The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star (21 page)

Verna frowned. If Raylene Riggs was inside, she was either asleep or sick. If she was just sleeping late, she would surely be glad to be awakened so she could get to work. If she was sick, she might need help. It was time to take some action, and Pauline would have a key. Verna turned away to go to the house, and as she did, she saw the corner of the yellow curtain twitch.

She hesitated, watching to see if the door would open after all. But it didn’t. The curtain twitched again, this time decidedly, and Verna frowned. Maybe Raylene was neither asleep
nor
sick. Maybe she had decided that she didn’t want to work at the diner after all and was getting ready to skip town. But Myra May was counting on Raylene and she needed to know one way or another. It wasn’t fair for Raylene to simply hide out and refuse to answer the door.

Verna turned and went in search of Pauline, whom she found gathering eggs in the small chicken coop directly behind the main house. She was a plump little lady with a face as round as a melon, dressed in a faded lavender print wash dress and muslin apron, her gray hair tidied up in a hair net. She wore a pair of Floyd’s old shoes. After Verna told her what was going on, she agreed, a little reluctantly, that they ought to check out the situation.

Trailed by two Barred Rock hens and a bedraggled red rooster, they went to the parlor-office, where Pauline took a ring of keys from a hook beside the front window.

“I hope there hasn’t been trouble,” she said, as they went down the front steps. “I had to call the sheriff a couple of days ago, y’know. There was some rowdies in Cabin Seven, liquored up and shootin’ off a gun and scarin’ the chickens—three of ’em, when they had only paid for two. Buddy Norris rode his motorcycle out from town and shushed ’em up good, though. And made ’em pay for the extra.” She set her mouth. “What I hate is when somebody comes in and pays for one in the cabin and then he starts unloadin’ the car and I look out there and see three or four sneakin’ in. Shame on ’em, is what I say. Cheatin’ an old woman!”

“Are you ever afraid, out here by yourself?” Verna asked. Most older Darlingians relied on their family for help when they got to the point where they couldn’t do for themselves, which was natural, because families stuck together. But Pauline didn’t have a family. She was vulnerable, especially at night, with strangers in the cottages and who-knows-what-kind-of-people drinking and shooting guns around the place.

And as times got harder, people got more dangerous, it seemed, and not just in the big cities, either. In Oklahoma, a couple of tourist camps and motor courts had been robbed and people shot to death. In rural Ohio and Kentucky, Pretty Boy Floyd and his gang were shooting things up. And in little Sherman, Texas, Machine Gun Kelly’s boys robbed the Central State Bank to the tune of $40,000; later, his girlfriend handed out spent shell casings as souvenirs. Even in Darling, folks were on edge, and more so in outlying areas, where the law could be miles away.

Pauline nodded, jingling the keys. “Well, yes, I’m afraid sometimes, especially with business so slow, the way it’s been and me here all alone.” She brightened. “But with the festival this weekend, I’m hoping for more business. And Miz Riggs, well, she’s booked herself for a full week, which is good, since it means less laundry. I even gave her a free night, just four dollars and fifty cents for the week instead of five and a quarter, seein’ as how she paid in advance. She seemed like a nice lady. I surely hope she’s not sick or been boozin’ it up all night so she can’t work this mornin’.” She shook her head sadly. “As I told the preacher man last Sunday, prohibition is all well and good but it don’t mean a blessed thing when a person is bound, bent, and determined to drink.”

Boozing. Verna frowned. She hadn’t considered that possibility. Myra May’s cook might be new to town, but anybody would be glad to tell her that she could get a bottle of good corn liquor from Archie Mann, at Mann’s Mercantile. If Raylene Riggs had got herself so soused after her first day on the job that she couldn’t get up and go to work, it didn’t bode well for her future at the diner. Myra May was not a teetotaler, Verna knew. But she wouldn’t put up with a cook who drank, especially with little Cupcake around.

