SIX

“I Have to Stop Her!”

Lizzy was still turning these questions over in her mind as she went back to the office. But what was done was done and there was no help for it. All she could do was hope she hadn’t caused Fannie too much grief and go on about the usual work of the office on a day when Mr. Moseley was out of town. She was also thinking ahead to the evening, when she had promised to talk to Mildred Kilgore, who lived near the Cypress Country Club on the southern outskirts of town.

Lizzy didn’t own a car. Until a year or so ago, she had been saving to buy a used one. But instead, she had handed over the money to Mr. Johnson at the Darling Savings and Trust, to keep him from foreclosing on her mother’s house.

Now, to somebody who didn’t know the full story, using her hard-earned car money to save her mother’s house from foreclosure might have seemed like a generous and unselfish act. Lizzy, however, knew that the opposite was true. She was very selfish, at least where her mother was concerned. If she hadn’t done this, her mother would have moved in with her. She and her cat, Daffodil, lived all by themselves in a beautiful little house that was just big enough for the two of them. There simply wasn’t room for her mother, who always seemed to take up more than her share of space and who (to make things worse) was constantly telling her daughter what to do, how to dress, and who to marry: Grady Alexander, of course.

Besides, as Lizzy often reminded herself, she didn’t really need to own a car. She could always borrow Grady’s blue Ford or Myra May’s old Chevy touring car when she had to drive over to Monroeville or (less often) down to Mobile. And Darling was a small town. She lived close enough to walk to the office, and she could ride her bicycle anywhere else she wanted to go.

“We never sit down to supper before eight in the summer, so you just come on out whenever you get off work,” Mildred had said over the phone. So after Lizzy closed the law office for the afternoon, she hurried home, grabbed a quick peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and changed into a pair of khaki slacks and a green plaid blouse. Then she climbed on the old blue Elgin bicycle she had ridden since her sophomore year in high school and biked all the way south on Robert E. Lee to Cypress Avenue, then turned off Cypress onto Country Club Drive.

The evening was warm and humid and the air was as heavy as a hot, wet blanket. But Lizzy was riding through a pretty part of town so she was distracted from the heat by the summer flowers blooming in people’s front yards. In Lizzy’s opinion, all of Darling was pretty. Some of it wasn’t, of course, but Lizzy understood that not everybody had the time, the money, or the inclination to keep a place looking good—and pretty wasn’t everything. In her view, her little town was a fine place to live, with friendly residents, mild winters, and a long gardening season. She smiled a little as she rode down the shady streets lined with beautiful magnolias and live oaks. She thought back over Darling’s history and reflected that the original settlers—Mr. Darling and his wife and children—would be utterly amazed if they could see the town today, with its impressive brick courthouse, its well-kept streets, and its up-to-the-minute electrical and telephone systems.

The town had come a long way since it was established (more or less accidentally) by Joseph P. Darling. Some 125 years before, he was on his way from Virginia with his wife, five children, two slaves, two milk cows, three old hens and a rooster, a team of oxen, and a horse. He was aiming to start a plantation somewhere along the Mississippi River and make a lot of money growing cotton.

But Mrs. Darling had had enough. She put her foot down. “I am not ridin’ another mile in this blessed wagon, Mr. Darling,” she declared resolutely. “If you want your cookin’ and your washin’ done reg’lar, this is where you’ll find it. You can go on if you want, but the lit’le uns and me are not stirrin’ another step.” She is said to have added, “And we are keepin’ the chickens and the red cow—you can take the old black cow. She’s dry, anyway.”

Mr. Darling looked around and saw that the gently rolling hills were covered with longleaf and loblolly pines, and that there were sweet gum and tulip trees growing in the creek and river bottoms, along with sycamore and magnolia and sassafras and pecan. There was wild game on the land and fish in the nearby Alabama River, and Andrew Jackson had already evicted the Creek Nation (which Lizzy had always thought was very cruel and unjust) so there was nobody to tell him that the land already belonged to somebody else. All told, Mr. Darling figured, this was a pretty good place—as good as he was likely to find anywhere. And anyway, he liked to eat every day and wear a clean shirt on Sundays and was mightily fond of Mrs. Darling and their little Darlings.

So he built a big log cabin for his family and a very little log cabin for his slaves and a fair-sized log barn for the milk cows. Then he built a log hut and nailed a painted sign over the door: Darling General Store. Mr. Darling’s cousin followed him out from Virginia and built the Darling saw mill on Pine Creek. Another Darling cousin built the Darling grist mill just upstream, so that people could get their corn ground for corn pone. Then they planted cotton, and when their cotton fields began producing, they built a cotton gin and a cottonseed oil mill. Traffic on the nearby Alabama River began to build, with steamboats plying a weekly route between Montgomery and Mobile, stopping at plantations along the way to drop off supplies and pick up bales of cotton and other produce.

