"Now what?" I poked the unconscious man.
Soo Jin breathed out. "I'm kind of glad he fainted. I don't think I would've been able to really torture him."
"Ah," I mused. "That Hippocratic Oath thing."
She shook her head. "No. It isn't that. Remember, I usually only work with dead people. I've never tormented anyone with a scalpel before. I'm not exactly sure what would work best."
"You really want to find that leg," I said.
"I really do. Are you sure this guy knows about it?"
I wasn't sure. "It's a hunch. He does know something about me. What if they're connected?"
Okay, I had zero evidence of this, but seriously, if there are two suspicious activities committed at the same Civil War reenactment, they must be connected.
"By now," Soo Jin said, "the leg would be rotting. It would smell. So why hasn't anyone noticed it yet?"
"What should we do with him?" I pointed at Ralph.
Soo Jin smiled. "We just leave him here. Maybe he'll freak out when he comes to and lead us to the leg."
"I've got an idea."
Across the room was a stack of parchment and quill. After several very splotchy attempts, I wrote a note that said Thanks for the intel!
"Do you think he'll fall for that?" Soo Jin asked as she helped me pin it to his chest.
I shrugged. "Possibly. He's not very bright. Or maybe his friends will find him with this note and beat it out of him."
"No way we could get that lucky," Soo Jin said as she followed me out of the tent. "Sorry I missed s'mores."
"You didn't miss anything other than pure sugar-coated hostility," I said.
Soo Jin laughed. "I did get a chance to meet her earlier."
"What do you think of her?" I asked Soo Jin. "She seems pretty awful."
Soo Jin gave me a look that was hard to interpret. "I think she's one of those people who likes stirring things up. They do it as a cry for attention, out of jealousy, or because they're just plain mean. Hatred takes up all of their time and energy, so I doubt she's involved."
"Which one is Mary's reason for the way she acts toward me?"
The medical examiner shrugged. "If I had to guess, I'd say she's just plain mean and hates you."
"Hates me? Why? What did I do to her?"
Soo Jin thought about this. "Probably nothing. It could be that she just doesn't like another troop being here. Maybe she hates Girl Scouts. Maybe she hates you because you're from Who's There."
"Okay. That makes sense."
The rivalry between Who's There and Bladdersly had spawned a number of jokes about those cretins. My favorite was how many Raging Bladders does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two. One to figure out what a lightbulb is, and one to jog all the way to Who's There to get someone to drive them back and screw it in.
"I've had to attend a couple of murders in Bladdersly," the medical examiner said. "You wouldn't believe the loathing they have for Who's There. I guess it dates back to some sort of family feud in the late 1800s."
"Oh. Right. That." To be honest, I'd loathed Bladdersly for so long that I'd forgotten about the feud. I told her the story.
Originally, the two towns kind of ignored each other. There wasn't a lot of malice, but there wasn't a lot of neighborly friendliness either. Mostly both places kept themselves to themselves.
Except for the Denton Family. For reasons unknown even to this day, Harry Denton lived in Bladdersly, and his brother Orville lived in Who's There. In spite of their geographic distance, the brothers remained close. Both families attended Sunday services together at the Baptist church on the outskirts of Who's There, their kids played together (a few even married each other, which was icky), and together they helped out their elderly parents on the family farm, which was equidistant between both towns.
All was fine. Until the day their parents died in an accidental tree pruning incident gone awry. No one knows the whole story, but rumor had it the goats had gotten into the moonshine and that was that. And the elderly Dentons, due to an unusual fear of writing things down, hadn't made a will.
You'd think that the boys were fighting over the farm, right? Nope. Both of them wanted the same chicken. A rooster named Satan. Satan was so beloved by the family that when a photographer rolled through town in 1890, instead of a group family photo, each person had an individual shot of them—sitting on the woodpile—with Satan. That photographer took twenty-three photos that day, and the whole thing was so expensive that they sold the grandchildren (only two, one from each side, who fortunately weren't married to each other).
