The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree (14 page)

The unforgiving light flooded the room. Verna saw a narrow bed made up to look as if someone were sleeping in it, with the coverlet pulled over a pillow. If Mrs. Brewster had opened the door and looked in on Saturday night, she probably thought that Bunny was there, asleep. Verna had to smile at that, because she had played the same trick when she was a young girl living with her parents, although her truancy had never extended to staying out all night, let alone for the weekend.

Bunny had indeed not taken her clothing with her—or at least, she hadn’t taken much of it. The chair in the near corner was almost hidden under an untidy heap of skirts, blouses, and dresses. Items of gauzy underwear, including a slinky, silky black teddy, littered the floor like dying moths. In the far corner was a pink-painted dressing table with a small round mirror and a pink bench. The top of the dressing table was covered with bottles and jars and tubes of lotions, potions, and makeup. Long ropes of beads and other costume jewelry dangled from the mirror. In lieu of a closet, a curtain was fastened diagonally across another corner, to hide hanging clothing. A basket on a battered four-drawer mahogany chest was filled with a tumble of colorful silk scarves. A cheap cardboard suitcase sat on the floor next to the chest. Verna hefted it. Empty.

She went to the dressing table, aimlessly turning things over. All of it was very much Bunny, she thought. A hair-brush with strands of bright blond hair, a cheap rattail comb, a pair of fancy tortoiseshell combs, bobby pins, spilled face powder, a bottle of fire-engine red nail enamel, an open inkwell, a pen. Several scraps of paper, as well, filled with a loopy, childish script.
Eva Louise Woodburn, Bunny Woodburn, Mars, Maxwell Woodburn,

Verna frowned down at the paper. Woodburn? She didn’t recognize the name. There were no Woodburns in Darling, so far as she knew.

There was a drawer in the dressing table, and she opened it, seeing that it was filled with emery boards, eyelash curlers, and the like. But in one corner, half hidden under a stack of cheap five-and-dime hankies, Verna saw a small wooden box, the polished top inlaid with colored mosaics and mother-of-pearl. Curiously, she picked it up, and then saw, beneath it, a small paper-bound savings account record book from the Darling Savings and Trust, with the name
Eva Louise Scott
written on the front. A small photograph was stuck inside the book: Bunny, squinting into the sun, wearing a lacy black teddy (probably the same one on the floor) and a pair of high heels. She was posed like a glamorous femme fatale on the front hood of a racy-looking roadster with an Alabama license plate. Her ample endowments were amply visible under the less-than-ample silk that barely covered them. The man taking the photo had cast a shadow in front of him. And yes, it was a man—or a woman wearing trousers and a fedora.

Verna (who didn’t shock easily) was shocked, and her estimation of Bunny shifted a point or two to the negative. She knew that women out in Hollywood posed for similar photographs—she had seen them in magazines. But this was Darling, and something like this was unusual.

Still thinking about the photo, she opened the deposit book and was surprised to see the amounts listed in the deposit column: regular deposits of ten dollars a week over the past six months. Two hundred and seventy dollars—not a huge amount of money, maybe, but pretty impressive for a girl who worked at the cosmetics counter at Lester Lima’s drugstore, where she probably earned no more than seven or eight dollars a week.

Verna put the deposit book back, her estimation of Bunny shifting a notch or two back toward the positive. She had pictured the girl as a spender, not a saver. But if she was saving ten dollars a week, how did she pay her board and room? Where was the extra money coming from?

The wooden box was still in her hand. Verna lifted the lid and was startled to see a pair of pearl earrings—real pearls, from the look of them—nestled against folds of blue velvet. In tasteful gold letters, inside the lid, was the name
Ettlinger’s Fine Jewelry, Mobile,

Her eyes widened at the sight. If the pearls came from Ettlinger’s, they had to be real. Where had Bunny gotten the money? Or if they’d been a gift, who in Darling could have afforded to give them to her? And then she thought of the bracelet Bunny had worn the other day. It had looked expensive, too. Where—

Verna’s questions were interrupted by a light rap at the door. A young voice asked softly, surreptitiously, “Bunny? You in there, Bunny?”

