The Operator

by Gretchen Berg

  When she went downstairs for dinner she noticed that the sour cream cookies were cooling on the countertop. Charlotte wondered if the “calming” had worked this time.

  Sour Cream Cookies:

  1 Cup Shortening (I use part butter)

  2 Cups gran. Sugar

  2 eggs, Large. (or more)

  5 Cups Flour

  1/2 Teas. Salt

  2 Teas. Baking Powder

  1 Cup Commercial Sour Cream

  1 Teas. Vanilla.

  Beat Shortening, Sugar and Eggs together ubtil smooth. Mix Sift Flour, Salt and Baking Powder together and bland into creamed mixture alternately with Sour Cream and add Vanilla. Mixing with you hands is much more thorough, at this point—then separate into one bunch at a time and roll to one eigth inch thickness. Cut out and bake at 350 degrees about 15 minutes. I always double the recipe which makes an awfully lot of cookies. But, I have mixed it up and frozen part of the dough for later baking.

  Chapter 35

  Dr. Charlton’s calming technique only worked when Betty remembered to use it. And just how was she supposed to do that when she had so many events to organize? The good citizens of Wooster hadn’t quite grasped their roles in this scandal and, once again, Betty Miller was having to pick up the slack. The Valentine’s Day celebration was the second event she’d had to orchestrate in the interest of putting Vivian Dalton in her place. Like everything else she did, Betty deemed it absolutely imperative. Of course Vivian wouldn’t be able to go to the event, it was being held at the country club. It was just a romantic peripheral reminder to Vivian (because of course she would hear word of the country club event, celebrating couples and romance) that her marriage was a sham. Betty had always had to go above and beyond a societal leader’s usual call of duty to keep things in line and as they should be, but that was what made her Betty Miller.

  For instance, last spring she’d had to take several weeks out of her extremely busy schedule in order to teach Dolly how to drive the Coupe, so that Dolly could take the car to the filling station when it needed gasoline. And really, if you thought about it, she had done Dolly a great service by teaching her to drive. There were people who might disapprove of Negroes being allowed to drive at all, but Betty thought that was preposterous. Being in service meant being able to do a wide range of errands, and occasionally that necessitated driving the car.

  She didn’t know what she’d do without their dear Dolly. She cleaned their house, mended their clothing, cooked their food. Why, Dolly even offered helpful suggestions for Betty’s events every once in a while. Which reminded her, she would need to remind Dolly to pick up the flowers for the Valentine’s Day gala.

  “Betty, you seem a little preoccupied with this,” Clara Weaver ventured uneasily. She had participated in the gossip about Edward Dalton’s astounding bigamy as much as the other women, but the personal assault Betty appeared determined to wage on Vivian was excessive. Vivian wasn’t even part of their social circle, and Betty spent just as much time harping on that; how she was “just so common and low-class.” It was a touch hypocritical for someone with more than a few fairly unsavory cousins herself. Clara remained still, but was shaking her head on the inside. You never knew who Betty’s next target might be.

  Clara thought she saw the briefest shadow pass over Betty’s face. A rare flash of doubt on the face of the always-certain, self-assured Betty Miller. Perhaps she realized she was going too far, and she just needed a friend to help lead her out of the bizarre vindictive trance. To Clara’s surprise, Betty appeared to be reaching out for her hand when a traffic horn blared outside the shop, startling both women. Betty scowled in the direction of the noise, then turned back to Clara with renewed irritation. “You didn’t see her at church on Christ-mas Eve, although I al-ready de-scribed her be-havior to you,” Betty countered. “And, I spoke with David at the post office. He men-tioned that he ran in-to her at the open house at the high school, and she was aw-fully friend-ly to him.” Betty made sure to arch her eyebrows on the word “awfully.” “Don’t you understand what a scorned woman is capable of?”

  Clara didn’t know about scorned women, but she knew what Betty was capable of. She could tell what Betty was trying to do, but she was going about it all wrong. Not only did Clara doubt her husband, David, had been at the post office with Betty (Clara was the one in charge of mailing letters and buying stamps), she doubted Betty would have even noticed him at the open house, with all the glad-handing she knew Betty did with the teachers and Principal Scott.

