The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies Read online

  “No matter how many times I’ve heard it, I always love it,” Earlynne Biddle said enthusiastically. “It’s my favorite poem.” Miss Rogers gave her a modest smile.

  “The last number will be my own little Melody,” Mildred said, looking up from her list. “She will tap dance to a recording of Nick Lucas singing ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips.’ ”

  There was a scattering of applause, but Aunt Hetty Little piped up. “Mrs. Eiglehorn isn’t going to recite ‘Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight’? Why, she’s practically an institution.”

  “She said she thought she wouldn’t perform this year,” Mildred replied diplomatically, and one or two people tittered. At the last talent show, a child in the front row had started to cry at the most theatrical moment in the poem, and poor old Mrs. Eiglehorn-eighty if she was a day and proud of her ability to memorize-had gotten so flustered that she forgot her lines. While the embarrassed mother carried out her screaming child, Mrs. Eiglehorn’s husband (several years older than his wife) had to find the place in the book and prompt her.

  “It’s a pity you couldn’t find another new act or two,” Mrs. Johnson said in a negative tone. “The program is fine, but everyone has already seen and heard the whole thing.”

  “I could work up another poem, I suppose,” Miss Rogers said doubtfully. “ ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ for instance.”

  “You did that one at the library benefit last year,” Verna reminded her.

  “Well, then, perhaps ‘The Raven.’ ” She deepened her voice. “ ‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I wandered, weak and weary-’ ”

  “Pondered,” Verna said helpfully.

  “Excuse me?” Miss Rogers asked, blinking.

  “Not wandered, pondered. ‘While I pondered, weak and weary.’ ”

  “I think ‘The Raven’ would be wonderful, Miss Rogers,” Earlynne Biddle hurried to say. “It’s my second favorite poem.”

  “We ought to have another new act or two,” Mrs. Johnson insisted.

  “I have done my best,” Mildred replied defensively.

  “I’m not suggesting you haven’t, Mildred,” Mrs. Johnson said. “I’m only saying that we need new blood.”

  Mildred frowned. “Then it’s up to the rest of you to come up with a new act or two. Any volunteers?”

  Beside Lizzy, Verna leaned forward, opening her mouth. But Lizzy, who had the feeling that Verna was about to suggest Lorelei LaMotte and Lily Lake, fastened a firm hand on Verna’s knee and shook her head. Verna sighed and sat back, folding her arms.

  “Well, if you don’t want to show off your talents on stage,” Mildred said, “there’s still plenty of other work to be done. We need somebody to type the program onto mimeograph stencils and be responsible for running off copies on the Academy’s mimeo machine. We also need someone to organize the refreshments we’re selling at the intermission, and another couple of people for tickets sales. Who will volunteer?”

  She looked around expectantly, and when nobody raised a hand, heaved a resigned sigh. “Well, then, ladies, I’ll just have to start naming names. Mrs. Johnson, you and Lucy Murphy will be in charge of organizing the ticket sales. Myra May and Ophelia, refreshments-yes, I know Myra May isn’t here today, but she’s logical because she owns the diner and Euphoria can bake up a couple of batches of those praline cookies she makes. Ophelia, if you would please tell her, I’d appreciate it.”

  “I’ll bring some of my Southern Comfort cookies,” Aunt Hetty Little offered.

  “Southern Comfort cookies?” Miss Rogers asked, frowning. “But liquor is prohibited!”

  A titter ran around the room. “Miss Rogers,” Verna said, “where have you been?”

  “I’m sure Aunt Hetty knows where to get whatever ingredients she needs for her cookies,” Mildred said hurriedly. She looked down at her list. “Just two more things. Verna, you did a great job with the stage management last time. Please do it again. And to type and run off the program-”

  Lizzy raised her hand. “I’ll take care of it,” she said, preferring to volunteer before her name was called. She was a good typist and she didn’t mind typing the program. But she hated wrestling with the Academy’s old mimeograph machine, which was known to eat stencils and couldn’t be counted on to produce more than forty copies in a run. But unless they got some new acts for the show, they might not need more than forty copies.

  Mildred gave her a grateful smile. “I think that takes care of it for now. Thanks, ladies.”