But things began to change. The War (always spoken of in Darling with a capital W) put an end to slavery, thereby putting an end to the plantation system and substituting sharecropping instead. The Louisville & Nashville railroad, which by the 1800s ran from Kentucky all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, put an end to the steamboats, since trains were cheaper to operate than paddle wheelers, ran on time, and almost never blew up or hit a snag. Then the boll weevil came along and put a crimp in cotton.

But by that time, the Darling city fathers had built a twenty-mile railroad spur connecting Darling to Monroeville and the L&N, and farmers and timber merchants could get their beef, poultry, and lumber to markets around the state, which made them—some of them, anyway—wealthy. The wealthier farmers and merchants got together and bought a large piece of land from the Little family. On it, they built the Cypress Country Club and Championship Golf Course, and then they bought property and built houses as close to the golf course as they could get. It was exclusive, and they liked that.

Lizzy was thinking about all this as she swung off Country Club Drive and into the Kilgores’ circular driveway. Mildred and Roger lived with their young daughter, Melody, in a large plantation-style white house a short walk from the ninth green. As Lizzy rode up, she saw that Mildred’s car—a snazzy-looking 1932 blue Dodge Roadster with chrome wheels—was parked in front of the house. She gave it an envious glance. Mildred’s father’s money had set Roger up in the Dodge dealership, and Roger thought that letting his wife drive the latest model was good advertising.

Lizzy leaned her bike against the wrought-iron fence, went up on the impressive plantation-style portico, and rang the brass doorbell. The door was opened by Mildred’s colored maid, Ollie Rose, dressed in a black uniform, spotless white apron, and perky white cap. Mildred had kitchen help, as well. The Kilgores were among the few Darlingians who could still afford to keep full-time servants.

Lizzy followed Ollie Rose through the big house to the back veranda. There, Mildred was stretched out on a cushioned chaise longue, a pitcher of cold lemonade and two glasses on the glass-topped table, beside a large crystal bowl filled with plump, pillowy purple and blue hydrangeas.

From the veranda, Lizzy could look out across Mildred’s camellia garden. It was planted around a rustic pergola and a native stone fountain, with a greenhouse off to one side. Lizzy knew that Mildred had spent a lot of money on her garden, and if there was a camellia anywhere in the world that she didn’t have, she would pay any price to get it. What’s more, she had a gardener who worked three days a week—full time during the annual December Home and Garden Tour. Many of her camellias were in bloom then, and people came from as far away as Montgomery to admire their spectacular beauty.

Lizzy’s own garden was filled with pass-along plants that hadn’t cost her a red cent. But she could not really begrudge Mildred her garden or her gardener—or, for that matter, her stylish clothes or her big house and servants. Mildred had inherited a sizeable fortune from her father (one of those who had grown wealthy planting cotton) and Roger was a respectable Darling businessman. How the Kilgores chose to spend their money, Lizzy always told herself, was no business of hers.

But her friendship with Mildred (which went all the way back to elementary school) was sometimes complicated by a few uncomfortable feelings of . . . well, envy. Lizzy wasn’t jealous of Mildred’s money and easy life, exactly. But she had to admit that every so often she felt a few sharp prickles of resentment. It usually happened when Mildred went out of her way to tell her about a Mediterranean cruise that she and Roger were planning or some extravagant trip they had taken to New York or Chicago or San Francisco.

There hadn’t been much of that kind of talk lately, however. Mildred and Roger didn’t seem to travel together as much as they had in the past. But Mildred’s splendid camellias were a sight to behold, and Lizzy could never in the world bring herself to criticize somebody who spent her money on flowers.

As Lizzy came up behind Mildred, she saw that her friend was reading a letter. Mildred glanced up, saw Lizzy, and hastily slipped the letter between the pages of a book that was open on her lap, her cheeks flushing a dull red. A plump, rather plain-looking woman, she had a too-high forehead, a too-long nose, and a receding chin. But she made up for her plainness by choosing expensive, smart-looking clothes and wearing them with panache. This evening, she was dressed in a yellow-and-red flowered cotton sundress with a flared skirt and perky bunny-ear straps that tied over her bare shoulders.

“My gracious, Elizabeth Lacy,” she said in her usual Southern drawl. She closed her book with a solid thump. “Just look at you. You are sweatin’ like a field hand and your face is as red as a firecracker. You walked all the way here?”

“Rode my bike,” Liz said, wiping the sweat off her cheeks with her forearm.

