The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree Read online

  “Found ’em?” Mr. Norris said. “Haven’t heard.”

  No, of course he hadn’t. Mr. Norris refused to have a telephone, which made Buddy so mad he could spit. As a deputy, he said, he needed to be on the line, and kept threatening to get himself his own place, just so he could have a phone. As it was, if the sheriff needed Buddy, he had to call Verna or Mrs. Aylmer, on the other side of the Norris house, and one or the other would run over to get him.

  They reached the back door, and Verna opened the screen and set the bucket on the wash bench just inside.

  “Why don’t you jes’ come on into the kitchen and help me snap them beans?” Mr. Norris asked.

  Verna tried not to laugh. If she went in with him, pretty soon she’d have all the beans snapped and he’d be asking her to cook them—and bake a batch of cornbread, to boot. “Sorry. I’ve got to get back and finish my hoeing.”

  He sighed. “Well, when Buddy gets home, you come on back over here an’ he’ll tell you all about the jailbreak.” He slanted her a cagey look. “Or I c’n send him over there.” Mr. Norris was always trying to persuade Buddy that he ought to court Verna, in spite of the fact that she was a dozen years older and a head taller.

  “I’ll come over if I’m not busy,” Verna said briskly. She didn’t want to encourage Mr. Norris’ romantic efforts. She and Buddy definitely were not a match.

  An hour later, garden chores done and Clyde whistled home from Racer’s pasture, Verna settled down at the kitchen table with a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich and two molasses cookies she’d saved back from the batch she took to the Dahlias’ meeting that afternoon—which were all gone, of course. The Dahlias loved anything sweet, and these were just sweet enough, and spicy. She always put more ginger in them than most people did.

  Finished with her meal, she settled down to drink her coffee and read her library book—The Circular Staircase, by Mary Roberts Rinehart. She had already read every single one of the detective novels the Darling Library had on its shelves (not a great many—it was a small library) and was reading the best ones for the second and third time. But that didn’t spoil the pleasure, for it was her opinion that a good novel, especially a good mystery, deserved more than one reading. Verna was especially fond of sleuths like Miss Rachel Innes in The Circular Staircase, who was clear-sighted and practical and knew exactly what questions to ask, even when she was scared half out of her wits. And Maude Silver, in The Grey Mask, by Patricia Wentworth. Miss Silver was a former governess, fond of knitting and quoting Tennyson, who had set up shop as a private inquiry agent. Verna could almost imagine herself in the role of Miss Silver (except that she’d never had the patience for knitting) and fervently hoped that Miss Wentworth would write more books.

  Her reading was interrupted by the telephone. Two longs and a short. It was Verna’s ring, although the four other Larkspur Lane families who shared the line—the Wilsons next door, then the Newmans, the Ferrells, and the Snows at the other end of the block (their house fronted on Rosemont, but they were on the Larkspur line)—were probably picking up their receivers and putting their hands over the mouthpieces so nobody could hear them breathing and know they were listening in. This effort at secrecy was silly, of course, because everybody listened in and everybody else knew it. Some folks now were getting private lines, but most of Verna’s friends and neighbors said they would rather be on a party line. How else would they get the news?

  The call was from Myra May, on duty at the switchboard in the diner’s back room. There were four operators on the exchange, Myra May, Violet Sims, Olive LeRoy (Maude LeRoy’s youngest daughter), and Lenore Looper (Olive’s friend). Each worked an eight-hour shift, so the board was covered twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There wasn’t that much telephone traffic, though, so Myra May and Violet also waited tables and handled the counter at the diner, also not a very demanding job, now that the diner’s business had fallen off.

  “Verna, is that you?” Myra May asked when Verna said, “Hello.” With so many people sharing a line, it always paid to know who was talking.

  “Yes, it’s me, Myra May,” Verna replied. “What’s going on?”

  “Doc Roberts called for Buddy Norris. The doc asked me to ask you to go next door and tell Mr. Norris that Buddy’ll be late gettin’ home tonight, but not to worry. Doc Roberts is patchin’ him up. He’ll drive him home when he’s done.”

  “Patching him up?” Verna asked, surprised. “Why? What happened?”

