The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

FOURTEEN

Outside on Franklin Street, Bessie and Liz stood in the shade of the faded green canvas awning of Musgrove’s Hardware, next door to the diner on the east. They were looking in the hardware store window, engrossed in a discussion of the merits of the new ten-gallon cast-aluminum National pressure canner that Mr. Musgrove had put on display.

The canner was a hefty contraption with a lid that strapped down and gauges and valves and various other doohickeys, made of heavy-duty aluminum to contain the steam pressure. In the window with the pressure canner were several of the more usual blue enamel canning kettles with wire racks, a pyramid of glass Mason and Kerr canning jars, a basket of lids and rubber rings for older jars fitted with wire bales and the newer screw-on metal rings and flat self-sealing disks, a jar lifter, canning tongs, and a large metal canning funnel-every up-to-the-minute device that a modern housewife would need to outfit her canning kitchen.

Bessie tilted her head to one side, thinking that she and Roseanne could certainly put that pressure canner to use in the kitchen at Magnolia Manor. “You know, Liz,” she said, “if everybody had one of those things, nobody would ever go hungry. They could can all the garden vegetables they could grow-beans, corn, okra, tomatoes, lots of things.” Her own mother and grandmother had always canned most of the family’s food, and she herself put up peaches and tomatoes and green beans and the like, using her mother’s canning kettle. But Mrs. Hancock stocked a variety of canned goods on her grocery shelves, and most women had decided that it was silly to put a lot of time and work into home canning. Using a can opener was very convenient, and if you put plenty of seasoning on the vegetables, most husbands couldn’t tell the difference.

“I’m sure people could can their own food,” Liz said thoughtfully. “But I wonder-” She craned her neck to peer at the price tag. “Why, it costs fourteen dollars and ninety-nine cents, Bessie!” she exclaimed. “Around here, who can afford that? And it looks a little daunting, don’t you think? You’d have to learn how to use all those dials and valves and things.”

Bessie shrugged. “Well, at that price, it’s out of the question. I guess we’ll just have to keep on using the old canning kettle-although it isn’t always safe for things like beans and corn. And it takes hours and hours in the hot kitchen.” But she couldn’t resist a last longing look at the canner. “If we had that at the Magnolia Manor, I’ll bet we wouldn’t have to throw out so many jars of spoiled food.”

“That’s one of the problems with the canning kettle,” Liz agreed. “Tomatoes are okay, but if the food isn’t acid enough, it doesn’t always keep. And no matter how long you boil the jars, they don’t always seal just right. When you bring a quart of green beans from the fruit cellar, it might be moldy, or worse.” She made a face.

Bessie cast a quick look over her shoulder. She and Liz were not standing in front of Mr. Musgrove’s hardware store window for the purpose of discussing what could be done with that pressure canner, interesting as it was. They were waiting for Mr. Frankie Diamond to emerge from the telephone booth on the other side of the diner.

When Liz had come back to the table from her visit to the Exchange, she had told Bessie that Verna was back there, working the switchboard. And that earlier that morning, Verna had had a long telephone conversation with Miss LaMotte’s housekeeper in Cicero. She had learned-among other things-that an attacker had slashed Miss Lake’s face and that Miss LaMotte had shot him.

Bessie stared at Liz across the table. “Shot the slasher?” she gasped incredulously. “Mercy me! Did she… Did she kill him?”

“Dead as a doornail,” Liz replied, picking up her glass of iced tea. “And if you ask me, he deserved it.”

Myra May had come up with their dinner plates and was standing behind them, listening. “Who shot a slasher?” she asked anxiously. “When? Where?”

“Shhh,” Liz hissed, shooting a meaningful glance at the baldheaded man at the counter. “Don’t talk so loud. We’ll tell you all about it later.”

But Bessie was sure the man hadn’t heard a word of what they’d said. The volume was turned up on the noon agricultural price reports on the radio, and the man was bent over his plate, shoveling in his mashed potatoes and gravy as fast as he could. He was obviously in a hurry to finish his dinner so that he could get back to the booth and make that telephone call.

Over their meal, Liz related to Bessie the rest of the details Verna had gotten from Mrs. O’Malley, including the fact that the man sitting over there at the counter, enjoying Euphoria’s fried chicken, was a member of the Capone gang named Diamond. Frankie Diamond. Verna had set it up so he was supposed to use the phone in the phone booth to make a call to Mr. Capone, but she wasn’t going to put the call through. When he came out of the booth, she wanted them to shadow him.

