The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star (27 page)

“You’re right about that,” Verna said emphatically. “It is certainly distinctive.” And with that, she reached into the car and took out the anonymous letter Mildred had given them a little while before. “But here’s something interesting, Angel. A friend of ours got a couple of letters in the past few months from someone she didn’t know. This is one of them. And it’s written in the same purple ink you’re using—on pink paper, of all things!”

Watching Angel’s face, Lizzy saw her eyes widen.

But Verna was going on. “And look—isn’t this strange? The way you’ve written ‘with all best wishes from your friend’ on the flier? It’s exactly the same as the same phrase in this letter! And it’s written in exactly the same way. See how the
t
is crossed with a little flourish? And the
f
s have those funny little short tails? The similarities are so amazing—why, I think
you
must have written it!”

Angel’s mouth tightened and a muscle in her jaw was working. “Where’d you get that?” she demanded. “Give it to me!” She tried to snatch the letter away.

“Not so fast, Angel,” Lizzy said, pulling at Angel’s arm as Verna stepped back, out of reach. “You can’t have that letter. It belongs to Mildred Kilgore. Roger Kilgore’s wife—the woman you sent it to.”

Angel sucked in her breath. Under her freckles, her face had gone ashen, with blotches of ugly red high on her cheeks. She looked uncertain and afraid, as if she were struggling to keep her balance on a shifting airplane wing.

“And there’s more,” Verna went on calmly. “These three canceled checks, made out by Roger Kilgore to someone named Lily Star—to Lily Dare, he thought.” She held them up. “But Lily Dare never got the money, did she, Angel? And what’s so interesting about these checks is that they’ve been endorsed with that same distinctive purple ink you used in the letters—and in the inscription just now.” She shook her head pityingly. “You weren’t so clever after all, Angel. You’ve left a trail a mile wide.”

Angel’s eyes narrowed and her anger overwhelmed her uncertainty. “Give me those!” she snapped menacingly. “Do you think I’m going to let you pull a cheap trick like that on me?” She lunged free of Lizzy and grabbed for the checks in Verna’s hand. When Verna held on to them, Angel punched her in the face, then slammed her, hard, against the wall of the shed, pinning her with a strong forearm across her throat. “Give me those checks,” she growled, “or I’ll break your stupid neck!”

Verna gasped futilely for air, trying to wrench Angel’s arm from her throat, but the wingwalker, athletic and years younger, was too strong for her.

“Lay
off
!” Lizzy cried. Frantic, she grabbed Angel’s hair and jerked her sharply back. “Verna can’t breathe! You’re hurting—”

She was stopped with a fist in the eye, as Angel swung sharply around and hit her, hard, with all the force of her swinging body. Stunned, Lizzy saw an explosion of stars against a canopy of velvety black. The next thing she knew, she was sprawled flat on the ground.

“Hey!” Buddy Norris yelled, suddenly appearing out of nowhere. His deputy’s badge was pinned conspicuously on his khaki shirt. “That’s enough of that!” He knelt beside Lizzy. “Are you okay, Liz?” he asked and helped her sit up.

“I . . . I think so,” Lizzy gulped, trying not to cry. She put a hand to her eye, which hurt fiercely. When she pulled it away, her fingers were smeared with bright red blood. Her cheek was bleeding.

“You’ve got a little cut,” Buddy said sympathetically, and pulled out his handkerchief, dabbing it gently to her face. “Sorry to be delayed,” he said. “I got tied up on a long-distance telephone call.” He handed her the handkerchief. “You okay now?” When she nodded, he helped her to her feet.

Angel’s menace had abruptly disappeared. “Oh, Buddy,” she cried, going to him and putting her hand on his arm. She smiled sweetly up at him. “Gosh, Buddy, you’ve got great timing! These two women have something that belongs to me and I’ve been trying to convince them to give it back.” Her smile became flirtatious. “I’m sure they’ll do whatever you say. Please tell them to hand over my stuff!”

“What kind of stuff?” Buddy asked.

“Oh, just—” She stopped, seeing the dilemma. “Just some . . . papers.”

“What kind of papers?” Buddy smiled in a helpful way. “I can’t make these women hand them over unless I know they belong to you—now can I?”

Desperate now, Angel said the only thing she could say. “It’s . . . it’s a letter I wrote, and some canceled checks. Come on, Buddy—they’re
mine
!”

“There!” Lizzy crowed. “Did you hear that? She’s just
confessed
!”

