The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose (10 page)

And then on Saturday, Mr. Scroggins made two calls, the first one to Verna (which Violet overheard), telling her not to come in to work on Monday and to turn over her key. And the second one to Coretta Cole (which Myra May overheard), telling her that he wanted her to come back full time and manage the office. He said that he was putting Verna “on furlough” while they straightened out a few things.

“I’m gettin’ the locks changed on the office door, too,” he added. “I’m gonna give you a new key, Coretta. I want you to be the first one there every mornin’ to unlock and let the other girls in, and the last one to leave every night. And if you can find out which one of ’em has been talkin’ outta turn to Charlie Dickens over at the
Dispatch
, I’d be glad if you’d tell me. That may have gone down all right with DeYancy, but I won’t tolerate it. You got that?”

Coretta hadn’t bothered to ask the whys and wherefores. She wasn’t the kind who did. The less she knew, the better she liked it—which is how Myra May saw it, anyway.

And by that time, Myra May and Violet had put two and two together and had come to the logical conclusion: there was fifteen thousand dollars missing from the county treasury and their friend Verna Tidwell was under suspicion.

“Do you think Verna will actually be . . .” Violet hesitated, looked over her shoulder as if to make sure that nobody else could hear her, and mouthed the word
arrested
.

“It didn’t sound like Earle Scroggins was terribly anxious to get the sheriff in on this.” Frowning, Myra May forked a bit of sausage, ran it through the soft yolk of her fried egg, and dredged it in grits. “I wonder why. You’d think he’d go straight to the law with his suspicions and let the sheriff investigate, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, yes.” Violet frowned. “And how can he be so sure that Verna is involved? Does he have some kind of evidence against her?”

“He doesn’t have any kind of evidence,” Myra May replied indignantly. “For one thing, Mr. Tombull couldn’t have the report from the auditor’s office yet. It was just mailed on Friday.” She put down her fork. “Anyway, you know there can’t be evidence against Verna, Violet. She’s as honest as the day is long. She’d never take anything that didn’t belong to her. Not one red cent.”

“I agree.” Violet pushed her plate away. “But
somebody
took that money, if the state auditor is right and it’s truly missing. And surely he wouldn’t make a mistake of that size.” Cupcake was fussing in her bassinet and she got up and went to pick up the baby.

“Fifteen thousand dollars,” Myra May said in a hushed voice. “Almost more than I can imagine.”

“Me, too.” Violet sat back down with Cupcake on her lap and picked up a spoon. The baby smiled and waved her fists, anticipating breakfast. “But as I say, Myra May, somebody took that money. And since the auditor figured out that it was missing, there must be some evidence of some sort.” She splashed a little cream onto the grits, stirred it in, and spooned up a bit for Cupcake, who smacked her lips and cooed, then leaned forward for more.

“I suppose.” Myra May pulled her brows together. “So maybe there’s evidence. But it can’t point to Verna, because she didn’t have anything to do with it. And if Mr. Scroggins thinks she does, he’s crazy as a bedbug.”

Violet looked up. “Unless,” she said quietly, “somebody
made
it point to Verna.”

Myra May stared at her. “You don’t think—”

“I’m afraid I do,” Violet said. “In which case, it might be a good idea to let Verna know what we know. It sounds like the deck might be stacked against her. And somebody’s dealing off the bottom.”

Myra May considered this for a moment. “How about if I talk this over with Liz first,” she offered. “Liz has a good head on her shoulders, and she works in a law office. She might be able to—” She didn’t get to finish her sentence.

“Miz Mosswell,” Euphoria called from the kitchen. “I got the grocery list ready. Somebody gonna go shoppin’ this mornin’, or do I gotta cook what’s on hand?”

Myra May picked up her plate and silver and stood up. “I’ll go, Euphoria. What do we need?”

Euphoria cackled. “Jes’ ’bout everything. List as long as my arm.”

Myra May sighed. “Well, let me see how much cash we have in the register.”

“Long as we can git chickens, eggs, and ham, we’ll be all right,” Euphoria replied. “Them green beans is comin’ on in the garden out there, and we’ll have okra and black-eyed peas right soon.”

