But over the years, she had learned that justice was far more slippery than she had imagined. “The law is full of tricks and bluffs and compromises,” Mr. Moseley said. “It doesn’t always go by the book.”
At first, Lizzy had felt this to be both confusing and dissatisfying. If the law played tricks on people, where was the justice? But after she thought about it—and watched Mr. Moseley confront, compromise, negotiate, and settle—she began to understand. The law might look solid enough, but in reality there were holes in it, like a good Swiss cheese. On the page, the rules seemed black and white, but in practice, they were various shades of gray. It was the very elasticity of justice and the deft skills of its practitioners that made it work. This wasn’t a comforting idea, but it fit the facts.
The coffee was ready now, so Lizzy poured herself a cup and settled down at her desk to type a brief in a civil suit over a client’s broken leg, scheduled for a preliminary hearing the next day. The client was suing Mr. Hokum, the owner of the cotton gin where he worked, because a rotten wooden floor had collapsed under him. She was a good typist and didn’t make many mistakes—thankfully. The brief had to be done in triplicate, so even a little error meant that she had to get out the eraser shield and correct the original and both carbon copies. She had been working at this tedious task for about fifteen minutes when the phone rang.
“Good morning, law office,” Lizzy said. She flexed the fingers of her right hand, glad for the interruption.
“Mr. Moseley, please.” The caller, a man, was obviously not a Southerner.
“He’s not in the office today,” Lizzy said. “Perhaps I can help you?”
“I would be grateful if you could give him a message,” the man said. “My name is Peter Price. I’m an attorney in Los Angeles, California. I represent Mr. Neil Hudson, also of Los Angeles. Mr. Hudson is looking for his daughter, Dorothy, whom he thinks may be living in your town. I hope Mr. Moseley can help.”
Calls often came in from other lawyers, and Mr. Moseley always responded, as a matter of professional courtesy. “I’ll be glad to tell him,” Lizzy said. She picked up a pencil and made a note of the time and Mr. Price’s name in her telephone log.
She added, “This is a small town and I know most of the residents. I don’t remember ever hearing of a Hudson family, though.”
“That’s not the name,” Mr. Price said. “Mr. Hudson says that his daughter, who is four years old now, is living with her aunt.”
“I see,” Lizzy said, making another note. “And the aunt’s name?”
“Violet Sims. Miss Violet Sims.” The lawyer’s voice sounded disapproving. “The lady is unmarried. We understand that she works in a café.”
Violet Sims. Lizzy felt a chill across her shoulders. For a moment, she couldn’t think how to respond. Then she heard herself saying, with remarkable evenness, “Thank you, Mr. Price. Your telephone number?” She wrote it down in the log. “I’ll give Mr. Moseley your message. If he has any information, he’ll be sure to call you.”
“Thank you. I would appreciate that very much,” Mr. Price said. He paused. “I should add that at this point, Mr. Hudson views this as a simple family disagreement. He hopes to resolve it amicably, without pressing criminal charges against his former sister-in-law. But you might tell Mr. Moseley that Dorothy’s aunt took the child without her father’s permission, after the death of her mother. We don’t want to involve the police—unless that becomes necessary, of course.”
“I see,” Lizzy said. That last bit sounded like a threat.
Smoothly, the lawyer went on. “We’re hoping that Mr. Moseley will be willing to go to the aunt and explain the situation. If she will return the child, all will be forgiven and forgotten. Mr. Hudson will be glad to pay for Mr. Moseley’s services and the railroad fare for sending the child to Los Angeles.” He paused, then added, as an afterthought. “If the aunt is reluctant, perhaps Mr. Moseley could sound her out on the amount she would accept.”
“Amount?” Lizzy asked.
“Well, we’re hopeful that Miss Sims will simply yield Dorothy to her father,” the lawyer said. “But she could reasonably request a reimbursement of her expenses for the support of the child for the past four years. We would be willing to go as high as, oh, say, a hundred dollars a year—although a lesser amount would naturally be preferable.”
