The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose (9 page)

Startled, Lizzy glanced at the Seth Thomas clock on the wall. It was nearly eight thirty. Verna should be in the courthouse across the street, settling into the day’s work at the county probate clerk and treasurer’s office.

“Why, Verna,” she said, surprised. “What are
you
doing here? Why aren’t you—”

She stopped, remembering what Myra May had said (or rather, what she
hadn’t
said) at the diner earlier this morning, and the strained expression on Myra May’s face when she looked over Lizzy’s shoulder at Verna’s boss. And Coretta Cole fidgeting on the edge of her chair while Mr. Scroggins and Mr. Tombull had their heads together. Obviously, something was going on. Something serious.

“I’m here because Mr. Scroggins called me up on the phone on Saturday afternoon and told me I had to stay away from the office,” Verna said tautly. “He ordered me to give him my key.”

“Stay away?” Lizzy asked in dismay. Now she guessed what Myra May must have overheard when she put the call through the Exchange: Verna’s boss telling her not to come to work. But she still didn’t understand. “Why? Are they painting the office or something?”

It couldn’t be as simple as that, though. Myra May wouldn’t be worried and Verna wouldn’t look so desperate over an office paint job. And there wouldn’t be any nonsense about a key.

“No, they’re not painting,” Verna replied in a choked voice. “Mr. Scroggins told me that Coretta Cole is coming in to manage my office. Coretta Cole!” she repeated, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was saying. “Coretta doesn’t know beans about anything. She always depends on me to tell her what she’s supposed to do, and even then, she can’t be trusted to get it right. And the other two women in the office know even less than Coretta does. When I get back—
if
I get back—there’ll be chaos. Total chaos. It’ll take me months to straighten things out.”

“You haven’t been . . .” Lizzy pulled in her breath. “You haven’t been
fired
, have you?”

The way things were these days, firing was just about the worst thing she could think of. Jobs were scarce as hens’ teeth, and if you’d been fired from one, it was next to impossible to get another. But if Verna had been fired, that would account for Coretta Cole, with her gray suit and red hat and Joan Crawford eyes, having breakfast with Verna’s boss and a county commissioner.

But Verna was shaking her head. “Not fired—yet. Officially, I’m furloughed. But it’s going to get worse, Liz. I . . . I think I’m about to be—” She stopped and took a breath, as if she had to steel herself to say the next word. “Arrested.”

“Arrested!” Lizzy repeated, feeling as if the floor had just tilted under her chair. “But that can’t be, Verna. What makes you think—”

“I need to talk to Mr. Moseley,” Verna broke in. “This morning, Liz. Right
now
, if I can.” Anxiously, she looked toward the open door to his office. “He isn’t in yet? What time can I see him?”

“He’s not here, Verna. He’s in Birmingham, and then he’s driving over to Warm Springs to meet with Governor Roosevelt. He won’t be in at all this week.” Lizzy shook her head, bewildered. “I don’t understand. Why would anybody want to
arrest
you?”

“Not here?” Verna wailed, disconsolate. She sank into the chair on the other side of Lizzy’s desk. “But I need him, Liz! I
need
Mr. Moseley.”

And with that, she began to sob, which by itself was incredibly shocking, since Lizzy had never once seen her friend cry, not even when Verna sprained her ankle on the courthouse steps and had to hobble a whole block to Doc Rogers’ office, leaning on Lizzy’s arm. Verna was one of those stoic women who hid her feelings and kept an absolutely stiff upper lip. And now she was falling apart, right in front of Lizzy’s eyes.

Lizzy stood up and took charge of the situation. “What you need more than anything else,” she said firmly, “is a cup of coffee and a doughnut. And then you need to tell me all about it.
All,
” she repeated emphatically. “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, Verna. I can’t help you if I don’t know every detail.”

Actually, she didn’t know whether she could help Verna at all. There must be something seriously wrong, if her friend was afraid of being arrested. But they had to start somewhere. And she had heard Mr. Moseley say those very same words to many clients who came to him in desperation, wanting him to fix this or that predicament they’d gotten themselves into. He always insisted on knowing every little detail about the situation, good, bad, or indifferent.

