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

afghan. “Eliz’beth, Grady stopped by ‘bout an hour ago. He left somethin’ for you. A glass jar of somethin’. On the porch, right there beside the door.”
    “Thank you, Momma,” Lizzy called, and waved, thinking once again that life would be much easier if she had a sister or two, or at least a brother.
    No such luck. Her mother had been nearly forty when Lizzy was born. Her father had died when she was a baby, and Mrs. Lacy had lavished all her attention on her only child. For the first ten years, this was a privilege Lizzy had enjoyed. Mrs. Lacy loved to sew, so her daughter was always dressed in the prettiest dresses, organdies and sheer cottons, always white, with ribbons and embroidery. Lizzy’s Mary Janes were always spotlessly white and polished. Her brown-gold hair was twisted up in rags every night so she could have bouncy banana curls.
    But as Lizzy got older, her mother’s fussing began to feel oppressive, to the point where it seemed that every action she took, every moment of her life, was watched, evaluated, criticized, and managed. When she was eighteen, fired by the desire to leave her mother’s house, she had said an overeager “yes” to Reggie Morris and accepted the engagement ring he gave her. She began looking forward to having her own home and husband and children to take care of. In the meantime, when Reggie signed up to fight, she got a job at Moseley & Moseley and tried to learn how to wait.
    But Reggie hadn’t come back from France with the rest of the 167th Infantry. It had taken Lizzy a while to get over that, and then she had started carrying a torch for Mr. Moseley. That took a while to burn itself out, and by the time he married Adabelle, Lizzy was well on her way to spinster-hood. To her surprise, she found she didn’t mind that much-maligned state very much at all. What she minded was living at home with her mother and being thoroughly managed. Why, she couldn’t even have a cat, because her mother was allergic. As to a dog, that was out of the question, too. Dogs barked. It was becoming increasingly obvious (as her mother liked to say) that “a son is a son ’til he takes a wife, but a daughter’s a daughter all her life.”
    Which was why, two summers ago, Lizzy did something highly unusual, at least by Darling’s standards. Old Mr. Flagg had lived for many years across the street from her mother. When he died, Lizzy bought his white frame house, with sunflowers and raspberries in the backyard and a profusion of roses on the trellis and a little vegetable plot and a fence covered with butterbean vines. Mr. Moseley was in charge of handling Mr. Flagg’s estate for the old man’s out-of-town heirs. Lizzy was able to purchase the house privately, before Mr. Manning, the local real estate dealer, could get in on the act and add his percentage. She didn’t tell her mother, or anybody else, for that matter.
    Lizzy had been saving five or six dollars a week since she had started working, so she was able to pay cash for the small house. She even had enough money left to get the old place repainted and wired for electricity (Mr. Flagg had liked his coal oil lamps). The work was done under the watchful eye of a local contractor whom Mr. Moseley had privately hired for her. When it was almost finished, Lizzy took the train to Mobile and treated herself to a new Tappan gas range and a GE Monitor-top refrigerator with coils on top, as well as a few items of necessary furniture, and arranged to have them delivered and installed. She didn’t tell her mother about any of this, either.
    All of this repair and refurbishment went on while Lizzy was at work. When she came home every evening, her mother couldn’t wait to tell her in great detail what had been done during the day. The entire neighborhood was buzzing with curiosity, for no one except Verna (who had recorded the deed but was sworn to secrecy) had the slightest idea of who had bought the old Flagg house and was fixing it up. Not even Mr. Manning could provide a clue, which was nearly driving him crazy. It was a huge mystery.
    All through that summer, the house was her mother’s most significant topic of conversation. It had to’ve been bought by somebody from out of town, Mrs. Lacy decided—one of Mr. Flagg’s large family of cousins, or somebody who had visited the house years before and liked it. But why hadn’t the buyer come to see the work that was being done? And why wouldn’t Mr. Moseley say a