The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady (15 page)

Putting the arm on Bodeen? Was that what he meant?
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Buddy gave Beau a stern look. “I'm going to talk to your brother. I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your mouth shut about this conversation until I've seen him.”

Beau shrugged carelessly. “Yeah. Okay by me. Bodeen and me ain't talkin' much anyway, these days.”

Yes, like that
, Buddy thought.

Back in the car, he sat for a moment, thinking. Then he opened his notebook and thumbed through the pages. If he had read Rona Jean's Valentine heart code accurately, Lamar and Beau were the only candidates for paternity. But what if he hadn't read it right? Or what if she had left somebody out, either accidentally or on purpose?

And it wasn't smart to trust Beau. The boy might be lying about tending that fire all night, and unless he could get some confirmation, one way or another, Buddy knew
he'd be a fool to put any faith in what Beau said. He'd seen the evidence of Beau's rage: the shredded jail-cell mattress and the wrecked bunk. He was perfectly capable of flying into a rage and throttling Rona Jean, and then of lying about it.

But Beau had raised a good point. Rona Jean could expect both Lamar and Beau to believe that they were the father; she'd had sex with both of them, so it made sense to try to get money out of them. And there was that threatening letter she had written to
him
. Her charges—that he'd slapped her, torn her clothes—were false, but he'd be the first to admit that it would have been tough to dispute them if she had pushed it somehow. He was just damned lucky she hadn't demanded money from him.

But maybe she'd pulled that trick on somebody else. Maybe she wrote a similar letter to him, making similar charges, similarly false, and threatening to go public if he didn't pay up. The evidence? That stack of twenties, $140 in all, which was a lot more than she could have saved out of her paycheck, especially since she was always broke, according to Bettina. Blackmail payoff, was it? Maybe she squeezed it out of some poor sucker—or for that matter, out of more than one poor sucker, using the same technique she had tried out first on
him.

And maybe she had been killed for it.

Frowning, Buddy thought some more about this angle. He went back to the top of his notebook list. With this new possibility in mind, who should he talk to next? He stopped at Violet's name, remembering that Rona Jean had written something about Violet in her diary. He flipped back through his notebook and found that he had copied a line out of the diary entry for June 5: Violet had promised Rona Jean to give her the money for all the bills,
before and after
, she had written,
and I can leave it there
. When he first read that, he'd been totally in the dark. He'd had no idea what
before-and-after bills she was writing about or what the “it” was that she could “leave.”

Now, knowing about the baby, it made sense. The “before and after” part, anyway. He needed to talk to Violet and find out what she knew. And Myra May, as well.

He put the notebook into his shirt pocket. Bodeen Pyle might be important, especially if there was some jealousy involved between the two brothers. But Bodeen could wait until Buddy had filled in some more of the details. He turned the key in the Ford's ignition and drove off.

Lizzy's Prayer Is Answered—But Which One?

Lizzy went up the path to her house, carrying her handbag as carefully as if it contained a dozen new-laid eggs. In it was a letter from Nadine Fleming, her literary agent—still sealed because Lizzy hadn't wanted to open it in the post office or on the street. It might contain good news about
Sabrina
, in which case she would probably have disgraced herself by bursting into tears of delight. Or bad news, in which case she'd be crying tears of disappointment. One way or the other, Lizzy knew she was going to cry. She preferred to do it in private.

Home was a tiny yellow-painted frame bungalow on Jefferson Davis Street, a block off Franklin and two blocks from Mr. Moseley's office, close enough to walk back and forth to work. The house, which Lizzy had owned for three years or so, was just big enough for one person—a doll's house, really. But as if to make up for its small size, it was surrounded with a large and very pretty yard. In the front, there were azaleas,
hibiscus, and a dogwood tree that was lovely in the spring. In the back, there was a grassy lawn, and a perennial border where eleven o'clock ladies sprang up among the lilies and irises in April and May; pink roses covered the trellis in June; and sunflowers bloomed along the fence in July and August. A small kitchen garden, fenced with a low white picket fence against hungry bunnies, provided fresh vegetables and herbs all summer long. The yard was perfect for a gardener, and gardening was Lizzy's favorite hobby—next to writing, of course.

In fact, as far as Lizzy was concerned, this absolutely perfect house and its perfect garden had only one drawback. It was right across the street from her mother's house, which meant that it was close enough for Mrs. Lacy—a quarrelsome, bossy woman who wanted nothing more than to manage her only daughter's life—to run over once or twice a day to “visit.”

Lizzy, a dutiful daughter, felt a half-guilty, half-loving obligation to her mother, which was why she continued to live within shouting distance. After all, her mother was a widow and otherwise alone in the world. She was an only child and a daughter, and it was well understood that Darling daughters (
only
daughters, in particular) had a special responsibility to their mothers. When Lizzy was a girl, her mother had been fond of remarking that so-and-so had never married, in order to stay at home and help her mother. (She had a large catalog of so-and-sos, updated every few months.) And that Great-aunt Polly had refused all beaus and took care of her invalid mother to her dying day. To Great-aunt Polly's dying day, that is: she took such good care of her mother that the irascible old woman outlived her acquiescent daughter by six years.