By that time, they had reached the cottage. Pauline banged with her fist on the door and called out, “Miz Riggs! Miz Riggs, you got a friend here lookin’ for you.”

Nothing. Pauline banged and called again, and again.

Still nothing.

“Well, I don’t usually do this,” Pauline said with a sigh, “but I guess I need to find out if she’s sick or drinkin’.” She located the key and stuck it in the lock. “We’re comin’ in, Miz Riggs,” she called cheerily. “Hope you’re decent.”

“No!” a voice cried. “I’m
not
decent! Don’t come in. I—”

But it was too late. Pauline pushed the door open and went in, Verna on her heels. Pauline stopped a few paces inside the door and put her hands on her hips.

“Who the dickens are
you
?” she demanded brusquely. “You ain’t Miz Riggs. And she only paid for one!”

Lizzy was looking around Miss Dare’s room, pondering the question of whether Mildred or Roger could have had a hand in her disappearance, when Mildred, still wearing a stunned and disbelieving expression, brought Charlie Dickens upstairs.

He stood in the open doorway, glancing around, frowning. He was dressed casually, in an open-necked blue shirt—no tie—and slacks. He looked tired and rumpled, as if he hadn’t slept much, and there was a coffee stain on his shirt.

“What’s going on here?” he asked. He looked at Angel Flame. “I thought you and Miss Dare wanted to get out to the airstrip early.”

“We do!” Angel’s voice dropped. “That is, we did. Until—” She gestured dramatically. “You can see for yourself, Mr. Dickens. She’s not here. She’s . . . gone!”

“Gone where?” Charlie asked, his frown deepening.

“We wish we knew!” Mildred cried, clenching her fists. “Mr. Dickens, I promise you that the front door was locked all night long, until I unlocked it myself, first thing this morning. We’re hoping you can figure it out. Please, please help us!”

Lizzy pointed to the scrap of sheer material caught on the sill. “That’s her nightgown,” she said. “If you’ll look out the window, you can see her mule, down there on the ground.”

Charlie leaned on the sill, looking out. “Her
mule
?”

“Her high-heeled slipper,” Mildred explained.

“That proves it, as far as I’m concerned.” Angel Flame’s voice was thin and high. “She’s been kidnapped! I
know
it!”

Charlie turned to Lizzy. “I thought you and Verna were supposed to keep an eye on her,” he said accusingly.

“We did,” Lizzy said. “Sort of, that is. Until—” She glanced at Angel Flame, then at Mildred.

Mildred got the point. “Miss Flame,” she said, “let’s go downstairs and get some coffee. Mr. Dickens and Miss Lacy want to talk.”

“But I want to
hear
,” Angel objected. She stamped her foot. “I think we ought to call the cops. We have to find out what’s happened to Lily!”

“We will,” Charlie replied grimly. “Just give us a few minutes to sort things out. We’ll join you shortly.”

Mildred led Angel, still protesting, out the door and closed it behind her.

“Now,” Charlie said, scowling. “What’s happened here, Liz?”

“I don’t have the foggiest,” Lizzy confessed. “But it was a very eventful night, believe me.” Mr. Moseley had trained her to remember and report conversations in detail, since information from a client could be very important. So she told Charlie everything she could remember about the two angry encounters—Mildred and Roger, with Miss Dare—that she and Verna had overheard. She had to tell him about Roger’s relationship with Miss Dare, as well as the anonymous letters and the telegrams asking for money. But at this point, breaking a confidence seemed irrelevant. She also told him about her conversation, afterward, with Miss Dare.

“She told me to get out and not to bother her again,” she said, “no matter what. So even if Verna and I had heard something—an argument or noises or something like that—we probably wouldn’t have rushed in here. By that time,” she added, “we were feeling pretty foolish about the whole thing. And this morning, we decided we wouldn’t sleep over here tonight. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

“I guess I can understand that,” Charlie said, shaking his head over all she had told him. “But you didn’t hear anything? After you talked to her for the last time, I mean. Or outside—you didn’t hear a vehicle?”

