The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star (13 page)

He nodded again, although this time, he found that he couldn’t meet her eyes. “I’m sorry, Fannie. I mean, I’m really sorry. I didn’t know it was going to be like this, or I would never have—”

He stopped, surprised and shaken by the pain he felt. It was as if he was putting a knife into her and feeling it slice through his own belly. The only thing that kept the thrust from being fatal was his knowledge that he was doing the right thing, the only thing, although with all his heart he wished it didn’t have to be done.

He cleared his throat and tried again. “I shouldn’t have pursued you the way I did, Fannie. I’m to blame, especially since I knew all along that I couldn’t . . . that is—”

He fumbled for the words and couldn’t find them. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Just . . . sorry.”

“So am I,” she murmured, and he thought she was. She sat silently for a moment, and he thought she must be weighing whether to leave the knife there or let him twist it one more time. He could see her holding her shoulders straight, hardening herself against the pain of another brutal thrust.

“I’m to understand that there was some sort of prior agreement between you and Miss Dare before you . . . before you and I started seeing one another.” It wasn’t a question.

He hesitated. “
Agreement
is too formal a word,” he said, hedging against the outright lie. “But I guess it’ll do. Yes. That’s what I’m saying.” He leaned forward, meeting her eyes, now speaking God’s truth and willing her to believe him.

“Look, Fannie. I have been a cad of the worst sort. You have every right to call me that in front of this whole town, to tell everybody what I’ve done. I hope you will. I
want
you to. I’ve treated you very badly and I’m sorry for it. But I would feel even sorrier if I let you go on thinking that there’s a chance that we could . . . That I—” He had rehearsed this part, too, but now he found that he couldn’t remember the words.

“That you could love me even a little,” Fannie said quietly, “when deep in your heart, all along, you have loved
her
instead.
I suppose that’s it.”

“Something like that,” he said, tasting the lie and feeling an abysmal self-hatred for what he was doing to her, unable now even to comfort himself with the knowledge that this was the right thing, the noble thing to do. And then, into the silence, crawled the ugly little worm of uncertainty. What if it wasn’t the right thing to do? What if he had just broken something very beautiful and fragile, something not meant to be broken? What if—?

“Well, then.” Fannie picked up her napkin and began to fold it, neatly and precisely, lining up the corners so that they were absolutely square. “Well, then,” she repeated, her voice clipped and brisk, her shoulders still straight in her pretty blue dress. “I suppose we won’t be seeing one another again—not
this
way, anyway.”

“I guess that would be best,” he said gruffly. Actually, he hadn’t thought about what would happen between them after tonight, after he had said what he had to say to give her a reason to break it off. Now, having said it, he felt a sudden, surprising void—not a cliff, but a void—open up at his feet. It was wide and so deep he couldn’t see the bottom.

Still in that brisk voice, she asked, “Will you be going off . . . with her?” She put down the napkin, adding quickly, “Forgive me for asking, but I think I should know. People might ask, and I would like to have something to tell them.” She paused, waiting, and then said again, “Are you going off together?”

He hadn’t thought of this question either, and found himself stumbling through a ham-fisted improvisation. “Actually, no. I mean, that’s not . . . it isn’t likely to happen. At least, it won’t happen any time soon. Neither of us has the money. And I can’t just walk away from the newspaper. There are debts.” There weren’t, luckily, but it was the best he could do on short notice.

“But if you love her,” she pressed, “and she loves you—well, then, money shouldn’t be an issue. And if you can’t leave the newspaper, couldn’t she come here, to be with you?”

The thought of Lily Dare staying in Darling was so absurd that Charlie almost laughed out loud. “No,” he said. “She couldn’t. But I’ll be seeing her, of course—as often as we can manage it.” He managed to wrap a chuckle around his next lie. “Maybe she’ll fly in for a weekend every so often.”

“With that airplane, I suppose she gets around,” Fannie said.

There was a long silence. Then she lifted her chin and he heard the hard, fierce honesty in her voice, truer than anything he had said to her.

“Well, then, Charlie Dickens, all I can say is that I’m sorry. I thought . . . that is, I had begun to feel that I loved you. And I thought you cared for me in the same way. I knew we couldn’t expect to make a life together for a while, the way things are these days. But I let myself hope, very unwisely, that we might, when things got better.” She clenched her small hands, the knuckles white and hard, her hard, fierce voice becoming even fiercer. “I can’t believe I let you fool me this way, Charlie. I’ve been so foolish.”

