The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

Verna couldn’t argue with that. “Big fish?” she asked casually. “Like who?”


The boy shrugged. “Like guys with money. Al, the guy who runs the parts department over at the Ford dealership. The dentist down the street. Salesmen who stayed at the Commercial.” He frowned. “I’m not sayin’ there was anything wrong. Guys like me, she was always real nice. Laughed and teased, flirted, even. But what she really liked was a good time. You couldn’t show her a good time, you weren’t gonna get to first base with her. Bottom line.”

Verna stirred her Coke with the straw, thinking that Bunny hadn’t changed one bit when she moved to Darling. She’d still liked a good time, and she’d still preferred guys with money. “She grew up around here, I understand.”

“Yeah. Went to school with my sister. Lived with her mom over on Oak Street, next to Doc Myers’ animal hospital—‘til her mom died a while back.” The boy cocked his head curiously. “Hey. How come you’re wantin’ to know about Bunny?”

Verna had already guessed that the news of Bunny’s death had not yet arrived in Monroeville. She wondered briefly if she should tell the boy, but decided against it. Bunny had been found late Monday, and today was only Wednesday. He’d find out soon enough, probably when the Monroe journal came out at the end of the week.

“Just curious,” she replied, and slurped up the last of her drink. “I met her at the drugstore over in Darling. She was working there.”

“Darling. So that’s where she went. I wondered. She kept sayin’ she was goin’ to Mobile or Atlanta. New York, even.” The boy picked up a glass and began to polish it. “Listen, you see her, you tell her Jerry the soda 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.