The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies (20 page)

Miss Jamison took out four dollar bills. She gave it to Beulah and took the box. “Keep the change.”

“Why, thank you,” Beulah said, surprised. The Bower ladies didn’t often tip.

“Are you sure you’re going to be able to get back to Miss Hamer’s house all right?” Bessie asked worriedly. “If you’ll hold up until I’m finished, I’ll walk with you.”

“No, no, I’ll be fine,” Miss Jamison said. “But I’m wondering—is there a back alley I could take?”

“Sure is, hon,” Beulah said. “Just go through the fence by the hollyhocks, turn right, and keep on goin’ for a couple blocks. You should end up right smack behind your aunt’s house.” She glanced down at Miss Jamison’s high heels. “Better stay with the street, though. Won’t do those pretty shoes any good to walk on cinders. The alley is where people dump their coal clinkers.”

“I’ll chance it,” Miss Jamison said grimly. “Thank you.” She went to the door and peeked out apprehensively, as though she was afraid that the baldheaded man might be lurking in Beulah’s rose garden. The coast must have been clear, for she turned and waved and then went down the stairs. She was wobbly, Bessie saw, but she’d probably be all right, once she got out in the air.

“A wig?” Leona Ruth asked with a short laugh, as the screen door closed behind Miss Jamison. “Did you sell her that ratty old redhead wig of yours, Beulah? Shame on you!”

Bessie got back in the chair and Beulah picked up a comb. “Bettina,” she said, “get started on that shampoo, will you?”

When Bettina had the water running, Bessie asked, in a low voice, “Did she really buy your old beauty school wig, Beulah? The one you loaned to the Ledbetter girl for the Academy’s senior play?”

Beulah nodded. “She was thinkin’ to order one, but when I showed her mine, she said it would do just fine, especially since she wouldn’t have to wait for it to come in the mail.” Beulah’s eyes met Bessie’s in the mirror. “You want to know what I think, Bessie? I think Miz Jamison bought my old red wig for that friend you mentioned, Miss Lake. The one DessaRae says is hidin’ out in her room. And she dyed her hair brown ’cause she’s hidin’ out from that baldheaded Yankee, who means her no good, whoever he is. Those two ladies don’t want that man to know they’re here in Darlin’.”

“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.

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.