The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

ONE - The Naked Ladies

TWO - Lizzy’s Key

THREE - Verna Is Rebuffed

FOUR - Saturday Night in Darling, or Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries

FIVE - The Roof Falls In

SIX - The Dahlias in Full Bloom

SEVEN - The Skeleton in Bessie Bloodworth’s Closet

EIGHT - Verna Has a Visitor

NINE - Beulah’s New Customer

TEN - Bessie Bloodworth Learns a Thing or Two

ELEVEN - Lizzy Goes to Work

TWELVE - Verna Makes a Phone Call

THIRTEEN - Verna Works the Switchboard

FOURTEEN - Buddy Norris Collars a Crook

FIFTEEN - Lizzy Faces the Lion in His Den

SIXTEEN - “The Game Is Afoot!”

SEVENTEEN - THE GARDEN GATE

EIGHTEEN - Bessie Bloodworth Pays a Call

NINETEEN - Lizzy Lays Down the Law

TWENTY - The Dahlias Score

TWENTY-ONE - Mr. Moseley Clears Up a Mystery

TWENTY-TWO - Bessie Solves a Mystery, Myra May’s Car Breaks Down, and Violet ...

TWENTY-THREE - Showtime!

The Dahlias’ “Dirty Dozen” Housecleaning Tips

Glossary

Recipes

Reading List

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

AN UNTHYMELY DEATH
CHINA BAYLES’ BOOK OF DAYS

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

The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter 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

The Darling Dahlias Mysteries by Susan Wittig Albert

THE DARLING DAHLIAS AND THE CUCUMBER TREE
THE DARLING DAHLIAS AND THE NAKED LADIES

Nonfiction books by Susan Wittig Albert

WRITING FROM LIFE
WORK OF HER OWN
TOGETHER, ALONE: A MEMOIR OF MARRIAGE AND PLACE
AN EXTRAORDINARY YEAR OF ORDINARY DAYS

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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

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 reaction to the recipes contained in this book.

Copyright © 2011 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 and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Albert, Susan Wittig.

p. cm.

ISBN : 978-1-101-51680-5

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

PS3551.L2637D39 2011

813’.54—dc22

2011009395

http://us.penguingroup.com

To garden clubs everywhere,
with grateful thanks for
making your communities more beautiful.
The Darling Dahlias and I send you our love.

Author’s Note

I love writing about real places. The little town that is the setting for this series is fictional, but it is located in a very real place: in southern Alabama, in the wooded hills west of Monroeville and east of the Alabama River, about seventy miles north of Mobile. You will find a map of Darling on the series website: www.darlingdahlias.com. You will also find other items of interest there, including: Depression-era recipes and household tips, some historical background of the 1930s (the period in which the series takes place), and information about Southern gardens. I’ll be adding new material frequently, so please bookmark the site and visit often.

I also love language, and in this series, as in all my books, I’ve tried to use the language of the people and their times. This historical series includes language and social practices appropriate to the early 1930s in the rural South. For instance, the characters use the terms “colored,” “colored folk,” and “Negro” when they refer to African Americans, and the attitudes of white people toward their black fellow citizens reflect the conscious and unconscious racism of the times. To write truthfully about this time and place requires the use of language and ideas that may be offensive to some readers. Thank you for understanding that I intend no offense.

As I work on these books, I especially find myself loving the spirit of the times. The 1930s were terribly difficult years, because so many people were facing daunting challenges that resemble some of the economic challenges we face today. But people didn’t lose hope. They had faith in themselves, in their families, and in their communities, and they did whatever they could to help themselves. I am touched by this spirit as I read the newspapers and books published in those years, and as I remember my mother and my aunts talking about the “tough times” they lived through in the decade before I was born. Ordinary people were tough and resilient enough to weather extraordinary challenge, and I hope to represent that spirit in these books.

