The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose (22 page)

“I agree with Verna,” Lizzy said emphatically. “There’s no time like the present, you know. Better that we do it tonight, while everybody’s thinking that Verna has gone to Nashville.” Unless, of course, it was too late, and Coretta had already passed the word that Verna was still in Darling. She glanced at Coretta, but there wasn’t a flicker of expression on her pretty face. It betrayed nothing.

But Verna was shaking her head. “I would prefer to do this alone. The job isn’t likely to take all night, but it’s certainly going to take several hours. You could find it hard to explain that at home.”

“Well, if you think it really
has
to be tonight,” Coretta said slowly, “I’m afraid that leaves me out.” She turned to Lizzy. “I told Ted that you and I were going to a girls-only card party out in the country and that I’d be home in a couple of hours. I never dreamed that there might be—” She pulled down her mouth. “I guess I just didn’t think ahead, that’s all.”

Lizzy thought that Coretta looked genuinely disappointed. She couldn’t decide whether it was because the other woman had truly wanted to be a part of this adventure, or because she had been told to go along with the plan and report back to . . . well, to whoever.

Verna pushed her lips in and out, thinking. “I guess that settles it,” she said finally. She looked at Lizzy. “But it would be good to have a lookout. Liz, would you be willing to wait downstairs and let me know if anybody happens along? Of course, nobody has a reason to come to the courthouse late at night, but you never know.”

“Sure,” Lizzy said. “I can do that.” She wasn’t eager to spend a couple of hours hanging around the main floor of the dark courthouse, but she felt she needed to stand by Verna. And she did wonder whether it was smart to talk about their plans in front of Coretta, just in case she—well, just in case.

“Okay, then,” Verna said. “Tonight’s the night.” She grinned mischievously. “This way, it’ll be over and done with before I lose my nerve.” Her grin faded and she shot a surreptitious glance at Coretta. “At least, I hope it will,” she added, half under her breath.

When they headed back to Darling a little while later, Coretta was sitting next to Lizzy in the front seat of Myra May’s touring car, and Verna was riding in the back. But because Lizzy still felt she couldn’t trust Coretta, she had blindfolded her again. There was still a problem—a big problem—and Lizzy hadn’t quite figured out how to deal with it.

If Coretta was on their side, she would go home and go to bed and not say a word to anybody—well, except for maybe Ted. But if she was working for somebody else, the minute she got home, she’d be on the phone to whoever it was, telling them that if they hurried, they would catch Verna in the act of burgling the county treasurer’s office.

There had to be a way of keeping her from doing that. But how? They couldn’t put a gag in her mouth and hold her captive until Verna was finished going through the accounts.

Could they?

FIFTEEN

Charlie and the Dahlias

About the time Lizzy was making her early-evening trip out to the Murphy place to talk to Verna about seeing Coretta, Charlie Dickens was eating supper at the diner. As usual, he was perched on the stool at the far end of the counter, where he was least likely to be disturbed by people who wanted to bend his editorial ear about this pet peeve or that pet project. He was digging into a plate of Euphoria’s fried liver and onions, with generous sides of boiled green beans with fatback and onions, potato salad, and sliced fresh tomatoes, on special for thirty cents.

Charlie ate as he usually did, listening to the news on the Philco behind the counter while he read an article in the
Atlanta
Constitution
about the likelihood of Governor Franklin Roosevelt’s nomination at the 1932 Democratic convention in Chicago. Although the convention was more than a year away, the
Constitution
was already optimistic. “As far as the South goes,” Senator William J. Harris of Georgia was quoted as saying jubilantly, “it’s all Roosevelt.”

Of course, that wasn’t exactly true, for right here in Darling, as Charlie was well aware, there were plenty of folks who felt that Roosevelt was dangerously liberal, maybe even socialist in his views. They saw the governor as old money from the northeast, a patrician snob who seemed to be possessed by the rash idea that he could hand out twenty million taxpayers’ dollars to the unemployed. Why, just look what he had done with that relief system of his in New York State, not to mention the old-age pension and unemployment insurance he was pushing through his state legislature. Hand a man like Roosevelt the power of the presidency, and there was no telling what he might do. The conservative Democrats were laying odds on John Nance Garner, Speaker of the House. Garner was a Southerner, a Texan, a regular guy whom Southern folks could count on to see things their way.

Anyway, Charlie knew that even if every Southern delegation went for FDR, they couldn’t carry the convention. Under party rules, the winning candidate had to muster a two-thirds majority, and there were other strong candidates. One of Roosevelt’s opponents was former governor of New York Al Smith, who was backed by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Smith, a Catholic and a Progressive, was hampered by his landslide loss to Herbert Hoover in 1928. But Hearst was using his publications to spread the rumor that Roosevelt—who had contracted polio some years back—couldn’t stand the strain of the presidency.
Time
magazine had just joined the Hearst-sponsored
Stop Roosevelt
chorus, repeating the rumor that while FDR might be mentally fit for the job, he was “utterly unfit physically”—this, despite the fact that a panel of noted physicians had just examined him and found that he had the “necessary health and powers of endurance” to carry out presidential duties. Mrs. Roosevelt was reported to have quipped that “if infantile paralysis didn’t kill him, the presidency won’t.”

