The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush (7 page)

BOOK: The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush
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“Print enough money— But that’s crazy!” Astonished, Verna couldn’t help laughing out loud. “They’ll end up in the penitentiary, sure as shooting. I wouldn’t have anything to do with such a stupid thing.” She paused, frowning a little. “Who do they think they’re going to get to do the counterfeiting?”

“Charlie Dickens, is what they said,” Myra May replied. “He owns the only job printing press in town. Mr. Duffy seems to think he can get the money into circulation, even if the bank is closed. Anyway, he says he’s counting on you and Jed Snow to get people to accept it. And Amos Tombull is in on it somehow, too. At least, that’s what they said.”

Verna had shaken her head, puzzled. She couldn’t believe that two grown, sensible men would come up with such a cockamamie scheme. What’s more, Charlie Dickens didn’t have the kind of printing equipment that could print a piece of paper that looked enough like real money to fool people. And while she didn’t know Alvin Duffy and couldn’t say what he might do, Jed Snow had always struck her as a man who played by the rules.

But maybe Jed was thinking that there weren’t any rules in a situation like this. People were in a state of panic. They might be willing to try just about anything to get themselves out of the current crisis. And Myra May had her head on straight—she hadn’t imagined this or made it up. Verna knew that much for sure.

“What about Mr. Johnson?” she asked. “Did they say anything about him?”

“Only that he’s out of the picture,” Myra May replied. “I don’t know whether he’s in jail or what, but I heard that Mrs. Johnson left town, so it doesn’t sound good for him, one way or the other.” She paused. “I just thought you ought to know that they’re planning to rope you into their little scheme, whatever it is. And I don’t trust that Duffy character any farther than I can throw him. Jed Snow says he’s real slick. When it comes to women,” she added in a flat, hard voice, half under her breath. “‘They just seem to fall at his feet’ is what he said.”

Verna wasn’t sure what being slick when it came to women had to do with counterfeiting money. But obviously, Myra May was upset about what she had overheard. And just why Alvin Duffy thought he ought to involve
her—
Verna—in his harebrained scheme was a complete and total mystery. But Myra May was sticking to her story, and when they had finished their pie and she got up to leave, Verna gave her a hug.

“Whatever is going on, I’m sure it’ll be okay,” she said reassuringly, thinking that Myra May didn’t look quite her usual self. “My mother always said that a little dirt shouldn’t bother anybody—it all comes out in the wash.”

“Sounds like a
lot
of dirt to me,” Myra May replied, with great conviction. “And as I say, I don’t trust that fellow Duffy. He’s up to no good. No good whatsoever
.
” Her vehemence was a little puzzling, Verna thought, since whatever intrigue Alvin Duffy was cooking up, it was no skin off Myra May’s nose.

But Verna was a devotee of true crime magazines, the reading of which she considered to be a good exercise for her inquiring mind and suspicious nature, and she now had something of interest to ponder. She had recently read a story in
Best Detective Magazine
about a ring of counterfeiters operating their own printing press on Chicago’s West Side, putting thousands of dollars into circulation. They got away with it for months and were taken out of business only when they ran afoul of Al Capone’s gang, over in neighboring Cicero. Capone didn’t take kindly to those who trespassed on his criminal turf.

Verna hadn’t heard of any counterfeiters operating in Alabama, but when people desperately needed money, they weren’t too careful about how they got it. Still, she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe that a bank vice president would be fool enough to think he could pull that kind of trick here in little Darling, and get away with it. And even granted that Myra May hadn’t heard it quite right, what in the world
was
he planning?

Verna had thought about this off and on all afternoon, and she was thinking about it now as she prepared to leave the office. She was about to close the door behind her when the telephone rang. She hesitated, thinking she should simply ignore it—the office was closed, after all. Sherrie had gone to chair a meeting of Keep Our Darling Beautiful, and Melba Jean had left, too.

But then, compelled by that annoyingly strict sense of duty that made her the responsible person she was, Verna went back to her desk and picked up the telephone. She was immediately glad she had. It was Amos Tombull, the chairman of the board of county commissioners—her boss.

