The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

by Susan Wittig Albert

  And then there were the men. Monday through Friday, Rona Jean worked the three-to-eleven shift at the Exchange, so she was never home on those evenings. She wasn’t home on the other evenings, either, for she was in the habit of going out every weekend night—to the movies, to the new roller skating rink, to the CCC camp for a dance—and staying out until all hours.

  And not with the same guy, either. In fact, Bettina had the idea that Rona Jean never went out with the same young man more than twice or three times. Then there were the occasions when Rona Jean had asked Bettina if she would mind going out to a movie so she could entertain a friend—like the night she’d had the sheriff over for supper and there had been that trouble.

  And meanwhile, Bettina had no dates at all, which wasn’t just embarrassing, it was downright disheartening. She had learned quite a number of neat tricks at the Beauty Bower, and she thought she had improved her appearance. She’d also studied up on style, using the fashion magazines that a client occasionally brought to the Bower, and she’d bought a sewing machine and taught herself to use it. So her clothes were as good as the next girl’s—here in Darling, anyway, where everybody was making do and getting along on not very much.

  But she never met a man at work (they got their hair cut at Bert’s Barbershop, on the square), and the men at the Baptist church, where she went, were already married or engaged or so old they didn’t have any spark left in them. There were quite a few CCC boys in town these days, and Rona Jean obviously had no problem making friends with them. But Bettina felt shy and awkward around people she didn’t know, and she couldn’t for the world imagine herself going up to a man she had never laid eyes on and starting a conversation right out of the blue. Which made her resent Rona Jean’s casual way of connecting with men.

  And now, Rona Jean was dead. When Myra May had phoned to tell her, she was stunned. She simply couldn’t believe what she was hearing. When she put the phone down, she thought she should cry (after all, she and Rona Jean had been living together for more than six months), but she couldn’t. Whether it was because of the shock or something else, she didn’t know. And then she’d gone to stand in the doorway of Rona Jean’s small room, which was just as messy as it always was, with her filmy underwear strewn everywhere, and her makeup and face creams and hair curlers piled on the vanity, and her collection of stuffed bears—which she said boys had won for her at fairs and carnivals—waiting for their mistress on the windowsill.

  Bettina did cry, then, for the thought of those forlorn pink and orange and purple plush bears forever waiting for someone to come back and hug them and love them—someone who would never come back, someone who was dead—was just too overwhelming. She sank down on the unmade bed, buried her face in a pillow scented with Rona Jean’s flowery perfume, and burst into tears. She was still crying when the sheriff phoned to say he would be coming over and would she please stay home from work until he’d had a chance to interview her.

  Which gave Bettina something else to think about, because of what Rona Jean had told her about him, about the terrible way he had behaved the night he had come over for supper.

  And that was what Bettina was remembering when she heard the knock on the door and opened it and came face to face with the sheriff himself, dressed in a khaki shirt and pants, with his star pinned to his shirt and holding his brown fedora in both hands. She was remembering what Rona Jean had told her about him and thinking that it wasn’t right that he should be investigating her murder.

  * * *

  Buddy sat down on the chair that Bettina Higgens pointed out, and put his hat on the floor beside him. She sat on the edge of the sofa, hands clasped nervously.

  “Sorry to have to barge in on you, Miss Higgens,” he said. “I’m sure this has got to be really tough for you, so I’ll make it as quick as I can.” Taking out his notebook, he glanced around. The little parlor was neat but sparsely furnished, and with a few feminine touches here and there—the embroidered pillow on the sofa, the anemic plant on the windowsill, a frilly doily under the lamp.

  The young woman on the sofa was tall and thin, with a wide forehead, gray eyes, and high cheekbones. She didn’t think she was attractive, Buddy guessed from the way she held her shoulders. She had dressed quickly or carelessly, misbuttoning her red dress, and her shoulder-length brown hair looked as if she hadn’t taken the time to comb it since she got out of bed. She clasped and unclasped her hands and then hunched over, wrapping her arms around herself.

