The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star (14 page)

Lizzy paused. “Actually, I don’t know when Miss Dare is arriving—tonight or tomorrow, or perhaps not at all. And I have no idea what’s going to happen. But I’m sure that two pairs of eyes would be better than one.”

“And if nothing else, we can keep each other awake,” Verna said with a chuckle. She flashed a wicked grin. “We could equip ourselves with whistles, so we can wake up the household if we spot somebody climbing the drainpipe with a rope over his shoulder and a knife in his teeth.”

Lizzy had to laugh at this comical idea, which sounded like something out of a silent-film melodrama. “I suppose I am taking this a bit too seriously,” she said. “But Mildred said—”

She broke off abruptly. No, not Mildred. It was the anonymous letter writer who had said that Miss Dare was ruining innocent people’s lives. That somebody had to stop the woman. Stop her how? By sabotaging her airplane? By following her to Darling and stabbing her with a knife, like poor Colonel Protheroe?

“What?” Verna regarded her curiously. “Mildred said what?”

Lizzy cleared her throat. “Nothing. Just . . . nothing.”

She wanted to tell Verna about the letters, but if she did, she’d have to tell her about Roger Kilgore’s relationship with Miss Dare, and about the money he was paying her. And what Charlie had said about Douglas Fairbanks and wedding rings. And she couldn’t do that—at least, not yet.

“I’ll check with Mildred,” she added, “but I’ll bet she’ll be glad for you to stay. And I’m sure I’m just being a worrywart.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Verna said darkly. “Bad things happen. Let me know when you need me, and I’ll be available. We’ll keep an eye on the drainpipes, just in case.” She put down her coffee and reached for the telephone on her desk. “And I’ll call the rental place about those tents right now. That way, you’ll have the latest information.”

This time, Verna was able to get through to the rental office, but the news she heard wasn’t good. “The tents apparently went north,” she reported gloomily, putting the phone down. “For some mysterious reason, the railroad shipped them to Indianapolis.” She made a face. “They’re not sure they can get them back here by tomorrow evening.”

“Well, if we have to, we can manage without the tents, I guess,” Lizzy said slowly. “As long as it doesn’t rain.” Of course, if it rained, there would be more difficulties. If the flying circus got to Darling, could they fly in the rain? She paused. “Have you heard anything about the carnival?”

“I ran into Mr. Trice yesterday. He says it’s on the way. Cross your fingers.” She frowned. “There’s nothing we can do about those tents, so I suppose there’s no point in worrying. But I wonder how they happened to end up in Indianapolis, instead of here. Seems suspicious to me.”

“Everything seems suspicious to you, Verna,” Lizzy replied, rising from her chair. “But there might be something we can do. Mr. Moseley gave me the rest of the day off. I’ll go back to the office and phone around and see if I can find another supplier. Just in case.”

But Lizzy didn’t get back to the office right away. After all, she had finished her “Garden Gate” column and she had the rest of the day off. As she came out of the courthouse, she paused on the steps for a moment, hearing a rumble of thunder and putting her hand up to settle her yellow straw hat against possible gusts. The air was sultry and heavy with heat and humidity, and to the northwest, the sky was beginning to fill with dark clouds. They could certainly use the rain, Lizzy thought, glancing at the annuals—marigolds, zinnias, strawflowers, and dusty millers—that the Dahlias had planted around the courthouse. They looked a little dry and wilted. And if it was going to rain, better that it rained on Thursday than on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday—especially if those tents didn’t show up!

On this hot and muggy July morning, the streets around the courthouse square were busy, as usual. Deputy Buddy Norris, on his red Indian Ace motorcycle, swung around the corner and skidded to a stop in front of the Darling Diner, raising a fishtail of dust on the dusty street. He parked next to a string of cars in front of the diner. Lizzy spotted Toomy LeGrand’s truck and the Newmans’ Nash. Toomy and Hank Newman, who were brothers-in-law, were probably having lunch.

Lizzy glanced at her watch. Maybe she should go to lunch now, and see for herself whether the new cook that Donna Sue had told her about was really
that
good.

“Hey, Liz!”

Hearing her name, Lizzy looked across Franklin Street to see Charlie Dickens standing in front of the
Dispatch
office, his big leather camera bag slung over his shoulder. He was wearing a blue and white striped seersucker suit and a straw fedora tipped to the back of his head. He waved at her, and she crossed the street.

