The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star

“Yes, but in the middle of the night?” Liz asked, taking a doughnut.

Raylene laughed. “It was a bit of a surprise when she knocked on the door and woke me up, I’ll admit. But Lily has always been . . . well, impulsive.” She tilted her head to one side. “And unpredictable. She’s like a kid that way. There’s no daylight between her idea and her doing. She gets herself in trouble sometimes, not thinking things through.” She said the last sentence regretfully and in a lower voice, almost as if she were talking to herself. “I’m not being critical,” she added, biting into her doughnut. “That’s just Lily. It’s the way she is.”

“But I still don’t understand why she felt she had to leave the Kilgores’,” Liz protested, looking from one of them to the other. “Especially the way she did it.”

“I can answer part of that.” Verna flicked a match to her cigarette. “We talked when we were driving out to the airfield. She told me she didn’t want to face Roger and Mildred across the breakfast table. She knew they would all three have matching black eyes and it would be just too embarrassing. And she was very upset at the idea that somebody—I’m afraid she was talking about you, Liz—was in the next room. She’s going to be staying at the motor court, where she can have some privacy.”

“You were there, too,” Liz said accusingly. “You were listening right along with me.”

“I know.” Verna sighed, feeling guilty. “But she didn’t know about me. I was trying to get her to talk to me and I didn’t think she’d want to if I told her that part of it. So I let you take the blame. Sorry about that.”

“Thanks,” Liz muttered dryly, and sipped her coffee.

Raylene sat forward on the edge of her chair. “How much of the rest of it did Lily tell you, Verna? Did she say anything about her . . . suspicions?”

“Well, some,” Verna said. “But I have no way of knowing if she told me everything.” She tapped her cigarette into the Darling Savings and Trust Bank ashtray on the table. “And of course, I can’t guarantee that what she was telling me was the truth.” She glanced at Raylene. “That’s what I hoped you could help with. Figuring out how much of what she says is true.”

“Yeah.” Raylene finished her doughnut, licked powdered sugar off her fingers, and leaned back in her chair. “With Lily, it’s hard to sort the truth from . . . well, the stories. She loves drama. She loves anything exciting—which is why she loves flying. She invents. And sometimes she gets carried away with her invention, to the point where she’s not sure about the difference between it and the truth.”

“Well, I for one would sure like to know why she invented an abduction,” Liz said testily. “She could have sneaked down the stairs and gone out the front door without overturning the furniture and snagging her nightgown on the sill and throwing her slipper out the second-story window, all of which made us think that somebody carried her off.” She crossed her arms on the table and looked at Verna. “Did she tell you about that?”

Verna nodded. “I’m not sure she was thinking straight when she was doing all that. She said that by the time she got to the motor court, she wished she’d just walked out and left a note. But she was scared.”

“Scared?” Liz asked, frowning. “Scared of what?”

“Scared of who is more like it,” Verna replied. She turned to Raylene, who was listening intently. “But you probably know more about that than either of us, Raylene. That was really why she came to your place, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Raylene acknowledged. “She came to me because the more she thought about it, the more afraid she got. She thought she needed a friend. Somebody she could talk to—and trust. And she didn’t trust anybody in the Kilgores’ house.” She looked at Verna with that penetrating gaze. “She told you that?”

“Some of it,” Verna said slowly. “It was the anonymous letters and the photograph that scared her. And Mildred’s charge that she—Lily, I mean—was blackmailing Roger. Finding out about that stuff really frightened her. It made her feel vulnerable.”

Raylene looked from Verna to Liz. “So both of you know about the letters and the telegrams?”

“Yes,” Liz said. She picked up her coffee cup. “Mildred told me a couple of days ago—in fact, she showed me the second letter and the incriminating photograph. And I told Verna.”

“And we both overheard Mildred accusing Miss Dare of sending the telegrams,” Verna said. “Of blackmail.”