The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

by Susan Wittig Albert

“A local angle?” Lizzy asked urgently. The picture was beginning to emerge, like a partially finished puzzle. But she still lacked a few pieces. “What local angle? Which client?”

  But Mr. Moseley was just getting warmed up. “The Feds have been working this case for over five years, Lizzy. They managed to get Capone’s brother Ralph, and they sent him to Leavenworth. They’ve put Jack and Sam Guzik and Frank Nitti behind bars. Louis Lipschultz is waiting trial.” Excitedly, he hit the desk with his fist. “Al Capone is next, by damn. And we’ve got the witness who’s going to nail him, right here in Darling, Liz! Our client!”

  Lizzy sat down in the chair on the other side of the desk. “Our client” was the last piece in the puzzle. “You’re talking about Miss Jamison,” she said. “Lorelei LaMotte.”

  “Exactly. She’s a burlesque dancer from Chicago-” He stopped, frowning. “Hey. How did you know that? And how in hell did you know her stage name?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute.” Lizzy waved her hand. “Go on.”

  “Huh.” He regarded her, still frowning. “Well, I guess there’s no reason not to tell you the rest of it, as long as you keep it under your hat. Miss Jamison is a former associate-no, make that a former girlfriend of Al Capone. She had an inside track with that guy for at least two years. But they had a serious falling-out, and she decided to get even. She is now cooperating with the Feds to help them fill in his financial picture.” He chuckled drily. “That creep has never paid one penny of taxes. Never had a bank account, never signed a check, never let his name appear on any business records. And all the while the money has been coming in like Noah’s flood.” He shuffled the papers on his desk, fished one out and held it up. “Here’s an example. For years, Capone has owned a bookie joint in the Smoke Shop at what is now the Western Hotel, on Twenty-second Street in Cicero-although of course he’s not listed as the owner.”

  The Western Hotel, Lizzie thought. That was the clue that had first alerted Verna to the connection between Miss Jamison and the Capone gang. And if Verna hadn’t made the connection, Frankie Diamond might have gotten away with murder.

  “Just listen to this, Liz,” Mr. Moseley was going on. “In 1924 alone, that one joint raked in some three hundred thousand dollars in profits. And there are other joints like that one, all over Chicago and Cicero. Every penny of profit went into Capone’s pockets, of course, after it was thoroughly laundered. Tax-free income-or so he thinks. But he’s got another think coming, believe you me. He may be able to skip out on a murder charge, although he’s behind God-only-knows how many murders. But Treasury has got him dead to rights on tax evasion.”

  Lizzy sat forward. “What is Miss Jamison’s role in all this? Why is she here in Darling?”

  “She’s hiding out. You see, she is Treasury’s star witness. They’ve scratched together a lot of circumstantial evidence, but they had to find somebody on the inside to give them the lowdown. When she showed up in their office, mad as hell at Capone and offering to spill everything she knew about his finances, the T-boys knew they had a winner. In fact, they thought they had it all wrapped up. They were getting ready to move in when Capone somehow got wind that she was blowing the whistle on him. So he sent one of his men to have a little heart-to-heart with her. The talk turned ugly and the man-the Blade, he was called-ended up cutting Miss Lake’s face pretty badly. Miss Jamison shot him. Killed him.” He paused, cleared his throat, and looked at Lizzy, as if he expected her to be shocked.

  She wasn’t, of course, since she already knew this part of the story. “Go on,” she said impatiently. “Go on, please.”

  He gave her a questioning look. “Well, anyway,” he continued, “the shooting meant that the two of them, Miss Jamison and Miss Lake, had to get out of town fast. The Cicero police are in the pockets of the Capone syndicate, and Treasury couldn’t risk letting the boys in blue get their hands on Miss Jamison. Luckily, she had already made arrangements to come here. She needed a safe refuge while she and the Feds-and I-worked out the details of her testimony on the Capone tax evasion case. When it looked as if she would be charged with murder, Treasury asked me to negotiate some sort of deal with the Illinois authorities. And meanwhile, to make sure that she stayed safely under wraps.”

  “She didn’t,” Lizzy said. “And she wasn’t.”

  Mr. Moseley’s eyebrows went up. “Didn’t what?”

