Page 62 of The Other Lady Vanishes

“The answers are at home,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sure.”

He didn’t argue. She took his hand and led him up to the road. Jake’s speedster was the only vehicle in sight.

He contemplated the car with a thoughtful air.

“You should drive,” he said.

“That is a very good idea.”

Chapter 30

The most dangerous time in a blackmail operation was the moment when the transaction took place, Thelma Leggett thought.

It was two o’clock in the morning. She stood inside a deserted hot dog stand, Zolanda’s pistol in one hand, and watched the darkened ticket booth at the entrance of the old seaside amusement park.

The park had closed a few years earlier, one more victim of the lousy economy. It had never been as grand as the boardwalk amusement park farther up the coast in Santa Cruz, but when she was a kid, it had seemed like a magical place. Tonight the moonlight shone down on the hulking skeletons of the great wheel and the roller coaster. The rides and arcades that lined the old midway were now deserted ruins. The wooden boardwalk was rotting into the sand.

She had chosen the ticket booth for the drop point because she knew the territory. When she was a little girl, her mother had often taken her to the amusement park in the summer when they came to the small town to visit her uncle. Tonight she had left her car parked acouple of blocks away on a dark side street where it was unlikely to be noticed. She had spotted the opening in the fence at the back of the park that morning when she had set out to choose a safe location for the payoff.

She and Zolanda had developed a variety of secure payoff strategies. The ticket booth had the single most important advantage that they had considered necessary for success in the extortion business—it could be observed from a safe distance. The old hot dog stand in which she stood was just one of a sprawling jumble of tumbledown shacks and arcades that littered the grounds of the amusement park.

A car cruised slowly past the sagging gates at the front of the park. It was the first vehicle to drive down the street in the nearly two hours that she had been waiting. Arriving early to ensure that there were no surprises was another important element of the payoff procedure.

Her nerves, already strained to the breaking point, threatened to shatter. She had collected blackmail payments before but always in Los Angeles, a city that was big enough to allow her to remain hidden.

Tonight was different. It was very possible that tonight she was doing business with a killer.

She could have used a couple of cups of the Enlightenment tea that Adelaide Brockton had concocted for Zolanda. Luckily she had a bottle of whiskey waiting back at the cabin.

A sedan stopped at the end of the street, did a U-turn, and drove back to the entrance of the amusement park. The driver brought the vehicle to a halt a short distance away. A figure wearing a trench coat with the collar pulled up and a hat angled low to conceal the profile got out from behind the wheel.

Thelma’s pulse skittered with excitement. Her first solo extortion payoff was going like clockwork. She didn’t count the deal that she had done with Conrad Massey yesterday. That had been a straightforward financial transaction.

She had been careful to conceal herself behind a large pair of sunglasses and a big hat when she met Massey at the gas station, but there was no reason to fear him. All he wanted was the information she had to sell—the location of the woman who was currently calling herself Adelaide Brockton—and he had been willing to pay for it. Massey had burned rubber when he floored the accelerator of his speedster and headed off down the highway toward Burning Cove.

But tonight’s business was very different and a lot more dangerous.

The figure in the trench coat and hat pushed open the rusty gates and stopped briefly. A flashlight sparked. Thelma realized the target was looking for the ticket booth that she had described on the phone. She had made certain that it could be easily spotted.

The target hurried toward the ticket booth and pushed a bulky package over the counter. It fell inside the small structure and disappeared.

It was all over in less than two minutes. The target rushed back to the sedan and drove off down the street.

Thelma waited until the rumble of the vehicle’s engine had faded into the distance. And then she waited a little longer, just to be sure. The thrill of success threatened to steal her breath. Her pulse was kicking up like crazy now.

Hardly daring to believe how easy it had been, she left the shadows of the hot dog stand and went quickly to the ticket booth. She opened the rear door. The interior of the small structure was steeped in darkness. She couldn’t see a thing and she didn’t dare use her flashlight for fear that a passerby might notice it.

She took two cautious steps inside. The toe of her shoe nudged an object on the floor. She reached down and grabbed the envelope. It was thick and reassuringly heavy. Small bills bound up in large quantities weighed more than most people expected.

Clutching the envelope in one hand and the pistol in the other, sheleft the ticket booth and started back through the amusement park. The fog was rolling in fast but there was still enough moonlight to allow her to find her way.

It had all been so easy.

She heard a sound behind her. Panic jolted her nerves, even as she told herself there was nothing to worry about. She had probably surprised a transient who had decided to bed down in the shelter of the old carousel.

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