The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

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.