Verna parked her LaSalle in the shade of a large oak tree behind the shed and waited beside the car. They had already decided what they were going to do, so when the line of eager airplane passengers had dwindled to a few, Lizzy went up to Angel, who was tucking a wad of dollar bills and a handful of coins into a purse that was fastened to a belt around her waist.
“Hey, Angel,” she said with a cheerful smile. “How about taking a break for a few minutes? I’d like to introduce you to somebody.” It was their good luck, Lizzy thought, that Verna had stayed in their room the previous night and left that morning before Angel got up, so Angel hadn’t met her yet. “She has a request for you, from one of your fans.”
Angel started to reply but was interrupted by the metallic roar of Rex Hart’s plane, coming in for a landing. A young man in a red shirt came up to her and yelled something into her ear. She pointed to a name on a list and the young man hurried off, in search of the next passenger.
“From a fan?” Angel asked in pleased surprise, when she could make herself heard. “Well, sure, Liz, I’d be glad do that. Let me just finish up these last few guys in line, and I’ll be right with you.”
Lizzy went back to join Verna under the tree. Overhead, they could hear the drone of Lily’s airplane. At the fairgrounds behind them, the music of the Ferris wheel joined the hurdy-gurdy of the merry-go-round in a pleasant circusy cacophony. “Do you think it will work?” she asked uncertainly.
“No way to tell until we try,” Verna answered, leaning against the car. “Anyway, we have nothing to lose.”
A few moments later, Angel sauntered toward them. Her bobbed brown hair was wind-tossed, and her tight white pants emphasized her lithe, athletic figure. She was no doubt quite athletic and brave, Lizzy thought. Very brave—or very foolhardy. She’d have to be, to perform on the wing of an airplane or on a trapeze slung underneath, hundreds of feet above the unforgiving ground, especially after she had seen her sister die in a fatal fall from Lily Dare’s airplane.
Lizzy introduced the two women. “I’m glad to meet you,” Verna said easily. “I’ve heard a lot about you from my cousin, Annie. She’s a real fan.” Verna, Lizzy knew, had no cousins named Annie.
“That’s nice,” Angel said with a chipper smile. “Is she the one Liz told me about?”
“She sure is,” Verna replied. She reached into the car and picked up Lizzy’s flier from the seat. “Annie lives in Florida. She’s watched you do your aerial stunts and would dearly love to have your autograph.” Verna held out the paper. “This is one of the fliers we had put up around town to publicize the air show. Maybe you could sign it for her?”
The flier in Verna’s hand featured photos of Lily Dare and Rex Hart and a blurred photograph of Angel, doing a handstand on the wing of Hart’s airplane, just as she had done earlier that day, in the air above the courthouse square. Verna added, “Could you sign it ‘To Annie, with all best wishes from your friend, Angel’? I know she’d love that.” She made a little face. “It’s a lot to write. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Oh, golly, no,” Angel said gallantly. “People are always begging Lily and Rex for their autographs. It’s swell whenever somebody asks for mine. And just in case, I always bring my favorite pen.”
She fished in the purse on her belt and pulled out a silver fountain pen. Seeing it, Lizzy’s eyes widened and she held her breath. Could it possibly be? If it was, it was certainly lucky—more than they’d had any right to hope for!
Angel uncapped the pen and scribbled swiftly across the flier, To Annie, with all best wishes from your friend, Angel Flame.
Lizzy let out her breath in a long puff. “Oh, my,” she said, admiring the inscription—and blessing Angel Flame’s desire to show off. “Purple ink!”
“Yeah, I like to use it for letters and stuff,” Angel said carelessly. “I have some pink paper, too, which I use for letters sometimes.” She handed the flier back to Verna. “Kinda gives it a personal touch, you know?” she added. “A little bit of individual flair. Not too many people use purple ink and pink paper.”
“You’re right about that,” Verna said emphatically. “It is certainly distinctive.” And with that, she reached into the car and took out the anonymous letter Mildred had given them a little while before. “But here’s something interesting, Angel. A friend of ours got a couple of letters in the past few months from someone she didn’t know. This is one of them. And it’s written in the same purple ink you’re using—on pink paper, of all things!”
Watching Angel’s face, Lizzy saw her eyes widen.
