The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady (27 page)

“Not really. He didn't put the bite on all the bidders, just on the ones he thought would pay up. Where there was a lot of competition among bidders. Or where the contract was really big and he thought the bidder was anxious to get it. The first lumber contract alone, I know, was worth ten thousand dollars.”

“Yeah,” he said ironically. “Pretty damned big. He must be raking it in by the thousands, getting ready to do a quick fade.” He made another note.
The money—in cash somewhere, in a bank account?
In cash, if the man was smart. Bank accounts were easily traced. “Do you know where he's keeping it?”

She didn't answer the question. Instead, she said, “But
when I say it got bad, I don't mean that it just got
big
. I mean—” She broke off. When she spoke again, Charlie could hear the tears in her voice. She was speaking so low that he almost couldn't hear what she said next. “This is where it gets to be more than just a newspaper story, Mr. Dickens. This is the part where I think you have to go to the sheriff.”

Charlie stopped writing. It had been hot when he arrived, and he'd left his jacket in the car. The storm had dropped the temperature dramatically, and his sweaty shirt was as cold against his shoulders as if he'd just taken it out of Fannie's icebox. He shivered.

“Go to the sheriff? But a minute ago you said—”

“I know what I said.” There was a long silence. Outside, the wind was pushing like a live thing, a savage thing, against the building, and Charlie thought he could feel it shudder.

At last she said, “Look. I sent you that note the day I told my husband that I wasn't going to bid on another contract. I didn't tell him why, just that I didn't want to do it anymore.”

Her husband
, Charlie thought. Well, that let Verna Tidwell out, and Liz Lacy and Bessie, none of whom were married. Earlynne Biddle? Could Mata Hari be Earlynne? Maybe—her husband ran the Coca-Cola bottling plant outside of town, and Charlie knew that Earlynne worked part-time in the office there. The bottling plant very likely had a contract to supply soft drinks to the camp.

She was going on. “I could afford to stop bidding because my husband has a good job and I'm working, too. But most people can't afford to get out. They need the money to buy shoes for the kids or put food on the table. They're forced to become criminals just to stay afloat. And it doesn't have to be that way! If it's honestly run, the contract system will work for everybody. For the camp, for the suppliers, for Darling.”
She dropped her voice. “When I wrote that note, I was hoping that all I had to do was give you a little push and get you started on the story, and you'd do the rest. You'd see that the system got fixed and I wouldn't have to be involved.” She was silent for a moment, as if putting a period to that sentence. “That's what I thought. Until this morning.”

“This morning?” Charlie asked. “What happened this morning?” And then he remembered. An icy finger began to tickle his spine, from his nape down to his tailbone. “You mean, when you heard about—”

“Yes,” Mata Hari said, in a very low voice. “That's why I had to talk to you
today
.”

A blinding flash of blue-white light illuminated the classroom for an instant and was gone just as quickly. The lightning was followed a heartbeat later by a bone-rattling clap of thunder.

He sucked in his breath. “You're telling me that this bribery business out at the camp is connected to Rona Jean Hancock's
murder
?” In his mind, he was putting two and two together—what Fannie had told him about Rona Jean's willingness to trade her baby for money, what the sheriff had told him about the deal she'd made with Violet and Myra May—and it was beginning to add up. Maybe.

He licked his lips. “You're saying that Rona Jean found out what was going on? That she blackmailed the guy who was running the kickback system?” He swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the lump in the middle of his gullet. “That she was killed to shut her up?”

As he said this, he thought how ridiculous it sounded, like a page out of an Ellery Queen mystery. But it wasn't ridiculous at all. It was utterly reasonable, given the way Rona Jean operated. She knew how to manipulate people, how to turn their desires—Fannie's longing for a child,
Violet's wish for a sister or brother for her daughter—into weapons she could use. She knew what
she
wanted and she wasn't afraid to go after it. And that kind of audacity could be dangerous. It could even be deadly.

