The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “A problem, you say, Mr. Mann?” Buddy asked pleasantly, hooking his thumbs into his belt and pushing his jacket aside so that his holstered weapon was clearly visible. His deputy’s badge, polished to a fare-thee-well, was prominently displayed on the lapel of his brown jacket. He smiled his Lucky Lindy smile at Bessie and gave her a little salute.

  “Afternoon, Miz Bloodworth.” His glance went to Liz, approving her yellow hat. “Miz Lacy. That’s a right purty hat.”

  He didn’t look at Mrs. Adcock. Bessie knew that he had once hit a baseball through Leona Ruth’s front window and she had made him pay for the broken glass by spading up her spring garden, which at the time was about the size of the baseball field out behind the Academy.

  “A real serious problem,” Mr. Mann said sternly. “This fella here has been annoyin’ these ladies. He-”

  “He’s not annoyin’, he’s a gov’ment agent!” Leona Ruth cried. “He’s here to-”

  “I’m afraid that Mrs. Adcock is very high-strung,” Bessie said sweetly. “If you want to know the truth, Buddy, you go right on over to the Exchange and have a little talk with Verna Tidwell. She’s on the switchboard this afternoon. She’ll tell you who this man really is. He is from-”

  “I don’t give a good goose turd who he is or where he’s from,” Mr. Mann said heatedly, “although it is purty obvious from the way he talks that he’s a damn Yankee from up north.”

  “He’s also armed,” Bessie said.

  “Armed?” Liz repeated in surprise.

  “Under his jacket, left side,” Bessie explained. “My father had one of those shoulder holsters. He was attacked by a crazy man at his funeral parlor once when he was laying out the man’s wife, and after that, he wore it every time he worked on a corpse or did a funeral. I could always tell when he had it on by the bulge in his coat.”

  “Armed, is he?” Buddy drawled. His glance sharpened and he took a step closer.

  “Armed? Well, o’ course he’s armed,” Leona Ruth protested. “I tell you, he’s a gov’ment agent, sent here by Mr. J. Edgar Hoover to-”

  “Lemme see your badge, Mr. Gov’ment Agent, sir,” Buddy said. Like Mr. Mann, he was taller than Diamond, and younger and fitter. And unlike Mr. Mann, Buddy had a gun.

  Diamond cleared his throat and looked nervously away. “I ain’t carrying no badge right now.”

  “Because he’s incognito,” shrilled Leona Ruth. “He’s undercover! He is on the trail of a-”

  “Miz Adcock,” Mr. Mann said with exaggerated politeness, “I reckon you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, so I’ll ask you to jes’ keep still and let us menfolks get this sorted out.”

  “No badge.” Buddy made a tsk-tsk noise. His voice hardened. “Then lemme see your gun. Slowly, now, Mr. Gov’ment Agent. No fast moves.”

  Diamond looked from Buddy to Mr. Mann, assessing the possibilities of escape. Seeing none, he opened his jacket and withdrew a wicked-looking snub-nose revolver. Sullenly, he handed it to Buddy.

  “Well, sir.” Buddy stuck the gun in his jacket pocket. “An armed undercover gov’ment agent with no badge who is botherin’ our womenfolks is something we just cain’t tolerate here in Darling.” His eyes narrowed. “Ain’t it about time for your train, do you reckon?”

  Diamond shook his head quickly. “Not until tomorrow morning.”

  “No, sir,” Buddy said. He cocked his head. “I can hear that train whistlin’ now, on its way in from over at Monroeville. Which means it’ll be goin’ out again in just about twenty minutes. You got a suitcase?”

  “At the hotel,” Diamond said sullenly. “But I’m not-”

  “Well, good,” Buddy said, and clamped a hand on Diamond’s collar. “Let’s go and get that ol’ suitcase, Mr. Gov’ment Agent, and I’ll make sure you get to the depot in time to catch your train.”

  “You ain’t gettin’ rid of me so easy!” Diamond shouted, dancing on his toes, trying to wrestle free of Buddy’s grip. “I’ll be back! You can’t keep me away.”

  “Better not try,” Mr. Mann muttered darkly. “We’ll be waitin’ for you.” He raised his voice. “In Darlin’, we tar and feather revenooers.”