But Verna was going on. “And look—isn’t this strange? The way you’ve written ‘with all best wishes from your friend’ on the flier? It’s exactly the same as the same phrase in this letter! And it’s written in exactly the same way. See how the t is crossed with a little flourish? And the fs have those funny little short tails? The similarities are so amazing—why, I think you must have written it!”
Angel’s mouth tightened and a muscle in her jaw was working. “Where’d you get that?” she demanded. “Give it to me!” She tried to snatch the letter away.
“Not so fast, Angel,” Lizzy said, pulling at Angel’s arm as Verna stepped back, out of reach. “You can’t have that letter. It belongs to Mildred Kilgore. Roger Kilgore’s wife—the woman you sent it to.”
Angel sucked in her breath. Under her freckles, her face had gone ashen, with blotches of ugly red high on her cheeks. She looked uncertain and afraid, as if she were struggling to keep her balance on a shifting airplane wing.
“And there’s more,” Verna went on calmly. “These three canceled checks, made out by Roger Kilgore to someone named Lily Star—to Lily Dare, he thought.” She held them up. “But Lily Dare never got the money, did she, Angel? And what’s so interesting about these checks is that they’ve been endorsed with that same distinctive purple ink you used in the letters—and in the inscription just now.” She shook her head pityingly. “You weren’t so clever after all, Angel. You’ve left a trail a mile wide.”
Angel’s eyes narrowed and her anger overwhelmed her uncertainty. “Give me those!” she snapped menacingly. “Do you think I’m going to let you pull a cheap trick like that on me?” She lunged free of Lizzy and grabbed for the checks in Verna’s hand. When Verna held on to them, Angel punched her in the face, then slammed her, hard, against the wall of the shed, pinning her with a strong forearm across her throat. “Give me those checks,” she growled, “or I’ll break your stupid neck!”
Verna gasped futilely for air, trying to wrench Angel’s arm from her throat, but the wingwalker, athletic and years younger, was too strong for her.
“Lay off!” Lizzy cried. Frantic, she grabbed Angel’s hair and jerked her sharply back. “Verna can’t breathe! You’re hurting—”
She was stopped with a fist in the eye, as Angel swung sharply around and hit her, hard, with all the force of her swinging body. Stunned, Lizzy saw an explosion of stars against a canopy of velvety black. The next thing she knew, she was sprawled flat on the ground.
“Hey!” Buddy Norris yelled, suddenly appearing out of nowhere. His deputy’s badge was pinned conspicuously on his khaki shirt. “That’s enough of that!” He knelt beside Lizzy. “Are you okay, Liz?” he asked and helped her sit up.
“I . . . I think so,” Lizzy gulped, trying not to cry. She put a hand to her eye, which hurt fiercely. When she pulled it away, her fingers were smeared with bright red blood. Her cheek was bleeding.
“You’ve got a little cut,” Buddy said sympathetically, and pulled out his handkerchief, dabbing it gently to her face. “Sorry to be delayed,” he said. “I got tied up on a long-distance telephone call.” He handed her the handkerchief. “You okay now?” When she nodded, he helped her to her feet.
Angel’s menace had abruptly disappeared. “Oh, Buddy,” she cried, going to him and putting her hand on his arm. She smiled sw
eetly up at him. “Gosh, Buddy, you’ve got great timing! These two women have something that belongs to me and I’ve been trying to convince them to give it back.” Her smile became flirtatious. “I’m sure they’ll do whatever you say. Please tell them to hand over my stuff!”
“What kind of stuff?” Buddy asked.
“Oh, just—” She stopped, seeing the dilemma. “Just some . . . papers.”
“What kind of papers?” Buddy smiled in a helpful way. “I can’t make these women hand them over unless I know they belong to you—now can I?”
Desperate now, Angel said the only thing she could say. “It’s . . . it’s a letter I wrote, and some canceled checks. Come on, Buddy—they’re mine!”
“There!” Lizzy crowed. “Did you hear that? She’s just confessed!”
Buddy nodded. “I heard that. But first things first. Miss Flame, I saw what happened a few minutes ago, and it looked to me like you were using your fists to get what you wanted. Here in Darling, we call that assault and battery.” He paused and looked from Verna to Lizzy. “Hate to say it, but you two look like this woman landed a few pretty good punches—she got you both right in the eye. What about it? Do you want to press charges?”