  Betty needs to brush up on her manipulation tactics, Clara thought archly. If her father wasn’t the mayor of Wooster, she wouldn’t get away with her behavior nearly as much.

  The level of suspicion regarding the husbands of Wooster had remained high for the country club set following the news of Edward Dalton. The seeds had been planted in the minds of the wives, just like they were planted in the soil every spring at the Trowel and Trellis Garden Club. Some were certain they’d rather not know, but others couldn’t help themselves, and between the fear of unfaithful husbands and the fear of being publicly humiliated by a tawdry scandal splashed across the front page of The Daily Record, the women found themselves sneaking around corners and listening at closed doors. This new wave of upscale spousal paranoia meant sleepless nights for the wives, a dramatic increase in “checking in” telephone calls for the husbands, and more of his least favorite type of work for Wooster’s top private investigator.

  Chapter 36

  If he were a kitchen utensil, he’d be a carving knife. If he were a hand tool, he’d be a mortising chisel. Or maybe the straight edge Elmer used for the cleanest, closest shave at Bowman Street Barber Shop. No matter what sort of inanimate object you used for comparison, Don was one of the sharpest PIs in Ohio, if not the entire mid-Atlantic region of the United States.

  There were people in Wayne County who might have argued that if Don McAfee was such a great private investigator, then why hadn’t he been able to locate Gilbert Ogden and Flora Parker? A couple of mild-mannered bank workers, and he couldn’t find them? Don had heard more than his share on what people considered to be his great failure as an investigator. “Never found those embezzlers, did ya, eh, Don?”

  Don took the occasional abuse about his professional “failures” in stride, tipping his hat to the few who dared confront him to his face, usually just people who were still sore about their money being stolen from the Wayne Building & Loan. Some of those same people wondered why the Building & Loan hadn’t had insurance, but given what Don McAfee knew about David Weaver’s insurance company, he wasn’t at all surprised.

  Anyone who had hired Don knew how good he was. They considered the Ogden Parker case to be one of the great unsolvables. Like Amelia Earhart or the Black Dahlia killer. And if Don McAfee hadn’t found Gilbert and Flora, then they probably couldn’t be found. Don had located ex-cons, runaways; he’d exposed philandering husbands and wives; he’d even found the rightful heir to a railroad magnate’s fortune, after combing through adoption records up in Cleveland. The discoveries were almost reward enough, and he would offer a sliding scale for his fees, depending on the client. Vivian Dalton had been a rough case, though, and she was on his mind tonight in particular. He always thought about all his maritally distressed clients when Valentine’s Day rolled around.

  He remembered Vivian’s expression when he had shown her the marriage record from 1923, and explained that he had not been able to find any evidence that the Edward/Mildred marriage had been annulled, nor evidence of a divorce. He had also told her that Mildred was still living. It had been a lot for a person to hear all at once.

  The husband-and-wife cases made up the bulk of his workload, but they were also the toughest for him. It was the criminal cases that kept him chomping at the bit, salivating for justice. And, just so you know, he could have found Gilbert Ogden and Flora Parker if he’d really wanted to. In fact, when business was slow, he did a little bit of snooping, just to satis
fy his own curiosity, to see if his instincts were correct. And they were. Give old Don a couple of days, a week at the most, and he could’ve had them both back in Wooster, in handcuffs, standing in front of the judge down at City Hall. But he was infinitely loyal to his clients, and did exactly as they asked. The thing was, he was being paid not to find them.

  Don sucked thoughtfully on a peppermint candy, looked at the date on the flip calendar on his cluttered desk. Friday the thirteenth, the day before Valentine’s Day. He shook his head.

  Chapter 37

  The day before Valentine’s Day was the day Gilbert decided to leave, so it was not in the least bit romantic for Flora Parker. Frantic was more like it. She rushed at the suitcase and started grabbing the folded shirts and pants and throwing them on the bed.

  “You can’t do this!” she begged.

  Gilbert returned from the bathroom holding his shaving kit and stood in the doorway. He shook his head at the scene before him.

