The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady (22 page)

“Had you seen this man before?” Buddy asked. “Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

“I don't think so.” Mrs. Hart pushed her lips in and out. “Far as I know, he ain't been in the laundry, at least when I've been up front here. He's kinda built big, like my Artis, with big shoulders.” She illustrated with both hands.

Built big, big shoulders.
Buddy was taking notes. It wasn't a
very good description. But most of the young men he had seen out at the CCC camp were thin and underweight. Someone with a big build and wide shoulders might stand out. “Height?”

She eyed Buddy. “About as tall as you, maybe.”

Buddy wrote down
5'10”
. “When you saw Miss Hancock and this man on Thursday night, did they seem . . . were they . . . well, friendly?”

Mrs. Hart frowned. “If you mean, were they huggin' and kissin'—no, they weren't. They were mostly talking, and neither of 'em seemed any too happy about it, either.”

Not happy.
“Arguing?”

“Maybe,” she said slowly. “I couldn't hear. They were serious, is all I can say. They weren't funnin' around.”

“How long did they talk?”

She considered. “Maybe four, five minutes. Then she walked off and he climbed on his motorcycle and rode away.” She frowned. “Blasted the night to smithereens, he did, revvin' up that engine. Rode away mad was the way it looked to me.”

Motorcycle.
Of course. “Can you describe the motorcycle?”

“Well, I couldn't see it too good that night, but I've seen it before,” she said. “Around town, I mean. Green, with U.S. Army painted on it, and a rack on the back, and saddlebags. Leather saddlebags, with buckles.”

Instantly, Buddy knew the motorcycle she was describing. He had noticed it, too, here and there: an olive-drab 1930 Harley-Davidson, about the same size as his Indian Ace.

Mrs. Hart was going on. “Mostly when I see that motorcycle, it's parked—like, out in front of the diner or the movie theater.” Her hand went to her mouth and she gave him a round-eyed look. “Are you thinking that maybe the one that drives it is the one that
killed
her?”

“Could be,” Buddy said. “If you see him or the motorcycle again, could you call the sheriff's office right away?”

“Oh, I will, Sheriff,” she said. “I surely will.” She regarded him, shaking her head a little, marveling. “You know, I just can't help remembering how you used to come in here, pulling that little red wagon piled up with your dirty underpants and socks. And just look at you now, all grown up and a
sheriff.
” She was beaming. “My, my, you have done us all
proud
.”

Buddy ducked his head, feeling himself coloring. He tried to think of something to say, but the best he could do was, “Yes, ma'am. Thank you.”

Her smile faded and she cocked her head, regarding him sternly. “Well, maybe I oughtta say that you'll do us proud when you catch that killer and lock him up. We can't have folks goin' around stranglin' other folks here in Darling. It ain't right, Buddy. It just ain't right at
all
. I'm sure your daddy has told you that.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Buddy said contritely.

Ophelia Collects What She Came For

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.

Ophelia very much liked Corporal Andrews, though, and appreciated his informality—they were on a first-name basis—and his relaxed way of working. The corporal was well built, with crisp brown hair, pale blue eyes, and a flash of ironic humor in a face that could be as hard as a nut. He was quite good-looking, Ophelia thought. No wonder Lucy was interested in him—
if
she was. The corporal was a Yankee from the big city of Chicago, with a Yankee's quick, staccato speech. But while he sometimes seemed secretly amused by Darling's small-town ways, his pleasant friendliness made him easy to like. Ophelia especially appreciated his infectious laugh, which took some of the sting out of Sergeant Webb's by-the-book style and his daily demand that they get the job done fast and get it done
right
.

Which wasn't easy. Measured by the reams of paperwork that crossed their desks and flew on to the various offices in Washington, the quartermaster's office was the busiest in the camp. It handled the arrangements for buying or leasing all the materials and supplies and equipment necessary to build and maintain the camp and carry out its mission. The office operated under a single cardinal rule, as it was spelled out by the sign on the office wall: BUY LOCAL.

