The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

by Susan Wittig Albert

  So she settled for, “How’s Edna Fay? I saw in last week’s paper that she went down to Mobile for a week to visit your aunt.”

  “She did,” Charlie said, “but she’s back now. I’ll tell her you asked.” He became businesslike. “Somethin’ I can do for you, Miss Bessie?” He reached for the pad on which he took down job printing orders or advertisements that people wanted to place in the paper. “You wantin’ to run another ad for your boardin’house, I reckon.”

  He was obviously not interested in small talk, and Bessie had the feeling that this might not be a very good moment to ask him a favor. But she opened her purse and took out the folded paper Miss Rogers had given her.

  “No, not an ad,” she said. “All my ladies are settled in for the duration, looks like.”

  Charlie nodded at the paper. “Then you got a story for me, I reckon. From the garden club, maybe?”

  His eyebrow was quirked and his tone was mildly sarcastic, in that way of his that irritated some and intimidated others. Charlie made it no secret that he didn’t think highly of women who spent their time going to meetings of garden clubs, bridge clubs, needlework clubs, or other ladies’ groups. Bessie wasn’t clear whether he disapproved of women who held a job or ran a boardinghouse, but she thought he probably did.

  “No, it’s not a garden club story,” she replied briskly. “Sorry to disappoint you.” She smiled at him as if to say, There, was that ironic enough for you? She unfolded the paper, cleared her throat, and began.

  “A friend of mine”—she and Miss Rogers had agreed that she wouldn’t use any names—“discovered some odd symbols and numbers cross-stitched on a very old pillow that once belonged to her grandmother. They seemed very curious to us, and we thought . . . that is, we wondered . . .”

  She took a breath, fumbling for words. Under Charlie’s half-amused, skeptical gaze, this suddenly seemed like a very foolish errand, and she wished she hadn’t volunteered. But now that she had started, there was nothing to do but stumble on.

  “It . . . it occurred to us . . . that is, to me, that it might be . . .”

  “Yes?” Charlie drawled, half teasing. “Might be what? Come on, out with it.”

  She took another breath. “Well, a cipher or something like that. You know, a secret code. I remembered that wonderful talk you gave at the Literary Society last year. I thought you might be interested in having a look.”

  She bit her tongue. Emphasizing wonderful might have been a little bit too much, but she thought she should compliment him. His paper had been genuinely interesting.

  Charlie all but rolled his eyes. “What in the world gave you the idea that somebody’s grandmother’s old needlework might be a secret code?” he asked with a disparaging chuckle. “Seems far-fetched to me. Why would a grandmother want to stitch out a cipher?”

  When the question was put that way, Bessie didn’t have a good answer. In fact, she had no answer at all. She couldn’t very well tell Charlie that the idea had come into her mind when she was trying to distract Miss Rogers from being angry and upset about the destruction of her pillow’s knitted cover. So she said the only thing she could think of.

  “Well, I once heard that certain quilt patterns were used as secret codes to tell slaves where to go on the Underground Railway.” This was true. She had read a magazine article about an old Negro woman who claimed that blocks like Wagon Wheel and Log Cabin and Crossroads, together with fabric colors and certain embroideries, held clues that helped escaped slaves find their way to freedom in the North. Some folks didn’t believe her, but the story had sounded plausible to Bessie.

  “Never heard that tale,” Charlie said skeptically, but he looked halfway interested. “You actually think it might be true?”

  “I don’t know,” Bessie admitted. “But I suppose it could be, the same way that ships used to use flags for signals before the wireless was invented. Different colored flags meant different things, and flags aren’t anything but pieces of fabric sewn together, like quilts.” She looked at him. “Isn’t that so?”

  “Well, yes,” Charlie said, grudgingly. “Hadn’t thought of it that way, but I suppose that’s what they are. There are flags that represent each letter of the alphabet. In the Battle of Jutland, during the Great War, the Royal Navy sent over two hundred fifty flag signals. And flags are still used at sea, because some ships aren’t yet equipped with a wireless.”

