The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

by Susan Wittig Albert

  He gave up trying to decide about his gun and left it where it was, holstered on his right hip. With a sigh, he got out of the car and made his way across the dirt yard to climb the step and rap on the screen door, scattering a half-dozen squawking red hens as he went. The exterior of the house had once been painted white but was now beaten by the weather into a subdued gray. The front step was a wide board propped on a couple of large rocks, and the porch sagged despairingly, as if it were anxious to separate itself from the house. The screen door had a big hole in the bottom panel where a dog had gone through it once and then kept right on using it as his own personal door. The dog in question, a mournful looking coonhound, came around the corner of the porch and stood watching him, head and tail down, too dispirited to bark.

  A woman in her sixties answered Buddy’s knock. Standing on the other side of the screen door, she wore a blue cotton housedress that hung loosely from her shoulders, a feed sack apron, rayon stockings that had slipped down around her ankles, and felt house slippers. Her gray hair was piled in a loose bun on top of her head, and the tendrils straggled down over her neck. She was missing several front teeth.

  Her eyes went to the star pinned to Buddy’s khaki shirt pocket, down to the holster on her hip, back up to his face. “He ain’t here,” she said, in a thin, querulous voice. “Nobody home but me.”

  Buddy took off his fedora and pretended she hadn’t spoken. “I’m Sheriff Norris, Miz Pyle,” he said politely. “I need to talk to your boy Beau. It’s important.”

  “Beau ain’t here,” the woman said, pointedly hooking the screen door. “No point in you lookin’. Him and Bodeen went down to Mobile and won’t be back till—”

  A male voice came from somewhere inside. “Ma, if that’s Tubbs, tell him I’ll meet him at the pool parlor in half an hour.”

  “It’s not Tubbs, Beau,” Buddy said loudly. “It’s Sheriff Norris. I need to see you. Now.”

  “Aw, hell,” Beau said disgustedly. Something slammed, hard. Not a door, a boot, maybe, against a wall.

  Buddy waited. When nothing else happened, he raised his voice but kept it even, easy. “No foolin’, Beau. You come on out now. We need to talk.”

  “Got nothin’ to say, Sheriff. Nothin’ to do with it, neither.”

  So he knew that Rona Jean was dead. “I hear you,” Buddy said. “Need to talk to you anyway. And I don’t think your mother wants me to come in and get you.”

  The woman straightened her shoulders. “Beau,” she said sharply. “You, Beau! You get out here, right now. I ain’t havin’ no trouble in this here house, you hear?”

  If Beau Pyle was afraid of anybody in this world, Buddy thought, it must be his mother, since he was out on the porch a moment later, pulling on a boot. He was a handsome kid, with a shock of black hair that fell across a broad forehead, a dark complexion and high cheekbones, a hard jaw, and a don’t-give-a-damn air. He got his boot on, then lit a Camel with a match flicked against his thumbnail and propped one shoulder against a porch post, mouth pulled down and petulant, a dangerously seductive bad boy.

  Buddy understood why Rona Jean had found Beau attractive, even though at eighteen, he was four years or so younger than she had been. He was dressed in a blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up, jeans, and smart-looking leather boots, and the chain he twirled around his finger was most likely gold, Buddy had to allow. Beau worked his brother Bodeen’s still out by Briar’s Swamp. After Mickey LeDoux was arrested and sent to prison, Bodeen’s moonshine was all there was in Cypress County, so if you wanted tiger spit these days, it was the Pyles’ tiger spit you got. The Pyle brothers made no secret of the fact that they had plenty of money to spend, witness Beau’s late-model Ford coupe parked in front of the house, fenderless and stripped down for the speed he needed to outrun the Revenuers.

  Limping, the hound dog climbed the porch steps, dropped down heavily in front of the screen door, and began to lick his sore paw. Buddy fished a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and stuck it in his mouth. He hooked his thumbs in his belt and leaned against the other porch post. “So you’ve heard about Rona Jean.”

  “Yeah. Bodeen was over at the diner for breakfast and heard tell of it.”

