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

especially those big, floppy cabbage roses that smell like paradise, but all the plants are in need of pruning and general cleanup. Old Zeke, who lives in a tiny cottage the next street over, keeps the grass mowed but that’s about all. The rest is a mess. If the Dahlias want to enjoy their garden, they’ve got their work cut out for them.
    If you step off the porch and follow the path to the right around the back of the house, you can see the big vegetable garden plot at the corner of Camellia and Rosemont. Mrs. Blackstone always grew enough sweet potatoes and okra and green beans and squash for the whole neighborhood. The garden hasn’t been planted for a couple of years now, and the Dahlias haven’t yet figured out what to do with it. But the soil is rich, the space large and sunny, and if they want to, they can turn it into flowers or mow it, or whatever. They can even sell it, although times are hard and property isn’t moving very fast in Darling. It might be difficult to find a buyer.
    But we’re not finished with our tour just yet. If you walk on around the house to the front yard, you’ll see Mrs. Blackstone’s prize hydrangeas, the old-fashioned weigelas that came from her mother, the wisteria climbing the front of the house, and the gorgeous azaleas, pink and lavender and white, massed under the front window, with a border of hostas at their feet.
    And the cucumber tree, of course. It’s such a big tree, and so pretty when it blooms, that it’s earned quite a reputation. People driving or walking down Camellia Street always stop to admire it, especially at this time of year. It’s in full bloom just now and covered with beautiful creamy blossoms as big as dessert plates, some of them. The flowers produce little red fruits that look like baby red cucumbers.
    The cucumber tree. That’s what everybody calls it, even though Dorothy Rogers, the town librarian and a Dahlia, insists that it ought to be called by its proper Latin name, Magnolia acuminata. But that particular tree and its twin in the back garden are both over eighty years old and have stood tall and proud since before the War Between the States. As far as people in Darling are concerned, they have always been cucumber trees, and cucumber trees they always will be. Aunt Hetty says that if you called it a Magnolia acuminata, nobody would know what in the Sam Hill you were talking about, and she’s right.
    For the club, inheriting the house (and the gardens and the two cucumber trees) came as a huge shock. When Mrs. Blackstone died, everybody in Darling quite reasonably figured that her property would go to her husband’s nephew Beatty Blackstone, the owner of BB’s Auto Repair Shop and the Sinclair Filling Station, and the only living Blackstone. That’s the way property is handed down in Darling, from one family member to another. If you’re next in line, it’s pretty much a sure thing.
    Beatty had it figured that way, too. He’d been thinking of this all the while his aunt was declining, figuring that he could sell the house or trade it to the bank in return for the mortgage on his repair shop. Either way, he’d be free and clear forever and wouldn’t that just be swell? So on the day after Mrs. Blackstone’s funeral, he locked up his repair shop, put on a clean white shirt and a tie, and sauntered jauntily over to Mr. Moseley’s law office on Franklin Street to hear Mr. Moseley read the last will and testament of his aunt-by-marriage and pick up the keys to his new front door—only to learn instead that she had bequeathed the keys, the front door, the house, the garden, and the vacant lot at the corner of Camellia and Rosemont to the garden club. What’s more, she had prepaid the taxes for three years, so the club would have a little time for fund-raising before they had to pay taxes again.
    For Beatty, this was a stunning blow.
    It was equally stunning for Lizzy, who was the first Dahlia to hear this news, partly because she was the club’s president but mostly because she worked for Mr. Moseley. She was at her desk in the reception room, typing up the shorthand notes she had taken in a deposition about a cow that got loose and broke down a neighbor’s fence, when Mr. Moseley opened the door to his office and asked her to come in and hear him read Mrs. Blackstone’s will. He had a quirky smile on his face, which should have told her that something was up. Anyway, the next thing she knew, he was handing her the trust