“Serves you right, then,” Mildred said in a scolding tone. “All you had to do was ask and I would’ve driven over and picked you up. It is just too hot to go riding that bicycle of yours all over creation.” She looked down at her book as if to make sure that the letter wasn’t visible. Then she reached over and picked up the pitcher of lemonade. “You need to sit down and cool yourself off.”

Mildred was sometimes sharp and critical, but it was just her way. Lizzy knew she didn’t mean it. She accepted the frosty glass of tart-sweet lemonade and settled back gratefully into a comfortable chair, wondering how to work her way around to the subject she had come to discuss.

But Mildred took charge of the conversation. “Are you all set for the party? I suppose you’ll be coming with Grady, but you can tell that man from me that he has to wear a dinner jacket, or he will be turned away at the door. And what are you wearin’?” She was talking faster and more nervously than usual.

Without waiting for an answer to her question, she added, “I swear, Liz, I have just about worked my fingers to the bone getting ready for this party. I sent Melody off to stay with her aunt for the entire week. I just could not bear to have her underfoot. And of course Roger has not been one bit of help.” She spread out her fingers to indicate how bony they had become, and her diamond wedding and engagement rings glittered. “I am goin’ to be a complete wreck by Friday night. I have told myself that this will be the biggest and best party of the season. I will allow nothing to go wrong. Not one little-bitty thing.”

If Mildred’s fingers were worked to the bone, Lizzy thought, they didn’t show it. But of course she didn’t say so. Stalling for time (she still hadn’t decided the best way to get around to the reason for her visit), she countered with her own question. “What are you going to wear, Mildred?”

Mildred brightened. “Oh, thank you for askin’, Liz. I have the most marvelous new dress! It is emerald green silk, with a beaded bodice and shoes to match. I bought it at Bergdorf Goodman, on Fifth Avenue, especially for the party.” Her voice sounded tinny and she swallowed. “What did you say you’re wearing, Liz? Don’t forget—you’ll be in the spotlight. As the Dahlias’ president, you are presentin’ the Texas Star to Miss Dare.”

Lizzy thought that Mildred spoke the last two words as if they were distasteful, but she only said, “It’s not a Texas Star. It’s a Hibiscus coccineus.” They both laughed. “I’m wearing my gray silk,” she added, and sighed, feeling briefly envious of Mildred’s Bergdorf Goodman dress. “It’s the only halfway decent thing I own.”

Actually, the dress was rather pretty, the soft fabric cut on the bias and draped across the bodice and hip to show her slim figure to advantage. With it, she usually wore her grandmother’s antique silver earrings and the silver bracelet Grady had given her, back when he could afford things like that. She wore the dress often, but since she wasn’t usually invited to country club parties, it ought to do for this one.

“To answer your other question,” she went on, “no, I’m not coming with Grady.”

“You’re not?” Mildred raised both eyebrows. “Well, then, who are you comin’ with, Liz?”

“Nobody,” Lizzy said with a sigh. “I’m coming by myself. I’m afraid it’s my own fault,” she added ruefully.

“There’s got to be a story behind this,” Mildred said.

There was a story—and it was indeed Lizzy’s fault, for two men had asked to take her to the party.

One was Grady, of course, her more-or-less-steady boyfriend for the past three years, who fully expected her to marry him. Both her mother and Grady’s mother expected it, too. In fact, the last time Lizzy and Grady had gone to his mother’s house for Sunday dinner, Mrs. Alexander had casually commented that now that Mr. Alexander was gone, she was just rattling around in the big old place and that after the wedding, there was not a reason in the world they couldn’t come and live with her. Grady had said he thought this was a good idea—until Lizzy said she definitely didn’t.

The other was Mr. Moseley.

“Mr. Moseley asked to take you to the party!” Mildred sat forward, her eyes widening in surprise. “Mr. Benton Moseley, your boss? I must say, Liz, he’s quite a prize! Why in the world aren’t you comin’ with him, then? You couldn’t have been fool enough to turn him down. Could you?”

“Not exactly,” Lizzy said.

She sighed and went on with her tale. The problem was that over the past year, Grady had begun to take her pretty much for granted. He more or less assumed that they would go to the party together in the same way he assumed they’d get married and have three children and that Lizzy would give up her job and stay home to take care of them, just as his mother had done. So he hadn’t bothered to invite her. In fact, he hadn’t even mentioned the party, which led Lizzy to wonder whether he had been invited. For all she knew, Mildred was inviting (besides the Kilgores’ country club friends) only the Dahlias, and inviting them only because of the plant they were presenting to Miss Dare.

“Well, of course Grady was invited,” Mildred put in crossly. “I wrote the invitation myself.”

