The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

“No, and I’m not saying he is. But if he doesn’t know anything about it, people will say that he should, since it’s his camp and he’s responsible for what happens in it. Either way, it’s bad for him. His reputation is at stake. He won’t want anybody poking around, especially the local law. Give him half a chance and he’d probably sweep the whole thing under the rug.” She paused again. “And go after anybody who might have squealed.” With the last sentence, her voice had changed, almost imperceptibly. It held something that Charlie thought sounded like fear.

“I see.” Charlie was scribbling fast, trying to get her words down verbatim. “So you wrote to me instead of the sheriff. You didn’t stop to think that I might go straight to the head guy?”

But he now had a different, and rather unsettling, perspective. He was looking at the situation from her point of view. Whoever she was—and she could be any one of a half-dozen women—her knowledge made her vulnerable. It put her in danger, like . . . The image of the woman he had seen this morning, dead, strangled, flashed into his mind, and he frowned. Why had he thought of that? There wasn’t any connection between Rona Jean Hancock and what was going on at the camp. Was there?

Mata Hari gave a humorless chuckle. “Of course you won’t go to the head guy. You won’t go to anybody, not on this. You don’t want to solve a crime or put somebody in jail. You don’t get paid—or get elected—for doing that. You just want a story. And that’s what I want, too. If you write this up the way I tell you and run it in the Dispatch, they won’t be able to ignore it out there at the camp, or pretend that it’s not happening. What’s more, that’ll keep me safe. The bad guy—or guys, or whatever—might suspect me of telling, but they won’t dare touch me.”

Charlie wondered at that. There could be a lot riding on this. Why wouldn’t the “bad guy” (singular or plural) try to silence her, to keep her from telling what she knew? He started to say this, but a heavy thud of thunder interrupted him, and when the reverberations had died away, Mata Hari was hurrying on.

“But even better, if you do a really, really good story on this, it might get picked up by a bigger paper. Maybe somebody will start an investigation. And when that happens, this swindle will stop. There won’t be any more kickbacks.” Half under her breath, she added, “At least, that’s what I was thinking when I wrote you that note.”

“It’s good thinking,” Charlie said approvingly. It was. She had thought this all the way through, and her conclusions were pretty much in line with his own thoughts on the matter. “But if I’m going to run a story, I can’t do it just on your say-so. I don’t even know who the hell you are, or whether what you’re telling me is the truth or a passel of lies. I have to run a background check on your information. I have to confirm it with other sources, the more, the better. But first, I’m going to need everything you’ve got—names, dates, amounts, everything you know. Don’t hold anything back. And let’s start with your name. Your real name.”

Of course, Charlie had already begun to work on that background check. That was why he’d put Ophelia Snow on special assignment and why she was out there at the camp today, getting the confirmation he needed. At least, that’s what she was supposed to do, assuming that everything was going according to plan. Which it didn’t always.

The wind blew eerily down the stovepipe again, and ashes puffed out into the room, wraith-like, the ghostly remains of long-dead fires. Somewhere toward the entry to the building—in the belfry, maybe—a board pulled loose and took up an annoying arrhythmic banging.

“No,” Mata Hari said in a determined voice. “I am not going to tell you who I am. But I’ll tell you everything else I know. Get your pencil and start writing.”