The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

by Susan Wittig Albert

  And when she went into the diner just after eleven that Monday morning and saw the situation-five customers seated at the counter, three more at tables, the switchboard buzzing, and Myra May looking gaunt and frazzled-Verna resolved, right then and there, that she would give up her dinner hour every day until Violet came home, in order to give Myra May a break. What’s more, she would talk to the Dahlias and see if she couldn’t recruit a few people to help Myra May behind the counter. It wasn’t right, her working this hard when others could lend a hand.

  The switchboard in the Darling Exchange hadn’t changed a bit since Mrs. Hooper had taught Verna to manage it some years before, and she rather enjoyed getting reacquainted with the plugs and cords and switches. The board worked according to a simple system, and all you had to do was keep your mind on what you were doing.

  The operator (in this case, Verna) sat in front of a vertical board that displayed rows and rows of empty sockets, one socket for every telephone in town, and a horizontal panel with a dozen pairs of cords with phone jacks on the ends. Say that Ophelia Snow was at home and decided to call her husband Jed at Snow’s Farm Supply to tell him to stop at Hancock’s Groceries and pick up five pounds of sugar. When Ophelia rang the switchboard, a little bulb would light above her socket-or rather, the socket for her party line, which connected several different houses. Verna would pull one of the cords out, plug the jack into Ophelia’s socket, and say “Number, please,” into her headset microphone. When Ophelia gave Jed’s number (or just said, “Verna, connect me to the Farm Supply, please.”), Verna would plug the second cord of the pair into the socket for the Farm Supply. Then she would send a signal down the line that rang the Farm Supply phone. When Jed answered, she would flip the switch that cut off her headset so that Ophelia and Jed could talk in private. (That was the theory, anyway, although everybody in town knew that the operators didn’t always bother to turn off their headsets, especially when they didn’t have any other calls to tend to.) When Ophelia and Jed hung up, Verna would unplug the cords from the sockets and that was that.

  Long-distance phone calls were a little more complicated. The switchboard had a couple of lines that connected to the long-distance office in Mobile. If Ophelia wanted to talk to her cousin in New Orleans, she would give the number to Verna, who would connect with the Mobile long-distance office, tell the operator she had a call for New Orleans, and would eventually be able to give the New Orleans operator the number for Ophelia’s cousin. When the cousin was on the line, Verna would connect Ophelia, and the two could talk. The process often took fifteen minutes or more, especially if the call had to go through several long-distance offices before it finally reached its destination. Circuits were often busy, and callers were sometimes told to hang up and try again later.

  Verna was just getting into the swing of things-plugging in a call from Mrs. Sedalius at Magnolia Manor to Beulah’s Beauty Bower-when she heard a familiar voice behind her.

  “Verna!” Liz Lacy exclaimed, sounding surprised. “Verna Tidwell, is that you? What in the world are you doing here?”

  Verna turned around. “I’m working the switchboard,” she replied, somewhat nettled. “What are you doing here?”

  Liz, looking like a ray of sunshine in her yellow dress and bright yellow straw hat, closed the door behind her and leaned against it. “I’m here because of that baldheaded man you told me about-the one who came to your house yesterday afternoon. Bessie says that Miss Jamison is scared to death of him, and he-”

  “Bessie?” Verna asked sharply. “How does Bessie know about him?”

  “Because she was at the Beauty Bower this morning when Miss Jamison was getting her hair dyed brown,” Liz replied. “Leona Ruth Adcock came in for her appointment and was telling everybody about this baldheaded man-she thinks he’s one of Mr. J. Edgar Hoover’s government agents-who came to her house looking for a platinum blonde. Bessie said Miss Jamison almost fainted. She also bought a red wig for Miss Lake.” She added, “Bessie’s out there in the diner now, waiting for me.”

  “Wait a minute, Liz,” Verna said, holding up her hand. “What’s this about Miss Jamison getting dyed brown? And J. Edgar Hoover? How does he fit into this?”

