The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

A little later, Lizzy put on her yellow straw hat and locked the office. Then she and Bessie went down the stairs and out onto Franklin Street, which ran east and west along one side of the courthouse square. The dusty streets (the Darling Women’s Club were still lobbying for pavement but with tax revenues falling, it looked like a lost cause again this year) were busy on this midday Monday, and loud with the noise of people going here and there and doing this and that. From the opposite side of the square, on Dauphin, an ooga-ooga horn blurted, several automobiles chugged loudly, and a hammer pounded sharply and irregularly—Mr. Dunlap repairing the sagging awning of his five-and-dime. A train whistle sounded from the rail yard several blocks to the east, where in years past, great stacks of cotton bales had waited for shipment to the textile mills. Now, between the drought and the growing recession (some newspapers were even beginning to call it a depression), there were far fewer bales and almost no corn, and the rail cars mostly hauled lumber from the Bear Creek sawmill north of town. Still, some people had plenty of money, as Lizzy recalled, as she saw Bailey Beauchamp’s lemon yellow Cadillac cruising west on Franklin. It turned the corner and bumped to a stop in front of the Darling Savings and Trust, where Lizzy intended to go, just as soon as she and Bessie had finished their little chore.

But not everybody drove a late-model auto. Next door on the west, tied to the wooden rail in front of Hancock’s Groceries, stood a brown mule hitched to an Old Hickory farm wagon, patiently flicking flies with its tail. Many of the farmers drove horses and wagons when they brought their butter and eggs and honey to Mr. Hancock to trade for tea and coffee and flour and salt. Next to the mule was an old black Model T Ford that had been made into a truck by pulling out the back seat and the window and adding a big wooden box. And next to that was the old green Packard that belonged to Mr. Howard, who was leaning against the fender with a cud of tobacco in his cheek, waiting for Mrs. Howard to do her week’s grocery shopping. On the backseat of the Packard was a crate of live chickens and a small goat.

Lizzy and Bessie turned left on Franklin in front of the Dispatch office. Looking through the window, Lizzy could see Charlie Dickens hunched over his typewriter, his green celluloid eyeshade pulled down over his eyes. She was uncomfortably reminded that she needed to get her column finished tonight, if she intended to meet tomorrow’s deadline. She was thinking of this when Bessie grasped her arm.

“Liz, that must be him!” she exclaimed in a half whisper, pointing. “Mr. Gold! Or Mr. Diamond—depending on who you believe.”

The man who had just crossed Franklin Street paused in front of the diner, took off his hat, and mopped his bald head with a handkerchief. He was of medium height and wore a light gray three-piece suit and gray hat. He put his hat back on, pocketed his handkerchief, and glanced back over his shoulder with an air of caution, as if to make sure he was not being followed.

Lizzy pulled in her breath and peered, trying to get a good look. This was the man Verna suspected of being a member of the Capone gang—or was he a government agent? “It looks like he’s going into the diner,” she said.

Bessie’s grip tightened and she pulled Lizzy forward. “No. He’s heading for the telephone booth. He’s going to make a phone call!”

The booth was a new feature in town, and the only one of its kind. It was said of Mr. Whitey Whitworth, half owner of the Darling Telephone Exchange (Myra May and Violet owned the other half), that he had more money than sense, and that the phone booth was a good example.

The year before, Mr. Whitworth had taken a trip to Atlanta, where he had seen his very first telephone booth on the sidewalk in front of the National Bank of Georgia. All you had to do was plug enough nickels, dimes, and quarters into the three slots at the top of the phone and you could call anybody, anywhere in the country, maybe even the world, if the person you were calling in France or Italy or wherever had a telephone and you knew the number. He had been so fascinated by the way the pay telephone worked and the cheerful clink-clink-clink of the coins dropping into the coin box that he had spent all of three dollars making long-distance calls to his whole family.