The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

by Susan Wittig Albert

  As Sergeant Webb had explained to Ophelia and Corporal Andrews, although it wasn’t discussed much publically, one of the goals of the Civilian Conservation Corps program was to pump money into the economically crippled towns and villages around the camps. As much as possible, the camp’s supplies were supposed to be purchased locally. Orders that had to be filled outside the local area had to go through the office of the camp commandant, and Captain Campbell had made it clear that he didn’t want to see them.

  But while buying local was proving to be an economic windfall for Cypress County, it could be a challenge. When Camp Briarwood was first established, everyone had lived in tents while the permanent buildings were built. This construction had required an enormous amount of milled lumber, which was hauled out to the camp from Ozzie Sherman’s sawmill and from three or four smaller sawmills elsewhere in the county. Musgrove’s Hardware and Mann’s Mercantile had supplied sacks of concrete, rolls of tar-paper roofing, and all the tools for clearing and construction—shovels and axes and hammers and saws and carpenters’ planes. To get all this material out to the camp, a new road had to be built, using mule teams and equipment rented or leased from local farmers and teamsters. Native stone and gravel was used where possible; where it wasn’t, Carruthers Gravel Pit had provided what was needed. For all this work, the supplies had to get where they were needed and get there fast, which was often hard to do, for the local merchants and suppliers were geared to a lower demand and a slower pace.

  And that wasn’t the end of it. When the initial camp construction was finished, it was time to get started on the projects. The first was the new bridge over Pine Mill Creek and a couple of concrete bridges on the road that led to the camp. After that, they had built six new fire towers. There was talk of even bigger projects, like the dam on Pine Mill Creek, which could create a sixty-acre lake for fishing and boating. If that happened, they might build recreation facilities around the lake to attract tourists. All of this building required more materials—obtained locally wherever possible and paid for through the quartermaster’s office.

  In the meantime, of course, everybody at the camp had to be fed three meals a day, every single day of the year. The Army sent in some of the staples—flour and sugar and coffee. And some of the fresh vegetables were grown in the garden that Bessie managed. But the rest of it had to be found locally, and merchants and farmers from Darling and Cypress County were granted contracts to supply meat, vegetables, fruits, milk, eggs, and bread. The quartermaster handled the payments for that, as well.

  As Camp Briarwood’s liaison officer, Ophelia had played a vital role in finding the right suppliers and contractors. She had spent all her life in Cypress County and could confidently boast that she knew every single merchant, businessman, farmer, orchardist, and plantation owner, as well as all their fathers, brothers, cousins, and friends. So when somebody put in a bid to become a supplier, Ophelia was responsible for assessing the capability of his (or her) dairy herd to supply milk, cream, and butter; or an orchard to produce peaches and plums; or a garden to provide fresh vegetables; or a herd of pigs or beef cattle to furnish the kitchen with steaks, hamburger, bacon, and ribs. She did a good job, too. She had been able to find local suppliers who were qualified to fill more than 90 percent of the orders Sergeant Webb gave her.

  Of course, Ophelia didn’t do the purchasing itself, or handle any of the billing or the payments. Corporal Andrews negotiated the contracts with the suppliers. Sergeant Webb prepared and managed the invoices that went to the appropriate federal offices in Washington, D.C., where payment was approved and the checks sent to the camp for disbursement. They were held in a locked drawer of the quartermaster’s desk until the suppliers picked them up. The system was straightforward enough, Ophelia had thought, and—at least as far as she could tell—it seemed to be working perfectly. There was hardly ever a hitch in the supply schedule, and none of the suppliers had ever complained that they weren’t paid on time.

  But somebody—a woman, he said, calling herself Mata Hari—had tipped Charlie Dickens that something fishy was going on in the quartermaster’s office, and he had asked Ophelia to help him find out whether the tipster was telling the truth. Now that she was here, though, in this deserted, creepy building, Ophelia was getting cold feet. And recalling the story of Mata Hari, she seemed to remember that the woman, an exotic dancer, had been executed for being a German spy. All of a sudden, her excuse for coming—that she had to pick up some paperwork—didn’t seem very plausible. What did she have to get off her desk that was so pressing and urgent that it couldn’t wait until Monday morning?