  Buddy regarded him mildly. “News to you, was it?”

  “Well, sure.” He looked offended. “O’ course it was news to me. What’d you think—that I did it?”

  “The thought did cross my mind,” Buddy admitted. “When did she tell you she was pregnant?”

  The question was an obvious surprise. Beau stared at him, dark eyes glittering. “How’d you—” He bit it off, reining himself in. “She never,” he said sullenly.

  Buddy chuckled. “What? You were hopin’ it was some kinda secret?” He flicked the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “You think you’re the only one?”

  The boy’s head came up and his voice hardened in an ugly line. “Well, yeah, there was you.”

  Buddy shrugged it off. “Maybe. But she didn’t tell me she was havin’ my baby. When did she tell you that?”

  Beau turned his head away, muscles tightening in his neck, lips pressed hard together.

  “Don’t jack me around, Beau,” Buddy said, letting the impatience show in his voice. “We’re talking murder here. And the girl kept a diary—with your name in it.”

  “I had nothin’ to do with no murder,” Beau flared angrily. He pulled on his cigarette.

  Buddy made his voice soft. “Seems to me you’re a pretty good candidate. Man gets a woman pregnant, doesn’t want to be bothered with the baby or with her. Gets tired of being hounded for money, gets mad and puts an end to—”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Beau growled, his face working. “That’s not how it was.”

  “How was it?”

  “She told me she was pregnant but—”

  “When?”

  “When?” He scowled, thinking. “End of April, maybe,” he hazarded. “It was a while back. Wanted me to give her money to get rid of it. I told her she could get lost. She wasn’t goin’ to get a nickel out of me. How was I to know it was mine? Like you say, there was others.” His voice was hard-edged, almost savage. If he’d used it on Rona Jean, Buddy thought, he’d likely scared the starch out of her. And maybe he’d used more than his voice. Maybe he’d used the back of his hand.

  “What happened after that?” Buddy asked.

  Beau flicked the cigarette, sending it arcing into the dirt of the yard. “A week or so later, I saw her out at the Roller Palace and she told me it was all a mistake. She wasn’t, after all. Or so she said.” He grunted. “Women. You never can tell whether they’re tellin’ you straight or tryin’ to pull a fast one.”

  “Yeah.” Buddy wondered if Rona Jean had decided that trying to get money out of Beau was too dangerous. “Did you go out with her after that?” There was no mention of it in the diary, but maybe Rona Jean hadn’t kept an accurate record.

  “You kiddin’?” Beau laughed shortly. “I ain’t goin’ out with no woman who thinks she can shake me down.”

  But something about the way he said it made Buddy think that it might just as easily have happened the other way: that Rona Jean, maybe frightened for her safety, had decided she didn’t want to see Beau again. How would a kid with a tinderbox temper take a rejection like that? Would he have blown his stack? Lost control and throttled her?

  But that was all conjecture, and he for sure wasn’t going to get answers to those questions out of Beau himself. “One more thing about Rona Jean,” Buddy said. “Did she write you any letters?”

  “Letters? Nah. Why would she do that? I’d already told her I wasn’t givin’ her a red cent. She could’ve got down on her knees and begged, and it wouldn’t do her no good.” He fished another Camel out of his pocket and lit it with a match. “Damn, it’s hot,” he said.

  Down the street, a child cried shrilly. A woman yelle
d, and the crying stopped. The old dog lifted his head at the sound, then went back to licking his sore paw. Buddy let the silence stretch out. Finally, in a casual tone, he asked, “So where were you last night?”

  “Last night?” Beau took a long, hard pull on his cigarette, letting out the smoke before he spoke. “Well, if you gotta know, I was down at the still.” He slanted Buddy a hard, defiant look. “You got a problem with that, Sheriff?”

  Buddy had the same attitude toward Bodeen Pyle’s still that Sheriff Burns had had toward Mickey LeDoux’s larger and more successful operation, before Agent Kinnard and his boys had shut it down. The sheriff’s words had been frequently and publically repeated. Far as I’m concerned, them boys can cook up whatever they want so long as they live decent and don’t go to killin’ other folks. Some of them shiners couldn’t feed their kids if they couldn’t make moon. The sheriff had said a true thing, in Buddy’s estimation, and that was the way he intended to do business in Cypress County.