Buddy nodded. “I heard that. But first things first. Miss Flame, I saw what happened a few minutes ago, and it looked to me like you were using your fists to get what you wanted. Here in Darling, we call that assault and battery.” He paused and looked from Verna to Lizzy. “Hate to say it, but you two look like this woman landed a few pretty good punches—she got you both right in the eye. What about it? Do you want to press charges?”

“Maybe,” Lizzy said. Her left eye was throbbing and the cheek below it was still bleeding. She held Buddy’s handkerchief to it and looked at Verna. “You’ve got a shiner, too, Verna.”

“I’m in favor of charging her with assault,” Verna said grimly. She rubbed her throat, where the bruise was already beginning to show. “She’s strong as an ox. I’m lucky she didn’t break my neck.”

“Assault?” Angel rolled her eyes, as if their complaints were just plain silly. “That’s nonsense. I was only trying to persuade them—”

“Shut up, Miss Flame,” Buddy said. He held out his hand to Verna. “Okay, now that we’ve got that settled, let’s see these papers that Miss Flame insists are hers.”

“Oh, but it’s not necessary for you to
look
at
them,” Angel said hastily. “They’re just a few pieces of paper, with no importance to anybody but me.” She pointed to Verna. “If she’ll give them to me, I’ll forget all about charging her with theft.”

“Theft?” Lizzy hooted. “Talk about
nonsense
!”

But Buddy was paying no attention. Verna had handed him the letter, the canceled checks, and the flier that Angel had signed. He was studying them carefully, chewing on one corner of his lip. Of course, he had already seen the letter and the checks when Lizzy and Verna had stopped at the sheriff’s office on their way out to the airstrip and asked his help with their plan. Now, all he had to do was compare the handwriting.

After a minute, he said, “Well, it looks to me like you and Liz got it right, Verna.” He folded the papers together and put them into his shirt pocket. “I’ll make sure that these documents get back to Mrs. Kilgore when we’re finished with them in the sheriff’s office.” He turned to Angel with a frown. “We don’t much like extortionists here, Miss Flame—or Miss Hopkins, or whoever you are.”

“Extortion?” Angel’s mouth worked. Her face was splotchy. “No! You’ve got it all wrong,” she said. “All of you.”

Lizzy took a deep breath and stepped forward. “We have it right,” she said firmly. “
You
wrote the letters and the telegrams. You endorsed the checks. And on one of the checks, you wrote ‘For deposit only’ under your signature.”

“So when that check is traced back to its deposit in your bank account,” Verna put in, “that will take care of any possible question. Your problem is that you just didn’t think things through. You didn’t cover your tracks. You thought you were so far out of the picture that nobody could trace you.” She chuckled shortly. “But you left a trail a yard wide and a mile long. Pink paper and purple ink. Dumb, dumber,
dumbest.
”

Angel’s chin trembled. “But why . . . why would I do such things?” she asked plaintively, trying to defend herself. “What possible motive could I—”

“Well, for starters,” Verna said, “there’s revenge. Bess Hopkins died in a fall from Lily Dare’s plane. You could be trying to get even with her for your sister’s death. You could be—”

Verna stopped. Angel’s face had crumpled at the mention of her sister. She squeezed her eyes shut and made a fist of her right hand and brought it to her mouth, as if to hold back a sob.

“Bess,” she said, very low. “Bess . . .” Her shoulders began to shake. “Lily was using second-rate equipment on that plane. She cuts corners. People die because of her—like Pete Rickerts. He’s dead, like Bess.” Her voice grew shrill. “She needs to pay for what she’s done.”

“That’s for the justice system to decide,” Verna said. “Not you. Anyway, you weren’t trying to get even with Lily when you defrauded Roger Kilgore out of nearly a thousand dollars. Why, for all we know, you’ve been pulling the same dirty tricks on other men—impersonating Miss Dare in order to solicit money.”

“And on top of assault and extortion, there’s the airplane sabotage,” Buddy Norris put in. “Could amount to attempted murder.”

“Attempted
murder
?” Angel’s eyes flew open. “Oh, no! I didn’t mean—that is, I was just . . .” She shook her head, now sounding desperate. “It was just a . . . a joke, that’s all. I figured the prop would break when the ground crewman turned it, before she took off. I only wanted to cause a little trouble, make her a little more careful. I wasn’t trying to
kill
her!”

