The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady Page 4

  Nobody seemed to know what to say. Finally, Earlynne remarked, in a carefully casual tone, “Well, aren’t you going to tell us who?”

  “Really, ladies,” Beulah said. “We shouldn’t—”

  “I think maybe I should just leave it to your imagination,” Leona Ruth said, smiling demurely.

  “I think you ought to tell the sheriff what you just told us.” With a disgusted look, Aunt Hetty retreated under her hair dryer.

  Leona Ruth cast her eyes upward. “I have the idea,” she said in an offhand tone, “that the sheriff already knows. His part of it, anyway.”

  Bessie stared at her, aghast. “You’re not saying that it was the sheriff who . . .”

  Leona Ruth looked straight at Bessie. “And not just the sheriff, either.” She smiled. “Actually, Rona Jean had several male friends, more than you might expect for a girl who wasn’t what you might call just real pretty.”

  “Actually,” Earlynne said, “you might want to be just a little bit careful what you say when it comes to naming names.”

  “Careful?” Leona Ruth asked archly. “Whyever in the world should I be careful, Earlynne?”

  Bessie gave Leona a malicious look. “Because we’re not talking tiddlywinks here, Leona Ruth. We are talking murder. There’s been one already. If you don’t watch your mouth, you just might be next.”

  For once, Leona Ruth couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  FOUR

  Sheriff Norris Learns a Few Facts

  It was nine twenty and the morning air was already heating up when Buddy Norris got out of his Ford in front of the small frame house where Bettina Higgens lived. When he was a deputy, he had ridden his Indian Ace motorcycle on the job. Now that he was sheriff, though, he was driving the department’s Model T, which had the advantage of being able to transport prisoners, if he had one—which he didn’t, at least, not very often. Just in case, he had installed a strip of hog wire across the back of the front seat, which should take care of anybody who wanted to join him up front. While he was at it, he had added a special boot to hold his shotgun and a box for his handcuffs and extra ammunition. Now he had a patrol car. He couldn’t help feeling proud of it, just a little.

  Not that he would need handcuffs and the like this morning, since he didn’t expect Bettina Higgens to give him any trouble. Buddy knew her the same way he knew most everybody in Darling, which was to say hello to on the street. Well, actually, he was a little better acquainted with her than that, since she had answered the door, twice, when he’d come to pick up Rona Jean. And she had come out on the back porch when they were sitting on the swing, and Rona Jean was getting a little . . . well, passionate.

  As he went up the walk, he thought about that, with some discomfort. Rona Jean had been ruthlessly, heartlessly murdered, and he was responsible for finding her killer and seeing that he got exactly what he deserved: a one-way ticket to Kilby Prison in Montgomery and the seat of honor in Yellow Mama, Alabama’s electric chair. Buddy had never wanted to see an execution, but by damn, when this one happened, he intended to have a front-row seat.

  But Buddy was uncomfortably aware that some people in Darling—Rona Jean’s roommate might be one of them—were likely to say that he ought to excuse himself from the case because of his relationship to the victim. They might think it was more . . . well, intimate than it was. They might even want him to call in the state police to handle the investigation, which he was definitely not going to do. And it wasn’t just because he had kissed Rona Jean a time or two maybe, or maybe even three or four. This was his first important investigation as sheriff—his first real, live murder investigation—and there was no way in hell he was handing it off to anybody else.

  So after he had seen Rona Jean’s body bundled into Lionel Noonan’s hearse and headed for the Monroeville Hospital where Doc Roberts would do the autopsy, Buddy had left Wayne to finish up the fingerprinting and phoned Mr. Moseley to ask if he could drop in for a few minutes to talk.

  Benton Moseley had represented the district in the legislature up in Montgomery and was a mover and shaker in the Alabama Democratic Party, and he sometimes drove over to Georgia, to Warm Springs, where he met with President Roosevelt and other Southern politicos. Back home, he was one of Darling’s three lawyers. They rotated the job of Cypress County attorney—not a very big job and certainly undeserving of any lawyer’s full-time attention—among them. This year, it was Mr. Moseley’s turn, and Buddy had decided he’d better get his advice, just in case somebody made any noise about bringing in the state police.