  Bessie remembered that he had included this information in his talk and was a little encouraged. She nodded and plowed on.

  “And I read once that Mary, Queen of Scots, had a secret language that she used to send messages to her friends. That was after Queen Elizabeth shut the poor thing up in prison and wouldn’t let her talk to anybody for fear they’d be hatching up a plot. I don’t know that she embroidered her messages on hankies, but I’m sure she could have. Her jailors might suspect if they saw pieces of paper going back and forth, but they probably wouldn’t look twice at a lady’s silk hanky or an embroidered scarf. Don’t you think?”

  Bessie stopped. She was afraid that she was babbling, but Charlie’s eyes were narrowed and he looked thoughtful. “Never heard that story, either,” he said, “but I suppose it’s possible.”

  “Well, then,” Bessie asked reasonably, “why not a pillow?”

  With a sigh, Charlie reached for the paper she was holding. “Okay. Let me have a look at these ‘symbols’ of yours.” He squinted down at Miss Rogers’ copy for a minute, then went to his desk, picked up a pair of metal-rimmed glasses, and hooked them over his ears. He came back to the counter and studied the paper a moment longer as Bessie held her breath. There were no sounds other than the hollow tick-tock of the old wooden clock on the wall.

  At last he put the paper down on the counter, his forehead wrinkled. “Where’d you say you got this?”

  Bessie let out her breath and repeated what she’d already told him. “My friend has a pillow that she inherited from her grandmother. It has these symbols embroidered on it, on both sides. She copied all of them.”

  “How old is your friend?” He frowned. “Not being nosy, just trying to get some kind of historical fix on this stuff, whatever it is.”

  “To tell the truth, I don’t know how old she is, exactly. But her age doesn’t matter. Her grandmother’s initials and the date are right there.” She pointed to the very bottom of the page.

  “Yes, I saw them.” Charlie bent closer, peering at the paper. “Rose,” he read aloud. “July 21, 1861.” He looked up, frowning a little. “What did you say your friend’s name is? Or, more to the point, what was her grandmother’s name?”

  “My friend was an orphan,” Bessie replied. “Her papers were lost at the orphanage and she never knew her family name. All she knew was that her grandmother’s name was Rose. The pillow belonged to her—to her grandmother, I mean.”

  To Bessie, who loved to spend time digging into Darling’s history and researching genealogies, not knowing the family name seemed like a very great tragedy, akin to waking up in an utterly strange place and not being able to remember where you were or how in the world you got there. She herself had uncovered some truly horrifying secrets about her own family, and particularly about her father, but she still cherished his name, because it connected her with a family past. She couldn’t imagine how Miss Rogers could have endured it all those years, not knowing who her people were.

  “The pillow was the only thing she had that belonged to her family,” she added. “It had a cover on it, a knitted cover, which had never been removed—until Saturday, that is. The cover was pulled off, unraveled, actually, by accident. My friend had never seen those symbols before.”

  “Anything else?” Charlie prodded.

  Bessie thought. “Well, her mother’s name was Rose, too,” she said slowly. “My friend remembers her mother telling her that her grandmother was a very b
rave woman. She drowned, apparently.”

  “She drowned?” Charlie repeated. He pursed his lips and pushed them in and out, frowning as if he were trying to grasp an elusive memory.

  “That’s what my friend remembers.” She looked back at the paper lying on the counter. “Do you think those symbols mean anything?” She almost hated to ask the next question, because she was afraid he would laugh at her. “Do you think they might really be some sort of secret code?”

  “I doubt it,” he said. But he didn’t laugh. “They are certainly curious, I’ll say that much.” He straightened up. “You’re not in a tearing hurry for an answer, are you?”

  “A hurry?” she answered with a chuckle. “That pillow has been lying around for nearly seventy years. I doubt if a few more days is going to make any difference in the scheme of things.”

  He nodded. “Well, then, if you’ll leave this with me, I’ll do a little research on it and see what I can find out.” He lifted his hand in a warning gesture. “Don’t get your hopes up, Bessie.”

