The Darling Dahlias and the Poinsettia Puzzle

by Susan Wittig Albert

Taken aback, Charlie stared at the boy for a moment. He felt in his shirt pocket, took out his Camels, and lit one, pushing the pack across the table to Wilber. Then he put on his glasses, opened the folder, and began to leaf through the papers.

  The dim light made reading difficult, but he could see that the pieces were neatly typed in standard-width newspaper columns—the boy knew how to do that, anyway. He skimmed several quickly, stopped here and there to reread, and was impressed. Whole sentences, grammatically correct. Details in the right order and complete. Sentence length and syntax, no problems. Vocabulary appropriate. Even an interesting turn of phrase here and there. Nothing exciting in terms of content, but that was Darling for you. Nothing ever happened in Darling.

  Except, Charlie reminded himself, that Ophelia was deserting him, and he was short a reporter, an advertising manager, and a Linotype operator. He closed the folder.

  “This is good stuff for where you are now, Wilber,” he said slowly. “I’m a pretty decent judge, and in my opinion, you’ve got the skills it takes to get started. From there, you can build the rest of what you need.” He tipped up his mug and emptied his root beer. But he didn’t come here looking for a replacement for Ophelia. He was after something else—and the sheriff was depending on him. He gave the boy a straight look.

  “There’s a story that’s not in this folder, though. The one about Bragg.”

  “Yeah.” Wilber looked troubled. “About Bragg, and . . .” He pushed Charlie’s cigarettes back across the table and took a new pack—Lucky Strikes—out of his pocket and clumsily began to open it. “And there’s more, Mr. Dickens. I’ve been thinking about this all day—how much I should tell you, I mean. There’s a lot more. I just don’t know what to do with it, or how.” He fished out a cigarette and lit it with a match.

  Charlie stared at the boy for a moment. More? More than Bragg? Feeling that it was time to take charge of the situation before it got completely out of his control, he leaned closer.

  “Okay. Here’s what I’ll do. Wilber. You write the story you’ve got, and I’ll take a look at it. If it’s ready to go, I’ll tell you. If it needs more work, I’ll tell you that. I’m your editor, remember? And I’m your publisher. Got that?”

  “Wow!” The boy’s eyes were shining. “Oh, yes, Mr. Dickens! Yes, sir. I got that. I—”

  “Hang on,” Charlie said. “While you’re writing your story, I’ll be writing mine. When I say it’s time to publish, I’m the one who decides whether we go with my story or yours. If we go with yours, it’ll have your name on it. If we go with mine, you can decide whether you want to be named as a source. Either way, there’ll be a job for you at the Dispatch. It’ll pay peanuts, and include advertising and subscription sales, Linotype and press operation, as well as job press stuff. But you’ll get a fair crack at reporting.”

  Wilber was exuberant. “A job at the Dispatch! Mr. Dickens, I can’t tell you how much I—”

  Charlie held up one finger. “One condition. Before you write, I have to hear what you’ve got. And depending on what it is, we may have to involve the sheriff.”

  “The sheriff?” Wilber frowned.

  “As in the law,” Charlie said firmly. “We’re dealing with a crime here. Right?”

  “Well, yes.” Wilber’s mouth firmed. “More than one.”

  “I don’t think you want to be an accessory after the fact,” Charlie said. “I know I don’t. So you tell me what you’ve got and we’ll take it from there.”

  Wilber squirmed. “It sounds like you’re holding all the cards. I gotta trust you to be square.”

  Charlie grinned mirthlessly. “That’s the way the world works, Wilber.” He picked up his mug, saw that it was empty and put it down again. He was remembering what the sheriff had told him about the ballistics test.

  “Now, how about we start with what you know about Bragg. Like, he didn’t shoot himself with that Colt revolver, did he?”

  The boy shook his head. His voice was very low. “No. Richards shot him, with his own gun. Richards’ gun, I mean. He had another that he threw down beside Bragg. That one was the Colt.”

  “Ah.” Charlie took a deep breath. “You saw this?”

  Wilber nodded mutely.

  “Did Richards see you?”

  Wilber shook his head. “I know I should have told the sheriff right away, but I was . . . well, I was scared.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” Charlie said ironically. “Your word against Richards’. And you’re just a kid. Right?”

