The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

Within the half hour, Mr. Moseley was at the sheriff’s office, presenting the photograph and the deposit book, and reporting Dr. Harper’s oral statement about the gun and the car. When the sheriff asked him where all this came from, he said the information was privileged—although his client might be willing to consider revealing his or her identity if the matter could not be resolved in any other way.

But it was resolved. The sheriff, feeling as if he had just been handed a present (which he had), got into his car and drove straight to Monroeville, where he spent the better part of an hour obtaining a signed affidavit from Dr. Harper, who decided that voluntary cooperation was better than the alternative. Then he drove straight back and got the county judge to sign a search warrant.

The search of Fred Harper’s house was successful, at least as far as the sheriff was concerned (Mr. Harper would not have agreed), for a .22 revolver was discovered in the springs of the parlor sofa. Confronted with that, and with the photo, the bank book, and the statement that his brother provided, Mr. Harper broke down and confessed to shooting Miss Scott.

His motive? He had made the mistake of bragging to her that he had taken some money from the bank in Monroeville, and she knew that he was continuing the practice at Darling Savings and Trust. She was already blackmailing him to the tune of ten dollars a week. Thinking that this ought to be a family affair (and recalling the sight of Miss Scott in her teddy), he had asked her to marry him. She refused. She wanted more money or she would tell what she knew. He killed her to keep her from spilling the beans.

The day after Mr. Harper was arrested and charged with murder, an additional charge of attempted embezzlement was filed against him. He was accused of taking nearly five thousand dollars in small amounts from various depositors’ accounts and depositing the money here and there. Some of it had gone into Bunny’s account, the rest into various inactive accounts, some of them belonging to dead people. The money, however, was still in the bank. Mr. Johnson was able to reverse these deposits and the cash was returned to the accounts from which it had been stolen. Nobody lost a dime. And best of all (as far as the Dahlias were concerned): Alice Ann was invited to come back to work, where she was promoted to head cashier and given a raise of ten cents an hour.

In the end, even the bank examiner was satisfied. Miss Rutledge (vindictive or not) made good on her promise to discuss the bank’s loan portfolio with him. After hearing her story and her threat to go to the Banking Commissioner in Montgomery, the examiner met with George E. Pickett Johnson. Their discussion must have been an interesting one, for the next morning, the two unsecured loans that were the bank’s most potentially damaging liabilities—one to Mrs. Voleen Johnson’s father, the other to her brother—were paid in full, righting the bank’s capitalization-to-debt ratio and allowing Darling Savings and Trust to be removed from the “troubled banks” list. This was a good thing, because the examiner was a longtime friend of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. He would have hated to close their bank.





TWENTY-FOUR





The Dahlias Plant Their Sign


Sunday, May 25, 1930





There were several other little mysteries, but they were cleared up over the next few days. Mr. and Mrs. Lester Lima came back home from their Florida vacation—a “second honeymoon,” Mrs. Lima called it, as she proudly displayed the diamond ring that Mr. Lima had bought her as a pledge of his undying love and affection. (“And an abject apology,” as Mildred Kilgore put it to Ophelia.) Mr. Lima reopened the drugstore and got busy filling all the prescriptions for the sick people who had gone without their medicines in his absence. Mrs. Lima put herself in charge of hiring, and after an exhaustive and highly competitive search, she found Miss Scott’s replacement, Mrs. Priscilla Prinney, age fifty-seven, mother of three and grandmother of eight.

Nadine Tillman, meanwhile, finally got around to letting her mother know where in the world she was. Her postcard arrived from Los Angeles, with a picture of the H-o-l-l-y-w-o-o-d L-a-n-d sign on the front (thirteen huge white letters planted on the side of Mount Lee, publicizing the new real estate development). Nadine had written a few lines on the back, saying that she was well and happy and hoping for a career in the movies. But she was broke and would really appreciate it if her mother could send a money order for ten dollars so she could pay her rent.