As Sergeant Webb had explained to Ophelia and Corporal Andrews, although it wasn't discussed much publically, one of the goals of the Civilian Conservation Corps program was to pump money into the economically crippled towns and villages around the camps. As much as possible, the camp's supplies were supposed to be purchased locally. Orders that had to be filled outside the local area had to go through the office of the camp commandant, and Captain Campbell had made it clear that he didn't want to see them.

But while buying local was proving to be an economic windfall for Cypress County, it could be a challenge. When Camp Briarwood was first established, everyone had lived in tents while the permanent buildings were built. This construction had required an enormous amount of milled lumber, which was hauled out to the camp from Ozzie Sherman's sawmill and from three or four smaller sawmills elsewhere in the county. Musgrove's Hardware and Mann's Mercantile had supplied sacks of concrete, rolls of tar-paper roofing, and all the tools for clearing and construction—shovels and axes and hammers and saws and carpenters' planes. To get all this material out to the camp, a new road had to be built, using mule teams and equipment rented or leased from local farmers and teamsters. Native stone and gravel was used where possible; where it wasn't, Carruthers Gravel Pit had provided what was needed. For all this work, the supplies had to get where they were needed and get there fast, which was often hard to do, for the local merchants and suppliers were geared to a lower demand and a slower pace.

And that wasn't the end of it. When the initial camp construction was finished, it was time to get started on the projects. The first was the new bridge over Pine Mill Creek and a couple of concrete bridges on the road that led to the camp. After that, they had built six new fire towers. There was talk of even bigger projects, like the dam on Pine Mill Creek, which could create a sixty-acre lake for fishing and boating. If that happened, they might build recreation facilities around the lake to attract tourists. All of this building required more materials—obtained locally wherever possible and paid for through the quartermaster's office.

In the meantime, of course, everybody at the camp had to be fed three meals a day, every single day of the year. The Army sent in some of the staples—flour and sugar and coffee.
And some of the fresh vegetables were grown in the garden that Bessie managed. But the rest of it had to be found locally, and merchants and farmers from Darling and Cypress County were granted contracts to supply meat, vegetables, fruits, milk, eggs, and bread. The quartermaster handled the payments for that, as well.

As Camp Briarwood's liaison officer, Ophelia had played a vital role in finding the right suppliers and contractors. She had spent all her life in Cypress County and could confidently boast that she knew every single merchant, businessman, farmer, orchardist, and plantation owner, as well as all their fathers, brothers, cousins, and friends. So when somebody put in a bid to become a supplier, Ophelia was responsible for assessing the capability of his (or her) dairy herd to supply milk, cream, and butter; or an orchard to produce peaches and plums; or a garden to provide fresh vegetables; or a herd of pigs or beef cattle to furnish the kitchen with steaks, hamburger, bacon, and ribs. She did a good job, too. She had been able to find local suppliers who were qualified to fill more than 90 percent of the orders Sergeant Webb gave her.

Of course, Ophelia didn't do the purchasing itself, or handle any of the billing or the payments. Corporal Andrews negotiated the contracts with the suppliers. Sergeant Webb prepared and managed the invoices that went to the appropriate federal offices in Washington, D.C., where payment was approved and the checks sent to the camp for disbursement. They were held in a locked drawer of the quartermaster's desk until the suppliers picked them up. The system was straightforward enough, Ophelia had thought, and—at least as far as she could tell—it seemed to be working perfectly. There was hardly ever a hitch in the supply schedule, and none of the suppliers had ever complained that they weren't paid on time.

But somebody—a woman, he said, calling herself Mata
Hari—had tipped Charlie Dickens that something fishy was going on in the quartermaster's office, and he had asked Ophelia to help him find out whether the tipster was telling the truth. Now that she was here, though, in this deserted, creepy building, Ophelia was getting cold feet. And recalling the story of Mata Hari, she seemed to remember that the woman, an exotic dancer, had been executed for being a German spy. All of a sudden, her excuse for coming—that she had to pick up some paperwork—didn't seem very plausible. What did she have to get off her desk that was so pressing and urgent that it couldn't wait until Monday morning?