“Miz Tidwell,” he said, in his slow, gravelly Southern voice, “would you mind steppin’ across the street to the newspaper
office ’fore you go home this afternoon? Mr. Duffy and Mayor Snow are here with me and Mr. Dickens. We’re fixin’ to come up with a way to avoid a shutdown of this entire town. We need you in on it. The front door’s locked but you just knock three times and Mr. Dickens’ll let you in.”

Verna immediately thought of what Myra May had told her, but she didn’t hesitate for a single second.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “I was just now locking up. I’m on my way, sir.” She hung up the receiver.

It didn’t hurt to “sir”
Amos Tombull—not out of respect, for Verna knew from personal experience that you couldn’t trust him any farther than you’d trust a canebrake rattlesnake. But he held the strings in Cypress County, and when he pulled them, people danced. Verna, being a practical person who intended to keep her job, liked to stay on his good side as much as possible. Which meant that while she didn’t do
everything
Mr. Tombull ordered, she usually let him think she did. He was so full of himself, he was easy to fool.

And anyway, she thought as she made a quick detour to the powder room, she was curious. Those four men—banker, mayor, county commissioner, and newspaper editor—were an improbable gang of counterfeiters, if that was indeed what they were up to. She still found that idea very farfetched. Nobody would be that dumb. But they were up to
something,
and she wanted to know what it was.

As Verna washed her hands, she gave herself a critical look in the mirror over the sink. Perms made her dark hair go all frizzy, and last week, when she went to the Beauty Bower, she’d had Beulah cut it in a short, sleek bob, with straight-across bangs. Beulah (a friend and fellow Dahlia) said it was a 1920s style and a little out of date.

“Everybody’s doin’ loose hair these days, honey,” she’d said, fluffing her own beautiful blond hair. “Lots of curls. And curls are easy, with the new ’lectric perm machine.” She’d pointed proudly to the contraption in the corner, with all the wires dangling down. “I can perm you, too, Verna. You’ll be beautiful.”

But Verna didn’t want curls. She was pleased with her new look. Her short, straight, easy-care hair was as polished and sleek as a helmet. She ran a quick comb through it, then took out her compact and powdered her nose. She didn’t usually bother with lipstick, but she’d found a red one at Lima’s Drugstore that complemented her olive complexion. She put it on, blotted her lips together, and regarded her image.

Those men couldn’t
really
be planning to print counterfeit money.

Could they?

*   *   *

The afternoon sun was half hidden behind a bank of dirty gray clouds and the air carried the scent of rain. Crossing Franklin in the direction of the
Dispatch
,
Verna noticed that there were no cars or wagons parked in front of Hancock’s Grocery. This was a surprise, since Mrs. Hancock had the only grocery in Darling and there were usually three or four vehicles out front and people coming and going. Verna glanced in the other direction. There were no vehicles in front of the diner or Mann’s Mercantile, either. The entire town square was deserted, at five o’clock on a Monday, when the streets should have been full of traffic. She shivered, suddenly cold. The scene was eerie. Darling was a ghost town.

The front blind was pulled down at the
Dispatch
and the door was closed. Feeling a little unnerved, Verna knocked three times, and a moment later, Charlie Dickens let her in, closing the door quickly behind her. The green-shaded lamp on the editor’s desk cast a tinted light and the large room was dim. The newspaper printing press and the Linotype machine were hulking shadows in the dark corners.

Alvin Duffy and Jed Snow were perched on chairs in front of Charlie’s desk. Mr. Duffy wore a natty brown suit and vest and a blue tie and was smoking a cigarette in a long plastic holder, like FDR. Jed wore his familiar blue plaid shirt and a worried look. Charlie was in shirtsleeves, badly rumpled and bleary-eyed, a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth. He looked, Verna thought, like he’d been having some of the hair of the dog that bit him—or more likely, the whole dog.

Mr. Tombull, also in shirtsleeves, a green bow tie, and blue and yellow suspenders, was seated in the chair behind Charlie’s desk, smoking a cigar. His face above his bow tie was red and round, and beads of sweat stood out on his upper lip. There was a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the desk in front of him. Verna didn’t see any glasses and decided that the men had been passing the bottle.

