Return of the Dixie Deb Read Free Page A

told her to admit the woman. I was afraid she might create a scene, draw a crowd.”
    “Yeah. Her name’s Stella Purvis, apparently a long-standing bank customer. A news crew from the local TV station interviewed her while I was there,” Derossiers said.
    “Are they talking about the old robberies? The Dixie Deb ones?” she asked.
    Derossiers shook his head ruefully. “No, and there may be a problem.” He looked over at his supervisor writing in his file.
    It didn’t sound good. Her antennae went up. Mac stared at him too.
    “The footage from the surveillance camera isn’t the best. Apparently, it’s an old system. I don’t know if local media is going to want to air it,” Mac’s fellow agent said.
    “And no one thought to check that out before we went in?” Jan pushed herself out of the armchair to pace over to the window. “This…We could have been killed in there if Stella What’s-her-name had been carrying a gun instead of pepper spray. And it was for nothing. How…”
    “Yeah, it’s something we missed.” Derossiers sounded genuinely regretful. “We’ll definitely check into it in the future.”
    The future? Oh, good. More staged bank robberies as she perfected her new career in crime. She leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. In back of her, she heard Whittaker clear his throat.
    “It’s no use crying over spilled milk. We need to learn from this and make the necessary modifications to insure better results. There is a positive aspect. It seems this woman, Stella Purvis, is a longtime local resident. She was living around here when the bank was robbed by the Dixie Deb.”
    The Dixie Deb . A week ago sitting in the I.R.S. office back in Atlanta, she couldn’t have imagined how her skin would crawl hearing those words.
    She straightened up wearily and went back to sit in her chair.
    “What happened at the bank today,” Whittaker was saying, “may provoke memories of the past. If Mrs. Purvis starts talking, and she seems the type who enjoys an audience, people may remember…”
    The Dixie Deb . It was the label press across the South had given the woman who had held up banks across Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, along with her male cohort, a quarter century before. The story had received massive coverage at the time. Tall and immaculately turned out in cotillion dresses or suits, pearls, and vintage hats, she and her companion had knocked over a series of small town banks before mysteriously disappearing from sight.
    The Dixie Deb . In the pictures Jan had seen of the notorious female bank robber, the woman had given the impression of aristocratic Southern gentility as she opened her leather attaché case with white-gloved hands, her silent companion holding his gun on the hapless bank customers. A similar briefcase was now in the trunk of their rental out in the parking lot. She tasted blood from her bit lip.
    The money from those earlier hold-ups had never been recovered; the crimes never solved. Was that the bone that stuck in Whittaker’s throat? Back in Atlanta, his mouth had tightened as he had explained the deal they were offering her, his finger thumping the old pictures of the “Deb” emphatically.
    Their offer was simple and thorough. All federal charges for income tax evasion would be dropped and her license as a C.P.A. left untouched in return for her co-operation in the undercover operation. They needed someone to impersonate a new version of the Dixie Deb and see if the original’s vanity or curiosity caused her to resurface.
    So what were her credentials? Well, she was tall, thin, Southern, and in trouble with the law. How much more qualified could someone be?
    She looked up. Mac was asking questions about the next few days.
    “We’ll lay off for a while. There was an interval of a week or so when the Dixie Deb started the bank heists. Once the two of them seemed to gain confidence, they knocked off a couple a week.”
    Wow ! What a thing to