  Lizzy took over the meeting again, with a few reminders. Monday night was the usual Dahlias’ card party. Bessie’s Bible Study had been changed to Thursday nights, so she was hosting the party at the Magnolia Manor. Lizzy also reminded everyone to turn in their items for the gardening column in Friday’s Darling Dispatch.

  “Tuesday’s the deadline,” she said. “That’ll just give me time to get it typed up before I have to hand it over to Mr. Dickens on Wednesday. Oh, and if you’ve got any more housecleaning tips for the other column we wanted to run, let me have them, too. I only have about six or eight, and I was hoping for a dozen.”

  That wrapped up the meeting, and Liz asked for a motion to adjourn. Verna moved it and Alice Ann seconded it speedily, and the ladies descended on the refreshment table as fast as grasshoppers on a bean patch. It was a pretty table, too, spread with an orange cloth and decorated with a large wicker cornucopia spilling colorful autumn gourds and blossoms of asters, zinnias, marigolds, and sunflowers.

  While the ladies were filling their plates and chatting noisily with one another, Ophelia Snow came over to Lizzy. Ophelia, a short person with a cherubic face, flyaway brown hair, and an irrepressibly optimistic outlook on life, was usually wreathed in smiles. But just now she wore a look that was halfway between impatient and cross.

  “We need to find another member,” she said shortly. “I was going to bring it up at the meeting but I thought it was something the officers ought to talk about first.”

  “Okay,” Lizzy replied, and beckoned to Verna to join them. “Ophelia says we need to find another member,” she said.

  Verna frowned. “Why? Are we losing somebody?” The club had begun with fourteen members. Then Mrs. Ross had moved to Montgomery and Dahlia Blackstone, the founder, had died, leaving them with twelve. Lucy’s membership had brought them to thirteen.

  “No-at least nobody that I know of,” Ophelia replied. She took a deep breath. “But some of the ladies are saying that thirteen is an unlucky number. And Beulah says she’s heard several people whispering about a ‘witches’ coven’ when they’re waiting to get shampooed and set.” Beulah Trivette owned and operated the Beauty Bower, which was gossip central for the Darling ladies. (The men, of course, preferred to get their gossip-which they liked to call “news”-from their buddies at the Darling Diner. And for shut-ins, there was always the party line.)

  “Witches’ coven!” Verna repeated incredulously.

  “Oh, really, Ophelia!” Lizzy exploded. At a questioning look from Mildred Kilgore, who was standing nearby, she lowered her voice. “That is just utterly ridiculous! Who is spreading such nonsense? We ought to stop it at the source, or it’ll get out of hand.” There were plenty of superstitious people in Darling, and superstitions-even silly ones-could cause trouble.

  “I know.” Ophelia sighed. “I asked who it was, but Beulah didn’t want to name names, and of course you can’t blame her. They’re paying customers, after all. She’s probably afraid that if they found out she tattled, they might leave the Bower and go over to the Curling Corner.” Julia Conrad ran Darling’s other beauty parlor, and there was an intense competition between the two shops.

  “Well, I suppose the problem is easily remedied,” Verna replied with a shrug. “All we have to do is find another new member, which will get us back to fourteen.”

  “How about Violet Sims?” Ophelia asked. “She helps Myra May with that big vegetable garden, and we all know her. She’d be a great addition.”

  “Sh
e would,” Lizzy replied, “but she’s up in Memphis right now. Her sister died, and she’s taking care of the new baby. Myra May doesn’t know when she’s likely to be back.”

  “Maybe Bettina Higgens?” Verna hazarded. Bettina worked for Beulah at the Beauty Bower and was intimately acquainted with all the Dahlias-with their hair, anyway.

  Ophelia gave her head a decided shake. “Bettina can’t even grow okra. Whenever the conversation gets around to gardening, she always says that she kills anything she puts in the ground. If Beulah nominates her, everybody’ll know it’s a desperation move on our part.”

  “Fannie Champaign, maybe,” Lizzy suggested. Fannie owned Champaign’s Darling Chapeaux, Darling’s only millinery shop, on the west side of the courthouse square, next to the Savings and Trust. Fannie lived above the shop and had a small but lovely garden at the back. “She always says her garden is the inspiration for her hats. Want me to ask her?”