And there was a fifth man, seated a little distance away, smoking a pipe, one leg crossed over the other knee. Verna was startled when she saw him. It was Mr. Benton Moseley, from the Moseley law office upstairs over the print shop. Mr. Moseley employed her best friend, Liz Lacy. He was in his early forties, an attractive man with neatly clipped brown hair, regular features, and a ready smile—it was no wonder that Liz had once had a crush on him as big as the state of Alabama. Mr. Moseley was the most popular lawyer in Darling, not just because he was gallant in the old Southern way (which he was), but because he was shrewd and knew his way around. A few years back, he’d been elected to the state legislature in Montgomery, and you didn’t survive in that den of vipers unless you knew how to quickstep through the snakes, the power brokers who ran the state’s affairs.

But Benton Moseley came from a long line of lawyers and had learned from his daddy and granddaddy before him that a sharp axe worked better than a big muscle. He had one of the sharpest axes Verna had ever seen. But he also had a reputation for being square as well as being shrewd, and Verna had relied on his advice more than once over the past few years. If Mr. Duffy and the others were cooking up a counterfeiting scheme, Mr. Moseley would soon set them straight.

Each man got up and shook her hand politely, and Jed Snow, mumbling a greeting, offered her his chair, dragging over a high stool for himself. She sat down, took her Pall Malls out of her purse, and lit one, very deliberately, blowing out a stream of smoke that swirled into the haze that hung over their little group. The green-tinted lamp, the blue haze, and the intent expressions on the men’s faces made her think of an outlaw gang huddled around a campfire, plotting their next bank robbery.

She broke the silence with a question. “Well, gentlemen, what’s on our agenda this afternoon?” With variations, this was her usual way of staking a claim to her place in a meeting, and she had learned to ask it first, before somebody else laid claim to the agenda.

Mr. Tombull spoke around his cigar. “The bank’s closed and the town’s in trouble,” he said, stating a fact. “We have got to do something. Mr. Duffy here has had a brainstorm he thinks will save our bacon. Mr. Moseley is here to give us his thoughts on the matter.” He swiveled to look at Mr. Duffy. “You tell Mr. Moseley and Miz Tidwell here what you got in mind, Alvin.”

Mr. Duffy spoke up. “I’ve been doing some research and have come up with a plan to provide liquidity to the townspeople in this current crisis,” he said. Verna reflected that he looked and sounded exactly like a stuffed shirt. “Now that Mr. Johnson has been removed—”

“He has?” Verna put in, narrowing her eyes. Now was the time for everybody to lay all his cards on the table, and if the men weren’t going to ask, it was up to her. “Why was he ‘removed’? Who had the authority to remove him? And what’s going to happen to the bank?”

Mr. Duffy gave her a startled look, as if a piece of the furniture had suddenly come to life, asking questions and demanding answers. He cleared his throat. “Shortly after the first of the year, Mr. Johnson sold the Darling Savings and Trust.”

“Mr. Johnson sold the bank?” Verna asked incredulously. She hadn’t known it was his to sell. In fact, she had no idea who actually owned the bank. It had always just been there,
like Mobile Bay or the Louisville & Nashville Railroad—until suddenly it wasn’t.

“Who’d he sell the bank
to
?” Charlie put in.

Mr. Duffy looked again at Verna. “Two years ago, Mr. Johnson bought out the other stockholders and became the sole owner of the Savings and Trust.” He turned to Charlie. “He sold it to the Delta Charter Bank of New Orleans, for which I work. I was sent here to manage the transition and—”

“Ah,” Jed said in an accusing tone. “So
that’s
how you wound up as the VP, instead of Sam Stanton, like everybody figured.”

Ah-ha,
Verna thought. She was beginning to understand.

“That’s more or less what happened,” Mr. Duffy replied, shifting uncomfortably. “I anticipated that the changeover would go smoothly, but it was interrupted by the bank holiday in early March. And then when the auditors came in—”

“I thought so,” Charlie Dickens interrupted, grinding his cigarette out under his heel. “Then they’re not state bank examiners.” As he reached into his shirt pocket for another Camel, he looked even more tired and dispirited than usual. He’d been looking that way since Fannie Champaign left town, Verna thought. He must know that she was back, though. She wondered if he had talked to her.

“No, they’re not state examiners. They’re auditors sent by Delta Charter pursuant to the conclusion of our purchase,” Mr. Duffy replied. “When they began work—”

“How come you let on that they were state examiners?” Charlie asked, lighting a book match with his thumbnail and putting it to his cigarette. “You trying to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes?”

BOOK: The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush
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