The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

“I guess you heard about Rona Jean Hancock getting killed,” she said, refilling everyone’s glasses. Stylishly thin, of medium height, Verna had recently adopted a new look, with short, straight, easy-care hair that fitted her head like a glossy dark helmet. Today, she was wearing a khaki shirtwaist dress with pockets in a flared skirt.

“My mother heard it on her party line first thing this morning and hurried across the street to tell me,” Liz said. “I didn’t really know Rona Jean, but I felt I did, just because she was there on the other end of the telephone line. I was shocked.”

In a way, Lizzy thought, the girls who worked on the Exchange were the best-known girls in town, even if you didn’t always recognize them when you saw them on the street. Everyone could identify their voices when they said, “Number, please,” or “Sorry, that line is busy,” or “Mrs. Musgrove just went over to the church to help get the tables ready for the supper tonight. If you need her, I’ll ring the Baptist parsonage.” Every single person in town would be touched by Rona Jean’s loss—and wondering who in the world could have killed her, and why.

“It’s a tragedy,” Verna agreed, sitting down.

Lizzy took a cookie. “Does anybody have more details?” She worked in Mr. Moseley’s law office and had learned the truth of what Mr. Moseley liked to say: the devil was truly in the details.

“Charlie told me that Doc Roberts is doing an autopsy,” Ophelia replied. Short and nicely rounded, with a cherubic face, flyaway brown hair, and an irrepressible optimism, Ophelia usually wore a wide smile that showed pretty white teeth. She wasn’t smiling now, though. “I’m sure that Charlie will handle the story,” she added, and if Liz and Verna thought they heard some envy in her voice, they would be right.

Ophelia worked part-time for Charlie Dickens at the Dispatch. She operated the Linotype machine, sold advertising, and wrote up stories for the women’s page. She was dying to do some serious reporting, but Charlie was in the habit of assigning her to “soft” news—the baby shows and women’s club meetings—and keeping the hard news (what there was of it) for himself. When she had started her new part-time job at Camp Briarwood, though, he’d asked her to write a column about the camp’s activities. And he’d come up with a new investigative assignment for her that sounded intriguing. In fact, the story was so important that he’d made her swear not to tell anybody—not even her Dahlia friends—about her investigation, which intrigued her even more.

“An autopsy?” Lizzy turned her lemonade glass in her long, slim fingers, her nails clipped short because she spent hours at the typewriter every day. “But they already know how Rona Jean died, don’t they? I understand that she was . . . strangled. With her own stocking.”

In Benton Moseley’s law office, Lizzy often had to deal with the grimier, grittier side of life. But murder wasn’t often on the agenda, and it certainly wasn’t something she liked to dwell on. She was creative and imaginative, a romantic who preferred to think of things that gave her pleasure, like her sweet little house and her garden and especially her writing—her new book, for instance. At least, she hoped it was going to be a new book. She didn’t know for sure yet, but she had her fingers crossed.