“Hey, Sheriff.” Leonard came out of the kiosk hitching up his uniform pants. “Good to see you. How ya doin’ today?”
“Doin’ swell, Leonard. You?”
“’Bout as good as usual, I reckon.” He tipped up the bill of his cap with his thumb. “What can I do you for?”
Buddy gestured to the autos. “The four boys with me are all deputies. We’re here to see Warden Burford. You know where I can find him?”
“He’s up at the house.” Leonard stepped back into the kiosk and took down a clipboard from a nail. “Wonder how come I ain’t got you on my weekend Admit page.”
Buddy made a face. “Wilber probably forgot to put it down. We don’t want to cause the kid any trouble with the boss, do we? You know how the warden gets when somebody doesn’t do his job right.”
Leonard rolled his eyes in agreement. “No, siree, I ain’t causin’ Wilber any trouble. He’s a good boy, always real respectful, not like a few others I can name. I’ll just put you down.” He looked at his watch, noted the time, and penciled a note. “To get to the house, go straight to the rear of the quad, and turn right. You’ll see it.” He grinned. “Enjoy the party.”
Buddy didn’t ask “What party?” because he was apparently supposed to know about it. But Leonard had more to say. “Them that has, gets,” he went on enviously. “You’ll see what I mean when you meet the girls he’s got in for this weekend. Real cute—makes a man’s mouth water.” He looked toward the cars. “But there ain’t enough to go around.”
Back in the car, Buddy led the caravan along the north edge of the quad to the rear and turned left down a narrow lane. The lane became a circle drive in front of a square two-story house with an imposing white portico that made it look like a plantation house. The men got out of their autos and Buddy and Kinnard led the way to the porch. Inside, Buddy could hear the thump of loud blues with a heavy walking bass, accompanied by a soprano crescendo of girlish giggles. Buddy raised his hand to the doorbell, but paused when he heard a splintery crash.
“Now see what you’ve done, Grover!” a woman cried. “The whole damn bottle!”
“I’ll handle this,” Kinnard growled, and Buddy stepped aside to let the agent and his men go forward. Kinnard pounded on the door. “Federal agents! We’ve got a warrant. Open up! Now!”
The door was jerked open by a broad-shouldered man in a neatly pressed khaki guard uniform, a holstered gun on one hip. His black hair was parted down the middle and Brylcreemed flat on both side. “What in the bloody hell—How’d you get in here? Who let you into the compound?”
“Shut up,” Kinnard barked. His hand darted forward and he yanked the guard’s gun out of its holster. “Hands behind your head. Face the wall. Don’t move.”
The guard’s jaw dropped, but he obeyed. Kinnard barreled through the door, followed by his two deputies, guns drawn. Buddy signaled to Wayne and they stepped inside, guns holstered. The two-story foyer was dimly illuminated by a crystal chandelier that hung from the high ceiling. A large parlor opened off to the right, and a flight of carpeted stairs rose into the shadows to the left. Wayne moved to a dark corner and stood with his back to the wall while Buddy went halfway up the stairs and stood, surveying the scene below.
“Federal agents,” Kinnard yelled again. “Burford, get your ass out here. Now!”
As Buddy watched, a busty red-head in a tight purple dress came to the open door at the end of the hall. She took one look, squealed, “Don’t shoot me! Oh, please don’t shoot!” and shut the door with a loud bang. Somewhere at the back of the house, a dog began barking, and Buddy remembered that the warden had a big black Rottweiler named Jingo. In the parlor, the blues kept on playing loudly. At the top of the stairs, an abundantly endowed blonde suddenly appeared, naked except for a black garter belt, black stockings, and black high heels.
She spotted Buddy and flung up an arm to cover her breasts. “Oh, my God,” she cried, “We’re under attack!” She disappeared. It was a good thing, Buddy thought, because his mouth was watering.
“Quiet,” Kinnard roared. “Everybody stay where you are but Burford. Grover Burford, out here in the hall. Right now. I want to see your empty hands.”
