The Burnt House

“So why can’t you get this information from WestAir?”

“I did,” Marge lied. “But Ace Insurance has asked me to go directly to the paper and compare it to the WestAir list.” She let go with a wide smile and a wink. “You’re a newspaper person, you know how important it is to check your facts.”

Delgado nodded. “If anyone had a list, it would have been Tricia, but she’s on vacation.”

“Dang. And there’s no one else who might have had that list?”

Delgado thought a moment. “Let me see what I can do. Would you mind waiting here for a few minutes?”

“No problem. Thank you very much, Mr. Delgado. You’ve been an enormous help. It sure beats talking to voice mail.”

“I’m glad, although I haven’t done anything.” Delgado smiled. “Wait right here. As I said, it may take me a few minutes.”

After he left, Marge thought about Delgado, who wasn’t much older than Vega. Her daughter seemed to be making unexpected headway in the social-arts department. After her first successful party experience, Vega was once again asked out by Josh, from her particle-physics course. This time it was di

The minutes stretched on.

Marge checked her BlackBerry. Will Barnes had called, text messaging that he was coming down to Santa Barbara for an interview. Did she want to come up? A weekend in the resort city sounded nice, and she was thinking about walks on the beach and a terrific halibut di

“The first list actually printed by the paper wasn’t hard to find. That’s this one.” He gave it to Marge, then rattled another piece of paper in front of her eyes. “As far as I can tell-and I’m not positive about this-but I believe this is the original list given to us by WestAir, and just as you said, it has fewer names than the list the newspaper printed.”

“See? I actually was sent here for a purpose.” She held out her hand.

“Uh, I should have asked you this in the begi

“Sure.” Marge rifled through her purse and debated showing Delgado her police identification. Sometimes, when she showed it quickly, people barely read it. This wasn’t one of those cases. Delgado wanted to verify who she was. She said, “You know, I don’t have my business cards with me. I can show you my driver’s license.” She presented it to him. “Don’t read my birth date. It’s not polite.”

He smiled, but studied the license. “You are indeed Marge Du

The only way she was going to slip out of this unscathed was if he smelled a big scoop slipping away. “You know, maybe I should wait for Tricia Woodard and go through proper cha

Delgado frowned. “What are you really after, Ms. Du

“Why don’t you let me look at the list and I’ll tell you.”

The young man made a calculated decision. He handed her the slip of paper. Rusty was nothing if not efficient. At the bottom of the first list were three names that had been added to the printed list. The first two were Campbell De

The last name on Delgado’s added list was Rosea

Marge pointed to the first two names. “It looks like these two were the children of ticketed passengers. This last one-Rosea

“None whatsoever. What do you think?”

“Spoken like a true newspaper person. Any idea who called her name in as an official victim?”

“Probably WestAir.”

“Probably, or do you know that for sure?”

“No, I don’t know that for sure. I didn’t have anything to do with compiling the list. That was Tricia’s job. I’m just showing it to you, and I probably shouldn’t be doing that because you suspect something is amiss. Want to tell me about it?”

“I don’t think anything’s wrong. I was sent to verify who called Rosea

“Then the woman would be alive,” Delgado said.

“Alive and scamming or she could be dead by some other means. It could have been called in by someone who had something to gain if Rosea

Delgado was definitely interested now.

Marge said, “Let me ask you something theoretically. What if it wasn’t WestAir who called in her death? What if it was a third party? You wouldn’t automatically add Rosea

“No. Tricia would have fact-checked the call with the desk editor and with WestAir. What are you thinking? That Rosea

“I’m not thinking anything, I’m just verifying.” Marge placed a hand on his shoulder. “Could you do me a favor, Mr. Delgado? Could you find out the name of the person at WestAir who called in Rosea

Delgado ran his fingers through his hair. “I wouldn’t want Tricia to get into trouble because of this.”

“I can appreciate that, sir, but you wouldn’t want your paper looking like a bunch of boobs. And you certainly wouldn’t want Rosea

“I take it Rosea

The guy was sharp. Marge said, “The recovery efforts are still ongoing, but no, she hasn’t been officially ID’d. How about if we both keep that fact a secret? The fewer people who know what I’m doing, the better off we are.”

Finally, Delgado nodded. “Give me a day to poke around and dig through some phone slips, okay?”

“Great.” Marge wrote down her cell number. “Whatever you find out, I’d like to hear about it. For someone to commit fraud and profit from a death is not only pathetic, it’s immoral.”

“I agree, but just look at 9/11.”

“Of course,” Marge said. “You know, your paper should write a story about that. You know how vultures swoop within minutes of tragedy to find a profitable angle for themselves.”

Delgado considered the idea and found it a good one. He spoke quietly and with a conspiratorial air. “If your investigation turns out to be fraud, I’ll run the whole thing past the desk editor. I’m sure with the right pitch, I can parlay this into some kind of a feature story.”