The Darling Dahlias and the Unlucky Clover

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Wayne nodded. “Yeah. I gave Jake a call a little while ago. He washed that car yesterday afternoon—himself. Shined up that old Pierce Arrow real pretty. Swears there was no dent. Says a dent in that precious auto of Whitworth’s would’ve made him blow a fuse.”

  “So your theory—”

  “There’s more.” He took another photo from the stack. “That road out there was nothin’ but Alabama mud and slick as the devil. See these ruts? Looks to me like somebody braked hard right here and skidded sorta sideways. Could’ve happened when it hit that Pierce-Arrow hard enough to send it downhill and down the embankment.” He paused. “That’s my theory, anyway. For what it’s worth.”

  Buddy looked. “I see what you’re saying, Wayne. So you think we’re looking for another car.” He was leaving to call on Mrs. Whitworth just as the tractor towing the wreck had arrived. He had directed them to the alley. “They park the wreck out by the fence?”

  “Yeah. It was there when I got back from dropping Whitworth off at the funeral parlor.” He paused, shaking his head. “Poor fella’s face is pretty much of a mess. Smashed against the steering wheel, from the looks of it. His best friend probably wouldn’t know him. Lionel doesn’t think he can fix him up decent,” he added. “Says it’ll have to be a closed-casket funeral.”

  “Folks won’t like that,” Buddy said. Darling folks liked to see their friends and loved ones laid out face up, just to make sure they were burying the right one. They were superstitious that way. He looked down at the photo of the crease in the car’s rear end. “Any other damage to the car? Bullet holes?”

  It sounded like a frivolous question, maybe, but it wasn’t. If another vehicle had been pursuing Whitworth, there might have been shooting. He thought of what Mrs. Whitworth had said. If Bodeen Pyle had been involved, shooting wouldn’t surprise him. He guessed that half the homicides in Alabama were related to bootlegging. Moonshine was a violent business. Stick your nose in where it wasn’t wanted, you’d get it shot off.

  “Nope, no bullet holes in the vehicle,” Wayne said. “I also took a good look at Whitworth when Noonan got him on the mortuary table. Doc Roberts will tell us for sure, but I couldn’t see any bullet holes in him, either.” Wayne squinted through the smoke of his cigarette. “You’re thinking of Bodeen Pyle, I reckon.”

  “You read my mind.” Buddy gave him an appraising look. “How’d you know?”

  “Charlie Dickens passed on some rumors when he brought the photos over here. He’s heard that Whitworth was a partner in Pyle’s moonshine operation.” He quirked an eyebrow. “How’d you find out?”

  “Heard it mentioned at the diner this morning,” Buddy said. “I wasn’t sure I believed it—Whitworth always looked like a straight-up citizen to me. But Miz Whitworth confirmed it. She doesn’t much like the idea.”

  “I don’t wonder. Husband involved in a shady racket. Doesn’t look good for her.” Cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, Wayne restored the photos to the stack and put the lot into a manila envelope. “Did you take her to Noonan’s to identify her husband?”

  “She didn’t want to go.” Buddy frowned. “Jed Snow’s wife told me that Miz Whitworth was thinking about getting a divorce. She’s apparently already talked to Moseley about it.”

  “Interesting,” Wayne said briefly. He jerked his head. “Car’s out back, on the alley.”

  The wrecked Pierce-Arrow squatted forlornly in a corner of the yard, under a green canvas tarp. Wayne pulled it off and Buddy shook his head sadly. Up close and personal, the damage looked worse than it had in Charlie’s photo. The elegant old car was completely wrecked, and there was a good deal of blood mixed with the red mud splashed on the driver’s door. No bullet or buckshot damage, though, just that unmistakable crease.

  And looking at that dent, Buddy decided that Wayne’s theory was quite reasonable. At some point, somebody had driven up behind the car and given it a right smart smack. Had it been done carelessly or deliberately? A bad driver or somebody with a grudge? But however it had happened, the impact could have sent the Pierce-Arrow careening out of control and over the embankment. Which could turn an accidental death into manslaughter, at a minimum. The question was who?

  Back in the office with a second cup of coffee, Buddy sat down at his desk and took his notebook out of his shirt pocket. The Beast followed him in, jumped gracefully onto the windowsill, and began washing his right paw with a bright pink tongue.