  “Right.” The boy gave him a grateful look. “The prison is . . . well, it’s got its own laws, and the warden is his own sheriff. I figured I could end up dead real easy, just like Bragg. But then you showed up and I began to think about using the Dispatch to go public with what I know. And quitting my job at the prison. Which would make it harder for them to go after me.” He chewed his lower lip. “Maybe. Am I wrong?”

  Charlie hesitated, wanting to be straight with the boy. “You’re not wrong,” he said slowly. “Bragg was an easy target. But you’re not entirely right, either. It depends on how much you know and what the downside is for them. And how fast the sheriff can act.”

  Certainly, Buddy Norris would be pleased. With an eyewitness, he would be able to get a warrant for Richards’ arrest—and his gun. The sheriff might be momentarily ticked off that Wilber had been so slow in coming forward, but he would appreciate the boy’s predicament. And in the long run, since the case was just coming together, the delay wouldn’t make much practical difference. Nobody had been indicted yet.

  “All right,” he said, looking around for an ashtray, “that’s Bragg. But I’m guessing there’s more.” Not finding one, he dropped his cigarette on the floor and stepped on it. “What else have you got?”

  Wilber leaned forward, lowered his voice, and told him, in detail. It took a few moments, while the music from the jukebox slowed to “Mood Indigo” and dancers crowded onto the floor until they were packed as tight as dill spears in a pickle jar.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Charlie said when the boy had finished his story. Now he really was surprised. “How long has this been going on?”

  “I haven’t been out there, but I know they’re pretty far along. I’ve overheard the warden and the others talking about it, and I’ve seen the invoices for supplies and equipment. I even know where they’re doing it—a place out by the river they call the Back Forty. I can draw you a map if you want.” He paused. “Do you want to hear more?”

  Charlie stared. “There’s more to tell?”

  “Oh, you bet,” Wilber said grimly, and lit another cigarette.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “THE DAHLIAS TAKE CARE OF THEIR OWN”

  Saturday, December 22

  “Well, it’s finally here.” Mildred unlocked the back door of The Flour Shop. “Opening day.” Never mind that it was pitch black outside on a bone-chilling December morning when everybody else in Darling was warmly cocooned in their beds, with another hour or more to sleep.

  “I can’t believe it.” Earlynne’s breath was a steamy cloud. “It’s happening at last. It seems impossible!”

  “Seems entirely possible to me,” Mildred said grumpily. She pushed the door open, fumbling for the light switch. “Especially given all the elbow grease we’ve used on this place. All the hours it took to scrub and paint. All the repairs—”

  She switched on the overhead light and gasped loudly, frozen in place.

  “What’s wrong?” Behind her, Earlynne gave her a hard push. “Don’t stand in the door, Mildred. Don’t—” She gasped, too. “Oh, no! No, no, no!”

  When they left just before midnight the night before, the old kitchen had positively sparkled. The green linoleum was scrubbed within an inch of its life, the counters and sink and refrigerator and stove and large oven gleamed, the white-painted walls shone, and the new shelves were neatly stacked with sacks of sugar and flour and jars of home-canned fruit, as well as bowls of rising dough and trays of
shaped pastries in their second rising, ready to be popped into the oven first thing this morning.

  But the sparkling kitchen was now a wreck. There were drifts of flour and sugar everywhere. Bowls of rising dough had fallen onto the floor and broken, spilling the dough in soft, spongy heaps. Large shards of broken Mason jars lay amid puddles of canned apples and peaches. A tray of rising dinner rolls lay upside down on top of two of Earlynne’s cookbooks. And in the shadowy darkness of the top shelf, just above eyelevel, sat a fat, fluffy, furry creature, mostly black with a wide white streak—

  “Skunk!” shrieked Earlynne, wrapping her arms around herself as if she were about to be attacked. “Mildred, get the broom! You’ve got to get that skunk out of here before it—”

  “Wait,” Mildred commanded. Picking her way through the litter of broken crockery and mounds of sticky dough, she advanced cautiously toward the animal.

  It looked down on her with amber eyes and politely inquired, “Meow?” Beside it on the shelf was a large gray mouse, headless and very dead.

