The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies (22 page)

Lizzy thought about Verna’s theory. “And if the man isn’t a policeman or a special agent? What if he is—” She let the sentence dangle.

“That makes it easy,” Bessie replied cheerfully. “If he’s not a policeman, we can stop fretting about Miss Jamison and her friend being criminals. We don’t have a thing to worry about.”

Lizzy didn’t point out that this wasn’t exactly logical. But she had the feeling that, if the baldheaded man was a gangster instead of a special agent, they had something
else
to worry about. Anyway, now she was curious. She wanted to see him for herself. And Bessie was a Dahlia, after all. Dahlias stuck together.

She glanced up at the Seth Thomas clock on the wall over the Chamber of Commerce certificate, its copper-colored pendulum swinging back and forth. It was almost eleven thirty, and Mr. Moseley would be leaving for Montgomery at any moment.

“I’ll finish this filing,” she told Bessie. “After Mr. Moseley leaves, we can go.”

 

 

A little later, Lizzy put on her yellow straw hat and locked the office. Then she and Bessie went down the stairs and out onto Franklin Street, which ran east and west along one side of the courthouse square. The dusty streets (the Darling Women’s Club were still lobbying for pavement but with tax revenues falling, it looked like a lost cause again this year) were busy on this midday Monday, and loud with the noise of people going here and there and doing this and that. From the opposite side of the square, on Dauphin, an ooga-ooga horn blurted, several automobiles chugged loudly, and a hammer pounded sharply and irregularly—Mr. Dunlap repairing the sagging awning of his five-and-dime. A train whistle sounded from the rail yard several blocks to the east, where in years past, great stacks of cotton bales had waited for shipment to the textile mills. Now, between the drought and the growing recession (some newspapers were even beginning to call it a depression), there were far fewer bales and almost no corn, and the rail cars mostly hauled lumber from the Bear Creek sawmill north of town. Still, some people had plenty of money, as Lizzy recalled, as she saw Bailey Beauchamp’s lemon yellow Cadillac cruising west on Franklin. It turned the corner and bumped to a stop in front of the Darling Savings and Trust, where Lizzy intended to go, just as soon as she and Bessie had finished their little chore.

But not everybody drove a late-model auto. Next door on the west, tied to the wooden rail in front of Hancock’s Groceries, stood a brown mule hitched to an Old Hickory farm wagon, patiently flicking flies with its tail. Many of the farmers drove horses and wagons when they brought their butter and eggs and honey to Mr. Hancock to trade for tea and coffee and flour and salt. Next to the mule was an old black Model T Ford that had been made into a truck by pulling out the back seat and the window and adding a big wooden box. And next to that was the old green Packard that belonged to Mr. Howard, who was leaning against the fender with a cud of tobacco in his cheek, waiting for Mrs. Howard to do her week’s grocery shopping. On the backseat of the Packard was a crate of live chickens and a small goat.

Lizzy and Bessie turned left on Franklin in front of the
Dispatch
office. Looking through the window, Lizzy could see Charlie Dickens hunched over his typewriter, his green celluloid eyeshade pulled down over his eyes. She was uncomfortably reminded that she needed to get her column finished tonight, if she intended to meet tomorrow’s deadline. She was thinking of this when Bessie grasped her arm.

“Liz, that must be him!” she exclaimed in a half whisper, pointing. “Mr. Gold! Or Mr. Diamond—depending on who you believe.”

The man who had just crossed Franklin Street paused in front of the diner, took off his hat, and mopped his bald head with a handkerchief. He was of medium height and wore a light gray three-piece suit and gray hat. He put his hat back on, pocketed his handkerchief, and glanced back over his shoulder with an air of caution, as if to make sure he was not being followed.

Lizzy pulled in her breath and peered, trying to get a good look. This was the man Verna suspected of being a member of the Capone gang—or was he a government agent? “It looks like he’s going into the diner,” she said.