Bessie listened to all of this with increasing astonishment. A member of the Capone gang, here in Darling? Miss Jamison’s friend, her face slashed? Miss Hamer’s niece, a killer? And she and Liz were supposed to do what?

“Shadow him?” She sneaked a look at the man out of the corner of her eye. There was a bulge in the back of his coat. Was it a gun?

“Follow him,” Liz explained. “Keep an eye on him. Find out where he goes. It’s something Verna got from reading those true-crime magazines of hers. But we have to keep out of sight. He’s not supposed to see us.”

“Oh,” Bessie said, understanding. She picked up her biscuit and slathered it with butter. “Well, as for keeping out of sight, you know as well as I do that we’re just a pair of small-town women. You’re too pretty and wholesome-looking to be any kind of a threat to him, and I’m almost old enough to be his mother. We might as well be invisible. He will never in this natural world suspect that we’re ‘shadowing’ him.”

And this seemed to be the case. As Bessie and Liz watched from their vantage point in front of the hardware store window, Mr. Diamond came out of the phone booth. His thick-featured face was a mottled red, his eyes were narrowed to slits, and his expression was surly. Bessie suppressed a giggle. He looked exactly like a man who had been cooped up for twenty minutes in a hot, stuffy telephone booth, only to learn that his critically important long-distance call could not be connected because all the circuits were busy.

Mr. Diamond jammed his snap-brim hat down on his bald head and strode angrily past Lizzy and Bessie. Without wasting so much as a look in their direction, he stalked across Robert E. Lee, dodging a pair of mangy dogs and a cart pulled by a mule. He was heading in the direction of Mann’s Mercantile. Taking their time, the two women strolled casually behind him, chatting as they went.

In front of Mann’s, Diamond paused, took out a cigarette, and lit it with a match. He was about to go into the store when a woman, coming out, bumped him. It was Leona Ruth Adcock, carrying a shopping bag full of purchases. She stopped, looked at Mr. Diamond in some surprise, smiled, and opened her mouth.

“Uh-oh,” Liz said, under her breath. “Didn’t you tell me that Leona Ruth has got it into her head that this man is a government agent?”

“I sure did,” Bessie said grimly. “She might be going to tell him how to find Miss Jamison. We ought to try to stop her.” She stepped forward. But she was too late.

“Oh, Mr. Gold!” Leona Ruth exclaimed in a tittery voice. “How nice to see you again.” Her black hat was tipped forward over her freshly done curls, a red rose bobbing in a nest of red ribbons over one ear. “It’s such a coincidence, runnin’ into one another like this.”

“You got me mixed up with somebody else,” Mr. Diamond growled impatiently, clearly in no mood to chat with a woman wearing a red rose over her ear. He made as if to dodge around Leona Ruth and into the mercantile, but she sidestepped adroitly, planting herself right in front of him.

“Why, don’t you recall?” She pouted, as if she were put out at him for not remembering. “You stopped at my house just yesterday afternoon, askin’ about a platinum blonde. I was just on my way over to the hotel to leave you a message.”

Mr. Diamond pulled his eyebrows together in a dark scowl, not even attempting to be polite. “I been stoppin’ at a lot of houses in this stinkin’ little burg, sister,” he snarled around his cigarette. “You got something juicy for me, spill it fast, before I lose what’s left of my temper. I been hangin’ out in a phone booth for twenty minutes and I ain’t in no mood to stand here and listen to some dumb dame bash her gums.”

Bessie saw that Leona Ruth was clearly taken aback by this out-and-out rudeness, but she pulled herself together and persevered.

“The lady you were inquirin’ about yesterday. I just might be able to tell you something about her.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice, darting a coy look at him. “That is, if you’ll tell me why you’re lookin’ for her. It’s a trade, y’see. You give me something, I give you something back.” She smiled, pleased with herself. “Tit for tat.”

“Tit for-” Mr. Diamond laughed harshly. He pulled on his cigarette, frowning, and began processing what Leona Ruth had said. “That blonde-you’re tellin’ me that you know where she is?”

“I’m tellin’ you that I might know,” Leona Ruth said demurely. “And I might be willin’ to tell you what I know. But you have to tell me something first.” She paused for emphasis. “What’s she wanted for?”

“Wanted for?” Mr. Diamond repeated. If he understood, Bessie thought, he was pretending not to. Or maybe he wasn’t quite as smart as he wanted people to think. Maybe he was the kind of man who relied on brawn instead of brains. She looked again, and saw the bulge under the back of his coat. She shivered. It had to be a gun.

