The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

by Susan Wittig Albert

  The pharmacy at the back of the store had already closed for the day, but Verna began to casually browse the cosmetics displayed on the shelves opposite the soda fountain, picking up a small rectangular box that held Maybelline Eyelash Darkener for “eyes that glow with enchantment.” She wondered whether her eyes would glow if she used it, but she doubted it. She rarely bothered with makeup, which took a long time and didn’t seem (to her, anyway) to make that much difference in the way she looked. The eyelash darkener cost fifteen cents, so she put it down.

  “Gloria ain’t here just now,” called the soda jerk. He was polishing a glass with a white towel. “If there’s anything I can help you with, just holler.”

  “Thanks,” Verna called back. She pretended an interest in a dark red Cutex nail enamel until the teenaged couple finished their milkshake and left, trading noisy good-byes. Then she went to the counter and sat down on one of the red leather-covered stools.

  “What’ll it be?” the soda jerk asked pleasantly. Behind him was an array of sparkling glassware—glasses for sodas and milkshakes, dishes for sundaes, plates for sandwiches and cake—on glass shelves. A large wall mirror reflected the glassware, the boy’s back, and Verna’s own image.

  “How about a cherry Coke?” Verna replied, and fished a nickel out of her coin purse.

  “None of that makeup stuff?” the boy countered, obviously eager for a sale. “Make you look real purty.”

  “I kinda like myself the way I am,” Verna said with a little laugh. She wasn’t priggish—she just thought it was silly to spend money to paint your face and pretend to be somebody you weren’t. If you were married, what did your husband think when the eyelash darkener came off and your eyes no longer glowed with enchantment? “Just the Coke, please,” she added firmly.

  “Comin’ up.” The boy took down a glass and held it under a spigot on the chrome-plated soda dispenser. Dark Coca-Cola syrup squirted out. Another spigot for the cherry syrup. Then a lever for fizzy carbonated water. The boy plopped in a maraschino cherry, added a paper straw, and pushed the glass across the black marble counter. He rang the cash register with a flourish and dropped the nickel into the drawer.

  “Nice place,” Verna said, looking around.

  “Been here since 1908,” the boy said proudly. “My dad’s place. He wa’n’t much older ’n me when he started it.” He wiped off the counter with a white cloth. “The soda fountain’s only a few years old, though. Dad likes to keep up with the times.”

  “He’s smart,” Verna murmured in an appreciative tone. “You’ve been working here long?”

  “Off and on since I was a kid,” the kid said, squaring his shoulders. “Want somethin’ to go with that Coke? We got sandwiches. Ham and cheese.” He gestured to a plate of white-bread sandwiches covered with a glass dome. “My mom makes ’em. Real good.”

  “No thanks,” Verna said. “I’m meeting someone later. Listen, I’m wondering ... Didn’t a girl named Bunny used to work here? Seems to me somebody told me that.”

  “Oh, yeah,” the boy breathed. “She sure did.” From the evident longing in his voice, Verna guessed that he wished she still did. “That was before Gloria,” he added. “She’s our cosmetics girl now.” He grunted disdainfully. “Not much of a girl, though. Gramma’s more like it. Dunno what an old lady like her is s’posed to know about cosmetics.”

  “Did you know Bunny very well?”

  The boy gave her a crooked grin. “Not as well as I would’ve liked.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. But she had bigger fish to fry. Which you can’t blame her for.” Another grin, this one with a cynical edge. “You got it, you better use it—that’s my motto. She had it. And believe you me, lady, she used it.”

  Verna couldn’t argue with that. “Big fish?” she asked casually. “Like who?”

  The boy shrugged. “Like guys with money. Al, the guy who runs the parts department over at the Ford dealership. The dentist down the street. Salesmen who stayed at the Commercial.” He frowned. “I’m not sayin’ there was anything wrong. Guys like me, she was always real nice. Laughed and teased, flirted, even. But what she really liked was a good time. You couldn’t show her a good time, you weren’t gonna get to first base with her. Bottom line.”

  Verna stirred her Coke with the straw, thinking that Bunny hadn’t changed one bit when she moved to Darling. She’d still liked a good time, and she’d still preferred guys with money. “She grew up around here, I understand.”