He wanted to say
No,
I’m the fool, Fannie, the biggest fool in the world.
But of course he didn’t. This was what he had wanted, wasn’t it? It was better for her to be angry. Anger would dull the pain. Anger would shield her against the inevitable gossip.

He lowered his head against her fierceness and said, with a contriteness that was agonizingly genuine, “I’m a louse, Fannie. I’m a jerk. I’m a damned two-timing
heel
. It’s better for you to know that now than to find it out later.”

Outdoors, the last light was gone, and in the room there were only shadows between them. He shoved the rest of the words out roughly, as if he were pushing rocks uphill. “That’s what I want you to tell anybody who asks. Tell them Charlie Dickens is a louse, a rat. Tell them how badly he’s behaved.”

She laughed then, a bleak laugh that was brittle with hurt. “What makes you think that people will have to be told? They have eyes, don’t they, Charlie? When they see you with her, they’ll know what kind of person you are. I won’t have to say a word. Not one single word.”

“I suppose so,” he said, and the darkness grew darker. He had done what he set out to do. His plan had worked as he intended, although he wished that she were angrier, that she would lash out, would lay into him like a cat-o’-nine-tails, the way he deserved. That she would raise her hand and slap his face so hard that it would rock him down to the soles of his shoes.

“Well, then.” She stood up, facing him in the dark, and he braced himself against her fury. But all she said was, “Well, then good-bye, Charlie.”

Charlie looked into her face and she met his gaze quite steadily. He had expected that she might cry, and if she did, that he would feel sorry for her. But she hadn’t cried, and feeling her steadiness, he suddenly felt sorry only for himself—sorry and very, very small. He had been so sure he was doing the right thing. But now he wasn’t.

He looked down into the black void at his feet and wasn’t sure at all.

On Thursday mornings, Mr. Moseley always reviewed the files for the upcoming cases and sent Lizzy over to Judge McHenry’s office with any additional paperwork relating to a pending hearing. Lizzy enjoyed this little task, since she usually took the opportunity to drop in at the county treasurer’s office and catch up on the latest news with her friend Verna.

Of all the Dahlias, Lizzy was closest to Verna, who—by virtue of the work she did in the probate clerk’s office—had developed the mistrustful habit of listening between the lines for whatever disagreeable truths people were trying to conceal. Verna liked to say that whenever she stubbed her toe on a rock, she just had to stop and peer under it to see what was hiding there. Lizzy almost never looked under rocks unless she absolutely had to, but she was always interested in what Verna found.

This Thursday morning, Mr. Moseley had telephoned from Montgomery with instructions to take several folders to Donna Sue Pendergast, the clerk in Judge McHenry’s office. After that, he said, she could take the rest of the day off. He paused.

“This is the Watermelon Festival weekend, isn’t it? And you’re in charge? Why don’t you close up the office today—and take Friday off, too.” With an apologetic chuckle, he added, “It’s the least I can do after standing you up for the Kilgores’ party.”

Well, this threw a different light on the day, didn’t it? Since there wasn’t any office work to do, she could settle down to the garden club newspaper column, “The Garden Gate.” For this week’s column, she had chosen the topic “Summertime Beauty Ideas from the Darling Dahlias” and had collected tips from every club member. Working fast, she got everything typed up in a matter of thirty minutes. She would drop the pages off in the
Dispatch
office on her way to Judge McHenry’s office.

The sky had looked threatening when Lizzy came to work that morning, so she had brought her umbrella. There was no sign of rain clouds now, however. So Lizzy put on her yellow straw hat (the color exactly matched her sunny yellow print dress), gathered her newspaper column pages and the folders, and went downstairs. Charlie Dickens wasn’t there, but she left the pages with Ophelia, who took them to her Linotype machine at once.

As Lizzy turned to leave the newspaper office, she saw the stack of ready print pages that had just arrived on the Greyhound bus from the print shop in Mobile. These pages—which would be incorporated with the local news in Charlie’s print run—were already made up with the latest national and world news, sports, comics, and women’s news. The headline:
Roosevelt Promises New Deal.

Curious, she paused and skimmed the article, but if the writer ever spelled out what a “new deal” was, she didn’t see it. She hoped it wasn’t going to be like the promises Hoover made when he was campaigning back in 1928, telling voters that presidents Harding and Coolidge (who also happened to be Republicans) had “put the proverbial ‘chicken in every pot’ and a car in every backyard.” Hoover promised more of the same. “The slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage,” he had said, back in 1928.

