The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

Until, that is, the second auditor showed up, also unannounced. Where the first fellow had been polite and laconic, the second was a fussy little man barely five feet high. He had a bald head, gold-rimmed glasses, a habit of walking on the tips of his toes, and the manner of a bossy banty rooster. He arrived early one morning with a brown leather briefcase in his hand, introduced himself as Mr. Daniel Beecham, Senior State Auditor, and appropriated Mr. Scroggins’ desk (which didn’t much matter because Mr. Scroggins rarely used it). He hung his brown felt bowler hat on a peg, draped his suit coat over the back of Mr. Scroggins’ chair, and fastened red elastic garters above his elbows, like a bank teller. Then he opened his briefcase and took out a pen, a bottle of ink, and a yellow tablet and ordered Verna to bring out the records, one large volume after another.

Mr. Beecham sat at Mr. Scroggins’ desk for a full week, which of course was a week of pure hell for Verna. For the first several days, he methodically worked his way through the records of the money that the county had collected in the past four years: sales taxes, property taxes, licenses and fees, and all funds received from the state. He examined every ledger entry, dipping his pen into his ink bottle and jotting columns of figures on his tablet. He went through the records of the various checking accounts and spent a full day examining the county expenditures. Verna, whose desk was next to his, could hear the sound of the pages turning, the irritating scritch-scratch of his pen, and an occasional sigh, whether of weariness or impatience, she couldn’t tell. It was all terribly unsettling.

Mr. Beecham was nothing if not punctual. He came in promptly at eight every morning and left with his briefcase at five every afternoon. He ate lunch at the desk, a sandwich and an apple packed for him by the cook at the Old Alabama Hotel, where he was staying. As he worked, he hummed tunelessly to himself, but he never said a word, except to ask for this or that ledger—and on the last day, to request that the office mechanical adding machine (a genuine Dalton that Verna had recently purchased for seventy-three dollars and ninety-five cents) be placed on his desk. He sometimes stopped to blow his nose into a white handkerchief, or sip coffee poured into a cup from a Thermos bottle. But otherwise, the little man did nothing but read and write for hours on end. Until the last day, that is, when he operated the Dalton nonstop, all day long, adding the columns of figures on his tablet.

Verna prided herself on being able to size people up, and she watched Mr. Beecham’s face carefully, trying to read his reactions. But she had no luck whatsoever. The little man was as stone-faced as the Sphinx. And when he left for the last time, at four fifty-nine p.m. on Friday afternoon, he said not a word of good-bye. He folded up the adding machine tape, put his tablet, pen, and ink bottle into his briefcase, put on his coat, slapped his hat on his head, and briskly left the office.

“What do you suppose will happen next?” Melba Jean asked fearfully.

“We’ll all three be lynched,” Ruthie said, with her grim gallows humor. “Or tarred and feathered.”

“Nothing at all will happen,” Verna said stoutly, summoning all her confidence. “I will see you both on Monday morning. I hope you have a very good weekend.”

She had been right, at least for a short while. Things went on just as usual, with Mr. Earl Scroggins popping in only once, to pick up the quarterly treasurer’s report that Verna had prepared for him to take to the county commissioners’ meeting. Verna had continued as usual, too, shopping for groceries, doing her laundry, borrowing S. S. Van Dine’s The Benson Murder Case from Miss Rogers at the library, mowing her grass, and helping the Dahlias with their new vegetable garden.

But all through the first few days after Mr. Beecham’s visit, Verna held her breath, especially when Ruthie handed her the mail from the post office. She went through the stack carefully, not wanting to see an envelope from the state of Alabama but at the same time wanting to see it. The suspense was killing her.

And to make things worse, she couldn’t talk to anybody about her worries. Definitely not to Melba Jean and Ruthie, for she felt she couldn’t trust either of them not to spill the beans all over Darling. And not even to her best friend, Liz Lacy. A long time ago, she had pledged to herself that she wouldn’t whine about her job, no matter how bad it got. A job was a job was a job and you did it, come hell or high water. Complaining was a sign of weakness. Verna had never broken that rule, and she wasn’t going to start now.

Anyway, as the days went by and no letter arrived, she had more or less convinced herself that things were more or less hunky-dory and she began to feel a little easier—at least as far as the audit was concerned. But she still couldn’t decide how to deal with the bewildering multiplicity of bank accounts. And those awful nightmares just kept coming.

Now, Clyde lifted his head and licked Verna’s chin as if to reassure her that whatever happened, she could count on him. He would always be around to take care of her and make sure that nothing bad ever happened. She was hugging him gratefully when the telephone on the wall startled her with a brassy brriingg-brriingg-bring. Two longs and a short. Her ring. Probably one of the Dahlias calling.