Charlie folded his newspaper and laid it aside. Roosevelt’s candidacy wasn’t the only thing he had on his mind tonight, not by a long shot. He was still juggling the bombshell that Ruthie Brant had dropped on him that afternoon—a big fat bombshell that any investigative reporter would love to explode like a giant firecracker all over page one. But like the other offerings Ruthie had brought him, this one was long on narrative and light on the facts. He was still trying to figure out how he could confirm it—especially the part about the auditor’s report.

Of course, it would be best if he could see it for himself and dope out what it meant. But how was he going to get his hands on the damn thing? One thing for sure, Earle Scroggins wasn’t going to hand it over. Not if it said what Ruthie Brant claimed it said. Fifteen thousand dollars missing from the county treasury? Scroggins and the commissioners would keep that under their hats as long as they could—as long as the
Dispatch
let them, that is. Charlie was well aware of his responsibility as a guardian of the people’s interest in their government, even when the people themselves weren’t very interested in their interest.

Charlie had something else on his mind as well—the information he had uncovered at the library about that “secret code” Bessie Bloodworth had given him. After looking over the scrapbook and reading parts of the book he had borrowed, he had decided to have another talk with Bessie and ask her if he could get a look at that pillow. Since there was nothing he could do tonight about that explosive inside dope Ruthie Brant had slipped him, he’d walk over to the Magnolia Manor as soon as he polished off a slice of Euphoria’s chocolate pie.

Charlie’s trip to the Darling library and the couple of hours he had spent with the fragile old scrapbook and the history of Civil War battles had given him the information he needed to fill in the gaps in his spotty schoolboy memory of the facts of the First Manassas. As he leafed through the yellowed pages, reading contemporary accounts from the
Richmond Daily Dispatch
and battle reports compiled by a Confederate army captain, he had begun to formulate an exciting and (he thought) entirely plausible theory about the identity of the person who had stitched those unusual symbols and numbers on the pillow. And when he read the first few pages of
My Imprisonment
, he was even more convinced that he was right. Charlie now wanted to see that pillow for himself. He had an idea about it that he felt he just had to test out.

So when he finished his pie, he left coins on the counter and stopped at the hotel to buy a seven-cent cigar. He ran into Artis Biggs and inquired after his wife, learning that Doc Roberts had confiscated Dr. Baxter’s diet pills and was treating Mrs. Biggs for nervous prostration.

“Good news,” Charlie said, adding fervently, “I hope she has a full recovery.” He meant it. As far as he was concerned, anything that kept Angelina from throwing her arms around him again was good news.

Leaving the hotel, he went down the block and—yielding to an impulsive temptation—stopped in Pete’s Pool Parlor, where he shot a few balls with Freddie Mann and Len Wheeler, who ran the repair shop at Kilgore Motors. Freddie, as usual, had a flask in his back pocket and didn’t mind sharing it around. He got it from his second cousin, Mickey LeDoux, who managed a big moonshine operation over by the river. Everybody in town (including the sheriff) knew that Mickey’s finest could be bought off the shelf behind the horse harness and saddles in the back room at Mann’s Mercantile. But nobody would ever spill the beans to the occasional revenuer who dared to show his face around town. Mickey LeDoux’s corn whiskey was Darling’s best-kept secret.

*  *  *

While Charlie was shooting pool and taking a nip from Freddie’s flask as it went around the table, Bessie and Miss Rogers were setting things up for the Dahlias’ usual Monday-night card party. People took turns hosting the party. It was open to all the members, but it was a rare evening when everybody could make it.

Miss Rogers didn’t usually play cards, although she allowed herself an occasional game of Rook, which was what they were playing tonight. So Miss Rogers would be there, and Bessie, of course, and Beulah Trivette and Fannie Champaign, who was joining them for the first time. Verna and Liz almost always came, but Liz had called to say that Verna had gone out of town to visit a friend and that something urgent had come up and she—Liz—wouldn’t be able to make it. Lucy Murphy had company (she didn’t say who), and Ophelia had to go to a dramatic recital at the Darling school, where her daughter was giving a dramatic recitation of “Annabelle Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe. Alice Ann Walker and Earlynne Biddle had a quilting club meeting. Myra May Mosswell was on the switchboard. Aunt Hetty Little wouldn’t come unless they played poker, Mildred Kilgore wouldn’t come when they played Rook, and Voleen Johnson never came under any circumstance.