“No, not a sound,” Lizzy said. “Outdoors or in.” She glanced around. “I know it looks like there’s been a struggle, and I don’t see how we missed hearing it. It should have woken us up, don’t you think?”

“
If
there was a struggle,” Charlie said in a skeptical tone. “But maybe there wasn’t.” Under his breath, he muttered, “Damn the woman, anyway.”

“No struggle? What about all this?” Lizzy gestured helplessly. “Somebody knocked over all this stuff. But who? And why? I can’t believe that Roger . . . or Mildred—” She stopped. “It could have been somebody from the outside, I suppose. But how did he get into the house without being heard? Did he climb up the trellis and come in through the window?”

Charlie threw out his hands. “Look, Liz, if this was anybody else but Lily Dare, I might see it differently, and I’d be the first to call in the law. But Lily—” His eyes were narrow, his voice gruff. “Do you remember what I said yesterday? She’s a schemer.”

Lizzy stared at him. “I don’t understand.” She went to the window and looked out. “Are you suggesting that she . . . she
staged
this? But why? What possible reason could she have?”

Charlie countered with his own question. “If you were sleeping in this room and somebody came in and pulled you out of bed and dragged you toward that window, you’d
yell
, wouldn’t you? Especially if you knew that there were two women in the adjacent room and another right across the hall? You’d scream at the top of your lungs, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, definitely,” Lizzy said hotly. “I’d not only scream, I would scratch his eyes out!”

“And if you couldn’t scream—if you were gagged, say, or somebody had his hand over your mouth—you’d kick the floor. You’d make enough noise to wake the dead. Wouldn’t you?”

Lizzy nodded. “Of course I would. But maybe . . .” She thought of something she had read in one of the true crime magazines Verna was always loaning her. “Maybe the kidnapper hit her over the head and knocked her out, or used chloroform or something.”

“Maybe. But if she was unconscious, there wouldn’t have been a struggle. We wouldn’t see the furniture knocked over.” Charlie went to the window. “But more important, Liz, just how do you think a kidnapper is going to get an unconscious woman out of this window? Is he going to
throw
her out? Let’s reconstruct this—hypothetically, that is.”

Doubtfully, Lizzy looked out the window. It was only a ten-foot drop. “Maybe he lowered her?” she suggested. “By her arms, I mean. She’s not a very big woman. Around 120 pounds, maybe.”

“Possible, I grant you. But if she’s unconscious, she’s a dead weight. The kidnapper would have to be strong enough, which lets out quite a few candidates. Angel Flame couldn’t have done it, for instance.”

“Angel?” Lizzy asked, puzzled. “Why would she—”

But Charlie was going on with his hypothetical reconstruction. “So this muscular kidnapper has lowered an unconscious Lily to the ground. And then what? Does he drag her into a waiting vehicle which is parked out front—and which nobody heard? I don’t think so, Liz.” He paused. “And who would have done this, anyway? Not Roger, although he might be strong enough. This is
his
house. He’d be at the top of the suspect list. And if he were going to kidnap her, there’d be none of this window nonsense. He’d take her out the front door.”

“The same goes for Mildred,” Lizzy said thoughtfully. “She would never have wanted Miss Dare to disappear from
her
house. If nothing else, it’s a huge embarrassment.” She considered for a moment. “How about Rex Hart? I know that you’ve been suspicious of him.”

Charlie chuckled shortly. “Where do you think I’ve been all night? I was in the shed at the airstrip, keeping an eye on those planes—and on Hart. I wanted to make sure he didn’t have a chance to try any dirty tricks with Lily’s plane. He could have been behind the earlier sabotage, but I can swear that he didn’t leave the shed all night long. Same with the rest of the crew—the three guys who drove in yesterday afternoon in an old rattletrap truck.”

“I see,” Lizzy said.

