The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree (15 page)

“I’ll always want you, Liz,” he said, in a joking tone. “You know that”

Lizzy felt herself blushing. She understood that it was just his way of saying that she was a good secretary and he liked her work, but his tone made the compliment sound more ... well, more personal than he probably meant. It was disconcerting. It renewed the romantic dreams she had folded and put carefully away, like old linens closed in a drawer with lavender.

She pressed her lips together. “Yes, Mr. Moseley,” she said evenly. “Would you like me to stay a little longer? In case you need me for something?”

He looked back down at the papers on his desk. “No, you go on, Liz. I’ll be here for a while. And I’m expecting somebody, so please leave the downstairs door unlocked.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched, arms over his head. “There is one thing, though,” he said casually—too casually. “Do you have much money in the bank here in town?”

She frowned at the unexpectedness of the question. “In the bank?” She thought. “Well, not a lot. Maybe fifty dollars or so. I’m saving for some more work on the house. Why?”

“It might be a good idea if you took that money out” He glanced at the clock on his desk. “They’re closed over there now, but you could do it first thing in the morning. You can keep it here in the office safe if you don’t want that much money in the house.”

“Take it out of the bank?” she asked uncertainly. “But why would I—”

His eyes narrowed and his tone became stern. “Don’t ask,” he commanded. “Just do what I say. And don’t tell anybody else about this. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“Don’t tell
anybody,”
he added emphatically. “That’s an order.”

She nodded, perplexed, and felt the prickles of apprehension on the back of her neck. Something serious was going on. She didn’t know what it was, or why it ought to involve her, but—

“And don’t worry,” he said, and gave her a lopsided grin. “Just do what I say and you won’t have anything to regret”

Which perplexed her even more. But she had never questioned Mr. Moseley and she wasn’t about to start now. She got her purse out of her bottom desk drawer and went down the stairs to the street, thinking that she’d better go next door to Hancock’s and buy some sugar. She’d stop at Mrs. Freeman’s house and pick up some eggs, too. Mrs. Freeman had a dozen laying hens that produced more eggs than she could use, so she traded the extras to the neighbors. Lizzy was already in debt to her for three quarts of raspberries, to be paid off when the berries were ripe.

But just as she stepped onto the street, a blue Ford coupe pulled up in front of the building and Grady Alexander jumped out. He was wearing his working clothes—blue shirt with the sleeves rolled above the elbows on tanned, strong arms, dark twill wash pants, sweat-stained felt fedora. He had what Lizzy thought of as that “Grady look” on his face, the intent look he wore when he had his mind on something serious.

Seeing him, she felt herself flushing, remembering Saturday night, when things between them had almost gotten out of hand. After the picture show, they had driven out to the bluff just beyond the Cypress County fairgrounds, where they parked under the shadowy trees. The flickering stars seemed brighter in the absence of the moon, and the languid music of the frogs and night birds drifted through the open windows of Grady’s Ford. Maybe it was the romantic scenes in the picture show that pushed him into that restless, urgent mood. Or maybe it was just what he said, that they had been seeing each other long enough and it was high time they made up their minds to get married—meaning that it was high time that Lizzy made up her mind, because Grady had already made up his.

Whatever it was, things had definitely gotten a little steamy between them in the humid, breathless dark, certainly a lot steamier than she had intended. She had pushed his hands away and made him stop at the point when she knew that if she didn’t make him stop right that very second, she would stop wanting him to stop and—

It wasn’t that she was a prude, or that she was saving herself for marriage, as her mother insisted she should. No. And it wasn’t that she didn’t want it, too, because she did, probably more than she was willing to admit. And she might’ve, if the question of doing it weren’t so tangled up with the puzzle of love and marriage. Grady seemed to have the idea that you only did it with someone you loved and meant to marry, either soon or someday. If they did it, he was bound to think she loved him and meant to marry him, and she didn’t want him to think that. Not yet, anyway. The days when she knew she didn’t mean to marry Grady still outnumbered the days she thought she might want to, someday.

“Hello, Grady,” she said, as casually as she could.

“Hullo, Lizzy,” Grady replied brusquely, and strode past her. Then he stopped and turned and snatched off his hat, and the sternness in his high-cheekboned face softened. Somewhere in his family, far enough back so that nobody quite remembered where or when or who, there had been an Indian—Creek maybe, or Choctaw. The lineage might be forgotten, but the lines on his face were clear enough. “Sorry. It’s not you, doll. I’m in a hurry. I gotta talk to Charlie.”