Leona Ruth, however, couldn’t see the bulge. She wasn’t fazed by the man’s response, either. She arched her eyebrows, tilted her chin, and giggled like a gaga schoolgirl with a crush.

“Well, o’ course, Mr. Gold, I understand that you cain’t tell me everything, since you’re carryin’ out this investigation incognito and undercover, which is just naturally right. But I ain’t askin’ for much, really.” She held up her gloved thumb and forefinger, measuring a small amount. “Just one teensy-weensy little hint about-”

“Undercover?” Mr. Diamond’s eyes narrowed. He threw his cigarette on the dirt and ground it out with the toe of his shoe. “Lady, are you tryin’ to pull a fast one? You tryin’ to muscle in on-”

“Perfect!” Leona Ruth trilled happily and clapped her hands. “Why, you sound exactly like one of those Chicago gangsters-Bugs Moran and Al Capone and all those other thugs! Y’see, Mr. Gold, we’re not as rural down here in South Alabama as you might think. There has been a radio in my house since right after the Great War, when the late Mr. Adcock insisted on buyin’ one so we could be informed about what was goin’ on. ‘Miz Adcock,’ he said, ‘we need to know what’s happenin’ out there in the world, so we are buyin’ a radio,’ which was exactly what he did, an RCA batt’ry-powered receiver in a mahogany case, and it has worked perfectly ever since.” She pulled herself up importantly, looking down her nose. “And in addition to the radio, we have a first-class weekly newspaper-it comes out on Fridays-and Mr. Greer at the Palace Theater shows a newsreel before every movie feature. We may live in a small town, but we keep up with the times.”

Mr. Diamond was staring at her, shaking his head as if he did not quite believe what he was hearing. Bessie understood his confusion. Leona Ruth often had that effect on people.

“Lady,” he growled, now almost plaintively, “will you pu-leez just get to the point? Where is that blonde?”

“Not so fast, Mr. Gold.” Leona Ruth became brisk. “The point is that I know who you are, and I am eager to do my patriotic duty as a citizen to help you capture the criminal you are lookin’ for. All I ask in return is a tidbit of inside information. I am sure that Mr. Hoover wouldn’t mind in the slightest if one of his government agents gave just a teeny tiny hint to a valuable informant.” She smiled meaningfully and repeated the phrase, with emphasis. “A valuable informant.”

“Mr… Hoover?”

“Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, of course.” Leona Ruth tittered. “You didn’t think I was talkin’ about the president of the United States, did you? Just a tidbit of information,” she cajoled. “What’s she done? What’s she wanted for?”

There was a moment’s silence while Mr. Diamond, knitting his brows, worked through all of this. Bessie had just come to the conclusion that the man really was a thickheaded dimwit when he smiled, snatched off his hat, and took Leona Ruth’s gloved hand in one pudgy paw.

“Okay. Okay. Now I gotcha. Yes, ma’am. Sure thing. Now I unnerstand.” He dropped Leona Ruth’s hand. “You wanna deal. Well, I don’t think Mr. J. Edgar Hoover back in Washington, D.C., would be too mad at me if I told you that the broad in question-the blonde-is wanted by the police in Cicero, Illinois. She shot Salvatorio Raggio.”

“Shot!” Leona Ruth’s eyes widened and she fell back a step, her nostrils quivering. “You mean, she’s a… a murderess? I was at the Beauty Bower, gettin’ shampooed and set in the comp’ny of a murderess?”

Mr. Diamond said through his teeth, “You got it, ma’am. What’s more, she shot Sal Raggio with a Remington 51 that was give to her by one of Al Capone’s gang members.”

Leona Ruth’s hand went to her mouth. “Al Capone!” she squeaked. “Did you say Al… Capone, Mr. Gold?”

“Yes, ma’am, that’s who I said. The gentleman who give her the gun-Diamond, his name is, Frankie Diamond-was convicted twice, once for runnin’ numbers and once for sellin’ illegal booze, for which he was sent up two years. It was an unfair trial and a rotten conviction, but that’s the kinda criminal associates this broad has got. I hafta tell you, lady, she ain’t got no decency. She don’t play fair with nobody, neither her friends or the local flat-feet.”

Liz elbowed Bessie in the ribs. “He gave Miss LaMotte the gun himself!” she whispered excitedly, and Bessie nodded. “They must have been involved,” she whispered back. “Romantically, I mean.”

Leona Ruth put her tongue between her teeth, shaking her head, big-eyed.

