The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

This weekend, though, Fannie was working, finishing a large order in the small workroom behind her shop, where she made the most amazing hats. That Charlie thought they were amazing should come as no surprise to anyone. (He was, after all, a fond husband.) But it was true that other people were genuinely impressed with her work. Lilly Daché, for example, a glamorous French milliner who had discovered Fannie’s work at a shop in Atlanta and now sold her hats on commission in her famous Daché shop on New York’s Fifth Avenue. Mme Daché also provided custom-made hats for the Hollywood studios. Thus, most amazingly of all, film stars (Marie Dressler, for instance, in Dinner at Eight) were wearing Fannie’s hats in the movies! Which meant that even though the Dispatch still paid only a few dollars a week to its editor and publisher, Fannie Dickens was bringing in a pretty penny every month, and Mr. and Mrs. Dickens were living quite comfortably—especially since Fannie had bought the building they lived in and they didn’t have to pay any rent.

But Fannie’s success was a two-edged sword, and Charlie felt its bitter blade all too keenly. She was bringing in most of the money, while—financially speaking—Charlie was a loser, tethered to a small-town newspaper that would never bring him anything but grief. Charlie hated the thought that he couldn’t support his new wife—that she had to work to keep their little family afloat. Although he had lost maybe thirty pounds in the past year and wasn’t as thick around the middle as he had been, he was well into middle age, with thinning hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and (he couldn’t help it) a newsman’s skeptical frown. He could not for the life of him figure out what sweet, attractive, clever, successful Fannie Champaign had seen in him, or why she wanted to marry him. Add to that his fear that he had lost his reporter’s nose for a good story, and it wasn’t any wonder that beneath Charlie’s more or less contented exterior lurked a discontented soul. Discontented, that is, with himself, and not in the slightest with his new wife, whom he loved to distraction and desperately wanted to please.

Which in part accounted for Charlie’s mood when he sat down to lunch at the small table in front of the open window that overlooked the courthouse square. Fannie liked to have things looking nice, so their luncheon table was covered with a flower-printed luncheon cloth and centered with a glass bowl of red roses. She had made Charlie’s favorite grilled cheese, tomato, onion, and bacon sandwich and served it with a cup of her homemade tomato soup—better, even, Charlie thought, than the tomato soup he got at the diner, which was pretty doggone good—and glasses of cold lemonade.

As Charlie sat down across from Fannie and bowed his head while she said grace, he thought again how lucky he was to have found her, how smart he was to have married her, and how much he would like to impress her by getting at least one of his two big stories on the wire. He allowed himself one swift moment of fantasy, like a gossamer dream, with President Roosevelt introducing him to an assembled throng at the White House (with Fannie, of course, in the front row), and praising him for having broken the Pulitzer Prize–winning story of—

“It’s just the saddest thing about Rona Jean,” Fannie said, unfolding her napkin in her lap. “Have they captured the man who killed her?”

She seemed troubled, Charlie thought, and looked at her more closely. Her eyes were red. He could swear that she had been crying. But then, Fannie was a compassionate person. She had a soft heart. Sad things, like the death of a friend, affected her deeply—although he hadn’t been aware that she knew Rona Jean, except as a voice on the other end of the telephone line, saying, “Number, please,” and “I have your party now.”

“If they have, I haven’t heard,” Charlie replied. “I asked the deputy to phone the newspaper when they caught him.” He picked up his sandwich. “I got some swell photos of the victim, though. Before the sheriff showed up and made me stop.”

Fannie’s response was not what he expected. “Photos?” Her brown eyes widened. “You took photos of Rona Jean? After she was dead?”

Charlie nodded, his mouth full of delicious sandwich. When he could, he said, “I was lucky to get them, too.”

“Well, I certainly hope you’re not going to use them,” Fannie said in a low voice.

“Not in the Dispatch.” Charlie licked mayonnaise off his fingers. “I’m planning to send the best of them to both the AP and the UP, though, along with my story. I’m betting both wire services will run them, which would mean—”

Fannie dropped her spoon and it splashed into her soup bowl. “Oh, dear, oh, Charlie, please don’t!” she exclaimed.