Doll. She wished he wouldn’t call her that, but there was no point in saying so—again. “What is it?” she asked, caught by the intensity of his expression.

“Come inside,” he said, and pushed open the door, standing back so she could go first. Grady had graduated from ag school at Auburn and was educated in the latest farming methods, but he was still a Southern gendeman. Or at least he had been, until Saturday night.

The
Dispatch
office was the size of Moseley & Moseley upstairs, but was just one large, tin-ceilinged room, with a wooden counter built across the space about ten feet from the front door. Behind it, Charlie Dickens was typing at his battered old desk, wearing his usual green eyeshade, a white shirt and tie, and a sleeveless gray vest. A cigarette dangled from one corner of his mouth. Behind him, at the back of the room, the newspaper press sat silent—he wouldn’t crank it up and start printing until Thursday evening, after Lizzy and Mr. Moseley had quit for the day. It made a lot of noise.

“Charlie,” Grady said urgendy. “Hey, Charlie.”

Charlie glanced over his shoulder. He was a large man, past middle age, fleshy and half-bald, with hard, penetrating eyes that didn’t seem to go with the plump softness of the rest of him.

“Hey, Grady.” Charlie stopped typing, rolled his chair back, and stood, stretching. “Afternoon, Lizzy. Say, Miz Search dropped off a page of tips on makin’ do for that pamphlet your garden club is compiling.” He began sorting through the litter of papers on his desk. “Now, whut the heck did I do with it?”

Charlie’s skills as an editor and his command of standard English were impeccable, but he preferred to ‘talk ’Bama,’ as he put it. He said that folks felt a little easier talking to him if he didn’t put on the dog.

Grady put his hat back on, all business. “Charlie, there’s been a bad accident. I was out having a look at Harvey Jackson’s hogs when his boys came in and said there was a car wrecked and somebody dead in it, down in Pine Mill Creek. Harvey and I drove over to look; then I hightailed it back here to town to tell the sheriff. Figured you might want to get out there and take some pictures. Looks like a newspaper story to met.”

Charlie stopped messing with the papers on his desk and jerked off his eyeshade. “Get out where? Where’s the wreck?”

“Where the bridge on the county road has been out for the past three weeks. A girl drove through the barrier and into the ravine. She’s dead.”

Lizzy bit her lip. “Oh, dear! Oh, Grady, that’s awful! A girl? Who?” Darling was small and its families, neighbors, and kinfolk were all knitted together in a dense fabric of relationships. When somebody died, it left a hole. Everybody felt the loss, one way or another.

“You can say that again,” Grady replied tersely. “Purely awful. The car rolled a time or two before it got to the bottom, and it landed on top of her. She’s smashed up so bad I couldn’t tell you who. She’s a blonde is all I can say.”

A blonde? Lizzy stared at him, her heart beginning to pound.

Charlie was reaching for his suit jacket. “Don’t have any film in my camera,” he said, shrugging into it. “Used it up on Saturday, shootin’ the Vo Ag boys out at the fairgrounds. Lester ordered it for me this mawnin’—be here on tomorrow’s bus. Lizzy, you got film in that Kodak of yours?”

“Sure,” Lizzy said. “You can take my camera.” She was trying to sound normal. “What kind of car is it, Grady?”

“Pontiac roadster, green, pretty new. It’s upside down in the rocks by the creek.”

“Roadster?” Charlie frowned. “Whose ’ud that be? Didn’t know we had any Pontiac roadsters in town.” Darling was small enough so that everybody knew what everybody else was driving, how long they’d had it, and what they’d paid for it.

“Dunno,” Grady said. “Didn’t recognize it m’self I can give you a lift out there if you want, Charlie. I left Harvey Jackson’s oldest boy with the wreck. I told his dad I’d bring him home, so I’m going back out there. We can stop at Lizzy’s house on the way and get her camera.”

“Fine with me,” Charlie said, shoving a small notebook into his coat pocket and grabbing his hat. “Let’s go.”

“I’m going too,” Lizzy said.