  But she was here, and she should do what she had come to do and get out as fast as she could. There was a sheaf of papers on her desk—that was her excuse for being here, if anybody asked. But what she was really after was a file folder that was kept in the locked top drawer of the gray metal file cabinet in Sergeant Webb’s office. In it was an up-to-date list she had recently typed of the vouchers that had been prepared for payment to the merchants, farmers, and other suppliers from whom the camp had purchased goods and services. She couldn’t for the life of her think why Charlie Dickens would want that voucher list, and when she asked him, he had only said something vague about “checking” with a few of the suppliers. But he’d insisted that it was important to get it, and she would do her best.

  Nervously, she went to the sergeant’s door and pushed it open. The quartermaster’s office was windowless and airless and black as pitch, and smelled of the sergeant’s pipe tobacco. She reached up and pulled the chain on the light bulb that hung from the ceiling. When it came on, the bulb swung back and forth, casting swaying shadows across the walls and the bare pine floor. The sergeant’s desk was scrupulously neat, the papers stacked with their edges aligned, two pencils lying perfectly parallel, a calendar displaying the day’s date, a small gold clock displaying the time, a wooden name plaque displaying its owner’s title and name: Sgt. Luther T. Webb, U.S. Army. On a shelf behind the desk were several Army purchasing manuals, a couple of sharpshooting award plaques, and a framed photograph of a pretty blond woman and two small girls in party dresses standing in front of a well-kept home with palm trees in the background—the sergeant’s wife and children, who lived in St. Petersburg. He never spoke of them, though, and she had never seen any letters going back and forth or known him to take leave to go to St. Pete for a visit.

  Ordinarily, Ophelia was only allowed in Sergeant Webb’s office when he was there, and she rarely had a reason to open his filing cabinet, which he kept locked. But a few days before, he had asked her to return a file to the top drawer, and she noticed that he had taken the key out of the top drawer of his desk.

  Feeling guilty and more than a little apprehensive (What if somebody came in and caught her?), she opened the desk drawer (Lucky it wasn’t locked, too!), found the key, and hurried to the filing cabinet. It only took a minute to locate the file Charlie wanted: a manila folder labeled “Local Suppliers.” She was familiar with it because she herself had typed the voucher list for the sergeant just last week, and she found it easily, in the very front of the folder. She had alphabetized the suppliers’ names, addresses, and amounts. The single-spaced list was numbered, with thirty names on the first page, twenty-two on the second page, and the pages were stapled together in the upper-left corner. Charlie had suggested that she take the list home and copy it out by hand. She could give him the copy, then replace the original in the file when she went to the office on Monday morning. She figured that would work, since the sergeant never showed up before ten o’clock.

  But as she was replacing the manila folder in the filing cabinet drawer, Ophelia happened to see that the folder contained a second typed, single-spaced list of vouchers, also labeled “Local Suppliers.” The sergeant must have typed this one, however, since she hadn’t, and she and the sergeant were the only ones in the office who typed. The list was made up of three stapled pages, not two
, and contained not fifty-two typed names, addresses, and amounts, but seventy. Seventy? Puzzled, Ophelia scanned it, noticing that on the list were quite a few names she didn’t recognize—eighteen in all, it looked like.

  But according to the addresses, these people, eighteen of them, lived in Cypress County. Who were they? Why weren’t they on her list? Had she somehow missed that many names? If she had, when Sergeant Webb got around to noticing what a mess she had made of the task, he’d be furious. She had better do something about it, like maybe retype her list and add his names. And the sooner she did that, the better—before he found out. She would take both lists home with her, and bring them both back on Monday morning. The risk would be no greater for one than for two, she told herself. Or as her grandmother used to say, You might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.

