The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “I agree,” Bessie said. “I don’t know who he is, but Miss Jamison is obviously afraid of him.” She thought of telling Beulah about Lorelei LaMotte and the Naughty and Nice Sisters and decided against it. The fewer people who knew about Miss Jamison’s previous career as a dancer in Mr. Ziegfeld’s Frolics, the better. She chuckled to herself. She always learned something when she came to get her regular shampoo and set. But today took the cake. She had learned so many different things, she hardly knew which to believe.

  “That fella.” Beulah leaned forward, her cornflower blue eyes large and dark. “Do you reckon he might be a policeman from Chicago, Bessie?” She considered this. “Or maybe Mr. J. Edgar Hoover sent him from Washington. Do you think those two women could be wanted by the Bureau of Investigation? Do you suppose they’re on the lam?” Her voice was hushed and eager-but not quite hushed enough, and Leona Ruth had good ears.

  “The Bureau of Investigation?” she cried, from her place at the shampoo sink. “Why, Beulah, I’ll bet dollars to dumplings you’re right. That man at my front door-that Mr. Gold or Frankie Diamond or whoever he is-he looked for all the world like one of Mr. Hoover’s special agents, with that snap-brim hat and those shiny shoes. I wonder how come I didn’t think of that.”

  “Oh, pooh, Leona Ruth,” Bessie said, making her voice light and teasing. If she didn’t put a stop to this, things were going to get out of hand. “There you go, jumping to conclusions. If Mr. Gold was a special agent, he would’ve shown you his badge. That’s what they’re supposed to do.”

  “Not if he was undercover, he wouldn’t,” Leona Ruth retorted darkly. “Don’t you read the papers? Government agents go undercover all the time, especially revenuers. Makes me wonder what that woman is wanted for. Don’t it you, Bessie? D’you reckon she stole some money? Helped her gangster boyfriend rob a bank and kill somebody? She looks like a gun moll on the lam, don’t you think?”

  “A gun moll?” Bettina asked incredulously. “Right here in Darling?”

  Leona Ruth bolted straight up, a look of horror on her face, shampoo lather dripping onto her shoulders, so that Bettina had to make a grab for a towel. “Mercy me, Bessie,” she cried. “Do you s’pose that woman might’ve had a gun in that pretty blue handbag of hers?”

  “Pretty please with sugar on it, Miz Adcock,” Bettina beseeched. “Lay back down and lemme rinse those suds outta your hair.” Leona Ruth, protesting, allowed herself to be rinsed.

  Bessie’s heart sank. By the time Leona Ruth finished telling all her friends what she thought she’d seen, everybody in town would believe that Mr. J. Edgar Hoover himself had sent an undercover special agent from the Bureau of Investigation to round up Miss Hamer’s niece and her friend and take them back to Chicago or Washington or New York, where they would be charged with robbing a bank and shooting three or four innocent bank tellers.

  “My goodness gracious sakes alive.” Beulah let out her breath in a rush. She leaned closer and whispered into Bessie’s ear. “I hate to say it, Bessie, but Leona Ruth could be right. I kinda liked Miss Jamison, but there’s really no tellin’ who she is or what she’s doin’ here. Do you reckon Miss Hamer is in any danger?”

  “I don’t have any idea,” Bessie replied. She was about to add, “And I’m not sure I want to know, either,” when Beulah cut her off.

  “Well, I think you oughtta find out,” she said in a tone of rebuke. “After all, you live right across the street, don’t you? And aren’t you just about the only person in this town-except for DessaRae and Doc Roberts-who’ll have anything to do with that crazy old lady? You may be one of the only friends she has in this whole entire town.”

  Bessie sighed. It was not a distinction she coveted. But she had to admit that Beulah had a point. And she had been thinking that perhaps she should have a talk with Miss Hamer about Harold-after all these years, surely they could discuss the matter civilly.

  And if they couldn’t, who cared? Miss Hamer might as well yell at her as shriek at nothing at all.