“Sure thing,” Charlie said, opening the front door. “We’ll leave you at your house after you give me your camera, and then we can—”

“No,” Lizzy said firmly. “I mean I’m going out to Pine Mill Creek with you. I want to see the wreck.”

“Absolutely not,” Grady said flatly. He went to the Ford and opened the passenger door with a Southern gentleman’s flourish. “Trust me, Lizzy. This is for your own good. You do not want to see this wreck. Now, get in the car. Charlie can ride in the rumble seat as far as your house.”

“Maybe Liz oughtta ride in the rumble,” Charlie said. “She’s skinnier than I am. How ‘bout it, Liz? You’re gettin’ out first”

“But I might know who she is,” Lizzy objected. “I know all of the women in this town. I might be able to identify her.” She lifted her chin and hardened her voice. “And if I don’t go, neither does my camera.”

“Forget it,” Grady said. “You are not going. It is not a thing for a woman to see.”

“All right, then.” Lizzy folded her arms. This was so like Grady, always trying to tell her what she should and shouldn’t do, which was one of the reasons she was not going to marry him. “I’m not going, and neither is my camera.”

Charlie scowled. “Hey, you two. Stop bickerin’ and let’s get goin’.” To Grady, he added, “Woman is too damn stubborn for her own good. If she wants to see a dead body, let her. What the hell—won’t hurt her none.”

“Exactly,” Lizzy agreed. “It won’t hurt me. And I might be able to help.”

“Help? I don’t see how you can help.” Grady glared at her.

“I might be able to identify her.”

Grady made a skeptical noise.

“Maybe she can,” Charlie said. He was trying to cram himself into the rumble. “Come on. Let’s get that camera.”

“You’ll faint,” Grady said.

“I’ve never fainted in my life,” Lizzy said. “But if I do, you can pick me up.”

Grady’s voice was hard. “Lizzy Lacy, I swear. You are the stubbornest woman God ever put on this green earth. Get in the damn car.”

They stopped at Lizzy’s, where she picked up her Kodak and turned it over to Charlie. Back in the car, she sat as far over against the door as she could, but it was a tight fit and she could almost feel the heat of Grady’s thigh and the angry thrust of his muscled arm when he shifted gears. What’s more, she could still feel the heat they had generated in this very same car on Saturday night. Neither of them spoke for the five- or six-mile drive.

Pine Mill Creek lay at the bottom of a wooded, steep-sided ravine, some thirty feet deep. The muddy waters had run high during the April rains, and the worst of the floods, laden with downed trees and other debris, had taken out the wooden pilings that supported the rickety wooden bridge. There wasn’t enough money to replace it with a modern structure, and the county commissioners hadn’t yet figured out what to do. In the meantime, the local residents were driving ten miles out of their way to cross the creek farther from town, and the county had put a couple of yellow-painted sawhorses across the road, with a sign that said BRIDGE OUT.

Now one sawhorse had been shoved aside and the other was splintered, where the Pontiac had smashed through the barricade. Sheriff Burns met them, a big wad of tobacco tucked in one cheek. His Model A was parked across the road, and Buddy Norris, his arm in a sling, was at the bottom of the ravine, with a young man dressed in overalls. The two of them were conducting a search around the wrecked car, which lay, wheels up, twenty feet down, at the edge of the running water. It had somersaulted at least once before it landed, and pieces of automobile wreckage—a bumper, a fender, a wheel, a headlamp—were scattered across the hillside. Carrying Liz’s Kodak, Charlie started down the bank.

The sheriff looked at Lizzy and his eyebrows went up.

“Miss Lacy thinks she might know the dead woman, Roy,” Grady said in an even tone. “Okay if she goes down and takes a look?”

The sheriff grunted and spit a string of tobacco juice. It splatted into the dirt. “Not a pleasant sight, Miz Lacy. That gal down there is tore up purty bad. Squashed flat when the car landed on her.”

“I want to do it,” Liz insisted.

The sheriff rolled his eyes. “Think you can handle it?”

Now that she was here, Lizzy wasn’t so sure. But she nodded, not trusting her voice.

“All right, then.” He looked at her shoes. “Not goin’ to be an easy climb down an’ back, neither.”

Lizzy pulled herself up. “I can do it.”

The sheriff twisted his mouth skeptically, but his desire to get the victim identified won out. “Well, then, let’s get on with it”