The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star (7 page)

“Sure, it matters,” Charlie said, leaning back in his chair. “Take this sabotage business, for instance. Lily didn’t tell me what was behind it. In fact, she was deliberately secretive. But I got the impression that Rex Hart is somehow involved.”

“Rex Hart? But he’s her partner, isn’t he?”

Charlie nodded. “They got together fairly recently, I understand. But that’s just an impression, so don’t quote me. Anyway, there have been several threats—or sabotage attempts, or something.”

“What kind of threats?”

“She didn’t say.” Charlie’s voice dropped. “Of course, Lily would never admit to being afraid of anything or anybody. The Texas Star likes to pretend that danger is her middle name. But I know her well enough to know that she’s scared.” His voice dropped even lower. “I can’t tell you what she’s afraid of, but she’s
scared.
”

Lizzy paused, considering. “Of course, there’s danger and there’s
danger
,”
she said thoughtfully.
“Miss Dare is probably a lot more comfortable with the danger she’s trained herself to handle. Danger in the air is something she knows how to deal with. Danger on the ground is something else altogether.”

“That’s it exactly, Liz,” Charlie said. “You’ve put your finger on it. And whether she thinks she’s the one who’s in danger or whether it’s somebody else, I don’t know.” He leaned forward. “But I do know this, Liz. We have to be on the lookout for trouble while she’s here. And I think you can help.”

“Me? But I don’t—”

Charlie interrupted her. “Look. I intend to hang around the airstrip as much as I can and keep an eye on her plane, make sure there’s no repetition of that sabotage. I understand that Lily and that aerialist—Angel Flame, she calls herself—are staying with the Kilgores while they’re here in Darling. And you and Mildred Kilgore are friends.” He gave her a raised-eyebrow look. “True?”

Lizzy nodded slowly. Yes, they were friends, although she and Mildred didn’t see much of each other outside the Dahlias’ meetings these days. The Kilgores lived practically next door to the golf course. They belonged to what Lizzy thought of as Darling’s “high society.”

Charlie was going on. “So I thought maybe you could keep an eye on things at the Kilgore place. While Miss Dare is staying there, I mean.”

Keep an eye on things?
“I don’t know how I can do that, Charlie.” Lizzy paused, wondering if she should tell him about the awkward corner she had backed herself into—about her date for the party—and then decided against it. “I’m a guest at the party Friday night. The only reason I’m there is to present the plant—the Texas Star—that the Dahlias are giving to Miss Dare. Most of the time, I’m not invited to country club parties.”

Charlie was silent for a moment. Then he sighed. “I see. Well, there’s probably nothing you can do, then.” He looked embarrassed. “Oh, hell,” he muttered. “I guess I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth. Sorry I bothered you with this, Liz.”

Lizzy reached out and put her hand on his arm. “Oh, don’t be sorry!” she exclaimed. “I’m glad you told me. Maybe I can think of some way to help.” She hesitated. “Would it be okay if I shared some of what you’ve told me with Mildred? I wouldn’t say anything about your knowing Miss Dare, of course. But I can at least alert her to the possibility of trouble. And if I talk to her, maybe I can figure out how to be of more help.”

Charlie pulled his brows together. “Well, I don’t know—”

“And in a way,” Lizzy broke in, “now that I know there might be a problem, I feel sort of obligated to tell Mildred.” She was being truthful. “I mean, it really doesn’t seem right to let her go into this situation blind, so to speak. After all, it’s her
house.”
And her husband,
she thought, but didn’t say.

Charlie considered that for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds right, Liz. Go ahead and talk to Mildred Kilgore, although I’d appreciate it if you kept me out of it as much as possible. I’ll have a little talk with Lily when she flies in.
If
she flies in,” he amended. “If they can’t get that airplane in the air, the show’s likely to be canceled. And you can forget everything you heard just now. In fact, I wish you would.”

“Oh, I hope not,” Lizzy exclaimed. “That it’s canceled, I mean. Everybody would be so disappointed.”

Charlie shook his head. “I don’t know, Liz,” he said ominously. “I have the feeling it might be better if it were.”

The door opened and Lizzy and Charlie looked up. It was Ophelia, carrying two pieces of pie and two cups of coffee.

