The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree (21 page)

“My goodness,” Grady said mildly. “You’ve missed your calling, Lizzy. You oughta be writing stories for one of those true crime magazines.” He chuckled. “You’re right about one thing, though. The girl was in the driver’s seat, but she wasn’t driving that car when it went over the edge.”

Lizzy stared at him. “How do you know?”

“Because the engine wasn’t running.”

“Wasn’t ... running? But how—”

“When we righted the car yesterday, I noticed that the key was in the ignition but it was turned off. Fact is, the motor wasn’t running when the car went over the edge. Even if Doc Roberts hadn’t spotted the gunshot wound, there still would’ve been a big question about that wreck.” He hoisted himself out of the chair. “Well, I guess I’d better go. I’ve got work to do, and you have, too.” He looked toward Mr. Moseley’s closed office door. “Where’s the boss?”

“He’s not here,” Lizzy said. “He said he was coming in a little late this morning and—”

She didn’t get to finish her sentence. Grady bent down, put his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her. Then he kissed her harder, and his arms went around her, lifting her to her feet, pulling her against him. She tried once or twice to push him away, but only briefly, for she found herself melting against him, tingling suddenly as if there were an electrical charge pulsing between them, giving herself to the reckless, unruly moment, wanting it to go on and on endlessly.

“Ahem,” said a dry voice. “Excuse me, but I believe I work here. If you don’t mind, that is.”

Lizzy pulled away from Grady, feeling herself blushing furiously, mortified. How long had Mr. Moseley been standing there, watching? She clenched her fists, trying to steady her breathing.

But Grady was grinning broadly. “Hello, Bent,” he said. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Nice to see you.”

“Same here,” Mr. Moseley acknowledged. He didn’t sound enthusiastic.

Grady picked up his hat and put it on his head, tipping the brim to Lizzy in a rakish way, his eyes glinting. “Later, doll.” He put his hands in the pockets of his pants, strolled out the door, and clattered noisily down the stairs.

“Doll?” Mr. Moseley’s brown eyebrows arched. “Later,
doll?”
he repeated, amused.

Lizzy, her face hot, pushed her hair out of her eyes. She sat back down at her typewriter table and turned the platen on the machine, bending over to look as if she were searching for the place where she had left off typing. But to tell the truth, she was trying, not very successfully, to catch her breath. She was still feeling the hardness of Grady’s body against hers. It was as if they had simply picked up where they had left off on Saturday night in the car.

Mr. Moseley hung his hat on the rack and shrugged out of his jacket. He turned, studying her for a moment, as if he were seeing her in a new way. “Doll,” he said, half under his breath. Then he smiled crookedly and put the morning’s mail on her desk. He began to roll up his sleeves.

“Well, now,” he said in a businesslike tone, “what about telephone calls? Anything urgent?”

Lizzy reached for the collection of telephone notes and handed them to him. He went through them, nodding, until he got to his wife’s two calls. His mouth hardened. “She didn’t leave a message?”

“Just that she’d like you to call as soon as you got in.”

“Right,” he said sarcastically, and wadded up the note and threw it, forcibly, into the wastebasket. He looked at Lizzy. “Did you do what I told you to do at the bank this morning?”

“Yes, thank you. I’ve put the money in the safe. In an envelope with my name on it.” She took a breath. “What’s it all about, Mr. Moseley? I’ve heard something about a bank examiner—”

“You’ve heard that?” he asked in some surprise. “People are talking about it? Who told you?”

“I’d rather not say.”

He grunted. “This damn town. People talk all the time. You can’t keep private affairs private.” He glanced at her. “Not
that
kind of affair,” he added archly. “Business affairs, I mean.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. Not wanting to be put off, she persisted. “But what about that bank examiner?”

“Is this the Cooper file?” He picked up a manila folder from her desk.

“Yes, sir. But what about—”

He gave her a hard, straight look, his courtroom look. “I can’t talk about it, Lizzy. There is a problem at the bank, yes. It may be a serious problem. That’s all I can say. And even if I knew the whole story—which I don’t, not yet—I couldn’t tell you. And that’s a fact.”

She frowned. A serious problem? Of course it was a serious problem! Something was going on at the bank and nobody was supposed to know anything about it. But the bank was the heart of the town. If it failed—

He paused, pursed his lips, and regarded her narrowly. “I don’t suppose it’s any of my business, Liz, but have you been seeing Grady Alexander long?”

The suddenness of the question startled her. She swallowed. “A ... while.”

“How well do you know him?”

She tilted her head, catching the clear implication, which offended her, although she wasn’t sure why. “Pretty well,” she replied defensively.

But it was a silly question. She’d have to know a man very well before she let him kiss her like that, wouldn’t she? She wasn’t the kind of girl who went around kissing everybody who wore pants.

Half-defiantly, wanting to show him that she had some important news, too, she straightened her shoulders and added: “Grady found a dead girl in Pine Mill Creek yesterday, and I identified her. It was Bunny Scott. He stopped in just now to tell me that she didn’t die in the car wreck. She was shot.”

What happened next was totally out of the blue.

“Bunny—The dead girl—” Mr. Moseley stared at her, first disbelief, then dismay written across his face. “Bunny? She’s ... dead? Good Lord!”

Lizzy was jolted. It sounded as if—“You knew her?”

He half-turned away, his hand over his mouth, as if he were gagging. “Yes. I mean, I know who she is. Was. The blonde who worked at Lima’s. Right? You say she was ... shot? Somebody
killed
her?” His voice was gruff and shaky, and then half-pleading. “Oh, God. Jesus, Liz. You’re kidding, aren’t you? You’re making this up?”

