The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree (26 page)

Finally, she rang Alice Ann’s number. When Alice Ann said hello, in a tired, unhappy voice, she said, “Alice Ann, honey, I’ve been hearin’ about your troubles. I wish there was something I could do, but I just can’t think what. Still, I want you to know that your friends don’t believe a word of it. Not a single, solitary word.”

There was a click on the line and then another and another, and Myra May said firmly, “Miz Perkins, is that you? Mr. King? One of the Barrett sisters? This is a private call, if y’all don’t mind. Miz Walker and I would appreciate it if you could just hang up now.”

Then she waited, counting the clicks. One, two.

“One more,” Myra May said sternly. “Maybe you don’t know it, but listenin’ to private conversations is against the law.” The third receiver went down.

By this time, Alice Ann was crying as if her heart would break.

“Oh, Myra May,” she sobbed, “I can’t thank you enough for callin’!” The words came tumbling out, all in a hurry. “Yours is the first friendly voice I’ve heard all day, and it sounds so sweet. I’ve been feelin’ all alone out here, just me an’ Arnold, and neither one of us knowin’ what in the world we ought to do. They won’t let me work at my window at the bank and I know I’m goin’ to be fired. Mr. Johnson took me into his office and him and the bank examiner kept askin’ me how was it I took all that money and what did I do with it, and I kept sayin’ I didn’t take any money so how could I tell them where it was?” She gulped. “But they say they’ve got evidence against me, Myra May! They say I might could get arrested!”

“What kind of evidence?”

“They say it’s in the bank records, although they won’t tell me exactly what records. And Arnold, poor man, he wants so bad to help but he can’t do a blessed thing. Seems like everybody is against us! It’s a terrible, helpless feeling. Why, I’m so discomboobilated that I can’t even think what I’m goin’ to feed poor Arnold for his supper!”

At last! Myra May had finally found something she could help with. She spoke firmly. “Don’t you bother your head one bit about supper, Alice Ann. I’ll call a few Dahlias and somebody’ll bring y’all some supper. But before I do, I wonder if you’ve given any thought to who might’ve taken that money. I mean, from the way I hear them tell it, it’s really gone, and it didn’t just disappear by magic, poof! If you didn’t do it, who did?”

Myra May’s question seemed to calm Alice Ann down a bit. “Well,” she said slowly, “there’s only the two cashiers, me and Mr. Harper, but he hasn’t been here very long. There’s the bookkeeper, Mr. Swearingen. And Mr. Johnson. But of course the president of the bank wouldn’t—” She stopped. “At least, I don’t think he would,” she said slowly.

Myra May frowned, remembering Mr. Johnson’s dramatics. What if that had been an act? What if he had been stealing money from the bank and got scared that the bank examiner was going to find out? It would be all too easy for him to manipulate the bank records so that the trail led to Alice Ann, rather than to him.

But she had just thought of another possibility. “What about Imogene Rutledge?” she asked. Miss Rutledge was a former cashier who had worked at the bank since Mr. Johnson’s father had opened it, back in 1902. The whole town had been surprised when she left her position as head cashier the previous fall, but she had explained it by saying that her mother (who lived over in Monroeville) needed her at home to help, which was something that everybody could understand. Mr. Harper had taken her place.

“Miss Rutledge?” Alice Ann sounded hesitant. “Well, we haven’t seen much of her lately. She moved over to Monroeville, to live with her mother.”

“But she was with the bank for years and years, wasn’t she? She probably knew the accounts better than anybody. And the way I heard it, her mother wasn’t the only reason she left.”

“Well, that’s true. I didn’t hear what really happened, but there were plenty of rumors flying around. Somebody said she got fired for sassin’ Mr. Johnson once too often.”

Myra May frowned. “And don’t I remember hearing that she bought a new Dodge from Kilgore Motors right after she quit? Must’ve cost nearly three hundred dollars.”

“Yes, I heard that, too. But—”

“And you don’t know for sure why they’re pickin’ on you?”

“No,” Alice Ann said. “I don’t have an idea in the world about it.” And she began to cry again.