  “But he’s an undercover agent!” Leona Ruth cried, as Buddy marched Mr. Diamond across the street to the Old Alabama Hotel. She was weeping now, big tears running down her face. “And that woman is a murderess! She is right here in our little town, walkin’ to and fro amongst us Christians like the devil in the Book of Job, figurin’ on who she’s goin’ to kill next. We’re none of us safe! Nobody!”

  “Hysterical,” Bessie said in a pitying tone, shaking her head sadly. “This whole affair has been too much for the dear old thing. Come on, Miss Lacy. Let’s take Mrs. Adcock home, where she can go to bed with a wet washrag on her forehead.”

  She took one arm and Liz took the other and they led Leona Ruth, weeping and sniffling, down Robert E. Lee Street.

  FIFTEEN

  Lizzy Faces the Lion in His Den

  Lizzy and Bessie got Mrs. Adcock-who had worked herself into a satisfying case of hysterics-back to her house and put her to bed. Leaving Bessie to cope, Lizzy used the crank telephone on the kitchen wall to call Verna at the Exchange.

  “Do you think the man has really left town?” Verna asked worriedly. Lizzy had told the story in very general terms, leaving out all of the exciting details. She had counted the clicks and knew that there were at least three people listening on Mrs. Adcock’s line. One of them had a cuckoo clock.

  “Buddy Norris said he was going to put him on the train,” Lizzy replied guardedly. “I have to stop at the Savings and Trust for a few minutes, Verna. How much longer are you going to be on the switchboard?”

  “Olive just phoned and says she’s stopped coughing but she’ll be late,” Verna replied. “I’ll be here another hour, anyway. Come over to the diner when you’re finished at the bank and we can talk about what we’re going to do next.”

  “I will,” Lizzy said, and went back to the bedroom to tell Bessie good-bye.

  “You’re coming to the Dahlias’ card party tonight, I hope,” Bessie said. “Ophelia said she’d be there, and Verna, too. You?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” Lizzy said. “See you at seven thirty.”

  She walked back up Rosemont in the direction of the Darling Savings and Trust, on the west side of the courthouse square. She was still mulling over the many misunderstandings and the surprising twists and turns that the encounter with Frankie Diamond had taken. She was glad that Buddy Norris had appeared and was willing to escort the fellow off to the train depot. But she had ridden that spur line between Darling and Monroeville herself, when she went to Monroeville to go shopping. The train moved so slowly that it was easy for people to jump off and on-and plenty did, to avoid paying the twenty-cent fare that the station masters collected at either end. Frankie Diamond was no patsy, like several of the revenue agents that Mr. Mann had mistaken him for, easily bribed or intimidated and all too eager to leave town before somebody built a fire under a tar barrel and the chicken feathers started flying. Diamond had most likely been in tougher spots than this, Lizzy thought nervously. He had a job to do and he was here to do it. He wouldn’t be easily deterred.

  But there was nothing she could do about Diamond at the moment, so there was no point in worrying about him. She squared her shoulders, straightened her yellow straw hat, and looked straight ahead. She had a task ahead of her, an altogether unpleasant one, and she wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to say or do. All she knew was that she was about to face a lion in his den. A formidable lion. And she was going to do it before the afternoon got a single hour older.

  The Darling Savings and Trust was an imposing red brick building. It was fronted with twin white pillars and two marble slabs that stepped up to a pair of polished oak front doors with large panes of sparkling plate glass and big brass handles. Inside, the floor was polished marble tiles; the ceiling was embossed tin, painted ivory; and gilt-framed oil portraits
of several generations of Johnsons hung on the walls. In the center of the floor stood a mahogany table that always featured a vase of Mrs. George E. Pickett Johnson’s flowers, usually white ones or the palest pink, provided daily from her garden. To the left was a paneled wall behind which the tellers worked, the brass bars of the teller windows gleaming. Alice Ann Walker, a fellow Dahlia, was waiting on a customer at her window. She looked up and caught sight of Liz and waved and smiled, and Lizzy waved back. After a ruckus a few months before, when Alice Ann had been falsely accused of embezzling from customers’ accounts, she had been promoted to head cashier, much to the satisfaction of Lizzy and her fellow Dahlias.