  ELEVEN

  Lizzy Goes to Work

  Lizzy was always wakened at sunrise by the lusty crowing of Mrs. Freeman’s rooster, who lived in a backyard coop two doors down and celebrated the morning with an extravagant delight. But this Monday morning, not even the cheerful rooster could prod Lizzy out of her bed. She had lain awake until after midnight, trying to come up with a solution to her mother’s plight. When she finally fell asleep, exhausted, her dreams were filled with a grotesque cartoon caricature of her mother, blown up to the size of a huge balloon, like the ones they sold at the carnival at the County Fair, bouncing from room to room of Lizzy’s beautiful little house, knocking things off the shelves and making a wreck of the place. Lizzy herself, reduced to the size of a helpless mouse, could do nothing but run in circles, squeaking her protests, while Verna, wearing an Al Capone mask and brandishing a tommy gun, cheered her on from the sidelines.

  It was Daffy who finally forced Lizzy to get up, rubbing his face against her cheek and purring loudly, eager for his breakfast. When she dragged herself out of bed and glanced in the mirror over her dresser, she was horrified by the dark shadows under her eyes and the harsh lines around her mouth. She looked positively awful, and no amount of red lipstick and pancake makeup, applied with a damp sponge and dusted with face powder, made her look any better.

  Then, with the idea that a little color might brighten her outlook, she put on a cheerful yellow-checked cotton dress with puffy angel sleeves, a white piqué sailor collar, and a white straw belt. The hat she chose was one of her mother’s more whimsical millinery creations: a wide-brimmed yellow straw with yellow silk jonquils and a small yellow chenille bird. But neither the color nor the whimsy helped very much. She felt like a wispy gray cloud on an otherwise sunshiny day.

  The law offices of Moseley & Moseley were located on Franklin Street, directly across from the Cypress County Courthouse and upstairs over the Darling Dispatch. Mr. Matthew Moseley (the elder Mr. Moseley) had been dead for a dozen years and the eldest Mr. Moseley (Matthew Moseley’s father) dead for twenty years more. But their white-whiskered, stern-faced photographs still hung at the top of the stairs, their commanding presences were still felt all across Cypress County, and the law office was still the same sober, lawyerly place that it was when the eldest Moseley opened it before the War.

  Another secretary might have wished for an updated look to the place where she spent her days, but Lizzy rather liked the fact that Mr. Benton Moseley (Bent, to his friends) hadn’t changed much of anything, except for hanging his own certificates and diplomas beside his father’s and grandfather’s. She felt that the dusty old rooms had a great deal of dignity, with their creaky floors and wood-paneled walls lined with glass-fronted bookshelves and the sepia prints of maps and old documents. The rooms and the books and the documents seemed to her to symbolize all that was established and stable and unchanging and trustworthy about the law. The office implied a much greater security and reliability than the color print of blindfolded Justice that hung beside Mr. Moseley’s desk. Her twin scales and her sword and her blindfold always made Lizzy shiver. If Justice was blind, how in the world could she ever be fair? Didn’t Justice have to peek out from under that blindfold and see who was in trouble and who needed help before she used that sword?

  This morning, Lizzy was especially grateful for Moseley and Moseley’s comforting security and stability-and as always, grateful for her job. So many people were out of work these days that steady employment of any kind was simply a blessing. She opened the venetian blinds and raised the windows in the reception room and in Mr. Moseley’s office, letting the cool morning air freshen the rooms and the bright sunshine flood the polished wood floors. She ran the carpet sweeper quickly over the faded oriental-style rug, dusted the old-fashioned wooden furniture, and made a fresh pot of coffee on the gas hot plate.

  Then she checked the court calendar and Mr. Moseley’s appointment book and stacked the files he would need in the
upper right hand corner of his green desk blotter. He was working on a property matter this morning but leaving around eleven thirty to drive to Montgomery, where he was meeting with the Alabama attorney general to discuss a hush-hush criminal matter. He hadn’t told her what it was, except to say that it involved an income tax case and that if everything worked out, a very important arrest would be made shortly. He seemed to be quite pleased with himself about it.

  But all the while Lizzy was doing these housekeeping chores, she was thinking about what Verna had told her-about the stranger who had knocked on her door and the need to get more background on Miss Jamison (if that’s who she really was). Lizzy was the kind of person who normally respected the rules, and under ordinary circumstances, she wouldn’t even consider breaking the office code or violating a client’s confidence. It was tantamount to a betrayal of Mr. Moseley and everything he stood for.