  But she had collected what she came for and it was time to get out. She replaced the file, closed and locked the drawer, and replaced the key, then went back into her own office, shutting the sergeant’s door behind her. At her desk, she slipped the two lists into her large handbag. And just in the nick of time. She heard a heavy step in the hall and the rattle of a key in the lock, and the door opened. Ophelia turned, sucking in her breath and feeling her stomach lurch. But the figure was a familiar one.

  “Raymond!” she gasped. “Gosh, I’m glad it’s you! You scared the living bejeebers out of me!”

  Corporal Andrews laughed. “Who did you think it was? King Kong come to carry you away?”

  A man of thirty-five, maybe forty, he was out of uniform and dressed in jeans and a cotton shirt the same pale blue as his eyes, with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. Ophelia thought again how good-looking he was. He turned on the light.

  “I must say, you’re a bit of a surprise, too, Ophelia. What are you doing here in the dark? Getting in some overtime?”

  Ophelia picked up the thin sheaf of papers from her desk. “A little job I didn’t quite finish yesterday,” she said glibly, waving the papers. “My daughter and I were shopping in Monroeville this afternoon, and I wanted to show her the camp. While we were here, I thought of the job and just popped in to pick it up.” She grinned—disarmingly, she hoped—and made a show of putting the papers into her handbag. “I’ve been in Sergeant Webb’s doghouse so often the past week or two, I figured I’d try to burnish my image by having this stuff on his desk when he comes in on Monday morning. Maybe even get a little raise.”

  To her great relief, Corporal Andrews didn’t question her excuse. He chuckled wryly. “I don’t know about a raise, but if you find the key to that man’s heart, I hope you’ll let me know what it is. I’m in his doghouse as much as you are, maybe more. You can type and I can’t, you know. My image could sure use a little burnishing.”

  Ophelia laughed a little. “Well, don’t say I haven’t tried to teach you.”

  It was true. The sergeant could type, and often prepared his own reports. He had told the corporal to learn to type. It hadn’t quite been an order, but almost, and both Corporal Andrews and Ophelia had made a good-faith effort. But the corporal seemed to be all thumbs. He just couldn’t get the hang of the typewriter. The best he could do was hunt-and-peck, and even that was full of errors, which didn’t please the sergeant, either. They had both finally given it up as a bad job.

  “You gave it your all,” the corporal said, “and I’m grateful. I guess I was just never meant to type.” He gave her a curious look. “That pretty girl I saw out there in the car—you’re not going to tell me you’re her mother?”

  Ophelia nodded proudly. “That’s my Sarah.”

  Andrews shook his head. “I am amazed,” he said with an admiring look. “Honest to Pete, Ophelia. You can’t possibly be old enough to have a teenaged daughter!”

  “You’re sweet.” Ophelia laughed lightly. “Actually, I’m glad to hear that she followed my orders and stayed in the car with her Nancy Drew mystery. She made noises about wanting to walk over and watch the baseball game, which I strictly forbade.”

  “Smart mama,” Andrews said approvingly. “A pretty girl like that—those boys would lose their heads.” He went to his desk. “Well, I won’t keep you. Hope you and Sarah have a great afternoon.”

  “You, too, Raymond,” Ophelia said. As she went back down the hall, she couldn’t help remembering what he had said—You can’t possibly be old enough to have a teenaged daughter!—and feeling a small, warm glow deep down inside. She loved her husband very much, even if he was a bit old-fashioned. But she had to admit that it was nice to be admired, especially by such a good-looking man as Corporal Andrews. Even if he was involved with Lucy Murphy.

  FIFTEEN

  Charlie Dickens Has Lunch with His Wife and Is Enlightened

  The telephone conversation that Charlie had held with Mata Hari (or Mattie Harry, as Baby Mann called her) had been brief and intriguing. She had to talk to him in person, she said, and it had to be today, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. She told him to meet her at two thirty that afternoon, out at the old Loblolly School. Which left him plenty of time to finish the piece he was writing, then put on his hat and walk home through the oppressive noontime heat, for a leisurely lunch with his wife.