  “Flora, please stop.”

  But she had upended the entire suitcase onto the pile of clothes and slammed both palms down onto the hard shell.

  “You can’t do this,” she repeated, this time in a small voice, which threatened to crack.

  Gilbert crossed the room to the bed and stood next to Flora, righting the suitcase and placing his shaving kit in the bottom. He rubbed his forehead.

  “I have to go. She’s sick. She doesn’t have anyone else.”

  Flora turned around and then slid down until her backside hit the floor and she was leaning against the bed, her hands covering her face.

  “If you’re caught, you’ll get the electric chair.”

  “I’m not going to get caught. I told you, I will be careful.”

  “Gil, that was a lot of money to steal. People don’t forget about that much money.”

  Footsteps echoed on the stairs.

  “Bill.” Flora moved her hands away to reveal a tear-stained face. “Tell him not to go.”

  Bill hated to see his wife like this. Desperate and high-strung. It was completely out of character for her, but she had always been that way about her brother.

  Since their mother’s mind had begun to go, and she’d started to lash out at Flora for having married a white man, Gilbert had assumed all the communication with her. Gilbert was the only real family either Flora or their mother had left.

  “Honey, if it was my mother,” Bill said, stroking the top of her head, “I’d do the same. I can’t stop him.”

  Well, she should have considered who she was asking for support, Flora thought with a mixture of exasperation and affection. Bill Parker had always been a mama’s boy. It wasn’t the worst quality in a husband, having an appreciation for his mother, but it wasn’t her favorite thing about him. He had his strengths, though.

  Bill’s capacity for drama surpassed her own. If Madame Ososki could have seen them, she would have been surprised that the two naïve rubes from “Nebraska” had learned something from her. That they had paid attention in class, and worked hard to instill her lessons into the deepest depths of their very beings. And then she would have been proud, although she would have insisted that Bill “use your words!” to convey his rage. She would have been wrong. He had done beautifully without them.

  Could there have been a better training ground for them than New York City theater? Although they’d both moved to Wooster half certain they’d never act again, the small town eventually became their stage, where both finally had the opportunity to give performances of a lifetime. Flora as a mild-mannered, double-crossing bank secretary. And Bill as a scorned and outraged cuckold of a husband.

  Flora would have disagreed with Vivian Dalton’s assertion that everyone knew everyone else’s business in a small town. She and Bill had kept to themselves, for the most part, and no one had any idea what they had been up to. Sure, the neighbors could get curious about where they were going, or what they were doing for the holidays, or she might have caught some nosy housewife inspecting her shopping cart at Buehler’s, passing judgment on her groceries, but overall the Parkers had been able to live a nice, quiet, and private life there in Wooster, Ohio.

  As they had done in New York, they rehearsed together in the evenings, after coming home from work. Bill had obsessed over his performance, spending hours asking himself, What is my motivation? and trying to come up with the perfect props to guarantee believability. Should he take the hat? Or would he have been too insane with anger and jealousy to remember the hat? Same question with the coat, although it was June. Maybe he should take a coat, just to prove how out of his mind he was. His winter coat would have hinted at serious derangement. A winter coat, in June? Why, that Bill Parker must be positively out of his mind, and who could blame him? Wife robbing a bank and running off with another man.

  He had hemmed and hawed over the ideal time of day to stage his dramatic exit from their cozy little house. He didn’t want to do it in the middle of the night, when no one would be watching; likewise, the middle of the day, when his neighbors would have been at work or running errands. Except, Flora had reminded him, she and Gilbert would be leaving on a Friday, and if everything went perfectly, no one would realize what they’d done until the following Monday. They’d had to concoct a story as to why Flora wouldn’t have come home from work that Friday. Bill had told their neighbors that Flora had told him she was going out of town to visit her mother. “Glad to be staying here, if you know what I mean,” he had said, chuckling, to Sam Goosson next door. Sam had guffawed and clapped Bill on the back. “I know what you mean!” Mothers-in-law and whatnot.