  Liz shook her head. “That’s all beside the point,” she said hurriedly. “I’ll fill you in later. The point is that your baldheaded man is out there at the counter getting a plate of Euphoria’s special right this very minute, and as soon as he’s done, he’s going to make a long-distance call from the booth, so he got two dollars’ worth of quarters from Myra May. I thought maybe I should try and find out who he was calling, so I came in here to the switchboard to see if I could listen in and-”

  But Liz was interrupted as the door opened and Myra May came into the room. “Verna, that man you’re looking for, the one you sent the telegram to-he’s out there at the counter. He-” She stopped and frowned at Liz. “What’re you doing here, Liz?”

  “It’s okay, Myra May,” Verna said. “Liz knows.” To Liz, she said in an urgent tone, “What’s that you were telling me about a wig, Liz? And Miss Jamison dyeing her hair brown?”

  “They must want to disguise themselves,” Liz replied. “That’s what Bessie thinks, anyway. She thinks they’re trying to hide from-”

  The switchboard buzzed and Verna turned around to connect Mr. Dickens at the Dispatch to Mr. Whitman at the Darling Academy, and disconnect Mrs. Sedalius from the Beauty Bower.

  “Anyway,” Myra May said to Verna’s back, “what I was saying is that your man is getting Euphoria’s fried chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy, which might slow him down a little. He may not get out to the phone booth right at noon to make that call. Don’t worry if he’s a little late.” There was the clatter of a plate being dropped and she rolled her eyes. “That’ll teach me,” she muttered. “Step away from the counter for a second and everything goes to hell.” She slipped out the door.

  Liz leaned forward, frowning. “What do I know?” she challenged. “You told Myra May that I know something, but I don’t know anything, Verna. I’m completely and totally in the dark.”

  “You know who he is,” Verna replied, and plugged in another cord. “Number, please.” She connected Mildred Kilgore, who had a private line, to her husband at Kilgore Motors, and unplugged Mr. Dickens, who had finished talking to Mr. Whitman. While she was doing this, she made a mental note to call Mildred back and ask her to give Myra May a hand behind the counter.

  “No, I don’t know who he is,” Liz said crossly, when Verna turned back to her. “Bessie says that Mrs. Adcock says that he’s a government agent.”

  “What would Leona Ruth Adcock know about government agents?” Verna scoffed. “Quite the contrary. He’s a member of the Capone gang.”

  Liz’s eyes got round. “You’re sure? How do you know?”

  “I’m sure. His name is Diamond, Frankie Diamond. Mrs. O’Malley says that he’s a friend of the man who slashed Miss Lake’s face.”

  “Slashed-!” Liz’s hand went to her mouth.

  “What’s more,” Verna went on, “Miss LaMotte shot the slasher-some gangster named Sal Raggio.”

  Liz’s eyes were like saucers. “Shot him!” she whispered.

  “With her Remington pistol. He died on the street in front of the Western Hotel. The hotel where Al Capone conducts his business. Where Miss LaMotte was standing in that photo the baldheaded man showed me yesterday. Mrs. O’Malley says that Frankie Diamond wants to kill Miss LaMotte, to pay her back for killing his friend.”

  “I just can’t believe this is happening in Darling,” Liz muttered, biting her lip. “It sounds like one of those awful gangster movies!”

  “I know, Liz. But it’s true, at least according to Mrs. O’Malley, and I don’t think she’d lie about something like this. She said they called a doctor, who came and stitched up the cuts on Miss Lake’s face. Miss LaMotte and Miss Lake caught a train the next morning-just before the Cicero police, under the direction of Al Capone, showed up to arre
st Miss LaMotte for shooting the slasher.”

  “So that’s why that business with the disguises that Bessie told me about,” Liz said thoughtfully. “The wig and the hair dye. The women thought they’d be safe with Miss Hamer, but something must’ve happened to make them afraid. Maybe they were somehow tipped off that this man-this Frankie Diamond-might show up here in Darling, looking for them.”

  “They might even have looked out the window and seen him walking past,” Verna said. “My house isn’t that far from Miss Hamer’s.”

  “Or maybe he even knocked at Miss Hamer’s door, and DessaRae sent him away.” Liz rolled her eyes. “And to think that I wanted to write a charming story about Miss Jamison-a hometown girl who made good in the big city. Some story! It belongs in a true-crime magazine, not in a family newspaper.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right.” Verna sighed. “I’m also afraid I’ve outfoxed myself, Liz. And I’m not happy about it.” She told Liz about the telegram she had faked, with its instruction to call “Mr. C” at noon from the phone booth.

