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

right.
    Still unlocked, luckily. They went in, quietly, and shut the door behind them.
    “Oh, dear,” Lizzy whispered, looking around the tiny room. “Oh, my goodness.”
    “Yes, exactly,” Verna said sadly. “Poor kid.”
    It didn’t look as if the police had been here. If they had, they hadn’t neatened anything up, for the room was as littered as before. Bunny’s clothes were still scattered across the floor, the bed was still unmade, the air still reeked of My Sin. Verna stood for a moment, then went to the dressing table and pretended to look over the cosmetics. Furtively, she opened her purse, took out the small box containing the pearl earrings, and slid it into the drawer, breathing a secret sigh of relief.
    Success! She could stop feeling guilty. Now nobody would ever know that she had taken those valuable pearls. She raised her eyes and glanced in the mirror, to see if Lizzy had noticed.
    She needn’t have worried. To Verna’s surprise, Lizzy was pulling open the dresser drawers, one after the other, pushing things aside and looking among Bunny’s clothing as if she were searching for something specific. In the third drawer down, she seemed to have found it. She took out a white envelope, held it in her hand for a moment, then, without turning around, quietly tucked it into the front of her dress.
    Verna cleared her throat. “Find something interesting?”
    “Oh!” Lizzy jumped, startled. “Oh, gosh. I didn’t think you’d—” She turned, shamefaced, and pulled out the envelope. “It ... It’s a letter, Verna. From Mr. Moseley to Bunny. I should have told you. It’s the reason I wanted to come here this afternoon. To see if I could find it.”
    “A letter?” Verna rolled her eyes. “For pete’s sake, Lizzy, the man’s a lawyer. Doesn’t he know any better than that?” Incautious letters sometimes led to blackmail. And blackmail led to murder. At least, that was the plot of a recent mystery she had read.
    “I don’t think he was thinking,” Lizzy said. Her face was pale. “I think maybe his brain shut down. He said he had to tell her that he wanted to break it off.”
    “What does the letter say?”
    “I don’t know,” Lizzy replied in a quavering voice, and handed it over. “You read it, Verna. Read it out loud.”
    Verna opened it. The letter was handwritten and dated two weeks before. It was short and to the point. She read in a low voice.
    “ ‘Dear Bunny, I’m sorry. I can’t give you what you want, or what you deserve. You need to find someone else. We can’t see each other again.’ It’s signed with his initials,” she added. “B.M.”
    She handed it back to Lizzy. “Sounds pretty definite to me. If I got a letter like that, I’d be upset. Maybe frantic, depending on whether I really liked the guy.” But maybe it wasn’t a case of Bunny really liking—or even loving—Bent Moseley. Maybe she’d seen him as a meal ticket, and when he dumped her, she had threatened to tell his wife about their relationship. If she threatened him, how would he react? Would he be scared? Would he be scared enough to kill her? To Lizzy, she said, “What are you going to do with that letter?”
    Lizzy straightened her shoulders. “I’m going to give it back to him.” She put the letter into her purse.
    Verna frowned. “You’re absolutely, positively certain that he didn’t have anything to do with Bunny’s death?”
    “I am positive.” Lizzy’s voice was firm. “I know Mr. Moseley, Verna. He would never do something like that. The trouble is that he doesn’t have an alibi for Saturday night. His wife was in Birmingham with the girls and he was home alone.”
    So that explained her unexpected remark about Mr. Lima’s alibi, Verna thought. She opened her mouth to tell Lizzy to put the letter back. If she took it, she’d be obstructing justice or something awful like that.
    But she didn’t. After all, she herself had taken those earrings—who was she to tell Lizzy what to do?
    Instead, she turned back to the drawer. “Here are the earrings I told you about,” she said. She took the box out of the drawer, and opened it.
    “Oh!” Lizzy exclaimed, in an awed tone. “Oh, my goodness. They’re beautiful!”
    “Do you think Mr. Moseley gave them to her?”
    “I asked him point-blank,” Lizzy replied. “He says he didn’t.”
    “That must have been some conversation,” Verna said with a dry chuckle. “Wish I’d been a fly on the wall.” She pulled