The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star Read online

  China Bayles Mysteries by Susan Wittig Albert

  THYME OF DEATH

  WITCHES’ BANE

  HANGMAN’S ROOT

  ROSEMARY REMEMBERED

  RUEFUL DEATH

  LOVE LIES BLEEDING

  CHILE DEATH

  LAVENDER LIES

  MISTLETOE MAN

  BLOODROOT

  INDIGO DYING

  A DILLY OF A DEATH

  DEAD MAN’S BONES

  BLEEDING HEARTS

  SPANISH DAGGER

  NIGHTSHADE

  WORMWOOD

  HOLLY BLUES

  MOURNING GLORIA

  CAT’S CLAW

  WIDOW’S TEARS

  AN UNTHYMELY DEATH

  CHINA BAYLES’ BOOK OF DAYS

  Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter Mysteries by Susan Wittig Albert

  THE TALE OF HILL TOP FARM

  THE TALE OF HOLLY HOW

  THE TALE OF CUCKOO BROW WOOD

  THE TALE OF HAWTHORN HOUSE

  THE TALE OF BRIAR BANK

  THE TALE OF APPLEBECK ORCHARD

  THE TALE OF OAT CAKE CRAG

  THE TALE OF CASTLE COTTAGE

  Darling Dahlias Mysteries by Susan Wittig Albert

  THE DARLING DAHLIAS AND THE CUCUMBER TREE

  THE DARLING DAHLIAS AND THE NAKED LADIES

  THE DARLING DAHLIAS AND THE CONFEDERATE ROSE

  THE DARLING DAHLIAS AND THE TEXAS STAR

  With her husband, Bill Albert, writing as Robin Paige

  DEATH AT BISHOP’S KEEP

  DEATH AT GALLOWS GREEN

  DEATH AT DAISY’S FOLLY

  DEATH AT DEVIL’S BRIDGE

  DEATH AT ROTTINGDEAN

  DEATH AT WHITECHAPEL

  DEATH AT EPSOM DOWNS

  DEATH AT DARTMOOR

  DEATH AT GLAMIS CASTLE

  DEATH IN HYDE PARK

  DEATH AT BLENHEIM PALACE

  DEATH ON THE LIZARD

  Nonfiction books by Susan Wittig Albert

  WRITING FROM LIFE

  WORK OF HER OWN

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA)

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  Copyright © 2013 by Susan Wittig Albert.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA).

  eBook ISBN 978-1-101-62523-1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Albert, Susan Wittig.

  The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star / Susan Wittig Albert.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-425-26058-6

  1. Women gardeners—Fiction. 2. Gardening—Societies, etc.—Fiction. 3. Nineteen thirties—Fiction. 4. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 5. Alabama—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3551.L2637D395 2013

  813'.54—dc23

  2013019112

  FIRST EDITION: September 2013

  Cover illustration by Brandon Dorman.

  Cover design by Judith Lagerman.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

  Contents

  Also by Susan Wittig Albert

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Letter to the Reader

  Club Roster

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  The Garden Gate

  Cucumber and Mint Cleanser

  Honey Facial Cleanser

  Rose Skin Toner

  Bessie’s Bath Powder

  Beeswax and Honey Lip Balm

  Banana Hair Conditioner

  Beulah’s Setting Lotions

  Whipped Cream Body Mask

  Fig Facial Mask

  Mashed Potato Hand Cream

  Clove Mouthwash

  Dry Feet Remedy

  Carrot-and-Egg Facial Mask

  Molasses Nail Soak

  Recipes

  Aunt Hetty Little’s Pecan Jumbles

  Raylene Riggs’ Sweet Potato Meringue Pie

  Grits and Sausage Casserole

  Slow-Cooked Pulled Pork with White Sauce

  Cheese Custard Pie, Served at Mildred Kilgore’s Party

  Resources

  For Lucille, Pearl, Mildred, and Josephine,

  four sisters who made the best of even the worst of times.

  Author’s Note

  The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star takes place in the summer of 1932. Across the United States, it has already been a year of extreme highs and abysmal lows. More than 13 million Americans have lost their jobs since 1929, and in that same period, more than 10,000 banks have failed—at a time when there is not yet any unemployment or depositors’ insurance. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped to 41.22, down 340 points from its bull market high of 381.17 on September 3, 1929.

  Looking to the future, the Republicans have nominated President Herbert (“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”) Hoover for a second term, while the Democrats have selected Franklin Delano (“Happy Days Are Here Again”) Roosevelt. Hoping to collect the compensation already due for past service, the Bonus Army of 20,000 Great War veterans has marched on Washington, D.C., and it will take General Douglas MacArthur, an infantry regiment, a cavalry regiment, and six tanks to oust them. It is also the year of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, of cigar-smoking Bonnie and gun-toting Clyde, and dust storms that turn the sky over the Great Plains, as Aunt Hetty Little would say, as black as the inside of a dog.