“Right. So who are we looking for? Some mystery man—a strong guy—who has never shown his hand until now?” He shook his head. “Uh-uh, Liz. I don’t think anybody else was in this room after you left it last night. I think this is one of Lily Dare’s damned cockamamie schemes.”

“I see what you’re saying,” Lizzy said. She looked around the room. “Which means that she did all this herself. She turned the furniture over—”

“Quietly,” Charlie put in, “so you and Verna wouldn’t come running over here and stop her.”

“Turned the furniture over quietly,” Lizzy continued. “She had to get dressed, because she wouldn’t want to go wandering around Darling in her nightgown. She ripped a piece off her nightgown and snagged it on the windowsill. And tossed her mule onto the ground and then climbed out the window and down the trellis. And she took her handbag.”

“Her handbag?” Charlie asked.

“Yes.” Lizzy went to the dresser. “It was right
here
, Charlie. A big leather handbag. I saw her take a cigar out of it. A woman would never go anywhere without her handbag—it has her wallet in it, her identification, her money, her smokes, everything. But a kidnapper likely wouldn’t think about such a thing. He wouldn’t
need
it, so he wouldn’t bother with it. He’d be too busy trying to handle her.”

“Ah,” Charlie said, nodding. “Of course, Liz. You’re right. It’s something a man wouldn’t even think of.”

“But that doesn’t answer the central question,” Lizzy replied. “Where did she go in the middle of the night? And
why
?”

“I have no idea,” Charlie replied. “You said that both of the arguments last night were pretty awful. Some harsh words were said, punches thrown. Maybe she just couldn’t face Mildred or Roger this morning. Couldn’t look them in the eye—especially if theirs were as black as hers.” He shook his head. “So she skipped. Classic Lily Dare behavior.”

“Maybe, but . . . Hang on a minute, Charlie.” Lizzy frowned, concentrating, trying to remember. “Miss Dare said something last night, as I was leaving the room. I asked her if she had any idea who might have written the letters to Mildred or sent those telegrams asking for money. She said she was ninety-nine percent sure that she knew who did it. Then she said she intended to ‘settle some hash’ over it. She sounded pretty angry, too.”

Charlie nodded approvingly. “Sounds like Lily. She’s got some sort of plan.”

“Maybe,” Lizzy replied. “But that doesn’t explain the faked struggle.”

“Right.” Charlie pushed his lips in and out. “If you ask me, she’s playing for attention. Lily likes to be the star of the show. Something as dramatic as this—” He shrugged. “It would suit her. She’s always playing for attention, you know, with that airplane and those aerial stunts. A promoter. A
self-
promoter. She can probably read the headlines in her mind:
Texas Star Kidnapped on Eve of Air Show!
”

“You’ve convinced me,” Lizzy said. “But you have to convince Angel Flame. She’s ready to phone the sheriff’s office. Now that we’ve come to this conclusion, it doesn’t seem like a very good idea—to me, anyway. I don’t want to answer questions about Roger Kilgore and Miss Dare. There are some things that are better kept private.”

“Well, maybe,” Charlie said. “But blackmail is a crime, you know, and so is extortion. And it may have escalated into something else—like that sabotage.”

Lizzy crinkled her nose. “You’re thinking that the same person—”

“I am. But I agree that we don’t want the sheriff asking questions.” Charlie started for the door. “Come on. We’d better get downstairs and make sure that nobody makes that phone call.”

But they were too late. As they came down the stairs, Deputy Buddy Norris was knocking at the front door in response to a telephone call from Angel Flame, which she’d made over Mildred’s strenuous objections.

“It’s Miss Dare!” Angel informed him excitedly. “She’s been kidnapped!”

“The Texas Star, kidnapped?” Buddy was incredulous. “Here in little ol’
Darlin’
?”

“Yes, oh, yes!” Angel grabbed Buddy’s arm. The freckles were standing out all over her pale face. “Please, Buddy! You’ve
got
to find Lily—before something terrible happens to her!”