“Yes,” Mata Hari said. “I think she was killed to keep her quiet.” Her voice was very low. “She knew what was going on. As for the other thing, the blackmail, I don't know that for sure. I think so, but—”

“But how did she find out?” Charlie interrupted urgently. “She wouldn't have been a supplier. How did she know—”

Another sudden gust of wind slammed the old building. This time, Charlie
knew
he could feel it shudder, and he wondered how solid the old piers were underneath the building. Or more to the point, how solid the frame construction was on top of the piers. Another gust or two like that one and the whole thing could—

“Think about it,” Mata Hari commanded sharply. “Where did Rona Jean work?”

“Well, she worked at the . . .” And then Charlie understood. “Of course. She worked at the Exchange. She listened in on a telephone call.” It was against the rules, of course, and not all the operators did it. But some did, especially at night, when the traffic was slow and they had nothing else to do. People in Darling knew, and if they had something they didn't want anybody to hear, they didn't trust it to the telephone. But somebody from out of town, somebody who was used to privacy on the phone, wouldn't know this. He might—

“Yes,” Mata Hari said. “That's how it happened. She listened in on a telephone call. I'm sure it wasn't the first time for her. She figured out what he was doing and snooped around until she discovered who he was, and when she did, I'm sure she thought she'd found herself a gold mine. She got herself introduced to him.” Her voice became bitter.
“From then on, it wasn't hard at all. He was a pushover—for her, anyway.”

Charlie had stopped writing now and was listening hard, listening to the story but also listening between the lines, listening to the woman who was telling it. And beginning to guess at another reason for her refusal to let him know who she was. The man she was talking about had been her friend. No, more than that, she had been in love with him, married woman or not. Maybe she had even been thinking of leaving her husband for him, leaving Darling and starting a new life somewhere else. And maybe he'd been in love with her, too, a lot or a little. Or maybe he was just taking advantage of her interest in him, finding her willing, even eager for kisses and whatever else he wanted. Which had maybe been just fine, for both of them.

Until Rona Jean had come along and changed the equation.

“I couldn't figure out what he saw in her.” Mata Hari went on, now speaking flatly, mechanically. “She wasn't all that pretty, but there was something . . . I don't know, seductive maybe. They went to the movies over in Monroeville, and to the roller rink and the dances at the camp. I could see that he was getting in over his head and I tried to warn him, but he thought he was in charge where women were concerned and he wouldn't listen. Until she told him what she wanted.”

Almost playfully, lightning skipped and skittered outside the window. The wind pummeled the building. “What was that?” Charlie asked. “What did she want? Marriage?”

She laughed abruptly. “No. Not that. She might have wanted a husband in the beginning, but somewhere along the way she changed her mind. What she wanted was a lump-sum payoff—a substantial payoff—to keep quiet. She wanted to leave Darling and get a new start somewhere else.
She demanded money. Five hundred dollars. And when he heard that—” A blast of wind and rain rattling against the windows blotted out the rest of her sentence.

Charlie waited until the assault quieted. “When he heard that, he
what
?” he prompted.

Her voice flattened out, lost all inflection. “I don't really know, because I wasn't . . . because after that we didn't . . . we didn't talk anymore.” In her pause, Charlie heard a final chapter of aching regret, the ending of a love affair, the beginning of a new and painful understanding.

After a moment, she went on. “I don't know, but I can guess. He decided he couldn't trust her. He was afraid that once he gave her anything, there'd never be an end to it. She'd keep coming back to him, asking him for money, for the rest of his life. He isn't the kind of man who could live with somebody holding something over his head. I hate the thought of it, and I almost can't believe I'm saying this, but I think . . .” Her words were swallowed by a sob.

“You think he killed her.” Charlie was suddenly frozen in the understanding that his two big stories—Rona Jean's murder and the kickback scheme—were one single story, a story that was bigger than anything he had ever written.