“Gee, Liz,” she said, as she came around the corner. “If I’d known you were still here, I would have brought pie and coffee for you, too.”

“On my way upstairs,” Lizzy said, and got up. “Thanks, Charlie,” she said, and put her hand on his shoulder. “I’ll let you know what happens.”

“Yeah,” Charlie replied. “Good luck.” To Ophelia, he said, “What kind of pie did you bring me? Chocolate, I hope.”

“Raisin was all they had,” Ophelia replied apologetically.

“Dang,” Charlie muttered. “I miss Euphoria already.”

Lizzy climbed the outside stairs to the Moseley law office and let herself in. Mr. Moseley had gone to Montgomery on business and wasn’t expected back until the following week, so the office was empty and all hers, which suited Lizzy just fine, because she wanted time to think.

From one angle, her talk with Charlie Dickens had been a real eye-opener. She’d had no idea about Charlie’s relationships with women in the past, and this glimpse into his life revealed a web of intriguing mysteries. It was, she thought, like opening a friend’s photograph album somewhere in the middle and trying to connect the random snapshots on the page to the real person sitting in front of you.

From another angle, the talk had been troubling, and she sat down at her desk to mull over what she ought to do. She really should speak to Mildred Kilgore—but should she be direct or beat around the bush? Should she telephone, or would it be better to have a face-to-face talk? And what, if anything, should she say to poor Fannie Champaign to prepare her for what might be a great shock, if Lily Dare reignited Charlie Dickens’ old torch? It wasn’t in Lizzy’s nature to meddle in other people’s business, and some of Mr. Moseley’s cases had shown her the unfortunate outcomes to which meddling could lead. So these were serious questions.

Lizzy took a deep breath and looked around the office. The dusty old rooms had their own special character, with their creaky wooden floors and wood-paneled walls hung with certificates and diplomas and the gilt-framed oil portraits of the three senior Mr. Moseleys—Mr. Benton Moseley’s great grandfather, his grandfather, and his father, all now deceased. The junior Mr. Moseley refused to sit for his portrait. “All traditions have to come to an end sometime,” he said. “And I am putting a stake through the heart of this one right now. Anybody wants to know what I look like, they can by God take a gander at my
face,
not at my portrait.”

But still, Lizzy loved the paintings, as much as she loved the sepia prints of maps of Cypress County and the old framed documents and the floor-to-ceiling shelves of law books and the fact that the office door was always open during working hours. When she first came to work here, it had seemed to her that the books and the documents and the dignified wood-paneled walls and—yes, even the open door—symbolized justice itself: stable and established and reliable and trustworthy and readily available to anybody who needed it. And if she needed another reminder of justice, there was the Cypress County courthouse right across the street, a beautiful redbrick building, foursquare and sturdy and solid, with white trim and a white-painted dome with a clock and a bell that rang out the hours with such regularity that you could set your mantel clock by it and so loud and clear that everybody in town could hear it, even when the doors and windows were shut.

In the past few years, though, Lizzy had begun to feel that her ideal of justice and the law might be a bit naïve and unsophisticated, for the more she saw of the law, the more elusive
justice
seemed. There were too many cases where the rich got all the “justice” they wanted and the poor got none at all, even though Mr. Moseley did the very best he could to get a fair hearing under the law for every one of his clients, rich and poor. And then there were the colored folks over in Maysville, who were most in danger of getting the short end of the stick, as Mr. Moseley put it when he was frustrated with a case. What kind of justice did they get?

In fact, justice was beginning to seem to Lizzy a lot like that shiny brass balance scale that sat on the shelf behind Mr. Moseley’s big walnut desk. It had two small metal pans that were supposed to balance against one another, both of them equal. But there was something wrong with the scale’s mechanism, so that no matter how carefully it was adjusted, one side always hung lower than the other. Lizzy didn’t like to think of it, but that was the way justice seemed to operate these days. It tipped in the direction of the people who had money and influence and power, and the rest . . . well, they came up short.

But Lizzy wasn’t thinking about justice today. She was thinking about what Charlie Dickens had told her about Lily Dare, the sabotaged airplane, and the possibility that the air show might be canceled. Of course, the Watermelon Festival would go on, with or without Miss Dare and her Dare Devils. There would be plenty of fun for everybody, especially for the young folks, who would enjoy the carnival rides and cotton candy and free watermelons.