  “Didn’t stay under wraps. And she wasn’t safe. She-”

  “What?” Mr. Moseley jumped out of his chair. He put both hands flat, palms down, on his desk, and leaned on them. “What did you say?”

  “They found her,” Lizzy replied. “That is, Frankie Diamond found her.”

  “Frankie Diamond?” Mr. Moseley asked. “He didn’t hurt her, did he? Don’t tell me he managed to-”

  “No, he didn’t-but he tried. He showed up day before yesterday at Verna’s door, looking for information about Lorelei LaMotte. He even had a photo of her, which was taken in front of the Western Hotel. That was a tip-off for Verna, because she had read in one of her crime magazines that the Western was Capone’s headquarters. She suspected that he was up to no good and called Miss Jamison’s place in Cicero. Mrs. O’Malley told her that Diamond was a friend of the Blade. So-”

  “Mrs. O’Malley?” he interrupted, pulling his brows together in a frown. “Then you gave Verna-”

  “Yes,” Lizzy said staunchly. “I gave Verna the name and phone number out of the file. And it’s a darn good thing I did, too,” she added. “Otherwise, Miss Jamison would likely be dead right now.”

  “Dead?” Mr. Moseley’s eyebrows flew up. “You mean, Frankie Diamond tried-”

  “Exactly. To kill Miss Jamison.” Lizzy took a deep breath and pushed ahead. “Verna asked Bessie Bloodworth and me to shadow him, and there was an argument outside of Mann’s and Diamond started pushing me and Bessie Bloodworth around and Mr. Mann came out and threatened to tar and feather him because he suspected him of being a revenue agent. But Buddy-”

  Mr. Moseley interrupted again. “Archie Mann suspects every stranger of being a revenue agent, Liz. He’s only right fifty percent of the time.”

  Lizzy nodded and went on, hurrying to get it all out before she was interrupted again. “Buddy Norris rode up on his motorcycle and collared Diamond and put him on the train. But before he did that, Leona Ruth Adcock spilled the beans on where Miss Jamison was staying. So Diamond jumped off the train and came back to town and went to Miss Hamer’s house to try and shoot her through the kitchen window after it got dark. But Sally-Lou and DessaRae banged on pots and sang and Miss Hamer gave him the Rebel yell, which finished him off. Buddy Norris nabbed him and put him in jail, which is where he is right now.” Lizzy stopped, concerned that she might have mixed things up a bit or left out something important. “But of course,” she added, “Verna and Bessie and I had no idea about the tax case against Al Capone, or that Miss Jamison was a witness.”

  “My god.” Mr. Moseley was staring at her. “You’re telling me that all this happened yesterday, while I was in Montgomery arranging Miss Jamison’s plea bargain? And that you were involved? You and the other… Dahlias?”

  “Well, yes, I guess you’d have to say we were involved. You don’t have to worry, though. Miss Jamison is safe. Only she’s not a platinum blonde anymore. Beulah dyed her brown, and Miss Lake is wearing Beulah’s old red wig. Nobody will ever recognize either of them. And Frankie Diamond is in jail.”

  Mr. Moseley was reaching for his jacket, thrusting his arms into it. “Diamond’s been booked? On what charge?”

  “Attempted assault with a deadly weapon, attempted burglary, and trespassing. Oh, and disturbing the peace. And anything else that Deputy Norris was able to think of.”

  Mr. Moseley was already on his way to the door. Liz got up and followed him.

  “I’m going over to the jail, Liz. Telephone Sheriff Burns and tell him to meet me there, pronto.” He grabbed his hat from the coat tree and jammed it on his head. “I want to see th
at deputy, too. The kid deserves a medal. And there may be a reward, as well. Diamond is wanted on suspicion in a pair of murders last month in a Chicago whorehouse.”

  “My goodness,” Lizzy breathed. “And to think that Bessie and Verna and Myra May and I were as close to him as-” Her breath caught.

  In two strides, Mr. Moseley was standing in front of her. “I don’t know how you and your buddies do it, Liz,” he said, “but you’ve done it again.” And then, to Lizzy’s astonishment, he bent forward and kissed her, full and hard, on the mouth.