  But she didn’t like the idea that Miss Jamison might be someone other than the person she was pretending to be. What if Verna was right and the woman was somehow connected to the most notorious gangster in America? And what if someone from the Capone gang was here in Darling, looking for her? While Mr. Moseley would be upset if he knew she’d given away a client’s address, he certainly would not want to risk something bad happening in Darling. A repeat of that horrible massacre that had taken place on Valentine’s Day the year before, for example, when Capone’s gang, two of them wearing police uniforms, had gunned down seven members of Bugs Moran’s gang in a garage on Chicago’s north side. Lizzy had felt sick when she saw the gruesome photograph of the seven dead men on the front page of Mr. Moseley’s New York Times.

  So she put her feelings of apprehension aside, took the key to Mr. Moseley’s desk out of the empty ink bottle where it was hidden, and opened the bottom right-hand drawer, where the confidential case folders were kept. She bent over it for a moment, hesitating. She would only get the information that Verna had asked for-she wouldn’t snoop through the rest of the folder.

  But on the card that contained the address-1235 S. 58th-there was a telephone number, too, jotted down in Mr. Moseley’s neat handwriting. UNderwood 3-4555. The number was followed by a name and note: Mrs. Molly O’Malley, housekeeper, still on premises. Lizzy had to smile. Mr. Moseley was always thorough: if he had to call about the house Miss Jamison wanted to sell, he’d want to talk to someone who was familiar with what was going on there. She copied the information, closed and locked the drawer, and telephoned the information to Verna, at the probate office.

  “Thanks, Liz,” Verna said. “This is really swell. I owe you.”

  “What are you going to do?” Lizzy asked.

  “I have a plan,” Verna said, and lowered her voice. “Two plans, in fact. I can’t talk about them right now, but when I find something out, you’ll be the first to know. I promise.” She raised her voice to someone in the office. “I’ll be right with you.” To Lizzy, she added, “See you later. And thanks again!”

  Lizzy returned to her desk, took the cover off her Underwood typewriter, and settled down to transcribing some of the shorthand notes she had taken on Friday afternoon. It was slow going. Mr. Moseley had dictated faster than usual, and she was having trouble reading her Gregg. She was having trouble concentrating, too. Her thoughts kept slipping away from the task at hand to her mother’s terrible problem. What in the world were they going to do?

  Mr. Moseley usually came in late on Mondays. This morning, it was a little after ten when he tramped up the stairs, tossed his gray felt hat onto the hat tree next to Lizzy’s, and smoothed his shiny brown hair, parted in the middle, with his hands.

  “G’morning, Liz,” he said cheerfully. “My, you look pretty and bright today in that yellow dress. A ray of sunshine. A treat for the eyes.”

  Lizzy looked up from her typewriter and tried to smile. “I’m afraid I don’t feel very bright,” she replied ruefully. She was always a little bothered by Mr. Moseley’s compliments. She knew he didn’t mean to be condescending, but that’s what it sounded like to her.

  Mr. Moseley frowned and came toward her. He leaned both hands on her desk, peering down at her. “Mmm. Now that you mention it, I have to say that you do look a mite tired.” He chuckled. “You and Grady Alexander do a little too much partyin’ over the weekend, huh?”

  Lizzy sighed. More condescension. And worse, after he had come into the office one day last spring and caught Grady kissing her, Mr. Moseley never missed a chance to tease her about the relationship. That had happened just about the time that Mr. Moseley’s wife Adabelle-a willowy debutant from a wealthy Birmingham family with important political connections around the state-announced that she was going home to Mama and Daddy and taking the two Moseley daughters with her. A month or two after that, Mr. Moseley had asked Lizzy to go with him to the tent theater over in Frisco City. A few weeks later, he tried again. They had been working late, getting ready for a trial on a civil matter, and he asked her to go to supper at the Old Alabama.

