The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

There. That was it. That was what they were here to discuss. Corruption in the federal program. Kickbacks at Camp Briarwood.

“So tell me, Mata Hari.” He glanced up at the peephole under Silent Cal. “Far as you’re concerned, those claims are all still true?” He chuckled loudly, so she could hear him. “By the way, ‘Mata Hari’ is pretty cute. You got my attention with that one.”

She disregarded the compliment, if that’s what it was. “Yes, it’s true,” she said grimly. “It’s been going on ever since the camp started buying milled lumber for the buildings. It’s still going on.”

Charlie reached into his shirt pocket for his notebook and pencil. “Hope you don’t mind if I take a few notes. My recollection’s not as good as it used to be.”

As he found a clean page in his notebook, he was sorting through his memories of women’s voices, trying to place this one. It wasn’t easy, though. Southern women tended to sound alike. This voice was familiar—it belonged to one of the Dahlias, he thought. That garden club seemed to get tangled up in everything that went on in Darling. But whose was it? From what he’d heard, half of the club members were working or teaching out there at the camp and could be expected to know something about what was going on. Ophelia, of course, but also Bessie Bloodworth, Verna Tidwell, Liz Lacy, Lucy Murphy, Earlynne Biddle, Miss Rogers, and maybe a couple of others he didn’t know about. Mata Hari could be any one of them. Well, not Miss Rogers, who was a prissy old thing with a voice like a squeaky violin string. No, definitely not her. But any one of the rest. Verna Tidwell was the most likely, he thought.

“Take all the notes you please,” Mata Hari said. “It’s important that you get it right.”

Her words were followed by a lightning flash that made Charlie blink, and the thunderclap followed in seconds. The sky outside the windows was darker, too, and the wind, gusting across the stovepipe, had set up an eerie, vibrating wail, like a kid blowing across a bottle. The storm was getting closer.

“Okay.” He held his pencil poised. “To start with, how come you didn’t contact the sheriff instead of sending that note to me? What we’re talking about here is a crime. Shouldn’t you have gone to Buddy Norris?”

There was a silence. “If I’d known what I know now, I would have.” Mata Hari’s voice was bleak. “Given what’s happened, I wish I had. I think . . . I’m afraid you’ll have to.”

He was about to ask why, but she drew a regretful breath and sighed it out. “You see, when I wrote to you, I was thinking that this was a federal thing, involving a federal employee, and maybe more than one. Yes, there are some local people involved, but mostly it’s federal. So the sheriff wasn’t . . . well, he wasn’t relevant.”

“Wait a minute,” Charlie said, looking up at Silent Cal. “What do you mean, what you know now? What’s changed?”

“We’ll get to that. But later.” There was a moment’s silence. “Anyway, I was thinking that Buddy Norris is a pretty nice boy, but he’s new on the job, you know, with almost no experience, and no connections out there at the camp. So what’s he going to do but go straight to the head guy? And for all I know, Captain Campbell himself might be in on this. It may be his idea. He may be taking a big cut.”

She paused, and Charlie asked, “Do you have any evidence that he is?”