  Mr. Moseley didn’t meet clients on Saturday, but he was in his office doing some research work, and when Buddy had knocked, he’d called, “Come on in, Sheriff—the door’s unlocked.”

  Buddy hung his brown fedora on the peg by the door. Then he sat down across the desk, described Violet’s gruesome morning discovery, and outlined his problem—not in detail, but the general gist.

  “I understand.” Mr. Moseley pulled his eyebrows together and puffed on his pipe. “And how many times did you say you saw the victim . . . er, socially?”

  In his early forties, Moseley was a slender, attractive man with neatly clipped brown hair, regular features, and brown eyes behind dark-rimmed glasses. He had loosened his tie and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt and was leaning back in his chair, smoking. There weren’t many in Darling who smoked a pipe, except Mr. Musgrove, who smoked a corncob stuffed full of Kentucky Planter’s. Mr. Moseley’s pipe was made of polished wood, with a sleek, sophisticated appearance, and his pipe tobacco had the pleasing aroma of vanilla.

  “We went out three times.” Buddy counted them off on his fingers. “First was when she invited me to the Methodist pie social. That’s where she went to church, and some of her friends saw us together. Another time, she’d been wanting to go to a dance out at the CCC camp, so I said I’d take her, and afterward, we sat out on her back porch for a while.” That was when Bettina had come out and found them.

  “Ah,” Mr. Moseley said. “Yes, well, go on.”

  “The third time—” Buddy looked away. “She asked me over to her place for supper. Afterward, we . . . well, we hugged and kissed.” He paused, feeling his face redden. “We fooled around some, too.”

  “I see,” Mr. Moseley said, through a cloud of blue tobacco smoke. He looked at Buddy over the top of his glasses. “Did the ‘fooling around some’ include anything more intimate than hugging and kissing?”

  Buddy ducked his head, feeling like all kinds of a fool. He knew the facts of life well enough—he just wasn’t used to talking about them out loud. He’d skipped the locker room conversations in high school, and since then, the subject hadn’t really come up. In a low voice, he said, “If you’re asking, did I have sex with her, the answer is no, I didn’t.”

  Mr. Moseley regarded him. After a moment, he said, in a kindly tone, “Why not, if you don’t mind my asking? Did the lady turn you down?”

  Buddy shook his head, embarrassed. “I was the one who said no, actually.” He’d thought later that maybe he should have taken Rona Jean up on her generous offer, since she had been so clearly ready and willing—eager, even. Most of the guys he knew would have jumped at the chance, and yes, Buddy had been sorely, sorely tempted. But there had been something in Rona Jean’s eagerness that had made him think it was not a good idea.

  He cleared his throat. “We were . . . we were going at it pretty hot and heavy, and all of a sudden I got the idea that what Rona Jean was really looking for was somebody to marry her, like right away, and I happened to be the nearest one. If we had sex, I could find myself in front of a preacher real fast. Like Grady Alexander.” Grady, who had been all but engaged to Liz Lacy, had to marry Sandra Mann, and now they had a little boy, born six months after the wedding. Grady was the county ag agent and had a steady job, but Buddy had heard they were just barely scraping by.

  The
corners of Mr. Moseley’s mouth tightened at the mention of Grady Alexander, and Buddy remembered, belatedly, that Liz Lacy worked for him. But he only said, “And you’re not interested in marriage?”

  Buddy cocked his head, considering. “Well, yeah, sure. Marriage and kids. But it’s not going to happen until I can afford a nice little house and some acres, so when the kids come, they’ve got a good place to grow up.” He paused, coloring. “The other thing was—well, I had no idea that we were going to . . . that she would let me . . . so I wasn’t, you know, prepared.”

  He was actually fully prepared, with a package of four Neverrip Preventions that he’d bought from under the counter at Lima’s Drugs, but they were under his socks in his top bureau drawer, in his room on the other side of town.

  “I told Rona Jean it wasn’t a good idea, but she said it would be okay to take a chance, since it was the wrong time of the month. But between that and the marriage thing, I was pretty well cooled off.” He colored, remembering. “If you know what I mean.”