The music stopped with a loud scratch of the needle across a phonograph record. Burford, a heavy man with grizzled hair and a brushy mustache, came out of the front parlor. He was dressed in smart plaid wool trousers and a yellow silk shirt, open to reveal a mat of black hair—a very different man than the one Buddy had seen in uniform. Peeking out from behind him, clutching his arm, was a dark-haired Oriental girl, barefoot, in a pink silk teddy.
His face mottled with rage, Burford shook off the girl’s hand. “What is the meaning of this outrage?” he shouted. “What the hell are you doing in my house?”
Kinnard flashed his badge. “Agent Kinnard, Bureau of Internal Revenue,” He jerked his head toward a coat tree beside the front door. “Get a coat, Burford. We’re going for a ride.”
“Bureau of—” The warden puffed himself up, brazening it out. “I am not going anywhere with you.” He looked from one to the other of the three agents and then saw Buddy on the stairs. “Ah, Sheriff Norris, there you are. Please tell me what the hell is going on here.”
Buddy leaned on his forearms against the banister. “If I were you, Warden,” he replied mildly, “I’d do what Agent Kinnard says. He’s federal. And he’s got kind of a short fuse, so I’d do it quick.”
“But a ride?” Burford asked, his jaw working. “I demand to know where we are going—and why.”
“You don’t get to ask questions, Burford,” Kinnard snapped. “You can shut up and follow orders. You’re in big trouble here.”
“Hands up!” The woman at the top of the stairs had reappeared. She was no longer naked, although the silky black shirt she’d put on was unbuttoned and left nothing at all to Buddy’s vivid imagination. More important, though, she was holding a double-barreled shotgun.
Gesturing with it, she cried, “Drop your guns on the floor, everybody, and put your hands up!” Her voice went up an octave. “If you don’t, I’ll shoot. I swear I will!”
Buddy didn’t doubt it for a minute. The woman was hysterical. She was shaking so hard that she couldn’t hold the shotgun steady. If she pulled the trigger, everybody would get their share of buckshot, at close range. Unfortunately, Buddy himself was the closest, no more than four yards away. And he’d seen what buckshot did to a man. It wasn’t pretty.
Kinnard looked up. “Aw, hell,” he said. With a clatter, he dropped his gun. His deputies followed suit.
“Thank you, Maisie,” the warden said loudly. “That’s very good, my dear. You can put that shotgun down now.”
“I will not!” the woman cried wildly. “They’re going to rape us!”
The Oriental girl gave a terrified yelp, ran into the parlor, and slammed the door.
“Now, Maisie,” the warden said, “you really don’t want to—”
“Get their guns, damn it!” Maisie screamed. “You’ve got to lock them up.” She gestured with the shotgun. “Now, while I’ve got the drop on—”
It all happened at once. The crack of the revolver, the reverberating blast of the shotgun, the crash of the crystal chandelier on the hallway floor, and Maisie’s screams as Buddy lunged up the stairs and tried to grab the shotgun out of her grasp. She was stronger than he expected. And since it was the first time he had ever wrestled with an almost-undressed female, he was a little uncertain just where to put his hands and how long to leave them there.
“I’ll let you explain the shooting to your county attorney, Sheriff,” Kinnard remarked, and picked up his gun. “Come on, Burford. Get your coat. We’ve got a job to do.”
Later, Buddy decided that Wayne must have shot first, surprising Maisie so that she’d jerked the gun upward and fired into the chandelier. Also later, Wayne claimed to have aimed just over the woman’s shoulder, so that Buddy could do what Buddy did. Which Buddy believed, because Wayne was a crac
k shot. If he’d wanted to shoot that woman, there was plenty of bare flesh to aim at.
But now he left Maisie sobbing on the floor, grabbed her shotgun, went down the stairs. He handed the gun to Wayne. “Thanks. You saved our bacon.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” With a lazy half-smile, Wayne added, “Mostly, I was keeping Maisie out of trouble. She’s too pretty to go to jail for killing a few lousy revenue agents and a no-count sheriff.”
“You said a true thing there,” Buddy agreed. “As a reward, why don’t you get the girls together and have a little talk with them? We’ll need their statements. Names, addresses, what they’re doing here, how much they’re paid, etcetera. I’m going out to the Back Forty with Kinnard. I’ll pick you up on the way back.”