“I wish I’d known that,” Lizzy said. It was truly awkward, because she had been invited and because a properly brought up Southern girl did not ask a man to take her out, even a man whose mother was expecting to be her mother-in-law. Lizzy was very modern in some ways. She loved earning her own paycheck and living in her own house, she smoked occasionally, she drank when she felt like it (no matter that booze was illegal), and she didn’t mind necking in the front seat of Grady’s blue Ford, even going a little farther than necking when they were both in the mood.

But she was old-fashioned in other ways, and not wanting to ask a man—even Grady Alexander—to go to a party with her was one of them. Even more, she was irritated by the fact that Grady was taking her for granted, not just as his date for the Kilgores’ party but as his soon-to-be spouse—although she had not agreed to be either one.

And then, while she was mulling over these admittedly contradictory feelings, she found an entirely unexpected note on her desk the morning after Mr. Moseley had left for the Democratic convention in Chicago. The note, written in Mr. Moseley’s strong, sprawling hand, asked if Lizzy would go with him to the Kilgores’ party. He had been invited, of course, since he belonged to the country club.

Mildred blinked. “My goodness gracious, Liz. You must have been surprised.”

“Could’ve knocked me over with a feather,” Lizzy confessed. She had been so stunned that she had sat at her desk for a full five minutes, looking down at Mr. Moseley’s invitation and wondering what to do.

Not many of her friends knew it (certainly not Grady), but Benton Moseley held a special place in Lizzy’s heart. He was sweet and very good-looking, and when she had first gone to work for him and his father, she was smitten. He was just out of law school, bright and full of Southern charm. He had never been more than courteous and polite, but Lizzy (who had read too many dime-novel romances in which beautiful but penniless young women married wealthy and handsome young gentlemen and lived happily ever after) managed to conjure up endless fantasies about him. It was a serious crush and—unfortunately—a durable one. In fact, she continued to carry her secret torch right up to the point where Mr. Moseley had gotten himself married to a beautiful blond debutante from a wealthy Birmingham family.

The marriage had not lasted long: just long enough to allow Lizzy to outgrow her adolescent crush and feel only a quiet, respectful warmth for Mr. Moseley and a genuine regret for the failure of his marriage. But as it happened, on the morning she found his invitation, she was feeling deeply annoyed at Grady. So when Mr. Moseley telephoned a little later to pick up his messages, she had told him she would be delighted to go to the Kilgores’ party with him.

“That’s swell, Liz,” he had said, and she heard the pleasure in his deep, resonant voice. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“So am I,” she said, and found to her dismay that it was true. She really was looking forward to going to Mildred’s party with Mr. Moseley. And he had never seen her in that lovely gray dress.

“Then why aren’t you coming with him?” Mildred demanded. “Did he change his mind? Did you?”

“Well . . .” Lizzy said. Not twenty minutes after she had happily accepted Mr. Moseley’s invitation, Grady had stopped by the office to tell her that he had just learned that the Kilgores’ party was “black tie” and wanted to know what that meant. When she told him, he was pained.

“A dinner jacket!” he growled. “Good grief, Liz. I haven’t worn a dinner jacket since college.”

“I don’t doubt that.” Lizzy glanced at his working clothes: a blue cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled high on tanned, strong arms, twill wash pants, a sweat-stained felt fedora pushed to the back of his head, boots caked with barnyard mud. If it weren’t for that rakish fedora, he might have been a cowboy in one of Tom Mix’s Western movies. “You’re not exactly the black tie type, Grady.”

“Damn right. I don’t even know if my old jacket will fit.” He sighed, a heavy, put-upon sigh. “I suppose you’ll be all dolled up. Do I need to buy you a corsage or something?” He paused, considering. “Say, how about if I pick you some lilies of the valley? My mother has some blooming beside her front porch. They’d look kinda nice on that gray dress of yours.”

“You don’t have to do that, Grady,” Lizzy had said in her sweetest voice. “Mr. Moseley will take care of it.”

“Mr. Moseley?” Grady scowled. He pulled down the corners of his mouth. “What the devil has Bent Moseley got to do with your flowers?”

“Why, he’s taking me to the party,” Lizzy replied lightly. “You didn’t say a word about it. So when Mr. Moseley asked, I said I’d be glad to go with—”

Grady stood up so fast that he knocked the chair over. “You are going to the Kilgores’ party with Benton Moseley?” he roared. When Lizzy said yes, she was, he said, well, that beat all he’d ever heard. He stomped out of the office, slamming the door so hard that Mr. Moseley’s great-grandfather tilted to one side on the wall.

All Lizzy could do was stare at the closed door. Grady had occasionally displayed spurts of jealousy, but never anything like this volcanic eruption. Seeing his reaction, she began to feel guilty. She hadn’t really wanted to make him jealous—had she?

