The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star Page 22

  “Oh, much,” Verna said, although the black eye was still quite noticeable. She was dying to ask Miss Dare how in the world she got here, to the motor court, and why. But she couldn’t think of a way to do it.

  “Good.” Miss Dare took a comb out of her bag and began to work on her hair. “I’ve got a party to go to tonight, and I don’t want to look like I’ve been trading punches with the local heavyweight. Say, Verna, I need to get out to the airstrip this morning. Does this burg have a taxi?”

  “Not really,” Verna said, suppressing a smile. “That is, it does . . . I mean, we do. But Mr. Clinton mostly goes between Darling and Monroeville, and the airstrip is out of his way.” She added, deferentially, “I could drive you out to the airstrip, Miss Dare. I have my car here.”

  “Oh, would you, dear?” Miss Dare asked warmly. “Please call me Lily.” She picked up a small canvas bag. “I’ll get dressed—it’ll just take a jiffy—and then go pick up my key at the office. I’m glad I came,” she added confidentially, as she headed for the bathroom. “This place may not be fancy, but it’s clean and private. And I can lock the door and keep folks from barging in on me.”

  I can lock the door. Verna flinched, remembering her own role in the invasion of Lily Dare’s privacy. Did she leave because she knew that people could overhear every word that was said in her room? Or was there some other reason? If so, could she get Lily to tell her what it was?

  Maybe, maybe not. But Verna vowed to give it her best shot.

  It was over an hour later when Verna pulled her LaSalle into a parking place in front of the courthouse, next to Judge McHenry’s old gray Buick. The judge’s bluetick coonhound, Buck, was sitting erect behind the steering wheel. He barked cheerfully at Verna when he recognized her—Buck was a frequent visitor to the courthouse and remembered Verna, who always scratched his ears.

  She knew she ought to run up to the office and check on Melba Jean and Ruthie. But she had something else on her mind, so she went straight across the street to the diner, where she found Myra May wrapping silverware in paper napkins for the noon rush. It looked as if peace and sanity had finally been restored. The morning crowd was gone, the tables were empty, and Rudy Vallee was crooning (on the Philco) “As Time Goes By,” one of Verna’s favorite songs. “Hearts full of passion, jealousy and hate . . .” Somehow, it seemed apropos to what she had just heard from Lily Dare.

  “Did Raylene make it to work okay?” Verna asked. “She had already left by the time I got out to the Marigold. Her roommate told me she got a lift into town.”

  “Yes, she got here,” Myra May said, “and we were plenty relieved. She’s back there in the kitchen right now, working on the food for the noon crowd. After lunch, we’re going out to the Kilgores’ and get started on the party stuff.” She picked up the coffeepot. “Coffee? You got out of here earlier without a full cup. We owe you.”

  “Just what I need,” Verna said gratefully, sliding onto a counter stool.

  Myra May filled a mug and pushed it across the counter. “Raylene’s got a roommate?” she asked with a curious, sidelong look. “She didn’t mention it to me.”

  “It was a one-night thing,” Verna said, and then, when both of Myra May’s eyebrows went up, added, “A woman she’s known for several years. An old friend.”

  Myra May’s eyebrows went back down. “Ah,” she said.

  Verna added sugar to her coffee and stirred. “Myra May, would it be okay if I had a talk with Raylene? Something . . . well, puzzling has come up. Disturbing, actually. I think she may be able to shed some light.”

  “She’s pretty busy right now,” Myra May said doubtfully. “Could you maybe do it after the party?”

  “That could be too late,” Verna said. “Or maybe not. The thing is, I just don’t know. Maybe it can wait, or maybe not. It all depends on—”

  The diner door popped open and Liz rushed in. “Verna!” she cried excitedly. “I went up to your office and Melba Jean told me you were out this morning. And then I saw your car and I thought you might be here. I’m so glad I found you!” She gulped a breath. “You will never guess what’s happened!”

  “Oh, I think I can,” Verna said. “Lily Dare disappeared from her room sometime after you left her last night. You don’t know where she is and everybody’s looking all over for her. You want me to help.”