  “I don’t know what I can tell you.” Her voice was hesitant, doubtful. “Rona Jean worked three to eleven at the Telephone Exchange five days a week, and I work eight to five at the Beauty Bower every day but Sunday. We weren’t what you’d call bosom buddies, I guess. We didn’t go places together. To tell the truth, we weren’t even home together all that often.” She cleared her throat. “To tell the truth, about the only time we talked was when she wanted to borrow money.”

  Buddy glanced down at his notebook, where he had written thick as theives. But she was making it sound as if they were no more than a pair of strangers sharing the same house. Which was right?

  “Borrow money?” he asked, remembering that Rona Jean’s pocketbook, which he had found on the floor of Myra May’s car, had contained one two-dollar bill in a billfold and forty-seven cents in a coin purse, along with the usual comb and makeup items.

  Bettina nodded reluctantly. “She was always broke and, most months, behind on the rent.”

  Always broke, Buddy wrote. “Had you been living together long?”

  “Four or five months.” Bettina frowned. “No, six. We rented this place in January. It was either move in here with Rona Jean or get a room at Mrs. Brewster’s.” She told the rest of the story simply, as Buddy took notes. When she stopped talking, he jotted down just roommates. At least, that’s how she’d put it.

  He cleared his throat. “What about Miss Hancock’s friends?”

  Bettina lifted her eyes. “You mean, friends like . . . you?” Her expression was unreadable, but there was an unmistakable challenge in her voice. “I bet you didn’t call her ‘Miss Hancock’ the night she had you over here for supper.”

  Buddy met her eyes without flinching. He wanted to answer her challenge, but now wasn’t the time. “Yes, ma’am, friends. Men, women, anybody she spent time with.”

  Bettina looked away. “Well, in addition to spending time with you,” she said pointedly, “she also went out with Lamar Lassen—he works over at the sawmill. And Beau Pyle.”

  Buddy didn’t know Lassen, but he’d already had a run-in with young Beau, Bodeen Pyle’s brother. The boy—he wasn’t any more than eighteen—had a reputation around town as a kid with a bad temper. He got in a fight at Pete’s Pool Parlor, and Pete (who wouldn’t stand for roughhousing in his joint) told him to leave. More fists flew, a knife was pulled, and Buddy was summoned to settle some hash. It had been his first major test in keeping the peace, and he thought he’d won the respect of Pete’s customers. He hadn’t made a friend of the Pyles, though. Beau had spent his night in jail getting even by shredding the straw tick mattress and wrecking the wall-hung bunk in his cell, which had earned him an extra two days’ incarceration, sleeping on the floor, and a $12.50 fine. His brother Bodeen, with a surly grunt of protest, had paid the fine. In Buddy’s opinion, Rona Jean would’ve done better if she had stayed away from Beau. He was bad news, and in any case, four or five years younger than she was.

  “Lassen and Pyle.” He wrote their names. “Anybody else?”

  Bettina paused. “Well, she was seeing a guy out at the CCC camp. Lately, I mean. In the last few weeks.”

  Buddy was momentarily distracted by the curve of her pale cheek, half hidden by a lock of brown hair. Her skin was pale and lightly freckled. She was pretty, in a kind of natural, unself-conscious way—which struck Buddy as odd, since she worked at the Beauty Bower, where women went to get themselves prettied
up. “Who?” he asked. “Who was she seeing out there?”

  “Ray somebody. I don’t know his last name, but he’s some kind of something out at the camp. Works in an office, I mean.”

  “How often did she see him?”

  “No idea.” Bettina lifted her shoulders and let them fall. “Maybe she put it into her diary.”

  Diary, Buddy wrote, and drew a box around the word. “What about girlfriends? I probably need to talk to them.” Especially, he thought, since I’m not getting much out of you.

  “Girlfriends?” Bettina’s mouth quirked. “Rona Jean didn’t have a lot of time for girls. There are the ones she worked with at the Exchange—Lenore Looper and Henrietta Conrad—but she didn’t see them after hours. She didn’t get along with Myra May just real well, but she sometimes went to the movies with Violet. When she wasn’t going out with some guy. She liked Violet a lot.”

