Barbara loved it.
"Willie Mae still had the doll. In return for giving it back to me, I gave her and her child enough for a new start in life. And the doll became the centerpiece of my collection."
Barbara then followed as Jackie led her to the bedroom she and her husband shared and where the prize doll lay on her pillow.
"I keep it near me for a lot of very good and probably very complicated emotional reasons. The least of them being that it was the first prize of my life. And no one should have been able to take that away from me."
Barbara appreciated hearing the story, mainly because it told so much about the character of her heroine. She thought they both had the same determination.
She also soon learned that despite Jackie's high energy and healthy look, she was at times in great pain. Her health problems went back to when she was fifteen and had been operated on for acute appendicitis. Frequent returns to hospital operating rooms resulted, because talcum powder from the doctor's surgical gloves had remained inside her. The blunder led to abdominal adhesions forming which tore at her intestines.
Just before dinner, Jackie introduced Barbara to her husband, a balding man with a pleasant-looking round face, big round black spectacles, and a Cary Grant cleft chin. Just married earlier that year after meeting four years before, they looked lovingly at each other as if still on their honeymoon.
Not prying for investment tips, but simply to make conversation, Barbara told Odlum she had just invested most of her income.
"Do you mind telling me in what you've invested?"
"Southern California real estate. A friend's broker advised me."
"That could make you rich. Depending on what part of the state it's in."
It's some vacant land east of Mohave, near my airport. By Rogers Lake, a dry lake, in case you know the area. Locals call it 'the Hat Farm.' That goes back to the 1890s when the railroad came to Mohave. The desert wind often took the derbies and Stetsons off the heads of passengers. They were blown to the level land east of town which became known as 'Hat Farm.' My broker said just about any land in southern California will be worth a lot more someday, and I bought Hat Farm cheap."
Odlum tried not to show his concern. Barbara sensed he did not think much of investing in real estate on that edge of the desert.
"Next time you want to invest, ask Floyd," Jackie whispered to her. "I hope you didn't short yourself too much, buying land out there. Be careful of whoever talked you into it."