  “Mrs. Hancock’s cat, from the grocery store,” Mildred said, much relieved. “His name is Smudge.” She reached up and took him down. With the cat in one arm, she picked up the dead mouse by the tail. “He must have come in after this mouse, and the two of them had a tussle.”

  “Put that cat out!” Earlynne cried, with a stamp of her foot. “I never want to see the wretched creature again!”

  “Thank goodness he isn’t a skunk,” Mildred said, showing Smudge and his mouse the back door. “That would have been worse.”

  Helplessly, Earlynne threw up her hands. “But just look at this mess!” she wailed. “Broken glass and china all over the floor, all that wonderful dough and those lovely peaches and apples, all totally lost! We’ll never get it cleaned up in time to—”

  “We won’t as long as you stand there sniveling,” Mildred snapped, taking charge. “I’ll get a box for the glass. You clean up a counter space where you can start making replacements for the batches we lost. But first—” She headed for the electric coffee maker on the shelf beside the stove. “Coffee,” she muttered. “I will not survive this debacle without coffee.”

  It took a full thirty minutes of frantic work to clean up the mess, fueled by several cups of hot, black coffee. But at last the floor was clean again, the sacks of flour and sugar (partly depleted) were replaced on the shelves, and Earlynne had finished mixing up the dough to replace the batches Mrs. Hancock’s cat had spoiled. And Mildred had found out how Smudge had got into the kitchen in the first place, via a loose vent cover in the wall, which she fixed with a few turns of a screwdriver.

  Earlynne had turned on the oven and headed for the pastry case in the front room of the shop, where she slid open the glass doors and pulled out two trays of oven-ready croissants that had been resting overnight, the yeasty dough plumping up, safely away from the marauding cat. She carried them into the kitchen.

  “Aren’t they gorgeous?” she asked, as she slid the trays into the hot oven. “I’m glad I put them into the display case, where that beastly animal couldn’t get to them.” She sighed. “Oh, I hope people will love them!”

  For once, Mildred couldn’t think of a single quibble. Indeed, Earlynne’s croissants were gorgeous, and yes, she hoped people would love them—especially because she knew the amount of love and attention Earlynne had invested in the croissant dough, rolling it out, rolling the chilled butter out to the right size, then stacking the butter and the dough together, turning and folding it like a book. And then doing it again and again, until at last she cut the rolled dough into neat little triangles, shaped the triangles into croissants, and finally baked them.

  Mildred knew that for Earlynne, this was a labor of pure love—love of the dough, love of the process, and love of the people who would enjoy the flaky perfection of each perfect croissant. And for the first time in their decades-long friendship, she allowed herself to see how Earlynne’s patient dedication to her craft made her the person she was—and to appreciate that. She faced the day with a new understanding of her friend.

  After she repaired the damage Smudge had caused in pursuit of his mouse, Mildred had turned on the lights in the shop and began getting ready for their first customers. She put a mat on the floor in front of the door, because the radio weather forecast predicted rain and cold temperatures. She installed a new paper tape in the cash register and put thirty dollars in bills and coins into the cash drawer. She set their new scale on the counter next to the register, to weigh bulk items or things they might sell by the pound. She stowed paper bags and boxes under the counter, along with string to tie up the boxes. She put fresh white paper doilies on the shelves in the glass display case, to make their baked goods—scones and gingerbread and cinnamon buns and orange nut bread and lemon tarts—look even prettier, and a large glass bowl of holiday cookies on the top of the case, with a neatly lettered sign that said “Free! One to a customer, please.”

  And finally, she placed one pot of Aunt Hetty’s bright red poinsettias on the counter and the other in the front display window. Along with the Christmas tree and the cookies and little gingerbread houses she had decorated, the poinsettias brought a note of wonderful Christmas cheer to the shop. As she paused to take a look around, checking to make sure that everything had been done, she found herself smiling happily. The shop looked wonderful, absolutely wonderful, she thought, as she put on a fresh white apron and got ready to greet their first customers.

  But there was still the difficult matter of bread.

  Mildred had told Earlynne about her desperate visit with Aunt Hetty the day before, and Aunt Hetty’s generous pledge to help them out with a couple of batches of fresh loaves—in return for their promise to go to her house on Sunday for a lesson on how to bake bread.