Myra May could understand why Alice Ann was crying, although she herself made it a personal rule never to cry. When you cried, they (usually some man or another) knew they had you in their power, and she was never going to give them that kind of satisfaction. She said gently, “Now, you just stop cryin’, Alice Ann, honey. Go lie down on your bed with a wet washrag on your eyes and you’ll feel better. The Dahlias are goin’ to take care of your supper. Somebody’ll be round with a basket in an hour or so.”

Myra May unplugged the call and swung into action. She rang up Beulah’s Beauty Bower, the one place in town where she could expect to find the regular Tuesday afternoon Dahlias gathered together. Bettina answered the phone.

Myra May said, “I’m organizing a basket supper for Alice Ann and Arnold. If any Dahlias there would like to help out, let me speak to them.”

As it happened, both customers in the beauty chairs—Bessie Bloodworth and Aunt Hetty Little—were Dahlias, as of course was Beulah. She had just shampooed Bessie and was trimming her, but she interrupted her work long enough to go to the phone and offer a big bowl of stewed hen and dumplings (tonight’s dinner at the Trivettes’) for the Walkers’ supper. Bessie spoke up from her chair and offered some black-eyed peas cooked with fatback and onions and a pint jar of home-canned pickled beets. Bettina was curling Aunt Hetty Little, who offered a garden salad and some fresh tomatoes and green onions, if somebody would come and pick it up. Beulah offered Hank’s services as a driver.

Which left dessert, but since Myra May knew there was plenty of Euphoria’s pie on the shelf in the diner, there was no need to ask anybody else for that. So she told Beulah to tell Hank to stop by on his way out to the Walkers’ and pick up half a pie.

“Tell everybody thanks,” she said. “Alice Ann can sit down to supper now without worrying her head or lifting a finger—and all on account of the Dahlias!”

But Myra May wasn’t quite finished. Before she hung up, she asked to speak to Aunt Hetty Little, whose white hair was now wound into what looked like shiny little white caterpillars all over her head. She was more than willing to come to the phone, step up on the stool that was kept under the phone for short ladies, and spend a few minutes talking—without fear of the neighbors listening in, since Beulah had a private line.

“You know about Alice Ann bein’ investigated for stealin’ money from the bank, I guess,” Myra May said.

“I do,” Aunt Hetty replied tartly. “Biggest load of cow poop I have ever in all my life encountered.”

Myra May heartily agreed. “Well, if Alice Ann didn’t do it, seems to me the question is, who did? I was goin’ down the list of possibles and wondered what you know about why Imogene Rutledge quit the bank.”

“Imogene Rutledge,” Aunt Hetty said thoughtfully. “My, my. Well, what Dorothy Rogers told me is that Imogene got pretty free with her tongue one day and Mr. Johnson ordered her to turn in her cashier’s badge. Imogene always did have a way with words. Used ‘em the way you’d use a flaying knife. Didn’t make her a whole lot of friends. And if she happened to make a few, she didn’t always keep ’em.”

“So she talked back to Mr. Johnson. You’re sure there was no more to it than that?”

Aunt Hetty was silent for a moment. “Well, there’s that new Dodge she bought the week after she left the bank.”

“A new car,” Myra May asked. “How well do you know her, Aunt Hetty?”

“Not as well as Dorothy does,” Aunt Hetty said pointedly. “You want to know about Imogene Rutledge, you go over to the library and talk to her.”

“Thanks, Aunt Hetty,” Myra May said. “I think I’ll just do that. You tell Beulah we’ll have that pie waiting for Hank when he comes to pick it up.”

Aunt Hetty said good-bye to Myra May, hung up the receiver, and told Beulah what Myra May had said about Hank and the pie. Then she went back to sit in the beauty chair so Bettina could use the electric hair blower to finish drying her hair. It made a fearful racket, but it worked so quick that nobody minded.

But since Beulah was using the other hair blower to dry Bessie Bloodworth’s hair, the two hair blowers together made it impossible to talk unless you shouted. And everybody wanted to talk, because everybody had been listening to Aunt Hetty’s end of the conversation.

“What does Imogene Rutledge’s new Dodge have to do with Alice Ann?” Bessie Bloodworth shouted, getting straight to the point.