  Nineteen thirty-two is a year when everything seems to move slower than molasses. The Gross National Product has fallen 43 percent since 1929, and the unemployed and homeless are mired in a Slough of Despond. But it�
��s also a year when things go faster and farther than ever before—a time of exciting achievements. Jimmy Doolittle flies his Gee Bee Model R-1 aircraft into the record books with a speed of 296 miles per hour, and Amelia Earhart pilots her Lockheed Vega 5B (which she affectionately calls “Old Bessie, the fire horse”) from Newfoundland to Ireland in 14 hours and 56 minutes—the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic. Not satisfied with that record, she flies from Los Angeles to Newark in just over 19 hours, the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the United States.

  When I began this mystery series, I thought it might be difficult to write about the Depression, because . . . well, lots of people were depressed. But as I’ve dug deeper into the newspapers, magazine articles, interviews, and letters of the time, I’ve learned that while people saw very clearly the difficulty they were in, they resisted giving in to their heartaches and fears. In my family, my mother always told me, “Folks just put their heads down and kept on keeping on.” Hard times, yes, and people in our family didn’t have one nickel to rub against another. Or, as Mom wryly put it, “We darned the darns in our stockings and then, gol-darn it, we darned ’em again.” But they worked hard, found fun where they could, and met often overwhelming challenges with courage, determination, and a deep awareness that almost everybody was in the same leaky boat.

  And throughout my research, it is the women who have impressed me the most, the women who made do or did without, shared what they had with those who had less, and smiled as hard as they could to cover their tears.

  That is the spirit I want to celebrate in these books about the Darling Dahlias.

  I hope you find their stories as heartening as I do.

  • • •

  Thanks to Deborah Winegarten, whose wide acquaintance with the life and times of Pancho Barnes and other early women pilots (and her wonderful collection of books!) gave me a wealth of ideas. Thanks to Nancy Lee McDaniel, for volunteering to help out on the Darling switchboard. And special thanks to my husband, Bill Albert, who, among his many other talents, has flown small airplanes. He suggested some nefarious ways they might be sabotaged.

  A note about language. To write about the people of the rural South in the 1930s requires the use of terms that may be offensive to some readers—especially “colored,” “colored folk,” and “Negro” when they are used to refer to African Americans. Thank you for understanding that I mean no offense.

  Susan Wittig Albert

  Bertram, Texas

  July 30, 1932

  The Darling Dahlias Clubhouse and Gardens

  302 Camellia Street

  Darling, Alabama

  Dear Reader,

  This is getting to be quite a habit—having books written about our garden club, that is. And a very pleasant habit, too, we must say!

  But we’re not one bit surprised that Mrs. Albert has decided to write another book about us, because every flower has a story to tell. And the story of the Texas Star (that would be Hibiscus coccineus, according to Miss Rogers, who is such a stickler when it comes to Latin names) is more sensational than most. Who could have guessed that the Texas Star herself, Miss Lily Dare—the fastest woman on earth, faster even than Amelia Earhart!—would have chosen our little town to show off her Dare Devils Flying Circus. Or that Miss Dare might be the object of so much envy and hate because of the way she lived her life and . . .

  But then, we’d better not say any more about that, because we might steal Mrs. Albert’s thunder and we certainly wouldn’t want to do that. Of course, we were understandably uneasy about a story that involves the secret shenanigans of the husband of one of our very own members. We don’t like to embarrass people we care about. So we sat down and had a serious discussion with Mrs. Albert about whether she ought to write this particular story or go find something else to write about.

  But as Mrs. Albert herself is fond of saying, a little truth never hurt anybody very much, except where it ought to. And since everybody in town already knew all there was to know about the situation by the time the Dare Devils flew away, we decided that it was a story that ought to be told. We understand that this husband—whose name you will learn later in this book—has apologized to all concerned and promises to behave himself from now on. (We also hope that all our Darling husbands will profit from seeing his transgressions written up in a book and think twice before they stray too far from the straight and narrow.)

  In our garden club, we all love flowers. But we have also planted a big vegetable garden. It is true that flowers are comfort food for the soul. But a big plate of green beans and fatback, stewed okra with tomatoes, buttered corn on the cob, and potato salad can go a long way to comfort a body, especially these days, when jobs and money are scarce as hens’ teeth and everybody’s got something to worry about.

  And yes, it’s a sad fact but true: there is just too much grief and too many crooks and cheaters in this world. (We’re not naming any names—we’ll leave that to Mrs. Albert.) But we agree with a French fellow named Marcel Proust, who wrote, “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” So if you’ll excuse us, we’ll pay attention to being happy and hope that our souls will bloom.

  And just to make sure, we’ll plant a few pretty flowers along with the beans and okra.

  Sincerely yours,

  Elizabeth Lacy, President

  Ophelia Snow, Vice President & Secretary

  Verna Tidwell, Treasurer

  The Darling Dahlias Club Roster,

  July 1932

  CLUB OFFICERS

  Elizabeth Lacy, club president. Garden columnist for the Darling Dispatch and secretary to Mr. Moseley, attorney-at-law.