“Naturally,” Lizzy murmured drily.
“We feel that, depending on her circumstances, she might respond better to that suggestion than to the threat of a kidnapping charge.” The lawyer’s voice took on an edge. “But we will involve the police if we have to.” This time, there was no mistaking the threat.
Lizzy took a deep breath. It was all becoming quite clear—and ugly. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll pass this along to Mr. Moseley.”
“Thank you. Do you know when he’ll be back?”
Lizzy knew that Mr. Moseley had to be in court the next day, but she found herself saying, “Early next week, I believe.”
“Good. If I don’t hear by the middle of next week, I’ll assume he’s not able to help and will get in touch with another attorney in Darling. I have a couple of other names to try.”
Lizzy said goodbye and replaced the receiver on the hook, feeling as though she had just been tossed off the back of an L&N caboose.
Violet Sims was her friend and fellow Dahlia, the co-owner (with Myra May Mosswell) of the Darling Diner and the Telephone Exchange. And while the name—Dorothy—puzzled her, she knew the child Mr. Price was looking for.
She was Darling’s adored little Cupcake.
* * *
*You’ll find the story of Grady’s marriage in two previous books: The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush and The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O’Clock Lady.
CHAPTER SIX
“WHATEVER IT TAKES”
Darling is no different from many small towns in the South. Its major historic event was the War Between the States, which took a generation of Darling boys into the Confederate Army and didn’t give them back. The War also taught Darling women that they could manage the work on the home front better than anybody might have predicted—a lesson that most were quick to forget when their men came home.
The second big thing was the telegraph and the Louisville & Nashville railroad spur, both of which arrived at the same time, for better or worse connecting Darling to the rest of the world. (The L&N also delivered the final, fatal blow to boat traffic on the Alabama River. Trains and railroad tracks were faster, more reliable and cheaper to operate than the old-fashioned paddle-wheelers, which had a tendency to catch fire, blow up, and sink.) The third was the telephone, which came to town around the time Woodrow Wilson was elected president and pretty much dealt a death blow to the telegraph. And after that came the Great War, which took another generation of Darling boys and didn’t give them back, either. War, it seems, is like that.
Like many other towns across the country, Darling has commemorated its war dead by building a granite monument to them on the courthouse lawn. The courthouse, the most important structure in town, is an imposing two-story red brick building with a bell tower and a white-painted dome with a clock that strikes the hour so loudly that it can be heard all over town. In the summer, the courthouse is surrounded by lush green grass and bordered with marigolds, zinnias, nasturtiums, and cosmos—planted, watered, and weeded by the Dahlias—for the enjoyment of all Darlingians.
By autumn, the summer flowers have given way to yellow and orange chrysanthemums, blue asters, and pansies with curious, upturned faces. The courthouse steps are lined by jack-o’-lanterns carved by Darling schoolchildren, and their drawings of Pilgrims, Indians, and turkeys decorate the courthouse windows.
Then, as the year drifts to a close, the jack-o’-lanterns are replaced by pots of bright red artificial poinsettias, and the courthouse lawn sprouts a collection of painted Christmas figures made by Hiram Hill the year McKinley was shot and Teddy Roosevelt moved into the White House. Hiram�
��s life-size plywood figures—six shepherds, three wise men, two angels, eight reindeer, one sleigh, one Santa, and a cadre of elves—are stored in the courthouse basement and set up every year by volunteers from the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
Then, the weekend before Christmas, men from the Loyal Order of Moose put up a tall, beautifully proportioned Christmas tree hung with tiny lights and dozens of painted cardboard stars made by Darling’s first and second graders, with each child’s name on his or her star. The lights are turned on in a festive display, and all the children in town are invited for carols and candy, handed out by Santa Claus himself, played with a jolly flourish of ho-ho-hos by Benton Moseley in a red suit that always smells a bit like camphor.
The courthouse Christmas party is organized by the County Clerk’s office, which means that Verna Tidwell—who is both probate clerk and county treasurer—is in charge. It’s fair to say that Verna loves being in charge of things: when she’s in charge, she can be sure that things are done right.