  “I don’t know the details, but there was some shootin’ out at Ralph Murphy’s place late this afternoon.”

  “Shooting!” Verna exclaimed. She knew perfectly well that Myra May wasn’t going to tell her everything all at once. She always strung the story out as long as she could, so that everybody who wanted to get on the line had time to get there, and she didn’t have to repeat. In Darling, this was a much appreciated courtesy.

  “Right,” Myra May said. “Shootin’. As in guns. Bang bang.”

  “Well, my heavens. Did Buddy get shot? I hope he isn’t too badly hurt.”

  “Nope. It wasn’t Buddy that got shot.”

  “Well, who?”

  “The Negro who busted out of the prison farm. Didn’t kill him, though. At least not so far as Doc Roberts said.”

  “What happened to Buddy, then?”

  “Ran his motorcycle through Ralph’s corncrib and broke his arm.”

  Verna had to stifle a laugh. “The same one that got broke before?”

  “Nope. The other one. Jed Snow drove him back to town and dropped him off at Doc Roberts’ office. Guess Buddy’ll have to get somebody to fetch his motorcycle later. It’s still stuck in the wall of Ralph’s corncrib.”

  Verna, curious asked, “What was Jed Snow doing out there?”

  “Lucy phoned and asked him to come out. I didn’t take that call, it was when Violet was on the board this afternoon, but Violet said that Lucy was half hysterical. Jed is Ralph Murphy’s cousin, you know. On his mother’s side. He’s out there a lot. Him and Ralph go hunting.”

  “Yes, I know, but—” Verna took a breath. “Ralph wasn’t shot, was he?” She and Ralph had been high-school sweet-hearts back before she married Walter and Ralph had married Emma, who died of a cancer in her breast, leaving him with two very young boys. Verna had been glad when he married again, although it would have been better if he’d found somebody older and more firm-handed than Lucy. The boys—Junior and Scooter—needed somebody to whack their behinds and keep them in line.

  “No. Ralph’s working on the railroad and doesn’t get home every weekend. Lucy was out there with the kids by herself and pretty scared. Guess she thought of Jed and felt like she needed a man around while the prisoners were on the loose.”

  “Oh,” Verna said. “Did they catch both the prisoners?” She wasn’t asking because she was anxious, but because she knew that everybody on the line would want to know.

  “They caught the one they shot,” Myra May replied, “but not the other one. Got clean away into Briar’s Swamp, they said. He’ll wish they’da shot him, I reckon. You go in there, you’re gonna get eaten alive by mosquitoes.” She paused. “You’ll tell Buddy’s dad?”

  “I’m on my way over there right now,” Verna said. Myra May hung up, but Verna didn’t, not right away. She just stood there, listening, as Miss Silver might have done.

  One. Two. Three. Four.

  Everybody on the party line had heard the news.

  FOUR

  Lizzy

  Monday, May 12,1930

  Mondays were always slow in Mr. Moseley’s law office, which didn’t bother Lizzy Lacy a bit. It gave her time to catch up on what she hadn’t finished the preceding week. If she had a few minutes left over, she worked on her newspaper column, which was always due on Wednesday.

  Today, there wasn’t much work left over from last week, just some bills to pay (Lizzy did the office books and handled Mr. Moseley’s personal accounts) and Lester Sawyer’s will to
type up, in triplicate, a job that Lizzy always hated, and especially in this case, because Lester Sawyer had a lot of property and was particular about who would get what when he was gone. She was a careful typist and didn’t make many mistakes, but when she did, she had to get out the eraser shield and correct every carbon copy, which slowed her down considerably. There was also a list of telephone calls Mr. Moseley had asked her to make, as well as the court calendar to check, so she could have the necessary files on his desk before he needed them. He mostly did property and family law, with the occasional criminal case. There was nothing very exciting or even especially difficult about any of it, but it did require her to pay attention and notice things—which Lizzy considered to be a good thing, since she was a person who noticed.