  “Yes, do,” Verna said. “We’d better come up with a couple of other possibilities, too, in case we get turned down.”

  “And we’d better hurry,” Ophelia said in a warning tone. “Halloween will be here before long, and we certainly don’t need people whispering that we’re witches.”

  When the refreshments had disappeared and people were leaving, Lizzy stopped Bessie Bloodworth, who was on her way out the door. “Oh, Bessie, will you be at home for a few minutes? When we’ve finished the cleanup, Verna and I would like to come over for a little talk.”

  “Of course,” Bessie replied. Short and stocky, in her fifties, she had thick, dark eyebrows and salt-and-pepper curls that always looked as if she’d combed them with her fingers, which she probably had. “I’ve been meaning to ask you to drop in, anyway. I wanted you to see my Angel Trumpet. It’s absolutely gorgeous. It’s a beautiful afternoon-we can sit out in the backyard and have some lemonade.” She gave Lizzy a curious glance. “What did you want to talk about?”

  “Oh, just a little family history,” Lizzy said evasively. It was too difficult to explain.

  “Goodie!” Bessie said with a broad smile. “There’s nothing I like to talk about more than family history. Unless it’s my own.” Her smile faded slightly. “That’s a different story.”

  As the other Dahlias took their empty dishes and left, Lizzy and Verna stayed behind to tidy up the clubhouse, put the chairs back, and sweep the floor.

  “Would you check the windows, Verna?” Lizzy called over her shoulder as she wielded the broom. “Make sure they’re all locked and the curtains are drawn.”

  Until the last few years, nobody in Darling had bothered to lock their houses. But since jobs had gotten so scarce, men and boys (and sometimes even girls) were riding the rails, looking for work and food and a place where they could sleep out of the weather. Darling wasn’t on the main Louisville & Nashville rail line, but the hoboes often rode in on the freight cars that came to the sawmill. If a house looked vacant, they might try to break in. The residents of Darling weren’t exactly afraid, but they were-well, uneasy. The town felt different, somehow, with strangers traipsing through it.

  And even though the strangers might only be down on their luck and without a shred of malice in their hearts, they were also quite likely to be desperate. In Mobile, a string of local household robberies had been attributed to a pair of young vagrants picked up by the police when they were found sleeping in a nearby park. The boys, barely out of their teens, protested their innocence and the only evidence that connected them to the crimes was circumstantial.

  At least, that’s what Mr. Moseley had said to Lizzy, after he read about it in the Mobile Register. He called it scapegoating and had gotten quite angry, saying that it sounded to him like the police had simply collared the nearest hoboes, in order to make an object lesson of the poor fellows. But a jury had agreed with the police, and they were sent to jail.

  As the district attorney said during his final summation to the court, “Desperate men will commit desperate acts. It is our duty to be watchful.”

  SEVEN

  The Skeleton in Bessie Bloodworth’s Closet

  Bessie Bloodworth was a dedicated student of Darling’s history and knew the family stories of almost all of the local residents. She could tell you anything you wanted to know about who was related to whom and where people’s ancestors had come from. She had even written a little book, which was sold by the local history club. It was called A Few Skeletons in Our Closets: A Peek at Darling History.

  Unfortunately, Bessie had recently been reminded that she had a few skeletons in her own family closet. She had climbed up to the attic to get the old green living room drapes that she was planning to donate to the Darling Quilting Club to make comforters for the needy. Under the drapes, shoved far back in a corner, she found a box of her father’s business papers, left after his old office had been cleaned out. Today was both his birthday and the tenth anniversary of his death, so Bessie thought that maybe she should sit down and sort through everything. Or maybe tomorrow, or next week. There was really no hurry, she told herself. Bessie and her father hadn’t been close for years. That was only one of her painful memories. There were others.

  Bessie lived at Magnolia Manor, next door to the Dahlias’ clubhouse. She had given this name to her family home after her father had died, when she turned it into a boardinghouse for older unmarried and widowed ladies. (Mrs. Brewster, over on West Plum, operated a boardinghouse for younger unmarried ladies. Her Rules for Proper Behavior were very strict, whereas Bessie had no rules at all, believing that if her boarders didn’t understand proper behavior by now, they probably never would.)