  Liz stared at her, uncomprehending. “Yes, but how did you know? How could you know, Verna? You left the Kilgores’ before Mildred and Angel Flame and I discovered that she was gone!”

  “I’m psychic,” Verna said with a smug chuckle. She sipped her coffee.

  “Ha!” Myra May hooted. “Verna, you are the most un-psychic person I know.” She leaned her elbows on the counter and turned serious. “Raylene Riggs, on the other hand, is really psychic. She knows what people want to eat, she knows things that are going to happen, she even knows—”

  “Excuse me, Myra May,” Liz said impatiently. “I’m sorry for interrupting, but this is important.” She sat down on a counter stool beside Verna. “Verna, you are not psychic, and if you were, you would never in the world admit to it. Now you tell me. How did you know Miss Dare has disappeared?”

  Verna picked up her coffee cup and took a sip. “Because I found her,” she said calmly.

  “You found her?” Liz leaned forward, her eyes widening. “Is she okay? Where is she? How did she get there? Why did she—”

  Verna held up her hand, damming the flow of Liz’s words. “Yes, she’s okay. Right now, she’s out at the airstrip. I drove her out there just a little while ago. As to why, that’s a long story.” She put her cup down. “Oh, by the way, Liz. I stopped at the fairgrounds on my way back to town. You’ll be glad to know that the carnival got in last night. They’re setting up this morning. The rides look as if they’re in pretty good repair and the sideshows actually look decent for a change. The Masons are putting up the tents for the exhibits. I think we’re in pretty good shape for the festival weekend.” She paused. “As for the air show, well, that’s something else. We need to talk about that.”

  “But I want to talk about Miss Dare!” Liz exclaimed. “I want to know why she—”

  Myra May picked up the coffeepot again. “Liz, you sound like you could use a cup of coffee, on the house. How about it?”

  “Yes, thanks. But I want—” Liz broke off. “Where, Verna?” she asked urgently. “Where did you find her?”

  But before Verna could answer her question, there was another interruption.

  “Hi,” a voice said, and a woman came out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel. She was Myra May’s height, and her auburn hair, gray-streaked, was cut short and curled around her ears. She was wearing a white cook’s apron over a red print dress.

  “Somebody’s wanting to talk to me?” she asked in her soft Southern voice. To Myra May, she added, “I just finished putting three pecan pies and two pans of meat loaf in the oven. The potatoes and eggs are cooked for potato salad, so all we have to do is chop the celery, onions, and pickles and put it together.” She hung up the towel. “I’m ready to take a little break.”

  “There,” Myra May said with satisfaction, and poured Liz’s coffee. “You see? Violet and I have decided that Raylene is positively psychic. Nobody told her that you two were out here, wanting to talk to her. She just knew. Same way she knew that Donna Sue was dreaming of her mother’s grits and sausage casserole and that J.D. wanted some sweet potato meringue pie. It’s a gift she has.”

  “Well, now that she’s here and ready to take a break,” Verna said, “is it okay if we talk to her?”

  Myra May rolled her eyes. “Who am I to say no?” She muttered an answer to her own question. “Just the boss, that’s all.” She picked up a mug and poured coffee for Raylene. “Sure. Go ahead and take a break. And take those leftover doughnuts with you. But maybe you’d better go over to that back table, in case
somebody comes in.” She turned away. “You want me, I’m in the kitchen.”

  Raylene put three doughnuts on a plate and led them, coffee mugs in hand, to the back table. They took seats under the Ferguson Tractor Company calendar from the feed store. As they sat down, Verna introduced herself to Raylene.

  “I came in here for breakfast this morning,” she went on. “I happened to have my car, so when Myra May said you were late for work, I volunteered to drive out to the motor court and check on you. I didn’t get an answer when I knocked on the door of your cottage, but I saw the curtain twitch so I knew someone was inside. I got Pauline DuBerry to bring the key and—”

  “And you found Lily.” Raylene smiled. “You must have been surprised. Did you wake her? We stayed up and talked pretty late. She said she was going to sleep late this morning.”

  “Lily? Lily Dare?” Liz exclaimed excitedly, and the questions began to spill out. “She’s at the Marigold? So that’s where she went! But why? And how did she get there? The motor court is a good mile from the Kilgores’. She’s never been to Darling, and it was dark. How come she didn’t get lost?”