  Lizzy had come to work for Moseley & Moseley not long after she got her high school diploma. Benton Moseley had been a young lawyer then, handsome, bright, just out of Auburn Law School, in practice with his father, Matthew Moseley, a widely respected lawyer and, at one time, a state senator. The elder Mr. Moseley had died in the 1918 Spanish Flu, which carried off quite a few folks. But the younger Mr. Moseley—Bent, his friends called him—had carried on, following in his father’s footsteps. He had even gone up to Montgomery in 1922 to serve in the Alabama Legislature, which meant more work for Lizzy, who had handled the office during the four years he was gone. In fact, she got to the point where she could do most of the things that Mr. Moseley could do, except go to court and argue in front of the judge. As it turned out, though, Mr. Moseley hadn’t liked politics all that much. After one term, he came back to Darling and to the office full-time.

  Lizzy was glad. She’d had a terrible adolescent crush on Bent Moseley in the early days of her employment and had mooned around, allowing herself to suffer greatly from unrequited love. But then he had married blond, beautiful Adabelle, a willowy debutante from a wealthy Birmingham family. They had two children, both girls who were blond and very pretty like their mother, and several years back had built a fancy house on the outskirts of town, near the Cypress Country Club. Adabelle’s father had helped build the house. He had helped to further Mr. Moseley’s political career, too, although it was rumored that he hadn’t been too happy when his son-in-law returned to private practice. Now, Lizzy didn’t allow herself to think of her earlier crush on Mr. Moseley—not very often, anyway. She just enjoyed working with him, did the best she could to make his work easier, and kept her romantic fire banked. These days, she wasn’t even sure it was still burning.

  This Monday was different from the usual because of the excitement of what had happened out at the Murphy place on Sunday afternoon, at the very hour that the Dahlias were holding their meeting. Mr. Moseley told her all the details when he came into the office. Two men had escaped from the prison farm. One had been shot in the shoulder—he was back at the farm, probably in solitary. The other had gotten away, Mr. Moseley said. He’d run back toward Briar’s Swamp along the river bend, but the dogs had lost the scent, which was very odd, because Sheriff Burns was always bragging that the dogs were the best in the whole state. Anyway, they hadn’t yet turned up his trail, as of this morning. Buddy Norris had tried to give chase on his Indian Ace motorcycle, but he hit a chicken, lost control, and rammed his motorcycle into the corncrib. The chicken only lost a few feathers, but Buddy ended up with a broken arm.

  “The same one that got broken before?” Lizzy asked, trying not to smile. It wasn’t funny, she supposed, at least, not to Buddy.

  “The other one,” Mr. Moseley replied. His tone was grave but his dark eyes were twinkling and the corner of his mouth twitched. “The one that didn’t get broken ... before.” The husband of the woman Buddy had been too friendly with had consulted Mr. Moseley about filing for divorce, but he and his wife had apparently made up, or maybe they decided that a divorce would be too expensive. Anyway, the wronged husband hadn’t kept his second appointment.

  “I hope Buddy’s going to be all right,” Lizzy said primly.

  “Doc Roberts says he’ll be fine. Not too sure about that motorcycle, though. Jed Snow said the frame was pretty badly bent.”

  “That’s too bad,” Lizzy said. “Buddy’s really crazy about that motorcycle.” He rode it up and down Darling’s streets on patrol—at least, that’s what he called it. Lizzy supposed that patrolling was intended to be a good thing, except that Darling’s residential streets weren’t paved and Buddy usually rode so fast that if something was wrong or somebody was trying to flag him down or get his attention, he’d never notice. Mostly all he did was raise the dust, which hung like a cloud of smoke over the street long after he and his motorcycle were out of sight.

  “I don’t suppose he’d be happy patrolling on a bicycle, would he?” she added wistfully.

  “I doubt it,” Mr. Moseley replied. “But with that escapee on the loose, it would be a good idea to have somebody patrolling. I don’t suppose he’ll come in this direction—he’s probably aiming to stay out in the woods. But some folks are going to fret until he’s captured.” He looked at his watch. “Well, now, Lizzy. Who’ve we got coming in first this morning?”

