The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

She flipped the grilled cheese sandwich onto a plate and poured the hot soup into a bowl. Then she put the plate and bowl on the kitchen table beside a glass of milk and her current book, Ellery Queen’s The Greek Coffin Mystery, which Miss Rogers had just gotten for her at the library. Verna had already read and enjoyed the three previous books in the series, The Roman Hat Mystery, The French Powder Mystery, and The Dutch Shoe Mystery. Queen was both the pseudonym for the authors—a pair of them—and the novel’s protagonist, Ellery Queen, a clever amateur detective who occasionally assisted his father, police inspector Richard Queen. In every book, the Queens, father and son, were confronted by a bizarre and baffling crime within a seemingly impenetrable maze of motives, clues, and red herrings.

But Ellery Queen used careful, analytic logic to arrive at the correct, truly brilliant, and least likely conclusion—the only conclusion, the authors insisted, that could be drawn from the clues they had presented to the reader. Verna always tried to solve the mystery before Queen did, and once or twice, she thought she had succeeded. But Queen inevitably out-reasoned her. In her opinion, his intellectual exploits were simply dazzling. She was always surprised.

Verna always looked forward to reading while she ate her supper. But when she propped her book against the green glass butter dish and picked up her grilled cheese sandwich, she found that she couldn’t keep her mind on her reading. Her thoughts kept going back to Mr. Duffy and what had happened after they left the meeting together. She was attracted to him, and the memory of his solicitous attentions—his hand on her elbow, the umbrella over her head—brought her an unaccustomed warmth.

But something was nibbling away at her pleasure, like an unwelcome little mouse in the bread box. There was Clyde’s behavior, for one thing. And what was it that Myra May had said earlier that day, when she had brought that piece of pie to the office? Mr. Duffy was “slick,” she’d said, and repeated Jed Snow’s odd remark that “women just seemed to fall at his feet.” There was something behind that comment, and Verna felt she should find out what it was.

And there was more, too. At this afternoon’s meeting in the Dispatch office, Mr. Duffy was the one who insisted on managing the scrip. He had put himself in charge, and nobody, not even the mighty Amos Tombull, had been willing to challenge him—except, that is, for Jed Snow, who had tried but eventually caved in under the others’ pressure. And that story about Mr. Johnson and the bank—was it true?

Now, if Verna had been anyone but Verna, she probably would have rolled her eyes and gone back to her book and her soup and sandwich. But Verna was mistrustful by nature. Once she had begun to feel that something was not quite the way it ought to be, not even the pleasant sound of a man’s voice or the remembered admiration in his eyes was enough to quiet her misgivings.

In fact, perhaps it was that very admiration that was making her wary. Men didn’t usually respond to her as Mr. Duffy had. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time a man had offered to drive her home so she wouldn’t get wet in the rain. Why had Mr. Duffy been so accommodating?

And who was he, really? How did anyone know that the man was who he said he was? She would bet that Ellery Queen wouldn’t take him at face value, even if he was a banker. Or maybe, especially because he was a banker. What would Queen do, if he were confronted by such a situation?

Verna was still considering that last question as she washed her few dishes, swept the kitchen, and went into the living room. On Monday evenings, she always listened to The Chase and Sanborn Hour. The show, which starred Eddie Cantor, was light and funny enough to take her mind off the question. But when it was over and she got out her sewing box to repair the hem of the blue serge skirt she planned to wear the next day, it came back.

Who was Mr. Duffy, really? How could she find out?

Both of these questions were still in her mind when she let Clyde out into the April darkness to do his evening business, called him back in again, and went to bed. But by that time, she had come up with a plan that might satisfy even Ellery Queen, so she had not the slightest trouble falling asleep.

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