  Buddy regarded the cat for a moment. Gravely, he said, “You go back down where you came from and get Roy Burns to tell you who was driving that car—the one that hit Whitworth’s Pierce-Arrow last night.”

  The Beast put his paw down and stared at him with those burnt-copper eyes. He didn’t say anything. After a moment, he began washing his left paw.

  With a sigh, Buddy turned to a clean page in his notebook and wrote Pile at the top of the page, and moonshine. Under that he wrote Warden. He frowned, thought, and wrote Bufford, although he wasn’t sure that was how the man spelled his name. Then he thought some more, remembered the widow’s lie about the divorce and wrote Miz Whitworth. He frowned, remembering something else Ophelia Snow had told him, which hadn’t really registered at the time. After the name, he wrote new car and added a question mark. And hadn’t Ophelia also said something about Mrs. Whitworth being a terrible driver? He added another question mark.

  He was still considering this list when the front screen door slammed and a sharp female voice shrilled, “Yoo-hoo! Sheriff? Is anybody here? It’s me.”

  Buddy sighed. He knew who me was, and he fervently wished she would go away. But he also knew she wouldn’t, so he closed his notebook and raised his voice. “I’m in the office, Miz Adcock.”

  The woman who came in—a sharp-chinned woman with a prissy mouth and squinty gray eyes—was wearing a bright purple dress, purple gloves, and a purple hat. Over the past few months, Leona Ruth Adcock had taken a liking to the new sheriff and had gotten into the habit of bringing him “tips” that she hoped might help him “solve crimes.” Indeed, one of her tips had resulted in the return of four disgracefully overdue library books to a grateful Miss Rogers at the Darling library, which Buddy didn’t count as much of a crime.

  As a tipster, Leona Ruth was only marginally useful. She was a sponge. Everywhere she went, she soaked up bits of this and that and mixed and mingled (and mangled) all of it with her own imagination. When she came to him with a story, it was impossible to tell what part of it—if any—was factual. Still, he had to listen to her. It was his job.

  “How are you today, Miz Adcock?” Buddy said with a phony heartiness, and waved his hand toward a chair. “Sit down and rest yourself a bit.”

  “B’lieve I will, thank you,” Leona Ruth said, and settled herself on the other side of Buddy’s desk. “This won’t take long, Sheriff. I just stopped in to tell you that Mr. Whitworth didn’t get hisself killed in any accident. It was deliberate.” She gave a sharp nod and the peacock feathers fluttered on her hat, their markings looking remarkably like a pair of large, iridescent blue eyes, encircled in green. “I know it for a fact.”

  “You do?” Normally, Buddy would have been skeptical. In this case, however, the lady might be onto something. So far as he knew, he and Wayne were the only ones aware of that dent in the back of Whitworth’s wrecked car.

  “Yes, I certainly do,” she said emphatically. “Mrs. Audrey Dunlap thinks her husband killed him.”

  Buddy’s jaw dropped. “Mrs. Dunlap? You mean, Liz Lacy’s mother? The one who—”

  “Exactly,” Leona Ruth said with satisfaction. “Mrs. Dunlap, who recently married Mr. Dunlap, from the Five and Dime. I learned this just a little while ago, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I finally decided that it was my duty as a concerned citizen to tell you.” She gave a nervous look at the Beast, who was staring at her with a fixed concentration. “That cat—he is certainly a malevolent creature.”

  “He’s just an old cat,” Buddy sai
d. “A stray. Don’t pay any attention to him. Why would Mr. Dunlap—”

  “Because Mr. Whitworth was his partner, that’s why.” Leona Ruth leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Which Mrs. Dunlap just found out about.”

  “I see,” Buddy said. Armed with Myra May’s tip, he had already been down that road. He had talked to Mr. Dunlap that morning, while Mr. Whitworth was still just a missing person. Dunlap had told him that Whitworth had come over for a few minutes the evening before to talk about the upcoming barbershop competition. Nothing suspicious there. He cleared his throat. “Did Mrs. Dunlap say why she thought her husband might have wanted to—”

  “Because there was a fight,” Leona Ruth said with relish. “It seems that a ways back, Mr. Dunlap signed a paper saying that the thousand dollars he got from Mr. Whitworth for his store was all he was ever going to get, while Mr. Whitworth would get his share of the profits forever. Doesn’t seem right to me, but that’s the way it is.”

