The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

Lassen apparently had the day off, because he was still asleep upstairs when Buddy knocked at Mrs. Meeks’ front door and explained what he wanted. She invited him into the parlor, but he opted for the front porch. The thermometer on the porch wall said it was eighty-eight, but there was a breeze. He cast an eye toward the sky, remembering what Wayne had said about the storm. It was a flat, pale gray, with a kind of silvery sheen to it. A storm sky, his old man would call it. But if there was a storm coming, it wasn’t there yet.

Five minutes later, Lassen came downstairs, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He was broad-shouldered and bulky, with gingery hair, a round, ruddy face, and muscular arms. From the size of him Buddy judged that he was making the most of Mrs. Meeks’ generous boardinghouse table. His brown wash pants were held up with red suspenders, and he wore a blue, coffee-stained shirt with the shirttail untucked, and brown leather work boots. A bent and misshapen cigarette, hastily hand-rolled, dangled from one corner of his mouth. He seemed surprised to see Buddy and even more surprised—genuinely shocked, Buddy thought—when the two of them went out on the front porch, where it was marginally cooler than the parlor, and Buddy told him, coming out with it hard and fast and without any cushion, that Rona Jean Hancock was dead.

“Dead?” Lassen took a step backward, as if Buddy had pushed him in the chest, and his mouth worked around the cigarette. “Dead how? Accident? She liked to drive fast whenever she could get her pretty little hands on a steering wheel.”

“She was murdered. Where were you last night?”

“Murdered?” Lassen’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. “Murdered? Aw, jeez. Jeeeeez!” The last word was a long exhale. Lassen sat down hard in the porch swing and dropped his elbows on his knees.

“Where were you last night?” Buddy repeated, giving his voice an edge.

There was no answer. Lassen’s head was bowed. He seemed dumbstruck.

“Mr. Lassen,” Buddy said sharply. “Where were you last night?”

“Me?” Lassen looked up, blinking, and Buddy saw that there were tears in his eyes. “Well, I’ll tell you where I wasn’t. I sure as hell wasn’t out there killin’ . . .” He swallowed. “Killin’ Rona Jean. I was here, if you gotta know. Howie and Nick and Mr. Meeks and me was playin’ poker from after supper to twelve thirty or one. I won the pot. Two bucks.” His eyes went to the holstered .38 on Buddy’s hip and he licked his lips. “Murdered . . . murdered how?”

Buddy folded his arms across his chest. “What’d you do after you won the pot?”

“Went to bed. Me’n Howie share the room at the top of the stairs. Tough to sleep in this heat, though.” He shook his head and kept on shaking it, as if trying to get rid of what he had heard. “I stopped seeing her, you know,” he muttered, and pulled his cigarette out of his mouth, holding it between two fingers. “Rona Jean, I mean.”

“When was the last time?”

A sour look crossed Lassen’s face. “It was before she started hanging out with you, I reckon. She didn’t want to see me no more.” He dropped the cigarette and ground it out with the toe of his work boot. His voice hardened. “How’d she get killed? You know who done it? If you do, tell me and I’ll save the county the cost of a trial.”

Buddy ignored the questions. “When did she tell you she was pregnant and that you were the father?”

The sour look was replaced with a look of pure surprise, and Lassen reared back. “How’d you know? Where’d you hear about that?”

“Come on, Lassen,” Buddy said, pushing it. “When?”

Lassen’s mouth worked. He was silent for a moment. A tear welled up and ran down his cheek. “Last week of April, sometime around there. She phoned me up, asked me to come over to her house so we could talk.” He stopped, as if he were trying to remember.