  Lizzy continued past the teller windows, past the bookkeeping office and the door that led to the stairs down to the big bank vault in the basement. She was heading for an office with curliqued, ornate gold lettering on the glass door: Mr. George E. Pickett Johnson, President. Lizzy opened the door and went in. Mr. Johnson’s secretary, Martha Tate, a tiny woman with mouse brown hair and a prissy, thin-lipped mouth, looked up from a ledger and recognized Lizzy, who had frequent dealings with the bank on behalf of Mr. Moseley.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Lacy,” she said, in her precise voice. “How may I be of service to you?”

  “I’d like to see Mr. Johnson,” Lizzy announced, in a tone that sounded braver than she felt.

  Mrs. Tate made a show of looking at the appointment calendar. “I’m so sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “He’s extremely busy this afternoon. Would you like to make an appointment for-”

  “Tell him I’m here about my mother’s house,” Lizzy said, trying to keep her voice from quivering.

  “Oh.” Mrs. Tate got up with alacrity. “I’ll see if he’s free.” A moment later, she was holding open the door to Mr. Johnson’s wood-paneled office with its rich Oriental rug and book-lined walls, and Lizzy was ushered in. Mrs. Tate closed the door firmly behind her. If this was the lion’s den, Lizzy was trapped in it.

  Back in the old days, when the soil was still rich, the plantations still flourished along the river, and cotton was still king, the Johnsons had gloried in their position as one of Darling’s premier aristocratic families. The only son of his father, who was the only son of his father, young George E. Pickett Johnson-named for a Confederate general who fought under General Lee at Gettysburg-had been expected to do great things. And so he had, or at least he had gotten off to a strong start. He had graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans, returned to take up his father’s scepter as the president of the Darling Savings and Trust, and married (as expected) his childhood sweetheart, Miss Voleen Pearl Butler of the aristocratic Butler clan and a graduate of Sophie Newcomb College, the premier Southern college for young ladies, also in New Orleans.

  But down the decades, the glory of the old days had been dulled by a series of debilitating disasters: the War Between the States, the Depression of the 1890s, the Panic of 1907, the advent of the boll weevil. If there had been any glory left for the local aristocracy, it was tarnished by the long, bitter drought of the late 1920s and the catastrophic Crash of ’29.

  While many of the old Darling families had fallen apart under the weight of these difficulties, the Johnsons, however, had flourished. They and their bank had become the most admired and respected members of the community. Oh, there had been that fracas of a few months before, when it looked as if the bank might be in serious straits and people had waited in line outside the front door to withdraw their money so they could hurry home and hide it under their mattresses. But that little problem had been smoothed over and Darling was assured that the bank and their deposits were safe. In fact, Mr. Johnson had taken out a full-page ad in the Darling Dispatch to let everyone know that whatever minor concerns there might have been, all was well. The Darling Savings and Trust was as solid as a rock.

  But things had changed. People could look around and see that Mr. Johnson’s bank now owned many of the houses and businesses in town and almost all of the plantations that had once belonged to the other aristocrats. The bank was the community’s most profitable business, and George E. Pickett Johnson, almost the last aristocrat left standing, was the richest man in Darling. These extraordinary financial successes had had a certain inevitable result, however, for the more properties that were acquired by Mr. Johnson, the less respected and admired he and his bank became. The Darling Savings and Trust was regarded as an adversary, rather than an ally, and Mr. Johnson was even more hated than he was feared-although of course there was quite a bit of envy mixed in, too.

  But that was neither here nor there today, for Lizzy was on a mission. She had to save her mother’s house-from the lions, as she saw it. From Mr. Johnson and his bank.

  “Ah, Miss Lacy,” Mr. Johnson said, and looked up from a tidy stack of papers-foreclosure documents, no doubt-on the desk in front of him. “You wanted to speak to me about your mother’s house, I believe you said? Please. Sit down.”

  Lizzy was trying hard not to be afraid, but it was difficult. Mr. Johnson was a thick-bodied, broad-shouldered man with a jutting jaw and pointed chin; a thin dark mustache over thin, colorless lips; and black, oiled hair that was parted precisely down the middle of his scalp. Behind gold-rimmed glasses, his eyes were hard and glittery, like chunks of black coal, and his black eyebrows rose to a peak. He had a satanic look about him, folks in Darling said. And he had a satanic manner of dealing, too. He was not, people said, a man to be crossed.