“The Pensacola police have a different idea,” Buddy said, unclipping the handcuffs from his belt. “I was on the phone with them just before I came out here. It turns out that they’ve located a witness who saw you take a hacksaw to that propeller. They’re going to want you to star in a police lineup down there.” Deftly, ignoring her protests, he turned Angel around and cuffed her hands behind her back, then turned to Verna.

“I’ve got a favor to ask, Verna. I can’t transport the prisoner into town on the back of my motorcycle. Can you and Liz take her in, in your car? I’ll give you a police escort, to make sure there’s no trouble.”

“Oh, you bet,” Verna said. Gently, she touched her swollen eye. “It will be a pleasure. A
pleasure
.”

It was, all the Dahlias agreed, the most exciting and best-managed Watermelon Festival ever. The air show was a spectacular success, attracting almost two hundred cars to the air strip on Sunday for a program of (as promised) thrills and chills and some really top-notch aerobatics, including both flying and wingwalking. The show culminated in an aerial dogfight so amazingly realistic that many spectators were convinced that the Texas Star and the King of the Air would collide and come crashing to the ground in blazing balls of fire—and some of them no doubt secretly hoped so. When all the excitement was over, Lily Dare and the Dare Devils packed up their gear and flew off to the next airshow, in Paducah, Kentucky. Unfortunately, one of the wing struts on Rex Hart’s Stearman broke and the King of the Air was grounded until Monday, when he, too, flew off to Paducah.

Everything else went remarkably smoothly. The Ferris wheel did not get stuck (to the disappointment of the junior Darlingians, who hoped to get stranded at the top for at least an hour or two). Mr. Burley’s goats stayed in their pen, sulking; the best they could do was a red ribbon. (Muddy Waters’ goats took the blue.) The Ladies Club tent did not collapse. The Chamber of Commerce popcorn machine did not
catch fire. The Eastern Star’s hot dogs held out until the last bun, just before closing time, and there were exactly enough watermelons for everybody to have exactly as many pieces as they wanted. The 1932 Darling Baby award went to Violet and Myra May’s little Cupcake (all of Darling applauded this choice). Mrs. Peabody watched her step; she did
not
fall off the stage and break her nose again.

And best of all, when Aunt Hetty turned in the nickels and dimes and quarters the Dahlias had earned from the sale of their fresh garden vegetables, it was enough to buy
two
pressure cookers and
three
cases of Mason jars and lids. Lizzy and the other officers were already making arrangements for their first canning party in the kitchen of the Dahlias’ clubhouse (the Kentucky Wonder green beans would need picking again next week) and planning for the Dahlias’ contributions to the Darling Family Food Pantry.

Wednesday morning was a hot one, with the temperature already nudging ninety and the air heavy with humidity. At Beulah Trivette’s Beauty Bower, the screen door and all the windows were open and the fans were turning. Several of the Dahlias were gathered to catch up on the latest Darling news and gossip and enjoy tea and cookies while Beulah and Bettina made them beautiful.

And there was a very great deal to catch up on. Lizzy, who was getting a shampoo and trim, had to tell everybody about the excitement of her very first airplane ride. She had gone up after the air show in the Texas Star, piloted by Miss Lily Dare. She had expected to pay $1.26 (a penny a pound). But Miss Dare gave her and Verna free rides, to thank them for their help in identifying Mabel Hopkins as the person who had sabotaged her plane, not just once but twice.

“Was it
fun
?” Beulah asked doubtfully, when Lizzy finished her story.

“It was so noisy and there was so much vibration that I thought the top of my head was going to fly off,” Lizzy said. She sat up and let Beulah wrap a dry towel around her head. “But it was incredibly gorgeous up there, the sky all around us, open and free, and the plane turning and wheeling just like a bird. The trees and fields were all spread out below like a rumpled-up green chenille bedspread. And there was Darling itself, with all the toy houses with their flower gardens and the town square and the courthouse with its bell tower and the neat streets and the trees.” She followed Beulah to one of the barber chairs and took her seat, while Beulah fastened a pink cape around her neck. “I looked right down on my roof, and my backyard, with my own garden like a tiny jewel, and it was all just perfect and perfectly beautiful.”

“I’d get perfectly dizzy,” Beulah said, getting out the tray of metal curlers she kept at her station. “I believe I’d keep my eyes closed the whole entire time I was in the air.” She poured some of her homemade setting lotion out of a bottle and into a jar. Dipping a comb into it, she began combing it through Lizzy’s hair.

