The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “What’s the matter, Dickens?” Duffy said impatiently. “Come on. Get me that scrip, will you?”

  “I don’t know . . . where it is,” Charlie said, trying to concentrate. “I printed and trimmed it yesterday morning. Bundled it up here at the counter, and put it into an old leather satchel I had after the war. Stowed the satchel under the counter—”

  Duffy bent over and peered into the dark space. “I don’t see it.”

  “That’s because it’s not there,” Charlie replied shortly.

  “Well, where is it?”

  Charlie shrugged. “I dunno. Must’ve put it somewhere else. I’ll have a look around.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? It hasn’t been stolen, has it?”

  “Well, what if it had?” Charlie rolled his eyes. “It’s not money, you know. It’s just bundles of colored paper that don’t have any real—”

  “Of course it’s money, you idiot,” Duffy snapped. “It’s Darling Dollars, thousands of them, coin of the realm, good as gold. Payroll dollars at the sawmill, the bottling plant, the county—” His face was red and getting redder. “In your limited notion of what’s possible, it might not seem to you like anything special, but—”

  “Hold your horses,” Charlie said wearily. “Don’t work yourself into a heart attack. That satchel hasn’t been stolen. It’ll turn up, and if it doesn’t, I’ll simply reprint. When do you need it?”

  “Today. This afternoon. I’m taking it to Mrs. Tidwell, over at the courthouse, and Hank Biddle, out at the bottling plant. Tomorrow I’m—” He stopped, his eyes narrowed. “How do you know it hasn’t been stolen?”

  “What good would it do anybody if it had?” Charlie countered in a reasonable tone. “I keep telling you. It’s phony money. Nobody would mistake it for the real thing.”

  “Maybe,” Duffy said between his teeth. “But it’ll spend like the real thing, here in Darling. How much did you print? Ten thousand, wasn’t it? If somebody took it, he can use it to buy groceries, pay taxes, pay for his newspaper subscription, give it away—”

  Charlie held up his hand. “It hasn’t been stolen,” he said, with more conviction than he felt. “The place was locked when I came in this morning.” He hadn’t remembered locking it the evening before, but he did know that he’d had to use his key this morning, because he’d had a little trouble getting it into the lock. “And anyway, this is no big thing. If the satchel doesn’t turn up, I’ll just reprint. It’ll cost a bit to reorder the paper, but I won’t charge you for my time.”

  “That’s big of you.” Duffy’s voice was dry. “How soon can you reprint?”

  “Well, let’s see.” Charlie frowned. “If I call Mobile now and order the paper, they’ll put it on the Greyhound tomorrow morning and I’ll have it tomorrow afternoon late. If they have it in stock. If they have to get it from the plant at Pensacola, it’ll likely be Monday. After I get the paper, it won’t take me long to print it but—”

  “Monday!” Duffy roared. He shoved his face close to Charlie’s, his eyes glittering and hard. “Now, you listen here, Dickens. Today is Wednesday. I want that money ready to meet payrolls on Friday, do you hear? If it isn’t, you will be the sorriest son of a—”

  “I can’t do anything more than my best,” Charlie said defensively. “You go on back to your bank. I’ll take it from here.”

  Muttering to himself and casting glaring glances over his shoulder, Duffy stomped out of the Dispatch office and Charlie began searching for the satchel in earnest. It had to be here somewhere.

  But a half hour later, he was ready to admit defeat. There were only so many shelves and corners and stacks of boxes and paper and other clutter behind or under or in which he could have stashed the satchel while he was soused the previous evening. He stopped, frowning, wondering whether he might have put it outside the back door with the intention of taking it home with him to Mrs. Beedle’s. In fact, the longer he thought about it, the more he thought he remembered intending something of the sort.

  Then it came clear, a flickering memory of standing at the back door around seven the previous evening, singing the other words he had learned to “Tipperary.” “That’s the wrong way to tickle Mary, that’s the wrong way to kiss. Don’t you know that over here, lad, they like it best like this.”