“You?”
Verna asked in surprise, and then bit her lip. “I didn’t mean—That is, I wasn’t expecting . . .” She stopped, took a breath, and went on lamely, “I was hoping that Mr. Moseley would take my case, Liz. I can’t ask you to listen to—”

“Oh, yes, you can,” Lizzy said firmly, and put the coffee cup down in front of Verna. “If you want Mr. Moseley to take your case, you are going to sit right there and tell me everything from
A
to
Z
, every single thing you know about this situation. I am going to write it all down.” She opened the drawer and got out the bag of doughnuts. “When Mr. Moseley calls on the telephone, I’ll relay what you’ve told me. He can tell us what to do. When he gets back, he can take over.”

Verna heaved an enormous sigh of relief. “That sounds good, Liz. Actually, that sounds
swell.
I’m so grateful. I don’t know how I can thank you.”

Lizzy raised her hand. “I can’t promise anything, of course. But Mr. Moseley is very good at straightening things out for people.” She paused, thinking how proud she felt when she said that. Mr. Moseley really was a very good lawyer. “In fact,” she added reassuringly, “I’ve never seen him tackle a case that turned out to be too tough to handle.”

Verna’s face darkened. “Have you ever seen him tackle an embezzlement case?”

Lizzy was jolted. “Embezzlement?” She had been thinking that Verna might be involved in a minor property dispute or even a disagreement over an unpaid bill. But
embezzlement
? Why, depending on the amount, that could be a felony! But of course even if she were arrested and charged, Verna wouldn’t be convicted. Mr. Moseley would get her off, because she was innocent. Steal money? She would never in the world do such a thing. In fact, this whole thing was beginning to seem like some sort of unfunny prank.

“You’ve got to be kidding, Verna,” she said at last. “This is a joke. Isn’t it?”

“I wish it were, Liz.” Verna’s voice was grim. “But I’m afraid I’m in serious trouble. Come on. Let’s get started.”

Still half disbelieving, Lizzy reached for her steno pad and a pen. Ten minutes later, she had to agree. If even half of what Verna feared was true, she was in
very
serious trouble.

FIVE

Myra May

Myra May got up early every morning to make the first batch of biscuits and start the grits. Mrs. Hancock, at the grocery store down the street, stocked a new-fangled quick-cooking grits for people who were in a hurry. But for pure down-home flavor, Myra May preferred the stone-ground white cornmeal she bought from a gristmill at the north end of the county. It took longer, about forty minutes, and you had to cook it just at a simmer and stir the pot every time you walked past it, or it would scorch. But whether you ate your grits plain with a chunk of butter or smothered in red-eye gravy or sliced and fried in bacon grease, or even topped with honey or molasses (which in Myra May’s opinion was just plain wrong), it tasted like grits was supposed to taste. Like corn, real corn, not like library paste.

Myra May glanced into the Exchange to see Henrietta on the job, then went to turn on the lights and the Philco that sat on the shelf behind the counter. This morning, station WODX in Mobile led off with “I Got Rhythm” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” which made Myra jig a little as she slipped on her apron over her trousers and plaid blouse. Then she stirred up the big copper pot of grits, started the coffee, and rolled and cut out the yeast doughnuts that had been rising overnight. She remembered to light the fire under the fat kettle so Euphoria could fry up the doughnuts after they’d had another rise. Then she made three dozen biscuits (that was all that would fit into the oven at one time) and checked to see that the tables were set up and the cream pitchers and sugar bowls filled. There were lots of little details involved in putting breakfast together, and Myra May always felt best when she could stay on top of everything, even if it meant getting up very early in the morning.

About the time that the first batch of biscuits came out of the oven and the radio was playing “Them There Eyes,” Euphoria arrived to take over her kitchen, where she was queen. Euphoria was famous across Cypress County for her fried chicken, meat loaf, meringue pies, and doughnuts. Without her, the diner would be in serious trouble, and she knew it. Myra May and Violet knew it, too, and made a point of never crossing Euphoria, especially when she was in a bad mood. She was likely to take off her apron, stalk out, and go on home. She tied on her capacious red and blue apron, rolled up her sleeves, and began frying doughnuts, stirring up pancake batter, and slicing ham, so everything would be ready for the early crowd. It would be all men at that hour, railroaders and sawmill hands and workers at the small Coca-Cola Bottling Plant on the south end of town, mostly single men with no woman to cook breakfast for them at home.

Violet came downstairs with Cupcake on her hip when the radio began to play Lee Morse’s catchy version of “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby!” Violet was wearing a pretty blue cotton print dress, and her taffy-colored hair was smoothed back from her face and tied with a blue ribbon, with a matching ribbon in Cupcake’s strawberry blond curls. She was just in time to take the second batch of biscuits out of the oven and sugar-glaze Euphoria’s doughnuts, smiling so cheerfully all the while that Myra May just had to smile back at her.