So Orville wanted Satan. And Harry wanted Satan. And neither man would budge. And for reasons unknown, each man allowed Satan to keep living at the family farm until they worked it out. So before long, name-calling in public escalated to fistfights on the streets. Then Orville Jr. shot at Harry Jr. in church.
The sheriff was not amused. He called in a judge from Des Moines, who heard out the two men and was so surprised that the brothers' families were fighting over a chicken, let alone one named Satan, that he jokingly suggested that the deciding factor should be a dance-off.
Harry was the five-time two-step champion of the annual Bladdersly Community Cotillion, and many people from both towns were certain that he would take Satan as the prize. Apparently, so was Orville, who literally had two left feet (his shoes are on display in the Who's There Historical Society). During Harry's first few moves in the competition, Orville shot him.
Because he felt sorry for Harry Jr., and he was still getting over the surprise that the dance-off had become an actual thing, the judge awarded custody of Satan to the dead dancer's son. Unfortunately, shortly after that, Satan choked on a grasshopper and died. You can still see him on display at the Bladdersly Historical Society. The taxidermist went that extra mile and added a grasshopper in his beak.
After that, both families went back to their respective towns, filled with hatred for the other side, which made holidays for the cousins who'd married each other extremely awkward. Over the years, blame shifted from Orville to Who's There. Eventually the whole family died off, but Bladdersly never forgot.
Interestingly enough, of the two grandchildren who'd been sold, one became governor and the other invented oatmeal and raisin cookies and married the US ambassador to France. Go figure.
Soo Jin looked stunned. She recovered and asked, "Okay, that's why Bladdersly hates Who's There. Why does Who's There hate Bladdersly?"
"Because they're idiots" was my reply. "What were we talking about?"
Soo Jin recalled, "Why Mary Gold hates you."
A thought popped into my head. "I wonder if Reuben Murphy with the skunk named Orville was an ancestor to Orville with the chicken named Satan."
Soo Jin studied me for a moment. "You Iowans are so weird."
"Thank you," I agreed.
Back in our tent, the girls seemed to be asleep. I tiptoed through, testing each girl and then Kelly before removing everything but my chemise and crawling into my sleeping bag to wait.
I didn't have to wait long. Betty stirred the moment I began fake snoring. In the dim light, I watched as she pulled her Union uniform from her pillowcase and got dressed. The second she stepped outside, I dove into my own Union uniform and followed her.
Soo Jin's and Eddie's tents were silent, and there wasn't any activity from the provost's or Juliette's tents. The rest of the camp, however, was very much awake. And very busy.
Pulling my kepi hat low over my eyes, I snuck behind the tents, where the men of the 47th were sitting around playing cards. Betty wasn't among them. Slipping back into the shadows, I stopped by the tents of the 23rd, but those men were reading books or talking softly around the fire. No Betty there either.
"Hey, soldier!" a man standing outside of a tent called to me.
I pulled my hat low over my eyes and nodded.
"You must be with the 47th," the man said as he held out his hand. "Name's Eldo."
I'd always been pretty good at disguising my voice. I could do all kinds of accents too. But I never had been able to pull off a male voice convincingly. And considering my years out of the CIA, I wasn't sure this was the right time to give it a shot. Still, maybe this guy had some information I could use.
"Smith," I grunted while squeezing his hand. Grunting and a crushing handshake should be enough to keep him from being suspicious. I could've played it as a woman, but that would make me memorable. It would make me stand out. Neither was good for undercover work.
Eldo nodded and cast his gaze skyward. Now that we were out in the country, the stars were bright and easy to see. It was one of the things I liked most about camping. All those stars.
"Nice night," he said.
"Yup." I cleared my throat. "Kind of a weird reenactment, huh?"
Eldo agreed. "Never heard of Idiot Creek before. Must be a very minor skirmish. I bet they embellished it. Organizers are always doing that."
He had no idea.
"You do many of these?" I asked as gruffly as possible.
"Not really. I can't always get the days off. You?"
"First one," I said, which was totally true.
Eldo looked back up at the sky. "Yeah, this is kind of a strange one."
My ears perked up. "You think so too?"
