The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose (15 page)

“Well, hooray for Verna,” Beulah said enthusiastically, and flicked the comb down the back of Alice Ann’s head, looking for ends she needed to snip off. She was thinking that Verna’s financial windfall, whatever its source, must have been fairly substantial. It cost a bundle to dig a well and put on a roof—not to mention buy a new leg. “So she’s got some extra cash. Doesn’t sound like much of a problem to me.”

Myra May put down her coffee cup, got up from her chair, and came to stand behind Beulah, where she could see Alice Ann’s face in the mirror. Beulah felt her tautness, as if Myra May were a wound-up watch spring about to let loose and let fly.

“Yes,” Myra May said, trying to sound casual. “What’s the problem, Alice Ann?”

Alice Ann fidgeted under her pink cover-up cape. “Well, the problem is that Mr. Scroggins—Verna’s boss—came in on Friday and asked to see Mr. Johnson. They went into Mr. Johnson’s office and closed the door. A little while later, Mr. Johnson came out and asked me to get out the records of Verna’s account. He looked them over and made some notes and took them back to his office, where Mr. Scroggins was waiting. I’m sure Mr. Johnson must have showed him the notes.”

Beulah was incensed. “What a lot of nerve!” she exclaimed hotly. “Bank accounts are supposed to be private! I don’t want Mr. Johnson makin’ notes about how much money I’ve got in the bank and givin’ the information to other folks. If he can do it to Verna, he can do it to anybody. To me or—” Indignantly, she pointed her rattail comb at Myra May. “Or you, Myra May. Or Violet or Liz or anybody! What gives that jerk—pardon my French—the right to go pokin’ around in people’s personal business?”

“That bothered me, too, Beulah,” Alice Ann confessed. “All weekend long, I kept thinking how wrong it was, what Mr. Johnson had done. Mr. Scroggins, too. I kept wondering whether I should phone up Verna and let her know about it. But Arnold, he didn’t think I should rock the boat. If Mr. Johnson found out, I could lose my job.” She bit her lip. “But after what happened this morning, I am really sorry I didn’t.”

“Why?” Myra May’s voice was still casual, but Beulah heard that note of deep unease. “I mean, what happened this morning to make you sorry, Alice Ann?”

Alice Ann gulped. “What happened was that Mr. Scroggins showed up again, just before I came over here.” She looked up and her eyes met Beulah’s and Myra May’s in the mirror. “And this time, he had the sheriff with him. They both went into Mr. Johnson’s office.”

“The sheriff!” Beulah and Myra May exclaimed in alarmed unison.

Alice Ann nodded. “And then Mr. Johnson came out and got the book with Verna’s account in it. This time, he didn’t bother taking any notes. He just carried that book back into the office with him. A little while later, maybe ten or fifteen minutes, Mr. Scroggins and Sheriff Burns left. That’s all I know.” She took a deep breath. “Oh, I do wish I hadn’t listened to Arnold! If I had given Verna a word of warning, she might . . . Well, maybe she could figure out what to do. And whatever they’re thinking about her and that money, I know they must be wrong.”

“Oh, dear goodness,” Beulah said, truly distressed. “I wonder what in this blessed world is goin’ on. What do you suppose, Myra May? What can it mean?”

But Myra May was striding toward the door. Over her shoulder, she said, “Beulah, I’ll have to reschedule my appointment. Maybe tomorrow—I’ll phone you up. Okay? Oh, and tell Bettina I’m sorry I missed her, will you?”

“Sure thing,” Beulah said, but Myra May was already flying out the door and down the back steps, the screen door banging shut behind her.

“My goodness,” Alice Ann said weakly, and didn’t say another word until Beulah brushed the hair from the back of her neck and whipped the cape off her. Then she took two quarters out of her purse and handed them to Beulah.

“Thank you, Beulah,” she said. And then, “I wish . . . I just wish—” She looked away. She didn’t finish her sentence.

“I know,” Beulah said sympathetically. “But you did the best you knew how, Alice Ann. And thank you for telling us about Verna’s situation. I know it wasn’t easy. But us Dahlias have to stand together. We’re all we’ve got.”

Mutely, Alice Ann threw her arms around Beulah and they gave each other a long, hard hug.

A little while later, Beulah was sweeping Alice Ann’s hair off the floor. Bettina, a tall, gangly young woman in a red print dress, had come in with three yards of pretty rose pink print cotton from the Mercantile and was happily chattering about the smocks she was going to make. But Beulah was only half listening. She was thinking about what Alice Ann had told them and wondering what Myra May knew about the situation. She obviously knew
something.
What was it?

