Miss Dimple Disappears (25 page)

But Ed shook his head. “I’m allergic to fresh air,” he announced, adding another log to the fire.

“Where should we go first?” Annie asked when they stepped outside. The days were getting much shorter now and sunlight was fading fast.

“I want to see where Miss Dimple got kidnapped,” Will said, walking ahead with Annie. “Maybe we’ll find another clue.”

Charlie fell into step with Joel. “Believe me, we’ve looked,” she told them. “This is where Willie says he saw Miss Dimple get into a car,” she said, pointing out the spot after they walked the few blocks to the rooming house. From there they circled the school, and were passing Charlie’s house on Katherine Street when Ollie Thigpen wheeled his bicycle out of her neighbor’s driveway, waved in their direction, and pedaled off toward home. Charlie returned his greeting, hoping things had gone well that day for Miss Bessie. If the man had any sense at all, he would realize what a prize he had in Bessie Jenkins. She paused to look back at her neighbor’s house where a light shone in the living room window, but none on the porch, and Miss Bessie usually turned that on when Ollie left and followed him out to say good-bye. Today she didn’t see a sign of her, but there was still some daylight left, so a porch light wouldn’t be necessary.
Why was Ollie leaving so early?
Charlie thought of her neighbor’s nearly new suit, her elaborate preparations for dinner, and her dreams for the future, and had to suppress a strong urge to run and shove him off his bike.

Annie interrupted her thoughts. “What’s Jesse Dean doing at your house?” she asked.

Charlie turned to see Jesse Dean Greeson in the truck he used for deliveries, slowly emerge from behind their house and turn into the street behind Ollie. “I can’t imagine unless he was delivering something that came in late, but Mama usually leaves the grocery orders to me.”

“I wouldn’t think he’d be delivering on Thanksgiving anyway,” Will said, frowning. “Maybe we’d better check and see if he left anything on your porch. Did you lock your doors when we left?”

Charlie smiled and shook her head. Nobody locked their doors in Elderberry.

“Maybe he was just turning around,” Annie suggested when nothing was found on the porch.

“It does seem that all the suspicious activity lately has been taking place around the school and your rooming house,” Joel said, turning to Annie. “Maybe you’d better change jobs and find another place to live.”

“Not
all.”
Charlie told him about Geneva Odom’s painful experience in the park.

“Was she robbed?” Will asked. “Or attacked in—uh, any other way?”

“No, thank heavens!” Charlie said. “It’s bad enough to get a blow like that on the head, but I guess it could’ve been worse.”

“Then somebody must’ve been afraid she’d see or hear something … something there in the park. Let’s go take a look before it gets too dark to see.” Will took long strides as he spoke and the others hurried to catch up with him.

“Now what?” Annie shivered. Although it was not yet six o’clock, night had overcome them, and with it the penetrating cold of late November when the sun goes down.

They stood by the stone bridge in the deserted park and Charlie instinctively moved closer to Joel. He smiled and took her hand, and Will, linking his arm in Annie’s, waded through the brittle leaves to the large magnolia where Geneva said she thought she’d seen someone. Parting the heavy limbs, he looked at the ground. “Wish we had a light. It’s dark as a vampire’s closet out here.”

Annie backed away. “Did you have to mention vampires?” She and Charlie had seen Bela Lugosi in a horror movie the year before, and neither slept well for a week.

“It doesn’t make any sense for him to come out and hit her when she was hurrying to get away,” Charlie said. “Unless he thought Geneva had seen him.”

“Or possibly someone else, or some
thing
else,” Joel suggested. “Like a car.”

“If they didn’t want anybody to see it, it wouldn’t have been parked in the street,” Annie said. “But isn’t there a little alley that runs behind the library?”

“It doesn’t lead anywhere except to an area in the back where they unload books,” Charlie told them. “Virginia Balliew, our librarian, parks there once in a while when she drives to work.”

“I don’t believe it was Virginia who was parked there the night your friend Geneva was attacked,” Will said as they started back to Aunt Louise’s.