  Bill had decided to commence his performance right around the time Sam Goosson came home from work that Monday. Some assistance he and Flora hadn’t counted on, which worked in their favor, was that Boyd Hunsicker telephoned the Parker house from the bank that Monday to ask where in the hell Flora was, and also to ask him what he knew about the robbery, but Bill had been at work all day.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Hunsicker, but there’s no answer,” Vivian Dalton had said into her mouthpiece at the switchboard. “Would you like to try again later?”

  The Parkers’ telephone had been ringing when he got home, and Bill had watched the street in front of the house for Sam’s car before he answered it. It was June, and hot, so the windows were open. He made sure Sam heard the phone ringing, and then the curtain went up on Bill’s performance.

  The shotgun had been a touch of genius. And he had recalled Jacob Starlin’s volcanic rage, when Bill had borrowed his wheelbarrow out of his backyard without asking permission first. It was a piece of junk, that wheelbarrow. Rusted all around, with a hole clean through in the corner. Bill had felt so bad about Jacob’s rage that instead of returning the rusty, battered wheelbarrow, Bill bought him a new one from Oliver’s Farm Supply. But Bill never forgot Jacob’s hot-red face, and the veins bulging in his neck as he screamed bloody murder in the backyard just opposite the Parkers’. Jacob had taken to the streets of Wooster, shouting at anyone who could hear him, about the “thievin’, stealin’ delinquents, got nothin’ better to do than steal my personal property.” Bill channeled that rage for his performance.

  Since Jacob lived behind Bill Parker, he hadn’t seen Bill’s dramatic exit after the news broke about the bank robbery, but he had heard about it later. The neighbors on either side of the Parkers had said it was a wonder he hadn’t driven the Studebaker right through the back of the garage, Bill was so steamed when he got into the car. “Carryin’ his hat in one hand, his shotgun in the other,” they all said.

  They had also wondered later, when Bill hadn’t returned after what seemed like an awful long time to be gone looking for your cheating wife. The burnt tire marks were a constant reminder of the wild episode, but Bill Parker never returned to his house. Some suspected he’d been so crazy with rage he must have driven himself right off a cliff to his death. Others thought he was probably okay, but just too darned ashamed to return to town.

  “Ma
ybe he found himself another girl,” Roy Patterson said. “One who wouldn’t screw around on him and run out of town with a skinny, four-eyed weasel and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  But not one person in all of Wooster thought that Bill had been in on the robbery, and had created a big to-do, just for show, before driving straight up to Canada to be with his wife and her sibling accomplice and all that money. Not even Vivian Dalton. Vivian hadn’t thought that Flora Parker would’ve ever left her husband in the first place, so she would have at least been half right.

  And after Vivian’s trip up to Syracuse, she had the full story.

  Chapter 38

  Vivian had the full story, all right, but what she didn’t have was her driver’s license. And knowing who did have her driver’s license caused a heavy pit of dread to settle in Vivian’s stomach. There it was, sitting right next to the pile of festering anger that had Edward’s name on it. If she made it through to summer without having an exploding ulcer, it would be a miracle.

  If she hadn’t had the dentist extract every one of her teeth, for purely cosmetic reasons, she was sure they’d be falling out by now. That had always been Vivian’s solution: if something was giving her trouble, have it yanked out. Her teeth, her uterus, gray hairs on her head, chin stubble, and lately the cords at Bell’s switchboard whenever Betty Miller was trying to place a call. But Vivian couldn’t just have Edward yanked out of her life.

  The idea of leaving him. Whooo, mercy, that was a doozy. Where would she even begin? Rent a room over the Laundromat and prostitute herself, like Daisy Stucker whose husband, Joe, had died in a horrible farming accident, leaving her with thousands of dollars in debt that she hadn’t known about? Vivian wouldn’t have to go that far, she did have her job at Bell. But if she kicked Edward out she’d be alone. Did she want everyone in town pitying her for having to live alone? Because that’s what you were doing if there was no man in the house. Even if you had six kids to take care of. You were living alone. She couldn’t decide which would be worse: having people talk about her because she was alone, or having them talk about her because she’d turned to prostitution so she could eat.