One way or another, Buddy had seen quite a few illegal stills in Cypress County, from the one-family copper “turnip pots” small enough for a man to carry on his shoulder, to Bodeen Pyle’s four-hundred-gallon boilers down in Briar Swamp. But the Back Forty operation—which they reached by following Wilber Casey’s very accurate map—was the biggest, most industrialized still he had ever seen.
It was operated by about a dozen men, all of them wearing prison garb, working under the watchful eye of an armed guard. Constructed at the foot of a wooded hill, the operation consisted of six “submarine” tanks, wooden-sided blackpot boilers that could hold eight hundred or more gallons of mash. A dense stand of young trees provided the firewood that would keep six concrete-block furnaces going night and day, while a nearby stream provided the running water necessary to cool down the alcohol vapor in the copper worm coils and condense it into high-octane whiskey. A cart track had been graveled to provide an all-weather road for hauling supplies in and white lightning out.
Kinnard put the prisoners to work destroying the boilers, breaking up the furnaces and condensing equipment, and pouring hundreds of gallons of corn whiskey on the ground. Even Burford was given an axe and told to use it. The destruction was complete by the end of the afternoon, and the prisoners and their guard were dispatched back to the compound.
Kinnard and his agents, pleased with their day’s work, got in their cars and drove away. Buddy loaded Grover Burford, glowering furiously, into his squad car. On the way back to Darling, he stopped at the warden’s house and picked up Wayne.
When Burford asked, all Buddy would say was that the county attorney wanted to discuss the charges that would be filed against him.
“That’s good,” Burford said, folding his arms. “I’m sure he’ll see his way clear to dismissing them—especially after he’s had a talk with the Board of Prison Administrators.”
“We’ll see about that,” Buddy said, and there was no more talk.
It was full dark by the time they got back to Darling. The temperature was dropping again, so while Wayne made coffee, Buddy fired up the coal stove in the reception room and turned up the oil heater in his office. Then Mr. Moseley arrived and he and Buddy sat down to discuss a few matters with the warden.
That’s when Burford learned that Richards had confessed to shooting Bragg and that Deputy Springer’s preliminary test (conducted that morning) indicated that it was Richards’ gun that fired the fatal bullet. The sheriff was confident that an examination by ballistics expert Calvin Goddard would confirm it.
Burford pretended shock. “That’s damned bad for Richards. But it has nothing to do with me. I took his word for it that Bragg killed himself. I trusted him.” He shook his head dolefully. “I just cannot fathom what got into the man. Why on earth did he do it?”
Mr. Moseley gave Burford a hard look. “He says you ordered the killing.”
“Me?” Burford half-rose from his chair. “He says that? Why that’s crazy!” He sat back down again. “Why would I do such a terrible thing?”
“Because Bragg had become a nuisance,” Mr. Moseley said. “He’d stopped being helpful. He was taking too much on himself. He was getting in your way. Most of all, he knew too much.”
“What are you talking about?” There was a tic under Burford’s eye. It jerked spasmodically. “Knew too much . . . about what?”
“He knew that you’ve been treating the prison as a cash cow: overcharging for prison labor and prison-raised crops and products. He knew that the profits were going into your checking accounts in out-of-state banks—and he knew where the banks were. He knew about your clever little foray into the bootleg business, out on the Back Forty.” Mr. Moseley’s grin was thin, without humor. “He knew about the girls, too. Maybe he wanted to muscle in on the action.”
Burford paled. “You don’t know—you can’t substantiate any of . . .” His voice trailed away.
“The state Board of Prison Administrators has been notified that you’ve been arrested. There’ll be somebody down here from Montgomery, helping with the investigation. They’ll have access to all your records at Jericho. And I’ve made arrangements to share what we know about your extracurricular activities. They are interested in your plans for—”
“I want a lawyer,” Bragg said.
“Sure thing,” Mr. Moseley said, rising and smiling pleasantly. “But it’s Saturday. You can work on that next week. In the meantime—” He jerked a thumb. “Sheriff, let’s lock him up.” He stood up and stretched. “When that’s done, I want you and Deputy Springer to come on over to the Diner with me. Euphoria is frying chicken tonight.”
“Sounds swell,” Buddy said. “It’s been a long day.”