He laughed. "Well, yeah. There's talk of some kid who's cheating men out of their money."
Was Betty cheating? I guess I never thought to ask her about that. I wouldn't put it past her. Maybe that was why the Rebel had threatened her.
"And a couple of guys told me there's this agent or Fed or someone snooping around."
I froze. Ralph knew my name. Were the men talking about me? I remembered Ike catching me in the act. He had used the word snooping. Was he telling people that he'd caught me in the act?
"What was he snooping about?"
Eldo lit up a cigarette. "Oh, you know. Stuff."
"What stuff?" A leg, perhaps? A dead body missing from the battlefield?
"Confederate money or some such nonsense." He blew smoke rings at the sky.
I relaxed a bit. Eldo was talking about Riley. He'd been a spy and a Fed and was here on a case about fake Confederate cash. That made sense. But Riley's case wasn't important to me.
"I've heard something too," I said. "Something about a man dying out here."
Eldo's eyebrows went up, and he started to study my face. The darkness made it easy to hide, but he was a little too curious. "What did you say your name was? Smith?"
A spy always knows when it's time to go. This was one of those times. It's a skill that keeps your cover from being blown and you from being blown away. Eldo had become interested in our conversation and me. It was time to go.
"Your voice sounds kind of funny," he growled. "You should keep your nose out of other folk's business."
"Gotta go," I grumbled and walked away. Once I knew he wasn't following me, I let out a sigh of relief.
Getting "outed" was something most spies would avoid by calling it a day. I wasn't that bright, and I didn't have much time.
The 166th was totally deserted. Riley and his men were nowhere to be found. Even the tents were empty. That meant only one thing. They were on the other side of the creek with the Confederates.
In between the tents for the 1st Tennessee and the 15th Alabama, a large party was going on. Riley and his men were laughing and drinking whiskey with the Rebels. Someone was playing music on a fiddle, and several men were clapping, with a few dancing.
Men sat in groups, some chatting, others playing cards. Which was where I found my Girl Scout, throwing down with the best of them, while a bunch of drummer boys watched sullenly.
There was some small satisfaction in that.
Why was Riley allowing this? Glancing in his direction, I realized that, while he was talking to the others, he had a steady eye on Betty. It was an old spy trick that works best in dark settings when wearing a hat—all of which was happening. You looked at the person talking to you, but when you laughed, you tilted your head down so that all he could see was the brim, covering your eyes. That's when you looked where you really wanted.
I'm not afraid to say I was pretty good at that. We mostly wore baseball hats as our disguise in this day and age, but there was a time when I was able to see and hear everything a Russian agent was saying while I was wearing a sombrero and talking to a group of college students who thought I'd had too many margaritas.
As a result, I caught the agent passing plans for shutting down the American stock market. And I got to have a few margaritas too.
Knowing that Riley had Betty's back, I slipped between the tents to see who else was there.
Ralph wasn't there. He must still be back at the medic tent. Embry, the galvanized Yankee turned Rebel, was leaning against a tree, watching the card game. Betty was playing against three Rebels, including the one who'd warned me that she should take care, two Union soldiers, and Provost Stumpy Smith.
Now that was interesting since Betty had heard the provost talking to someone in the 15th Alabama, saying the words dead, body, and wrath. It seemed odd that he'd play poker with a little girl, and for money, but considering the huge pile in front of Betty, I assumed she was holding her own okay.
Then I remembered that not only were these the man who'd threatened me with Betty getting hurt, but also the provost had been warned to do something about her or else. This was a dangerous card game indeed. Did Betty know that?
The biggest problem was that I couldn't hear what they were saying. I simply wasn't close enough. If only I'd brought some of my spy equipment. I had a microphone hidden in a mint tin that could pick up a fly rubbing his legs together at two hundred yards.
Why hadn't I brought my equipment with me? Then again, how was I to know something like this would happen and that I'd actually need a mint tin microphone? Oh, who am I kidding? Stuff like this always happened to me. I'd have to be better prepared next time.