“You don’t believe me on this,” Mr. Diamond went on, “you just go to the phone and call up Captain Ricardo at the Cicero police department and ask him who he’s lookin’ for in the murder of Mr. Salvatorio Raggio. He’ll put you wise-if you can get through to him, that is. I didn’t have no luck callin’ Cicero just now myself.” His voice hardened. “Okay, lady? Now it’s your turn. Cough it up. Where is this broad? Where can I find her?”

“W-where?” Leona Ruth stuttered. Her face was white, and Bessie could see that she was genuinely frightened. Whatever she may have imagined Miss Jamison’s offense to be-tax evasion? petty theft? littering?-murder obviously wasn’t on the list.

“All right, sister, let’s cut the comedy.” Diamond leaned forward so that his face was only inches from Leona Ruth’s. In a threatening voice, he growled, “I ain’t got time to fool around. This here is a dangerous woman we’re talkin’ about. She carries that gun of hers around in her pocketbook, ready to shoot anybody who looks at her crosswise. You said you know where to find her. So tell me, or so help me I’ll-” He lifted his hand.

Leona Ruth looked cornered. “She’s stayin’ with her aunt,” she began in a halting voice. “The old lady lives on Camellia Street, right across from the-”

Bessie couldn’t let Leona Ruth spill the beans on Miss Jamison. Knowing it was now or never, she abruptly charged forward, brushed past Mr. Diamond, and seized Leona Ruth by the arm, knocking her hat askew.

“Why, Leona Ruth Adcock!” she cried. “I have been looking all over this town for you, and here you are, standing on Robert E. Lee, right here in front of Mann’s! Your sister sent me to tell you that you’re wanted at home, this very minute! It’s an emergency.”

“My… my sister?” Leona Ruth faltered. “But I don’t have a-”

“Oh, swell, Miss Bloodworth! You’ve found her!” Liz rushed around Diamond and took Leona Ruth’s other arm. “Your sister says it’s a case of life and death, Mrs. Adcock. We hate to interrupt your conversation with this gentleman, but you’ve got to come with us. Right now! There’s not a second to lose.” And both Bessie and Liz began to pull Mrs. Adcock away.

Diamond was suddenly jarred into action. “Hey!” he exclaimed indignantly. He reached out and grabbed Bessie’s arm. “What’s with yous dames? I’m talkin’ to this lady. She’s about to give me some very valuable information.” To Leona Ruth, he said, “Across Camellia Street from what?”

Leona Ruth replied, “Across from the Magnolia-”

“Help!” Bessie cried, trying to wrench her arm free from Diamond’s grip. She let go of Leona Ruth and whapped the man with her handbag. “Get your hands off me!” she screeched. “Help, police!”

Hanging on to Leona Ruth, Liz stepped forward. “Let her go!” she yelled at Mr. Diamond. “You let Miss Bloodworth go, you big thug!” She turned back to Leona Ruth and began to pull. “Hurry, Mrs. Adcock! It’s an emergency. There’s not a minute to lose!”

“Wait! You can’t go!” Diamond protested loudly. Still holding Bessie’s arm, he grabbed for Leona Ruth’s sleeve, pulling her jacket half off and tilting her hat across one eye. Leona Ruth screamed and dropped her shopping bag, and an assortment of nuts, candies, and raisins spilled out and rolled across the ground. “Across Camellia from the Magnolia what?” he demanded.

“Help!” Bessie shrieked frantically, and hit the man with her handbag again. “Get your hands off me! Help!”

Leona Ruth was staring at Diamond as if she were mesmerized. She began, “Across from the Magnolia Man-” But she didn’t get to finish. Liz clapped her hand over her mouth.

At that moment, the glass door to the store slammed wide open and Mr. Mann, the proprietor, strode out, wearing a white shirt with red sleeve garters, a black bow tie, his usual red suspenders, and a white apron. He was a burly man with powerful shoulders, at least two heads taller than Diamond.

“What’s goin’ on out here?” he demanded. “Ladies, is this fella botherin’ you?” He peered through his gold-rimmed bifocals at Bessie. “Why, Miz Bloodworth, for heaven’s sake! And Miz Adcock!” He turned to Diamond. “Get your big fat hands off these ladies,” he barked, pushing him backward, forcing him to release his hold on both Bessie and Mrs. Adcock. “You oughtta be ashamed of yourself!”