But the air show—well, that was something people were looking forward to. It was the brightest spot in an otherwise pretty dismal summer, what with Ozzie Sherman cutting back on the hours his men worked at the Pine Creek sawmill, and the Coca-Cola bottling plant laying off one full shift, and Cypress County reducing the size of the road repair crews. If Dad was out of work and the family couldn’t afford the buck it cost to watch the air show from the field, they could pay fifteen cents apiece for tickets to the Watermelon Festival and watch the show from the fairgrounds. They wouldn’t get to see the clown or the magic show or the head-on car crash, but they could see the airplanes and the wingwalker. If that was canceled, there’d be dozens of disappointed dads, moms, and kids.

Lizzy thought for a moment more, then reached for the telephone. What she had to tell Mildred was important, and she could say it without mentioning anything about Lily Dare and Roger Kilgore. She would call and be sure that Mildred would be home this evening, then ride her bike out there after work and have a little talk with her friend.

• • •

During her lunch hour on Wednesdays, Lizzy usually treated herself to a shampoo and set at the Beauty Bower over on Dauphin Street, just a couple of blocks from the office. The Bower was owned and operated by fellow Dahlia Beulah Trivette and located in the enclosed back porch of her house, where her devoted husband Hank had installed two shampoo sinks, two barber chairs, and two big wall mirrors in front of the chairs. Hank also put in an electric hot water heater, which meant that Beulah and her helper, Bettina Higgens, wouldn’t have to pour hot water for shampoos out of teakettles and pitchers, with the potential for somebody to get scalded.

In addition to the hot water heater, Hank had recently installed another innovation for his wife: a new electric permanent wave machine. Well, it wasn’t new, it was used, but the condition was “like new” and the price was right. Aunt Hetty Little had sniffed at the contraption and said it looked like a “flock of black caterpillars dangling from a buzzard’s nest.” But as far as Beulah was concerned, it turned the trick. With that magic machine, she could make any woman beautiful.

Beulah loved everything that was beautiful but especially adored big, floppy pink cabbage roses and had wallpapered the Bower’s walls with them. In fact, pink was her very favorite color, so she painted the floor a beautiful shade of pink and spattered yellow, gray, and blue paint all over it, much to the amazement of her older customers, who had never seen so unusual a thing as a deliberately paint-spattered floor, let alone one that started out pink. (“A
pink
floor,” Mrs. George E. Pickett Johnson had sniffed. “I don’t know what this world is coming to.”) After the floor was spattered, the walls were covered with roses, and the furnishings installed, Beulah hung her beautiful gilt-framed degree from the Montgomery College of Cosmetology on the wall where everyone could see it and declared that the Beauty Bower was open for business.

Beulah had chosen to practice the art of making women beautiful, in part because she herself had been gifted with physical beauty and wanted to share it. Her blond hair was loosely curled and artistically lightened and she had a glorious complexion and a generous mouth with dimples that deepened when she smiled. She also had an enviable figure. (That is, the Darling women envied her figure, while the Darling men envied her husband.)

And as an artist, Beulah was truly gifted, especially where hair was concerned. She kept informed about the latest hair styles by studying photographs of starlets in the Hollywood magazines. She worked astonishing miracles with the curling iron, even on the most uncooperative hair. And while coloring hair was considered daring, Beulah dared to do it, offering any shade that any client (she never called her customers “customers”) might desire, from the palest peroxide platinum of Jean Harlow to Myrna Loy’s gorgeous russet-red. These talents had earned her a special spot in the hearts of Darling ladies, and especially in the hearts of her sister Dahlias, who were as eager for beauty as anybody else.

Indeed, as Lizzy walked in just after noon that Wednesday for her regular appointment, she saw that two other Dahlias were there before her. Aunt Hetty Little was just leaving, her old black handbag over her arm, her snowy white hair faintly blued and beautifully waved. And Fannie Champaign had her head in the shampoo sink, where Bettina was giving her a vigorous shampoo and scalp massage.

“I’m glad I ran into you, Liz,” Aunt Hetty said. “I stopped over at the Dahlias’ vegetable garden this morning to see how it’s coming along. We’re going to have more snap beans and sweet corn than you can shake a stick at. Did you remember to ask Myra May to call the Dahlias and remind them about the pickin’ party on Friday afternoon?”