“Glad I saw you, Liz,” he said. “I phoned upstairs to your office but didn’t get any answer. I’ve got some good news. Lily Dare is on her way to Darling and is due to land in the next half hour. Looks like the air show is going to come off after all.”

“That
is
a relief!” Lizzy exclaimed. “I’ll go call Mildred Kilgore and let her know that her guest is arriving. What about the others? Rex Hart and that aerialist? Are they flying in today, too?”

“A little later in the day,” Charlie replied. “The rest of the team is driving in. But I’ve already called the Kilgores—I figured they’d like to know right away.” He hitched his camera bag higher on his shoulder. “I’m driving out to the airfield now. I want to get some pictures.”

“Okay if I go with you?” Lizzy asked eagerly. “Mr. Moseley is out of town. He gave me the rest of the day off, so I’m free.” She was dying to meet the fastest woman in the world, the beautiful,
sexy
woman who had tantalized Charlie Dickens and wormed her way into the heart (or at least the pocketbook) of Roger Kilgore.

Charlie eyed her. “Did you talk to Mildred Kilgore about . . . you know. What we discussed on Tuesday?”

“I told her what you said about the sabotage,” Lizzy said. “And that there had been some sort of . . . well, threat. Mildred agreed that it might be a good idea if I stayed at her house. I’m to have the room next to Miss Dare’s.” She paused, wishing that she could tell Charlie about those letters—and the compromising photograph, and the checks Roger Kilgore had written to Lily Dare. But she had promised Mildred, so she couldn’t.

“Oh, and Verna Tidwell has agreed to stay with me,” she added. “Between the two of us, we ought to be able to keep an eye on the situation and make sure that nothing happens.”

“Good,” Charlie said. “Yeah. Come on out to the airfield with me, Liz. It’s time you met Lily Dare.”

Charlie owned an old green Pontiac four-door sedan. He was in the habit of driving fast with the windows open, and the wind and the engine noise made it impossible for Lizzy to ask the questions that were going through her mind. By the time they got where they were going, her hair was blown every which way. She’d even had to take off her yellow straw hat and hold it on her lap to keep it from blowing away. As they drove, she saw that the dark clouds that had been piling up to the northwest now covered a third of the sky, and flickers of lightning danced from one towering thunderhead to another. It was going to rain.

Darling’s airfield was on the south side of town, past the Cypress Country Club and the Cypress County fairgrounds. It was a narrow, grassy strip about two hundred yards long with sycamore and pecan trees growing along the fence rows at either end. Off to one side stood a plywood shed, weathered gray by the sun and rain. It was roofed with corrugated sheet metal and large enough to house a couple of airplanes. The shed had been knocked together back in the mid twenties, when barnstormers came to town sometimes three or four times a summer. These days, though, there were fewer flying circuses, and since nobody in town owned an airplane, the airfield wasn’t maintained. The grass and weeds grew hip-high around the unpainted shed and across the airstrip.

But today, the strip had been mowed, a wind sock was hung from a tall pole, and a row of wooden bleachers had been erected along one side of the field so that Darling’s dignitaries could watch the show in comfort. The rest of the crowd would park their cars and trucks on both sides of the field and sit on the hoods and car roofs.

As Charlie drove up, Lizzy saw that the tall sliding doors on the shed were open and the building was empty. There were several cars parked around the back. Three men were standing in front, shading their eyes with their hands and looking southeastward, into the sky.

One of the men was Roger Kilgore, nattily dressed in a light tan summer suit with a red tie and brown and white shoes and looking very much like Clark Gable. Another was Amos Tombull, the county commissioner that everybody called Boss, in a Palm Beach suit with a vest that was buttoned tight across his bulging midriff, a flat-crown white straw hat on the back of his head. As usual, the Boss was smoking a large cigar. The third man was Darling’s mayor and the owner of the feed store, Jed Snow. Jed was wearing his usual work clothes, a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up and wash pants. Young Sam Snow and his little sister Sarah were with their father. Sam was carrying a cardboard, hand-lettered sign:
Welcome to the Fastest Woman in the World!
Sarah, dressed in a starched pink cotton dress with ruffles around the hem, had a huge armful of lilies, almost more than she could carry.

“My, my. That’s quite a welcoming committee,” Charlie remarked dryly, getting out his camera equipment.

“Well, she’s a celebrity,” Lizzy said, although she couldn’t help suspecting that it wasn’t Miss Dare’s fame or his official duties that had brought Roger Kilgore here. If that anonymous letter writer was telling the truth . . . But the photograph and the checks proved
that
, didn’t they? She lowered her voice. “When you talked to Miss Dare on the phone, did she say anything more about the sabotage? Or about a threat?”