“Maybe,” Lizzy said. Her left eye was throbbing and the cheek below it was still bleeding. She held Buddy’s handkerchief to it and looked at Verna. “You’ve got a shiner, too, Verna.”
“I’m in favor of charging her with assault,” Verna said grimly. She rubbed her throat, where the bruise was already beginning to show. “She’s strong as an ox. I’m lucky she didn’t break my neck.”
“Assault?” Angel rolled her eyes, as if their complaints were just plain silly. “That’s nonsense. I was only trying to persuade them—”
“Shut up, Miss Flame,” Buddy said. He held out his hand to Verna. “Okay, now that we’ve got that settled, let’s see these papers that Miss Flame insists are hers.”
“Oh, but it’s not necessary for you to look at them,” Angel said hastily. “They’re just a few pieces of paper, with no importance to anybody but me.” She pointed to Verna. “If she’ll give them to me, I’ll forget all about charging her with theft.”
“Theft?” Lizzy hooted. “Talk about nonsense!”
But Buddy was paying no attention. Verna had handed him the letter, the canceled checks, and the flier that Angel had signed. He was studying them carefully, chewing on one corner of his lip. Of course, he had already seen the letter and the checks when Lizzy and Verna had stopped at the sheriff’s office on their way out to the airstrip and asked his help with their plan. Now, all he had to do was compare the handwriting.
After a minute, he said, “Well, it looks to me like you and Liz got it right, Verna.” He folded the papers together and put them into his shirt pocket. “I’ll make sure that these documents get back to Mrs. Kilgore when we’re finished with them in the sheriff’s office.” He turned to Angel with a frown. “We don’t much like extortionists here, Miss Flame—or Miss Hopkins, or whoever you are.”
“Extortion?” Angel’s mouth worked. Her face was splotchy. “No! You’ve got it all wrong,” she said. “All of you.”
Lizzy took a deep breath and stepped forward. “We have it right,” she said firmly. “You wrote the letters and the telegrams. You endorsed the checks. And on one of the checks, you wrote ‘For deposit only’ under your signature.”
“So when that check is traced back to its deposit in your bank account,” Verna put in, “that will take care of any possible question. Your problem is that you just didn’t think things through. You didn’t cover your tracks. You thought you were so far out of the picture that nobody could trace you.” She chuckled shortly. “But you left a trail a yard wide and a mile long. Pink paper and purple ink. Dumb, dumber, dumbest.”
Angel’s chin trembled. “But why . . . why would I do such things?” she asked plaintively, trying to defend herself. “What possible motive could I—”
“Well, for starters,” Verna said, “there’s revenge. Bess Hopkins died in a fall from Lily Dare’s plane. You could be trying to get even with her for your sister’s death. You could be—”
Verna stopped. Angel’s face had crumpled at the mention of her sister. She squeezed her eyes shut and made a fist of her right hand and brought it to her mouth, as if to hold back a sob.
“Bess,” she said, very low. “Bess . . .” Her shoulders began to shake. “Lily was using second-rate equipment on that plane. She cuts corners. People die because of her—like Pete Rickerts. He’s dead, like Bess.” Her voice grew shrill. “She needs to pay for what she’s done.”
“That’s for the justice system to decide,” Verna said. “Not you. Anyway, you weren’t trying to get even with Lily when you defrauded Roger Kilgore out of nearly a thousand dollars. Why, for all we know, you’ve been pulling the same dirty tricks on other men—impersonating Miss Dare in order to solicit money.”
“And on top of assault and extortion, there’s the airplane sabotage,” Buddy Norris put in. “Could amount to attempted murder.”
“Attempted murder?” Angel’s eyes flew open. “Oh, no! I didn’t mean—that is, I was just . . .” She shook her head, now sounding desperate. “It was just a . . . a joke, that’s all. I figured the prop would break when the ground crewman turned it, before she took off. I only wanted to cause a little trouble, make her a little more careful. I wasn’t trying to kill her!”