  Buddy nodded. It was the situation that Myra May had described that morning. “It’s called a limited partnership.”

  “Whatever.” Leona Ruth waved her hand. “Doesn’t make it right. Anyway, Audrey—that’s Mrs. Dunlap—she told me that when Mr. Dunlap asked Mr. Whitworth to chip in on a new heating system, Mr. Whitworth said no, he wasn’t putting in any more money. They got into a big argument—worse than that, there was pushing and shoving, Audrey said. After Mr. Whitworth left, Mr. Dunlap was so upset that he went for a long drive, to calm himself. He wouldn’t let Audrey go with him, and he didn’t get home until midnight—and after that, he paced around the house all night and wouldn’t eat Sally-Lou’s apple pancakes for breakfast, which Audrey says he has never done before.”

  “I understand,” Buddy said, “and I’m glad to know all that. But does Mrs. Dunlap have any concrete evidence that her husband actually—”

  “We didn’t go into that,” Leona Ruth said, very prim. “Poor Audrey was terribly upset, and I didn’t feel I should make it worse by asking questions.” She looked down at her purple-gloved hands folded in her purple lap. “Of course, she would never tell you a word of this herself,” she added righteously, “but I felt I had to. It was my civic responsibility!” The peacock feathers on her hat trembled with the force of her conviction.

  Buddy took a deep breath. “Well, I’m glad you did, Miz Adcock,” he said. “I’ll be sure and check into it.”

  Leona Ruth raised her head and fixed him with her eyes. “But I sincerely hope and trust that you won’t tell dear Audrey that I was the one who told you. I mean, I wouldn’t want her to think—”

  But that was as far as she got. For as Leona Ruth raised her head, her peacock feathers shimmered, their eyes twinkled enticingly, and the Beast launched himself into the air, closing the gap between himself and Leona Ruth’s hat in one powerful leap, its force carrying both him and the hat halfway across the room.

  It took quite a while to calm Leona Ruth’s hysterics, rescue her battered, de-feathered hat, and banish the Beast. Afterward, Buddy escorted her out to the sheriff’s squad car and drove her home, still sniffling into her handkerchief. He walked her to her door, took off his hat, and solemnly thanked her again.

  “Speaking as the sheriff,” he said, “it’s just real good to know that the law in this town can count on people like you.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I consider it my duty.”

  Back in the office, he opened a fresh can of tuna fish, whistled for the Beast, and watched while the cat made short work of an extra-large helping.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  OPHELIA, LIZ, AND CHARLIE

  Ophelia’s husband Jed was always cautioning her against poking her nose into things that weren’t her business, but she had never been able to corral her curiosity once it got a bit between its teeth. And while she felt downright sorry for Regina Whitworth—even if the poor thing was planning to divorce her husband, it must have been terrible to lose him in the blink of an eye, as it were—she was still puzzling over several unanswered questions.

  Which was nothing new, of course, for Ophelia often spent whole days trying to unravel variously twisted skeins of thought that led her here, there, and everywhere. She had never been what anybody would call an organized thinker—although in her own considered opinion, this was an asset, because it sometimes led to conclusions that a more orderly thinker might miss.

  And for another thing, Ophelia had not once during her expedition with the sheriff taken her reporter’s notebook out of her handbag, and she had almost no little bits of human-interest story to soften Charlie Dickens’ report of the accident. While there was that intriguing business about Mr. Whitworth’s being a silent partner in Bodeen Pyle’s moonshine operation, that didn’t exactly qualify as human interest, did it?

  And Regina’s little white lie about the divorce—well, that didn’t count, either. The sheriff was right when he said it wasn’t related to Mr. Whitworth’s accident. At least, not on the surface and not in any way that Ophelia could easily see. And anyway, Charlie couldn’t use it. Divorce was one of the words Darling didn’t like to read in its newspaper.

  So when Sheriff Norris let her out of his car in front of the Dispatch office, Ophelia stood for a moment on the sidewalk, trying to decide what to do next. She hated to confess to Charlie that her errand—for which she had given up that meeting with the men of the Share the Wealth Society—had not been as productive as he hoped. She needed to talk this over with somebody who could help her think this through. Liz Lacy. That’s who she would talk to!

