The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

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.

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.


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