  “She walked,” Raylene replied. “Walking a mile isn’t any big challenge for Lily. She’s always liked to stay in shape—says she couldn’t fly if she didn’t have plenty of physical stamina. And when she’s up in the air, she often has to find her way by flying along roads and railroads in marginal conditions, so she’s always mentally storing away information. She knew where the motor court was because she noticed it when Mr. Dickens drove her into town. And I happened to mention it to her when she was here for lunch yesterday. It wasn’t hard for her to figure out how to get there.”

  As Raylene talked, Verna thought that there was something familiar about the strong set of her jaw—or maybe it was her penetrating gaze, the way she held your eyes and didn’t let you look away. Had she met this woman somewhere before? But the impression was fleeting, and the question was gone almost as soon as it occurred to her.

  “Oh, and the moon was out last night, you know,” Raylene added, picking up a doughnut. “Lily said it was almost as bright as day.”

  “I take it that she didn’t walk that mile in her negligee, barefoot,” Verna remarked dryly. “Especially with the moon as bright as it was.” She reached into her handbag and took out a pack of cigarettes, offering one to Raylene.

  Raylene shook her head. “No, thanks. No, Lily was fully dressed—pants, shirt, the clothes she wears when she’s working around the airplanes. She brought her nightie in her bag.” She turned to Liz. “You’ll remember that I saw you and Lily here yesterday, after lunch, Liz. That’s when I invited her to drop in and see me at the motor court while she was here in Darling.”

  “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.”

  “Extortion would be a better way to describe it,” Liz added, sipping coffee.

  “Extortion, yes,” Raylene said, shaking her head. “An ugly word. She swears she had nothing to do with that and hates it that Roger Kilgore thought those telegrams came from her—that she was asking for money. She’s sorry she let herself get into a relationship with him and she says she’s going to break it off permanently. But the letters and those telegrams—together with the sabotage—have convinced her that somebody’s out to get her.”

  Verna nodded. They were getting to the heart of it now. “But if you ask me,” she said, “it was when she figured out who sent those letters and the telegram and connected it to the sabotage of her airplane—that was when she got scared.” She looked at Rayle
ne. “Did she tell you who she suspects?”

  “Yes,” Raylene said slowly. “But I . . .” She stopped.

  “Well, who?” Liz demanded eagerly. “Come on, Verna, who?”

  “Rex Hart,” Verna replied.

  “Rex Hart?” Liz frowned. “But Charlie Dickens said that he couldn’t have been involved. He was at the airstrip all night.” Her frown deepened. “No, wait. That’s not right. Charlie was talking about the abduction, not the letters or the telegrams. Or the sabotage.”

  Verna looked at Raylene. When she didn’t say anything, she said, “Lily has decided that it’s Rex Hart who sent the letters. He was in New Orleans when the photograph was taken. He wasn’t with them at the café—Lily and Roger, that is—but she knew that he was nearby. She believes that he took the photo and wrote the letters to Mildred. And sent the telegrams to Roger.”

  “Why?” Liz asked, puzzled. “I mean, why did he do it? What was his motivation?”

  “She thinks it’s because he’s jealous,” Verna replied. “Because he’s in love with her himself. He figured he could convince Roger that the relationship with Lily was too costly—and too dangerous—to pursue. That it could wreck his marriage, and maybe his business. She says Hart wrote the letters to Roger’s wife so she would pressure Roger to break it off.”

  “It makes sense, I guess,” Liz said slowly. “But what about the sabotage? Is that his work, too?”

  “That’s what Lily says.” Verna frowned. “I could understand the letters and telegrams, but that’s where I lose it. I mean, if Rex Hart loves Lily enough to be jealous of her other relationships, why would he sabotage her aircraft? If he loves her, he wouldn’t try to kill her, would he? And there’s the damage to the show, in which he has a financial investment.” She turned to Raylene. “That was what I wanted to ask you, Raylene. Lily said that you and she met in Tampa several years ago, when your husband was taking flying lessons from Rex Hart. You know both Lily and Hart. Is she right about him?”