The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

Outside on Franklin Street, Bessie and Liz stood in the shade of the faded green canvas awning of Musgrove’s Hardware, next door to the diner on the east. They were looking in the hardware store window, engrossed in a discussion of the merits of the new ten-gallon cast-aluminum National pressure canner that Mr. Musgrove had put on display.

The canner was a hefty contraption with a lid that strapped down and gauges and valves and various other doohickeys, made of heavy-duty aluminum to contain the steam pressure. In the window with the pressure canner were several of the more usual blue enamel canning kettles with wire racks, a pyramid of glass Mason and Kerr canning jars, a basket of lids and rubber rings for older jars fitted with wire bales and the newer screw-on metal rings and flat self-sealing disks, a jar lifter, canning tongs, and a large metal canning funnel—every up-to-the-minute device that a modern housewife would need to outfit her canning kitchen.

Bessie tilted her head to one side, thinking that she and Roseanne could certainly put that pressure canner to use in the kitchen at Magnolia Manor. “You know, Liz,” she said, “if everybody had one of those things, nobody would ever go hungry. They could can all the garden vegetables they could grow—beans, corn, okra, tomatoes, lots of things.” Her own mother and grandmother had always canned most of the family’s food, and she herself put up peaches and tomatoes and green beans and the like, using her mother’s canning kettle. But Mrs. Hancock stocked a variety of canned goods on her grocery shelves, and most women had decided that it was silly to put a lot of time and work into home canning. Using a can opener was very convenient, and if you put plenty of seasoning on the vegetables, most husbands couldn’t tell the difference.

“I’m sure people could can their own food,” Liz said thoughtfully. “But I wonder—” She craned her neck to peer at the price tag. “Why, it costs fourteen dollars and ninety-nine cents, Bessie!” she exclaimed. “Around here, who can afford that? And it looks a little daunting, don’t you think? You’d have to learn how to use all those dials and valves and things.”

Bessie shrugged. “Well, at that price, it’s out of the question. I guess we’ll just have to keep on using the old canning kettle—although it isn’t always safe for things like beans and corn. And it takes hours and hours in the hot kitchen.” But she couldn’t resist a last longing look at the canner. “If we had that at the Magnolia Manor, I’ll bet we wouldn’t have to throw out so many jars of spoiled food.”

“That’s one of the problems with the canning kettle,” Liz agreed. “Tomatoes are okay, but if the food isn’t acid enough, it doesn’t always keep. And no matter how long you boil the jars, they don’t always seal just right. When you bring a quart of green beans from the fruit cellar, it might be moldy, or worse.” She made a face.

Bessie cast a quick look over her shoulder. She and Liz were not standing in front of Mr. Musgrove’s hardware store window for the purpose of discussing what could be done with that pressure canner, interesting as it was. They were waiting for Mr. Frankie Diamond to emerge from the telephone booth on the other side of the diner.

When Liz had come back to the table from her visit to the Exchange, she had told Bessie that Verna was back there, working the switchboard. And that earlier that morning, Verna had had a long telephone conversation with Miss LaMotte’s housekeeper in Cicero. She had learned—among other things—that an attacker had slashed Miss Lake’s face and that Miss LaMotte had shot him.

Bessie stared at Liz across the table. “Shot the slasher?” she gasped incredulously. “Mercy me! Did she . . . Did she kill him?”

“Dead as a doornail,” Liz replied, picking up her glass of iced tea. “And if you ask me, he deserved it.”

Myra May had come up with their dinner plates and was standing behind them, listening. “Who shot a slasher?” she asked anxiously. “When? Where?”

“Shhh,” Liz hissed, shooting a meaningful glance at the baldheaded man at the counter. “Don’t talk so loud. We’ll tell you all about it later.”