  Then he turned and headed for the door again. “Call the sheriff,” he commanded over his shoulder. “Now!”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Bessie Solves a Mystery, Myra May’s Car Breaks Down, and Violet Sims Offers a Lift

  A few hours later, Lizzy was straightening her desk and getting ready to go to lunch when the door opened. She turned to see Bessie step in and greeted her, surprised: it was the second time in two days that she had come to the office. But when Lizzy looked closer, she saw that Bessie’s eyes were red and puffy. She had been crying.

  “Why, what’s the matter, Bessie?” Lizzy asked, putting an arm around the older woman’s shoulders.

  Bessie sniffled and held out a key ring. “Would you drive me out to the cemetery, Liz? Myra May said we can take her car. I asked her to drive, but Violet isn’t back yet and she can’t leave the diner during the dinner rush. I could walk-it’s only a couple of miles, but I’d rather not do this alone. And I don’t feel as though I can wait until late afternoon, when Myra May will be free.”

  With one more look at Bessie’s face, Lizzy decided that lunch could wait. She reached for the car key. “I’ve never driven Big Bertha before, but if you’re game, I’ll give it a try.”

  Big Bertha, Myra May’s 1920 green Chevrolet touring car, was parked in the ramshackle garage behind the diner. Bertha was ten years old and on her fifth set of tires and her second carburetor, but she still had a good many miles left in her. Lizzy climbed in feeling doubtful, but the car looked enough like Grady’s Ford that she thought she could manage it. Bravely, she inserted the key and pushed the starter button, and (after a little coaxing) the engine started. Gingerly, she backed it out, shifted into low gear, and swung the car out onto Robert E. Lee, startling a fat white hen that clucked frantically and scurried to get out of the way. “Where are we going?” she asked, over the rattle and cough of the motor.

  “Schoolhouse Road,” Bessie said, holding on to her hat as they bounced along. “The Darling Cemetery.”

  The morning had been sunny, but gray clouds were beginning to gather to the south. The air felt heavy with moisture and the trees drooped, their limbs too languid to support the weight of their summer foliage. But driving was pleasant because the canvas-topped touring car, which had no side curtains, admitted a breeze.

  Lizzy held her questions until they turned off Schoolhouse Road and drove through the black-painted ironwork gates and into the cemetery. The rolling, wooded grounds were crowded with gravesites dating back to Darling’s founding, marked by simple headstones as well as elaborate stone urns, stone Confederate soldiers with stone rifles, and stone angels blowing silent stone trumpets to summon the dead to their eternal reward.

  Lizzy felt an immense curiosity. What were they doing here? Why had they come? Why had Bessie been crying? But all she asked was, “Where to now, Bessie?”

  Bessie’s voice was shaky. “To the left. Follow the lane all the way around to the far right corner.” A few minutes later, she put her hand on Lizzy’s arm. “Stop, Liz. We’re here.”

  Here, Lizzy saw, was the unoccupied back corner of the cemetery, where a barbed wire side fence right-angled into an old stone wall that was covered in kudzu vines. The rest of the graveyard was neatly mowed and trimmed, and there were bouquets of flowers tucked into Mason jars at the foot of many of the headstones. There was even a recent grave, a heap of wilted flowers from mourners’ gardens blanketing the freshly turned soil-Mrs. Turner’s grave, Lizzy guessed. The old woman had died the week before. But there were no headstones in the back corner, hidden behind a clump of trees. The area had been allowed to grow up in Johnson grass and weeds, and in contrast to the tended graveyard, it wore an air of unkempt neglect.

  Lizzy and Bessie got out of the car. The sky overhead was darker now, and a moist breeze that smelled of rain lifted the kudzu leaves on the vines along the stone wall. Lizzy shivered, feeling somehow apprehensive, but not knowing why. She clasped her arms around herself and stood for a moment, glancing around.

  “Okay, so we’re here. What are we looking for?”

  “I don’t have any idea,” Bessie said bleakly. “Maybe a grave marker, or maybe a metal stake. Or maybe nothing at all.” She pointed toward the corner. “Let’s just walk around and look. Back there, along the wall.”

  Lizzy followed her friend through the tall grass, the foliage catching at the hem of her dress. Not having any idea what they were looking for, she felt doubtful and hesitant. But following Bessie’s lead, she kept her eyes on the ground-or rather, on what she could see of it through the thick grass. The light seemed to be dimming as the clouds thickened over the noon sun, and in a nearby tree a crow squawked, protesting their intrusion.