  To put it mildly, Earlynne had not been enthusiastic. “I hate for Aunt Hetty to see what an utter bumbler I am about bread-baking,” she said. “What’s more, Henry and I were planning to visit his parents on Sunday.” She turned down the corners of her mouth. “I think it’s a waste of time. But if you insist—”

  “It’s Aunt Hetty who’s insisting,” Mildred interrupted. “And since she has offered to help us out with the opening, I think we have an obligation. Don’t you?”

  Earlynne sighed and rolled her eyes, but she finally said yes. So when Aunt Hetty walked through the front door promptly at eight forty-five, bearing a box filled with a dozen beautiful loaves of home-baked bread, Mildred could tell her to expect both her new students right after church the next day.

  “Wonderful!” Aunt Hetty held out the box. “Why don’t you put these loaves into that lovely new display case of yours while I look around and see which of Earlynne’s pastries I’d like to buy. I know you’re not open yet, but—”

  “Oh, please!” Mildred said. “Choose whatever you’d like, Aunt Hetty. It’s on the house. We’re just so grateful to have this wonderful bread!”

  Mildred arranged Aunt Hetty’s beautifully browned bread in beautifully neat rows, with a small sign that said “Baked FRESH this morning! Only 11¢ a loaf.” By the time she was finished, Aunt Hetty had picked out a lemon tart, a sticky bun, and a scone.

  “Are you sure this is all you want?” Mildred asked, putting the items into a bag. “Wouldn’t you like to have a few—”

  “No, thank you,” Aunt Hetty said. “I do my own baking, you know.” She added, enigmatically: “If you sell out of my bread, don’t despair. There’s more on the way.”

  Mildred was too busy to give that mysterious comment much thought. Soon after Aunt Hetty left, she placed the “Open” sign in the front window, the little brass bell over the front door began to tinkle, and Darling people started flocking in. They came by ones and twos, sometimes by threes—so many at one time that Earlynne had to put on a clean apron and come to the front to help out for a while.

  Mildred had always liked talking to people, and standing behind the counter of her very own shop gave her
an unexpected thrill—especially since almost all of the Darling folks came with a smile and a warm “Congratulations on your opening!” Several brought cute handmade cards, two of the Dahlias brought winter bouquets of chrysanthemums and asters, and Mildred’s neighbor Mrs. Rooker brought a cute little paintedrock doorstop and a flyswatter decorated with ribbons, to be used in warmer weather. As the gifts accumulated, The Flour Shop began to seem more and more homelike.

  And the baked goods simply flew off the shelves. Bob Denny’s wife Clara bought a loaf of bread and a small carrot cake. Henrietta Conrad, a telephone operator at the Darling Exchange, bought four doughnuts and a loaf of bread. Bettina Higgens, Beulah Trivette’s associate at the Beauty Bower, bought a loaf for herself and one for Beulah, plus a half-dozen scones for the ladies who were getting their hair done that morning. Mrs. Lima (the wife of Lester Lima, who owned the drugstore) bought eight cupcakes, a gingerbread house for her grandson Little Elmer, and a loaf for herself and another for Little Elmer’s mother. Pauline DuBerry, from the Marigold Motor Court, bought two loaves and two sticky buns. Everybody complimented Mildred on her window display and said how Christmassy the shop looked. And when Mildred said, “Please come back,” each one said, “Oh, I will!” or “You can count on it,” or “Sure thing!”

  And so it went, in spite of the chilly wind and dreary skies—not the best kind of day for a grand opening, Mildred thought. Around ten that morning, when Earlynne brought in more trays of sweet and savory baked goods to fill the empty spaces in the display case, every single one of Aunt Hetty’s beautiful homebaked loaves had been sold. Mildred was making a small “Out of bread—SORRY!” sign for the empty spot in the display case, when Bessie Bloodworth came in, carrying a shopping bag.

  “A dozen loaves from Roseanne and me, as a grand opening present for The Flour Shop,” she said, putting the shopping bag on the counter.

  Mildred stared at her. “A . . . dozen loaves?” she managed. “Oh, my goodness! Why, that’s . . . that’s wonderful, Bessie! However can we thank you?”