Miss LaMotte turned away, pretending not to notice. She faced Verna, lifting her chin. “I am sorry,” she said sharply, ignoring Verna’s outthrust hand, “but you are mistaken. You are confusing me with someone else. My name is Nona Jean Jamison. I am staying with my aunt here in Darling.”
“Yes, Miss Jamison,” Verna said, feeling rebuffed. She put her hand (her nails really were a little grubby) into her skirt pocket. “I understand that you’re Miss Hamer’s niece, and that you grew up over in Monroeville. But my husband Walter—he’s dead now—and I saw you at the New Amsterdam on West Forty-second Street with Walter’s cousin Gerald. Gerald is from Monroeville, too. So he knew who you were—although he said he would never in the world have recognized you.” She smiled reminiscently. “You and Miss Lake were the Naughty and Nice Sisters. You danced the shimmy, and Miss Lake sang and played the mandolin and made funny jokes. I just want you to know that my husband Walter enjoyed it so much. It was all he talked about on the train back to—”
Miss LaMotte stamped her foot. “I said,” she cried shrilly, “that you are wrong! Wrong, do you hear? I have never been in the theater, and I don’t know a thing about Mr. Ziegfeld’s shows or dancing and singing! I should like to go on about my business now. And I’m sure you have something else to do besides accosting perfect strangers.” Chin up, shoulders straight, clutching her handbag and the paper sack Mr. Lima had given her, she turned away.
But not before Verna saw the shadow of fear in her eyes.
FOUR
Saturday Night in Darling, or Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries Over the summer, Grady had taught Lizzy to drive his blue Ford coupe and encouraged her to practice whenever they went out. She was saving her money to buy a car, but that would take a while. In the meantime, she could ride her bicycle or walk anywhere she wanted to go in Darling and the surrounding countryside. Her house was only a couple of blocks from the courthouse square, around which most of the town’s businesses were located, including the law office where Lizzy worked, upstairs over the newspaper office.
Directly opposite the Dispatch building, in the middle of the square, stood the Cypress County Courthouse, an imposing two-story red brick building with a bell tower and a white-painted dome with a clock that struck every hour. The courthouse, built in 1905, was surrounded by a ragged brown apron of scuffed grass bordered with bright summer annuals: marigolds, zinnias, nasturtiums, cosmos, and the like. The flowers were planted, watered, and weeded by the Darling Dahlias for everyone in town to see and enjoy. The Dahlias believed that when times were hard, a few flower seeds could go a long way toward making people feel better, and they put that belief into practice wherever they could. Times were definitely hard in Darling these days, although folks who had been up north or back east said it was a lot worse in the big cities, where people were mostly strangers to one another and had to rely on the Salvation Army soup kitchens for food and Red Cross shelters when they didn’t have a place to sleep. “We’d rather be in Darling than anywhere else,” those folks said when they got back home, “especially when things are bad.”
The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies
Susan Wittig Albert's books
- The Face of a Stranger
- The Silent Cry
- The Sins of the Wolf
- The Dark Assassin
- The Whitechapel Conspiracy
- The Sheen of the Silk
- The Twisted Root
- The Lost Symbol
- After the Funeral
- The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
- After the Darkness
- The Best Laid Plans
- The Doomsday Conspiracy
- The Naked Face
- The Other Side of Me
- The Sands of Time
- The Sky Is Falling
- The Stars Shine Down
- The Lying Game #6: Seven Minutes in Heaven
- The First Lie
- All the Things We Didn't Say
- The Good Girls
- The Heiresses
- The Perfectionists
- The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly
- The Lies That Bind
- Ripped From the Pages
- The Book Stops Here
- The New Neighbor
- A Cry in the Night
- The Phoenix Encounter
- The Dead Will Tell: A Kate Burkholder Novel
- The Perfect Victim
- Fear the Worst: A Thriller
- The Naturals, Book 2: Killer Instinct
- The Fixer
- The Good Girl
- Cut to the Bone: A Body Farm Novel
- The Devil's Bones
- The Bone Thief: A Body Farm Novel-5
- The Bone Yard
- The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel
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- The Girl in the Woods
- The Dead Room
- The Death Dealer
- The Silenced
- The Hexed (Krewe of Hunters)
- The Night Is Alive
- The Night Is Forever
- The Night Is Watching
- In the Dark
- The Betrayed (Krewe of Hunters)
- The Cursed
- The Dead Play On
- The Forgotten (Krewe of Hunters)
- Under the Gun
- The Paris Architect: A Novel
- The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush
- Always the Vampire
- The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose
- The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree
- The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star
- The Doll's House
- The Garden of Darkness
- The Creeping
- The Killing Hour
- The Long Way Home
- Defend and Betray
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- Bone Island 01 - Ghost Shadow
- Bone Island 02 - Ghost Night
- Bone Island 03 - Ghost Moon
- Last Vampire Standing