The County Clerk’s office is upstairs on the second floor of the courthouse. It’s a busy place, because that’s where people pay their property taxes, get their marriage licenses, file birth certificates and adoption papers and death notices, and register liens and property sales. It’s also where votes are tallied. Verna regards election management as one of her most important jobs, especially now that women can vote.
The office is open from eight to twelve and from one to five, which gives Darling folk plenty of time to do their business there. They are waited on by Verna’s assistant, Madge Shoemaker, who answers questions and gives directions, manages the part-time lady who files and sorts the mail, and cleans the canary cage. Madge inherited the canary (named Bing Crosby) from her sister. But Bing sang so loud and so often that Madge’s husband wouldn’t let her keep him at home. So Bing now lives in the office, where he freely and fervently bestows his song on everybody who comes through the door.
Verna and Liz have worked across the street from one another for years and are in the habit of eating their lunches together a couple of times a week. In the summer, they picnic on the lawn. In the winter, they eat indoors, at Verna’s office or Liz’s.
On this particular Thursday, Verna picked up the phone in mid-morning and found Liz on the other end of the line. “Something’s come up, Verna, and I need your advice. How about lunch today?”
From the tone of Liz’s voice, Verna suspected that Liz had something pretty serious on her mind—something personal, probably. She had already confided her rock-and-a-hard-place predicament with Grady Alexander, and Verna had offered her opinion. Grady had had his chance and had blown it. He had no business telling Liz they should reignite their romance. In Verna’s considered opinion, Grady was an opportunist who was taking advantage of Liz’s compassionate heart. She ought to tell him to find somebody else to be a mother to his little boy and get on with her life.
But as it turned out, Liz had an entirely different subject in mind, although she didn’t get to it until they had finished eating. Verna poured mugs of coffee and they opened their lunch bags by the window in her office, where they could look out at the Moose men putting up the last of the plywood reindeer while they ate and chatted about Darling doings.
When they were finished, Liz folded her arms on the table and said, “I got a very strange phone call this morning, Verna. It’s worrying me.”
“A phone call?” Verna rolled her eyes. “From Grady, I suppose. With another proposal. Really, Liz. When are you going to—”
Liz shook her head. “No, it was from an attorney named Price, in Los Angeles. He has a client who is looking for his four-year-old daughter, Dorothy. The client’s wife is dead and the baby was taken from him shortly after her birth by his sister-in-law—his wife’s half-sister. At least, that’s what the lawyer—Mr. Price—says. He thinks the sister-in-law and the little girl are living in Darling, and he wants Mr. Moseley to find her.” She paused. “Mr. Price says he’ll pay for Mr. Moseley’s trouble. He’ll even pay the aunt to give up the child. If she doesn’t, he intends to press criminal charges. Kidnapping, I suppose.”
“Criminal charges?” Verna scowled. “Sounds like a threat. And the payment sounds like a bribe.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Liz said. “He said he’d pay as much as a hundred a year for the four years she’s had the child—unless she’ll take less.”
Verna pursed her lips. “It also sounds sleazy, if you ask me. I don’t think I know of any four-year-old Dorothys in Darling. What’s the aunt’s name?”
“Violet.” Liz knotted her fingers together. “Violet Sims.”
“Violet?” Shocked out of her usual equanimity, Verna stared at her. “Violet? Oh, my God, Liz! Then Dorothy must be—”
“Yes,” Liz said bleakly. “She must be Cupcake. That’s why I wanted to talk to you, Verna. I don’t know what to do.”
Verna sipped her coffee, thinking. “I’m trying to remember the details, but I don’t think I ever knew what happened, exactly. All I can recall is that Violet was out of town for a while, then appeared one day with the child. Cupcake was just a baby at the time, wasn’t she?”