  Ophelia Snow, club vice-president and secretary. Linotype operator and sometime reporter at the Darling Dispatch. Wife of Darling’s mayor, Jed Snow.

  Verna Tidwell, club treasurer. Acting Cypress County treasurer, manages the Cypress County Probate Clerk’s office.

  Myra May Mosswell, communications chairwoman. Co-owner of the Darling Telephone Exchange and the Darling Diner. Lives with Violet Sims and Violet’s baby girl, Cupcake, in the flat over the diner.

  CLUB MEMBERS

  Earlynne Biddle, a rose fancier. Married to Henry Biddle, the manager at the Coca-Cola bottling plant.

  Bessie Bloodworth, proprietor of Magnolia Manor, a boardinghouse for genteel ladies.

  Fannie Champaign, proprietor of Champaign’s Darling Chapeaux. Sweet on Charlie Dickens, editor and publisher of the Darling Dispatch.

  Mrs. George E. Pickett (Voleen) Johnson, president of the Darling Ladies Guild, specializes in pure white flowers. Married to the owner of the Darling Savings and Trust Bank.

  Mildred Kilgore, married to Roger Kilgore, the owner of Kilgore Motors. The Kilgores have a big house near the ninth green of the Cypress Country Club, where Mildred grows camellias.

  Aunt Hetty Little, gladiola lover, town matriarch, and senior member of the club. A “regular Miss Marple” who knows all the Darling secrets.

  Lucy Murphy, grows vegetables and peaches on a small farm on the Jericho Road. Married to Ralph Murphy, who works on the railroad.

  Miss Dorothy Rogers, darling’s librarian. Knows the Latin name of every plant and insists that everyone else does, too. Resident of Magnolia Manor.

  Beulah Trivette, artistically talented lover of cabbage roses and other exuberant flowers. Owns Beulah’s Beauty Bower, where all the Dahlias go to get beautiful.

  Alice Ann Walker, grows iris and daylilies. Her disabled husband, Arnold, tends the family vegetable garden. Cashier at the Darling Savings and Trust Bank.

  ONE

  Liz Lacy Is in Charge

  Monday Evening, July 11, 1932

  “Well, it’s almost all over,” Mildred Kilgore said in her slow Southern drawl. She sat down at the table in the Dahlias’ clubhouse kitchen.
“I don’t mind saying that I, for one, am glad.”

  Aunt Hetty Little came to the table with a pitcher of cold lemonade and began to fill the four glasses on the table. “All over?” She chuckled wryly. “Why, bless your heart, child, it’s just begun!”

  Mildred was nearly forty, but Aunt Hetty was no spring chicken and felt qualified to call everyone “child,” especially when they were talking about presidential elections. At eighty, her memory of presidents went back to Abraham Lincoln, although she had only been able to cast her vote since Mr. Harding, twelve years before. “Can’t blame the mess in Washington on us women,” she liked to say. “That place was a mess long before we got the vote.”

  “The nominating conventions are just the beginning,” Elizabeth Lacy said, agreeing with Aunt Hetty. She put her Dahlias’ club notebook on the table and sat down, taking a deep breath. The kitchen door was open and the sweet scent of honeysuckle filled the room, along with the evening song of a perky Carolina wren, perched in the catalpa tree just outside the window. “It’s a long time to the elections, although Mr. Moseley says he’s pretty sure that—”

  “We all know what Mr. Moseley says, Liz,” Verna Tidwell put in dryly. She took a chair on the opposite side of the table. “He’s been angling for months to get that fellow Roosevelt on the ticket. I sure hope he doesn’t regret it. We all know Hoover. Nobody knows what FDR will do.”

  Verna was tall and thin, with narrow lips, an olive complexion, and dark, searching eyes under unplucked (and thoroughly unfashionable) brows. She didn’t pay much attention to fashionable dressing, either. She had come to the meeting straight from her office in the Cypress County courthouse and was still dressed in her working clothes: a plain white cotton short-sleeved blouse and a belted navy gabardine skirt. But what Verna might lack in conventional prettiness, she more than made up for in smarts, which was why Lizzy Lacy liked her so much.

  Lizzy reached for one of the pecan jumbles, an old-fashioned cookie that Aunt Hetty had brought. The previous week, the Democrats had nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor of New York, on the fourth ballot, after a floor fight that just about wore all the delegates out. At least, that was according to the story in the Darling Dispatch. What Lizzy herself knew about politics wouldn’t fill a peanut shell. But for over a year, Mr. Moseley (her boss and the most prominent lawyer in Darling) had been working like a stubborn mule for Roosevelt, and she tried to keep up with what he was doing. She and Verna and several of their friends had got together in the diner after closing on Saturday night to listen to Mr. Roosevelt’s acceptance speech on the radio. The governor had actually chartered an airplane and flown all the way from Albany to Chicago to speak to the convention delegates. An airplane! That was a first for any presidential candidate.