  “What was her trouble with Myra May?”

  Bettina paused, considering, then said, “I guess mostly it was because she was friends with Violet. There was some kind of trouble on the switchboard, too. Every now and then, Rona Jean would say that Myra May had warned her that she was going to get fired.”

  “Why?”

  “For listening in on people’s conversations. The operators aren’t supposed to do that.”

  “But Rona Jean did?”

  Bettina nodded. “Last week, she told me that Myra May got really mad at her about it and threatened to fire her, but Violet wouldn’t let Myra May do it.” She pulled her eyebrows together, puzzled. “At the time, I thought it was odd. She even said, ‘Myra May wouldn’t dare fire me.’ She laughed when she said it. She seemed to think it was funny.”

  Buddy wrote listening in and MM wouldn’t dare and added two emphatic question marks. He scratched his nose with his pencil.

  “So what about last night? Was Rona Jean planning to see anybody after she got off work?” Eleven o’clock was late by Darling standards, but apparently that didn’t matter to Rona Jean.

  “If that was her plan, she didn’t tell me. But then, she didn’t tell me she wasn’t, either.” Bettina gave a half-discernible shake of the head. “Rona Jean was free as a bird, or she liked to think she was. She pretty much came and went as she pleased.”

  Buddy closed his notebook. Now was the time. “When I asked you a minute ago who were her friends, you said, ‘You mean, friends like you?’ It sounded like you don’t think I’m the kind of friend a girl should have.” He looked at her steadily. “Is that it? Is that what you were thinking?”

  “Well, why wouldn’t I?” Bettina was defiant. “After what happened.”

  “What happened when?”

  “When you . . . slapped her around.” Bettina dropped her eyes, as if he were too ugly to look at.

  “Slapped her around? I never laid a hand on that girl.” Buddy colored, remembering where exactly he had laid his hands. “Well, not in anger, anyway,” he muttered.

  “That’s not what she told me,” Bettina retorted.

  Buddy opened his notebook again. “What did she tell you? I want to know.”

  “Why?” Bettina challenged. “Don’t you remember?”

  “Come on, Miss Higgens,” Buddy said grimly. “This is a murder investigation. What did she tell you? I want it straight. All of it.”

  She stumbled clumsily through it and Buddy wrote down what she said. When she finished, he said, “Thank you.”

  She cast a doubtful glance in Buddy’s direction. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Aren’t you going to . . . deny it or something?”

  “No point,” Buddy said quietly. “I don’t behave like that. Never have, never will. If you knew me, you’d know that without me having to tell you. But since you don’t know me, I doubt you’ll believe me.”

  Bettina’s eyebrows went up. “But the sleeve of her blouse was torn. There was a bruise on her arm and she was hysterical. She . . .” She swallowed. “You’re saying she made it all up? You didn’t . . . ?”

  Buddy gave her a steady look. “I am saying she lied to you, Miss Higgens, pure and simple. It’s true that Rona Jean got mad at me after we had supper together, but it wasn’t because I slapped her around.” He was too much of a gentleman to say that Rona Jean had gotten mad at him because he rejected her advances. “It’s also true,” he added evenly, “that she wrote me a letter afterward.”

  Now that he thought about it, he wondered if some of the things Rona Jean had written to him had come to her mind after she had talked to Bettina. He didn’t know much about psychology, but he’d seen hysterical people. Maybe the things she put in the letter began to seem real to her when she told them to her roommate, especially if her roommate believed her and commiserated with her.

  “A letter?” Bettina asked uncertainly. “What kind of letter?”

  Buddy met her eyes. “Not a nice one, and that’s all I’m going to say about it.”

