The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

Buddy put clock hands inside the circle, pointing to five minutes to twelve o’clock. There was a murmuring voice and a pause, then Edna Fay said, “Well, go next door and see if Mrs. Barker has any clothespins you can borrow until I can get over to Mann’s to buy another package.” To Buddy, she said, “I swear, that girl breaks more clothespins every wash day than a normal person would in a month.” She paused. “Where were we?”


“Yes’m,” Buddy said, and drew a diamond around the clock. “You were saying that Rona Jean—Miss Hancock—was hit on the head and then strangled with a rope, not her stocking. What about assault?” He reminded himself that Edna Fay was a nurse. “Sexual assault,” he added.

“No evidence of sexual assault, is what he said,” Edna Fay replied cheerily. “And—” She broke off. “Lord, Darla Ann, what is it now?”

This time the murmur was louder and more querulous and the pause was longer. While he waited, Buddy wrote no assalt under the diamond. He frowned at the word, which didn’t look right, crossed it out, and wrote assallt. He was glad, for Rona Jean’s sake. But if she hadn’t been killed fighting off her killer’s advances, why had she been killed?

Edna Fay was back on the line, and this time, she was fit to be tied.

“Buddy, you are not going to believe this, but Darla Ann knocked out the prop and down came the clothesline, with all the clean sheets and towels on it. Right down in the dirt, and of course they were still sopping wet, which means they are muddy.”

“Sorry ’bout that,” Buddy said, and drew a big square around the diamond. “You said there was no evidence of assault and—” He paused, hoping she’d fill in the blank.

“Yes, no assault,” Edna Fay said. “And no evidence of recent intercourse. But he was surprised when he saw that—” She raised her voice. “Darla Ann, I’ll be out there in a minute, soon as I finish on this phone. You start unpinning them off the line and put them in the basket. Shake off as much of that mud as you can. I don’t want to have to wash them again if we don’t have to.”

Intercourse? Buddy was shocked. He had read the word, of course, and he knew what it meant, in his own experience. But the guys he knew used other words for it, and he had never heard anybody—let alone a woman—actually utter the word. But then, Edna Fay was a nurse and probably used to talking that way. No intercorse, he wrote, and drew two heavy lines under it. “You were saying that when he did the autopsy, Doc was surprised,” he prompted. “Surprised about what?”

“I was saying?” She sounded distracted. “Oh, yes. He said she was about four months. Now, if you’ll excuse me, that poor girl I’ve got workin’ for me has absolutely no brains in her head at all. I am going to have to get out there and rescue those sheets myself.”

Four months, Buddy wrote. He frowned. “Four months? Four months what?”

Edna Fay’s laugh tinkled over the telephone wire. “Oh, Buddy, you are so funny. Why, four months pregnant, of course.”

Buddy’s pencil lead snapped.





EIGHT


Charlie Dickens: A Newsman in Search of a Story



Whistling the cheerful refrain of “Dixie,” Charlie Dickens pushed his bicycle through the front door of the Dispatch office and leaned it against the inside sill of the wide front window. He was hanging his straw boater and light blue seersucker suit coat on the coat tree in the corner when he heard a male voice.