  “I won’t,” Bessie said. She smiled. “Thank you, Charlie. I was afraid . . . I was afraid you’d think I’m being pretty silly about this.”

  “Oh, I do,” Charlie said with a shrug that was meant to look careless. “But I get pretty silly sometimes, too—when it comes to things I’m interested in.” He paused for a moment, shifting his weight uncomfortably. “I guess you saw Angelina Biggs rushing out of here as you came in.”

  “I did,” Bessie said. She smiled wryly. “She nearly bowled me over, in fact.”

  He paused again, as if he were fishing for words. This hesitation was so totally unlike Charlie Dickens that Bessie was surprised. Finally, he said something entirely unexpected, in a voice that was almost tentative. “Afraid she was a little upset. But I want you to know I had nothing to do with it, Bessie.”

  Nothing to do with it? Why should Charlie think that she would think he had something to do with Angelina’s hasty, blundering exit?

  But there wasn’t a tactful way to ask this nosy question. And anyway, Charlie was turning back to his desk, obviously putting an end to the conversation. Over his shoulder, he added, “I’ll give you a call if I learn anything about this so-called secret code of yours.”

  “Thanks,” Bessie said, still puzzling over what he’d said about Angelina Biggs and slightly offended at his patronizing reference to that so-called secret code of yours. She pushed open the door and left, going kitty-corner across the square to Mann’s Mercantile. Roseanne’s old straw broom was in tatters, and she needed a new one. Miss Rogers wanted some black darning cotton for her stockings, and Bessie was looking to buy three yards of bleached cotton to make dish towels for the kitchen.

  * * *

  If Bessie had stepped out of the Dispatch office just a minute or two earlier, she would have seen Myra May heading back from the grocery store, her shopping finished for the morning. But Myra May didn’t go back to the diner, at least, not right then. Instead, she turned at the corner of the Dispatch building and went quickly up the stairs to the second-floor law office. Bessie wouldn’t have wondered at this, for Liz Lacy and Myra May Mosswell were good friends. She would have thought that Myra May was just dropping in to trade a little gossip and maybe have a cup of coffee before she went back to work.

  But truth be told, Myra May had a much more serious errand. She had decided that she needed to tell Liz what she and Violet had learned when they broke the Rule. She wanted to get Liz’s advice about what to do.

  SEVEN

  Lizzy, Verna, and Myra May

  It had taken Lizzy quite a while to reach Mr. Moseley in Birmingham, where he was closeted in a morning meeting of the Alabama Roosevelt for President club, but their conversation took only a few minutes. She hung up the receiver and put the black candlestick telephone back on her desk, then turned to Verna, who was leaning forward eagerly in her chair.

  “Well,” Verna demanded. “What did he say? Is he going to take my case? What am I supposed to do?”

  Lizzy took a breath, knowing that Verna would not be happy to hear the message. “Mr. Moseley says he’s terribly sorry but there’s nothing he can do unless you’re actually arrested.” She hurried on. “He understands how you feel about taking some sort of action immediately, but he says that isn’t a good idea. For one thing, you don’t even know what’s really going on. It’s probably just a mistake. He says you should go home and wait to see what happens.”

  “Go home and wait?” Verna cried desperately. “No, Liz! I can’t!”

  “But you have to, Verna.” It took an effort, but Liz made her voice firm. “You may be jumping at shadows, you know. This problem, whatever it is, could get sorted out in a couple of hours and you’ll be back at work.” She took a breath. “Of course, if you should get arrested—although we hope it won’t happen—Mr. Moseley says you need to call me right away and I’ll come and post bail. That way you won’t have to spend the night in jail.”

  Lizzy occasionally made arrangements on behalf of one or another of Mr. Moseley’s clients with Shorty Boykin, Darling’s only bail bondsman, who had a storefront office next door to the jail. It was painful to think of doing it for one of her friends, but she certainly knew the procedure.

  Verna pushed herself out of her chair and began to pace back and forth in front of Lizzy’s desk, her shoulders bent, her hands clasped behind her back.