  And then he had put the satchel outside the door, thinking that he would pick it up on his way home, after he had locked the front door and enjoyed one last drink.

  Hurrying now, he went to the back door to look, with “the wrong way to tickle Mary” running through his head. He fully expected to look down and see the decal-studded satchel at his feet, but to his dismay there was nothing in the alley except the straggly black cat that lived under Hancock’s grocery store steps and was always looking for a handout. The satchel wasn’t outside the back door, and he didn’t have the foggiest idea where it was. If he had indeed put it out there, somebody must have come along and picked it up. But who? The alley wasn’t used, except sometimes by Old Zeke, when he was carting grocery orders for Mrs. Hancock’s customers in his little red wagon.

  Closing the door, Charlie decided he’d better call Mobile and see about ordering the colored paper—what was it? Yellow, red, purple, green? He frowned. The thing was, he couldn’t quite remember what colors he had assigned to the different denominations. Was it red ones, yellow fives, green tens, and purple twenties? Or—

  Nota bene, he muttered, as he reached for the telephone. It was what one of his commanding officers used to say—the guy with the Harvard law degree. Always make notes. He should have written down which colors he’d used for which of the damn Darling Dollars. He rang the switchboard, got Myra May, and was eventually put through to the paper supply house in Mobile. He ordered the paper, telling the bookkeeper there to bill the Darling Savings and Trust. Doing it that way, he wouldn’t have to ask Duffy to reimburse him. And he got a lucky break, for the paper was in stock. If all went well, he would have it tomorrow afternoon, assuming that the Greyhound bus didn’t break down, which had been happening with greater frequency in the past few months.

  Charlie hung up the phone and sat down in his chair, rubbing his face. His headache was back—or maybe it had never left, had just been drowned out by Duffy’s annoying insistence and the need to find that satchel. He opened his desk drawer and was hunting for an aspirin when the bell over the front door tinkled and a man put his head in.

  “Yo, Dickens,” he called. “You here?”

  Charlie stood and raised his voice. “At the desk. Come on back, Moseley.”

  Benton Moseley, wearing his usual courthouse suit and tie and a gray fedora, came around the counter. “You got a few minutes?”

  “Sure thing.” Charlie gestured to the only straight chair in sight. “Take a load off. Better dust it first, though. That’s ink dust on the seat. You don’t want to sit in it.”

  Of all the people in Darling, Charlie had the greatest respect for Benton Moseley. He wasn’t just the best-liked lawyer in Cypress County, he was the smartest, with the most political savvy, having survived a tour of duty on the front lines in the state legislature. What’s more, he came from a long and distinguished line of Darling lawyers, his Moseley father and grandfather and great-grandfather before him all practicing out of the office upstairs, above the Dispatch. To Charlie’s certain knowledge, many of the legal secrets in Cypress County—and there were plenty of them, some of them inconsequential, some momentous, some even murderous—were neatly filed away in those wooden file cabinets upstairs.

  Or in Bent Moseley’s brain, under that good-looking head of curly brown hair, where he carried even more secrets and pulled out one or two of them when they were needed to get something done. Not blackmail, of course. Bent was too much of a straight shooter for that. But he was a master of the sharp, crafty use of relevant information, dropped like the right card out of the right hand at th
e right moment in a poker game.

  Bent brushed off the chair, took off his hat, then sat down and pulled out his pipe, regarding Charlie critically. “You’re looking a little the worse for wear. Have a big night, did you?”

  “Wish I could remember,” Charlie said with a rueful grin. “Afraid I can’t offer you a drink, though. Finished the bottle last night and God knows when I’ll get another one as good, at least until whiskey is legal.”

  Maybe he should quit, he thought, not for the first time. That business with the satchel—not being able to remember what the hell he’d done with it—was bothering him. A good bottle of whiskey, savored the way you savored a good woman, was one thing. But when the night’s drinking screwed up the next day’s work, it was time to cut back, or quit cold turkey. Yeah, it was time. But could he do it? Could he?