“Well, if you ask me, Mr. Grady Alexander got just what he deserved,” Mildred remarked tartly. “The two of you aren’t engaged, at least not so far as I’ve heard. He should never have assumed.” She frowned. “But what about Mr. Moseley? He asked you—why aren’t you coming with him?”

“Because,” Lizzy said. Last week, when Mr. Moseley got back from helping to put Governor Roosevelt at the top of the Democratic ticket, he had told her that he had to break their date. He’d been called to Montgomery on a case that was being heard in state court there and would have to stay the whole weekend. “I’ll call Roger and tell him I won’t be there.

“I am so very sorry, Liz,” he said penitently. “I was looking forward to it. I’ll think of a way to make it up to you. Maybe we could go to—”

“Oh, don’t, please,” Lizzy had replied. “It’s all right, Mr. Moseley. I don’t mind one bit. I know there are things you have to do.”

And while she couldn’t help feeling disappointed, it really was all right. Going out with Mr. Moseley might have been a memorable experience, but it wasn’t the best idea in the world.

“Not the best idea in the world is right,” Mildred said flatly. “What would you do if Mr. Moseley wanted to kiss you? One thing leads to another, you know.” Her voice took on an oddly bitter edge. “It could be dangerous, Liz. There’s no telling where it would end. In a scandal, probably.”

Lizzy stared at her in some surprise, thinking that in all the years she had known Mildred Kilgore, she had never heard her friend use such a darkly judgmental tone. Mildred made it sound as if going to a party with Mr. Moseley meant that they would end up in bed together—and Lizzy knew that was definitely not going to happen. A little harmless flirting was one thing, especially if it made Grady appreciate her a little more. Sex was quite another. She was saving herself for marriage—or trying to, anyway, although that was sometimes a challenge, especially because Grady wasn’t very cooperative. She opened her mouth to correct this wrong impression, but Mildred was going on.

“I’m sorry you have to come to the party alone, Liz. If I could think of somebody to fix you up with, I would. But we’re a little short of single men these days.” She paused, raising one eyebrow. “Or maybe you should let Grady know that you’re available again.”

“I don’t think so,” Lizzy said, remembering the way Grady’s mouth had twisted like a knotted rope and how hard he had slammed the door. That had been several days ago and she hadn’t heard a word from him since. He was sulking.

“Anyhow,” she added, “a date might get in the way.”

“In the way of what?” Mildred asked.

Lizzy put down her glass. It was time to spell out the reason for her visit. “Charlie Dickens had a call from Miss Dare this afternoon.”

“Oh, that woman.” There was no mistaking it this time. Mildred sounded as if she found the two words as distasteful as spoiled sauerkraut. “What did she want?”

Now Lizzy really was puzzled. Something was going on here—something involving Miss Dare. But what it was, she had no idea. So she only said, “It looks like we might have a bit of a problem, Mildred.”

Then, for the next few minutes, she gave Mildred a thoroughly edited version of what Charlie had told her, omitting any mention of a personal relationship between the editor of the Dispatch and the Texas Star—or between the Texas Star and anybody else. And especially not Roger Kilgore.

Mildred was staring at her, eyes narrowed, an unreadable expression on her face. “Lily Dare’s airplane was sabotaged?” she said. “Does that mean that somebody tried to kill her?”

The question stopped Lizzy. She had thought of the sabotage merely as a way of causing trouble for the flying circus, a nuisance kind of thing, nothing else. She hadn’t thought of it as an attempt on Lily Dare’s life. But now that Mildred raised the question—

She shivered. “Gosh, Mildred, I just don’t know. I guess if somebody was tampering with her plane, she could have been killed. And Charlie says he thinks she’s scared. He believes that she might be in danger—while she’s here, I mean. That’s why he asked me to help.”

“In danger.” Mildred’s eyes narrowed. “Well, I have to say I’m not surprised. If that woman is in the habit of behaving the way she did at the Lions Club convention in San Antonio, she probably has quite a few enemies following her around. I—”

She stopped, pressing her lips together, as if she had said more than she meant to say.

San Antonio, Lizzy thought. That was where Roger had first met Miss Dare, wasn’t it? All of a sudden, everything clicked into place. Mildred (who wasn’t the prettiest peach on the tree) was jealous of Lily Dare (who was). And while Lizzy didn’t like to think about it, Mildred’s worries might well be justified. She remembered Grady’s report of the gossip at Bob’s Barbershop. And Charlie Dickens’ remark that a little thing like a wedding ring wouldn’t stop the Texas Star from fooling around if she wanted to. Miss Dare might have been tempted with Roger Kilgore in the same way that (according to Charlie) she had been tempted with Douglas Fairbanks.