  It hadn’t been out-and-out blackmail—somehow, it was more naïve than that, or maybe she was only half trying. But the letter had ended with several thinly veiled threats that could have been read as blackmail. Buddy wasn’t the kind of person who was easily intimidated, but he’d admit to being relieved when that letter wasn’t followed by a demand of some sort. Relieved, yes, and angry, too. But mostly angry at himself, for getting into that position. He was just damned lucky. She could have caused all kinds of nasty trouble for him, and since there weren’t any witnesses, it would have been hard to defend himself.

  And then another thought came to him. If Rona Jean had behaved that way toward him, maybe she had done the same thing with one of the other fellows she was seeing. Maybe the letter to him was just practice, and with her next attempt, she got serious. Something like that—blackmail, more or less—could very well be a motive for murder, couldn’t it?

  Buddy stood. “You mentioned a diary. I need to see it. I’d like to take a look at her room, too. And then I’ll get out of your hair.”

  Without a word, Bettina got up and left the room. Buddy followed her.

  FIVE

  The Dahlias Do Business

  Verna closed the Dahlias’ treasurer’s ledger and sat back in her chair, satisfied. “Looks to me like we did pretty well, girls. We netted forty-two dollars and seventy-four cents, after expenses. That’s not shabby.”

  “It’s a lot better than last time,” Liz replied. “And the time before that, we didn’t even break even.”

  “The difference is that we sold a lot more plants,” Ophelia put in. “Getting members to commit to the plant sale a couple of months ahead was a real good idea. They had everything potted up and ready to go, and the plants looked great. They practically sold themselves.”

  Three of the garden club officers (Elizabeth Lacy, president; Ophelia Snow, vice president; and Verna Tidwell, treasurer) were holding an early morning business meeting in the clubhouse kitchen to discuss the results of the recent Dahlias garden club tour and plant sale, held at the beginning of June, when the gardens were at their peak.

  Twice a year, the Dahlias—Darling’s only garden club—invited the public to tour their famous gardens. They charged a small admission fee and donated the money to the town’s relief fund, where it was needed and welcomed. The Depression had hit Darling hard. Businesses had failed, people were out of work, and those who had nothing needed all the help they could get. Of course, it went without saying that nobody wanted to be on government relief. They were all used to working hard and making their own way in the world, and taking money when you hadn’t earned it was a terrible blow to a person’s pride.

  But people did what they had to do to keep their families together, and if that meant accepting help from neighbors and friends . . . well, that seemed somehow different from accepting handouts from Uncle Sam—and better. For one thing, it wasn’t called relief
, it was called “community assistance.” For another, it was a comfort to know that their fellow townspeople cared and were willing to pitch in and help where they could. It meant they weren’t alone.

  Still, in such dire times, it would be easy to say that the town could do without a garden club. Who cared about pretty flowers when mothers couldn’t afford to buy milk? But the Dahlias had proved themselves to be a valuable asset to Darling. Their vegetable garden helped to feed the town’s hungry families (on both sides of the L&N tracks). The flowers they tended on the courthouse square kept people’s spirits from flagging. And their garden tours raised money for the relief fund. Nobody could say that the Darling Dahlias’ interests were purely decorative.

  “One more item,” Liz reminded them. “The flowers for the Miss Darling float.” The Fourth of July parade was coming up next Wednesday, and the Dahlias were responsible for decorating the float that would carry Miss Darling and Little Miss Darling. This year, it would be a special treat to decorate the float, since Violet’s and Myra May’s daughter, Cupcake, had been chosen as Little Miss Darling. “Earlynne is in charge of this project. She asked Myra May to call all the club members and remind them that we need their contributions early that morning. If they don’t show up by nine o’clock, we can’t guarantee that we’ll use their stuff.”

  “I hope Myra May remembers to tell people that potted plants—especially marigolds and zinnias and begonias, annuals with lots of color—are better than cut flowers,” Verna remarked. “Especially if it’s windy.” One year, they had decorated the float entirely with cut flowers and the wind made a mess of everything.

  “I’m bringing three big ruffled ferns,” Ophelia said. “They’ll make a nice display around the throne. And Aunt Hetty promised her parlor palm—the same one she brought last year.”