The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

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?”