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.
FIFTEEN
Lizzy and Bessie got Mrs. Adcock-who had worked herself into a satisfying case of hysterics-back to her house and put her to bed. Leaving Bessie to cope, Lizzy used the crank telephone on the kitchen wall to call Verna at the Exchange.
“Do you think the man has really left town?” Verna asked worriedly. Lizzy had told the story in very general terms, leaving out all of the exciting details. She had counted the clicks and knew that there were at least three people listening on Mrs. Adcock’s line. One of them had a cuckoo clock.
“Buddy Norris said he was going to put him on the train,” Lizzy replied guardedly. “I have to stop at the Savings and Trust for a few minutes, Verna. How much longer are you going to be on the switchboard?”
“Olive just phoned and says she’s stopped coughing but she’ll be late,” Verna replied. “I’ll be here another hour, anyway. Come over to the diner when you’re finished at the bank and we can talk about what we’re going to do next.”
“I will,” Lizzy said, and went back to the bedroom to tell Bessie good-bye.
“You’re coming to the Dahlias’ card party tonight, I hope,” Bessie said. “Ophelia said she’d be there, and Verna, too. You?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Lizzy said. “See you at seven thirty.”
She walked back up Rosemont in the direction of the Darling Savings and Trust, on the west side of the courthouse square. She was still mulling over the many misunderstandings and the surprising twists and turns that the encounter with Frankie Diamond had taken. She was glad that Buddy Norris had appeared and was willing to escort the fellow off to the train depot. But she had ridden that spur line between Darling and Monroeville herself, when she went to Monroeville to go shopping. The train moved so slowly that it was easy for people to jump off and on-and plenty did, to avoid paying the twenty-cent fare that the station masters collected at either end. Frankie Diamond was no patsy, like several of the revenue agents that Mr. Mann had mistaken him for, easily bribed or intimidated and all too eager to leave town before somebody built a fire under a tar barrel and the chicken feathers started flying. Diamond had most likely been in tougher spots than this, Lizzy thought nervously. He had a job to do and he was here to do it. He wouldn’t be easily deterred.
But there was nothing she could do about Diamond at the moment, so there was no point in worrying about him. She squared her shoulders, straightened her yellow straw hat, and looked straight ahead. She had a task ahead of her, an altogether unpleasant one, and she wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to say or do. All she knew was that she was about to face a lion in his den. A formidable lion. And she was going to do it before the afternoon got a single hour older.
The Darling Savings and Trust was an imposing red brick building. It was fronted with twin white pillars and two marble slabs that stepped up to a pair of polished oak front doors with large panes of sparkling plate glass and big brass handles. Inside, the floor was polished marble tiles; the ceiling was embossed tin, painted ivory; and gilt-framed oil portraits of several generations of Johnsons hung on the walls. In the center of the floor stood a mahogany table that always featured a vase of Mrs. George E. Pickett Johnson’s flowers, usually white ones or the palest pink, provided daily from her garden. To the left was a paneled wall behind which the tellers worked, the brass bars of the teller windows gleaming. Alice Ann Walker, a fellow Dahlia, was waiting on a customer at her window. She looked up and caught sight of Liz and waved and smiled, and Lizzy waved back. After a ruckus a few months before, when Alice Ann had been falsely accused of embezzling from customers’ accounts, she had been promoted to head cashier, much to the satisfaction of Lizzy and her fellow Dahlias.
Lizzy continued past the teller windows, past the bookkeeping office and the door that led to the stairs down to the big bank vault in the basement. She was heading for an office with curliqued, ornate gold lettering on the glass door: Mr. George E. Pickett Johnson, President. Lizzy opened the door and went in. Mr. Johnson’s secretary, Martha Tate, a tiny woman with mouse brown hair and a prissy, thin-lipped mouth, looked up from a ledger and recognized Lizzy, who had frequent dealings with the bank on behalf of Mr. Moseley.
“Good afternoon, Miss Lacy,” she said, in her precise voice. “How may I be of service to you?”
“I’d like to see Mr. Johnson,” Lizzy announced, in a tone that sounded braver than she felt.
Mrs. Tate made a show of looking at the appointment calendar. “I’m so sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “He’s extremely busy this afternoon. Would you like to make an appointment for-”
“Tell him I’m here about my mother’s house,” Lizzy said, trying to keep her voice from quivering.
“Oh.” Mrs. Tate got up with alacrity. “I’ll see if he’s free.” A moment later, she was holding open the door to Mr. Johnson’s wood-paneled office with its rich Oriental rug and book-lined walls, and Lizzy was ushered in. Mrs. Tate closed the door firmly behind her. If this was the lion’s den, Lizzy was trapped in it.
Back in the old days, when the soil was still rich, the plantations still flourished along the river, and cotton was still king, the Johnsons had gloried in their position as one of Darling’s premier aristocratic families. The only son of his father, who was the only son of his father, young George E. Pickett Johnson-named for a Confederate general who fought under General Lee at Gettysburg-had been expected to do great things. And so he had, or at least he had gotten off to a strong start. He had graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans, returned to take up his father’s scepter as the president of the Darling Savings and Trust, and married (as expected) his childhood sweetheart, Miss Voleen Pearl Butler of the aristocratic Butler clan and a graduate of Sophie Newcomb College, the premier Southern college for young ladies, also in New Orleans.