“You and Verna are
brave
,” Bessie Bloodworth said, from her place under the permanent wave machine, where she was getting her graying hair electrically curled. Another Dahlia, she had been a big help in getting the garden vegetables picked and carted out to the festival grounds. She went on: “Honest to Pete, Liz, I’d chew my nails down to the wrists if I had to go up in one of those machines. It might fall right down out of the sky with me in it!”

“The only thing that fell out of the sky was that wingwalker,” Aunt Hetty said. Completely covered by a pink cape, she was settled in the other barber chair, where Bettina, wearing an embroidered pink smock, was combing out her white hair after a shampoo and set.

Bettina gasped and her eyes opened wide. “She really did
fall
?” Bettina had gone to her mother’s over the weekend and missed the air show.
“She was
killed
?”

“It wasn’t a she,” Aunt Hetty replied crisply. “It was a he, and he didn’t really fall, at least not all the way, because he was wearing a parachute.”

“Oh, of course,” Bettina said, teasing out a fluff of white hair and patting it delicately into place. “This must be somebody who took Angel Flame’s place after she got arrested.” She picked up the scissors and snipped off a stray strand.

“That’s right,” Verna said, leafing through a magazine while she waited for her turn in Bettina’s barber chair. “The new wingwalker was a guy named Wiley Tuttle.”

Lizzy was watching in the mirror as Beulah deftly wound her hair around a fat metal roller and fastened the clip. “Wiley Tuttle is one of the members of the ground crew,” she said, handing Beulah another clip out of the bowl in her lap. “Neither Miss Dare nor Mr. Hart guessed that he had any experience as a wingwalker or a parachute jumper. But it turns out that he had been wingwalking with a flying circus that went broke a couple of months ago. He signed on with the Dare Devils, hoping to get a chance to strut his stuff.”

“He had plenty of stuff to strut,” Aunt Hetty said admiringly. “One minute that young fella is way up there in the sky, dancing around on the airplane wing like it’s a ballroom floor. And then the next minute he flies off that wing like a bird with his arms out.” She raised her arms to demonstrate and Bettina put a hasty hand on her shoulder.

“There now, Miz Little, you don’t want me to snip a bit off your ear, do you?”

Aunt Hetty dropped her arms. “And he’s falling like a rock, falling and falling and
falling
.” She took a deep breath. “And then just when I think he is going to crash into the ground right in front of my very eyes, he pulls a cord and
whomp!
like a lily blooming, that big white parachute opens up. And he lands—
splat!—
right in the middle of Archie Mann’s mattress!” She shook her head, disbelieving. “How that young fella could pick out that little tiny mattress to land on is completely beyond me.”

“Miss Dare says he’s a better wingwalker than Angel Flame,” Verna said. She looked up from her magazine. “Of course, his legs aren’t as pretty as hers, but he’s a lot stronger. He rode the wing through a loop and a spin. Imagine, hanging onto a wing while the plane is flying
upside down
! She said that Angel Flame could never have done that.”

Beulah wound a curler over Liz’s left ear. “Upside down,” she murmured. “I just can’t believe these modern marvels. Why, next thing you know, folks’ll be wanting to fly to the moon.”

“That’ll be the day!” Bessie Bloodworth hooted.

“What I want to know,” Bettina said, “is what’s going to happen to Miss Flame. Is it true that she’s in jail in Pensacola?” Peering into the mirror, she patted Aunt Hetty’s white hair. “What do you think, Miz Little? Does it look all right to you?” She brushed the back of Aunt Hetty’s neck and took off the cape with a flourish. “Here. Tell me what you think.” She handed Aunt Hetty a mirror.

“Looks just beautiful, child,” Aunt Hetty said, turning so that she could see the back of her head. “Real professional.”

“Professional.” Bettina beamed. “Thank you, Miz Little. I just love to hear that word. I try so hard to be a professional!”

Verna took Aunt Hetty’s place in the barber chair and Aunt Hetty went to sit where Verna had been sitting. “To answer your question, Bettina, Buddy Norris took Angel Flame—Mabel Hopkins, her real name is—down to Pensacola on the Greyhound. They put her through the lineup and she’s been charged. And yes, she’s in the jail, for now.”

“Mr. Moseley says that Angel will probably hire a lawyer who will try to get her some sort of plea deal,” Lizzy added, as Beulah wound another curler. “Whatever happens, she won’t be performing with the Dare Devils again. And Miss Dare said that if she has anything to do with it, Angel won’t be wingwalking with any of the other flying circuses. She’s going to spread the word that Angel can’t be trusted.”

