It was the Rebel yell that toppled Frankie Diamond-and no wonder, for it was the same yell that had scared the pants off every Union soldier when he heard it through the trees or over a stone wall. Diamond dropped the gun and fell to his knees, covering his head with his arms, cowering.
“Lots of good old-fashioned Alabama yellin’ goin’ on over there,” Liz remarked cheerfully, as Buddy Norris ran up, kicked the gun away, and jerked Diamond to his feet.
“That damn Yankee must think all the hounds of hell are after him,” Verna observed with satisfaction. In one swift move, Buddy pulled the man’s hands behind his back and handcuffed him. Then he went to the kitchen window and rapped on it, and the pot-clanging and African wailing stopped. The Rebel yell continued for a moment, then it stopped, too. The night was quiet once again, as front doors all along the street popped open and people spilled out onto their porches to see what was going on.
Mr. Butler, two doors down, called, “Dep’ty Norris, you need a hand over there?”
“I reckon if you’ve got ten minutes, you can help me march this Yankee off to the hoosegow,” Buddy replied. “I’m gonna book ’im on a charge of attempted assault with a deadly weapon, attempted burglary, trespassin’, and disturbin’ the peace. And maybe by the time I get him there, I’ll think of something else to pin on him.”
“Lemme get my shoes on,” Mr. Butler replied. “Be with you in a shake.”
So that was why the neighbors along Camellia Street were treated to the satisfying sight of Deputy Buddy Norris, accompanied by Mr. Butler in his undershirt, trousers, and suspenders, escorting one of Al Capone’s most dangerous gangsters to the Cypress County jail, upstairs over Snow’s Farm Supply. It wasn’t a comfortable jail, just two small cells, one of which was probably already occupied by a drunk or a vagrant.
“Well, my goodness,” Bessie said limply to Verna and Lizzy. “How in the world did you girls manage all that?”
“We didn’t do anything much,” Verna said in a modest tone. “Buddy wanted to be a hero, so we asked him to hang around in the dark and see if Diamond showed up. And Liz put Sally-Lou up to organizing a little noisemaking with those clanging pots and pans. We thought that maybe some racket from inside would confuse Diamond and make it easier for Buddy to nab him.”
“And that Rebel yell?” Bessie asked.
“That,” Liz said with a chuckle, “was Miss Hamer’s own idea.”
Verna let out her breath. “Well, now that Buddy’s got his man, what say we play some hearts?” She rubbed her hands. “I’m ready for a game!”
“Maybe we could have refreshments first,” Liz said. “All this excitement has made me thirsty. And didn’t I see some lemon chess bars on a platter on your sideboard, Bessie?” She grinned. “You must’ve known that they’re my favorite.”
The three of them polished off the refreshments, then played a couple of games. The Magnolia Ladies came home from the baby shower and Liz and Verna said good night and went home. Bessie put away the card table and straightened the parlor, then climbed the stairs to her bedroom.
All in all, it had been a memorable day, from its inauspicious and rather ordinary beginning at Beulah’s Beauty Bower to its extraordinary conclusion with Miss Hamer’s Rebel yell and the arrest of a Chicagoland gangster right across the street-not to mention Miss Hamer’s claim that her father had paid Harold to jilt her and leave Darling. Who would have thought that all those amazing things could happen on just one day? She rather hoped that things would go back to being ordinary again tomorrow. She’d had just about all the excitement she could handle.
In her room, Bessie turned on the light beside her bed. She was tired, but her mind was still racing and she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Her glance went to the box of her father’s papers that she had carried down from the attic, sitting on her dresser. She hadn’t had an urgent reason for going through them-until now. Of course, it wasn’t likely that she’d find anything to confirm or refute Miss Hamer’s assertion. But still, she ought to make the effort. When she didn’t find anything, she would at least know that there wasn’t anything to find.
Mr. Noonan had brought the box over from the funeral home one day not long after her father had sold the business. He was already too sick to be able to go through the papers, so Bessie had carried the box to the attic without bothering to take a look. Mr. Noonan told her that he’d kept the business items he had found in the files-burial records, grave marker and grave location information, invoices, employee records, and the like-and was returning items that looked to be of a more personal nature: newspaper clippings, notes from grateful clients, complaints, and so on. There was a note inside the box from Mrs. Noonan, saying that she had put everything into folders, a folder for each year. Now, Bessie was grateful. Her father had been in the funeral and gravestone business for decades and had accumulated a great many papers. At least she didn’t have to sort through dozens of scraps.
The file folders were neatly labeled and arranged in chronological order. Not all the years were represented, and the files were variously thick and thin. Bessie flipped through the folders, found the year she was looking for-the year Harold disappeared-and opened the file. There were only five or six items in it. A clipping about a death in neighboring Monroeville; a plaintive letter from a mother in North Carolina, asking for information about the burial of her son, with a carbon copy of the typed letter her father had written back; and several dated notes in her father’s cribbed and almost illegible handwriting, scribbled on the backs of funeral cards. She was about to close the file when she noticed another piece of paper, the familiar plat of all the graves in the Darling Cemetery, neatly numbered.
Bessie had seen similar copies many times before, at the funeral home and on her father’s desk at home. The plat was necessary, he had once told her, because sometimes people came in from out of town and needed to know where their father’s cousin or their mother’s great-aunt Clara were buried. But this one caught her eye because it was dated in the top corner: the day of Harold’s disappearance, a date she would never forget.
Curious now, she studied it. There was the road and the gate and the lane that meandered around to the back, where an old stone wall marked the graveyard’s farthest boundary. And in the far right corner of her father’s cemetery, there was a tiny penciled square and two letters. HH.
Her heart beating fast against her ribs, Bessie stared at the sketch map, remembering that awful week, the week of Harold’s disappearance. Her father’s unaccustomed kindnesses, his tender gestures, his gruff words: “Some things don’t bear looking into, child.” Her breath caught in her throat, and she put her finger on the penciled square. HH. What had he done? What had her father done?
Outside the open window, a night bird called from the willow tree and the fragrance of the Angel’s Trumpet, its pale blossoms unfurled in the darkness, hung heavy on the air, like the stifling scent of funeral flowers.
TWENTY-ONE
Lizzy was always the first to arrive in the law office, but when she opened the door at her usual early hour the next morning, she found Mr. Moseley already at his desk, a steaming cup of coffee at his elbow, his suit jacket draped over the back of his chair. He glanced up when she stood in his doorway and his eyes lightened.