Bettina looked up at the clock. “Eleven,” she said, folding the cotton and putting it back into the bag. “I wonder where Miz Biggs is. She’s almost never late.” Angelina Biggs had a standing appointment for a shampoo and set on Mondays at eleven.

As if on cue, the bell tinkled, the door opened, and Mrs. Biggs burst in. Her hat was askew, there was a fresh coffee stain on the skirt of her green rayon dress, and her face was red and blotchy, as if she’d been hurrying—not a good idea in this heat, especially when you were as oversized as Mrs. Biggs, who found it hard to fit comfortably into the chair at the shampoo sink without parts of her hanging out.

Beulah was almost never judgmental when it came to beauty or the lack of it. She was confident that every woman had in her what it took to be truly beautiful. All a woman had to do was get shined up—with a little expert help, of course. But Beulah had seen photographs of Mrs. Biggs when she was young and gorgeous, with a full head of luxuriant blond hair and a curvaceous shape. She couldn’t help thinking that under all that regrettable stoutness was a perfect figure, just dying to come out and be admired by all. In fact, she had heard that Mrs. Biggs was trying to reduce by taking some of Dr. W. W. Baxter’s famous patent-medicine diet pills—the extra-strong ones. Beulah sincerely hoped that the pills would turn the trick. But from what she had seen on Mrs. Biggs’ plate at the last church social (the Biggses were members of Hank’s father’s congregation), it wasn’t likely. The lady had tucked into several helpings of Granny Mitchell’s potato salad, four pieces of Jed Snow’s mother’s fried chicken, three big spoonfuls of Mrs. Vaughn’s green beans and fatback, and two generous slices of Doris Wedford’s pecan pie, topped with Aunt Hetty Little’s pecan praline ice cream. Beulah had the feeling that even Dr. Baxter’s diet pills—extra-strong or not—were no match for Mrs. Biggs’ very healthy appetite.

But she betrayed none of this when she said cheerfully, “Good mornin’, Miz Biggs. And how are you on this beautiful Monday mornin’?”

“Oh, Beulah,” Mrs. Biggs said, and gulped back a sob. “I tell you, I am so discombobulated, I just about don’t know whether I’m up or down or inside out!”

“Bettina,” Beulah said, divining that Mrs. Biggs had something on her mind, “why don’t you go in the back room and fold the towels while I do Miz Biggs?” Bettina, understanding the situation, picked up a basket of towels and vanished.

Beulah went to the shampoo sink. “Miz Biggs, you just come over here and sit yourself down in this chair and put your feet up on this stool. A nice shampoo with plenty of hot water is always balm to the soul.”

A few minutes later, Mrs. Biggs, draped in a pink cover-up cape, was lying in the chair, face up. Her eyes were closed, her toes were turned up, and her head was in the shampoo sink. Beulah was beginning the second lather, humming happily to herself. Next to cutting hair, she loved to wash it, pushing her fingertips firmly into the scalp, scrubbing and massaging and rinsing and scrubbing and rinsing again. For her, it was joy, pure joy, and she prided herself that her clients loved it, too. They always smiled blissfully and, when she was finished, told her that she was the best shampoo artist they had ever met, which for Beulah was every bit as good as the money she got paid for a job well done.

Mrs. Biggs, however, wasn’t smiling, blissfully or otherwise, and the frown furrows between her eyes were deep as ruts on a muddy road. Beulah didn’t like the look of that. Frown furrows on a lady’s face were a sign that something unhappy was going on inside the lady’s head and heart—something that might keep her from becoming as beautiful as possible.

As the shampoo bubbles frothed like meringue through her fingers, Beulah used her standard question to get Mrs. Biggs’ mind off whatever was making her unhappy. “How’s every little thing over at your place? Mr. Biggs doin’ okay, is he?”

Mrs. Biggs opened her eyes, then closed them again. “Everything is just hateful, Beulah.” Her voice became bitter. “Mr. Biggs is havin’ himself an affair. He won’t sleep with me, but he’ll sleep with
her.
”

Beulah’s jaw dropped. Clients sometimes said unexpected things, especially when they were flat on their backs with their eyes shut and their heads in the shampoo sink, which tended to reduce their inhibitions and divorce them from their everyday realities. But in all the years she had been asking her
how’s every little thing
question, nobody had ever answered it quite that way. She was awfully glad she had sent Bettina to the back room to fold the towels and that there was nobody else in the shop to hear what she’d just heard.

