The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush (19 page)

“I came to pick up the scrip you printed. I told Mrs. Tidwell I would help her set up her county payroll disbursements.” He grinned expansively. “You just watch, Dickens. We are going to pump some money back into this town.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever you say.” Feeling the need for nicotine, Charlie fished for a Camel, lit it, and dropped the match into the overflowing ashtray. “Got any news on the bank opening?” He filled his lungs with smoke and blew it out. “If you have, I could make room for that. Front page. Above the fold.” He’d bump Libbie Custer to page two.

Duffy grunted. “Not yet. Working on it.”

A no-answer answer, Charlie thought. “Well, is the holdup here, or in New Orleans?” He eyed Duffy through the curling smoke, and a new thought came to him. “Is there a chance that your bank will pull out of the deal?”

Duffy pushed his hands into his trouser pockets. “Off the record?”

“Absolutely.”

“How the hell should I know? Nobody tells me a damn thing.”

Charlie considered that. Duffy hadn’t said, “No, there’s not a chance we’ll pull out.” And his “Not yet” had sounded down, dejected. Charlie felt his newsman’s nose begin to twitch. Something was going on here.

“Seriously,” he said. “And still off the record. Just when do you think you’ll be able to announce that the bank is definitely going to open again?”

Duffy made a disgusted noise. “Lay off, will you, Dickens? I don’t have all morning. Just get me that scrip and I’ll get out of your hair.”

Charlie considered that a no-answer answer as well, added it to the first and second, and knew that his newsman’s nose was right. It sounded like the New Orleans bank might be getting cold feet on the deal. If that happened, what would become of the Darling Savings and Trust? Would it be bought out by some other bank? Would it stay closed forever? He shivered. If that happened, they could kiss the town good-bye.

“Come on, stop stalling,” Duffy said brusquely. “You may have time to sleep off last night’s bender, pal, but I’ve got work to do.”

Charlie frowned. Was it that obvious? He had shaved and changed his shirt, but there wasn’t much he could do about the bags under his eyes. Stung, he pushed himself out of his chair and went to the wooden counter, where he had stowed the leather satchel full of scrip. He reached down for it, didn’t feel it, and bent over to pull it out. It wasn’t there.

He straightened up, frowning uneasily. He distinctly remembered putting the satchel under the counter after he had talked to Twyla Sue Mann. But he had to admit to having a little too much of Mickey’s joy juice last night, here at the office, because sometimes Mrs. Beedle knocked on his door and demanded to know if he was smoking, which she didn’t allow for fear that her boarders would fall asleep with a cigarette and set the mattress on fire.

And to tell the truth, he’d been so blotto that he didn’t even remember going home—although he knew he must have, because that’s where he woke up this morning, sprawled across his bed with his clothes and shoes on, stinking like a barroom. He had probably stashed the satchel somewhere else for safekeeping and forgotten about it.

In fact, he thought he dimly remembered doing just that while he was under the influence. But where? He turned, looking around the office, which was considerably cleaner today than it had been for some time. Where would he have put it? In the corner, under those boxes?

“What’s the matter, Dickens?” Duffy said impatiently. “Come on. Get me that scrip, will you?”

“I don’t know . . . where it is,” Charlie said, trying to concentrate. “I printed and trimmed it yesterday morning. Bundled it up here at the counter, and put it into an old leather satchel I had after the war. Stowed the satchel under the counter—”

Duffy bent over and peered into the dark space. “I don’t see it.”

“That’s because it’s not there,” Charlie replied shortly.

“Well, where is it?”

Charlie shrugged. “I dunno. Must’ve put it somewhere else. I’ll have a look around.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? It hasn’t been stolen, has it?”

“Well, what if it had?” Charlie rolled his eyes. “It’s not money, you know. It’s just bundles of colored paper that don’t have any real—”

“Of course it’s money, you idiot,” Duffy snapped. “It’s Darling Dollars, thousands of them, coin of the realm, good as gold. Payroll dollars at the sawmill, the bottling plant, the county—” His face was red and getting redder. “In your limited notion of what’s possible, it might not seem to you like anything special, but—”

“Hold your horses,” Charlie said wearily. “Don’t work yourself into a heart attack. That satchel hasn’t been stolen. It’ll turn up, and if it doesn’t, I’ll simply reprint. When do you need it?”