  Both times, she had said no. For one thing, his divorce from Mrs. Moseley wouldn’t be final for some time yet, and Lizzy had made up her mind a long time ago that she would never date a married man. For another, she thought that going out with her boss would unnecessarily complicate things in the office. Carrying a torch for him had been okay, because she had known that nothing would ever come of it. She was proud of the fact that she had successfully extinguished those unruly feelings several years before, and she had no intention of reigniting them. Anyway, there was Grady. She wasn’t going to go out with Mr. Moseley as long as she was going out with Grady, and that was that.

  She frowned. “No, Grady and I did not do too much partying this weekend,” she retorted, nettled. “He’s out of town. I didn’t even see him.”

  “Ah-ha! No Grady?” He quirked one eyebrow in that annoyingly superior way of his. “You mean, there’s hope for me, after all?” He straightened and held up his hand, forestalling whatever she had been about to say. “Seriously, Liz, what is it? What’s wrong? You look like you didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Lizzy lied. She lifted her chin. “I’m fine.” While she had been tossing and turning and trying to come up with a way to deal with her mother’s foreclosure, she had thought of talking it over with Mr. Moseley. He dealt with property matters all the time, and he might be able to come up with a simple solution to the problem. But she had decided that he would have to be a last resort. If he helped her out, she would be deeply in his debt. Mr. Moseley was a gentleman and would never use that to pressure her in any way, but still-

  She pushed back her chair and stood. “Today’s files are on your desk, Mr. Moseley. I’ll get your coffee.”

  Mr. Moseley looked at her for a moment. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll be leaving for Montgomery before lunch. Why don’t you treat yourself? Take the afternoon off. You’ve worked late several times lately. You’ve got it coming.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t!” Lizzy said quickly. “There’s so much to-”

  “No, there isn’t,” he said. He smiled at her. “Boss’s orders. No argument, now. You’re taking the afternoon off.” Then he turned and went into his office.

  Lizzy stared after him. An afternoon off? Well, she could certainly use the time, couldn’t she? She could walk over to the bank and talk to Mr. Johnson about her mother’s foreclosure. Surely she could persuade him to put off the eviction for a few weeks-maybe even until after the holidays. It would be cruel to throw somebody out now, with Thanksgiving and Christmas on the way. And even though her mother’s house was nice and well maintained, it wasn’t likely that anybody would be interested in buying during the holidays. In fact, with so many empty houses for sale, it might not sell at all.

  Feeling grateful to Mr. Moseley for letting her take some time off, Lizzy sat back down at her desk and pulled out the big leather-bound account ledger. Between the long drought and the low cotton prices, the farmers had had a difficult time of it
in the past few years. Some of Mr. Moseley’s clients had begun paying their legal bills in kind, bringing eggs, boxes of figs, and lard pails full of fresh robbed honeycomb to the office, not to mention a few live chickens. Mr. Moseley always accepted these payments, told Liz how much to credit against what was owing, and then carted everything over to the Presbyterian Church for its Food for the Darling Needy program. This morning, she caught up the accounting quickly, finished typing the notes, then typed two legal documents that would be needed later in the week-with carbons, which she hated, since she had to erase every mistake and retype the correction carefully, to avoid smudging. Typing carbons slowed her down.

  The bookkeeping and typing finished, Lizzy got up and went to the stack of case files that were waiting for filing in the gray metal cabinets on either side of the front windows. She was just getting started when she heard hasty footsteps on the stairs, the door opened, and Bessie Bloodworth burst in. She was wearing a lace-colored mauve cambric dress and what looked like a freshly done shampoo and set, her springy, precise salt-and-pepper curls peeking out from under her straw sailor hat.

  “Why, hello, Bessie,” Lizzy said. She was surprised, since Bessie didn’t come to the office very often-but then she remembered that she had asked the Dahlias to turn in items for her garden column, which she had to finish by tomorrow. Now that she had the afternoon off, she’d have plenty of time. “Have you brought me a piece for the column?”

  “No,” Bessie said. “To tell the truth, I forgot all about that.” She glanced in the direction of Mr. Moseley’s closed door and lowered her voice. “I don’t want to interrupt while you’re working, but do you have a minute, Liz?” Her face was pink with the exertion of climbing the stairs and she sounded excited. “I need to ask you something.”