The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady (3 page)

Sheriff Norris Investigates

“Thanks for being willing to talk to me, Violet,” Buddy Norris said, as he sat down on a straight chair next to the sofa where Violet lay.

Buddy was a lean, gangly man with brown hair and blue eyes, a look-alike (many said) for Lucky Lindy, who had flown his
Spirit of St. Louis
all the way to Paris, only to lose his firstborn son to a kidnapper and murderer just two years ago. The mildness of Buddy's expression—he rarely frowned—was somewhat contradicted by the pale thread of a scar across his cheek, a souvenir of a knife fight at the Red Dog juke joint over in Maysville. He was wearing the khaki shirt and pants that passed for the Cypress County sheriff's uniform, with the nickel-plated star pinned to his pocket flap.

He flipped to a clean page in his notebook, checking his wristwatch for the current time, seven thirty a.m., and jotting it down with the date. “So you saw that the garage doors were
open and went to see why,” he said. “Is that how it happened, Violet?”

He was feeling a little awkward. A couple of years ago, Buddy had been sweet on Violet Sims, who once was one of the two young ladies he most wanted to get to know. (The other one was the girl who was out there in the front seat of Myra May's car with her stocking wrapped around her neck, waiting for Lionel Noonan to drive up in his funeral parlor hearse and take her to Monroeville for an autopsy.) But Buddy had given up on Violet when she made it clear that she wasn't interested in going out with him, although she said it in such a sweet way that he couldn't feel hurt by the rejection. She simply preferred to spend her free evenings with Myra May and Cupcake in their flat over the diner.

So he had turned his attentions to Rona Jean, who maybe wasn't as pretty as Violet but had seemed sweet and eager to please him (at least in the beginning), which was always a compliment to a fellow. He and Rona Jean had gotten along just fine, for a while. He felt a fist of hot anger tighten in his belly when he thought of what somebody had done to her, and then a quick, warm wash of sadness that was accentuated by the strains of “Goodnight, Sweetheart”—Rona Jean's favorite song—from the radio downstairs. But this wasn't the time or the place to dwell on that. He had to put his mind to his investigation and let nothing interfere. He poised his stub of a pencil over the page and waited.

Violet's “Yes, that's how it happened” was almost inaudible. Pale and wan, her soft brown hair in a mass of curls around her face, she was lying on the sofa in the apartment over the diner, where she lived with Myra May. Raylene Riggs had spread a crocheted granny afghan over her and was kneeling beside the sofa, holding her limp hand.

“Maybe just one or two questions, Buddy?” Raylene asked
in a low voice. She'd said that Violet had fainted again after she and Myra May had gotten her upstairs. “This is so difficult for her. She and Rona Jean both worked in the Telephone Exchange, and they sometimes went to the movies together. They were close friends.”

Buddy hadn't known that, actually. He scribbled the words
close friends with Violet—movies
in his notebook, then wondered briefly how Myra May felt about that and wrote
Myra May??
with a heavy underline. When he'd been trying to get Violet to go out with him, before he'd understood about her situation, he had felt that Myra May was acting kind of jealous. Or maybe “protective” was a better word, like a mama hen ruffling her feathers and snapping her beak, hovering over her chick and not wanting anybody to get too close. He wasn't quite sure why it was, but after Violet had made it clear that he was wasting his time, Myra May had eased up. Then he wondered who else (besides Violet, that is) Rona Jean might have counted as her close friend, and added
other friends?
He guessed that was something he had better find out. He bit his lip and focused on his next question.

This was Buddy Norris' first investigation as the sheriff of Cypress County, and the fact that he was investigating a murder—and Rona Jean Hancock's murder, on top of that—made it a lot more important than the usual humdrum routine of minor thefts, car wrecks, gambling, and moonshining that the sheriff's office dealt with every week. Rona Jean's murder had struck Buddy like a bolt from the blue, and investigating it was not at all what he wanted to be doing on a bright and pretty June morning.