Which was saying something, because before Violet came along, Myra May hadn’t found much to smile about. She had even thought seriously of leaving dumpy little Darling and going off to live in a big city. She was glad now that she hadn’t, for if she had gone to Mobile or Atlanta, she might have missed meeting up with Violet Sims, which would have been such a sad thing that Myra May didn’t like to think about it.

Of course, it worked the other way as well, for until Violet met Myra May, she had been what her mother called
flighty
, never able to settle down to one thing in one place for any length of time. Every so often, she’d get what she called
itchy feet
, so she’d pack her suitcase and go down to the Greyhound station and buy a ticket for who knows where, just to be on the move.

But when Violet got off the bus that morning a couple of years ago, it hadn’t taken her more than a few days to discover that Darling was the place she wanted to stay and that her new friend Myra May Mosswell was just as steady and solid as an anchor holding a boat in a fast-moving current. No matter how hard the current might tug or how crazily the boat might bob up and down in the water, the anchor always held. And when Violet brought her niece Cupcake home after her sister died and the baby’s totally worthless drunk of a daddy tried to give the newborn away to strangers, Myra May proved to be as dependably steady and reliable for the two of them as she had been for Violet alone. So it wasn’t any wonder that Violet always felt like smiling as she came downstairs in the morning, or that Myra May turned from the big copper pot of grits with a spoon in her hand and a grin on her face.

“Yes, sir, that’s my baby,” she sang, and waved the spoon at Cupcake and Violet. “No, sir, don’t mean maybe. Yes, sir, that’s my baby,
now
.”

The breakfast hour was always too busy for any kind of talk except “eggs over easy” and “double up on the gravy” or “more java over here!” The railroad and sawmill workers left and the people who worked around the courthouse square began to show up—they didn’t have to be on the job until nine, when the shops and offices opened. (That was when Earle Scroggins and Coretta Cole and Mr. Tombull had come in.) The table and counter traffic usually got lighter after the courthouse square gang left, and Myra May and Violet finally had time to fill their plates and coffee cups and take them to the table in the back corner beside Cupcake’s bassinet, where they could relax and talk about the work that had to be done that day.

Breakfast was out of the way, but there would be another two meals to cook and serve, shopping to do, and the Exchange to keep an eye on. Myra May and Violet would be pretty busy, especially since they had cut back on the afterschool help. The breakfast traffic was still brisk but the lunch bunch had slimmed down—more folks were packing peanut butter and jelly, it seemed. And the supper business had definitely dropped off. People were holding on to their money. They just weren’t eating out as much as they used to, even on Friday and Saturday nights. In the
Montgomery
Advertiser
, Myra May had read that dozens of restaurants had closed their doors in New York City—this, next to a photograph of the brand-new forty-one-million-dollar Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world, which was scheduled to open in a couple of weeks. In Myra May’s opinion, there wasn’t any justice in the world.

This morning, Myra May sat down with her grits, eggs, and coffee, but she didn’t say much. For a while, they ate in silence, Violet watching out of the corner of her eye. At last, she said, lightly, “Cat got your tongue, Myra May?”

Myra May frowned. “I’m not liking this one bit, Violet. Feels pretty serious to me, especially after I saw Earle Scroggins and Amos Tombull with their heads together this morning and Coretta Cole sitting there looking smug as a puppy with two tails.”

She didn’t have to say what
this
was. Violet knew. She and Myra May both worked the switchboard, and while the other operators were sternly instructed
not
to listen in, the two of them had long ago given themselves permission to break what they always thought of as the Rule, with a capital
R
. The other operators were also forbidden to talk to one another about things they heard when they were on the switchboard. But Myra May and Violet broke this rule, too—only with one another, of course, and only in private.

“Verna must be so scared,” Violet said in a low voice. “I know I would be, if it was me. How’s she holding up?”

“Dunno,” Myra May replied glumly. “Haven’t seen her all weekend. I asked Liz about her when she came in for a doughnut this morning, but she didn’t seem to know a thing. Liz must’ve guessed that something was up, though. You should have seen the look on her face when she caught sight of Coretta Cole, having breakfast with those two bigwigs. Between them, they pull every string that ever gets pulled in Cypress County.”

“I thought Coretta was a friend of Verna’s,” Violet said.