Lizzy felt as if she had just stepped into a tangle of poisonous snakes, but of course this was all conjecture, and (as Mr. Moseley liked to say) an ounce of facts always outweighed a ton of speculation. She took a deep breath and hurried on.

“Charlie says he’s going to hang around the airfield over the weekend. He’s worried that there might be another attempt at sabotage. But he knew that you’ve invited Miss Dare to be your guest, so he thought—”

She paused, uncomfortably aware that she had gotten to the tricky part. “He suggested that I might try to keep an eye on things here—at your house, I mean. In case somebody tried something.”

“Tried something?” Mildred asked, frowning.

“Tried to . . . oh, I don’t know. Cause trouble, I suppose.” Lizzy took a breath. “I told him I was planning to be here just for the party. But as I was riding over just now, it occurred to me that maybe there might be another possibility. Of course, it’s just an idea, and maybe you won’t like it, but—”

“What did you have in mind?” Mildred asked, cutting Lizzy short.

Feeling awkward, Lizzy cleared her throat. “Well, I thought maybe I could sleep over on Friday and Saturday nights. If you have room, that is,” she added hastily. “I don’t want to impose or upset any of your plans. And I certainly don’t want to invite myself as a houseguest if I’m not—”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Mildred interrupted brusquely. “Of course you wouldn’t be imposing, Liz. Actually, I think it’s a good idea. I certainly wouldn’t want any trouble while she’s here.”

She paused, tapping her manicured fingernail on the arm of her chaise longue. “Yes, I’m sure we can manage. I’m putting Miss Dare”—she said the two words with a distinct distaste—“in the yellow room at the top of the stairs. I was planning to put Miss Flame in the pink room, adjacent to Miss Dare’s, with a connecting door. But you could sleep in the pink room and Miss Flame could have the blue room across the hall. I understand that Mr. Hart will be staying at the airfield.”

“That would be perfect,” Lizzy said, relieved. “I’ll let Charlie know. Thank you.” She was a little surprised that Mildred was so willing to let her stay—it was, after all, an unusual request. But perhaps her friend had her own personal reasons for being so accommodating. If she was really jealous of Roger and didn’t want him to spend time alone with Miss Dare over the weekend, she might welcome the idea that Lizzy was sleeping in the next room.

“Please don’t thank me,” Mildred said in a dry, ironic tone. “I certainly wouldn’t want anything to happen to Miss Dare while she was under my roof. She’s such a celebrity.” She leaned forward, speaking more seriously. “That sabotage business—you don’t really think there’s any real threat, do you?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Lizzy confessed. “I don’t know any of the details, although Charlie did say that Miss Dare was afraid.” She smiled slightly. “He made it sound rather melodramatic.”

“Miss Dare is a melodramatic woman,” Mildred replied.

“You’ve met her, then?” Lizzy asked curiously.

“No,” Mildred said darkly, “but I—” She seemed on the verge of saying more, then stopped and waved her hand. “That’s . . . that’s just my impression. And it’s entirely possible that she’s making up that business about the sabotage, you know. It could be her way of getting attention. And guaranteeing publicity, of course. She seems to be quite adept at that.”

“I suppose you could be right,” Lizzy admitted. “But Charlie Dickens isn’t the sort of man who would be taken in by somebody’s melodrama.”

Not to mention, she thought to herself, that he seems to know Lily Dare pretty well. If anybody would suspect her motives, Charlie the Skeptic would be the one. She frowned. On the other hand, maybe not. The two of them had obviously been close at one point. Maybe that made it more likely he would be taken in. Oh, why did people have to be so complicated!

Mildred put her lemonade glass on the table and lowered her voice. “Now that we’re talking about this, I have something to ask you, Liz, as a friend. But I need you to keep it confidential. Very confidential.”

“Of course,” Lizzy said.

Mildred looked over her shoulder as if she thought that one of the servants might be listening. She spoke in a half-whisper that Lizzy had to strain to hear. “Did Mr. Dickens happen to mention . . . my husband? In connection with Miss Dare, that is.”

“Mention Roger?” Suspicions confirmed, Lizzy spoke hesitantly. “Well, he said that Roger could take the credit for bringing her here—something like that.” It was true. Everything else was her own conjecture. “Why?”

“Oh, no special reason,” Mildred replied hurriedly. Then she bit her lip and looked away, and Lizzy saw from her face how desperately unhappy and troubled she was. “Actually, there is a reason, Liz. I wouldn’t have said anything, but . . . Well, the truth is that I received a terribly disturbing letter, full of the most awful kind of accusations. Not that I believe a single word of it, of course, but—”

Her glance went to the book beside her on the chaise longue, and Lizzy understood. She had been reading that letter when Lizzy arrived. No wonder she was nervous and on edge. Poor Mildred. Something like that could be poisonous.

