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

jerk said hi. She’ll remember me. Tell her she oughtta come back over here and see her friends sometime. We’ll all chip in and buy her a dinner or something.”
    Verna stood up, feeling a sudden impulse to tell the boy that Bunny would never come back—hefe or anywhere. That she was dead. That somebody had killed her. She felt a sharp anger rising inside her.
    “I sure will,” she lied, thinking urgently that she had better get out before she said more than she intended. “Thanks for the Coke.”
    The boy raised his hand. “You bet.”
    Verna thought then of giving up the search. The boy had already answered the question she’d come to ask—which of Bunny’s stories about her life was true? Bunny had lived with her mother on Oak Street, not in an old farmhouse outside of town, the brave caretaker of four small children. Anyway, what did that matter now?
    But Oak Street wasn’t far away, as Verna learned when she asked directions to the animal hospital, and she had an hour to kill before she was supposed to meet the others. So she began to walk.
    The animal hospital—a regular house with a big fenced-in yard, dog houses here and there—was on the corner. The house next door was small, no more than three rooms, and it hadn’t been painted in many years. The front door was open and Verna rapped at the screen. The woman who answered the knock was well past middle age and her dark hair was going gray. Her hands were square and work-hardened, the hands of a farm wife. She didn’t offer to open the screen door.
    “Sorry to bother you,” Verna said. “I’m looking for Miss Scott. Eva Louise Scott.”
    There was a sudden chorus of barking from the animal hospital next door, and the woman raised her voice. “Eva Louise don’t live heah no more. Her mama died a while back and she moved out. Went over to Darling is what I heard.” She cocked her head to one side. “How come folks’re askin’ ’bout Eva Louise all of a sudden? She gone an’ got herse’f in some kinda trouble?”
    The barking stopped. “Folks?” Verna asked. “What folks?”
    “Some man, jes’ this mawnin’. Said he was a lawyah from over in Darlin’.” The woman shook her head. “Allus bad trouble when lawyers come ‘round askin’ questions.” She peered at Verna. “Don’t reckon you’re a lawyah,” she said, and then chuckled at her own joke.
    Something clicked. A lawyer. “Wouldn’t have been Mr. Moseley, would it?” Verna guessed.
    The woman nodded vigorously. “Moseley. Yep, that‘ud be him. You know him?” She made a clucking sound with her tongue, and Verna saw that she was missing most of her teeth. “Eva Louise—her mama raised her right an’ she’s a good girl, down deep in her heart. But she don’t allus use the sense God gave her, ‘speshly where menfolks is concerned.” She laughed. “That lawyah fella—he seemed right surprised to find out she lived heah, her ’n’ her mama. Got it into his head some way that her mama done run off years ago an’ Eva Louise was takin’ care of a big bunch o’ brothers an’ sisters somewheres out in the country. He was gonna stand right theah an’ argue with me ’bout that, ’til I showed him that photo of Eva Louise an’ her mama.”
    Verna chuckled to herself, imagining Mr. Moseley’s surprise when he learned the truth. Good enough for him, she thought with a kind of acid pleasure—allowing himself to be taken in by a pretty girl on the make. But why had he come here?
    “You’re related to Miss Scott?” she asked, wondering if this woman should be told about Bunny’s death. Obviously, Mr. Moseley hadn’t told her—and she wondered why.
    “Not related.” The woman shook her head. “Knew her mama from church is all. She sang in the choir, helped out with Bible School. That picture I showed that lawyah is one that was took last summer at the church picnic.” She frowned. “That girl is in trouble, I reckon,” she said sadly. “Like I said, she’s a good girl, but she’s got no sense.”
    “Thank you,” Verna said, and decided against saying anything about Bunny’s death. She hated to be the bearer of bad news. And, like the soda jerk, the woman would find out soon enough.
    “No sense a-tall,” the woman muttered, and turned away from the door.

    Earlier that day, Myra May had done as Aunt Hetty Little suggested. She had taken a break from the diner after lunch and gone to the Darling library to ask Miss Rogers what she knew