  “I was thinking of it as a kind of test,” she added. “I thought if that fellow made the call, it would prove definitively that he was connected to the Capone gang. But Mrs. O’Malley has already given us all the evidence we need. And now Diamond is going to call that number and find out that it wasn’t his pals up there in Cicero who sent him that telegram. He’ll know that somebody here in Darling has figured out who he is. I wish I hadn’t done it.”

  “Well, for pity’s sake, Verna,” Liz said, with a wave of her hand. “That’s an easy problem to solve. Just don’t connect him.”

  Verna frowned. “Excuse me?”

  “Think about it, Verna,” Liz replied patiently. “You’re the telephone operator. You can pretend to be putting him through all the long-distance offices, but you really won’t. You can make him wait for fifteen or twenty minutes and then tell him that all the circuits are busy and he needs to try again later.” She grinned crookedly. “Happens to me about half the time when I want to make a long-distance call. Doesn’t it happen to you?”

  Verna rolled her eyes, wondering why she hadn’t thought of this splendid subterfuge. “Oh, you bet. What a grand idea, Liz. That’s exactly what I’ll do.”

  “Swell,” Liz said. She hesitated, frowning. “You know, Verna, if this guy really is dangerous, somebody ought to keep an eye on him.”

  “Shadow him, you mean?” Verna suggested helpfully. “Maybe that’s something you could do, Liz. If you don’t have to get back to the office right away.” Liz was right that somebody ought to watch the fellow.

  “I’m available,” Liz said. “Mr. Moseley left for Montgomery and gave me the afternoon off. I was planning to go over to the Savings and Trust and talk to Mr. Johnson about Mama’s situation, but that can wait. How about you? Can you help to…” She frowned. “To shadow him?”

  “I promised Myra May I’d work on the switchboard until one or one thirty,” Verna replied. “But if you and Bessie could keep an eye on him for an hour, I could relieve you after that.”

  “How will you know where to find us?” Liz asked.

  Verna frowned. “He’s not likely to go very far, I wouldn’t think. He might just walk around the square, stopping in businesses, flashing that photograph, and asking for information. All you have to do is hang around behind him. Don’t let him see you, of course. And in an hour, grab the nearest phone and call me here at the board and let me know where you are.”

  “We’ll try,” Liz said. She turned to go. “Say, Euphoria’s fried chicken looks really good. Want me to have her make up a plate for you?”

  “Sure thing,” Verna said. The light blinked over Doc Roberts’ socket. She turned back to the switchboard, plugged in a jack, and chirped, “Number, please.” When she noticed that Mildred Kilgore was finished talking to Kilgore Motors, she rang up Mildred and asked her if she wouldn’t mind volunteering to help Myra May out behind the counter on Tuesday. And when Mildred said yes, she asked if Mildred would be willing to round up three or four other Dahlias to help on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday-just until Violet got back from Memphis. Mildred said she would do her best, and they hung up.

  Fifteen minutes later, as Verna dawdled over a plateful of Euphoria’s delicious fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and green beans, she was doing exactly what Liz had suggested. On the other side of the diner wall, in the phone booth, Mr. Frankie Diamond (aka Mr. Gold) was waiting-and waiting, and waiting, and waiting-to be connected to the number he had given her, which should be taking the usual long-distance route from Darling through Montgomery, Nashville, Memphis, and Chicago to its final destination, but was of course going nowhere at all.

  Finally, Verna finished eating a leisurely meal, wiped her fingers and her mouth, and set her plate aside. Then she opened the line to the telephone booth and said, in a pleasantly lilting voice, “I’m sorry, sir. All the circuits are busy now. Please try your call again later.”

  She pulled the plug before she could hear her victim’s sputtered curse. She waited five minutes, then put through the call to the number Frankie Diamond had given her. It zipped right through, smooth as silk and without a single delay, to Montgomery, Nashville, Memphis, Chicago, and Cicero.

  “Western Hotel,” said a brusque male voice on the other end of the line. “Who’re you callin’?”

  “Is Mr. Capone available?” Verna asked.

