The small woman with the dark hair reflected on the few weeks leading up to her decision to slip the note to Blake Madison. Actually, she thought about the year that she had spent with the folk festival. On the surface, it was a jolly group of people who enjoyed music and a good laugh. She tried to remember when she first started to feel uneasy. It wasn't a sudden thing. More of a gradual dawning of realization that something wasn't quite right, and her more recent realization that she'd gotten in way over her head.

She did her best to not get into the middle of the politics. But she was outspoken from time to time when she couldn't take the petty squabbles that seemed to be constantly brewing between the folkies.

It was little things at first. But after a while, strange things started happening in a big way. Mostly it was strange messages from people she didn't know very well, or even at all. Most of the strange messages were faintly veiled attempts to get information about her. Some of it, information that could be damaging to her or to people she cared about. Including her little friend, Flim Flam, the folkie clown.

But then she got a message from one of the singer/guitar players who had been digging for information about her finances, with information about how she could make sure her wishes were known in the event of her death. She had a strange feeling about this man, almost from the beginning. She instinctively felt uneasy about him, and fearful of his invitations to get her to go to isolated places with him.

But she didn't think too much about all of this until her big altercation with the head public relations man. She had been told that he was a man with a big heart and a lot of compassion. So she didn't worry too much about the flares of temper he displayed from time to time. She figured that was just something she would have to contend with.

But one day, she discovered that the PR man had a burning resentment of anyone who questioned his authority, which she had done from time to time. And he let her know, quite plainly, that he considered her to be a threat. And she had been told that he was not a man to back down when he got himself worked up. That was when she put all of the strange messages together in her mind and realized that she and Flim Flam might be in grave danger. And that was when she decided to leave the note with Blake Madison.

She suspected that whoever was trying to kill Condolezza probably just wanted her to stop singing.