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

tomorrow.”
    “Not us, I hope. What is it now?”
    “You wait and see,” Jed said. His face darkened. “It’s not goin’ to be good, Opie, but I’ve taken care of us. You and me and the kids—whatever happens at the bank,” he added, “we got nothin’ to worry about”
    “Taken care of what?” Ophelia asked, now alarmed. “What don’t we have to worry about?”
    “Can’t rightly say just yet” Indulgently, he patted her on the cheek. “But I don’t want you frettin’ your pretty head about it,” he said, and was gone.

    Ophelia was still pondering Jed’s mysterious words as she set up the card table and got out the cards and paper and pencils for scoring. The Dahlias’ Monday evening card party was open to all the club members, but not everyone came. Miss Rogers and Aunt Hetty Little didn’t play cards, and Bessie Bloodworth had Bible study at the Manor on Mondays. Alice Ann Walker often played with them, but she had left a message with Florabelle, saying that she wouldn’t be able to make it tonight. So it would just be Verna, Myra May, and Lizzy—four, counting herself. Which was fine for hearts. They could play with as many as seven, but it was a little awkward.
    She made tea, cut the still-warm peach cobbler, and laid out her prettiest lace-trimmed napkins (the ones her mother had embroidered with pansies). She was moving the chairs when she heard the knocker. As she opened the door to Myra May, Verna and Lizzy were coming up the walk.
    “Good timing,” Ophelia said cheerfully, trying not to look at the dirty hem of Lizzy’s skirt. It looked like she’d been rolling in the mud. “Only have to answer the door once.”
    A few minutes later, they were settled around the card table, glasses of iced tea at their elbows. But they weren’t playing cards. They were staring openmouthed at Lizzy, who had just told them that Bunny Scott had died in an automobile wreck. She had stolen a nearly new green Pontiac and crashed it through a barrier and into the Pine Mill Creek ravine.
    “Dead!” Myra May exclaimed. “So she was one of that pair of thieves?”
    Ophelia gasped. “That pretty little blond thing that works in the drugstore stole a car? Why, she’s no more than a child!”
    “The sheriff says she stole it,” Lizzy said grimly. “But to tell the truth, girls, I can’t believe it, either. Verna and I have lunch with her every day ... had lunch with her. Bunny was always kind of silly and flighty, but she didn’t have any meanness in her. She’d never steal a car.”
    “A green roadster?” Ophelia asked, frowning. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a green roadster in this town. Who did it belong to?”
    “The dentist in Monroeville,” Myra May said. “Fred Harper phoned the sheriff around midnight Saturday night to report it stolen—his brother’s car, he said. I was on the switchboard,” she added, in answer to the raised eyebrows. “I heard him. Said he couldn’t see the man very well, but he gave a pretty good description of the woman. She had short blond hair and was wearing a red dress. In her twenties. Staggering, maybe, like she was drunk.”
    “Bunny was wearing a red dress,” Lizzy said quietly.
    “Who’s Fred Harper?” Verna wanted to know.
    “The chief cashier at the Savings and Trust,” Myra May said.
    Verna rolled her eyes. “Oh, that one.”
    “You’ve met him?” Ophelia asked Verna.
    “Only through the teller’s window. He’s thin, kind of bony, actually. Pale hair, steel-rimmed glasses, no eyebrows. Sort of ... finicky.” Verna looked at Myra May. “It wasn’t his car?” She answered her own question. “I don’t suppose it was. Somehow, he doesn’t strike me as the roadster type. More like a bicycle sort of person.” She raised her eyebrows. “I could see him on one of those old-fashioned high-wheelers, like my old granddaddy used to ride.”
    Myra May nodded. “He told the sheriff that he’d borrowed it from his brother, which I guess made it worse, far as he was concerned. He was half hysterical. Kept saying he didn’t know how he was going to explain it. To his brother, I guess he meant”
    “If he saw somebody stealing his brother’s car,” Ophelia said reasonably, “why didn’t he just go out there and stop them? Why was he wasting time on the telephone, for pity’s sake?” She shook her head. “If Jed saw somebody stealing our Ford, he’d pick up his gun and stomp out there and haul them out of the car before