“Oh, Mr. Mann, I am so glad to see you!” Bessie cried, straightening the sleeve of her dress and righting her hat. “Mrs. Adcock has an emergency and has to go home, right this minute, but this gentleman is attempting to detain her. Could you talk some sense into him for us?”

“Oh, you bet, Miz Bloodworth,” Mr. Mann replied. He was scowling furiously, his face as red as a turkey’s wattle. “I don’t know who the Sam Hill you are or what you think you’re doin’, stranger,” he bellowed, “but I’ll thank you to keep your hands to yourself. It ain’t polite to molest a Southern lady.”

“Keep yer shirt on,” Mr. Diamond said, taking a step backward and raising his hands as if to defend himself. “I ain’t molestin’ nobody. I am only tryin’ to get the information I was promised by this lady right here.”

“Well, I advise you to give up tryin’,” Mr. Mann snapped. He thrust a thick forefinger into Diamond’s nose. “Whoever the hell you are, I want you off my proppity, right now. You hear?”

“But it ain’t what you think, Mr. Mann!” Leona Ruth was struggling to free herself from Bessie and Liz. “His name is Mr. Gold. He’s a gov’ment agent! He’s here in Darling to arrest-”

“A gov’ment agent?” Mr. Mann shouted, and his face got so red that it looked as if he were about to explode. “A gov’ment agent, huh? Well, I don’t give a good gol-durn who he’s here to arrest, Miz Adcock. And I don’t know why in tarnation you’re actin’ like it’s your duty to defend him.”

“Of course I’m defendin’ him,” Leona Ruth shrilled. “He’s doin’ important business for Mr. Hoover. He-”

“And I am tellin’ you for your very own personal good that he’s got no bidness layin’ his dirty hands on Miz Bloodworth, or on Miz Lacy, or on you. And I am surprised right down to my toe bones that you are tryin’ to make excuses for him. Gov’ment agent-ptui!” And he spit contemptuously on one of Diamond’s shiny shoes.

Bessie knew exactly why Mr. Mann was so furious. Deep in the wooded hills to the west of Darling, between the town and the Alabama River, Mr. Mann’s second cousin, Mickey LeDoux, ran the biggest moonshine operation in all of South Alabama. Mickey supplied an excellent corn liquor not only to the residents of Darling, but to Monroeville, Frisco, and all the little villages roundabout. What’s more, everybody in town-including Sheriff Roy Burns-knew for a certain fact that Mr. Mann had a secret shelf behind the horse harness and saddles in the back room at the Mercantile, where he would be glad to sell you a bottle or two of Mickey’s best. Hearing the words government agent, Mr. Mann had quite naturally assumed that Mr. Diamond was a revenue agent-a revenooer, as the locals called them-and that he was planning to arrest Mickey Mann and anybody who was associated with him.

Afterward, Bessie wondered what might have happened next, but as things turned out, whatever it was didn’t get a chance to happen. Whether it was blind luck or Divine Providence or maybe even the work of the devil, at that very moment, Deputy Buddy Norris came roaring up Robert E. Lee on his red Indian Ace motorcycle, a cloud of dust spinning along behind him like a miniature tornado. He was wearing his khaki deputy’s uniform and jacket, his leather motorcycle helmet and goggles, and his gun. Bessie didn’t know whether he was on duty or not, because Buddy loved his work so much and was so diligent about it that he wore his uniform constantly. Some folks guessed that he even slept in it, with his gun under his pillow.

Seeing Buddy coming, Mr. Mann stepped into the dusty street, windmilling both arms. “Hey, Buddy, stop!” he yelled. “We got us a problem here.”

Buddy Norris skidded to a stop, kicked down his motorcycle stand, and lifted his leg gracefully over the machine. He was a tall, lean, well-built young man with a shock of brown hair across his forehead and a straggly growth of beard on his chin. He was known to be somewhat reckless and accident prone, but he was a good deputy and a better law enforcement officer, in most people’s estimations, than Sheriff Roy Burns. Bessie agreed, for she knew Buddy Norris well. He had mowed her grass twice a month every summer from the time he was ten until the sheriff had picked him to take Deputy Duane Hadley’s place. A decent young man, willing to help, if sometimes a rapscallion.

“A problem, you say, Mr. Mann?” Buddy asked pleasantly, hooking his thumbs into his belt and pushing his jacket aside so that his holstered weapon was clearly visible. His deputy’s badge, polished to a fare-thee-well, was prominently displayed on the lapel of his brown jacket. He smiled his Lucky Lindy smile at Bessie and gave her a little salute.