  “Who is it wants to talk to him?” the man demanded roughly.

  Quietly, Verna broke the connection.

  FOURTEEN

  Buddy Norris Collars a Crook

  Outside on Franklin Street, Bessie and Liz stood in the shade of the faded green canvas awning of Musgrove’s Hardware, next door to the diner on the east. They were looking in the hardware store window, engrossed in a discussion of the merits of the new ten-gallon cast-aluminum National pressure canner that Mr. Musgrove had put on display.

  The canner was a hefty contraption with a lid that strapped down and gauges and valves and various other doohickeys, made of heavy-duty aluminum to contain the steam pressure. In the window with the pressure canner were several of the more usual blue enamel canning kettles with wire racks, a pyramid of glass Mason and Kerr canning jars, a basket of lids and rubber rings for older jars fitted with wire bales and the newer screw-on metal rings and flat self-sealing disks, a jar lifter, canning tongs, and a large metal canning funnel-every up-to-the-minute device that a modern housewife would need to outfit her canning kitchen.

  Bessie tilted her head to one side, thinking that she and Roseanne could certainly put that pressure canner to use in the kitchen at Magnolia Manor. “You know, Liz,” she said, “if everybody had one of those things, nobody would ever go hungry. They could can all the garden vegetables they could grow-beans, corn, okra, tomatoes, lots of things.” Her own mother and grandmother had always canned most of the family’s food, and she herself put up peaches and tomatoes and green beans and the like, using her mother’s canning kettle. But Mrs. Hancock stocked a variety of canned goods on her grocery shelves, and most women had decided that it was silly to put a lot of time and work into home canning. Using a can opener was very convenient, and if you put plenty of seasoning on the vegetables, most husbands couldn’t tell the difference.

  “I’m sure people could can their own food,” Liz said thoughtfully. “But I wonder-” She craned her neck to peer at the price tag. “Why, it costs fourteen dollars and ninety-nine cents, Bessie!” she exclaimed. “Around here, who can afford that? And it looks a little daunting, don’t you think? You’d have to learn how to use all those dials and valves and things.”

  Bessie shrugged. “Well, at that price, it’s out of the question. I guess we’ll just have to keep on using the old canning kettle-although it isn’t always safe for things like beans and corn. And it takes hours and hours in the hot kitchen.” But she couldn’t resist a last longing look at the canner. “If we had that at the Magnolia Manor, I’ll be
t we wouldn’t have to throw out so many jars of spoiled food.”

  “That’s one of the problems with the canning kettle,” Liz agreed. “Tomatoes are okay, but if the food isn’t acid enough, it doesn’t always keep. And no matter how long you boil the jars, they don’t always seal just right. When you bring a quart of green beans from the fruit cellar, it might be moldy, or worse.” She made a face.

  Bessie cast a quick look over her shoulder. She and Liz were not standing in front of Mr. Musgrove’s hardware store window for the purpose of discussing what could be done with that pressure canner, interesting as it was. They were waiting for Mr. Frankie Diamond to emerge from the telephone booth on the other side of the diner.

  When Liz had come back to the table from her visit to the Exchange, she had told Bessie that Verna was back there, working the switchboard. And that earlier that morning, Verna had had a long telephone conversation with Miss LaMotte’s housekeeper in Cicero. She had learned-among other things-that an attacker had slashed Miss Lake’s face and that Miss LaMotte had shot him.

  Bessie stared at Liz across the table. “Shot the slasher?” she gasped incredulously. “Mercy me! Did she… Did she kill him?”

  “Dead as a doornail,” Liz replied, picking up her glass of iced tea. “And if you ask me, he deserved it.”

  Myra May had come up with their dinner plates and was standing behind them, listening. “Who shot a slasher?” she asked anxiously. “When? Where?”

  “Shhh,” Liz hissed, shooting a meaningful glance at the baldheaded man at the counter. “Don’t talk so loud. We’ll tell you all about it later.”

  But Bessie was sure the man hadn’t heard a word of what they’d said. The volume was turned up on the noon agricultural price reports on the radio, and the man was bent over his plate, shoveling in his mashed potatoes and gravy as fast as he could. He was obviously in a hurry to finish his dinner so that he could get back to the booth and make that telephone call.