  Running a boardinghouse was the last thing Bessie had planned to do with her life. She had hoped to train as a nurse. But her mother had died when she was a girl-one of the painful parts of the Bloodworth family story-and her three older brothers had left Darling just as quickly as they could. They wanted to get away from their father, who had changed after their mother died. But Bessie didn’t have the same freedom. She couldn’t leave, even if she wanted to. As her father’s only daughter, she was expected to live at home until she was married-to a local boy, of course. After that, she was expected to live close enough to be available to manage her father’s household and take care of him whenever he needed her. There was nothing unusual about this. It was a duty that every Darling parent expected and an obligation that all Darling girls understood.

  And that was what Bessie had expected, too. She fell in love with Harold, the boy across the street, and when she graduated high school, agreed to marry him. They planned to live with her father until they could afford their own home. Lots of young people in Darling did this, but it wasn’t an ideal situation and they knew it. Mr. Bloodworth was a volatile man who was given to rash, temperamental outbursts, and he hadn’t approved of his daughter’s choice of a husband. As Darling’s only undertaker and a member of the City Council, he thought Bessie could have done much better if she’d taken the time to look around a little, instead of settling for Harold Hamer, whose prospects were not exactly bright. That’s what her father said, anyway, although Bessie suspected that he would have felt the same way about anyone she chose. Nobody would ever be good enough to marry a Bloodworth.

  But the young man’s sister, who had raised him and with whom he lived, was equally temperamental and equally unimpressed by her brother’s choice of a bride, and let Harold know about it in no uncertain terms. So to Bessie and Harold, living with Bessie’s father (who was at least gone all day and quite a few evenings, tending to his funeral parlor and gravestone business) seemed the lesser of two evils.

  But as it turned out, they didn’t live there at all-and this was the most painful part of Bessie’s story, the part she had tried so hard to forget. About a week before the wedding, her fiancé left Darling, abruptly and without a word of good-bye, and neither Bessie nor Harold’s sister nor anyone else had ever heard another word from him. The wedding was at first postponed and then canceled, and all
over town, people were saying that poor Bessie had been jilted. Everybody felt sorry for her. She could see the pity written on the face of every single person she encountered. The loss of Harold and the pity of the townspeople-taken together, it was almost too much to bear, and her heart had broken.

  Surprisingly, Mr. Bloodworth had shown his daughter many small kindnesses in this terrible time, taking her wedding dress back to Mann’s and canceling the arrangements she had made at the church. When she had cried out loud, “Why? Why?” he had answered gruffly but kindly, “Some things don’t bear looking into, child.” It was as good an answer as any, and at the time, she had felt her father was right. Harold was gone. That was all she had to know. The why could remain a mystery forever.

  Bessie wept until she couldn’t weep anymore, and then she pulled herself together and went on doing the things she was expected to do. To help her get through, she played a game with herself, pretending that Harold had just gone off on a trip to New Orleans or Memphis and would one day walk through the door and everything would be exactly the way they had always planned it. It wasn’t pretending, she told herself: she believed to her soul that it was true.

  But time passed, as time has a way of doing, and one morning Bessie woke up and discovered that Harold was only a dim memory, a distant melody, like a song sung so far away that it could scarcely be heard. She no longer wanted to pretend that he was coming home, and she found to her surprise that this was all right. “Time heals all wounds,” she reminded herself, and felt that the hoary old proverb was true. She still loved Harold, she supposed, and she still longed to know what had happened to him and whether he was well and happy. But she was ready to stop living on the hope that he would come back.

  There were other changes in Bessie’s life, not all of them as healing as this one. Her father had become increasingly temperamental and hard to live with. He sold his funeral parlor to Mr. Noonan and the gravestone business to a man from Mobile and retired. Within a month, Doc Roberts diagnosed him as having cancer of the lungs. Bessie took care of him until at last he died and was buried next to her mother in the Bloodworth family plot in the Darling Cemetery on Schoolhouse Road-the cemetery that Mr. Darling had owned and where so many of his professional duties as Darling’s only undertaker had been carried out. And there she was, all by herself in the big house, faced with the challenge of supporting herself and unexpectedly, surprisingly lonely.