“Well, that’s good,” Myra May replied absently. She was already thinking about talking to Liz and wondering how much she could tell her without breaking the Rule. “I guess we can feed folks out of the garden.”

At the table, holding the baby in her lap, Violet pressed her lips together. She wasn’t thinking of the Rule. She was thinking of that fifteen thousand dollars that was missing from the county treasury and imagining all the ways they could use that money, if they had it.

SIX

Bessie

At Bessie Bloodworth’s suggestion, Miss Rogers had worked over the weekend to copy onto paper the mysterious symbols and letters that were cross-stitched on her grandmother’s pillow. She had done the work with painstaking care, making sure to get every little line and dot just right. In the process, she had gained a new respect for her grandmother’s cross-stitching skills, which were truly quite fine. In fact, some of the stitched symbols were so minuscule that Miss Rogers had to use a magnifying glass to make them out. Perhaps even more importantly, she had learned her grandmother’s initials. On one side of the pillow, in tiny letters, she had found the word
Rose
and a date,
July 16, 1861
, embroidered in the tiniest of stitches.

“Eighteen sixty-one!” Miss Rogers exclaimed, as she reported this discovery to Bessie as the two of them were collecting the bedsheets for Monday’s laundry. (Each Magnolia Lady stripped her own bed and piled the sheets in the hallway.) “Eighteen sixty-one was just thirteen years before I was born. The first year of the War Between the States.” She pulled her brows together. “And to think that I owe this interesting bit of information to the claws of that wretched cat. Is it actually true that he’s going to a new home?”

“I sincerely hope so.” Bessie picked up a pillowcase. “I telephoned Ophelia last night, after Lucky Lindy did himself in by unraveling Mrs. Sedalius’ knitting. It turns out that Lucy Murphy has been looking for a barn cat to keep the mice down, so Ophelia volunteered to take Lindy out to the Murphys’ place this afternoon. Lucy and Ophelia married cousins, you know.” She paused. “Ophelia also thought she might know where to find a kitten, too—to replace the cat. I hope you won’t object.”

Miss Rogers sighed. “Cat fur is my bête noire. But a kitten is certainly preferable to that scruffy fellow who likes to leap off the draperies and onto our laps. Still, I have to be grateful that he unraveled the cover of my pillow. I might never have discovered that it concealed something important.”

Bessie dumped Maxine’s sheets into the basket. “I’ve got to go shopping this morning. Would you like to come along? We could take your transcription to the
Dispatch
office and show it to Mr. Dickens. He might be able to tell us something about it.”

Miss Rogers hesitated. “I hope you don’t think . . . That is, I’ve been reconsidering the plan we talked about and . . .” Her voice trailed off and she started again, tentatively. “While I’m acquainted with Mr. Dickens as a library patron, I’m not entirely comfortable around the man. He makes me feel . . .” She stopped, coloring. “You’re going to think I’m very silly.”

“No, not at all,” Bessie said. She straightened up and looked at Miss Rogers. “I’ve been acquainted with Charlie Dickens for a good many years. He’s a very bright man, but he’s . . . well, he’s skeptical, and critical. And he lived in many different places before he came back here.” Charlie may have grown up in Darling, but his years of travel and his life in big cities had given him a different perspective on small-town life. Most Darlingians no longer saw him as a local boy.

“Precisely,” Miss Rogers said in a grateful tone. “Thank you, Miss Bloodworth. Mr. Dickens can be extremely critical at times. And there is something quite ironic about that eyebrow of his. When he lifts it, it’s as if he’s secretly laughing at something you’ve said. I would be glad to have his opinion about the symbols on the pillow. But I would prefer not to hear him say that it’s just some sort of female foolishness.” She sighed. “Which I now suspect that it is.”

“You do?” Bessie asked sympathetically. “Why?”

“As I copied things down, I tried to figure out for myself what they might mean. I confess that I found myself at a total loss. I have enjoyed words and language all my life, and thought I might find some meaning in it—if it was a code, that is. But the more I looked at it, the more it looked like so much gibberish. I thought perhaps I might mail Mr. Dickens a copy, with a letter explaining where I found it. He could telephone me with his opinion, or write it down and mail it back.” She shook her head dispiritedly. “But I don’t want to go to a lot of trouble just to have him tell me that it’s all just nonsense and that I’m an old fool for taking it seriously.”