  When he had returned to Darling to take over his father’s newspaper, Charlie had fallen into the habit of eating lunch at the diner, where he caught up on the news that hadn’t yet reached the Dispatch office. But now that he and Fannie were married, he almost always went home for lunch—an easy walk, kitty-cornered across the courthouse square to the small apartment above Fannie’s Darling Chapeaux shop, where the newlyweds lived.

  Charlie’s life had changed in several other ways, major and minor, now that he and Fannie were married. He still played poker with the boys, but only once a month, instead of once a week. He only occasionally dropped in at Pete’s Pool Parlor, rather than making it his regular Saturday night stop. He only smoked at the office, because Fannie didn’t like the smell of cigarettes. And instead of his local white lightning, one of Fannie’s Atlanta friends kept them supplied with several good dinner wines, which they shared over Fannie’s good meals.

  His weekends had changed, too. They used to be primarily valuable for sleeping off hangovers and having some of the hair of the dog that bit him. But now, when the weather was good, he and Fannie liked to get out into the countryside and ride around in his old blue roadster, stopping to pick flowers and admire the scenery. When it rained or was chilly, they stayed home and puttered around their neat little apartment, Charlie reading aloud to Fannie, while she cooked something special for him. Or they might listen to the Palmolive Beauty Box Theater on the radio (sentimental crap, Charlie thought, but he never said so for fear of hurting Fannie’s feelings), or play dance records on the Victrola. Charlie wasn’t much of a dancer, but he liked band music, and dancing gave him an excuse to hold Fannie, who fit so sweetly into his arms and was light as a feather on her feet. After a nice dinner (with wine), they could often be found dancing to “More Than You Know” and “It’s Only a Paper Moon” in their attractive living room, which Fannie had tastefully decorated, with stylish furniture, airy curtains, and art prints on the ivory-painted walls.

  This weekend, though, Fannie was working, finishing a large order in the small workroom behind her shop, where she made the most amazing hats. That Charlie thought they were amazing should come as no surprise to anyone. (He was, after all, a fond husband.) But it was true that other people were genuinely impressed with her work. Lilly Daché, for example, a glamorous French milliner who had discovered Fannie’s work at a shop in Atlanta and now sold her hats on commission in her famous Daché shop on New York’s Fifth Avenue. Mme Daché also provided custom-made hats for the Hollywood studios. Thus, most amazingly of all, film stars (Marie Dressler, for instance, in Dinner at Eight) were wearing Fannie’s hats in the movies! Which meant that even though the Dispatch still paid only a few dollars a week to its editor and publishe
r, Fannie Dickens was bringing in a pretty penny every month, and Mr. and Mrs. Dickens were living quite comfortably—especially since Fannie had bought the building they lived in and they didn’t have to pay any rent.

  But Fannie’s success was a two-edged sword, and Charlie felt its bitter blade all too keenly. She was bringing in most of the money, while—financially speaking—Charlie was a loser, tethered to a small-town newspaper that would never bring him anything but grief. Charlie hated the thought that he couldn’t support his new wife—that she had to work to keep their little family afloat. Although he had lost maybe thirty pounds in the past year and wasn’t as thick around the middle as he had been, he was well into middle age, with thinning hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and (he couldn’t help it) a newsman’s skeptical frown. He could not for the life of him figure out what sweet, attractive, clever, successful Fannie Champaign had seen in him, or why she wanted to marry him. Add to that his fear that he had lost his reporter’s nose for a good story, and it wasn’t any wonder that beneath Charlie’s more or less contented exterior lurked a discontented soul. Discontented, that is, with himself, and not in the slightest with his new wife, whom he loved to distraction and desperately wanted to please.

  Which in part accounted for Charlie’s mood when he sat down to lunch at the small table in front of the open window that overlooked the courthouse square. Fannie liked to have things looking nice, so their luncheon table was covered with a flower-printed luncheon cloth and centered with a glass bowl of red roses. She had made Charlie’s favorite grilled cheese, tomato, onion, and bacon sandwich and served it with a cup of her homemade tomato soup—better, even, Charlie thought, than the tomato soup he got at the diner, which was pretty doggone good—and glasses of cold lemonade.