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

the far corner was a pink-painted dressing table with a small round mirror and a pink bench. The top of the dressing table was covered with bottles and jars and tubes of lotions, potions, and makeup. Long ropes of beads and other costume jewelry dangled from the mirror. In lieu of a closet, a curtain was fastened diagonally across another corner, to hide hanging clothing. A basket on a battered four-drawer mahogany chest was filled with a tumble of colorful silk scarves. A cheap cardboard suitcase sat on the floor next to the chest. Verna hefted it. Empty.
    She went to the dressing table, aimlessly turning things over. All of it was very much Bunny, she thought. A hair-brush with strands of bright blond hair, a cheap rattail comb, a pair of fancy tortoiseshell combs, bobby pins, spilled face powder, a bottle of fire-engine red nail enamel, an open inkwell, a pen. Several scraps of paper, as well, filled with a loopy, childish script. Eva Louise Woodburn, Bunny Woodburn, Mars, Maxwell Woodburn,
    Verna frowned down at the paper. Woodburn? She didn’t recognize the name. There were no Woodburns in Darling, so far as she knew.
    There was a drawer in the dressing table, and she opened it, seeing that it was filled with emery boards, eyelash curlers, and the like. But in one corner, half hidden under a stack of cheap five-and-dime hankies, Verna saw a small wooden box, the polished top inlaid with colored mosaics and mother-of-pearl. Curiously, she picked it up, and then saw, beneath it, a small paper-bound savings account record book from the Darling Savings and Trust, with the name Eva Louise Scott written on the front. A small photograph was stuck inside the book: Bunny, squinting into the sun, wearing a lacy black teddy (probably the same one on the floor) and a pair of high heels. She was posed like a glamorous femme fatale on the front hood of a racy-looking roadster with an Alabama license plate. Her ample endowments were amply visible under the less-than-ample silk that barely covered them. The man taking the photo had cast a shadow in front of him. And yes, it was a man—or a woman wearing trousers and a fedora.
    Verna (who didn’t shock easily) was shocked, and her estimation of Bunny shifted a point or two to the negative. She knew that women out in Hollywood posed for similar photographs—she had seen them in magazines. But this was Darling, and something like this was unusual.
    Still thinking about the photo, she opened the deposit book and was surprised to see the amounts listed in the deposit column: regular deposits of ten dollars a week over the past six months. Two hundred and seventy dollars—not a huge amount of money, maybe, but pretty impressive for a girl who worked at the cosmetics counter at Lester Lima’s drugstore, where she probably earned no more than seven or eight dollars a week.
    Verna put the deposit book back, her estimation of Bunny shifting a notch or two back toward the positive. She had pictured the girl as a spender, not a saver. But if she was saving ten dollars a week, how did she pay her board and room? Where was the extra money coming from?
    The wooden box was still in her hand. Verna lifted the lid and was startled to see a pair of pearl earrings—real pearls, from the look of them—nestled against folds of blue velvet. In tasteful gold letters, inside the lid, was the name Ettlinger’s Fine Jewelry, Mobile,
    Her eyes widened at the sight. If the pearls came from Ettlinger’s, they had to be real. Where had Bunny gotten the money? Or if they’d been a gift, who in Darling could have afforded to give them to her? And then she thought of the bracelet Bunny had worn the other day. It had looked expensive, too. Where—
    Verna’s questions were interrupted by a light rap at the door. A young voice asked softly, surreptitiously, “Bunny? You in there, Bunny?”
    Verna opened her mouth to answer, and then changed her mind. After one more knock, the door was pushed open. Verna swiftly pocketed the little jewelry box. Mrs. Brewster might be confident in the integrity of her girls, but it wasn’t a good idea to leave obviously expensive jewelry lying in an unlocked drawer in an unlocked room in a house where nobody had anything to hide.
    Verna spoke crisply. “Hello.”
    The girl jumped, and her hand went to her pretty mouth. “Oh!” she cried. “Oh, my goodness! Oh, Mrs. Tidwell!” It was little Miss Amanda Blake, the elementary school teacher, who had come from