  “Yeah. Went to school with my sister. Lived with her mom over on Oak Street, next to Doc Myers’ animal hospital—‘til her mom died a while back.” The boy cocked his head curiously. “Hey. How come you’re wantin’ to know about Bunny?”

  Verna had already guessed that the news of Bunny’s death had not yet arrived in Monroeville. She wondered briefly if she should tell the boy, but decided against it. Bunny had been found late Monday, and today was only Wednesday. He’d find out soon enough, probably when the Monroe journal came out at the end of the week.

  “Just curious,” she replied, and slurped up the last of her drink. “I met her at the drugstore over in Darling. She was working there.”

  “Darling. So that’s where she went. I wondered. She kept sayin’ she was goin’ to Mobile or Atlanta. New York, even.” The boy picked up a glass and began to polish it. “Listen, you see her, you tell her Jerry the soda jerk said hi. She’ll remember me. Tell her she oughtta come back over here and see her friends sometime. We’ll all chip in and buy her a dinner or something.”

  Verna stood up, feeling a sudden impulse to tell the boy that Bunny would never come back—hefe or anywhere. That she was dead. That somebody had killed her. She felt a sharp anger rising inside her.

  “I sure will,” she lied, thinking urgently that she had better get out before she said more than she intended. “Thanks for the Coke.”

  The boy raised his hand. “You bet.”

  Verna thought then of giving up the search. The boy had already answered the question she’d come to ask—which of Bunny’s stories about her life was true? Bunny had lived with her mother on Oak Street, not in an old farmhouse outside of town, the brave caretaker of four small children. Anyway, what did that matter now?

  But Oak Street wasn’t far away, as Verna learned when she asked directions to the animal hospital, and she had an hour to kill before she was supposed to meet the others. So she began to walk.

  The animal hospital—a regular house with a big fenced-in yard, dog houses here and there—was on the corner. The house next door was small, no more than three rooms, and it hadn’t been painted in many years. The front door was open and Verna rapped at the screen. The woman who answered the knock was well past middle age and her dark hair was going gray. Her hands were square and work-hardened, the hands of a farm wife. She didn’t offer to open the screen door.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Verna said. “I’m looking for Miss Scott. Eva Louise Scott.”

  There was a sudden chorus of barking from the animal hospital next door, and the woman raised her voice. “Eva Louise don’t live heah no more. Her mama died a while back and she moved out. Went over to Darling is what I heard.” She cocked her head to one side. “How come folks’re askin’ ’bout Eva Louise all of a sudden? She gone an’ got herse’f in some kinda trouble?”

  The barking stopped. “Folks?” Verna asked. “What folks?”

  “Some man, jes’ this mawnin’. Said he was a lawyah from over in Darlin’.” The woman shook her head. “Allus bad trouble when lawyers come ‘round askin’ questions.” She peered at Verna. “Don’t reckon you’re a lawyah,” she said, and then chuckled at her own joke.

  Something clicked. A lawyer. “Wouldn’t have been Mr. Moseley, would it?” Verna guessed.

  The woman nodded vigorously. “Moseley. Yep, that‘ud be him. You know him?” She made a clucking sound with her tongue, and Verna saw that she was missing most of her teeth. “Eva Louise—her mama raised her right an’
she’s a good girl, down deep in her heart. But she don’t allus use the sense God gave her, ‘speshly where menfolks is concerned.” She laughed. “That lawyah fella—he seemed right surprised to find out she lived heah, her ’n’ her mama. Got it into his head some way that her mama done run off years ago an’ Eva Louise was takin’ care of a big bunch o’ brothers an’ sisters somewheres out in the country. He was gonna stand right theah an’ argue with me ’bout that, ’til I showed him that photo of Eva Louise an’ her mama.”

  Verna chuckled to herself, imagining Mr. Moseley’s surprise when he learned the truth. Good enough for him, she thought with a kind of acid pleasure—allowing himself to be taken in by a pretty girl on the make. But why had he come here?

  “You’re related to Miss Scott?” she asked, wondering if this woman should be told about Bunny’s death. Obviously, Mr. Moseley hadn’t told her—and she wondered why.