But she was here, and she should do what she had come to do and get out as fast as she could. There was a sheaf of papers on her desk—that was her excuse for being here, if anybody asked. But what she was really after was a file folder that was kept in the locked top drawer of the gray metal file cabinet in Sergeant Webb's office. In it was an up-to-date list she had recently typed of the vouchers that had been prepared for payment to the merchants, farmers, and other suppliers from whom the camp had purchased goods and services. She couldn't for the life of her think why Charlie Dickens would want that voucher list, and when she asked him, he had only said something vague about “checking” with a few of the suppliers. But he'd insisted that it was important to get it, and she would do her best.

Nervously, she went to the sergeant's door and pushed it open. The quartermaster's office was windowless and airless and black as pitch, and smelled of the sergeant's pipe tobacco. She reached up and pulled the chain on the light bulb that hung from the ceiling. When it came on, the bulb swung back and forth, casting swaying shadows across the walls and the bare pine floor. The sergeant's desk was scrupulously neat, the papers stacked with their edges aligned, two pencils
lying perfectly parallel, a calendar displaying the day's date, a small gold clock displaying the time, a wooden name plaque displaying its owner's title and name: Sgt. Luther T. Webb, U.S. Army. On a shelf behind the desk were several Army purchasing manuals, a couple of sharpshooting award plaques, and a framed photograph of a pretty blond woman and two small girls in party dresses standing in front of a well-kept home with palm trees in the background—the sergeant's wife and children, who lived in St. Petersburg. He never spoke of them, though, and she had never seen any letters going back and forth or known him to take leave to go to St. Pete for a visit.

Ordinarily, Ophelia was only allowed in Sergeant Webb's office when he was there, and she rarely had a reason to open his filing cabinet, which he kept locked. But a few days before, he had asked her to return a file to the top drawer, and she noticed that he had taken the key out of the top drawer of his desk.

Feeling guilty and more than a little apprehensive (
What if somebody came in and caught her?
), she opened the desk drawer (
Lucky it wasn't locked, too!
), found the key, and hurried to the filing cabinet. It only took a minute to locate the file Charlie wanted: a manila folder labeled “Local Suppliers.” She was familiar with it because she herself had typed the voucher list for the sergeant just last week, and she found it easily, in the very front of the folder. She had alphabetized the suppliers' names, addresses, and amounts. The single-spaced list was numbered, with thirty names on the first page, twenty-two on the second page, and the pages were stapled together in the upper-left corner. Charlie had suggested that she take the list home and copy it out by hand. She could give him the copy, then replace the original in the file when she went to the office on Monday morning. She
figured that would work, since the sergeant never showed up before ten o'clock.

But as she was replacing the manila folder in the filing cabinet drawer, Ophelia happened to see that the folder contained a second typed, single-spaced list of vouchers, also labeled “Local Suppliers.” The sergeant must have typed this one, however, since she hadn't, and she and the sergeant were the only ones in the office who typed. The list was made up of three stapled pages, not two, and contained not fifty-two typed names, addresses, and amounts, but seventy.
Seventy?
Puzzled, Ophelia scanned it, noticing that on the list were quite a few names she didn't recognize—eighteen in all, it looked like.

But according to the addresses, these people, eighteen of them, lived in Cypress County. Who were they? Why weren't they on
her
list? Had she somehow missed that many names? If she had, when Sergeant Webb got around to noticing what a mess she had made of the task, he'd be furious. She had better do something about it, like maybe retype her list and add his names. And the sooner she did that, the better—
before
he found out. She would take both lists home with her, and bring them both back on Monday morning. The risk would be no greater for one than for two, she told herself. Or as her grandmother used to say,
You might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb
.