  “Bad business, that raid on LeDoux’s still.” Bent took a leather tobacco pouch out of his jacket pocket. He had a deep voice, slow and thoughtful, richly Southern flavored, and he didn’t use words idly. When he said something, you knew he meant it. “The kid was just fifteen. No excuse for shootin’ in a situation like that.” He shook tobacco into his pipe and tamped it down with a forefinger. “Damn near criminal.”

  “My sentiments exactly,” Charlie said. “Nothing to be done, though.” He paused, and added hopefully, “Is there?”

  “I doubt it. But on the off chance, I called a fellow I know who swings some weight in the district office in Birmingham. I gave him the straight of it. There’s no telling what Kinnard will put in his report—ambush, exchange of fire, self-defense—to try to make it look good. This isn’t the first time his bunch has pulled something like this, you know. They raided a still up near Selma a few weeks back—another shooting. I don’t reckon my call will change anything, but we’ll see what happens.” He put his pouch away. “Say, Charlie, I’ve got a story for you, my friend. For Friday’s paper.”

  “You and half the damn town,” Charlie said grumpily. But he reached for his pencil and pad. Bent rarely brought him a story, because most of the time, he didn’t talk about his work, protected by attorney-client privilege, of course. When he did offer Charley a story, though, it was a doozy, like the time he had lifted the lid on the bribery scandal involving old Judge C.L. Lewis. It had almost torn the roof off the courthouse.

  “Half the town?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” Charlie picked up the pencil. “So what’s the story?”

  “It’s George Johnson,” Bent said, putting a match to his pipe. “You heard about the vandalism at his place last night?”

  “I wrote it up,” Charlie said. “Klan look-alikes, red paint on the front porch and sidewalk, plants pulled up in the garden. Page one stuff,” he added dryly.

  “And a rock through the window with a death threat tied to it,” Bent said. “Off the record.”

  Charlie frowned. “I missed that one.”

  “That happened Monday night. He didn’t report it. He didn’t want his wife to know.”

  “I put a story in the paper that says she’s visiting her sister.”

  Bent crossed one leg over the other. “Right. He sent her to Montgomery. He knew it was going to get ugly and wanted her out of the way. I think you can understand that.”

  “There’s a lot I don’t understand about this situation,” Charlie said flatly. He lifted an eyebrow. “Not complaining, just ignorant. Uninformed. Happens all the time.”

  “Happens to me, too.” Bent pulled on his pipe. “And ‘uninformed’ is exactly the problem. George is under attack because folks here in Darling don’t understand the situation. Duffy and his bosses in New Orleans haven’t released any announcements about the sale of the bank, which allows people to think whatever they want to think about George’s role in the closure. They can—”

  “They can make him out to be the villain of the piece,” Charlie put in. “Which is exactly what they are doing. They want a scapegoat, and he’s within easy reach—and logical. Show me a banker anywhere, and I’ll show you a man who will never win any popularity contests with the hoi polloi.” He paused. “Got an idea who’s behind the vandalism?”

  “No, and I’m not sure that makes any difference, at least not right at this moment. What happened was small potatoes—except for the death threat, of course. George has a gun, although I’m not sure he knows what to do with it. But that’s beside the point. We need to stop this from escalating, the way it did over in Harkinville.”

  That had been big news the month before. The Harkinville bank had failed, bringing down several local businesses. The banker had been hanged in effigy. Then his house was torched, and a colored maid had died in the fire. A day or so later, the banker had taken his pistol out to the barn and shot himself. The panic had spread to several neighboring towns and counties, with people rushing to withdraw their money as fast as they could. Before the alarm ended, five banks—and five towns—were in deep trouble.

  “So what do you want me to do?” Charlie asked.

  “We have to change the way people see this situation. Change the emotional climate. Lower the temperature. And you’re the only one who can do that. That’s the story.”

  “Well, somebody’s going to have to come clean with a few more factual details,” Charlie said testily. “I’m as much in the dark as the next guy. If I’m going to shed any light, I need to be enlightened first. And I assume that you can assure me that George Johnson isn’t guilty of anything that people suspect him of. Embezzlement, for example. Misappropriation of funds. Malfeasance. All of the above.”

