The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

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.”