The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star (10 page)

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.