“Yes,” she said. “I think so. I don't know for sure, but I think so.” She was struggling with the words. “I don't think he planned it, though. I think she taunted him until he got so angry that he lost his head and just . . . just
did
it. I can't prove any of this—I don't have even a single clue, except what I know about her demand. But I know him and I heard what happened to her and I can't live with myself if I don't tell what I know.” She took a deep breath. “I'll tell you his name. But I can't go to the sheriff. You'll have to do that for me.” Another breath. “Please.”

She's desperate
, Charlie thought, understanding.
She's trying to do the right thing, but she's scared. She wants to see justice done, but she doesn't want anybody in Darling to know that she's been romantically involved with a man who isn't her husband, who is running a kickback racket, who might even be a killer. She's hoping to go back to her marriage without being found out. She's using me as a conduit to law enforcement—and a screen to hide behind.

But he couldn't blame her for any of this, could he? He had fallen in love unwisely a time or two himself, and he understood the desperation she must be feeling. She'd paid a bribe, yes—but so had dozens of other people. And she had come forward with her suspicions about the murder, and about the suspect's possible motive, even though she might still care for him. She could have kept quiet, but she hadn't. He had to give her credit for that.

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped in front of him. “Okay. But I still think the sheriff will want to talk to you. He won't take my word for any of this, because it's secondhand. It's . . .” He groped for the legal term. “It's hearsay. He'll be looking for evidence. He'll need—”

“No, please!” she cried. “I can't talk to him. I can't! I have to stay out of it entirely.” She hurried on. “You've got everything you need to expose the kickbacks and print your story. For Rona Jean's murder, you can tell the sheriff that you got an anonymous tip that he should question Corporal Raymond Andrews, out at Camp Briarwood. And if he needs evidence, tell him to take a look at the motorcycle pool roster at the camp. Ray had to check the motorcycle out every time he drove it to town and check it in when he brought it back. He didn't have any other way to get around.”

Corporal Andrews?
Charlie was surprised. And then he
wasn't. The quartermaster's assistant, the man who placed the ads every couple of weeks, was a good-looking man, mid-thirties, maybe forty, affable and quite charming. He was the kind of guy who could ask for a bribe and make it seem like he was doing the other person a big favor.

“Corporal Andrews,” he said aloud. “I see.”

“Yes,” she said. He could hear the muffled misery in her voice. “Tell the sheriff everything, if you want, and take all the glory. For breaking the story, for giving the sheriff a lead to the man who might have killed Rona Jean. But leave me out of it,
please.
”

Blue-white lightning flared like popping flashbulbs, and thunder was an almost constant stutter. Rain was sheeting down the closed windows and pouring in buckets through those that were broken. Water was spreading across the floor, and the smell of wet dust hung on the air.

“I understand,” Charlie said, raising his voice above the storm. “But it would be better if you'd come with me to talk to the sheriff. I know Buddy Norris. He's a good guy. He'll keep your part in this confidential. He's got ways to handle stuff like this, if you'll just trust him.” He hoped it sounded like he knew what he was talking about. “Look. All you have to do is get in the car with me. We'll drive to town, and you can tell Buddy everything you've told me.” He made himself laugh. “Hell, we can even put a bag over your head if you don't want anybody to see your face. So what do you say? The deputy is working on fingerprints now, and they may be able to get a match. If they do, it'll make the case. You won't have to—”

But the rest of what he had intended to say was annihilated by a blinding flash of lightning and a simultaneous explosion, as lightning struck the old sycamore next to the
building. The tree exploded like a detonating artillery shell, dropping two massive limbs squarely on the school building's roof and hurling showers of sparks and torso-sized chunks of splintered, flaming wood through the windows. The school's belfry toppled onto the roof, and the roof collapsed on the desks with a deafening roar, as if a giant hand had broken its spine. The stovepipe came down and the Acme stove crashed over onto its side. The schoolroom filled with a haze of dust and old ashes—and smoke and the smell of burning kerosene.