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

Montgomery at the beginning of the school year. Verna had met her at a Presbyterian ice cream social the month before. She was wearing a green wrapper and her hair was wet under a towel turban. “You startled me. I thought there was nobody here.” She gulped. “I mean, I thought Bunny was—”
    “You were looking for Bunny?”
    Miss Blake looked flustered, and her glance flew from one side of the room to the other. “Not exactly. I mean—Well, Bunny borrowed my red blouse last week. I thought, since she wasn’t here, I’d just come in and see if I could—” She pounced on a bit of filmy red fabric hanging over the seat of the chair. “There it is! Oh, goody, goody gumdrops!”
    Verna suppressed a chuckle. Miss Blake had tried to appear so grown-up when they met at the social. At the moment, she looked as if she were fourteen. “When did you see Bunny last?” she asked.
    “Bunny?” Miss Blake frowned and puckered up her mouth. “Well, I’m not sure. I suppose it was Saturday evening.” She thought for a minute more. “Yes. Saturday. She wasn’t here for breakfast or supper yesterday, or breakfast this morning.” She lowered her voice. “Mrs. B is fit to be tied. She says she’s throwing Bunny out.”
    “You saw Bunny at supper on Saturday?”
    “Not then.” Miss Blake shook her head. “It was at the picture show. Johnny Potter and I went to see Helen Morgan in Applause.” She clasped her hands and rolled her eyes in a fair imitation of the melodramatic Miss Morgan. “She was so swell. Helen Morgan, I mean. Really, truly she was. I cried and cried. Have you seen it yet, Mrs. Tidwell? If you haven’t, you must. You’ll just love it. Oh, and there’s a Tarzan feature, too. But it’s silent. Applause is a talkie.”
    “You said you saw Bunny,” Verna prompted.
    “Oh, sure. I saw her coming out of the ladies’ when I went to get popcorn for Johnny and me. But we just waved; we didn’t speak.”
    “Who was she with?”
    “Why, nobody.” Miss Blake held up her blouse, frowning at something she saw on the front. “Just look at that,” she muttered. “Grease. Or maybe coffee. Bunny is so careless.”
    “She went to the picture show by herself?”
    Miss Blake looked up. “Oh, I meant that nobody was with her coming out of the ladies’. I don’t know who she went to the picture show with.”
    Verna gestured to the bed. “Mrs. Brewster said Bunny was here on Saturday night. What do you think?”
    “I think...” Miss Blake hesitated. “Well, personally, I don’t think she slept here. I doubt she came home after the picture show.”
    “Where do you suppose she is?”
    “Don’t have a clue.” Miss Blake gave Verna a half-defiant look. “But it isn’t the first time she’s been out all night. Oh, she’s always here when Mrs. B checks the beds, or she makes it look like she is. And she’s always back in time for breakfast. Until now, anyway.”
    “Oh, really?” Verna asked, surprised. “But I thought Mrs. Brewster locked the doors. How does she—”
    “I’ll show you.” Miss Blake stepped out into the hall. Verna followed her.
    “This window,” Miss Blake said in a low voice. “Don’t tell Mrs. B, but the girls use it sometimes. To come and go after hours. You can climb down the porch pillar, and there’s a trellis—a little shaky, but almost as good as a ladder for getting back in. Nobody can see you from the street, because of that big tree and the bushes. Not that I’ve done it myself,” she added righteously. “But Bunny has. And the others, too. But mostly Bunny.”
    “Ah,” Verna said. “Of course.”
    Experimentally, she raised the sash and put her head out. The porch roof wasn’t at all steep. If you were young and agile, it wouldn’t be much of a trick to climb out. And if the trellis bore your weight, you could use it to climb back in again. She put the sash back down, noticing that it moved easily and quietly. The girls probably promoted that with a bit of Vaseline on the cords.
    “Well, I guess this tells us something,” Verna said.
    “Shhh!” Alarmed, Miss Blake put a finger to her lips, glancing over her shoulder. “You don’t want to go giving away our secrets, do you? If Mrs. B found out—”
    “I won’t tell her,” Verna said reassuringly. She paused. “Tell me—do you know the names of the young men Bunny has been seeing?”
    “Well, there are several.” Miss Blake stuffed her red blouse into the pocket of her wrapper,