The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

Lizzy had gone into action to avert this calamity. She had been saving for a car, so she went to the bank and put the money down on a loan to buy her mother’s house. Now, Mrs. Lacy worked a couple of days a week at Mr. Dunlap’s Five and Dime and helped Fannie Champaign to make hats. Out of her earnings, she was able to buy groceries and give her daughter a few dollars a month for rent. It wasn’t enough to cover the payment to the bank, and Lizzy still had no car. An ideal solution, of course, would be for her mother to marry, and Lizzy had often addressed the Almighty on that very question. But the Almighty wasn’t listening—at least, He wasn’t listening yet. And in the meantime, it was worth every dollar it cost to keep her mother on the other side of the street.

With an air of mystery, Mrs. Lacy sat down at the table, picked up the pitcher of lemonade, and poured a glass for herself. “I’ll save my own personal news for last, because I’ve got something else on my mind. It’s about the murder,” she said in a conspiratorial tone. “Rona Jean Hancock’s murder. You’ve heard she was strangled, I suppose. In Myra May Mosswell’s car. With her stocking. Which is what happens to girls who fool around.”

“Yes, Mama, I know,” Lizzy said with a sigh. “Such a terrible thing.” She picked up a folded napkin and fanned herself with it, wondering briefly if maybe the killer had been driven mad with the heat. She’d read about things like that happening. It might make an interesting story.

“But that isn’t all,” her mother went on, eyes sparkling, quivering with barely suppressed excitement. She looked, Lizzy thought, as if she was enjoying herself. “Ouida Bennett says that the girl was pregnant.”

“Oh dear!” Lizzy said, completely taken aback. So there wasn’t just one death—there were two. Rona Jean and her unborn baby. She frowned. “Are you sure that’s true, Mama? Where did Mrs. Bennett hear—”

“Oh yes, it is definitely true,” Mrs. Lacy said, picking up her glass and drinking deeply. “Ouida heard it at Mann’s Mercantile. Mrs. Mann’s cousin Agnes works over at the Monroeville Hospital, where Doc Roberts did the autopsy on Rona Jean. Agnes heard it from a records clerk over there and phoned Mrs. Mann right away. Ouida happened to be in the store when the call came.” Mrs. Lacy dropped her voice confidingly. “Poor Ouida has been putting on so much weight lately that she had to buy some new elastic to repair the waist of her unmentionables. Anyway, she got an earful as soon as Mrs. Mann hung up.”

I’ll bet she did, Lizzy thought darkly. And then she delivered that earful to everybody she met on the way home. She shook her head. There was no way on God’s green earth to keep a secret in Darling.

“And if you ask me—” Mrs. Lacy leaned even closer and lowered her voice almost to a whisper, as if she were afraid that somebody might be listening at the open window. “If you ask me, it’s entirely likely that whoever it was put that bun in Rona Jean’s oven was the one who killed her.”

“I suppose it’s possible,” Lizzy acknowledged cautiously. “But—”

Her mother sat back. “And what’s more, it could very well be the sheriff who got her in the family way—and who could have done the awful deed himself. The very person who is supposed to be investigating this crime!” She threw up her hands. “What this world is coming to, I don’t know. When we can’t trust the law to—”

“Mama, stop!” Lizzy said firmly. “Facts are one thing, but gossip is something else again. It can wreck a person’s career, and even his whole life. I wish you wouldn’t—”

“But it’s not gossip!” her mother exclaimed, offended. “It’s the truth, Elizabeth, the bare-bones truth. Leona Ruth Adcock saw Rona Jean and Buddy Norris hugging and kissing with her very own eyes, right there at Rona Jean’s kitchen sink. Of course, he wasn’t sheriff then, but he was a deputy sheriff and—”

“And Leona Ruth’s eyes aren’t what they used to be,” Lizzy said sharply. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing wrong with her tongue, except that it flaps on both ends.”

Her mother gave her a reproachful look. “I don’t know why you’d want to defend Buddy Norris, Elizabeth. He’s a man, just like all the rest of them.” She took another drink of lemonade. “He wouldn’t even be sheriff today if it weren’t for poor Roy Burns gettin’ bit by that rattlesnake and dyin’ such an untimely death. And bein’ sheriff doesn’t make a person holy. Sheriffs can chase around just like anybody else. In fact, Roy Burns himself used to—”