  “Thank you,” Lizzy said, seating herself. She folded her hands in her lap and tried to keep her fingers from trembling. “Mother has told me that you are about to foreclose on her house.”

  Mr. Johnson scowled, rocked back in his leather-upholstered swivel chair, and twirled his pencil between his fingers like a drum major. “Let us be clear,” he said, in a voice that was like a fingernail scraped across a blackboard. It sent shivers up Lizzy’s spine. “I am not about to foreclose on her house. The bank is. The papers are being prepared as we speak.”

  Lizzy swallowed. “I’ve come to ask you for a little more time, Mr. Johnson,” she said. “The holidays will soon be here and-”

  Mr. Johnson cast his glance heavenward. “Time?” he asked rhetorically. “Your mother has known of her difficulties for almost a full year, Miss Lacy, ever since the Crash. The foreclosure has been pending since April. And since she herself has told me that she is quite willing to turn her house over to the bank-”

  “Quite willing?” Lizzy asked blankly.

  “Why, yes, of course. She has explained that she plans to live with you until you and Mr. Alexander are married, at which point you will of course go to live in the house he recently purchased.” Mr. Johnson’s smile did not quite reach his eyes. “Please accept my congratulations, by the way. I am acquainted with Mr. Alexander and find him to be an engaging-”

  “But I am not being married!” Lizzy exclaimed fiercely. “I am not leaving my house. And I have no intention of allowing my mother to move in with me.” This last, she knew, was an awful heresy, for every decent daughter ought to be glad to provide her impoverished mother a home.

  Mr. Johnson’s black eyebrows went up. “Well, then,” he said after a moment. “Mrs. Lacy will have to find another place to live, I suppose. I am sorry.” It was not clear whether he meant that he was sorry Lizzy was not going to marry, or sorry that she refused to take in her mother.

  Lizzy leaned forward. She had been taught that a lady could always catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar, but at this moment, she was in no mood to be sweet, or to be a lady, either. She was angry. She spoke with as much reasonableness as she could summon.

  “Mr. Johnson, my mother did a very foolish thing, and she is paying a high price. I cannot excuse what she has done. But there is nothing to be gained by evicting her from that house. If it is occupied and maintained, the property will someday be of value to the bank. It can be sold when the real estate market turns up again, for a much better price than it could command n
ow. If it’s empty, it will be the target of vagrants and vandals. I think you ought to allow my mother to live there and maintain your house-the bank’s house-and pay a rent. A modest rent, I’m afraid, because that’s all she can afford.” Actually, she couldn’t afford any rent, but Lizzy hadn’t thought quite that far.

  Impatiently, Mr. Johnson tapped his pencil on his desk. “And why should I do this?” he asked in an arch tone.

  “Because it’s the right thing to do!” Lizzy exclaimed heatedly. “And it’s the smart thing. You-the bank, that is- should be doing it with every single house you’ve foreclosed on. Empty, they are a disgrace. You should let people stay in their houses and take care of them, at least until they can be sold.”

  “Come, come, Miss Lacy.” Mr. Johnson pulled down the corners of his mouth. “That’s not the way the system works. People need to learn that credit isn’t cheap. They must be obliged to take responsibility for their foolish choices. They must learn that their actions have very real consequences. That is how the system works.”

  “But not everyone who has lost a house was foolish,” Lizzy burst out. “Some people have had accidents or gotten sick and some have lost jobs through no fault of their own. Don’t you see? That mean, cold-hearted, calculating attitude is exactly what makes people despise the bank and hate-” She stopped. It was true, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

  Mr. Johnson said it for her. “Hate me?” He leaned forward on his elbows, his brows pulled together in a deep scowl. Lizzy quailed, thinking that he looked exactly like Satan. “Miss Lacy, I am quite aware of the… esteem, shall we say, in which I am held in this town. Given the situation, that is unavoidable. People need a villain. They need someone to blame for their sad plight, and I-and the bank-will do as well as any. Better, in fact, than most. I cannot blame them, either, for they are not privileged to see the many, many instances in which the bank-and I-have given extensions and made accommodations. That is only as it should be, of course, since we must respect our clients’ privacy.”