  “I do know. Providential, most likely.” The corner of Mr. Moseley’s mouth quirked. “Commendable, certainly.”

  Buddy sighed heavily. “I didn’t feel that way at the time. And I guess I didn’t do a very good job of explaining to Rona Jean. She got it into her head that I didn’t like her, that maybe she wasn’t pretty enough or something. She was kinda pissed at me.”

  Kinda pissed didn’t quite do justice to the height and depth and breadth of Rona Jean’s anger or the way she had expressed it to him afterward, but it wasn’t important. Mr. Moseley didn’t need to know about that, especially since the letter she had written him afterward was all full of lies. There wasn’t a grain of truth in it.

  “Happens,” Mr. Moseley said thoughtfully. “Some women take it personally. When they do, there’s not much a fellow can say about it. There are no witnesses. And juries tend to believe the woman. Funny how that works.” He puffed on his pipe and the blue smoke rose over his head. “When was this?”

  Buddy shifted uncomfortably. “A week or so after the dance at the CCC camp. Which makes it maybe two months ago, I reckon. It was before I was elected sheriff, anyway.”

  “And you haven’t seen her since?”

  “Not to talk to,” Buddy said. He was glad that Mr. Moseley hadn’t asked whether he’d heard from her. If so, he would have had to tell him about the letter. But no, he could say truthfully that he hadn’t seen her. Not until this morning. Not until he’d seen her dead, with that stocking tight around her neck and her blouse unbuttoned and her legs splayed like she was a common—

  Buddy swallowed. He didn’t want to think about that.

  Mr. Moseley sat forward and put his elbows on his desk. “All right, then, Sheriff, here is the opinion you asked for. Seems like you already know several rather important things about this young lady’s modus operandi. What you know may be a help as you try to find out who killed her and why, which clearly puts you at an advantage in this investigation. Furthermore, if we bring in the state police, they’re going to take matters out of our hands. There’s no telling what’ll happen after that, or whether they would be any more or less successful than you would be. But I would prefer not to lose local control.”

  Modus operandi. Buddy frowned, remembering that he had read about that in the scientific crime detection manual he had bought. “Her . . . mode of operation?”

  “Well, you just reflect on it for a minute, son.” Mr. Moseley put his pipe in his mouth and leaned back again. “What makes you think you were the only lucky fella whom this young lady favored with her attentions?”

  Now Buddy felt even more foolish. “Yeah,” he muttered.

  Of course. He’d already had the idea that he wasn’t the first guy she was with—she was too experienced for that. She knew where to put her hands and what to do with them once she got them there. But he hadn’t thought of it as Rona Jean’s modus operandi. Just an awkward situation that he had gotten himself into and hadn’t managed very well. Mr. Moseley’s question put what had happened into an entirely different context. He would have to think about it.

  Mr. Moseley eyed him. “Doc Roberts is doing an autopsy?”

  “Right. We put her in Lionel Noonan’s hearse and Lionel drove her over to Monroeville.”

  “Well, we’ll know soon enough, then.”

  Know what? Buddy was still trying to figure that out when Mr. Moseley knocked his pipe into the green glass ashtray on his desk and said, in a formal tone, “With regard to this criminal case, Sheriff Norris, and acting as Cypress County attorney, I am instructing you to go ahead and do whatever has to be done to apprehend Miss Hancock’s killer. If anybody gives you any trouble about your relationship with her, don’t try to explain, just refer them to me. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Thank you.” Buddy felt a great relief. “Thank you, Mr. Moseley,” he said again, emphatically. “I really appreciate it.”

  “That’s what they pay me for, although they don’t pay me much.” Mr. Moseley gave him a cheerful smile. “What’ve you got planned for today?”

  “Well, I’ve talked to Violet Sims—she found the body. The two of them were real good friends.”

  “Ah,” Mr. Moseley said thoughtfully. “Good friends, were they?”

  Buddy nodded. “Next up on the list is Bettina Higgens, the roommate. I’m hoping she can give me a list of girlfriends, names of the men Rona Jean—Miss Hancock—went out with.” He colored and added hurriedly, “I’ll talk to them, then canvass the neighborhood, find out if anybody saw or heard anything last night or this morning. Also, I’ll talk to the girls she worked with at the Exchange. And Myra May,” he added.