Susan Wittig Albert

November 1, 1930

Darling, Alabama

Dear Reader,

When the author of The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree asked us if she could write a second book about us, we were thrilled. It’s not every garden club that gets a book written about it, much less two books! But we agreed because we liked the way Mrs. Albert gave you all the ins and outs of what happened in The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree. Mr. Dickens naturally didn’t print the full story in the Dispatch, so lots of people in town didn’t know all the details and were very surprised when they found out. In fact, some people were so surprised that they tried to boycott the book when Mr. Mann put a stack of them out for sale in front of the Mercantile, and Mrs. Lima was heard to say that she didn’t know how she was going to hold up her head in this community, now that everybody knew what had gone on in the back room at Lima’s Drugs. We’re sorry about that, but we do believe that Mr. Lima will toe the straight and narrow from here on out, and that Mrs. Lima won’t have a thing to fret about. Everybody understands that people make mistakes. Live and learn, as the old folks say.

Anyway, when Mrs. Albert learned that we were in the middle of another mystery and asked us if she could look over our shoulders and write everything down as it happened, we thought it was a good idea. Several of us were especially wondering about the pair of ladies who had moved into Miss Hamer’s house on Camellia Street, the one with all the naked ladies in the front yard. And if you don’t know what naked ladies are, well, you can read this book and find out. We won’t tell you anything more about that, since we don’t want to spoil the story for you.

And it’s true that we need stories these days, don’t you think? Times have been hard since the Crash, people are out of work all over the country, and it seems like too many of us are scraping the bottom of the barrel. But stories—even when they include a few folks who don’t measure up by the Golden Rule—help us to forget our troubles for a little while and learn something about people and the silly (and sometimes dangerous) things they do.

So we hope this story brightens your day a little. And speaking of bright, Aunt Hetty Little wants us to remind you of something we have said before but which bears saying again. We keep our faces to the sun so we can’t see the shadows, which is why we plant sunflowers and marigolds and cosmos in amongst the collards and sweet potatoes and okra in our gardens.

We hope you will, too.

Sincerely,
Elizabeth Lacy, president, The Darling Dahlias
Ophelia Snow, vice president & secretary
Verna Tidwell, treasurer

The Darling Dahlias Club Roster, October 1930

OFFICERS

Miss Elizabeth Lacy, president. Secretary to Mr. Moseley, attorney at law, and garden columnist for the Darling Dispatch.

Mrs. Ophelia Snow, vice president and secretary. Wife of Darling’s mayor, Jed Snow.

Verna Tidwell, treasurer. Secretary to the Cypress County probate clerk.

CLUB MEMBERS

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

Mrs. Bessie Bloodworth, Darling’s historian. Owner and proprietor of Magnolia Manor, a boardinghouse next door to the Dahlias’ clubhouse and gardens.

Mrs. George E. Pickett (Voleen) Johnson, wife of the owner of the Darling Savings and Trust Bank. Specializes in pure white flowers.

Mildred Kilgore. A collector of camellias, Mildred is married to Roger Kilgore, the owner of Kilgore Motors, and lives near the Cypress Country Club.

Aunt Hetty Little, oldest member of the club, town matriarch, and lover of gladiolas.

Myra May Mosswell, owner of the Darling Diner and an operator in the Darling Telephone Exchange. Lives in the flat over the diner. Has a vegetable garden.

Lucy Murphy, the newest member of the club. Lucy is married to Ralph Murphy and lives on a small farm on Jericho Road. Just planted a peach orchard.

Miss Dorothy Rogers, Darling’s librarian. Miss Rogers knows the Latin name of every plant and insists that everybody else does, too. Lives in Magnolia Manor. Beulah Trivette, artistically talented owner/operator of Beulah’s Beauty Bower, where small groups of Dahlias gather almost every day. Loves cabbage roses and other big, floppy flowers.

Alice Ann Walker, bank cashier. Her husband, Arnold, is disabled. Loves spring-flowering bulbs.

ONE

The Naked Ladies

Elizabeth Lacy opened the small shed behind the Dahlias’ clubhouse and stowed the rakes, hoes, and spades inside. She closed the door, took off her floppy-brimmed hat, and turned to Verna Tidwell.