Bessie understood Miss Rogers’ reluctance, but she hated to see her drop the project so quickly. And besides, now that she’d had time to think about it, she herself was intrigued by the symbols and numbers. Were they just so much gibberish? Or was there a hidden meaning, perhaps a clue to the story behind the pillow? As an historian of sorts, Bessie couldn’t help wanting to know more.

She picked up the laundry basket. “Tell you what, Miss Rogers. I have to go to Hancock’s for groceries after Roseanne and I finish with these sheets. The
Dispatch
office is right next door. I could take your copy and leave it. If Mr. Dickens is interested, he can reply either by telephone or by mail.” She paused. “Would you like me to do that?”

Miss Rogers looked doubtful. “You’re sure? You aren’t afraid the man will raise that ironical eyebrow at you?” She laughed, but only a little.

Bessie smiled, thinking that Miss Rogers was beginning to seem like a real person, now that she had revealed a few chinks in her armor of prim self-assurance. “He might. But if he does, I’ll simply raise my eyebrow right back.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “His younger sister Edna Fay and I were best friends when we were girls. I know a secret about Mr. Dickens.”

This was true, although the secret was only mildly embarrassing or perhaps even endearing, depending on your point of view. It definitely wasn’t scandalous and it had happened a very long while ago. It was a high school romance, documented in a couple of passionate love letters that a young Charlie Dickens, smitten, had written to Angelina Dupree, who was now married to Artis Biggs, the manager of the Old Alabama Hotel. Angelina had returned the letters, and Bessie and Edna Fay had found them when they were snooping in Charlie’s room after he went off to his first year at Alabama Polytechnic. Faces burning, hearts pounding, the girls had read them, giggling hysterically the whole while, of course. To this day, Bessie remembered those letters, in which a passionate young man had poured out the dearest hopes and dreams of his heart, and very poetically, too. She occasionally thought about them when she saw Charlie or Angelina around town, and wondered whether they remembered them as well as she did.

That was the thing about living in a small town, where people sometimes knew too much about one another, or knew secret things or things that had been hidden so long they were almost forgotten. The past was always intruding on the present, even when you least expected it. You never knew when some little something—the smell of a flower or the sound of a voice—was going to pull you back into what once was. Sometimes, it was hard to tell just where the past ended and the present began, and some people seemed mostly to dwell in the past. History was Bessie’s hobby, so she knew this very well.

“Well, then.” Miss Rogers straightened her shoulders. “If you’re willing to brave the lion in his den for me, I’m sure I’d be grateful. Thank you, Miss Bloodworth.” And she actually put out her hand.

Bessie took it and held it for a moment. Miss Rogers’ fingers were sticklike, almost all bone, and rather chilly.

“You’re welcome,” she said, feeling moved by what felt like an offer of friendship. “And I really wish you’d call me Bessie. After all, we’ve been living together for several years, and both of us are Dahlias. Shouldn’t we be on a first-name basis?”

Miss Rogers withdrew her hand.

*  *  *

Bessie had been born and raised in Darling and couldn’t imagine a different life for herself, although she sometimes envied people like Charlie Dickens, who had been to New York and Paris and Cleveland and Baltimore and who knows where else. But if you had lived in a big city for a while, you would surely have seen how dirty and ugly and unfeeling it was, with nobody but strangers wherever you looked. When you got to Darling, you’d notice the difference. You’d be grateful.

And there was plenty to be grateful for, in Bessie’s opinion. For one thing, the town looked pretty much as it always had, and if you weren’t aware of the current sorry state of national affairs, you couldn’t tell it by looking around Darling. It was a lovely place, with huge magnolia trees along the streets and flowers in the yards and friendly people and a fascinating history. Mobile was seventy miles to the south, a half-day drive, more if the roads were bad and you had to get a farmer and his horse to pull you out of a mud hole. Montgomery, the state capital, was a hundred miles north, too far to drive unless you absolutely had to and were a glutton for punishment. If you didn’t want to drive, of course, you could take the train both ways. The Louisville & Nashville Railroad went north and south out of Monroeville, twenty miles to the east, and there was a local spur that went to Monroeville. Get on the train in Darling first thing in the morning, get off in Mobile before lunch or in Montgomery by early afternoon.