A full garage,
Lizzy thought a little wistfully—and she was still riding her bicycle. Not much progress, was there? As if to underscore that thought, as she went out the door, she glanced down Franklin Street and saw an old Keystone iron-wheeled farm wagon in front of Hancock’s Grocery. It was hitched to a scarred brown mule, patiently flicking its ears and tail against the flies. A woman wearing a slat bonnet and a feed sack dress waited patiently on the wagon seat, a baby in her arms, a diaper over the tiny face to shield it from the sun. A small boy, towheaded, barefoot, shirtless and dressed in ragged overalls, sat in the back of the wagon with a black and white dog.

Parked beside the wagon was a rusty old Model T Ford. Mr. Betts, the Ford’s owner, had made it into a truck by the simple expedient of taking out the backseat and the whole back end of the car and adding a big wooden box that stuck out over the back bumper like the bed of a truck. The box was filled today with a wooden crate of live chickens, a goat with its legs trussed, and a bushel of shelled corn.

And next to Mr. Betts’ old Ford was Mr. Elias’ older brown Packard, which lacked the passenger-side door, as well as both front and back bumpers. An old leather belt was slung across the missing door to keep Mrs. Elias from tumbling out when her husband turned a sharp corner.

Lizzy shook her head. There might be plenty of new cars in the garages in Mr. Hoover’s neighborhood, but not here in Darling—and not many full dinner pails, either. What would it take to get things moving forward again, even if Governor Roosevelt were elected? What could one man—even somebody as powerful as the president of the United States—do in the face of such a difficult situation? Mr. Hoover was a decent, good-hearted man who cared about people. Surely he would have changed things if he could—but he hadn’t. Mr. Moseley said it was because members of his party wouldn’t let him put any spending programs in place to boost the economy, but Lizzy didn’t understand that. She had heard that the government was in debt to the tune of some sixteen billion dollars, an almost unimaginable sum. How could Mr. Hoover spend money the country didn’t have?

Lizzy was still pondering this question as she walked down the dim courthouse corridor and into the clerk’s office, where she put the folders on the desk. Donna Sue, the judge’s clerk, turned around from a file cabinet and asked if Liz had heard that Myra May and Violet had hired a new cook.

“I knew they were holding auditions,” Lizzy replied, “but I didn’t know they had found somebody already. That was quick. Have you tried her food yet?”

“I stopped in there this morning,” Donna Sue said. She was a hefty woman who ordered her dresses from the Montgomery Ward “stout ladies” pages and was obviously enthusiastic about food. She paused, an oddly puzzled expression on her round face.

“It was the strangest thing, actually,” she went on. “Last night, I dreamed about my mama’s grits and sausage casserole. She used to make it for Sunday breakfasts, and it was always so good. It’s my favorite memory of her. When I woke up from the dream, I could almost taste that casserole.” She closed her eyes and licked her lips.

Then her eyes flew wide open. “You are
not
going to believe this, Liz. But lo and behold, when I went into the diner to get my usual doughnut for breakfast, Raylene—that’s the name of the new cook—was just serving up a batch of—
guess what!—
grits and sausage casserole! And what’s more, it tasted like my mama’s, too—which is strange by itself, since there must be dozens of ways to cook up grits and sausage in a casserole.”

“That
is
hard to believe,” Lizzy replied, thinking that if anybody but Donna Sue had told her this, she would suspect that it was a made-up story. But Donna Sue was an unimaginative woman who did good work in the circuit court judge’s office precisely because she was such a no-nonsense, nothing-but-the-facts-please kind of person. “You dreamed about it, and there it was,” she mused. “You must have been surprised by the . . . coincidence.”

“Surprised? Was I ever!” Donna Sue exclaimed. “But to tell the truth, it didn’t feel like a coincidence. It felt like
magic.
” She added ruefully, “I’m afraid I made a pig of myself. That casserole was even better than my mama’s, if you can believe that. I told Violet and Myra May that Raylene is a much better cook than Euphoria and I hoped that she would be cooking in their kitchen for
ever
.” She paused. “Really, Liz. You should go over there and give Raylene a try.”

“I will,” Lizzy said, and headed upstairs to the county treasurer’s office to have a cup of coffee with Verna.

Verna was not the most cheerful person in the world, but this morning, her frown was even darker than usual. “I have bad news about the tents for the Watermelon Festival,” she said, as she put Lizzy’s coffee mug on the desk. “Two men from the Masonic Lodge brought a truck to the depot to pick them up, but the tents weren’t on the train.”

“Oh, dear!” Lizzy exclaimed, suddenly apprehensive. The sabotaged airplane and now this! She sat down in the chair next to Verna’s desk. “Well, when
are
they coming?”