  “Not related.” The woman shook her head. “Knew her mama from church is all. She sang in the choir, helped out with Bible School. That picture I showed that lawyah is one that was took last summer at the church picnic.” She frowned. “That girl is in trouble, I reckon,” she said sadly. “Like I said, she’s a good girl, but she’s got no sense.”

  “Thank you,” Verna said, and decided against saying anything about Bunny’s death. She hated to be the bearer of bad news. And, like the soda jerk, the woman would find out soon enough.

  “No sense a-tall,” the woman muttered, and turned away from the door.

  Earlier that day, Myra May had done as Aunt Hetty Little suggested. She had taken a break from the diner after lunch and gone to the Darling library to ask Miss Rogers what she knew about Imogene Rutledge.

  The library was located in two small rooms at the back of Fannie Champaign’s milliner shop, Champaign’s Darling Chapeaux, on the west side of the courthouse square. In one room was Miss Rogers’ desk, a rack of wooden drawers that held what she called the “card catalog,” and a table where a person (only one, because there was only room for one chair) could sit and read in front of the window. The other room had shelves on all four walls, from the floor as high as a person could reach. The books were mostly donated, but the City Council set a few dollars aside for new books every year and sometimes people gave a little money. Miss Rogers was frugal. She bought mostly nonfiction. The year before, she had bought We, by Charles Lindbergh, A Preface to Morals, by Walter Lippman, and (on the lighter side), Believe It or Not, by Robert L. Ripley. But she did buy two best-selling novels: The Bishop Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine and Joseph and His Brethren, by H. W. Freeman.

  When Myra May came in, Miss Rogers had immediately told her what had happened at the Magnolia Manor the night before—or rather, in the backyard of the Dahlias’ clubhouse. Bessie Bloodworth had fired on an intruder and had hit him—accidentally, of course. She had aimed over his head.

  “Any idea who he was or what he was doing?” Myra May had asked.

  “It was the escaped convict, if you ask me,” Miss Rogers said. “Now, Myra May, what can I help you with today?”

  When Myra May told Miss Rogers what she wanted, the librarian frowned. “Imogene Rutledge,” she mused. “Well, I’ll tell you this much. That woman still owes a library fine. It just keeps getting bigger, too.” She opened her desk, took out a ledger, and consulted a page. “It’s up to forty cents.”

  “My goodness,” Myra May said, and something occurred to her. “I’m going over to Monroeville late this afternoon, Miss Rogers. Would you like me to see if I can collect?”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you, Myra May.” Miss Rogers wrote some numbers on a slip of paper and added them up. “Here’s the fine and a list of the penalties. I doubt if she’ll pay it—she is such a negative individual. But of course it’s worth a try.” She handed the paper to Myra May. “Why are you asking about her?”

  “Because,” Myra May said, and told Miss Rogers that Alice Ann was accused of embezzlement. While some of the Dahlias were thinking of possible suspects, Imogene Rutledge’s name had come up and Aunt Hetty Little had suggested that Miss Rogers might know something.

  Miss Rogers sniffed. “Well, what I know,” she said tartly, “is that Imogene Rutledge has a very sharp tongue and doesn’t mind using it. And in addition to not paying her fine, she stole a book. Took it right off the shelf in the other room.”

  “Stole a book!” Myra May exclaimed. “Oh, my goodness!” She was shocked by the theft, of course, but even more shocked that Miss Rutledge had dared to take the book out from under Miss Rogers’ nose. “How did she manage to—”

  “Simply put it in her bag and walked out the door with it,” Miss Rogers said darkly, and it was clear from her expression that this was an exceptionally malevolent transgression. “I missed it immediately, of course, for I had seen it on the shelf not a half hour earlier. It happened to have been a personal favorite of mine—a book that everyone in Darling enjoyed reading and rereading. Further Chronicles of Avonlea, by Maud Montgomery.”

  “I see,” Myra May said, thinking that somebody who was bold enough to walk past Miss Rogers with a stolen book—and one of the Anne of Green Gables series, at that—was bold enough to embezzle. “Is there anything else that might point to ...” She hesitated. “Well, to Miss Rutledge being involved in shenanigans at the bank?”

  “You mean, anything in addition to that brand-new car and the house she bought for her mother in Monroeville?” Miss Rogers’ tone was acid.