But the sadly ironic truth was that whoever had strangled Rona Jean had handed Buddy his first big case, the opportunity he needed to show the citizens of Darling that they had been right to elect him as their sheriff. It was a
test of what he had learned so far, a measure of his abilities as an investigator. He couldn't afford to fail.

Until several weeks ago, Buddy had been Darling's deputy sheriff, and not an altogether popular one, at that. Some folks criticized him for his youth (he was in his late twenties but looked younger) and others for his “swagger and derring-do,” especially when he arrested Reverend Craig, the traveling revival preacher, who was driving his 1926 Studebaker sixty miles an hour out on the Jericho Road. On the front seat was a bottle of what the reverend claimed was communion fruit of the vine. When Buddy tasted it, however, the bottle proved to contain something a sight more potent than grape juice. It was Bodeen Pyle's Panther Juice, and as illegal as sin. Nevertheless, some folks said that Buddy didn't show good judgment when he arrested a man of God. If he was going to be sheriff, he had a lot to prove.

But Buddy was good enough to be a deputy, almost everybody agreed. He had taught himself how to take crime scene photographs and dust for fingerprints out of a book on scientific detective work that he had mail-ordered from
True Crime
magazine. He was especially interested in fingerprint evidence, which had been used as forensic evidence in the United States since 1911, when Thomas Jennings was convicted of murder after he broke into a Chicago home and killed the owner during an attempted burglary. Jennings left his prints on a freshly painted railing, was convicted, and hanged. Buddy didn't have much confidence that fingerprints would ever solve a case in Darling, but he wanted to know how to use them if the opportunity ever presented itself.

All things considered, Buddy had proved himself to be a good deputy. He wasn't afraid to wade in with his fists when that was necessary, as it sometimes was. He was strong and athletic and (having been a sprinter in high school and a regular
winner of the hundred-yard dash) he got around much faster than the sheriff, who had forty years and fifty-plus pounds on him. What's more, he rode his red Indian Ace motorcycle when he was on patrol duty, which guaranteed Sheriff Burns some serious bragging rights: Buddy was the only mounted deputy sheriff in all of southern Alabama.

In fact, everybody said that the sheriff and his deputy functioned as a pretty good team—until the sheriff was struck down dead by a rattlesnake. He was fishing all by himself below the waterfall at the very bottom of Horsetail Gorge when it happened, which was a very bad place to have a rattlesnake tuck into you. Roy Burns weighed well over two hundred pounds, and with his arthritis, he couldn't move too fast on a good day. On a bad day, when the rattler had bitten him hard on the wrist, he didn't make it back up to the camp. He sat down and died beside the waterfall. It took three men, a mule, and a block and tackle to hoist him out of the rocky gorge.

The county commissioners met the next week, as Amos Tombull announced somberly, “to plan for a special election to fill Sheriff Burns' empty size twelves.” There were two candidates on the ballot, Buddy Norris and Jake Pritchard, who owned the Standard Oil station on the Monroeville highway. But although many had misgivings about Buddy, the endorsement of the Darling
Dispatch
helped him eke out a win. He was also helped by the fact that Jake had recently raised the price of his gasoline from ten cents a gallon to fifteen, which made some of the voters a tad bit unenthusiastic about him. Jake had the only gas station in town. Some folks may have thought that making him sheriff was giving him too much of a monopoly.

With all this in mind, Buddy knew better than anybody that, in Darling's eyes, the investigation into Rona Jean's
murder would be a test case. His reputation, his career, and quite possibly his entire future were on the line here. Which meant that he had to take full charge of the investigation and do most of the legwork himself, rather than rely on his new deputy, Wayne Springer. Wayne, who had learned his policing over in Montgomery, already knew how to dust for fingerprints. He was working on the car right now, and doing a good job. That's the kind of deputy he was. But everything else connected with this murder, all the interviews, all the people stuff, Buddy knew he would have to do himself.