Bessie’s grip tightened and she pulled Lizzy forward. “No. He’s heading for the telephone booth. He’s going to make a phone call!”

The booth was a new feature in town, and the only one of its kind. It was said of Mr. Whitey Whitworth, half owner of the Darling Telephone Exchange (Myra May and Violet owned the other half), that he had more money than sense, and that the phone booth was a good example.

The year before, Mr. Whitworth had taken a trip to Atlanta, where he had seen his very first telephone booth on the sidewalk in front of the National Bank of Georgia. All you had to do was plug enough nickels, dimes, and quarters into the three slots at the top of the phone and you could call anybody, anywhere in the country, maybe even the world, if the person you were calling in France or Italy or wherever had a telephone and you knew the number. He had been so fascinated by the way the pay telephone worked and the cheerful clink-clink-clink of the coins dropping into the coin box that he had spent all of three dollars making long-distance calls to his whole family.

And when somebody told him that big-city folks had been using outdoor telephone booths since before Theodore Roosevelt built the Panama Canal, he had decided that it was high time Darling had one, so that people who came to town and discovered that they needed to telephone their homes or businesses wouldn’t have to pester the merchants on the square to use their phones. And if a citizen of Darling didn’t have a phone at home, by golly, he or she could walk the few blocks to the square and use the pay phone. Mr. Whitworth thought it was bound to be a paying proposition.

At first, people thought it was a joke. They said that the phone booth looked like a privy and they wouldn’t be caught dead going into it right out there in front of God and everybody on the town square. But it wasn’t long before they got used to the convenience, and sometimes you’d see two or three folks lined up, waiting for their turns. To make a call, you simply picked up the receiver, cranked the handle for the operator (who was on the other side of the wall, in the Exchange office behind the diner), and gave her the number you wanted to call. She connected you and told you how many coins to drop into the slots so you could start talking. She listened for the sounds of the coins you put in, and told you to go ahead with your call. When you were finished, you hung up and waited for the operator to call you back and tell you how much more money you owed. (Nobody ever tried to leave the booth without paying the rest, because there was a note on the wall that said that the switchboard operator would send somebody out from the diner to collar the cheapskate.) The new arrangement had proved to be so popular that Mr. Whitworth was planning to install a pay telephone in the lobby of the Old Alabama Hotel, so that hotel patrons would have access to a private phone, since there were no phones in the rooms.

By now, Lizzy and Bessie were close enough to get a good view of their quarry—a little too close for Lizzy’s comfort, actually, especially if Verna was right and he was one of Al Capone’s boys. But Mr. Gold paid no attention to them at all. He paused in front of the phone booth’s folding glass door, put his hand into his pocket, and took out a leather coin purse. He dumped his change into his palm, counted it, and then—apparently deciding that he didn’t have enough coins to make his call—turned and went into the diner.

Lizzy and Bessie followed as Mr. Gold stepped up to the counter and took out his wallet. “Gimme some change for the pay phone,” he said to Myra May, and put down two dollar bills.

“You won’t need all that if it’s a local call,” Myra May said pleasantly, as she rang up a no-sale on the cash register. She was wearing khaki-colored trousers, a green knit polo shirt, and a bleached cotton apron. Violet had embroidered the words
The Darling Diner
across the apron’s bib in purple and red embroidery floss.

“It’s long distance,” Mr. Gold said. He frowned, cocking his head. “I can make a long distance call from that phone out there, can’t I?”

“Sure thing,” Myra May said, and slid eight quarters across the counter. She grinned as he took the change and paused, glancing up at the chalkboard that displayed the noon menu. “You look like a hungry fella,” she added. “The dinner special today is fried chicken. Mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, a biscuit, and your choice of pie. Thirty-five cents, includes coffee. That phone call can wait till you have yourself something to eat, can’t it?”

