The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

“You can trust me,” Myra May replied in a comforting tone. “I won’t tell a soul. And I’m glad she didn’t go all the way to Nashville.” She tilted her head. “Would you like to borrow Big Bertha instead, Liz? I’m taking a shift on the switchboard tonight, or I’d offer to drive you. But I’d be glad to lend you the car, if you like.”


Lizzy considered. Big Bertha was Myra May’s old Chevy touring car, and probably a good alternative. If she asked Grady to lend her his car, he would volunteer to drive, and she didn’t think it was a good idea to share any of this with him. Grady was a dear and she loved him, but he could be a stickler when it came to rules. He might not understand about Verna hiding from the sheriff when there was a warrant out on her. And now that she had spilled the beans, she might as well take up Myra May on her offer.

“Thanks,” Lizzy said gratefully. “I’d love to borrow Big Bertha. That’s really good of you, Myra May.”

Downstairs, the old job press in the Dispatch office started up. It wasn’t as loud as the newspaper press, but it made quite a racket.

Myra May raised her voice. “Good, hell. You know me, Liz. Curious is my middle name. When you bring Bertha home, come in for a cup of coffee.” She gave Lizzy a wicked grin. “Maybe I can get you to tell me how much Verna really has in that bank account—and where she got it.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Lizzy said with a chuckle, picking up the letter she had to mail and pushing back her chair. “I’ll walk with you. I’m headed for the post office.”





ELEVEN

Charlie Dickens



Downstairs, in the Dispatch office, Charlie Dickens finished repairing the ink roller on the old Prouty job press, a real antique he had inherited with the business, and began printing the menus for the Old Alabama Hotel. While he worked, he was puzzling over what had happened that morning during that surprising and painful encounter with Angelina Dupree Biggs, his high school sweetheart.

Angelina was water under a very old bridge, very long ago, and their flaming, furtive passion—now as cold and unappetizing as last night’s okra gumbo, and difficult, embarrassing even, to remember—was a thing of a long-dead past. Angelina had decided not to wait for Charlie to finish college and get a job that would support her in the style to which her mother thought she should become accustomed. She had opted instead to become Angelina Biggs, and Charlie’s love for her (if that’s what it was, or something else) had died a sudden and chilly death.

This had happened so long ago that Charlie had all but forgotten it, except to be glad, now and again, that Artis Biggs and his Buick had come along when they did. Not being married to Angelina, he had been able to cut his ties to Darling. Not being married to anybody, he had been able to travel and work and play whenever and wherever and as much or as little as he pleased, having to consider only his own wants and whims. And as a bachelor, he had no wife to nag him about his drinking. He bore no ill will toward Angelina for jilting him, quite the contrary. He was glad that she had married a man who gave her children and treated her right. It had all worked out, the way things usually do if you let them alone for long enough.

At least, that’s what Charlie had thought until this morning, when Angelina (now almost twice the size she had been when he could scoop his arm around her tiny waist and twirl her around the dance floor) had come into the Dispatch office. She was there to turn in the copy for the next week’s menus for the Old Alabama Hotel, the way she usually did. Angelina was always a little diffident on these occasions, as if she might be remembering what had once been between them and wondering if Charlie remembered it, too, which he did, sometimes, in the way of a man who remembers a dream of something beautiful glimpsed long ago.

But this morning, Angelina had done something totally unexpected. Instead of staying on the customer’s side of the wooden counter that divided the public area from the working area, she had come around behind it, and before he realized what was happening, she had accosted him. Yes, accosted him—there was no other word for it. She had flung her plump arms around his neck and pressed the soft, heaving pillows of her bosom against him in a way that inspired not passion but panic in Charlie’s breast. The room was brightly lit and the two of them were standing in full view of the sidewalk. What if somebody walked past the plate-glass window and looked in?

“Stop it, Angelina,” he commanded hoarsely. “You gone crazy or something? Just quit! You hear me? Quit!” He grabbed her arms and pushed them down to her sides, freeing himself from her grip.