“I am so sorry, Mildred,” Lizzy said, very honestly. “The accusations—they’re about Roger and Miss Dare?”

“How did you know?” Mildred’s brown eyes flooded with tears but she didn’t wait for an answer. “Yes. The letter claims that they have been seen together. Not here in Darling, of course. But elsewhere. In different places.”

“Who wrote the letter?” Lizzy asked.

“It wasn’t signed.” Mildred wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “The envelope was postmarked in Atlanta, but there was no return address. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t believe anything that somebody put in an anonymous letter, but . . .”

“But what?” Lizzy prompted gently.

“But whoever wrote it knew that Roger was in Orlando on a business trip a couple of months ago, and in Baton Rouge the month before that. He—or she, the handwriting looked like a woman’s—said that Lily Dare was in both cities, too. At the same time.” She bit off the words as if they tasted bitter. “At the same hotel.”

“Oh, dear,” Lizzy said. Instinctively, she reached out and took Mildred’s hand. The fingers felt cold and fragile, and Lizzy could feel them trembling.

Mildred took a deep breath. “So even after I got the first letter a couple of weeks ago, I just laughed it off. I tried to deny it, you see. I just couldn’t . . . I couldn’t believe that Roger would do such an underhanded thing.”

“The first letter?” So there had been two. “What did it say?”

“I can’t remember exactly.” Mildred lowered her head. “I . . . I burned it. I thought it was all a pack of lies.”

Lizzy couldn’t help thinking that it hadn’t been a good idea to burn the letter, but it wouldn’t do any good to say so. “You changed your mind, though?” she asked tentatively. “You think it’s true?”

“I know it’s true,” Mildred said bleakly. “This time, the person who wrote it sent a photograph.” She picked up the book, opened it, and took out the letter that Lizzy had seen her slip between the pages. A photograph spilled out, and she handed it to Lizzy. “Here. You can see for yourself how beautiful she is. And sexy.” She took a deep breath and blew it out, explosively. “God, how I hate that woman. And to think that she’ll be sleeping under my roof this weekend!”

The photograph showed a man and a woman seated together at a table in what looked like an outdoor café. It was clear that they were more than just friends: they were holding hands and their heads were close together. All Lizzy could see was their profiles, but she recognized Roger Kilgore’s dark hair and strong, regular features. She recognized the woman, too, from the publicity photos that had appeared in the Darling Dispatch. She was stylish, slender, and generously endowed. She was sexy. She was Lily Dare.

Lizzy handed it back. “I am so sorry,” she said again. “This must be terribly difficult for you. Have you . . . have you spoken to Roger about it?”

“No,” Mildred said miserably. “I can’t. I’m afraid if I do, it might bring everything crashing down. I love him, Lizzy. I love him desperately, and I don’t want to lose him. When you came, I was sitting here hoping that I could think of a way to make him see how she’s using him.”

“Using him?” Lizzy asked.

“Well, of course! That’s what the letter says, anyway. Here. Read it for yourself.” She thrust the letter into Lizzy’s reluctant hands.

The letter was written in a distinctive back-slanting hand, in purple ink on a dusty-pink paper. It was not dated.

Dear Mrs. Kilgore,

I’m sorry to write you again, but I think you should know that your husband is still seeing Miss Dare. This picture was taken in New Orleans and it proves what I’m saying. It would be one thing if she loved him from the heart, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t love any of the men who think she does and who give her money to support her expensive habits. They’re just saps and suckers that she uses, then throws away when she’s done, like a piece of trash. Like Pete Rickerts, who crashed his airplane because he was so crazy in love with her. She is a terrible person who goes around destroying marriages, tricking men into giving her money, and making a mess out of innocent people’s lives. She must be stopped. If you love your husband, you’ll do whatever it takes to protect him from her. And do it before she wrecks his life—and yours and your little girl’s.

With all best wishes,
Your Friend

Lizzy went back and reread the sentence about Pete Rickerts, remembering that he was the pilot who had died on Miss Dare’s ranch. Had he been one of Miss Dare’s lovers? Had he crashed his plane on purpose?

She felt the skin prickling between her shoulder blades. “She must be stopped.” Stopped how? Who’s going to stop her?

She folded the letter and handed it back. “What . . . what do you think it means, Mildred?”

Mildred didn’t answer Lizzy’s question. She put the letter back in her book, her mouth hardening. After a moment, she said, “Obviously, the woman has no soul. She has made a mess out of many lives. The lives of many innocent children, like my little Melody.”

