Oswald Cobblepot was a dealer in secrets. He was the sort of man who liked having his finger on the pulse and his sharp little nose in everyone else's business. Not because he was naturally nosey, but because it was useful to know things about people who could prove to be a danger to you. If you keep a blackmail file on every one of your more deadly acquaintances, they're more likely to leave you alone--knowing that any move against you will come back to bite them in the ass.
Now, when Columbine Jones was nothing more than a wannabe torch singer who waitressed for him on the nights she wasn't onstage, he didn't care in the least where she was from or what her past was like. She wasn't a major enough player to garner much interest from the birdlike man, other than a brief appreciation for her looks and rather attractive figure, so he left well enough alone.
The moment she took up being the Joker's new love interest (if you could call it that), she became someone that the Penguin knew he would need blackmail material on. Now she was a VIP in Gotham's underworld, due solely to her involvement with the Clown Prince of Crime, so a little bit of insurance was definitely in order.
What the Penguin found when he started poking around in Columbine's past was very interesting, to say the least.
For example, just for starters, she didn't have a past. According to every record he could find, there was no Columbine Jones registered anywhere.
Cobblepot dug deeper. After all, it was possible she had changed her name…it wasn't all that often that people named their children things like 'Columbine', and it did smack of being more of a stage name sort of thing…
Still, he found nothing that eluded to the fact that Columbine Jones had ever existed prior to her arrival at the Iceberg a few scant months earlier.
He called in a few of his private detective acquaintances and set them on the trail, but they too could find no record of her beyond a handful of months.
Oswald knew he was no Edward Nygma, to be sure, but he still didn't like having puzzles like this lying around in front of him without any feasible solution in sight. He spent several weeks pondering on the clues before him, feeling like the answer to this particular mystery was staring him in the face--if only he could see it--before the truth finally dawned on him.
It was, quite possibly, one of the better skeletons in the closet he'd come across in recent years. Really, once he'd worked out the times, dates, names and places--the similarities and the differences that had been noted by his little brood of private eyes--it all seemed to be incredibly obvious.
Being who he was, Oswald couldn't keep the information to himself for very long. He knew he'd have to lord his knowledge over the woman who called herself Columbine, and when she arrived late one night, asking for a favor on behalf of the Joker (a fresh batch of chemicals whose names don't bear mentioning at this point), he conducted business as usual throughout the little transaction right up until the very end.
She was about to leave, but he stopped her by placing an all too friendly hand on her arm.
"Columbine, my dear, I believe we have something we need to discuss before you go disappearing into the night once more."
His eyes glinted with barely contained mirth over a joke he only knew the punch line to, and she stopped in her tracks, turning to face him suspiciously.
"The Joker is waiting."
"I know, and our purple clad friend can be quite impatient," he replied easily, releasing her arm. "But I promise not to take up much of your time."
Columbine's eyes narrowed a fraction of an inch. "Get on with it then."
He leaned forward conspiratorially, as though he were going to share a juicy piece of gossip with a dear friend, rather than blackmail her with it.
His voice was barely a whisper and his smirk was irrepressible. "I know who you really are."
Her sudden, sharp bark of laughter startled him, as did the shark-like grin that accompanied it. "I highly doubt it, my rolly-poly friend."
"I do," he stated confidently.
"Impossible," she said with a dismissive flip of her hand. "I've been too careful for someone like you to figure it out."
"The impossible is only impossible to those who don't know what to look for," he replied assertively. "I know who you are under all that makeup and beneath the rest of your 'costume'. Tell me, Columbine…has the Joker ever noticed any of the little idiosyncrasies that you share with--WAUGH!"
She suddenly had him by the throat and slammed him against the nearest wall, her brown eyes blazing. "Forget it. Forget it all, Penguin. If one word about my identity leaves those slimy little lips of yours, I will kill you, consequences be damned!"
The look that passed over her face was one of the most unsettling that he'd ever seen. "Have I made myself crystal clear?"
"Swarovski."