Betty said something, and the men all burst out laughing. She was funny—that was true. I wished I could've heard what she'd said. I moved a little closer, still hemmed in by the tents and mostly hidden.
Now I could see more. In fact, I noticed Mary Gold of the Ladies Aid Society sitting on a stool, arms folded over her chest, muttering while she glared at Betty. It probably drove her crazy that a young girl should be hanging out with the men. That made me smile a little. It also worried me that Betty had so many enemies so close to her.
What was Mary Gold's story anyway? It seemed to me that Soo Jin had nailed it. People like Mary Gold tend to attract other mean people. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if she was friends with Juliette Dowd.
That's when Juliette walked over and sat down next to her.
Sometimes I hated being right. If she was socializing with my greatest nemesis since I quit the CIA, she didn't deserve a second chance. Out of curiosity, I retreated, moved two tents over, and hid in the shadows while I listened to the women.
Juliette had finished talking. I didn't know what she had said, but Mary's jaw dropped open.
"And she stole your fiancé? Just like that?"
Great. So Juliette was still bitter that Rex had married me. He had never been her fiancé. They'd barely dated in high school. Years later, when she found out I was dating Rex, she decided I was evil incarnate.
"What a slut!" Mary said.
I didn't really take offence because I didn't really care what these women thought of me.
Juliette, in finding a sympathetic ally, got excited. "She used to be a spy, you know. I think she used some sort of secret hypnosis to win him over."
I couldn't help but smile at that. Of course we had secret hypnosis! But it was extremely temporary and wouldn't have worked on Rex. Very effective, though, when you need to convince a crooked Estonian politician that he really wants to move to Antarctica to research penguins. That was one of the times the hypnosis did work long term. The man in question joined a team of researchers just before the winter blizzards hit. He was stuck there for six months. By the time he got out, the Estonians had declared him dead and elected someone a little less crooked to take his place.
"I didn't like her the minute I laid eyes on her," Mary said.
Oh, like that was a surprise.
"She really is unlikeable," Juliette agreed. "Which I don't get because so many people at the council really like her."
"Have you ever thought about getting revenge?" Mary said.
That made my ears prick up.
"What do you mean?"
Mary looked around and then leaned forward, whispering to Juliette. Juliette's eyes grew wide, and she nodded eagerly.
"Do you think that would work?" Juliette asked.
"Of course." Mary smiled. "Here's what we do…" Her voice faded as they plotted against me.
I leaned forward a little, but it wasn't enough.
"What are you doing here?" a child addressed me from behind.
Betty was staring at me, arms folded over her chest. "You're spying on me."
"Of course I was," I said as I whisked her back into the darkness. "But I have a bigger problem, and I might need your help."
"Oh yeah?" Her eyebrows went up.
I filled her in on the conversation I'd just heard, leaving out the word slut of course. I'm not a total degenerate.
Betty held out her hand. "Lend me $20."
"For gambling?" I shook my head. "Of course I'm not going to do that."
"Just trust me," the child said.
"Tell me what you need it for."
I was too smart to just give the equivalent of a couple of hundred dollars to a kid. Mostly because I'd done that once before with her. She bought 2,000 glass marbles that she unleashed on her brother Bart and his friends when he had a secret party at their house while their parents were gone. Fifteen kids were sent to the hospital with broken arms, legs, and ankles. Betty had everything cleaned up before the authorities knocked on the door, and since Bart smelled like a brewery and had no proof, they had a little talking to with his bewildered parents.
"Just trust me," she said. "I'll find out what you want to know."
Against my better judgement, as always, I handed over the money. "Any word on our little investigation?"
"Not yet." Betty shrugged. "Soon. Thanks!" She ran off toward the poker game.
I looked out to see that Juliette had left and Mary was sitting by herself, grinning madly. I really needed to find out what those two were up to.
In fact, it didn't seem very fair that I had to deal with all of this. There was the warning from Ralph that he now denied, the missing leg, the provost's mention of dead bodies and my name, and now Juliette was working with my Southern counterpart to get revenge on me.
This just wasn't fun anymore.