  With a bland expression Bent pulled on his pipe. “My clients are innocent. George is no exception.”

  “Yeah.” Charlie’s chuckle was sarcastic. “Tell me another.”

  “If he’s guilty of anything, it’s making unwise loans—not to his friends or family, he’s clean there. Or at least he’s straightened all that out. But he’s made loans to ordinary people—working stiffs, farmers, stockmen, merchants—who weren’t creditworthy, which is why the bank is in trouble with its buyer.” Bent puffed out a cloud of blue smoke. “George may not be the best bank manager on record, but it’s because he had a heart, not because he’s a crook or a thief. That’s the story I hope you’ll write. A human interest story about a guy who’s made a few mistakes. Who hasn’t? But he’s no more a crook than you or I.”

  “I should’ve figured you’d say that.” Charlie drummed his fingers on the desk. “Well, in the interest of Darling peace and harmony, I’m willing to write the story. But I’m up against a deadline, and I’ve got a big print job to do tomorrow. If you want it in Friday’s Dispatch, I need to interview Johnson this afternoon. And Duffy, too.”

  “Not Duffy,” Bent said firmly, shaking his head. “He’s not a part of this story.”

  “But he’s the new president of the bank. Why isn’t he part of the story?”

  Bent’s face was stubborn. “Trust me, Charlie. He isn’t.”

  Charlie had a feeling that there was more here than Bent was letting on. But it wasn’t his nut to crack and if Bent had decided not to tell him, he wasn’t going to find out. So he only shrugged and said, “Have it your way. When can I talk to Johnson?”

  “Are you free this afternoon?”

  “The sooner the better.” Charlie paused. “Is this a solo gig, or are you planning to be there, too?”

  “Might be good if I tagged along,” Bent said casually. “Make sure that you don’t ask any questions that’ll get George into trouble.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s just past noon. How about if I meet you at the Johnson house, say, in an hour or so?”

  “I’ll be there,” Charlie said, and then decided it was worth one more try. “This guy Duffy. If he’s not part of the story, is it because he’s not going to be around much longer? Here in Darling, that is. If you ask me, this town would be better off without him. He’s—”r />
  Bent stood up. “Charlie, did anybody ever tell you that you don’t know when to stop?”

  “Sure,” Charlie said. “People say that all the time about me. I’m a newsman, remember? I go where the story goes. And if you ask me, Duffy is the story. I’m going to find out why.”

  Bent grinned. “Not from me, you’re not. Not from George, either. Oh, by the way, Liz wanted me to give you this.” He reached into his jacket pocket and took out two folded sheets of paper. “Her garden club column for Friday’s paper.” He laid it on Charlie’s desk.

  “Thanks,” Charlie said. He scanned the pages, decided they didn’t need any serious editing, and slid them into Ophelia’s basket on the corner of his desk. “Liz does good work.”

  “She does.” Bent puffed on his pipe, looking thoughtful. “I guess you know that Grady Alexander is getting married on Saturday.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard. Mrs. Mann brought in a wedding announcement. Obviously, big doings in the Mann family. Thought I would lose it at the bottom of page seven, under the market reports.” Charlie paused. “Liz doing okay, is she?” She had been going with Grady Alexander for as long as he’d known her, and everybody expected them to get married one of these days. His wedding would have come as a huge shock.

  “She’s deeply distressed, of course, but she’s holding up pretty well.” Bent’s jaw tightened. “I just can’t figure it out, Charlie. Alexander always struck me as an okay guy, but now I’m convinced he has rocks in his head. Liz is . . . well, she doesn’t deserve that kind of treatment. She’s special.”

  Charlie looked at him, the glimmer of an idea forming. “You’re not—”

  He stopped. No, surely not. Bent had been divorced for a couple of years now, and Charlie had heard that he was seeing a woman up in Montgomery, a very pretty socialite, rich as goose grease and also divorced. Rumor had it that they might be getting close to an engagement.