“No idea,” Verna said shortly. “I called the rental agency in Mobile as soon as I got the word, but nobody answered the telephone. I called twice more this morning. I’ll try again in a little while.” She shook her head. “Sorry, Liz. I know that isn’t what you wanted to hear. But I’ve got it under control.”

Lizzy chuckled wryly, and Verna gave her a suspicious look. “What’s so funny?” she demanded.

“I’m remembering what you said Monday night, at the Dahlias’ clubhouse,” Lizzy replied. “‘When everything seems to be under control, that’s just the time when it isn’t
.
When everything just plain goes to hell in a handbasket.’” She sighed. “Far as I’m concerned, this festival is jinxed. Everything is already going to hell.”

“Uh-oh,” Verna said, with evident interest. She liked it when someone confronted her with a problem she could put her mind to. Verna was a natural problem solver. “What else has gone wrong?”

“Too much,” Lizzy said. Choosing her words carefully, she told Verna about the sabotage to Miss Dare’s airplane, the possibility that the air show might be called off, and Charlie Dickens’ concern for the physical safety of the Texas Star. Lizzy didn’t say anything about the rest of it, of course: Charlie’s relationship with Miss Dare (whatever it was) and the anonymous letters and photograph that had sparked Mildred Kilgore’s fears about her straying husband. Those things had been told to her in confidence and were too deeply personal to share—unless she felt she absolutely
had
to.

“And that’s the story,” Lizzy concluded. “If the air show comes off as planned, Charlie plans to hang around the airfield and make sure nobody monkeys with the airplanes. And I agreed to stay at the Kilgores’ while Miss Dare is there. I’m sleeping in the bedroom adjacent to hers, so I can keep an eye on her and make sure she’s safe.”
Or to keep her away from Roger,
she thought to herself. She laughed a little self-consciously. “I’m afraid this sounds a bit Miss Marple-ish, doesn’t it? But it seems like the right thing to do.”

Verna, a fan of true crime magazines and Agatha Christie’s detective stories, had recently loaned Lizzy her well-thumbed hardcover copy of
The Murder at the Vicarage
. The book had reminded Lizzy that things were not always as they seemed, and that even small towns—like the quiet and innocent-appearing St. Mary Mead, where nothing important ever happened—could harbor some sinister secrets, secrets that nobody in the world could guess. Nobody, that is, except for a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.

Innocent little Darling had its dark corners, too, as Lizzy knew from her own experience over the past few years. There had been the dreadful murder of young, pretty Bunny Scott, which might have gone unsolved if she and Verna and Myra May hadn’t gotten curious about a certain dentist in Monroeville. And that slick gangster from Chicago who had come to Darling looking for Al Capone’s ex-girlfriend, who had moved in with her aunt right across the street from the Dahlias’ clubhouse! And those sneaky shenanigans with the Cypress County bank accounts that had ended when the county treasurer drowned himself in a gallon of the local white lightning. You’d never in the world know that such ugly events could occur in such a lovely small town as Darling. But of course they could, and they had. And that was exactly the point. Bad things could happen anywhere.

“Personally, I think what this world needs is one or two more Miss Marples,” Verna replied. “But I sincerely hope that Miss Dare hasn’t collected as many enemies as Colonel Protheroe did. And that she doesn’t end up the same way
he
did.” She narrowed her eyes. “Stabbed to death.”

Lizzy stared at her. It was the murder of Colonel Protheroe—a man who was hated by half the village of St. Mary Mead—that the astute Miss Marple had solved in
The Murder at the Vicarage
. Lizzy swallowed. And Lily Dare, like Colonel Protheroe, had a great many enemies. But it hadn’t occurred to her that anyone might actually try to—

“You don’t think there’s a possibility of
that
?” Lizzy asked. She thought of the letters that Mildred had received and her mouth went suddenly dry.

“Obviously, somebody hated her enough to sabotage her plane. So yes, indeed, there’s a possibility of that.” Verna spoke with the grim assurance of someone who knows that when she turns over a rock she will find a snake or a scorpion under it—and the experience of someone who never expects anybody to act any better than anybody else (and usually a whole lot worse). “Oh, and if you need me to help you keep an eye on things at the Kilgores,” she added casually, “you can count me in.”

“Really?” Lizzy put down her coffee cup. She hadn’t thought about asking someone else to help, but now that she did, it certainly made good sense to ask Verna, who was by nature a suspicious person.

“Really,” Verna said emphatically, and Lizzy could tell that she would like nothing better.