  “She bought a house?” Myra May asked, surprised.

  “She certainly did. Quite a large one, too. New, from what I heard. Must’ve cost a great deal of money. Of course, I have no information about what might or might not have happened at the bank, and whether the car and the house have anything to do with that. I suppose she might have made her little bundle in the market, before the Crash.”

  Miss Rogers pressed her lips together, turning her head, and Myra May knew that she was thinking of the money she herself had foolishly invested in stocks and the little cottage she had hoped to buy with all that money she was going to make in the market. No wonder she was angry at Miss Rutledge, who had committed three terrible sins. She had not paid a fine, she had stolen a book, and she still had plenty of money, when Miss Rogers had lost every penny of hers.

  Myra May had thought about this all afternoon, while she was working. She had even gone so far as to call the operator in Monroeville and get Miss Rutledge’s telephone number and street address. So when Verna suggested that they split up to do their investigating, she had been glad to volunteer to talk to Miss Rutledge.

  The Rutledge house, it turned out, was indeed quite large, although it was by no means new. In fact, it was old and in urgent need of repair. But there were pots of red geraniums on the front porch, red and green chintz cushions on the porch swing, and a small brass plate beside the front door, engraved with the words RUTLEDGE’S RESIDENCE FOR GENTEEL LADIES.

  Miss Rutledge herself answered the door. In her fifties, she was erect and firm-featured, with a braided coronet of still-dark hair. She wore a gray skirt and tailored white blouse with a dark, mannish tie. “Yes?” she asked pleasantly. “May I help you?”

  Myra May introduced herself and said, in a deeply apologetic tone, “Actually, I’m here at the request of Miss Rogers, at the Darling Library. I hope I’m not offending you, but I mentioned that I was coming to Monroeville and Miss Rogers asked me to stop in and remind you about the library fine.”

  Miss Rutledge rolled her eyes. “Oh, for pity’s sake,” she said. “Dorothy Rogers. She’d rather send somebody than spend two cents on a stamp. Such a parsimonious old dragon!”

  Myra May gave a little laugh. Clearly, Miss Rutledge’s reputation as a woman who spoke her mind was well earned. She herself liked Miss Rogers, but the librarian was strict and she made sure that everyone obeyed her rules to the letter, whether the rules made sense or not. Lots of people would probably agree that she was a dragon—and parsimonious to boo
t.

  “Forty cents!” Miss Rutledge heaved a sigh. “Well, that’s what I get for forgetting. Since you’re here, I suppose I might as well pay up, so Dorothy can scratch my name out of her little black book. Come into my office, and I’ll get the money for you.”

  Somewhat surprised that collecting was going to be so easy, Myra May followed Miss Rutledge into the hallway. An older woman, obviously quite genteel, sat in the parlor, embroidering what looked like a napkin. Another, equally genteel, was reading aloud to her while she worked. A fat spaniel lay at their feet, snoring.

  “The Bigood sisters,” Miss Rutledge whispered. “My first residents. There are two others, but they’re napping right now, as is my mother.” She gave what sounded like a snicker. “Genteel old ladies nap quite a lot, it turns out.”

  Myra May found herself liking this woman. She was leading the way into a room behind the parlor, just large enough for a neat little writing desk and chair, a wooden filing cabinet, a bookshelf, and a straight chair. On the wall over the writing desk hung a plaque from the Monroeville Chamber of Commerce, welcoming Rutledge’s Residence for Genteel Ladies to the roster of outstanding Monroeville businesses, and a large framed photograph of Miss Rutledge and an older woman (who must be her mother, Myra May thought) cutting a ribbon across the front porch. There was another photograph, too: Miss Rutledge high on a ladder with a brush and a bucket, painting the shutters on a second-story window.

  Miss Rutledge followed her glance to the plaque and the photographs. “It’s not exactly a genteel life for me,” she said wryly. “Managing Mama and the rest of these old ladies takes just about all my strength. My patience, too. Sometimes I tell them if they don’t behave, I’m going to run away and join the circus.” She shuddered. “But it’s better than the bank, I’ll tell you. Mr. Johnson was never an easy man to work for, and when the money situation got worse, he got to be a real bear.”