“Afternoon, Miz Bloodworth.” His glance went to Liz, approving her yellow hat. “Miz Lacy. That’s a right purty hat.”

He didn’t look at Mrs. Adcock. Bessie knew that he had once hit a baseball through Leona Ruth’s front window and she had made him pay for the broken glass by spading up her spring garden, which at the time was about the size of the baseball field out behind the Academy.

“A real serious problem,” Mr. Mann said sternly. “This fella here has been annoyin’ these ladies. He-”

“He’s not annoyin’, he’s a gov’ment agent!” Leona Ruth cried. “He’s here to-”

“I’m afraid that Mrs. Adcock is very high-strung,” Bessie said sweetly. “If you want to know the truth, Buddy, you go right on over to the Exchange and have a little talk with Verna Tidwell. She’s on the switchboard this afternoon. She’ll tell you who this man really is. He is from-”

“I don’t give a good goose turd who he is or where he’s from,” Mr. Mann said heatedly, “although it is purty obvious from the way he talks that he’s a damn Yankee from up north.”

“He’s also armed,” Bessie said.

“Armed?” Liz repeated in surprise.

“Under his jacket, left side,” Bessie explained. “My father had one of those shoulder holsters. He was attacked by a crazy man at his funeral parlor once when he was laying out the man’s wife, and after that, he wore it every time he worked on a corpse or did a funeral. I could always tell when he had it on by the bulge in his coat.”

“Armed, is he?” Buddy drawled. His glance sharpened and he took a step closer.

“Armed? Well, o’ course he’s armed,” Leona Ruth protested. “I tell you, he’s a gov’ment agent, sent here by Mr. J. Edgar Hoover to-”

“Lemme see your badge, Mr. Gov’ment Agent, sir,” Buddy said. Like Mr. Mann, he was taller than Diamond, and younger and fitter. And unlike Mr. Mann, Buddy had a gun.

Diamond cleared his throat and looked nervously away. “I ain’t carrying no badge right now.”

“Because he’s incognito,” shrilled Leona Ruth. “He’s undercover! He is on the trail of a-”

“Miz Adcock,” Mr. Mann said with exaggerated politeness, “I reckon you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, so I’ll ask you to jes’ keep still and let us menfolks get this sorted out.”

“No badge.” Buddy made a tsk-tsk noise. His voice hardened. “Then lemme see your gun. Slowly, now, Mr. Gov’ment Agent. No fast moves.”

Diamond looked from Buddy to Mr. Mann, assessing the possibilities of escape. Seeing none, he opened his jacket and withdrew a wicked-looking snub-nose revolver. Sullenly, he handed it to Buddy.

“Well, sir.” Buddy stuck the gun in his jacket pocket. “An armed undercover gov’ment agent with no badge who is botherin’ our womenfolks is something we just cain’t tolerate here in Darling.” His eyes narrowed. “Ain’t it about time for your train, do you reckon?”

Diamond shook his head quickly. “Not until tomorrow morning.”

“No, sir,” Buddy said. He cocked his head. “I can hear that train whistlin’ now, on its way in from over at Monroeville. Which means it’ll be goin’ out again in just about twenty minutes. You got a suitcase?”

“At the hotel,” Diamond said sullenly. “But I’m not-”

“Well, good,” Buddy said, and clamped a hand on Diamond’s collar. “Let’s go and get that ol’ suitcase, Mr. Gov’ment Agent, and I’ll make sure you get to the depot in time to catch your train.”

“You ain’t gettin’ rid of me so easy!” Diamond shouted, dancing on his toes, trying to wrestle free of Buddy’s grip. “I’ll be back! You can’t keep me away.”

“Better not try,” Mr. Mann muttered darkly. “We’ll be waitin’ for you.” He raised his voice. “In Darlin’, we tar and feather revenooers.”

“But he’s an undercover agent!” Leona Ruth cried, as Buddy marched Mr. Diamond across the street to the Old Alabama Hotel. She was weeping now, big tears running down her face. “And that woman is a murderess! She is right here in our little town, walkin’ to and fro amongst us Christians like the devil in the Book of Job, figurin’ on who she’s goin’ to kill next. We’re none of us safe! Nobody!”

“Hysterical,” Bessie said in a pitying tone, shaking her head sadly. “This whole affair has been too much for the dear old thing. Come on, Miss Lacy. Let’s take Mrs. Adcock home, where she can go to bed with a wet washrag on her forehead.”

She took one arm and Liz took the other and they led Leona Ruth, weeping and sniffling, down Robert E. Lee Street.