The bookkeeping and typing finished, Lizzy got up and went to the stack of case files that were waiting for filing in the gray metal cabinets on either side of the front windows. She was just getting started when she heard hasty footsteps on the stairs, the door opened, and Bessie Bloodworth burst in. She was wearing a lace-colored mauve cambric dress and what looked like a freshly done shampoo and set, her springy, precise salt-and-pepper curls peeking out from under her straw sailor hat.
“Why, hello, Bessie,” Lizzy said. She was surprised, since Bessie didn’t come to the office very often-but then she remembered that she had asked the Dahlias to turn in items for her garden column, which she had to finish by tomorrow. Now that she had the afternoon off, she’d have plenty of time. “Have you brought me a piece for the column?”
“No,” Bessie said. “To tell the truth, I forgot all about that.” She glanced in the direction of Mr. Moseley’s closed door and lowered her voice. “I don’t want to interrupt while you’re working, but do you have a minute, Liz?” Her face was pink with the exertion of climbing the stairs and she sounded excited. “I need to ask you something.”
“Sure,” Lizzy said, and pointed to one of the reception room chairs. “Why don’t you sit down there and catch your breath, Bessie? I can listen and file at the same time.” She picked up the first file, opened a drawer, and dropped it in place. “What’s on your mind?”
“It’s not a what, it’s a who,” Bessie said. She pulled the chair around so she could see Liz and sat down, crossing her thick ankles. “It’s Miss Jamison.”
Lizzy flushed guiltily, thinking of the information she had given to Verna. “What about her?”
“I’ve just come from the Beauty Bower. Beulah was already working on her when I got there. On Miss Jamison, I mean.” Bessie puffed out her breath and fanned herself with a hankie. “She was dyeing her brown. Transforming her from platinum to brown, right there in front of my eyes.”
“Brown!” Lizzy exclaimed. “Gracious sakes! Why in the world would Miss Jamison want-”
Bessie held up her hand. “Wait, there’s more, Liz. Lots more. In fact, you might as well hear the whole thing, start to finish.”
It took a little while for Bessie to tell the whole story, which she did in one long sentence, from Miss Jamison’s purchase of Beulah Trivette’s red wig and the blond-to-brown coloring job she got on her hair to Leona Ruth Adcock’s tale about the baldheaded man with shiny leather shoes (who might or might not have been a special agent for Mr. J. Edgar Hoover), who had shown up at Leona Ruth’s front door the afternoon before, introducing himself as Mr. Gold (although Miss Jamison said he was really Mr. Diamond, Frankie Diamond) and asking if she had seen a platinum blonde and a girl with short dark hair.
“I haven’t actually laid eyes on Miss Lake myself,” Bessie added breathlessly. “She had already hidden herself away in her bedroom when I went over to say hello after they arrived. But I’ll bet a nickel that she’s the one with short dark hair-except that by this time, she’s probably wearing Beulah’s old red wig. She’s in disguise. Both women are hiding out.”
Lizzy stared at Bessie. Why, this was the very same story that Verna had told her on the phone the afternoon before, although Verna hadn’t said anything about her caller looking like a special agent. Quite the contrary, in fact.
“Do you think Mrs. Adcock is right?” she asked tentatively. “That this fellow is a policeman?” She looked down at the folder in her hand, realized that she’d gotten so caught up in Bessie’s story that she hadn’t filed it, and opened a drawer.
“I have no idea,” Bessie said. “But whoever the man is, Mr. Gold or Mr. Diamond or whoever, I’m here to tell you that he scared the stuffing out of Miss Jamison. She almost fainted when Leona Ruth described him. And it wasn’t any stunt, either. She got white as a sheet and Beulah and I had to make her sit down. She is scared to death of him.” She narrowed her eyes and leaned forward. “There is something truly fishy going on over at Miss Hamer’s house, Liz. I think we ought to find out what it is. How much time do you take at noon?”
“An hour, usually. But Mr. Moseley is driving to Montgomery and he’s given me the afternoon off.”
“That’s good,” Bessie said with satisfaction. “But an hour ought to be way more than enough time for us to do it.”
“Do what?”
“To walk on over to the Old Alabama Hotel and get a quick bite. I know it’s more expensive than the diner, but if we just got a sandwich and split it between us, it shouldn’t be any more than a quarter apiece. I would’ve asked Verna, too,” Bessie added, “but she wasn’t in the office when I stopped. Mrs. Cole said she was out running an errand.”
Lizzy frowned. “Why do you want to go to the hotel?”
“Because Mr. Gold told Leona Ruth that he’s staying there,” Bessie replied. “If that’s true, then he ought to be taking his meals there, wouldn’t you reckon? I thought, if we could get a good look at him, we might be able to tell whether he’s a special agent or-” She stopped.
“Or what?” Lizzy asked, thinking of Verna’s guess that he was one of Al Capone’s henchmen. Both seemed equally improbable to her.
Bessie sighed plaintively. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not a good idea. I just have this feeling that somebody ought to be doing something to find out who this man really is and why Miss Jamison is so deathly afraid of him. I can’t think of any other way to do it-and I certainly can’t go to the hotel by myself.”
Lizzy understood why. Nobody thought twice of a woman eating by herself at the diner, where she could sit at the counter and talk to Myra May or Violet or Euphoria while she enjoyed her meal. But it would be odd for a woman to eat in the Old Alabama dining room unless she was traveling or with someone. Still-
“I’m not sure why we should care who he is,” Lizzy said, stalling for time. “What business is it of ours?” She dropped another folder into the drawer. Then she realized that she’d put an “E” folder into the “L-R” drawer, and took it out.
Bessie leaned forward, her lined face intent. “Well, for starters, if he is a policeman or a special agent looking for those two women, it stands to reason that they are criminals, doesn’t it? Leona Ruth said that Miss Jamison looks like a gun moll to her-and she is no doubt spreading that very same thing all over town, right this minute.” She leaned back and folded her plump arms. “You know Leona Ruth. When she gets through with Miss Jamison and her friend, nobody in Darling will have a blessed thing to do with them, regardless of who they are.”
Lizzy understood this, too. In Darling, there were the facts, and then there were the facts according to whoever was telling them, which might or might not be the same thing and usually wasn’t. If Leona Ruth was telling folks that these women were gun molls, that’s exactly what people would believe. Even if they were totally innocent, their reputations would be completely destroyed.
She opened the “E-K” drawer and put the file into the right place. “I wonder how Mrs. Adcock knows what a gun moll looks like,” she said thoughtfully.