“Today. This afternoon. I’m taking it to Mrs. Tidwell, over at the courthouse, and Hank Biddle, out at the bottling plant. Tomorrow I’m—” He stopped, his eyes narrowed. “How do you know it hasn’t been stolen?”

“What good would it do anybody if it had?” Charlie countered in a reasonable tone. “I keep telling you. It’s phony money. Nobody would mistake it for the real thing.”

“Maybe,” Duffy said between his teeth. “But it’ll spend like the real thing, here in Darling. How much did you print? Ten thousand, wasn’t it? If somebody took it, he can use it to buy groceries, pay taxes, pay for his newspaper subscription, give it away—”

Charlie held up his hand. “It hasn’t been stolen,” he said, with more conviction than he felt. “The place was locked when I came in this morning.” He hadn’t remembered locking it the evening before, but he did know that he’d had to use his key this morning, because he’d had a little trouble getting it into the lock. “And anyway, this is no big thing. If the satchel doesn’t turn up, I’ll just reprint. It’ll cost a bit to reorder the paper, but I won’t charge you for my time.”

“That’s big of you.” Duffy’s voice was dry. “How soon can you reprint?”

“Well, let’s see.” Charlie frowned. “If I call Mobile now and order the paper, they’ll put it on the Greyhound tomorrow morning and I’ll have it tomorrow afternoon late.
If
they have it in stock. If they have to get it from the plant at Pensacola, it’ll likely be Monday. After I get the paper, it won’t take me long to print it but—”

“Monday!”
Duffy roared. He shoved his face close to Charlie’s, his eyes glittering and hard. “Now, you listen here, Dickens. Today is Wednesday. I want that money ready to meet payrolls on Friday, do you hear? If it isn’t, you will be the sorriest son of a—”

“I can’t do anything more than my best,” Charlie said defensively. “You go on back to your bank. I’ll take it from here.”

Muttering to himself and casting glaring glances over his shoulder, Duffy stomped out of the
Dispatch
office and Charlie began searching for the satchel in earnest. It had to be here
somewhere.

But a half hour later, he was ready to admit defeat. There were only so many shelves and corners and stacks of boxes and paper and other clutter behind or under or in which he could have stashed the satchel while he was soused the previous evening. He stopped, frowning, wondering whether he might have put it outside the back door with the intention of taking it home with him to Mrs. Beedle’s. In fact, the longer he thought about it, the more he thought he remembered intending something of the sort.

Then it came clear, a flickering memory of standing at the back door around seven the previous evening, singing the other words he had learned to “Tipperary.” “That’s the wrong way to tickle Mary, that’s the wrong way to kiss. Don’t you know that over here, lad, they like it best like this.”

And then he had put the satchel outside the door, thinking that he would pick it up on his way home, after he had locked the front door and enjoyed one last drink.

Hurrying now, he went to the back door to look, with “the wrong way to tickle Mary” running through his head. He fully expected to look down and see the decal-studded satchel at his feet, but to his dismay there was nothing in the alley except the straggly black cat that lived under Hancock’s grocery store steps and was always looking for a handout. The satchel wasn’t outside the back door, and he didn’t have the foggiest idea where it was. If he had indeed put it out there, somebody must have come along and picked it up. But who? The alley wasn’t used, except sometimes by Old Zeke, when he was carting grocery orders for Mrs. Hancock’s customers in his little red wagon.

Closing the door, Charlie decided he’d better call Mobile and see about ordering the colored paper—what was it? Yellow, red, purple, green? He frowned. The thing was, he couldn’t quite remember what colors he had assigned to the different denominations. Was it red ones, yellow fives, green tens, and purple twenties? Or—

Nota bene,
he muttered, as he reached for the telephone. It was what one of his commanding officers used to say—the guy with the Harvard law degree.
Always make notes.
He should have written down which colors he’d used for which of the damn Darling Dollars. He rang the switchboard, got Myra May, and was eventually put through to the paper supply house in Mobile. He ordered the paper, telling the bookkeeper there to bill the Darling Savings and Trust. Doing it that way, he wouldn’t have to ask Duffy to reimburse him. And he got a lucky break, for the paper was in stock. If all went well, he would have it tomorrow afternoon, assuming that the Greyhound bus didn’t break down, which had been happening with greater frequency in the past few months.