Verna opened her mouth to answer, and then changed her mind. After one more knock, the door was pushed open. Verna swiftly pocketed the little jewelry box. Mrs. Brewster might be confident in the integrity of her girls, but it wasn’t a good idea to leave obviously expensive jewelry lying in an unlocked drawer in an unlocked room in a house where nobody had anything to hide.

Verna spoke crisply. “Hello.”

The girl jumped, and her hand went to her pretty mouth. “Oh!” she cried. “Oh, my goodness! Oh, Mrs. Tidwell!” It was little Miss Amanda Blake, the elementary school teacher, who had come from 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, then pulled the towel off her damp hair and shook it loose. “There’s Pete Crawford and Willy Warren and somebody else ... Can’t remember who; somebody she knew when she worked over in Monroeville. Bunny isn’t just real crazy about him, but he’s got more money than most, so she sees him sometimes.”

“What about Maxwell Woodburn? Is he the one she met in Monroeville?”

“Woodburn?” Miss Blake frowned, shaking her head. “No, he’s her pen pal up in Montgomery. He writes to her a lot. But as far as the boys here go, she always says they’re hardly worth thinking about.” She sighed plaintively. “It’s hard these days, you know? A boy maybe likes you, but he doesn’t have the money to take you out, so he doesn’t let on. That he likes you, I mean. And those that have money, you don’t like. I don’t mean
you
, exactly,” she amended hastily.

“I’m sure,” Verna said, very glad that she was past all that liking business. She paused for a moment, thinking. “What about the other girls who live here? Are they friends with Bunny? Would they be likely to know where she is?”

“No, not really,” Miss Blake said. “The home demonstration agent is a lot older, almost an old maid, and the other teacher says Bunny is wild.” She stopped, frowning, sounding worried. “You don’t suppose something’s happened to her, do you? I mean, they ... they haven’t caught that convict yet.”

“I don’t have any idea,” Verna said honestly. “What do you think?”

“What do I think?” Miss Blake sighed and rubbed the towel through her hair. “Well, I guess maybe she just got tired of Darling and ran off. She talked about that a lot. She was always threatening to get on the Greyhound and go down to Mobile, or even up to New York. She said she knew a lot about selling cosmetics, and that she could get a job pretty easily, with her looks and all.” She rewrapped her turban. “But it’s kinda funny that she didn’t take her clothes and her jewelry. I mean, if I was leaving town, I’d sure as shootin’ clean out my room and take a suitcase. Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, I would,” Verna said, thinking regretfully of the clothes on the floor and the empty suitcase. “I would definitely do that.”

Lizzy finished up her Monday afternoon work at the usual hour, but Mr. Moseley was still at his desk. In fact, he had been there since right after lunch, working on a stack of documents he had brought into the office with him. He had made several telephone calls direct from his phone without asking Lizzy to get the other party for him, the way he usually did. He kept the door shut while he was talking.

Usually, Lizzy knew everything that happened in the office, so she was intensely curious. Whatever was going on, it involved Mr. Riley, the certified public accountant who sometimes worked on cases that required an auditor. It also involved Mr. George E. Pickett Johnson, who had already called twice and had sent a packet of papers over from the Savings and Trust in the middle of the afternoon. There had been two or three other calls, as well—the same man each time, but he refused to identify himself and asked to be put straight through to Mr. Moseley, after which Lizzy was instructed to hang up. After the first call, Mr. Moseley told her to cancel the two appointments left on the day’s calendar. She knew that something very mysterious was going on, especially when he was still at his desk at the end of the afternoon.

Lizzy rapped on his door, and when she heard a grunt, she opened it. “It’s five o’clock and I was thinking of going home. Are you going to want me again today, Mr. Moseley?”

Mr. Moseley glanced up from his work. His brown hair fell in a boyish shock across his forehead and he pushed it out of his eyes. He had taken off his suit coat, undone his blue tie, and was working with the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up on his forearms. His forehead was creased, but his eyes lightened when he saw her.