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

being as soft as she was and Ralph working on the railroad and gone all week, even some weekends.
    Ophelia pulled up at the gate. When Emma was alive, she had kept up the yard, but now there wasn’t much to it but dirt and weeds and a few straggly flowers along the porch, where a pair of dominecker hens were scratching under the watchful eye of their red-watded rooster. A white goat was tethered beside the fence, thoughtfully nibbling what was left of Emma’s favorite Ducher rosebush—a white China rose, the only white one Ophelia had ever seen.
    Ophelia tootled the horn, and in a few moments Lucy hurried out onto the porch, waving when she saw the car and starting eagerly down the rock-bordered dirt path. But when Ophelia got out and Lucy saw who it was, she dropped her arm and stood still.
    With some wistfulness, Ophelia had to admit that Ralph’s wife was a beauty. She wasn’t more than twenty-two or twenty-three, and her thin cotton dress was buttoned tight across a full bosom and snugged in to a small waist. She was barefoot and her red hair was twisted up carelessly to keep it off her neck, but the untidiness only added to her loveliness, making her look like a child. There was something of the child in her face, too, a welcoming eagerness, even when her visitor turned out to be somebody other than the person she might have been expecting. She was wary, yes, in the way a child is wary of a stranger. But who wouldn’t be on her guard, living out here, with the nearest neighbor—the Spencers—threequarters of a mile away, back toward town?
    Seeing the eagerness, Ophelia took heart. This girl is just plain lonely, she thought. Ralph’s boys might be company, but she’s happy to see anyone who might pay her some attention, break up the monotony of an isolated life. Maybe she would have preferred it to be Jed, but his wife would do almost as well. Of course, she was an optimist, Ophelia reminded herself, but it wouldn’t hurt to start off thinking like this, until she was proved wrong.
    “Why, hello, Opie,” Lucy said warmly. “I wasn’t expecting anybody this morning. So nice of you to come by.”
    “I was just out this way,” Ophelia said, “and I thought I’d stop and see how you were doing.” Of course, if Lucy gave it a moment’s thought, she’d know this wasn’t true. Ralph’s place was at the end of the road, which dead-ended in the swamp just behind that clump of trees to the west. You wouldn’t come this far unless you were coming here . But maybe she wouldn’t think about it. “You okay?” she added.
    Lucy crossed her arms, hugging herself. “Well, to tell the truth, it’s not been any too good the past week. Ralph is away, workin’, and it’s hard, bein’ here alone with the boys.” Her voice was light and soft, like lemon meringue fluff “They’re at school today, and on weekends, they’re off in the woods, huntin’ and fishin’ Mostly, it’s just me, by myself.”
    “And now there’s that convict on the loose,” Ophelia said. “It’s been a whole week. I’m surprised they haven’t caught him yet. Somebody said they all have shaved heads at that farm. Shouldn’t be too hard to spot him.” At the plant sale on Saturday, she’d heard that the dogs had somehow got confused on the scent, some going one way, the others going a different way. In the muddle, they’d lost the trail. They were good dogs, trained bloodhounds, and it wasn’t often that they lost their quarry. But Sheriff Burns was still saying it was only a matter of time before they had the convict under lock and key again.
    Lucy looked away. “I reckon he’s a smart one, knows how to live off the land back there in the swamp. Either that, or he’s gone clean out of the county by now.”
    “You’d think somebody’d see him and turn him in,” Ophelia said. “A colored man with a shaved head wearing a striped prison suit—a dead giveaway, seems to me.”
    “He’s probably wearing Tad Spencer’s overalls by this time,” Lucy said with a little laugh. “Miz Spencer missed ’em off her clothesline, along with Mr. Spencer’s blue work shirt. And he’s not colored.”
    “Oh, really? I just assumed—”
    Lucy let out her breath uneasily. “’ Course, I haven’t seen him, but that’s what they say. Young, too, no more’n a boy. But old or young, I couldn’t take a chance. I was sure glad when Jed came out here and took a hand with Junior and Scooter the Sunday the posse was