“Obviously not.” Myra May’s mouth tightened. “You don’t treat a friend like dirt, the way Coretta is treating Verna. But five will get you ten that she won’t be in Verna’s job for long. She is totally disorganized. She’ll make a mess of that office in nothing flat.” Myra May had met Coretta when they both volunteered to run the Children’s Day program at the park for the Darling Ladies Club. Myra May had ended up doing most of Coretta’s work.

“She’s probably thrilled to be working full time again,” Violet said softly. “I heard from Mrs. Musgrove at the hardware store that Coretta’s husband got laid off out at the Coca-Cola bottling plant. The Coles have two kids in high school. I’m sure they’re hard up for money.”

“You’re too softhearted, Violet. Everybody’s hard up for money. And it’s no excuse for being underhanded. Why, Verna taught Coretta all she knows about that office. And now Coretta is taking Verna’s job!”

This wasn’t a wild guess. Myra May and Violet had pieced together what they knew about the situation from several overheard phone conversations, going back to the previous Thursday.

It had started with a call from the state auditor to Mr. Tombull, chairman of the board of county commissioners, at Tombull’s Real Estate, out at the end of Dauphin. Violet had to stay on the line at the beginning of the call because Mr. Tombull couldn’t be found right away. She needed to be sure he was available, so that she could connect the two parties. When he finally came on the line, slightly winded, the auditor announced right off the bat that there was a fifteen-thousand-dollar discrepancy in the county treasurer’s accounts. This announcement was so shocking that Violet didn’t stop listening, the way she was supposed to. Unashamedly, she eavesdropped on the rest of the conversation.

The auditor said he had sent Mr. Tombull a report of the missing funds, which had been turned over to Cypress County by the state of Alabama from the gasoline tax, to be used for road and bridge upkeep. The letter accompanying the report said that the county should begin its own investigation immediately.

“When a situation like this happens,” the auditor said, “we usually leave it up to the county to decide how it should be handled—that is, whether or not to bring in the local law enforcement. But we do expect that it will be dealt with expeditiously and the culprit brought to justice as soon as possible.” He had paused, cleared his throat, then added in an even sterner voice, “It goes without saying, Mr. Tombull, that there will be a full restitution of funds. This is the gasoline tax fund.” From the tone of his voice, it sounded as if the money were sacred.

“Oh, of course,” Mr. Tombull had replied, obviously caught off guard by this unexpected turn of events but attempting to cling to his dignity and authority. “We’ll get the person who did this. And oh, yes, sir. Full restitution. Of course, of course.”

Myra May was as astonished as Violet when she learned this news. Luckily, she was on the switchboard when the next call went through, no more than an hour later, from Mr. Tombull to Earle Scroggins. Mr. Tombull was as irate as a mule with a mouthful of bumblebees.

“How’d you let this happen, Earle?” he demanded. “We figgered you knowed what you was doin’ with those dang accounts. First I’ve heard about this-here audit, too. Whyn’t you tell me ’bout it when it happened, ’stead of lettin’ me hear it from the state auditor?”

But that was as much as Myra May got to hear at that moment, because Nona Jean Jamison wanted to talk long distance to Chicago, which meant that Myra May had to route the call through Montgomery, Nashville, Memphis, and then to Chicago, which took four or five minutes.

By the time she got back to Mr. Tombull and Mr. Scroggins, Mr. Scroggins was saying, touchily, “I said I’d handle it, Amos, and I will. O’ course, I cain’t rightly guarantee anything about the money. Restitution, I mean. But I’ll do the best I can to get to the bottom of this and see it’s made right, far as I’m able. You can count on that.”

“You better, Earle,” Mr. Tombull growled. “You hear me? You jes’ better do that.” He paused. “The other commissioners are gonna need to know about this. And what about the law? I’m thinkin’ we oughta get Sheriff Burns in on it from the start. That way, there ain’t no question.”

There was a long silence. “Well,” Mr. Scroggins said, “how ’bout you let me see what I can do first, Amos? We can always bring the sheriff in later, if’n it turns out we need the law.” He gave a meaningful cough. “Best thing ’ud be to handle it without the newspaper gettin’ wind of it, wouldn’t you say? Long as we can, anyway. Charlie has got a dickens of a nose for news, if you get my drift.”

Mr. Scroggins laughed as though that were funny, but Myra May noticed that Mr. Tombull didn’t laugh at all. Instead, he said, “I’m also thinkin’ you oughta mend a fence or two with Charlie Dickens, Earle. He’s not like his daddy. He’s a sharp son of a gun and he wants to run that paper like it was the
Baltimore
Sun
.” His voice hardened. “There’s ways to make him back off. If you get my drift.”