*   *   *

They found the dishes washed but not dried, so upon their return, everybody pitched in to help while they listened to H. V. Kaltenborn on the radio with more news of the Russian counterattack at Stalingrad. It seemed the German general, Paulus, commander of the Sixth Army, was determined to fight on against the Red Army. Charlie had seen newsreels of the frigid Russian countryside and was glad, at least, that her brother wasn’t there.

Aunt Lou insisted on serving leftover turkey for sandwiches before they left for home and everyone seemed surprised they had any appetite at all. But in spite of their objections, Charlie noticed, they managed to do all right for themselves.

Because it was dark when they left, Uncle Ed offered to drive them back to Jo’s, but only Jo and Charlie accepted. Annie, who planned to spend the night in her room at Phoebe’s, said she didn’t mind the short walk, so Will went along to see her home. When Joel started to join them, Charlie pulled him aside. “I was hoping you might give me another chance at poker,” she whispered, with a glance at his sister and Will.

“Oh.” Joel shook his head and grinned. “Guess I wasn’t thinking. Thanks for reminding me—and I’m sure Will will thank you, too.”

And he would kiss Annie good night … and maybe he would kiss her again. After all, wasn’t that the point of making sure the two of them had some time alone?

After her mother went to bed, Charlie and Joel drank Postum and played gin rummy at the kitchen table and had hardly finished the second hand when they heard Will return. Joel glanced at the clock and shrugged. “Must be too cold to cuddle!”

But Charlie knew Phoebe’s parlor was warm, and probably empty as the other roomers had either left for the weekend or retired at their usual hour. What was the matter with Annie? Hadn’t she even invited Will inside?

She would have to wait until tomorrow to find out. Before she went to bed that night Charlie stood at the living room window and looked out at the Jenkins house next door, hoping to see her neighbor moving about. But everything was dark.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-THREE

Miss Dimple did not eat the muffins, nor did she partake of any other nourishment that Thanksgiving except for tea and a few spoonfuls of canned chicken noodle soup in the middle of the day. Mr. Smith had seemed offended. “I made them muffins just like you said, and you didn’t do no more than nibble. Seems like you’d at least try to do better than that.”

Miss Dimple turned away. The very nerve of the man to complain of ill treatment after robbing her of her freedom for these two weeks. “I don’t know how you’d expect me to eat them when you left out some of the most essential ingredients,” she said.

“Like what?” he pouted.

“Well, soy flour for one. Surely I wrote that down. And I’m sure you didn’t add the ginger or molasses.”

This time she didn’t have to pretend to be ill. The aspirin had helped, but now the fever had come back with a vengeance and for the first time Dimple Kilpatrick began to wonder if she would ever escape this dismal place alive.

Now he sighed. “I haven’t had a chance to pick up all them things you listed, and stores aren’t open today but I can try again tomorrow. You gotta do better than this, you know.” His shoulders sagged when he walked, she noticed. In fact, his entire body drooped. It cheered her that apparently things weren’t going as well for him as expected and now he was afraid she might die before he could make the trade for whatever evil plan he had in mind. And Dimple Kilpatrick made the decision right there and then that she didn’t intend to die—not if she could help it. “If you’ll kindly bring me some hot salt water to gargle and a few more of those aspirin, I’ll try to get some sleep. Perhaps I’ll feel better then.”

Later she would not only need her strength but a whole lot more as well. Miss Dimple missed reading her Bible, but doubted if there was one in this foul place. Instead, she found comfort in a favorite Psalm she’d committed to memory: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble …”

*   *   *

“Did you and Will have some sort of disagreement last night?” Charlie whispered to Annie when she phoned her the next morning. Her mother had left early for her work at the ordnance plant and their two house guests were still asleep upstairs. “You
are
coming over this morning, aren’t you?” The last thing she wanted right now was to be left for any length of time with Will Sinclair when Annie wasn’t around.

“Of course I’m coming, and everything’s okay with Will as far as I know. Why?”

“Well, he certainly didn’t stay long. I thought surely he’d hang around for a while. Didn’t you ask him in?”

