But all the while Lizzy was doing these housekeeping chores, she was thinking about what Verna had told her-about the stranger who had knocked on her door and the need to get more background on Miss Jamison (if that’s who she really was). Lizzy was the kind of person who normally respected the rules, and under ordinary circumstances, she wouldn’t even consider breaking the office code or violating a client’s confidence. It was tantamount to a betrayal of Mr. Moseley and everything he stood for.
But she didn’t like the idea that Miss Jamison might be someone other than the person she was pretending to be. What if Verna was right and the woman was somehow connected to the most notorious gangster in America? And what if someone from the Capone gang was here in Darling, looking for her? While Mr. Moseley would be upset if he knew she’d given away a client’s address, he certainly would not want to risk something bad happening in Darling. A repeat of that horrible massacre that had taken place on Valentine’s Day the year before, for example, when Capone’s gang, two of them wearing police uniforms, had gunned down seven members of Bugs Moran’s gang in a garage on Chicago’s north side. Lizzy had felt sick when she saw the gruesome photograph of the seven dead men on the front page of Mr. Moseley’s New York Times.
So she put her feelings of apprehension aside, took the key to Mr. Moseley’s desk out of the empty ink bottle where it was hidden, and opened the bottom right-hand drawer, where the confidential case folders were kept. She bent over it for a moment, hesitating. She would only get the information that Verna had asked for-she wouldn’t snoop through the rest of the folder.
But on the card that contained the address-1235 S. 58th-there was a telephone number, too, jotted down in Mr. Moseley’s neat handwriting. UNderwood 3-4555. The number was followed by a name and note: Mrs. Molly O’Malley, housekeeper, still on premises. Lizzy had to smile. Mr. Moseley was always thorough: if he had to call about the house Miss Jamison wanted to sell, he’d want to talk to someone who was familiar with what was going on there. She copied the information, closed and locked the drawer, and telephoned the information to Verna, at the probate office.
“Thanks, Liz,” Verna said. “This is really swell. I owe you.”
“What are you going to do?” Lizzy asked.
“I have a plan,” Verna said, and lowered her voice. “Two plans, in fact. I can’t talk about them right now, but when I find something out, you’ll be the first to know. I promise.” She raised her voice to someone in the office. “I’ll be right with you.” To Lizzy, she added, “See you later. And thanks again!”
Lizzy returned to her desk, took the cover off her Underwood typewriter, and settled down to transcribing some of the shorthand notes she had taken on Friday afternoon. It was slow going. Mr. Moseley had dictated faster than usual, and she was having trouble reading her Gregg. She was having trouble concentrating, too. Her thoughts kept slipping away from the task at hand to her mother’s terrible problem. What in the world were they going to do?
Mr. Moseley usually came in late on Mondays. This morning, it was a little after ten when he tramped up the stairs, tossed his gray felt hat onto the hat tree next to Lizzy’s, and smoothed his shiny brown hair, parted in the middle, with his hands.
“G’morning, Liz,” he said cheerfully. “My, you look pretty and bright today in that yellow dress. A ray of sunshine. A treat for the eyes.”
Lizzy looked up from her typewriter and tried to smile. “I’m afraid I don’t feel very bright,” she replied ruefully. She was always a little bothered by Mr. Moseley’s compliments. She knew he didn’t mean to be condescending, but that’s what it sounded like to her.
Mr. Moseley frowned and came toward her. He leaned both hands on her desk, peering down at her. “Mmm. Now that you mention it, I have to say that you do look a mite tired.” He chuckled. “You and Grady Alexander do a little too much partyin’ over the weekend, huh?”
Lizzy sighed. More condescension. And worse, after he had come into the office one day last spring and caught Grady kissing her, Mr. Moseley never missed a chance to tease her about the relationship. That had happened just about the time that Mr. Moseley’s wife Adabelle-a willowy debutant from a wealthy Birmingham family with important political connections around the state-announced that she was going home to Mama and Daddy and taking the two Moseley daughters with her. A month or two after that, Mr. Moseley had asked Lizzy to go with him to the tent theater over in Frisco City. A few weeks later, he tried again. They had been working late, getting ready for a trial on a civil matter, and he asked her to go to supper at the Old Alabama.
Both times, she had said no. For one thing, his divorce from Mrs. Moseley wouldn’t be final for some time yet, and Lizzy had made up her mind a long time ago that she would never date a married man. For another, she thought that going out with her boss would unnecessarily complicate things in the office. Carrying a torch for him had been okay, because she had known that nothing would ever come of it. She was proud of the fact that she had successfully extinguished those unruly feelings several years before, and she had no intention of reigniting them. Anyway, there was Grady. She wasn’t going to go out with Mr. Moseley as long as she was going out with Grady, and that was that.
She frowned. “No, Grady and I did not do too much partying this weekend,” she retorted, nettled. “He’s out of town. I didn’t even see him.”
“Ah-ha! No Grady?” He quirked one eyebrow in that annoyingly superior way of his. “You mean, there’s hope for me, after all?” He straightened and held up his hand, forestalling whatever she had been about to say. “Seriously, Liz, what is it? What’s wrong? You look like you didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Lizzy lied. She lifted her chin. “I’m fine.” While she had been tossing and turning and trying to come up with a way to deal with her mother’s foreclosure, she had thought of talking it over with Mr. Moseley. He dealt with property matters all the time, and he might be able to come up with a simple solution to the problem. But she had decided that he would have to be a last resort. If he helped her out, she would be deeply in his debt. Mr. Moseley was a gentleman and would never use that to pressure her in any way, but still-
She pushed back her chair and stood. “Today’s files are on your desk, Mr. Moseley. I’ll get your coffee.”
Mr. Moseley looked at her for a moment. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll be leaving for Montgomery before lunch. Why don’t you treat yourself? Take the afternoon off. You’ve worked late several times lately. You’ve got it coming.”
“Oh, I couldn’t!” Lizzy said quickly. “There’s so much to-”
“No, there isn’t,” he said. He smiled at her. “Boss’s orders. No argument, now. You’re taking the afternoon off.” Then he turned and went into his office.
Lizzy stared after him. An afternoon off? Well, she could certainly use the time, couldn’t she? She could walk over to the bank and talk to Mr. Johnson about her mother’s foreclosure. Surely she could persuade him to put off the eviction for a few weeks-maybe even until after the holidays. It would be cruel to throw somebody out now, with Thanksgiving and Christmas on the way. And even though her mother’s house was nice and well maintained, it wasn’t likely that anybody would be interested in buying during the holidays. In fact, with so many empty houses for sale, it might not sell at all.
Feeling grateful to Mr. Moseley for letting her take some time off, Lizzy sat back down at her desk and pulled out the big leather-bound account ledger. Between the long drought and the low cotton prices, the farmers had had a difficult time of it in the past few years. Some of Mr. Moseley’s clients had begun paying their legal bills in kind, bringing eggs, boxes of figs, and lard pails full of fresh robbed honeycomb to the office, not to mention a few live chickens. Mr. Moseley always accepted these payments, told Liz how much to credit against what was owing, and then carted everything over to the Presbyterian Church for its Food for the Darling Needy program. This morning, she caught up the accounting quickly, finished typing the notes, then typed two legal documents that would be needed later in the week-with carbons, which she hated, since she had to erase every mistake and retype the correction carefully, to avoid smudging. Typing carbons slowed her down.