  Of course, the situation was different now, with Prohibition repealed, Alabama local option, and Cypress County dry. But that didn’t mean that Mickey and Bodeen and their kin were out of a job. No, not by a long shot. The only legal booze a man could drink now was the stuff that was brewed in taxpaying distilleries, and the bottles bore the stamp that proved that Uncle Sam had taken his cut, which added about two dollars a gallon to the cost of the whiskey. Bootleggers didn’t pay taxes, so their homemade stuff was still illegal. But they didn’t give a damn. They had a bone-deep contempt for the government and the laws it slapped on their moonshine.

  And so did the people who drank it. Over the years since 1919, when the Eighteenth Amendment criminalized the making and drinking of alcohol, Darling drinkers had developed a strong preference for their neighbors’ swamp-brewed white lightning. For one thing, the local boys didn’t make the kind of alcohol that would pickle a person’s insides, like the poisonous bathtub gin that had killed all those drinkers in New York and Chicago. Mickey and Bodeen made good corn whiskey, which in Darling’s view was just as true and right and American as grits, peanut butter, and home-cured bacon. For another, the money that Darlingians forked over for their drink stayed right here in the Alabama county where their neighbors made it, rather than going into the pockets of some rich distillery owner up in Kentucky or Tennessee. And for a third, Darlingians felt that drinking the local white lightning was a pleasurable way of thumbing their noses at the Yankee bureaucracy, up north in Washington, D.C.

  So instead of shutting down the Cypress County moonshiners, Repeal had given them what looked to be a longer, stronger life, and Buddy was taking a leaf from his predecessor’s book. He had no intention of getting in their way. Live and let live, he’d decided, as long as there wasn’t any shooting. Or strangling.

  “I don’t have a problem with you being out at the still,” Buddy replied, “If that’s where you were. So how long were you out there? Was there anybody else around?”

  Beau blew smoke hard out of his nostrils. “I went out to take over the fire at six yesterday evening. I was out there all by myself. It don’t take two to mind the fire, if the wood’s cut and ready.”

  Buddy knew that keeping the wood fires burning under the pot stills at the right heat and intensity was an art in itself, just one of the many minor arts that went into the larger art of cooking mash. Fire tending wasn’t a job that was taken lightly, and Bodeen would’ve come down hard on Beau if he’d let the fire go out.

  “You were out there all night?” Buddy asked.

  “Until six this morning.” Beau’s chin jutted out. “But I didn’t leave and drive back into town and strangle Rona Jean, if that’s what you’re thinking. Didn’t have no cause.”

  Buddy grunted, a grunt that might have said, Now, that is purely a crock, or Yeah, reckon I can accept that. He didn’t know which it was, since there was nobody to confirm or dispute Beau’s alibi. The boy could’ve planned ahead and paid one of the Pyle cousins to tend the fire for a few hours. And he was certainly capable of killing Rona Jean. But on impulse, Buddy thought. It wouldn’t have been according to a plan.

  He cocked his head and asked: “How’d you know she was strangled?”

  “Got it from Bodeen. Strangled with her stocking. He got it from Myra May while he was having breakfast this morning.” His lip curled in a mirthless smile. “Said it damn near spoiled his grits and sausage.”

  That rang a bell. Buddy frowned and took his notebook out of his shirt pocket, flicking to the page where he’d made the list of the people Rona Jean had mentioned in her diary. He ran his thumb down the list. B.P. Bodeen Pyle?

  “Bodeen,” he said, looking up. “He ever take Rona Jean out?”

  “Not that I know of,” Beau said. His voice took on a jagged edge. “Not that I better find out, anyway.”