Charlie shook his head. “I’ll ask her about that later, when—”

But before he could finish, there was an excited cry from the group, and the children began to dance up and down.

“There she is!” Jed Snow shouted. He put his hand on his son’s shoulder and pointed toward the trees at the southern end of the field. “There’s her plane, Sam. The Texas Star is coming in!”

As Lizzy and Charlie joined the group, the air was filled with the roar of an airplane engine, and a moment later, there it was, a small white biplane with a red, white, and blue star on the side, surrounded by the words
Lily Dare’s Dare Devils
. The plane got bigger and bigger the closer it came until, no more than thirty feet above the ground, it raced the length of the field from south to north, its engine so loud that Lizzy had to put both hands over her ears. She saw Miss Dare in the open cockpit, wearing her white helmet and trademark red scarf, which streamed behind her like a bloody ribbon.

The airplane reached the northern end of the field, cleared the trees, then waggled its wings and began to climb sharply, up and up and up, hundreds of feet into the sky, where it was silhouetted against the angry storm clouds. Lizzy watched, openmouthed, as Miss Dare climbed past the vertical, the nose of the airplane falling back and over. A moment later, the Texas Star turned belly up. Miss Dare was flying upside down.

The Boss took his cigar out of his mouth. “My gawd a-mighty
,
” he blurted out in his gravelly voice. “Just like they do it in the movies.”

“The fastest woman in the world,” Roger Kilgore said. He sounded almost reverent.

“What’s she doing, Daddy?” Sarah whispered fearfully. “Why is she upside down?”

“She’s looping the loop, Sarah,” Jed Snow replied.

“She’s doing an
inside
loop!” young Sam Snow shouted, hopping from one foot to the other. “An inside loop!”

“Is she going to crash?” Anxious, Sarah reached for her father’s hand. “Daddy, is she going to
crash
?”

“Not a chance,” Roger Kilgore put in. There was a note of pride in his voice. “You are watching the number one female stunt pilot in the country. In the
world
,
by damn. She’s done this maneuver a thousand times.”

Lizzy watched, her heart in her mouth, as Miss Dare flew the Jenny upside down for what seemed an endless stretch of time, then pulled the nose down into a steep vertical dive, down and down and down until it seemed that she was aimed straight as an arrow at the earth.

The men gasped. Sarah turned and buried her eyes in her father’s sleeve. “She’s going to
crash
!” she cried. “She’ll be
dead
!”

But she didn’t crash. At the very last moment, Miss Dare pulled up from her dive, leveled out at the southern end of the field and brought the plane to a perfect landing as a great shout went up. While Lizzy had been keeping her eyes on the skies, a cheering, noisy crowd of fifteen or twenty men and boys had materialized as if out of nowhere—actually, they had run over from the fairgrounds, where they were working.

As the plane taxied up and Miss Dare climbed out, they stampeded onto the airstrip and she was surrounded. There was so much commotion, it looked like Charles Lindbergh had just dropped down out of the sky, and that the crowd had mistaken Miss Dare for Lucky Lindy and the Mystery Ship Texas Star for the Spirit of St. Louis.

But that was not the case, for a chant went up as Miss Dare climbed out of her plane. “Lily Dare! Lily Dare!” some people cried, pushing forward, while others chanted “Texas Star! Texas Star!” A lesser woman might have been frightened, but the aviatrix was handling her adoring public with confident aplomb. Dressed in a sleek leather jacket and white jodhpurs, white helmet, and red scarf, she stripped off her gloves, signed a few autographs, allowed several snapshots, then made her way toward the small group waiting in front of the shed, the crowd parting to let her pass.

And then what did she do? She walked straight up to Roger Kilgore, put both hands on his lapels, and kissed him on the cheek. In a low, sultry voice she murmured, “Roger, my dear, it’s oh, so good to see you again,” as if the two of them were utterly alone.

Roger might look like Clark Gable, but he didn’t
act
like Gable. Suddenly red-faced, he took a clumsy step backward, grasped Miss Dare’s hands and pushed them away.

“On b-b-behalf of the Lions of Darling,” he stuttered, “w-w-welcome to our little town.”