  The morning’s appointments marched briskly toward noon, when they closed the office for an hour. Mr. Moseley usually went home for a sit-down dinner with Adabelle, meat and potatoes and vegetables and dessert. But Lizzy always brought her lunch and ate on the grassy lawn behind the courthouse, under the chinaberry tree, where she was joined by two or three of the women who worked in the businesses around the courthouse square.

  Today’s group was small, just Bunny Scott (who sold cosmetics at Lima’s Drugstore and gave makeup demonstrations for ladies’ clubs in the area) and fellow Dahlia Verna Tidwell, who had some news about yesterday’s prison farm escape and the efforts to capture the escapees. Verna, it turned out, had seen Dr. Roberts bringing Buddy home, his arm in a sling and a bandage across his forehead after he had wrecked his red Indian Ace at Ralph’s place.

  “Guess that’ll teach him to ram that old motorcycle of his into other people’s corncribs,” Bunny said, and giggled in a way that told them she wasn’t talking about motorcycles and corncribs.

  “How you talk, Bunny,” Lizzy said, pretending to be shocked.

  Bunny (she hated her real name, which was Eva Louise) was in her early twenties and liked to shock. Today, she was wearing a lipstick-red silky rayon dress with a tantalizing V-neckline that exhibited her ample endowments and must have shocked some of Lester Lima’s drugstore customers, including Mr. Lima himself, who was a deacon in the Baptist church. He had told Earlynne Biddle (Earlynne’s son Benny was a soda jerk at the drugstore soda fountain) that he would never have hired Bunny, except that she was the Baptist preacher’s wife’s cousin’s daughter. According to Earlynne (who had told this to Lizzy), the girl had grown up over in Monroeville, where she lived with her widowed mother until the previous winter, when she had moved to Darling.

  However, since Bunny sold cosmetics, her peroxided hair, lacquered nails, and full figure weren’t entirely bad things, at least as far as the drugstore’s business was concerned. Benny Biddle had told his mother that Bunny was bringing in a whole passel of new customers. The men in town who would never be caught dead at a cosmetics counter were coming in to shop for perfume and lipstick and such for their wives and girlfriends. They didn’t always have money to buy, Benny said, but they certainly liked to shop.

  “Well,” Verna said, “it must have been pretty scary for Lucy, out there with the two kids and those escapees on the loose. Guess that was why she called and asked Jed to come out”

  “Oh, really?” Bunny took a shiny gold lipstick tube and a matching gold compact out of her purse. Looking into the mirror, she began to apply bright red lipstick. She pursed her lips, applied a second coat, then smoothed it with her little finger, the nail enameled bright red. “Lucy called Jed? Is that what you said?”

  Verna nodded. “Myra May told me. She wasn’t on the board when the call went through. That w
as Violet. But it was definitely Lucy calling.”

  “My, my!” Bunny’s eyebrows, carefully plucked, were arched up under her bangs. “That’s interesting, I must say.” She closed her compact and put it away. “I was over at the Snows’ last night—not Jed and Ophelia’s place, but his folks’. I met Sis last winter when I first moved here, y’see, and I stopped to say hi when I saw her out front, keeping an eye on her kiddos. We all sat around and talked for a while. Jed’s wife, Ophelia, was there. She said it was Sheriff Burns who called and asked Jed to go out to the Murphy place. She was kinda curious about that, which is why I remember it”

  “Hmm,” Verna said, in a skeptical tone that implied all manner of things.

  Lizzy, who noticed Verna’s skepticism, folded the wax paper in which she had wrapped her egg salad sandwich.

  There was a silence. Bunny took out a tiny bottle of My Sin and began applying it to her wrists and behind her ears. She was wearing an expensive-looking bracelet with geometric silver-plated links and rhinestones that caught the sun and fired it back. “Far be it from me to gossip,” she said carelessly, “but last week, Mrs. Adcock told me that Jed Snow and Lucy Murphy are quite the—”

  “I’m sure there’s nothing to it,” Lizzy interrupted, before Bunny could tell them what Mrs. Adcock had said. Didn’t matter whether there was any truth behind the talk—all by itself, talk could cause plenty of trouble. Working in a law office had taught her that, among other things. She folded the wax paper with her brown-paper lunch sack and put them both into her purse. “Anyway, it’s none of our business.”