The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star

Fannie folded her hands across her midriff. “We go out sometimes—to a movie or a social event. But I like it best when he comes over to my apartment for supper. I make something easy, jambalaya or stewed chicken and dumplings, and we play pinochle and sometimes dominoes and listen to the radio.” She sighed happily. “He pretends to be a crusty old journalist who has seen too much of the world and is tired of all of it. But underneath that tough veneer, he’s a very sweet man.”


“Mr. Dickens has definitely been around,” Lizzy agreed. Maybe this was the opening she was looking for. “I’m always surprised when he tells me about the places he’s been and the people he’s known. Why, just take Miss Dare, for instance. The Texas Star,” she added, just in case Fannie didn’t remember who Miss Dare was.

“The female pilot?” Fannie asked. “The one who’s doing the air show this weekend?” She raised her head and peeled off one of the cucumber rounds so she could look at Lizzy. “Mr. Dickens knows her?”

“Oh, yes.” Lizzy chuckled uneasily, wondering if she would regret opening this subject with Fannie. “I understand that they’re . . . old friends.” She didn’t intend for the last two words to have such a significant emphasis, but they certainly came out sounding that way, as if she meant to suggest something more than a friendship.

“Old friends,” Fannie repeated slowly, replacing the cucumber slice and putting her head back down. “He . . . told you this?”

“Yes,” Lizzy said. “We were talking about the air show, and he started telling me about Miss Dare. He seems to be excited about seeing her again. He knew her when he was working at the newspaper in Fort Worth. I gather that they developed a rather . . . close friendship.”

“I see,” Fannie said quietly, chewing on one corner of her lip. “Well, I don’t suppose that’s a huge surprise. Mr. Dickens has worked and lived and traveled in lots of places. He must have . . . friends all over the world.”

“Yes,” Lizzy said. “I suppose he does.”

“I have been very foolish,” Fannie said, again as if to herself, speaking so low that Lizzy could barely hear her. “How could I have been so foolish?”

Lizzy knew she wasn’t expected to answer, but she felt like apologizing for having spilled the beans. Obviously, Fannie was very badly hurt by what she had heard. She was enormously relieved when Beulah came hurrying back into the beauty shop.

“Sorry, Liz,” Beulah apologized. “Spoonie had to be rescued. She loves to play with her pet chicken, but that old rooster has spurs like knives and Spoonie’s afraid of him. I had to pen him up, and he’s the dickens to catch.” She picked up a towel. “Now, then, we’re doing a shampoo and set today? Or do you want a trim, too?”

“Just a shampoo and set,” Lizzy said. As she sat down in the shampoo chair and leaned back so that Beulah could wash her hair, she was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable about what she had said to Fannie.

Had she done the right thing by tipping her off to Charlie’s relationship to Lily Dare?

Or should she better have kept her mouth shut and let Fannie find out for herself?





SIX




“I Have to Stop Her!”



Lizzy was still turning these questions over in her mind as she went back to the office. But what was done was done and there was no help for it. All she could do was hope she hadn’t caused Fannie too much grief and go on about the usual work of the office on a day when Mr. Moseley was out of town. She was also thinking ahead to the evening, when she had promised to talk to Mildred Kilgore, who lived near the Cypress Country Club on the southern outskirts of town.

Lizzy didn’t own a car. Until a year or so ago, she had been saving to buy a used one. But instead, she had handed over the money to Mr. Johnson at the Darling Savings and Trust, to keep him from foreclosing on her mother’s house.

Now, to somebody who didn’t know the full story, using her hard-earned car money to save her mother’s house from foreclosure might have seemed like a generous and unselfish act. Lizzy, however, knew that the opposite was true. She was very selfish, at least where her mother was concerned. If she hadn’t done this, her mother would have moved in with her. She and her cat, Daffodil, lived all by themselves in a beautiful little house that was just big enough for the two of them. There simply wasn’t room for her mother, who always seemed to take up more than her share of space and who (to make things worse) was constantly telling her daughter what to do, how to dress, and who to marry: Grady Alexander, of course.