Aunt Hetty shouted back: “Myra May is doing some investigating on her own, seems like. She’s looking for other suspects.”

“Suspects in the embezzlement?” Beulah asked, and when Aunt Hetty put her hand to her ear, repeated the question in a shout.

Aunt Hetty nodded vigorously.

“Well, Imogene Rutledge would be at the top of my list, just on gen‘ral principles,” Bettina shouted, then added, “O’ course, I’m just jokin’.” Everyone knew she wasn’t really, though. When Miss Rutledge lived in Darling, she had not patronized the Beauty Bower, but had gone to Conrad’s Curling Corner, on the other side of town. In Bettina’s eyes, this was an unforgivable sin.

“Well, there’s that new Dodge she bought before she left town,” Bessie shouted. “It must’ve cost a pretty penny. Bet Kilgore Motors was happy to see her comin’.”

“And I heard she bought her and her mother a house over in Monroeville,” Beulah shouted. “A big house. They’re meaning to turn it into a rooming house.” She turned off the hair blower halfway through her sentence and the last part of it was very loud.

“A new car, a new house,” Bessie shouted, which also came out too loud, because Bettina had shut off her blower. “Sounds pretty incriminating to me,” she added, in a lower voice. She turned her head, admiring her reflection in the mirror. “My, Beulah, but that is pretty.”

“Well, if I say so myself, I do know hair,” Beulah said modestly, picking up a soft brush and whisking hair off the back of Bessie’s neck. “Listen, ladies, I want to know if either of you have heard anything about that escaped convict. Bettina and I ask everybody who comes in here, and nobody seems to have heard a blessed thing.”

“There wasn’t even anything about him in Friday’s
Dispatch,”
Bettina complained, beginning to unwrap Aunt Hetty’s little white caterpillars, which by now were nice and dry and very springy. “You would think Mr. Dickens would give us at least one little clue, wouldn’t you? Why, I don’t know whether it’s safe to sleep with my window open at night, or whether I ought to lock all the doors and take the stove poker to bed with me.”

“Oh, pooh,” Aunt Hetty said dismissively. “You can stop worrying about that escaped convict, Bettina. He probably hopped a freight train and is havin’ a high old time with the ladies in Memphis or St. Louis by now.”

“I agree,” Bessie Bloodworth said, getting out of the beauty chair and allowing Beulah to unfasten her cape. “Nothing for any of us to worry about, Bettina.”

Bettina breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, I am glad to hear that. I guess I can put that big ol’ stove poker back where I got it, can’t I?” She unwrapped the last caterpillar. “Now, Mrs. Little, I need you to tell me what I’m doin’ wrong with my eggplants. They just don’t seem to be growin’ as good as they should. They’re just little bitty things.”

“Don’t you fret about those eggplants, dear,” Aunt Hetty said in a comforting tone. “The mornings have been chilly lately, and they don’t like cold feet. They love summertime, and they’ll perk up real good when it heats up some. Look for ‘em to grow like a house afire along about the Fourth of July. Come hot summer, you’ll have more eggplants than you know what to do with, and you’ll be askin’ everybody for recipes.”

“I’ve got a good one for you, Bettina,” Beulah said, hanging Bessie’s cape on the hook. “Tomato and eggplant pie, with eggs and a little milk and cheese rubbed through the grater, if you’ve got cheese. If you don’t, you can do without, but maybe put in an extra egg so the custard sets up. I have a hard time getting my children to eat eggplant, but they do like that pie.”

“Thank you, everybody,” Bettina said gratefully. She looked around, smiling. “I guess I owe just about everything I know about gardening and cooking to Beulah’s Beauty Bower.”

It is true, however, that while the Dahlias know quite a lot about growing vegetables and making pies, they don’t know all there is to know about escaped convicts.

When Lizzy and Verna stopped giggling about their narrow escape from Mrs. Brewster’s boardinghouse, they discovered that they were hungry—which might be expected, since the sandwiches they had eaten at lunchtime were a distant memory. Lizzy’s house was closest, so she invited Verna to have supper with her.