  “I can’t just go home and wait for the sheriff to show up, Liz. I’ve got to find out what’s going on. This is either a huge mistake or . . .” Her voice dropped. “Or somehow, for some reason, somebody’s trying to frame me. For something. For embezzlement.”

  “Frame you?” Lizzy asked doubtfully, thinking that Verna had probably been reading too many of those murder mysteries she liked so much. Lizzy knew what frame meant, because she’d heard the word in The Last Warning, starring Laura La Plante, which she and Grady had seen at the Palace a couple of weeks before. But who in the world would want to frame Verna? And why?

  “Yes. Frame me. Make me look guilty of something.” Verna threw out her hands. “It’s the only explanation I can come up with. Nothing else makes sense. That’s why I’ve got to find out what’s going on. I need to know what really happened to that money. And the sooner the better.”

  “But how is that possible?” Liz asked reasonably. “Unless you want to go directly to Mr. Scroggins and ask him to—”

  “Ask Earle Scroggins?” Verna interrupted her with a harsh, impatient laugh. “He won’t tell me anything.” She reached the edge of the carpet and turned. “I’ll just have to conduct my own investigation, Liz. I’ve known ever since I took over the treasurer’s office that there was something goofy with the bank accounts, I just couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was. But now I will, I swear it.” Her voice hardened and her eyes were flashing fire. “If money is missing from the county treasury, I’ll find out where it went and who took it—or die trying.”

  Lizzy shivered, not liking the sound of those last three words. “But Mr. Scroggins told you to turn in your key. How could you manage to get into the office to—”

  Verna barked another harsh laugh. “You don’t think I gave that man my only key, do you? I’m not that dumb, Liz. I had two duplicate keys made at the hardware store a long time ago, just in case I lost one.” She sat back down in her chair, looking pleased with herself. “What’s more, I also have a key to the courthouse. I can get into that building any time I want to.”

  “Oh,” Liz said. That kind of precaution was exactly like Verna, who liked to have everything under control. But still—“You’ll have to do it at night, won’t you? How long is it going to take?”

  “Of course I’ll have to do it at night,” Verna said shortly. “And it’s not going to take that long, either. I watched that man—that auditor—when he was going through those books. He ha
d a face that was carved out of stone and I couldn’t tell a blessed thing by his expression. But I know which records he spent the most time working on, and I made it a point to glance over his shoulder whenever he seemed to linger over certain pages. I noted them down, so I have a pretty good idea of where to look.”

  Lizzy frowned, thinking what Mr. Moseley would say if he thought his client (assuming that Verna actually became his client) intended to trespass on county property, especially when she might be facing a charge of embezzling county funds. Hoping to dissuade her, she said, “But isn’t it awfully risky, Verna? If you’re caught, people will think you were there to try to cover something up. It will look just terrible. And if somebody’s trying to frame you, won’t they be expecting you to do something just like this?”

  Verna was irritatingly sure of herself. “I won’t be caught, Liz. I’ll come in after dark and leave before dawn, and I’ll work in the room where we keep the records. It doesn’t have any windows. Nobody will know I’m there. And when I’m through, I’ll have a suspect list. I might even be able to tell you who dunnit.”

  Lizzy wished that Verna hadn’t read quite so many crime stories, but now she was curious. “A suspect list? Who do you think might be on it?”

  Verna looked thoughtful. “Mr. DeYancy set up those multiple accounts. And he never let Melba Jean or Ruthie know why or what was going on. At least, that’s what they said.”

  “But Mr. DeYancy is dead,” Lizzy objected.

  “Suddenly and unexpectedly dead,” Verna pointed out in a meaningful tone.

  Lizzy frowned. “You’re suggesting that Mr. DeYancy’s dying had something to do with—”

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” Verna said flatly. “Just thinking about a list of possible suspects. Mr. Scroggins would have to be on it, of course. And anybody who’s had access to those account books over the past year or so. Including Melba Jean and Ruthie. One or the other of them might just be playing dumb. Or maybe even both of them. They might know a lot more about those accounts than they’re letting on. In fact, I have the idea that Ruthie—”