“I sure did,” Lizzy said, and added fervently, “I hope we’ll have plenty of help getting everything to our booth.” With all the other problems involved with the festival, she didn’t need another worry.

“We’ve got more watermelons than we banked on, too,” Aunt Hetty added. “Obadiah Carlson said he’s bringin’ a wagonload. Says he can’t sell ’em so he might as well give ’em away. And he might have more by Sat’iddy afternoon.”

“A wagonload!” Lizzy’s eyes widened. “That’s a
lot
of watermelons, on top of what’s already promised.”

“My sentiments exactly.” Aunt Hetty paused, frowning. “It’s got me wonderin’ if there’s such a thing as too many watermelons.”

“Never!” Beulah declared, bustling into the beauty parlor from her kitchen with a fresh pitcher of lemonade. She liked her clients to think of coming to the Bower as though they were coming to a party (which most of them did), and always served cookies or cupcakes with drinks. “We can never have too many watermelons at the Watermelon Festival—and if we do, why, we’ll just give ’em to people to take home. Folks’ll love us for it.” She gave them a dazzling smile.

“Beulah, dear,” Aunt Hetty said, “you are always so danged
cheerful.
Makes my teeth hurt just to see you smile.” She glanced at Lizzy. “I dug up that Texas Star and put it into a pretty pot so you can give it to Miss Dare at the party Friday night.”

“Thanks for taking care of that,” Lizzy said gratefully. Aunt Hetty might be twice as old as the rest of them, but she could always be counted on to do what she promised. And she could outlast them all in the garden.

“I’ll be ready to shampoo you in a few minutes, Liz,” Beulah said, waving good-bye to Aunt Hetty. She put the lemonade on a small table, beside a plate of cookies. “You just take a seat while I go check on Spoonie.” Spoonie was Beulah’s little girl. “She’s out back playing with her chicken.”

Lizzy sat down in a chair beside the shampoo sinks, where Bettina was applying a conditioner to Fannie’s hair and scalp. Commercial hair conditioners had gotten so pricey, Beulah said, that she’d started mixing up her own, from eggs (produced by her backyard chickens), Johnson’s Baby Oil (lightly scented, just twelve cents a bottle at Lima’s Drugstore), and warm water. If you wanted this extra-special conditioning, Beulah added a nickel to the price of the shampoo.

Fannie was already wearing Beulah’s homemade facial mask, whipped up from grated cucumbers (peeled, of course), mixed with buttermilk and a spoonful of cream from the top of the milk bottle. It was only a nickel, too—and even better, Beulah’s clients said, than Frances Denney’s facial cream, which cost almost six dollars for a teensy tiny jar. Beulah herself said she was thinking of going into business with her own cosmetic line, which she could sell right there at the Beauty Bower.

“There now, Miz Fannie,” Bettina said, rinsing her hands. “You just lie in that chair and relax and think beautiful thoughts, and then I’ll rinse you off.”

Bettina herself was no beauty. When she came to work for Beulah, she wasn’t even pretty. Her dark brown hair was thin and limp, she was as skinny as a flagpole, and flat as a board. She hadn’t been to beauty school, either. But Beulah (who always saw the beauty in everybody) spotted Bettina’s hidden talent with a comb and scissors and gave her a chance to put it to work. Under Beulah’s generous guidance (and with a few beauty tips here and there), Bettina was blossoming. She even had a beau, Lizzy had heard—Alice Ann Walker’s brother Lester.

Lizzy glanced at Fannie, her head still in the sink. “Getting all prettied up for the Kilgores’ party Friday night?” she asked. “From everything I hear, it’s going to be quite an occasion.”

Lizzy had always admired Fannie’s lovely complexion and light brown hair, which was short and softly curled. It was an attractive complement to the hats Fannie wore as an advertisement for Champaign’s Darling Chapeaux, the only milliner’s shop in Darling. If you admired the hat she was wearing, she would encourage you to try it on, to see if it looked good on you. If you liked it, she’d sell it to you right off her head, with a ten or fifteen percent discount because it was “gently worn.” And since every one of Fannie’s hats was an original, you didn’t have to be afraid that you’d end up in church on Sunday morning, sitting right next to (or right behind) the very same identical hat.