“What about me?” Burford asked plaintively, as Buddy cuffed him for the short walk to the jail. “I only had a light lunch.”
“Don’t worry.” Buddy prodded him toward the door. “I think we can fix you up with a hot dog.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“WHATEVER COMES”
Afterward, Lizzy thought she had never had such an exciting evening in her life. The Old Alabama was at its stately best, with candles and fresh snapdragons and asters on the table, a snowy white tablecloth set with crystal and china, and Earlynne Biddle’s boy, Benny, dressed up in a white shirt and bowtie and waiting tables.
Ryan proved to be a fascinating conversationalist, captivating her with tales of his travels for Harry Hopkins at the WPA. His stories featured people whose names she recognized from the Dispatch and the Montgomery Advertiser (Eleanor Roosevelt, Huey P. Long, Frances Perkins, Charles Lindbergh, Lorena Hickok, Amelia Earhart) and she couldn’t help being impressed by the people he knew. The Chicken Kiev was good, although perhaps not as good as Euphoria’s fried chicken. But the white wine—which they would not have gotten at the Diner—was splendid. Because she wasn’t used to it, the two glasses she drank (two!) gave her a pleasant buzz, which lasted through the first fifteen minutes of Red Dust. Until Ryan’s hand, possessively, found hers.
At which point the buzz from the wine gave way to a giddy buzz from something else. His closeness in the dark theater. The provocatively masculine scent of him. The scratchy warmth of his wool jacket against her bare arm. The disorienting sense that something was going to happen between them, and she had no idea what it was.
Where was this taking her? Where would it end? She had been in the Palace hundreds of times, but this felt like the first time, and the place itself felt strange and new and different. It felt unreal, and she felt almost as if she were in a movie—only nobody had given her the script, and she wasn’t sure which part she was playing.
The feeling of unreality grew even stronger after the film ended and they left their seats. In the lobby, they ran into Verna Tidwell and Al Duffy. Lizzy had to introduce Ryan—“My friend, Mr. Nichols, who is setting up an office in Montgomery, where he’ll be managing the new Federal Writers Project”—while she fielded Verna’s deeply curious look and raised eyebrows. And then Ryan added, smoothly, “What Elizabeth is neglecting to say is that we’ll be working together on the project after the first of the year. She’ll be one of our program directors.”
Drawing her aside, Verna hissed into her ear. “The man is abso
lutely gorgeous! Why haven’t you told me about him? And a new job, which you haven’t even mentioned? What is going on here, Elizabeth?”
Lizzy could only shrug and whisper, “I wish I knew.”
On the way out the door, they encountered Charlie Dickens and Fannie Champaign, who confessed with a laugh that they were seeing the movie for the second time, because Fannie was delirious about Clark Gable and Charlie wanted to see Jean Harlow take another bath. They had to be introduced, as well, and Ryan had to agree to send material Charlie about the project, for an article in the Dispatch—which would include a formal announcement of Lizzy’s new position.
“Swell,” Charlie said enthusiastically. “Can we get a photo of the two of you together?”
“I’m sure we can make arrangements for that,” Ryan said, and smiled at her. “Can’t we, Elizabeth?”
Lizzy nodded weakly. Their photograph in the Dispatch? Now everybody would know about her new position, before she had a chance to get used to it herself!
It was still fairly early on Saturday night, and some of the stores were open for late shoppers, their holiday windows a pretty sight. The Christmas tree in front of the courthouse was spectacular, glittering with colored lights and the schoolchildren’s cardboard stars. The life-size plywood holiday figures of wise men and angels and reindeer were lighted with a gala effect. Families with children were stopping to admire the display, and children squealed with delight as they found the stars they had made, bearing their names, hanging on the tree.
Ryan took possession of her arm as they walked along. But they had gone only a dozen yards when they met Mr. Moseley coming down the outside stairs on his way to his car, diagonally parked at the curb in front of the Dispatch office. Lizzy avoided his surprised look and, feeling her checks and throat reddening, muttered the briefest of introductions and silently prayed that Ryan would not tell Mr. Moseley about her new job.
The Darling Dahlias and the Poinsettia Puzzle Page 23
