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

to get ready to get her hair done over at Beulah’s Beauty Bower.
    After she had gone, Ophelia sat at the table for a moment, thinking that it was a good thing that Mrs. Adcock had come over while Florabelle was out in the backyard hanging out the wash. Florabelle absolutely believed in ghosts. If she thought the Cartwright ghost was walking again, she’d throw her apron over her head and go sit with her face to the wall.
    Ophelia was also glad that Florabelle hadn’t heard the other thing, too—although if people around town were talking about Jed and Lucy, the colored folks already knew it. Florabelle lived in Maysville, on the east side of the railroad tracks. When she went home at night, she caught up on the news from all her cousins and friends who worked for the white families in Darling. Ophelia considered asking Florabelle what people were saying about Jed and Ralph’s young wife. But Florabelle was like most of the colored women Ophelia had known in her life, kind and thoughtful, with a sturdy, innate dignity. She might’ve heard something, but she wouldn’t tell Ophelia what it was. It would be too embarrassing to both of them.
    Ophelia got up and wiped the red-and-yellow-checked oilcloth with a dishrag, then got the broom and began to sweep. She was remembering the phone call a week ago yesterday, the one Jed had said was from Sheriff Burns. She was also remembering what she had heard on the party line that same evening, when Verna and Myra May were talking about Buddy breaking his arm when he drove his motorcycle into Ralph’s corncrib. Myra May had said it was Lucy who called Jed, not the sheriff, the way Jed claimed.
    Ophelia hadn’t thought much about it at the time. There must have been a lot of excitement at the switchboard that afternoon, with telephone calls flying back and forth about the prison farm escape. It would’ve been easy for whoever was on the board at any given time to misremember who called who and what they said. Ophelia had meant to ask Jed when he got home, but Sam had fallen and scraped his knee when he was roller-skating, and by the time she’d patched that up, she’d forgotten all about it.
    Ophelia wasn’t inclined to pay a lot of attention to Mrs. Adcock’s story. But there were a few other things, now that she thought about it. Little things, like Jed’s increasingly frequent visits to the Murphy place. And people who stopped talking when she came into the room, as if they didn’t want her to hear what they were saying. Were they talking about Jed and Lucy?
    But Ophelia didn’t believe in stirring a big pot of troubles until her mind and heart got stewed into mush. So she stopped thinking and went out to the washhouse to give Florabelle a hand with the wringer. Jed’s pants were heavy when they were wet and the wringing went faster when there was one to feed and one to turn the wringer crank.
    By the time Jed’s pants were on the line, Ophelia had decided what to do. She put on a fresh cotton dress, combed her hair, put on her second-best hat (the straw with the blue silk flowers) and reminded Florabelle that Jed wouldn’t be home to noon dinner because it was the third Monday, the day the Elks held their monthly meeting at the Darling Diner. Florabelle could go ahead and give the children their dinner—she would eat when she got home, which might be later in the day. Then she went to the garage and carefully backed out the Ford sedan. She was going out to see Lucy. She didn’t have a plan—Ophelia wasn’t the kind of person who thought ahead about what she wanted to say. She just wanted to see Lucy and try to figure out what was what, that was all.
    Really, she told herself. That was all.

    The Murphy place was at the end of the Briarwood Road, about four miles west of town, just at the edge of Briar’s Swamp and not far from the river. It was Ralph’s daddy’s home place, but Ralph had built an addition on the house when he and Emma—Ophelia’s best friend—got married years ago. Emma had been a solid, sensible girl, and she’d started having babies right away. But she’d died of a cancer too young, leaving Ralph to cope with Junior and Scooter, who were as free-spirited and independent as might be expected of youngsters who didn’t have a mother. Ophelia didn’t like to criticize, but Lucy wasn’t old or heavy-handed enough to take Emma’s place. The boys needed a switching every now and then, which wasn’t likely to happen, with Lucy