Especially because she didn’t believe it. Artis Biggs had finished sowing his crop of wild oats before he got to be twenty-one. Now fifty-something, he was a man of upstanding reputation, a deacon in the Four Corners congregation, a former mayor, and the manager of Darling’s best hotel. If this story got out, and whether there was anything to it or not, the scandal was going to rock Darling to its very foundations—not to mention what it would do to Four Corners. Hank’s father, the Reverend Dr. Trivette, would be shattered. He put his faith in all his deacons.

What’s more, Beulah felt strongly that Mrs. Biggs shouldn’t go around saying such things, right or wrong or somewhere in the middle. What went on between a woman and a man in their bedroom should be held sacred and not told to anybody, not even to the woman’s beautician in the privacy of the shampoo sink at the Beauty Bower. And if Mrs. Biggs was telling this story here, she could be telling it anywhere. Everywhere, for that matter, and to everyone. To Mrs. Hancock at the grocery, or over at Mann’s Mercantile, or (heaven help her) to Mrs. Adcock, Darling’s most notorious gossip.

“I am downright sorry to hear that,” Beulah managed. “I hope it turns out for the best.” She changed the subject hurriedly, saying the first thing she could think of. “Bettina just got back from the Mercantile a bit ago. You should see what she bought—three yards of the prettiest pink cotton you’d ever hope to see. She’s going to make new smocks for us, with
The Beauty Bower
embroidered across the front in old-timey letters. When we get through with your shampoo, I’ll have her show it to you.”

But Mrs. Biggs was not to be distracted by pink smocks or old-timey letters. “He’ll regret this,” she cried fiercely, her eyes squeezed shut now, her pudgy fingers clutching the arms of the shampoo chair like swollen claws. “Soon as I catch them. They’ll
both
regret it!”

Beulah pulled in her breath, feeling unsure and helpless in the face of such wrath. “Well,” she ventured, “maybe it’s not what you think. Appearances can be deceiving sometimes. People don’t always—”

“Not
this
time!” Mrs. Biggs cried, smacking the flats of her palms on the arms of the chair. “I have seen him with my very own eyes, Beulah, coming out of those rooms. They do it on the second floor, you know. Every chance they get. Every morning.”

“Oh,” said Beulah, and began to hurry with the rinse. Maybe a little splash of cold water would cool Mrs. Biggs down and make her think twice about what she was saying. But the lady was so heated that even a little rivulet of cold water dripped on her forehead didn’t dampen her fires.

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Biggs said fiercely, clenching her fists. “Oh, yes, Beulah, oh, yes, yes, yes. The awful truth is that men are lecherous and treacherous by their very natures. Their
natures
, mind you, deep down in the depths of their souls! And not just Mr. Biggs, either. Why, do you know, when I went into the
Dispatch
office this morning to leave an advertisement for the hotel menu, Mr. Dickens tried to kiss me!”

“
Kiss
you?”

Hastily, Beulah squeezed the water out of Mrs. Biggs’ hair. She was seized by an unaccountable and nearly irresistible urge to giggle. Charlie Dickens was a confirmed bachelor who never displayed any interest in women—although Beulah had heard that he might have his eye on Fannie Champaign, who owned the hat shop on the square. And of course, she knew that Mr. Dickens and Mrs. Biggs had been high school sweethearts. But that was decades (and eighty or ninety pounds) ago.

“Yes, kiss me!” Mrs. Biggs kicked her heels against the stool. “Why, the man was so passionate, he nearly knocked me off my feet. I swear, Beulah, it was all I could do to escape from the place with my virtue intact. As soon as I am pinned up and dried and combed out, I am going straight to the sheriff and swear out a warrant against Mr. Dickens for assault with attempt to molest. I’m sure Bessie Bloodworth will testify to what happened. I bumped into her as I was running away from him this morning. She saw how terribly upset I was.”

“Oh, dear,” Beulah said faintly, looking down at the sink. The drain was clogged with a large clump of Mrs. Biggs’ hair and the water wouldn’t go down. She turned off the faucet.

“Oh, dear is right!” Mrs. Biggs was shrill. “And then I am going back to the hotel and wait for that husband of mine to go prancing up to that second floor. I am going to catch him in the act. In the very
act
, you just wait and see if I don’t.”

But Beulah wasn’t listening. She was staring in horror at the clogged drain, at the hank of wet hair she was holding in her hand, and at the large and clearly visible bare spot on Mrs. Biggs’ shiny pink scalp.

Mrs. Biggs stopped talking. Her eyes flew open and she caught sight of the horrified look on Beulah’s face. “What’s wrong?” she asked.