mother. They both mourned their mothers, though Eddie’s was still alive.

      When a waiter presented them with a tray of Coca-Colas, Eddie looked around for who ever had sent them. Food and drinks were expensive on the train.

      A blond officer, tanned and broad-shouldered, sat smoking at a nearby table. On his uniform collar, twin silver bars. He raised his glass of amber liquid to her questioning eyes. She lifted her bottle and mouthed thank you.

      They were singing about swinging on a star, carrying moonbeams in a jar when the conductor called, “Union Station, Washington, D.C., fifteen minutes.”

      The singers let out a collective groan. The journey was over too soon. Eddie feared the whole summer would pass like their journey, and they’d be on their way back to Saltville and their old lives. The idea filled her with verzagen, despair.

      Before leaving the club car, she glanced around to the man at the table. He crooked his finger at her, his battleship gray eyes hypnotic. Without a conscious decision to do so, she changed course and threaded her way through the crowd to him.

      He set down his cigarette with its long worm of ash and pushed a small leather-bound notebook and an expensive fountain pen across the table to her. “Your name and telephone number, please, Miss.”

      Her insides turned to jelly, a reminder she was not the wunderkind Saltville folks said she was. She was a fraud. People always remarked on her maturity, her intelligence, but she was no valedictorian when it came to men.

      In her best penmanship, she wrote what he’d asked.

      On her way back to her seat, in a vestibule between cars, the Washington Monument appeared in a rain-flecked window. “Hello Washington,” she whispered and placed her palm on the glass as if to embrace this city she loved already.

      Yet cold dread crept up her spine, and she shivered at a danger she couldn’t name. Washington must have its salt flats, too, dangers that could suck you under. And unlike Saltville, she didn’t know where these were.

      Beside Rachel again, she said, “I’ve become a floozy already. I gave my name and phone number to a man I don’t know.”

      “You mean the handsome Marine Corps captain, who only had eyes for you?” Rachel winked. “If you didn’t give him your number, how would you see him again?”

      4

      Washington, D.C.

      Special Agent Jessup Lindsay weeded the squash vines. He was too anxious to do anything else. On the last Sunday of every month since January, a government girl’s body had been found. And today was the last Sunday in May.

      Let it not happen again, let it not happen, he repeated to himself.

      Around him in the victory garden, dusk folded into night. The light was fading. If he wasn’t careful, he would pull out a vine instead of a weed.

      No lights burned from the back of the three-story house on Georgia Avenue, where their landlady, Mrs. Trundle, lived. Behind her house was the bungalow, little bigger than a henhouse, but he and Alonso called it home and paid Mrs. Trundle, a war profiteer if ever there was one, a whopping thirty-five dollars a month for it and for the garage. At first, their bungalow hadn’t even been livable. Alonso, who Mrs. Trundle referred to as “your nigra manservant,” had screened its windows and run a wire from the