“Yes, welcome to Darling,” Sarah Snow cried, rushing up to her with the lilies. “These are for you, Miss Dare. And I’m so glad you didn’t
crash!
”

“Why, thank you, my dear,” Miss Dare said, smiling. She took the flowers. “Lilies—how very sweet of you. And no, I never crash. It’s bad for business.” She smiled at Sam, who squirmed and blushed to the roots of his hair. “And what a swell sign, young man. I am honored.”

Then came the introduction to Mr. Tombull, who clutched his straw hat to his stomach and gazed soulfully at her, stumbling all over his short welcoming speech. The Boss was clearly and totally smitten. And Roger, too, Lizzy thought. The flush had ebbed from Roger’s face and he was quite pale. But although he was standing well back from Miss Dare, he watched her hungrily, as if he couldn’t get enough of looking at her. As if, Lizzy thought, he wanted to reach out and pull her to him and never let her go.

Then Miss Dare saw Charlie and turned eagerly toward him. “And here’s my old friend Charlie Dickens,” she cried, blowing him a kiss. “Hey, Charlie, it’s swell to see you!” She pulled off her leather flying helmet and shook out her very dark hair. She stepped close to Roger, smiling and posing prettily. “Be a peach and take our picture, won’t you, Charlie? I would just
love
to have a photo of Roger and me together.”

Roger went even redder. He grabbed Jed Snow’s sleeve and pulled him forward. “Come ’ere, Jed,” he urged. “You have to be in the photo, too.” He raised his voice. “Mr. Tombull, over here, sir. Charlie Dickens is gettin’ some pictures for the paper and we want you in it.” As Amos Tombull joined them, Roger stepped aside, so that Jed Snow and the Boss were on either side of Miss Dare and he was on the outside of the group. To Charlie, he said, “Hurry up, Dickens. It’s fixin’ to rain.”

The rain held off long enough to take the photos and push the airplane into the shed and close the doors. As the first few drops began to spatter down, Jed Snow took Miss Dare’s arm in a solicitous gesture. “The kids and I will drive you into town, Miss Dare.”

“Oh, but I’m planning to ride with Roger,” Miss Dare objected, pulling away. “After all, he’s the one who arranged for the Dare Devils to come to Darling.”

Lizzy thought that Roger looked as if he were torn in two. “Sorry,” he said numbly. “I have to get back to the dealership. Mildred—my . . . my wife—is expecting you, at our house.”

“Your wife.” Miss Dare laughed lightly. “Of course. But do let’s plan to get together. We have a great deal to catch up on, you know.” With that equivocal remark (or at least it seemed so to Lizzy), she turned back to Jed Snow. “I have a bag in the back of the plane. Could you get it, Mr. Snow?”

But when Jed returned with the bag, there was another change of plans. Charlie had taken charge, introducing Lizzy and suggesting that Miss Dare ride back to town with the two of them. They would go to the newspaper office where Charlie would conduct the prearranged interview and take a few more photos. And then he would take her to get some lunch and show her around Darling before he drove her to the Kilgores’.

Miss Dare agreed to that, then leaned close and said to Charlie, in a low voice, “You said you’d get somebody to hang out here and keep an eye on the plane until Rex and the rest of the team show up. Have you—”

“All taken care of,” Charlie said, and Lizzy saw him signal to Zipper Haydon, who was standing at the back of the crowd. Zipper was in his seventies and had a crippled foot, but he was known to be a reliable watchman. He stepped forward, clutching his brown felt hat in one hand. “Zipper will be on watch for the rest of today.”

Miss Dare nodded and turned back to Roger. “I’m looking forward to meeting your wife. I want to thank her for inviting me to stay at your house.” She smiled broadly. “And for the party, of course.”

To Lizzy, the words seemed to have a significant emphasis—perhaps even a sinister one. Roger seemed to think so, too, for he seemed to flinch. Was he afraid that Miss Dare might tell Mildred about their relationship—and about the money he had given her? Lizzy looked quickly around to see if anybody else had noticed his reaction. But if they had, it wasn’t apparent.

Amos Tombull put on his most ingratiating smile. “We are
all
lookin’ forward to havin’ the chance to get to know you, Miss Dare,” he said cordially. “We are so honored to have you in our little town.”

“Why, thank you, sir,” Miss Dare said with a flirtatious smile. “I am just so
delighted
to be here in Darling. We’re going to have a great show on Saturday.”

And at that moment, there was a flash of lightning, a clap of thunder so loud that it seemed to rattle Lizzy’s bones, and the skies opened. The rain began to pour down in a deluge and all discussion was halted as everyone scrambled for the cars.