It took a moment to persuade him that she wasn’t kidding, a little longer to tell him the full story. About Grady coming to town for the sheriff and for Charlie Dickens. About going out there with Grady and Charlie and seeing the body and knowing who it was from the hair and the rhinestone bracelet. And then about Grady telling her that Bunny was shot and the car pushed into the creek, with the ignition key off.

“Grady says it was a twenty-two. Dr. Roberts retrieved the bullet.” Lizzy swallowed. Her mouth had gone dry and she was trembling. “From inside Bunny’s ... skull.” Somehow it was that detail that made it so much more horrible, the finding of the bullet that had killed her, somewhere inside her head.

“Good Lord,” Mr. Moseley said, very low. He passed his hand across his forehead, wincing as if he himself were feeling the pain of the bullet. His words were ragged, as if his throat was clogged. “She was so
alive.
I can’t believe—”

“I’m sorry,” Lizzy said, feeling inadequate, trying to think of what to say. “If I’d known that you knew her, I wouldn’t have—”

“I didn’t
know
her,” he cut in harshly. He put up his hand as if to stop her, physically, from going a step farther. “Not in the way you’re thinking.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again, now thoroughly confused. She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean ... I wasn’t—”

“Listen to me, Lizzy.” He gave his words an abrupt staccato emphasis. “I did not know that woman. Do you understand me?”

She blinked, speechless. Her heart was pounding. After a moment, she whispered, “Honestly, Mr. Moseley, I really didn’t think—”

“Then don’t,” he snapped, striding toward his office. “You’re not paid to think.” He opened the door and went in, closing it behind him, not quite slamming it, but almost.

Lizzy sat for a moment, almost in shock, feeling bruised and swollen, as if he had hit her. Mr. Moseley had never spoken to her like that before. He had always been courteous, respectful, even attentive, as if he cared what she thought, how she felt, even if she was only his secretary. He had helped her handle the purchase of her house and offered her advice on the remodeling work. He had given her time off when her mother was sick. He had never—

She stopped.

All of that was true. And all of it made what had just happened entirely inexplicable, another of the entirely inexplicable things that seemed to be happening in the past couple of days.

But it wasn’t inexplicable, was it? If Mr. Moseley had been secretly seeing Bunny Scott—

She pushed her chair away from the typewriter, feeling a sharp stab of anger that she might have recognized as jealousy, if she had been a little more experienced in that emotion. Well, to hell with him. She hadn’t meant anything by what she said. The thought of Mr. Benton Moseley and Bunny Scott had never once come into her mind—not until he had put it there himself, just now, with all those denials.

She took a deep breath. The world might be going to hell in a handbasket, but there was work to be done. And work was the sheltering wall behind which Lizzy Lacy had always taken refuge when things became difficult. She reached for the stack of mail Mr. Moseley had brought from the post office and began to open the envelopes, slitting each one with careful precision, taking out and unfolding the contents and neatly paper-clipping everything to the envelope before putting it in the appropriate stack, concentrating on this task as if it were really important, pushing everything else out of her mind.

There were two checks from clients, and she set them aside to be entered in the office accounts ledger. There was the six-month invoice for the lease payment for the office space, to be paid to Charlie Dickens, who owned the building. There was a bill for the repair of Mr. Moseley’s automobile, which she would pay from his personal account, and another from—

Dismayed, she stared at the envelope she had just opened. It was from Ettlinger’s Fine Jewelry, in Mobile.

In it was an invoice for twenty-six dollars.

For a rhinestone bracelet, engraved with the initials
ELS.

When lunchtime came around, Verna was still trying to deal with the upsetting news she’d gotten from Myra May and Ophelia’s surprising revelation about Bunny and Mr. Lima. She closed and locked the office and went outside, pausing to admire the summer annuals—zinnias, marigolds, and petunias—that were beginning to bloom in the sunny strip along both sides of the walk. She bent down to pull a couple of volunteer weeds. The Dahlias had planted the beds six weeks before. They’d be blooming most of the summer and would strike a bright and cheerful note in the courthouse square—something the whole town would need, if the unthinkable happened and the Darling Savings and Trust failed.

She went to the usual lunchtime spot beneath the chinaberry tree and sat down. When Lizzy crossed the street and sat down beside her, Verna looked at her friend in surprise.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, as Lizzy pulled a paper bag out of her purse and took out a sandwich and boiled egg. She had so much to tell, but the look on Lizzy’s face made her hold her tongue.

“What’s
wrong?”
she repeated urgently.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Lizzy replied in a high, unnatural voice. She cleared her throat and repeated it. “Nothing’s wrong. Whatever makes you think that?” She unwrapped a ham-and-sliced-tomato sandwich, laid it on its wax paper, and began peeling the egg. The shell flecked off unevenly, pulling chunks of egg with it.

Verna grunted. “Then why are you looking like somebody just socked you in the stomach? And the way you’re attacking that poor, defenseless egg—there won’t be anything left by the time you finish butchering it.”

Lizzy didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she put down the egg and pulled in a ragged breath. “Grady came to the office this morning to tell me that Bunny didn’t die in the car wreck, Verna. She was shot. In the head. Point-blank.”

“Shot!” Verna exclaimed, thunderstruck. “That’s incredible!”

She listened to Lizzy, trying to comprehend the story that spilled out incoherently, the whole unbelievable thing, from somebody shooting Bunny and pushing the car into the ravine to Mr. Moseley being terribly upset by the news—and finally Lizzy’s discovery of the invoice for the engraved rhinestone bracelet from Ettlinger’s.

“Bunny and Benton Moseley!” By now, Verna was nearly weak from shock. “Gracious sakes, Lizzy! That girl had more men on her string than anybody can count. Do you think Mr. Moseley gave her the pearl earrings, too? Or was that somebody else? And who the devil
shot
her?” She leaned forward and dropped her voice, although nobody was listening. “You don’t think it was Mr. Moseley, do you?”