  And having made up her mind, she turned, crossed the street, and headed straight for the bed of bright fall annuals—purple asters, orange marigolds, red zinnias, and yellow chrysanthemums—blooming with a burst of color in a corner of the courthouse lawn. As a Dahlia, she had helped plant that bed, along with Aunt Hetty Little and Bessie Bloodworth. She had weeded it, too. Which made them her flowers more than anybody else’s.

  She bent over and began to pick a bouquet.

  Upstairs at her desk in Mr. Moseley’s law office, Lizzy was talking to Mrs. Ellie Sue Slimm, who had a legal problem.

  “I’m so sorry you’ve had this trouble,” she said soothingly. “I’ve written down everything you’ve told me, and I’ll let Mr. Moseley know about it the minute he gets back to town. But in the meantime, maybe you could have a talk with the sheriff.”

  The woman seated in the chair on the other side of Lizzy’s desk was wearing a plain cotton housedress and no gloves, and her going-to-town straw hat was trimmed with a wilted-looking red crepe paper rose.

  “I did that yestiddy,” Mrs. Slimm said. “The sheriff says it’s a civil matter, which ain’t the same as criminal, so he can’t do anything about it. Or won’t,” she added with weary resignation. “Which amounts to the same thing, I reckon. The sheriff says I should take Tom Jerkins to court to make him pay what he owes me for that mule. He’s a good mule with a lot of years left in him.” She unsnapped her pocketbook. “I’ve got a bill of sale right here, with Tom Jerkin’s name on it and the date, all legal. There’s more than half owing on that mule, and I purely do need that money.”

  Tom Jerkins. The name rang a bell, Lizzy thought. Mr. Moseley had dealt with him earlier, when he had tried to skip out on another debt. “It’s good that you have the bill of sale,” she said. “You hang onto it until you’ve talked to Mr. Moseley. How can he get in touch with you?”

  The woman looked down at her chapped, work-worn hands. “Don’t have no phone. But he can call my near neighbor, Stella Parnell, and she’ll send her little girl across the road to get me. Her number is Evergreen 237.”

  “Thank you.” Lizzy wrote it down: EV 237. “I’ll tell him.”

  Mrs. Slimm’s complaint against Tom Jerkins was typical of the things people asked Mr. Moseley to do for them—drawing up property deeds, making wills, collecting debts, mediating disagreements. Small-time, small-town work, but Mr. Moseley preferred it, he said, to the big-ci
ty clients he had in Montgomery and Mobile, who were often intentionally crooked and hired him to clean up their criminal messes.

  But the trouble was that Mr. Moseley’s Darling clients didn’t always have cash to pay their legal bills. Which meant that they paid in whatever they had of value. The week before, a farmer in bib overalls had brought in two fat Rhode Island Red hens.

  “These’ll make real good chicken and dumplings,” he said, handing them to Lizzy. Mr. Moseley, with an eye to a more durable reward than a Sunday dinner, donated the hens to Lizzy’s backyard flock, where they would lay eggs for breakfasts for the two of them, with plenty left over for the Darling Blessing Box. The unfortunate thing, of course, was that people who paid their bill in chickens weren’t paying Lizzy’s salary—which was why Mr. Moseley was thinking of reducing her hours.

  The door opened and Lizzy saw that it was Ophelia. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Snow,” she said brightly. “I’ll be with you in just a minute.”

  Mrs. Slimm stood. “You tell Mr. Moseley.” Her crooked smile showed a missing tooth. “I’ll sure thank him if he can help me get the rest of the money. That mule is a good mule.”

  Lizzy stood and held out her hand. “You’ll hear from him soon,” she promised with a smile. When the woman had gone, she turned to Ophelia.

  “Hey, Opie. Nice to see you.” She gave her friend an appreciative glance. Ophelia didn’t spend much money on her clothes, but she always looked neat and fresh. Today, her pink-and-white belted seersucker dress and pink sweater looked both feminine and professional, and she was carrying a small bouquet of bright flowers.

  “For you,” Ophelia said, holding them out. “For your desk.”

  “Oh, how lovely!” Lizzy exclaimed. “Thank you!” She buried her nose in the flowers and breathed deeply. The marigolds had a distinctive fragrance that always reminded her of a summer garden on a hot, sunshine-blessed day. “What’s the occasion?”