  Mr. Moseley put his pipe into the holder on the desk and gave him a sharp look. “You think Myra May could be involved?” His voice had a particular edge.

  “I don’t know,” Buddy replied, wondering what exactly Mr. Moseley meant by “involved.” He spoke tentatively. “Violet told me that Myra May was working in the kitchen until midnight. Maybe she heard something.”

  Mr. Moseley went on as if he hadn’t said anything. “Myra May has a temper and she’s possessive about Violet. But she’s a smart cookie. If she killed Rona Jean, she wouldn’t do it in the front seat of her very own automobile. And leave the body there for Violet to find the next morning.”

  Buddy was taken aback. He hadn’t gone any farther than an undefined suspicion of Myra May, but now that Mr. Moseley had laid it out so clearly, he found himself agreeing. Myra May may not have appreciated the friendship between Violet and Rona Jean, but she was not a suspect.

  He nodded and said, “By the time I get all that done, maybe Doc Roberts will have the results of the autopsy.” He shivered at the thought of Rona Jean being cut open. “After that . . . well, I guess I’ll have to figure out where to go from there.”

  Mr. Moseley nodded. “Makes good sense.” He smiled slightly. “Tell you what, Sheriff. You go out there and do your job, and when you’ve finished, I’ll do mine.” His voice hardened. “You bring me the killer and enough hard evidence for me to make the case, and I’ll see that the son of a bitch is convicted.”

  Buddy stood. “Yes, sir,” he said, and almost saluted.

  Now, holding his hat in one hand and raising his fist to knock at Bettina’s front door, he stood tall and confident, knowing that Mr. Moseley was behind him.

  * * *

  Well before the second month’s rent was due, Bettina Higgens had understood that agreeing to take Rona Jean Hancock as a roommate was a big, fat mistake.

  It was Rona Jean’s half of the rent money that had tempted her. For a couple of years, Bettina had lived with her sister and her brother-in-law over on Oak Street, which hadn’t been bad, although their apartment was small and there wasn’t a lot of privacy. But her sister had gotten a divorce and moved to Atlanta, and Bettina had to hunt for another place to live.


  The cheapest place she found was a room at Mrs. Brewster’s boardinghouse for young working women on West Plum. But Bettina hadn’t liked what she heard about the place from girls who had lived there. Curfew was at nine on weekdays and ten thirty on weekends, and if you weren’t in the house on the dot, Mrs. Brewster (the girls called her Dragon Lady behind her back) simply locked the doors and you were stuck outside for the night. If you overslept at breakfast time (six thirty in the morning) or you were late to supper (five thirty at night), you went hungry, for you couldn’t use the kitchen or keep food in your room. As for entertaining company—well, that was a joke. You could sit out with a young man on the front porch until it got dark. Then you could sit in the parlor (on separate chairs, with the lights on), but only so long as the door to Mrs. Brewster’s sitting room was open.

  But bad as Mrs. Brewster’s was, Bettina finally decided it was the best she could do, so she called to make the necessary arrangements. She hadn’t any more than hung up, however, when the phone rang again, and the switchboard girl at the Telephone Exchange—Rona Jean Hancock—introduced herself. She sincerely apologized for having overheard Bettina’s conversation with Mrs. Brewster. She said she would never have done such a thing but she was looking for a roommate, too, and knew of a small house for rent. If Bettina was interested, maybe they could go and look at it together.

  That was how Bettina got hooked up with Rona Jean, and when the two of them had first moved in together, she had thought that it would be okay. She certainly enjoyed the little house, and since Rona Jean was gone a lot, she had it mostly to herself, which suited her just fine. After a hard day’s work making women beautiful, it was a relief to come home and kick off her shoes and relax.

  But it wasn’t more than a couple of weeks before Bettina began to see the mistake she had made. First there was the money. Rona Jean was always a couple of weeks late with her share of the rent and was forever asking to borrow fifty cents or a dollar, which Bettina usually felt she had to loan her because she had been broke herself and knew what it felt like.