The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

Another cough, followed by a reflective sigh. “You said Roy was fishing? Too damn bad, but it comes to us all in the end. Remember me to his missus next time you see her. We were in school together, about a hundred years ago.”


“I will, sir, and thanks.” They exchanged good-byes and Buddy replaced the receiver on the telephone hook. He looked down at the diary. Seven weeks, maybe eight. Flipping the pages, he counted back from April 23 to early March. The first weekend, Rona Jean noted that she had gone to the movies with Beau Pyle. According to the diary, they drove over to Monroeville to see Today We Live, starring Joan Crawford and Gary Cooper. Rona Jean had worn her purple dress with the polka dots, and Beau was a good (underlined twice) kisser. The next night, Sunday night, she had gone to the Roller Palace with Lamar Lassen, where she also skated with Jack Baker, whom she apparently met for the first time at the rink. The next Saturday night, she’d gone out with Baker, who (she noted) was from nearby Thomasville and was a swell skater, even better than Lamar, but not much of a kisser.

So it could’ve been Pyle, Lassen, or Baker—but maybe not Baker, who wasn’t much of a kisser. And then he noticed that on the pages that mentioned Beau Pyle and Lamar Lassen, Rona Jean had drawn those little Valentine hearts. Staring at them, a realization flickered. Rona Jean had been twice as experienced as he had imagined, for both Beau Pyle and Lamar Lassen were candidates for fatherhood. Was there anybody else?

He glanced through the previous weeks, and while both Pyle and Lassen were mentioned, he saw no other men’s names, and no hearts. Then he paged through the rest of March and April, remembering that Doc Dubois had said that it was “hard to be sure at that stage.” Baker’s name appeared again, and there was somebody named Ray. But none of those names had been awarded the Valentine heart. The symbol of Rona Jean’s sexual favors belonged exclusively to Lassen and Pyle.

Buddy closed the diary and regarded it for a moment, imagining Mr. Moseley holding it up in court for all to see: Your Honor, we have here People’s Exhibit One—the document that gave Sheriff Norris the facts he used to solve this horrific crime. Buddy smiled, picturing the jurors leafing through it, reading Rona Jean’s entries, and drawing the same conclusion he had drawn.

Then he reddened, remembering that she hadn’t written very favorably about him and imagining the jurors’ reactions to her comment that he wasn’t a very good kisser. At the same time, and contradictorily, he felt grateful to whatever caution had kept him from accepting Rona Jean’s invitation to go to bed with her. There was no Valentine heart on his page.

He put the diary back in its envelope and locked it in the drawer and sat for a moment, thinking. His job now: find out which of the two men—Lassen or Pyle—had fathered Rona Jean’s baby, since he would be the likeliest candidate for the killer.

Buddy frowned, feeling confused. But that wouldn’t work. Unless one of them upped and confessed and the other one said that it couldn’t be him because he’d used protection, there was no way to know, let alone prove, which of the two was the actual father. What he had to find out was which of the two Rona Jean had fingered as the father, which might or might not be the same thing. And he’d better get on it right away, which meant that he’d need to assign Wayne to the job of checking the garage for rope and something that could’ve been used to hit Rona Jean on the head. And he was going to have to interview the neighbors, to see if anybody saw or heard anything around the time of death.