The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree (Berkley Prime Crime)

must have been an interesting one, for the next morning, the two unsecured loans that were the bank’s most potentially damaging liabilities—one to Mrs. Voleen Johnson’s father, the other to her brother—were paid in full, righting the bank’s capitalization-to-debt ratio and allowing Darling Savings and Trust to be removed from the “troubled banks” list. This was a good thing, because the examiner was a longtime friend of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. He would have hated to close their bank.

TWENTY-FOUR
    The Dahlias Plant Their Sign
    Sunday, May 25, 1930

    There were several other little mysteries, but they were cleared up over the next few days. Mr. and Mrs. Lester Lima came back home from their Florida vacation—a “second honeymoon,” Mrs. Lima called it, as she proudly displayed the diamond ring that Mr. Lima had bought her as a pledge of his undying love and affection. (“And an abject apology,” as Mildred Kilgore put it to Ophelia.) Mr. Lima reopened the drugstore and got busy filling all the prescriptions for the sick people who had gone without their medicines in his absence. Mrs. Lima put herself in charge of hiring, and after an exhaustive and highly competitive search, she found Miss Scott’s replacement, Mrs. Priscilla Prinney, age fifty-seven, mother of three and grandmother of eight.
    Nadine Tillman, meanwhile, finally got around to letting her mother know where in the world she was. Her postcard arrived from Los Angeles, with a picture of the H-o-l-l-y-w-o-o-d L-a-n-d sign on the front (thirteen huge white letters planted on the side of Mount Lee, publicizing the new real estate development). Nadine had written a few lines on the back, saying that she was well and happy and hoping for a career in the movies. But she was broke and would really appreciate it if her mother could send a money order for ten dollars so she could pay her rent.
    Maxwell Woodburn had no telephone, but Myra May was finally able to locate an address for him. He was very, very sorry when he learned about Bunny’s death. They had been corresponding for several years, he said, having met through the Baptist Sunday School Pen Pals list. He was a little surprised to hear that Bunny had been practicing her signature as Mrs. Maxwell Woodburn, for he was serving four years in the state penitentiary (he was truly a “pen pal,” he joked) and would not be able to marry anybody until he got out. But he appreciated the thought and wished that Bunny was still alive so he could tell her so.
    Which leaves the mystery of Bessie Bloodworth’s ghost, the one she fired at with her twelve-gauge shotgun. Bessie was right, of course. The cloaked figure with the shovel was no ghost. He was Beatty Blackstone. He would not have revealed himself, except that he was wounded in his encounter with Bessie—not because she shot him (she really did shoot over his head when she discharged her gun) but because he somehow managed to slice his leg quite badly with the sharp edge of his shovel when he was trying to get away from Bessie’s twelve-gauge.
    Beatty (who never liked to admit to weakness and didn’t like to spend money on doctors) put off treatment for several days. But when his leg became seriously infected and he could no longer walk, his wife Lenora insisted on taking him to the doctor. Doc Roberts scolded Beatty for not coming in earlier, then cleaned and stitched the wound and painted it with iodine. He had done all he could, he said, but Beatty would be lucky not to lose his leg. It was touch-and-go for a couple of days, but gradually the leg improved, and after a while, Beatty could get around again without too much trouble. But forever after, he walked with a limp.
    This ghostly misadventure might not have come to light if it hadn’t been that Beatty, out of his head with pain, told Doc Roberts that he’d been injured when he was digging under the cucumber tree in Mrs. Blackstone’s garden. When Doc Roberts asked him why he was doing such an outlandish thing, Beatty, by that time rambling and incoherent, told him the whole story. Doc Roberts’ assistant, Maureen Wiggins, was helping the doctor sew Beatty up and overheard the tale.
    Maureen told her mother-in-law, Leticia Wiggins, who had witnessed the ghost-bagging episode from the window of the Magnolia Manor.
    Leticia told Bessie Bloodworth.
    And Bessie told the Dahlias, when they met at the clubhouse the following Sunday afternoon.
    “Dressed up like the Cartwright