Mr. Gold took a large pocket watch out and consulted it. “Don’t have to make it until noon,” he said. “Yeah, why not? Fix me up with the special, baby.” He slid onto one of the red leather–topped stools, took off his hat, and put it on the counter beside his elbow. His bald head glinted.

Lizzy leaned over to Bessie. “Why don’t you get a table for us,” she suggested. “And keep an eye on that man. I’m going to visit the washroom.”

But instead of turning right when she got to the back of the diner, Lizzy turned to the left, pushed open the door, and stepped into the Darling Telephone Exchange. She didn’t have a very clear idea of what she was going to do. But she knew that there must be a way to find out who the man was calling. Since Myra May was working the counter and Violet was still in Memphis, one of the other girls—Olive or Lenore—had to be on the switchboard. Lizzy knew the rules, but she was hoping that maybe she could talk the operator into not flipping the switch so she could eavesdrop on—

She didn’t get to finish the thought. She stopped inside the doorway and stared at the operator’s back.

“Verna!” she exclaimed, in great surprise. “Verna Tidwell, is that you? What in the world are
you
doing here?”

Verna had learned to be a telephone operator a few years before, when Mrs. Hooper needed extra help and she needed extra money, but she didn’t usually spend her lunch hour—or any hours—at the Darling Telephone Exchange. But being on the switchboard at noon was part of the plan she had mentioned to Liz, a plan that she had sold to Myra May the evening before.

At eight o’clock on Monday morning, as usual, Verna opened the probate office. Located on the second floor of the courthouse and to the right at the head of the stairs, the office had a reception room divided by a long wooden counter, with the public area on one side and three wooden desks and chairs on the other: one for Verna, one for Coretta Cole, and the third, behind a low partition, for Mr. Earle Scroggins, the elected probate clerk, just in case he should happen to drop in, which he didn’t, usually.

Mr. Scroggins was a fat, jovial man with a bulbous red nose and twin white mustaches that curled up on the ends. He wore red suspenders and a bow tie and owed his reelection for three consecutive six-year terms as probate clerk to the goodwill of the friends who, in their turn, called on him for important favors, usually (but not always) legal. Mr. Scroggins owned a cotton gin on the south side of town and a cottonseed oil mill over by the river, and (although he was always careful not to miss the monthly meetings of the county commissioners) did not see much point in spending a lot of time in the office, especially since Verna took such good care of everything.

Whenever he dropped in, Verna would hand him a pen and a bottle of ink and a few papers requiring his signature (she had already signed the rest), bring him up to date on anything that might present a major problem, and ask his opinion about one or two minor matters. He would smile and pat her on the shoulder and say, “Don’t reckon I could do without you, Miz Tidwell,” and go back to his cronies and his cotton gin.

To some people, Verna’s job might have seemed boring, but she enjoyed being responsible for the multitude of property transactions, tax liens, wills, probate orders, and election details that kept the machinery of Cypress County moving. She also liked her work because it gave her an inside look at what was going on at the moment. She always knew who was buying and selling property, because the office managed the property records. She knew who died or was born or got married, because the probate clerk issued marriage licenses and birth and death certificates, as well as filing wills and probate documents. The office also collected property tax payments, so Verna knew who had gotten so far behind on their taxes that the county was planning to put the property up for auction. When that happened, she was the one who recorded the sale. In fact, Verna often said that nothing of any consequence could happen in Cypress County without leaving a paper trail across her desk.

Until a few months ago, there had been two women full-time in the office, Verna and Coretta Cole. But tax revenues were down, and Mr. Scroggins had decided to save money by cutting staff hours. Now, Coretta worked only two days a week, usually Tuesdays and Thursdays. But Coretta had agreed to come in on Monday, instead. So Monday morning, when Liz Lacy phoned the probate office to give Verna the address she had found in Miss Jamison’s file, and (to Verna’s pleased surprise) a telephone number and a name as well, Verna could ask Coretta to take over for her. She could turn her attention to the plan she had concocted the evening before—the plan to deal with Mr. Gold.