“The Pensacola police have a different idea,” Buddy said, unclipping the handcuffs from his belt. “I was on the phone with them just before I came out here. It turns out that they’ve located a witness who saw you take a hacksaw to that propeller. They’re going to want you to star in a police lineup down there.” Deftly, ignoring her protests, he turned Angel around and cuffed her hands behind her back, then turned to Verna.
“I’ve got a favor to ask, Verna. I can’t transport the prisoner into town on the back of my motorcycle. Can you and Liz take her in, in your car? I’ll give you a police escort, to make sure there’s no trouble.”
“Oh, you bet,” Verna said. Gently, she touched her swollen eye. “It will be a pleasure. A pleasure.”
TWENTY
“A Happy Ending,
Don’t You Think?”
Wednesday, July 20, 1932
It was, all the Dahlias agreed, the most exciting and best-managed Watermelon Festival ever. The air show was a spectacular success, attracting almost two hundred cars to the air strip on Sunday for a program of (as promised) thrills and chills and some really top-notch aerobatics, including both flying and wingwalking. The show culminated in an aerial dogfight so amazingly realistic that many spectators were convinced that the Texas Star and the King of the Air would collide and come crashing to the ground in blazing balls of fire—and some of them no doubt secretly hoped so. When all the excitement was over, Lily Dare and the Dare Devils packed up their gear and flew off to the next airshow, in Paducah, Kentucky. Unfortunately, one of the wing struts on Rex Hart’s Stearman broke and the King of the Air was grounded until Monday, when he, too, flew off to Paducah.
Everything else went remarkably smoothly. The Ferris wheel did not get stuck (to the disappointment of the junior Darlingians, who hoped to get stranded at the top for at least an hour or two). Mr. Burley’s goats stayed in their pen, sulking; the best they could do was a red ribbon. (Muddy Waters’ goats took the blue.) The Ladies Club tent did not collapse. The Chamber of Commerce popcorn machine did not catch fire. The Eastern Star’s hot dogs held out until the last bun, just before closing time, and there were exactly enough watermelons for everybody to have exactly as many pieces as they wanted. The 1932 Darling Baby award went to Violet and Myra May’s little Cupcake (all of Darling applauded this choice). Mrs. Peabody watched her step; she did not fall off the stage and break her nose again.
And best of all, when Aunt Hetty turned in the nickels and dimes and quar
ters the Dahlias had earned from the sale of their fresh garden vegetables, it was enough to buy two pressure cookers and three cases of Mason jars and lids. Lizzy and the other officers were already making arrangements for their first canning party in the kitchen of the Dahlias’ clubhouse (the Kentucky Wonder green beans would need picking again next week) and planning for the Dahlias’ contributions to the Darling Family Food Pantry.
Wednesday morning was a hot one, with the temperature already nudging ninety and the air heavy with humidity. At Beulah Trivette’s Beauty Bower, the screen door and all the windows were open and the fans were turning. Several of the Dahlias were gathered to catch up on the latest Darling news and gossip and enjoy tea and cookies while Beulah and Bettina made them beautiful.
And there was a very great deal to catch up on. Lizzy, who was getting a shampoo and trim, had to tell everybody about the excitement of her very first airplane ride. She had gone up after the air show in the Texas Star, piloted by Miss Lily Dare. She had expected to pay $1.26 (a penny a pound). But Miss Dare gave her and Verna free rides, to thank them for their help in identifying Mabel Hopkins as the person who had sabotaged her plane, not just once but twice.
“Was it fun?” Beulah asked doubtfully, when Lizzy finished her story.
“It was so noisy and there was so much vibration that I thought the top of my head was going to fly off,” Lizzy said. She sat up and let Beulah wrap a dry towel around her head. “But it was incredibly gorgeous up there, the sky all around us, open and free, and the plane turning and wheeling just like a bird. The trees and fields were all spread out below like a rumpled-up green chenille bedspread. And there was Darling itself, with all the toy houses with their flower gardens and the town square and the courthouse with its bell tower and the neat streets and the trees.” She followed Beulah to one of the barber chairs and took her seat, while Beulah fastened a pink cape around her neck. “I looked right down on my roof, and my backyard, with my own garden like a tiny jewel, and it was all just perfect and perfectly beautiful.”
The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star Page 26