Charlie hung up the phone and sat down in his chair, rubbing his face. His headache was back—or maybe it had never left, had just been drowned out by Duffy’s annoying insistence and the need to find that satchel. He opened his desk drawer and was hunting for an aspirin when the bell over the front door tinkled and a man put his head in.

“Yo, Dickens,” he called. “You here?”

Charlie stood and raised his voice. “At the desk. Come on back, Moseley.”

Benton Moseley, wearing his usual courthouse suit and tie and a gray fedora, came around the counter. “You got a few minutes?”

“Sure thing.” Charlie gestured to the only straight chair in sight. “Take a load off. Better dust it first, though. That’s ink dust on the seat. You don’t want to sit in it.”

Of all the people in Darling, Charlie had the greatest respect for Benton Moseley. He wasn’t just the best-liked lawyer in Cypress County, he was the smartest, with the most political savvy, having survived a tour of duty on the front lines in the state legislature. What’s more, he came from a long and distinguished line of Darling lawyers, his Moseley father and grandfather and great-grandfather before him all practicing out of the office upstairs, above the
Dispatch.
To Charlie’s certain knowledge, many of the legal secrets in Cypress County—and there were plenty of them, some of them inconsequential, some momentous, some even murderous—were neatly filed away in those wooden file cabinets upstairs.

Or in Bent Moseley’s brain, under that good-looking head of curly brown hair, where he carried even more secrets and pulled out one or two of them when they were needed to get something done. Not blackmail, of course. Bent was too much of a straight shooter for that. But he was a master of the sharp, crafty use of relevant information, dropped like the right card out of the right hand at the right moment in a poker game.

Bent brushed off the chair, took off his hat, then sat down and pulled out his pipe, regarding Charlie critically. “You’re looking a little the worse for wear. Have a big night, did you?”

“Wish I could remember,” Charlie said with a rueful grin. “Afraid I can’t offer you a drink, though. Finished the bottle last night and God knows when I’ll get another one as good, at least until whiskey is legal.”

Maybe he should quit, he thought, not for the first time. That business with the satchel—not being able to remember what the hell he’d done with it—was bothering him. A good bottle of whiskey, savored the way you savored a good woman, was one thing. But when the night’s drinking screwed up the next day’s work, it was time to cut back, or quit cold turkey. Yeah, it was time. But could he do it?
Could he?

“Bad business, that raid on LeDoux’s still.” Bent took a leather tobacco pouch out of his jacket pocket. He had a deep voice, slow and thoughtful, richly Southern flavored, and he didn’t use words idly. When he said something, you knew he meant it. “The kid was just fifteen. No excuse for shootin’ in a situation like that.” He shook tobacco into his pipe and tamped it down with a forefinger. “Damn near criminal.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Charlie said. “Nothing to be done, though.” He paused, and added hopefully, “Is there?”

“I doubt it. But on the off chance, I called a fellow I know who swings some weight in the district office in Birmingham. I gave him the straight of it. There’s no telling what Kinnard will put in his report—ambush, exchange of fire, self-defense—to try to make it look good. This isn’t the first time his bunch has pulled something like this, you know. They raided a still up near Selma a few weeks back—another shooting. I don’t reckon my call will change anything, but we’ll see what happens.” He put his pouch away. “Say, Charlie, I’ve got a story for you, my friend. For Friday’s paper.”

“You and half the damn town,” Charlie said grumpily. But he reached for his pencil and pad. Bent rarely brought him a story, because most of the time, he didn’t talk about his work, protected by attorney-client privilege, of course. When he did offer Charley a story, though, it was a doozy, like the time he had lifted the lid on the bribery scandal involving old Judge C.L. Lewis. It had almost torn the roof off the courthouse.

“Half the town?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Charlie picked up the pencil. “So what’s the story?”

“It’s George Johnson,” Bent said, putting a match to his pipe. “You heard about the vandalism at his place last night?”

“I wrote it up,” Charlie said. “Klan look-alikes, red paint on the front porch and sidewalk, plants pulled up in the garden. Page one stuff,” he added dryly.

“And a rock through the window with a death threat tied to it,” Bent said. “Off the record.”