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

out there in the woods.
    “cup.”
    “Have they found them yet?” she asked. “The escapees, I mean.” Verna wasn’t all that anxious, but she knew that many people in town would be concerned. Once, years before, an escaped prisoner had made his way to Darling. Desperate, he’d broken into the diner for food and into Mann’s Mercantile for clothing to replace his prison stripes. He’d jumped a train and gotten as far as Montgomery before the police caught up with him, and until then, everybody in town was on pins and needles, wondering where he was.
    “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