The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

Alvin Duffy and Jed Snow were perched on chairs in front of Charlie’s desk. Mr. Duffy wore a natty brown suit and vest and a blue tie and was smoking a cigarette in a long plastic holder, like FDR. Jed wore his familiar blue plaid shirt and a worried look. Charlie was in shirtsleeves, badly rumpled and bleary-eyed, a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth. He looked, Verna thought, like he’d been having some of the hair of the dog that bit him—or more likely, the whole dog.

Mr. Tombull, also in shirtsleeves, a green bow tie, and blue and yellow suspenders, was seated in the chair behind Charlie’s desk, smoking a cigar. His face above his bow tie was red and round, and beads of sweat stood out on his upper lip. There was a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the desk in front of him. Verna didn’t see any glasses and decided that the men had been passing the bottle.

And there was a fifth man, seated a little distance away, smoking a pipe, one leg crossed over the other knee. Verna was startled when she saw him. It was Mr. Benton Moseley, from the Moseley law office upstairs over the print shop. Mr. Moseley employed her best friend, Liz Lacy. He was in his early forties, an attractive man with neatly clipped brown hair, regular features, and a ready smile—it was no wonder that Liz had once had a crush on him as big as the state of Alabama. Mr. Moseley was the most popular lawyer in Darling, not just because he was gallant in the old Southern way (which he was), but because he was shrewd and knew his way around. A few years back, he’d been elected to the state legislature in Montgomery, and you didn’t survive in that den of vipers unless you knew how to quickstep through the snakes, the power brokers who ran the state’s affairs.

But Benton Moseley came from a long line of lawyers and had learned from his daddy and granddaddy before him that a sharp axe worked better than a big muscle. He had one of the sharpest axes Verna had ever seen. But he also had a reputation for being square as well as being shrewd, and Verna had relied on his advice more than once over the past few years. If Mr. Duffy and the others were cooking up a counterfeiting scheme, Mr. Moseley would soon set them straight.

Each man got up and shook her hand politely, and Jed Snow, mumbling a greeting, offered her his chair, dragging over a high stool for himself. She sat down, took her Pall Malls out of her purse, and lit one, very deliberately, blowing out a stream of smoke that swirled into the haze that hung over their little group. The green-tinted lamp, the blue haze, and the intent expressions on the men’s faces made her think of an outlaw gang huddled around a campfire, plotting their next bank robbery.

She broke the silence with a question. “Well, gentlemen, what’s on our agenda this afternoon?” With variations, this was her usual way of staking a claim to her place in a meeting, and she had learned to ask it first, before somebody else laid claim to the agenda.

Mr. Tombull spoke around his cigar. “The bank’s closed and the town’s in trouble,” he said, stating a fact. “We have got to do something. Mr. Duffy here has had a brainstorm he thinks will save our bacon. Mr. Moseley is here to give us his thoughts on the matter.” He swiveled to look at Mr. Duffy. “You tell Mr. Moseley and Miz Tidwell here what you got in mind, Alvin.”

Mr. Duffy spoke up. “I’ve been doing some research and have come up with a plan to provide liquidity to the townspeople in this current crisis,” he said. Verna reflected that he looked and sounded exactly like a stuffed shirt. “Now that Mr. Johnson has been removed—”

“He has?” Verna put in, narrowing her eyes. Now was the time for everybody to lay all his cards on the table, and if the men weren’t going to ask, it was up to her. “Why was he ‘removed’? Who had the authority to remove him? And what’s going to happen to the bank?”

Mr. Duffy gave her a startled look, as if a piece of the furniture had suddenly come to life, asking questions and demanding answers. He cleared his throat. “Shortly after the first of the year, Mr. Johnson sold the Darling Savings and Trust.”

“Mr. Johnson sold the bank?” Verna asked incredulously. She hadn’t known it was his to sell. In fact, she had no idea who actually owned the bank. It had always just been there, like Mobile Bay or the Louisville & Nashville Railroad—until suddenly it wasn’t.