“The garden looks really swell, don’t you think?” she said, surveying the result of the afternoon’s hard work.

“Well, it ought to,” Verna retorted crisply, stripping off her green cotton gardening gloves. Her brown hair was short and combed straight back from her face in a characteristically no-fluff style. “We’ve poured a lot of time and sweat into this place over the past few months. How many Dahlias were out here this afternoon, slaving in the sunshine? I counted ten. That’s a good turnout.”

Lizzy stretched down and touched her toes, working out the kink in her back that came from kneeling in front of the phlox bed for two hours, pulling weeds. “Ten is right. Voleen Johnson said she had company, and Ophelia’s boy was playing in the baseball tournament at the fairgrounds. Oh, and Myra May had to work the switchboard because Violet is up in Memphis.” She straightened up and stretched her hands over her head. “Her younger sister just had a baby and Violet’s helping out. Myra May said the sister isn’t doing too well.”

Verna stuck her gloves in the pocket of her gardening skirt, wrinkling her nose distastefully. “Have you ever noticed that Voleen always manages to have out-of-town company on one of our work days? If you ask me, I think she invites them on purpose, so she doesn’t have to come over here and risk breaking one of her fingernails, all pretty and polished up.”

“You might be right,” Lizzy said, in a noncommittal tone. She didn’t like to criticize other people because you never knew when they might be criticizing you, and they might not be as nice about it as you were. But it was definitely true that Mrs. George E. Pickett Johnson rarely lent her perfectly manicured hands to the task when it came to the Dahlias’ garden. Or her own beautiful garden, for that matter, since she had a colored man who did all the work for her. The George E. Picketts were among Darling’s hereditary nobility and Mrs. Pickett’s garden was a showplace, with never a leaf or a twig out of place.

“We managed all right without her,” Lizzy added, looking around appreciatively. “The garden hasn’t looked so pretty for quite a while. Mrs. Blackstone couldn’t do much in her last years.”

The small white frame house the garden club had inherited from Mrs. Dahlia Blackstone sat fairly close to Camellia Street. Behind the white picket fence out front, the yard was mostly hydrangeas and azaleas and roses. But behind the house, a large garden swept down toward a tall magnolia tree, a clump of woods, and a small, clear spring smothered in ferns, bog iris, and pitcher plants. This garden had once been so beautiful that it had been written up in newspapers all over the South, and as far away as New Orleans. But as Mrs. Blackstone grew older and less able to care for it, the plants had become disheveled and shaggy, in the ragamuffin way of gardens when there’s nobody to pull weeds or deadhead or prune the roses or dig and separate the perennials or even mow the grass regularly.

Then Mrs. Blackstone had died and left her house and the garden to the garden club she had founded, whose grateful members quickly renamed themselves the Dahlias in her honor. Then they (well, most of them, anyway) pulled on their garden gloves and picked up their rakes and hoes and trowels and clippers and set about restoring the garden to its former glory. They had yanked the smothering weeds—the dog fennel, henbit, ground ivy, and (the biggest garden bully of all!) the Johnson grass—out of the curving perennial borders, so that the phlox, larkspur, iris, asters, and Shasta daisies could take a deep breath. They had dug and divided and replanted Mrs. Blackstone’s much-loved lilies: Easter lilies, spider lilies, oxblood lilies, and her favorite orange ditch lilies. They had untangled the cardinal climber and crossvine and honeysuckle on the fence and repaired the trellises so the mandevilla and confederate jasmine could stretch up and out. They gently disciplined the hibiscus and the dozens of roses, including the climbers, the teas, the ramblers, the shrubs, and a charming yellow Lady Banks. Yet to be done: the cleanup of the woodland and spring at the foot of the garden, where Miss Rogers thought they ought to put the bog garden. And every time a Dahlia set foot on the place, she saw something else that needed to be done, such as painting the shed, or repairing another trellis, or planting a ground cover over a bare spot. Gardens, of course, are a labor of love, and love—and its labor—is never-ending.