By this time, Lizzy could hardly think of anything to say. Her conjectures had been redeemed by the facts, as Mr. Moseley would say, but she felt no satisfaction. She managed, “But maybe it’s not as bad as you think, Mildred. Maybe—”

But Mildred wasn’t listening. “I’m sure Roger believes that he is very special to her. But he is obviously just the next man in a long line of . . . of suckers.” Mildred’s words were like acid. “He must be in love with her—or think he is—or he wouldn’t be behaving the way he is. I can’t tell him that she’s using him to get whatever she wants—love, admiration, money—”

“Money?” Lizzy asked sharply. “You mean, there’s money involved?”

“Is there ever,” Mildred said, with a bitter little laugh. “The first letter claimed that Roger was writing checks to her out of his business accounts, using the name Lily A. Star.” She gave a sarcastic laugh. “Lily Dare, the Texas Star. If she was trying to hide what she was doing, she didn’t try very hard. Even a dummy could get that one.”

Lizzy frowned, wondering how the letter writer knew about the checks. It had to be someone close enough to Miss Dare to know where her money was coming from. But maybe—

“That’s an easy claim to make,” Lizzy said, and asked the question she knew Mr. Moseley would ask in this circumstance. “Is there any evidence? Do you know whether it’s true?”

Mildred pressed her lips together to keep them from quivering. “Yes,” she said, lowering her head. “I waited until he was out of the office one day and went through the ledger. In the last six months, he wrote three checks to Lily A. Star, for a total of nine hundred dollars. I have the canceled checks.”

Lizzy flinched. Nine hundred dollars was a lot of money, especially these days. And Mildred had known this for a while. No wonder she had been looking wan and worried.

Mildred’s voice was choked but the words came out in an explosive rush, as if they had been bottled up for too long and the speaker felt a terrible pressure, a push to get them out in the open air, once and for all.

“The dealership is in a terrible situation these days, Liz. Nobody’s got the money to buy anything, and months go past when not a single cent comes in—not even the money that’s owed on time payments, thousands and thousands of dollars. Roger has had to lay off poor Freddie Mann in the repair department and Duffy Peters from sales, and both of them with wives and children at home. I helped Roger get that dealership started with the money I inherited from Daddy, and I’ve been using it to support this house and the hired help. But if things keep up as they are, there’ll soon be nothing left of Daddy’s money, and what we’ll do when it’s gone, I have no idea. Just no idea!”

“Oh, Mildred, I’m so sorry,” Lizzy began, but Mildred had gulped a breath and was going on, her voice ragged and desperate, out of control.

“And now I find out that he’s been writing checks to her out of the dealership bank accounts. I have to stop that horrible woman, Liz. I simply have to, or I’ll lose it all! This house, the business, my husband—they’re all I have!” Her voice thinned to a wail, like a trapped animal. “When they’re gone, there’ll be nothing left of me. Nothing!”

Lizzy stared at her, suddenly thinking that perhaps the big plantation-style house and the servants and the chrome-trimmed roadster and the stunning collection of camellias and, yes, even Roger and Melody—they were all one and the very same thing to Mildred, and all of them like the Bergdorf Goodman dress she’d bought for the party and the other expensive clothes she wore. They were ways of covering up and disguising an emptiness inside. But perhaps she was overreacting. Maybe it wasn’t like that at all. Maybe—

“Yoo-hoo,” a high, light voice called. “Oh, Mildred, Liz, it’s me!”

A gate at the back of the garden had opened and Aunt Hetty Little was coming down the path toward the house. She wore a flowered print dress and carried a pot containing the Hibiscus coccineus, the plant that Liz was supposed to present to the Texas Star at the party.

“Oh, dear,” Mildred said, very low. “If it isn’t old Aunt Nosy.” She sighed heavily. “Sorry. I don’t mean to complain. Aunt Hetty is a sweet old thing, and rather pitifully lonely. I just wish she didn’t live quite so close.”

In the early 1920s, the Cypress Country Club and the properties on Country Club Drive had been carved out of the large Little cotton plantation, which at one time was one of the most beautiful and substantial plantations in the area. The Little plantation house had burned down the year before President Wilson dragged the country into the Great War, and all the servants had been let go. Since then, Aunt Hetty—the last surviving Little—lived by herself in a cottage on the other side of Mildred’s back garden hedge. She was a congenial neighbor, although (as Mildred frequently complained) an irritatingly nosy one, who liked to know everything that was going on.

Mildred turned to Lizzy. “Now that she’s here, Liz, we can’t talk anymore. I’m sure I’ve said far too much, anyway—about those letters, and about everyone else. You must promise me not to say anything to anybody about them.”

“I promise,” Lizzy said. “Not a single word. To anyone.”

She didn’t imagine that she might come to regret that promise—and to break it.