But while Lizzy felt she was duty-bound to look after her mother, she had no intention of following Great-aunt Polly's example to the grave. So, feeling strong and
almost
rebellious,
she had bought her own house and steadfastly refused to give her mother a key. (After all, a grown person needed
some
privacy!) And without a key, Mrs. Lacy couldn't drop in just any old time, which she would have done, since the plain truth was that she was not only bossy and argumentative, but also a snoop. Lacking a key, she had to wait by the parlor window until she saw her daughter come home—and
then
she came over.

Just now, Lizzy was praying that her mother would stay away long enough for her to read her letter and have her cry in private. And that privacy—her solitude—was Lizzy's deepest joy. If she wanted company, she had plenty of books, including the one she was writing. And if she wanted to hear a human voice, why, she could listen to her own. She could talk to her orange tabby cat, Daffodil, who never ever talked back.

Lizzy went up the steps to the front porch, where Daffy was waiting on the porch swing, keeping cool in the breeze that filtered through the honeysuckle at the end of the porch. He jumped down and wound himself around her ankles, purring a loud welcome. She unlocked the front door and stepped into the small entry hall. On the left, a flight of polished wooden stairs led up to two small bedrooms. On the right, a wide doorway opened into a parlor that was just large enough for a fireplace and built-in bookcases, a Mission-style leather sofa, a dark brown corduroy-covered chair, and a Tiffany-style lamp with a stained glass shade that had cost Lizzy the enormous sum of seven dollars and fifty cents. It was much too much to pay for a lamp, but she loved its soft amber-colored light, which gleamed richly against the refinished pine floors.

She hung her straw hat on the wall peg in the hallway, then went past the parlor and into the compact kitchen. She had left the windows open, and the room was cooler than the
out of doors. Nervously, thinking about the letter (so
much
seemed to hang on it), she filled a kettle with water and set it on the gas stove and got out her Brown Betty teapot and the ceramic canister of tea she had bought in that cute little tea shop in Montgomery and measured the fragrant tea into the strainer in the teapot. Her fingers trembling, she took Nadine's envelope out of her purse and slit it carefully, then laid it on the oilcloth-covered table in the small dining nook. The nook looked out on the garden and was one of her favorite places in the house—one of her
comfort
places, especially when the window was open to the honeysuckle-scented breeze, as it was now.

When the tea was ready, she poured herself a cup, added a spoonful of honey, and sat down. Steeling herself to read the letter—
bad news or good?—
she took it out of the envelope and said a tiny silent prayer for the courage to face whatever came. She had just begun to unfold it when she heard a sharp rapping at the back door. She looked up to see her mother peering through the glass.

“Damn and
blast
,” she muttered, and quickly slid the folded letter under the oilcloth. With a long sigh of resignation, she got up and opened the door.

“Oh, hello, Mama,” she said brightly. “I was just sitting down to a cup of tea. Would you like to join me?” She was going to do it anyway, Lizzy thought. She might as well be invited.

“I waited for you to telephone me when you got home,” Mrs. Lacy said accusingly. “But you didn't.” She puffed out her breath. “Lord sakes, it is
hot
. Comin' across the street in that sunshine is like walking across a bed of coals.”

“Then maybe you'd rather have lemonade,” Lizzy said. “It might cool you off.”

“I'll have lemonade,” Mrs. Lacy said, as if she had thought of it herself, and went to the refrigerator to get it, taking the opportunity to look on the shelves to see what Lizzy was eating. Mrs. Lacy was an oversized woman with an oversized voice and ample bosom and hips. She was wearing a wide-brimmed orange straw hat and a red rayon chiffon dress splashed with large orange and yellow flowers that made her appear even bulkier than usual. Her smile was just a little smug. “I have some important news, in case you're interested.” She put the pitcher on the table.

“Of course I'm interested,” Lizzy said. Since the kitchen was quite small and Mrs. Lacy was quite large and loud, she took up more than her share of the space, leaving very little room—and not quite enough air—for Lizzy. Now, Lizzy moved her teacup and the teapot to the round kitchen table and took a glass out of the cupboard for her mother. The one time her mother had tried to squeeze into the dining nook, she'd gotten stuck and Lizzy had had to move the table so she could get out.

Lizzy was often tempted to feel sorry for her mother, but that was difficult, because she had been so foolish. Five years before, she had put up her small annuity and her paid-for house as collateral against a bank loan to buy stocks in the booming stock market, planning (like everybody else in America) to get rich quick and be set for life. When the stock bubble burst and Wall Street crashed, she lost everything. Mr. Johnson, at the bank, carried the note on her house as long as he could (he had done that for a great many Darlingians), but he finally had to foreclose.

Unfazed, Mrs. Lacy declared that the bank could take the house and she would move in with her daughter, which, as Lizzy saw it, would be a disaster of titanic proportions. Her
little dollhouse wasn't large enough for two normal-sized people. If her mother moved in, there wouldn't be any room for
her—
and not one shred of privacy.

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—”