He straightened his shoulders, suddenly aware of the burden on them. “Just a couple more questions and I'll be finished.” He leaned forward. “When you went into the garage, Violet, did you hear anything or see anybody? Or maybe when you were out in the garden, picking beans?”

“No,” Violet whispered. “I didn't hear a thing when I was in the garden—except for the rooster up the street and Bill Board delivering the milk and Myra May singing along with the radio. And then I saw the double garage doors open and thought I'd better close them. When I went in, at first, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was just too awful. The way Rona Jean was . . . all spread out, I mean. Like she'd been—” Her voice trembled and she bit down hard on her lip. “And then I saw that stocking around her neck. I just ran.” After a moment she looked up at Raylene. “I'm so sorry, dear. I spilled the bucket of beans I was picking for lunch.”

“Don't worry about it, Violet,” Raylene said in a comforting tone. “Eva Pearl came in early to give us a hand at the counter. After the breakfast rush, I'll send her out to pick up the beans. Or I could just open a couple of jars of that sweet corn the Dahlias canned for us last summer and make corn pudding instead. Most folks like that just as well as green beans.”

Buddy felt that the interview was getting away from him.
“One more question,” he said. “Were you here when Rona Jean . . . when Miss Hancock finished her shift and left last night?”

He felt Raylene's curious eyes on him and shifted uncomfortably. Both she and Violet and just about everybody else in town would recall that he and Rona Jean had gone around together fairly recently. He hadn't called her “Miss Hancock” then. In fact, on their second date she had called him “sweetheart,” in that slow, sweet, suggestive Southern voice of hers. They were trading moonlight kisses on the back porch of the house she shared with Bettina Higgens, and the Victrola was playing in the parlor.
Goodnight sweetheart, 'til we meet tomorrow. Goodnight sweetheart, parting is such sorrow
. And then the third time they were together, when—

But that was when Rona Jean had proved to be too . . . “dangerous” was the word that came to mind. Not the kind of woman Buddy wanted, or could afford, at this point in his life. Still, Rona Jean was dead now, and it was his job to find out who had killed her. It didn't seem quite respectful to use her personal name when he was asking questions about the last hours of her life.

“I was, yes,” Violet said slowly. “But I didn't see her when she left. I was upstairs here, reading. Cupcake was asleep in her crib. Myra May had gone down to check on the shift change and do a last-minute check on the kitchen, the way she usually does. Rona Jean went off at eleven, and Lenore—that's Lenore Looper, she's Alva Looper's middle daughter—was scheduled to come on. Myra May always likes to see that the next girl is ready to take her shift on the switchboard before the other girl leaves. Otherwise, there could be a gap, which wouldn't be good.”

Buddy looked down at the words
close friends with Violet
. “Myra May came right back upstairs after the shift change?”

Raylene slid Buddy a puzzled glance, as if she was wondering what that had to do with anything. He was glad she didn't put the question into words, for he couldn't have answered if she had. He was remembering once when Myra May saw him talking to Violet and had gotten kind of bent out of shape about it, to the point where she put his cup down hard on the counter and splashed hot coffee on his hand.

There was a moment's silence. Violet looked away, her lower lip caught between her teeth, and Buddy could tell she was thinking about his question. She frowned a little.

“Right back upstairs? Well, I guess maybe not. There's always stuff to do in the kitchen. Sometimes one or the other of us is down there until midnight.” She looked up and managed a small smile. “Breakfast for twenty-five or thirty doesn't get cooked by wishing it would, you know, Buddy. There's plenty of night-before work that goes into it.”

“I reckon,” Buddy said, and wrote
midnite
in his notebook, after
Myra May.
“Well, I guess that does it for me, for now anyway. I'll maybe think of something else later.” He pocketed the notebook and pencil. “You get some rest, now, Violet. Y'hear?”