  Like that, was it? Buddy thought. Maybe there was a new angle here. What if Rona Jean hadn’t been killed because of the pregnancy? What if she had told Beau she was finished with him and turned right around and started seeing Beau’s brother? What if one of the brothers had killed her in a jealous rage? He drew a line under the initials and added a question mark. He’d have to check and see when the mentions of B.P. occurred, and how often. He closed his notebook and pocketed it, took out the toothpick, and stuck it in his shirt pocket, too.

  “Reckon that’s it for now,” he said. “Don’t you be goin’ down to Mobile until I get this business straightened out. Or anywhere else.” He tightened his voice. “You hear?”

  Beau nodded sullenly.

  “Where will I find Bodeen?”

  “Out at the still, I reckon,” Beau said, and pushed himself erect. He turned to look full at Buddy. “You think she was puttin’ the arm on somebody else? Was that why she got killed?”

  Putting the arm on Bodeen? Was that what he meant? “Your guess is as good as mine.” Buddy gave Beau a stern look. “I’m going to talk to your brother. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your mouth shut about this conversation until I’ve seen him.”

  Beau shrugged carelessly. “Yeah. Okay by me. Bodeen and me ain’t talkin’ much anyway, these days.”

  Yes, like that, Buddy thought.

  Back in the car, he sat for a moment, thinking. Then he opened his notebook and thumbed through the pages. If he had read Rona Jean’s Valentine heart code accurately, Lamar and Beau were the only candidates for paternity. But what if he hadn’t read it right? Or what if she had left somebody out, either accidentally or on purpose?

  And it wasn’t smart to trust Beau. The boy might be lying about tending that fire all night, and unless he could get some confirmation, one way or another, Buddy knew he’d be a fool to put any faith in what Beau said. He’d seen the evidence of Beau’s rage: the shredded jail-cell mattress and the wrecked bunk. He was perfectly capable of flying into a rage and throttling Rona Jean, and then of lying about it.

  But Beau had raised a good point. Rona Jean could expect both Lamar and Beau to believe that they were the father; she’d had sex with both of them, so it made sense to try to get money out of them. And there was that threatening letter she had written to him. Her charges—that he’d slapped her, torn her clothes—were false, but he’d be the first to admit that it would have been tough to dispute them if she had pushed it somehow. He was just damned lucky she hadn’t demanded money from him.

  But maybe she’d pulled that trick on somebody else. Maybe she wrote a similar letter to him, making similar charges, similarly false, and threatening to go public if he didn’t pay up. The evidence? That stack of twenties, $140 in all, which was a lot more than she could have saved out of her paycheck, especially since she was always broke, according to Bettina. Blackmail payoff, was it? Maybe she squeezed it out of some poor sucker—or for that matter, out of more than one poor sucker, using the same technique she had tried out first on him.

  And maybe she had been killed for
it.

  Frowning, Buddy thought some more about this angle. He went back to the top of his notebook list. With this new possibility in mind, who should he talk to next? He stopped at Violet’s name, remembering that Rona Jean had written something about Violet in her diary. He flipped back through his notebook and found that he had copied a line out of the diary entry for June 5: Violet had promised Rona Jean to give her the money for all the bills, before and after, she had written, and I can leave it there. When he first read that, he’d been totally in the dark. He’d had no idea what before-and-after bills she was writing about or what the “it” was that she could “leave.”

  Now, knowing about the baby, it made sense. The “before and after” part, anyway. He needed to talk to Violet and find out what she knew. And Myra May, as well.

  He put the notebook into his shirt pocket. Bodeen Pyle might be important, especially if there was some jealousy involved between the two brothers. But Bodeen could wait until Buddy had filled in some more of the details. He turned the key in the Ford’s ignition and drove off.

  TEN

  Lizzy’s Prayer Is Answered—But Which One?

  Lizzy went up the path to her house, carrying her handbag as carefully as if it contained a dozen new-laid eggs. In it was a letter from Nadine Fleming, her literary agent—still sealed because Lizzy hadn’t wanted to open it in the post office or on the street. It might contain good news about Sabrina, in which case she would probably have disgraced herself by bursting into tears of delight. Or bad news, in which case she’d be crying tears of disappointment. One way or the other, Lizzy knew she was going to cry. She preferred to do it in private.