The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

She frowned. This wasn’t the kind of information she wanted to pass along on the party line. She looked at her wristwatch. It was just past ten, and the courthouse was only a couple of blocks away. She would drop in on Verna in the probate office and deliver this surprising fact in person.

Verna and Lizzy were conducting an investigation into Bunny’s death. This was something they needed to know.





TWELVE


Myra May Learns Some Startling Facts Myra May Mosswell’s daddy had been a doctor. When he died, he left his only child a small house and a nice little bundle of money, not very big, but big enough to get her started in a business. Myra May, who was a practical sort of person with a good head on her strong shoulders, spent several months considering in a logical, rational way what she wanted to do with her inheritance. Did she want to move to a big city that would offer exciting opportunities for a woman of ambition and common sense? Memphis, maybe, or Mobile or Atlanta? Or did she want to invest her money in Darling and live in a small, comfortable, but essentially boring town for the rest of her life?

While Myra May was turning these important questions over in her mind and trying to decide what she wanted to do with her life, she was managing the dining room and kitchen at the Old Alabama Hotel. As things turned out, however, staying in Darling was not a calculated decision based on a commonsense approach to planning for the future. It was sheer, random happenstance—a bit of luck. Or, as Myra herself said afterward, a piece of stunning good fortune. Just before Labor Day brought a close to the long, hot, boring summer (during which Myra had just about decided she’d be better off in Atlanta) a young woman got off the Montgomery-Mobile Greyhound bus and came into the hotel looking for work. Her name was Violet Sims. She had curly brown hair and a sweet voice and she was very pretty.

Now, Myra May was not what anybody would ever call pretty. She had a strong jaw, a broad forehead, a firm mouth, and a way of looking at people—especially men—as if she might bore a hole right through them with her eyes. When men were around her, they had a tendency to stumble and mumble and make themselves scarce as soon as they could. She had never yet met a man she wanted to marry and by this time (she could see thirty in the rearview mirror) she was pretty sure that she never would. Women liked her because she was strong and a straight shooter, but they were afraid of her, too, although not as much as the men.

Violet, as it turned out, was not at all afraid of Myra May. She had been born and raised in Memphis and had seen enough of the city, as she put it, to last her for a couple of lifetimes. She and Myra May hit it off at once—“It was just like we’d known one another forever,” Myra May said in astonished delight—and for the next six months, they worked shoulder-to-shoulder in the Old Alabama dining room and kitchen. By Halloween that year, Violet had moved into Myra May’s house, and by Christmas, Myra May had decided that she definitely wanted to stay in Darling, at least as long as Violet was there.

And then there was another piece of luck. Mrs. Hooper, who had owned the Darling Diner for over thirty years, began to have trouble with swelling in her legs and decided it was time to put the business up for sale. It had a fine location on Franklin Street, across from the courthouse, between the Dispatch building and Musgrove’s Hardware. The serving area featured a long linoleum-covered lunch counter with a dozen red leather—covered stools and a half-dozen wooden tables and chairs. Behind the counter was a pass-through to the kitchen, and at the back of the building was the small room that housed the town’s telephone exchange. Upstairs was an attractive, sun-filled apartment with its own porch and private entry, where Mrs. Hooper herself had lived. The building needed some painting and fix-up, but the kitchen equipment was in good shape, and the diner had a reputation for serving good food at fair prices—unlike the Alabama Hotel, where the food was good but the prices were out of sight.

Myra May and Violet inspected the property and discussed the matter for several days. Then Myra May went to Mr. Manning, Darling’s real estate dealer, and made an offer to trade her house and some cash for the diner, as long as Euphoria Hoyt (who was known as the best chicken fryer in southern Alabama) was part of the bargain. Mrs. Hooper was in the market for a small house where she didn’t have to walk up stairs, and Myra May’s house suited her just fine.