So there would be just the four of them. And since the Magnolia Ladies had traipsed off en masse to play bingo at the Odd Fellows Hall on Franklin Street, Bessie set up the card table in front of the big window in the parlor, saying a fervent thanks to the blessed fate that had exiled Lucky Lindy from their midst. Ophelia had taken the cat out to Lucy Murphy’s place. He would never again launch himself from the top of the curtains into some unsuspecting lady’s lap.

While Bessie fetched the chairs from the dining room, Miss Rogers put out the evening’s refreshments on the cherry sideboard, on top of a white cloth embroidered with roses. There was a delicate china platter filled with a selection of Roseanne’s cookies and a large pressed glass pitcher of lemonade with a pretty garnish of fresh mint from the garden.

Bessie had just set out the fourth chair when she looked out the window and saw Beulah and Fannie walking together up the path to the front porch. When she opened the front door, they were chattering excitedly about what had happened to Angelina Dupree Biggs that day.

“Can you
feature
that?” Beulah was saying to Fannie. “In fact, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t held her wet hair in my very own two hands.”

“What’s happened to Angelina Biggs?” Bessie asked curiously, remembering her odd encounter with the woman in front of the
Dispatch
office. “I ran into her this morning, and she seemed . . . well, strange. Very odd.”

“She’s been poisoned!” Fannie Champaign exclaimed, taking off her hat and putting it on the hallway table. This one was yellow straw with a wide, floppy brim and a fine yellow feather band. Fannie owned Darling’s only hat shop and liked to wear her hats as an advertisement. If you admired the one she had on at the moment, she’d be glad to tell you how much it cost and encourage you to try it on in front of the nearest mirror. If you liked it, she’d sell it to you right off her head, with a nice little discount because it was “gently worn.”

“Poisoned!” Bessie exclaimed, taken aback by this news.

“Beulah will tell you all about it,” Fannie added, snatching a glance at herself in the mirror and patting her hair. “She’s the one who figured out what was wrong with the poor thing. Mrs. Biggs, I mean.” She shook her head at Beulah. “Beulah, I am just amazed at the way you put those clues together. I swear, honey, you are the sleuth-in-chief, just like Miss Marple. You know what Miss Christie says. Miss Marple ‘always knew every single thing that happened and drew the worst inferences.’” She laughed, a sweet, tinkling little laugh.

A few weeks earlier, Fannie had given a talk at the Darling Literary Society on
The Murder at the Vicarage
, Agatha Christie’s new mystery, and had quoted a number of lines she liked. She had also read aloud bits of the
New York Times
review of the book. The reviewer had been patronizing in an unmistakably male sort of way, feeling that Miss Christie was far from “being at her best” in the book. “The local sisterhood of spinsters is introduced with much gossip and click-clack,” he had written. “A bit of this goes a long way and the average reader is apt to grow weary of it all, particularly of the amiable Miss Marple, who is sleuth-in-chief of the affair.” The members of the Literary Society (fully half of them were Dahlias) had giggled at the phrase
local sisterhood of spinsters
. That was exactly how they liked to describe themselves, although not all of them were spinsters.

“There’s something wrong with Mrs. Biggs?” Miss Rogers asked, coming into the parlor with another plate of cookies. “I hope it’s not too serious. She is one of the library’s most supportive patrons.” She paused, and her tone became slightly disapproving. “She rather enjoys romantic novels.
The Sheik
seems to be her current favorite. In fact, I believe that the book is a day or two overdue. I shall have to telephone her.”

Bessie refrained from rolling her eyes. She had started to read the novel, which was still wildly popular, even though it had been out for over ten years. But she stopped when she got to the part where the hero, Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan, had dragged the heroine, Lady Diana, into his tent and cruelly ravished her while she screamed and resisted. Bessie knew she was old-fashioned, but she didn’t feel that the hero of a book ought to behave in such a violently lecherous fashion, even if he was a lord of the desert. In the movie based on the book, Rudolph Valentino (Sheik Ahmed) had taken pity on Agnes Ayers (Lady Diana) and had been a great deal more romantic—it was Hollywood, after all. But the scenes were still shocking enough that the film had been banned in Kansas City. Bessie found it interesting that Angelina Dupree Biggs was a fan of the book.

“The poor dear is losing her hair,” Fannie explained. She rolled her eyes. “Isn’t that just too hideous for words?” She paused, reflecting. “Actually, I have a draped satin toque—teal blue—that would be appropriate for such a situation.” She looked at Beulah. “Do you think it would be too forward of me to offer to loan it to her until her hair starts coming back in? Assuming it does, that is,” she added thoughtfully. “It might not.”

“I think you should definitely offer,” Beulah said, although the thought of Angelina Biggs in a teal blue satin toque made her lips twitch. It was something that Lady Diana would have worn, however, so maybe Angelina would accept. “Fannie, that is very gracious of you.”