Roger and Mildred had already talked to Mr. Moseley about pressing extortion charges, but they hadn’t yet decided what to do. If Mr. Moseley could get Angel to give back the nine hundred dollars she got under false pretenses, they would probably let the matter drop. But of course, Lizzy didn’t say any of this out loud, since it was a legal matter and she never talked about what went on in Mr. Moseley’s office.

“I thought Mildred’s party was a great success,” Bessie Bloodworth remarked, from her place under the electric permanent wave machine.

“Yes, it was,” Verna agreed. “A complete success. The weather, the food, everything.”

Beulah started on the hair at the back of Lizzy’s head. “You looked just beautiful in that gray dress, Liz. And your hair—well, it was just gorgeous, if I do say so myself. I got a really good do on you that time.” She smiled at Lizzy in the mirror. “It was a dang shame that Grady Alexander wasn’t there to see you.”

Lizzy returned the smile. “Poor Grady. I can’t believe that DeeDee Davis did that to him—and she was Miss Congeniality, too!”

“What did DeeDee Davis do to Mr. Alexander?” Bettina asked curiously. She unwound the pink towel from Verna’s head. “I don’t think I heard about that.”

“Why, she stood him up for her old boyfriend, Tookie Turner,” Aunt Hetty said. She was leafing through Verna’s magazine while she waited for Bettina to do her manicure. “Grady showed up all decked out in his black tie to take her to the party and DeeDee’s mother told him that she had eloped with Tookie Tucker just that afternoon.”

“Eloped!” Bessie Bloodworth exclaimed. “With Tookie Tucker?” She rolled her eyes. “She’ll rue the day she said yes to that young man, you all mark my words.”

“Eloped,” Bettina murmured. “Poor Mr. Alexander. Must have spoiled his evening.”

“Spoiled it so much that he decided not to come to the party,” Verna said with an ironic laugh. “Went home and took off his dinner jacket and sulked, was the way I heard it. Doctored himself with a big dose of Mickey LeDoux’s medicine.” Melba Jean, one of the women who worked in Verna’s office, lived next door to the house where Grady lived with his mother, and she and Mrs. Alexander were back-fence buddies.

“A nice piece of humble pie won’t do Grady Alexander one bit of harm,” Aunt Hetty said firmly. “Don’t mean to be hard on him, but that young man thinks he’s God’s gift to women.”

Lizzy wouldn’t have admitted it, but she was glad that Grady hadn’t shown up at the party with Miss Cotton of Monroeville. It would have completely spoiled what was an otherwise very nice get-together, with great food (the ladies from the Darling Diner had come up with an amazing assortment of tasty dishes), and pleasant company. There was even dancing, to the tune of the Kilgores’ Victrola rather than the band Mildred had originally planned to hire. (The cost of the party had begun to worry her, apparently.)

And those five shiners? By Friday afternoon, all five—Mildred’s, Lizzy’s, Verna’s, Miss Dare’s, and Roger’s—were quite spectacular and sure to raise questions. But just before the party, Mildred had come up with a scheme. She cut up a piece of black cloth and made five eye patches, giving them the rakish look of pirates.

She also made five extras and persuaded Myra May, Raylene Riggs, Aunt Hetty, and Ophelia and Jed Snow to wear them. So there were ten people walking around with black eye patches, none of whom would offer a word of explanation (other than the expected “You should see the other guy”). The eye patches were a big mystery, and the other party guests seemed to be amused by it.

Halfway through the evening, Mildred announced the presentation of the beautiful Texas Star (
Hibiscus coccineus
, as Miss Rodgers’ would say), decorated with a big green bow. Lizzy did the honors, Miss Dare gave a polite acceptance speech, and everybody clapped. The next morning, the Texas Star was kind enough to go with a group of the Dahlias to the garden behind their clubhouse, where they planted the
Hibiscus coccineus
and put up a wooden sign, handpainted by Beulah herself, commemorating the grand occasion.

Charlie Dickens came to the ceremony to snap a couple of photographs for the newspaper, but he left as soon as he finished. He seemed silent and unusually out of sorts. He hadn’t come to the party, either. Lizzy privately wondered whether his mood had anything to do with the CLOSED sign on Fannie Champaign’s hat shop and the blinds that were drawn at Fannie’s windows in the flat above the store.