The site for the town was picked out in 1823 by Joseph P. Darling. He had come all the way from Virginia in a wagon pulled by a team of oxen, with his wife, five children, two slaves, a pair of milk cows, and a horse. He intended to keep on going as far as the great Mississippi River, where he planned to start a cotton plantation and make a lot of money, now that Mr. Jefferson had bought and paid for the Louisiana Purchase.

But Mrs. Darling had other ideas, as the story had been told to Bessie by one of their descendants. The Darling party camped for the night beside Pine Mill Creek. When Mrs. Darling got up the next morning, the rain had put the campfire out, the wood was soaked, and breakfast was cold corn pone and last night’s cold coffee. For Mrs. Darling, who was tired to death of traveling, that was the last straw.

“Mr. Darling, I am not ridin’ another mile in that blessed wagon,” she said. “If you want your meals an’ your washin’ done reg’lar, this is where you’ll find it—soon as you put a roof over my head. Until then, I ain’t gettin’ back in that wagon for love nor money. You kin put that in your pipe an’ smoke it.”

Confronted with this ultimatum (and without his coffee), Mr. Darling took a long look around. He noticed the rich soil, the Alabama River flowing quietly not far away, the fast-moving creek where they were camped, and the fish in the creek and the wild game in the woods. He took into account the abundant timber—loblolly and longleaf pines on the gently rolling hills, with tulip trees and sweet gum in the bottoms, as well as pecan and sycamore and magnolia and sassafras. He also took into account the fact that he liked clean britches and his three squares a day. Altogether, he felt compelled to reply, “Well, if you insist, Mrs. Darling. You can take your bonnet off and get out your washboard. We’re stayin’.”

And stay they did. Mr. Darling cut enough loblollies to build a cabin for the family, another for the slaves, and a barn for the animals. More Darlings trickled out from Virginia, and before long, the Darling clan had built a general store, a sawmill, a gristmill, a school, and a church. More folks came, of different religious persuasions, so they needed more churches. And the more people came, the more money they brought with them and earned when they got there, so they definitely needed more stores where they could spend it. It wasn’t long before Darling became a county seat and got dirt sidewalks and a brick courthouse with a bell tower and a county government and a county sheriff. It was on its way to being a real town.

Darling wasn’t an isolated, out-of-the-way town, either, the way some little towns were, stuck way out in the elbow-bend back of nowhere. Steamboats chugged up and down the Alabama River, picking up cotton and delivering supplies at plantation landings, which made it easy to go south to Mobile or north to Montgomery, if somebody wanted to. And not long after the War, the owners of the sawmill, the hotel, and the bank scraped the money together to build a railroad spur that connected Darling to the Louisville & Nashville Railroad just outside Monroeville, which meant that everybody could go pretty much anywhere they wanted, even when the roads were bad (which they were, most of the time) or the river was flooded (which it was, every spring).

But mostly, people who were born in Darling were content to stay right there, since it was a very nice town. Some, of course, went off for the sake of adventure or because they had to, like the boys in gray who marched off to the tune of “Dixie” and the boys in khaki who marched off to “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Some of them didn’t come home again because they couldn’t, and a few decided to go and live where they could get a better job and make more money. But in general, the men who left came back as soon as they could and married their hometown sweethearts and lived happily ever after, right there in Darling.

But not Charlie Dickens, who (as Bessie knew) had gone off to Alabama Polytechnic Institute in Auburn after high school and then to New York to the journalism school at Columbia University and after that to a reporting job on the Cleveland
Plain Dealer
. And after the army and France, it was back to the States, moving from place to place. Finally, he got to Baltimore, where he landed a good job as a reporter on the city desk at the
Sun
, until a new editor took over and the two of them discovered that they didn’t see eye to eye about a great many important things, mainly having to do with Charlie’s passion for investigative journalism. He had written a couple of in-depth features about police corruption in the city and raised some hackles in the police department and the mayor’s office. And that was the end of his reporting career at the
Sun.