  A moment later, she stubbed her toe against something and looked down. At first she thought it was a rock, perhaps fallen from the wall. But when she reached down to push the grass aside, she saw that it was a small, irregularly shaped piece of rough-cut granite, sunk crookedly into the ground and almost covered with earth. There was only a corner sticking up an inch or so-the corner she had stumbled against. In the center, there were two crooked letters, shallowly and inexpertly cut with a chisel. HH.

  “Bessie,” she called urgently. “Come and see.”

  Bessie hurried over and looked where Lizzy was pointing. With a little moan, she dropped to her knees and touched the stone, then began to pull the grass away from it. As she did, Lizzy thought she could trace out the larger outline of a grave, its surface sunken a little.

  Lizzy put her hand on Bessie’s shoulder. “It’s Harold, isn’t it,” she said quietly.

  “It’s Harold,” Bessie replied, no longer trying to hold back the tears. “We’ve found him. He’s been here, right here, all these years. So close, so close!”

  She bent over, her shoulders heaving, and gave way to sobs. Lizzy knelt beside her and took her in her arms, leaning her cheek against Bessie’s gray hair. She did not try to speak. There was nothing to say.

  The rain began a little later, a gentle rain, like a warm mist enveloping the grasses and flowers. Lizzy and Bessie left the gravesite and went to sit in the car.

  “How did you know where to look?” Lizzy asked, taking a clean handkerchief out of her handbag and handing it to Bessie.

  “It was Miss Hamer,” Bessie said, wiping her eyes. “She told me yesterday that my father had bragged to her that he was going to pay Harold money to jilt me and leave Darling. But Harold wasn’t the kind of man who would let somebody bribe him into doing something like that. In fact, he was likely to be pretty angry about it.”

  “I certainly hope so!” Lizzy exclaimed hotly.

  Bessie was going on. “Anyway, I found a box of Daddy’s papers in the attic, and last night, after you and Verna left, I looked through them. That’s where I found this little map that my father had drawn. The date on it is the same week that Harold disappeared.” She opened her handbag and took it out. “When I saw it, I had an inkling of what could have happened.” She lifted her head and glanced around them at the softened outlines of the granite monuments, just visible through the mist. Her voice trembled and she drew in her breath to steady it. “I must’ve been here for buryings a dozen times since Daddy put him here, and I never knew. Never had the slightest idea.”

  Startled, Lizzy asked, “Do you think your father… killed him? Because he wouldn’t take the money?”

  Bessie gave a long, weary sigh, as if she were breathing ou
t a century of sadness. “My father had a hair-trigger temper, Liz. He could explode at the littlest thing. Maybe he offered Harold some money-it wouldn’t have been very much, because he was such a skinflint. Harold probably laughed at him and told him what he could do with it. Daddy got mad and shot him.”

  “He had a gun? Your father had a gun?”

  Bessie’s hands were clenched tight. “He had a little revolver that he kept with him when he was at work. He said people sometimes do crazy things when their nearest and dearest died.” She opened her hands and flexed her fingers. “Or maybe he didn’t shoot him. Maybe they got into a fight and Daddy hit him with a stick of stove wood or something. Maybe…” Her voice trailed off.

  “But how could your father bury him here without anybody finding out?” Lizzy asked.

  Bessie sighed. “I don’t suppose it would’ve been very hard. There were always a couple of coffins in the back room at the funeral home, and Daddy was out here at the cemetery several times a week. He could have paid one of his gravediggers to dig the grave and given him a bottle of whiskey to keep it quiet.” She chuckled sadly. “By the time the whiskey was gone, the gravedigger would have forgotten where he dug it. Daddy could easily have brought the coffin out here and buried Harold himself, maybe at night. Or maybe he thought he was safe, screened by those trees, so he did it in the daytime. People saw him out here so often that I doubt that anyone would ask him what he was doing.”

  “And the grave marker?” Liz asked.

  “It’s nothing but a scrap of granite. Daddy owned the gravestone business, Liz. It could have been just something he had around. It looks like he cut the initials himself.” Another sad chuckle. “He was never much of a hand when it came to stonecutting.”

  “Oh, Bessie,” Lizzy said. “I am so sorry. What… are you going to do?”

  Bessie dried her eyes again and handed Lizzy’s handkerchief back. “Do you mean, am I going to tell anybody? Like-the sheriff?”