The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

Breathing heavily, Ophelia leaned against her office door, taking comfort from the familiar surroundings where she spent her workdays and trying to push the thought of Rona Jean—dead, murdered—out of her mind. Rona Jean’s murder had nothing to do with Charlie’s investigative assignment. There was nothing to be afraid of. Here in her office, the door firmly locked, she was safe.

The large bush outside the window filtered a greenish light into the room, pale but bright enough so that she didn’t have to turn on the bare 60-watt electric bulb that hung from the ceiling. Her wooden desk, with its covered Remington typewriter, neat stacks of manila file folders, and a gilt-framed photograph of Jed and the kids, sat against the white-painted beadboard wall to her left, her chair pushed under it. Corporal Andrews’ desk—the top clear except for a black dial telephone and a Cypress County phone book—sat against the opposite wall, under a sign that said, NO PERSONAL CALLS. Large area maps were pinned on the walls over both desks. There was a tall, three-drawer wooden filing cabinet; a narrow worktable under the window; and a shelf of thick, paperbound CCC operations manuals. And two doors—the door Ophelia had just closed and locked behind her, and the door that opened into the office that belonged to her boss, the camp quartermaster, Sergeant Luther Webb.

Like most of the other officers at Briarwood and other camps, Sergeant Webb was regular Army. Some people were alarmed by this and declared that the presence of the Army officers (both active duty and reserve) made the camps look like a fascist militia, like what that fellow Hitler was cooking up in Germany. Most Americans were isolationists who, after the experience of being dragged into the Great War by a president who had promised that America would not get involved, were unwilling to support a militia of any description. They liked the idea of a permanent civilian corps that would train young men for work and give them a healthy outdoor life, although they would prefer that it be managed by the Forest Service. But for now, the Army managed the camps, and it looked like it was going to be that way for a long time to come.

Ophelia didn’t much like Sergeant Webb. He was a slender, upright man with a square jaw, a hard eye, and an authoritative air, who made it a rule to follow all rules to the letter. Every document he signed (and there were plenty of them) had to be letter-perfect. If it wasn’t perfect the first time, it had to be redone until it was. He even had his own typewriter, a twin of Ophelia’s standard-issue Remington, and often typed his own reports. That way, he said (somewhat self-importantly, Ophelia thought), he would know it was done right. It wasn’t easy for Ophelia to satisfy his requirements for exactitude, and when he was in the office (thankfully, this was only a few hours a day), the air often crackled with his disapproval.