“I remember the day she came back,” Liz said. “It was in September, about four years ago. Bessie Bloodworth and I were visiting the cemetery. Our car quit on us, so we started to walk back home. Just then Violet came along, in Mr. Clinton’s taxi. She had gotten off the train in Monroeville, but there wasn’t a train to Darling until late that evening, so she paid Mr. Clinton to take her home. When she saw us walking, she asked him to stop and pick us up.”
“And the baby?”
“Violet was holding her. She was just a tiny thing, no more than a few weeks old, all wrapped up in a pink flannel blanket with nothing showing but her face and a little curled-up fist. I remember Violet telling us that her sister—the baby’s mother—had died in Memphis. I think she said that the baby’s father couldn’t keep her, or didn’t want her, something like that. He was going to send the child to an orphanage. Violet was the only family the little girl had, so she decided to raise her.”
Verna pushed her lips in and out, thinking. “Did she have any papers to prove that she had a right to the child?” Violet was a sweet, compassionate person. Anybody who knew her would understand that whatever she did, she did with the best of intentions. But if you were the little girl’s father and you wanted her back, it might not be too hard to convince people that she had kidnapped that baby.
“If she did, I didn’t see them,” Liz said. She pulled in a ragged breath and blew it out again, looking distressed. “Mr. Price said they would prefer to treat it as a simple family disagreement. But he made it clear that they’d go to the police if they don’t get Dorothy back right away.”
Verna turned her coffee mug in her fingers. After a moment, she said, “When you talked to Violet in the taxi, did she seem at all frightened?” Maybe her brother-in-law had threatened her, or the baby. If that’s what had happened—if she had taken the baby because she was afraid the father couldn’t take care of her, or might even harm her—it could change the whole situation. “Did she look as if she’d been slapped around? Violet, I mean. Or like she was running away from something?”
“Not that I remember,” Liz said slowly. “To me, she just seemed happy to be getting home. The only thing that was worrying her was Myra May.” She smiled a little. “She was afraid that Myra May might not want the baby. If that happened, she wasn’t sure where she would go.”
“Wouldn’t want the baby?” Verna gave a wry chuckle. “That child has Myra May wrapped around her finger. And her grandmother Raylene, too. Their lives seem to center completely around Cupcake. If they lose her, they will be devastated.”
And Cupcake would be, too. Violet and Myra May and Raylene were her family. They were her whole world, from the very beginning of her life. Darling was the only home she had ever known. Everyone in town was her friend.
Liz gave Verna
a direct look. “I told the lawyer I would give his message to Mr. Moseley. But now I’m thinking that’s not a good idea, at least until we know a little more about this situation. It also occurred to me that we might have nothing to worry about. You have all the county adoption records here, don’t you? Perhaps Violet and Myra May have already—”
But Verna had understood where this was going. She pushed back her chair and got up from the table. A few quick steps took her to a tall wooden filing cabinet in a corner of the office, where she pulled out the third drawer. In it were a dozen manila folders, alphabetically arranged—not many, because adoptions in Cypress County were usually informal agreements among friends or family members. Going to court cost money, and if they didn’t expect a challenge, people didn’t bother. She was sure she would have remembered Violet’s application, but she ran her fingers across the tabs anyway, checking the labels.
“No, sorry,” she said, straightening up. “Violet has never filed for adoption here.” She went to her desk and got her cigarette case. “And even if she had, it might not matter. In the cases I’ve seen, the judge asks for a signed release from one or both of the parents, if they’re still living. It sounds as if Cupcake’s father never gave her that.” She took out a cigarette. “But we don’t know what really happened, do we? All we know is what that lawyer said his client told him. And lawyers are as likely to lie as the next person, when they think it’s to their advantage.”
“What do you think I should do?” Liz asked worriedly. “If I tell Mr. Moseley, I’m afraid he might . . .” She bit her lip.
Verna flicked her lighter to her cigarette. She knew what Liz had been going to say. As a member of the Alabama bar, Mr. Moseley had an obligation to the law. In this case, the law could be on the father’s side. They needed to know more about the situation before they involved Liz’s boss.
The Darling Dahlias and the Poinsettia Puzzle Page 5