Annie giggled. “I would have if I hadn’t drunk all that tea last night but I was about to die to go to the bathroom!”

Charlie never knew her friend to be so prim and proper she was reluctant to admit that situation to her date, but she kept her opinion to herself. Maybe Will was unusually shy about things like that, but he certainly didn’t seem that way. Instead of pursuing the subject, the two of them planned what they would do during the cadets’ last full day in Elderberry.

Her mother seldom used the family car so Charlie had saved a fair amount of ration stamps to buy gas and over a late breakfast the four of them mapped out a tour of the area that would include several interesting and historic towns.

“There’s a quaint little restaurant in Covington where we can stop for lunch,” Charlie suggested, “unless it’s closed for the holiday.”

Which, of course it was.

The day had turned out bright and sunny with what Jo Carr liked to call a brittle coldness in the air, and Charlie was glad she’d thought to tuck gloves in the pocket of her warm corduroy jacket with the fleece lining. Joel was eager to get behind the wheel of a car again and Charlie happily gave him the opportunity. The old Studebaker, cantankerous at best, was forever stalling on inclines just to be exasperating, and she drove it only when necessary. In the backseat Annie chatted glibly to Will about the Thanksgiving program they’d had at school, her delight in a student whose goal was to read every book in the school library, and the sensitive issue of dealing with children over the sudden death of Christmas Malone.

“And did they find out what killed him?” Joel asked, overhearing.

“They’d like us to think it was a heart attack, but we never heard for sure,” Annie said. She told them how the police had confiscated the wooden eagle with the broken wing. “Several of us have been wondering if somebody used it to hit Christmas over the head. Seems to me they’re being very hush-hush about it.”

“But why would anybody want to kill the fellow?” Will wanted to know.

Nobody had an answer.

*   *   *

During the morning they had paused briefly in the town of Eatonton, and stopped to stroll the quaint streets of Greensboro and Madison before continuing to Covington, so it was after one when they pulled up in front of Miss Eula’s Dinner Table on the Covington Square and found it closed.

“I’m famished!” Joel complained. “Wonder if
anything’s
open today?”

“There’s a hamburger place between here and Griffin that’s not too far away,” Charlie offered. “Maybe we could get something there, and it’s only a few miles from there to Indian Grave Mountain if you want to do any walking.”

“Eat first, walk afterward,” Will directed. “Meanwhile, why don’t we sing something? It’ll keep us from thinking about food and maybe we won’t hear our stomachs growling.” And with that he led off with “Oh My Darling, Clementine,” and followed it with “Sweet Betsy from Pike.”

Charlie was amazed not only at his true tenor voice, but also that he knew all the words. “How do you remember all that?” she asked.

“That’s nothing. You should hear him on the guitar,” Joel told her. “I tried to get him to bring it with him, but he didn’t want to be bothered lugging it around. Everybody in Will’s family plays a musical instrument. You’ll have to get him to sing ‘Scarborough Fair.’ ”

“Hey! Cut it out! That’s enough of that.” Will, obviously uncomfortable with the attention, pounded his friend on the back. “You make it sound like I’m the only person in the universe who can pick out a tune.”

“Well, I don’t like to brag,” Joel said, laughing, “but I used to play a pretty mean triangle in the grammar school rhythm band.”

They all laughed a lot during a lunch of burgers and fries in a tall wooden booth at Bart’s Drive-in just outside the small town of Griffin. The place smelled of cigarette smoke, coffee, and grease, and they sat at tables carved with initials dark with age. There were only a few customers the day after Thanksgiving and the manager, whose name wasn’t Bart, but Fred, insisted on treating them all to shakes after taking an interest in hearing about the cadets’ flight training.

“The least you can do is to thank him by singing ‘Scarborough Fair,’ ” Annie teased Will.

He grinned and put a nickel in the jukebox. “I’d rather dance with a pretty girl, but I’d die before I’d ask her.”

Of course that was all Annie needed and the two of them took the floor with the Andrews Sisters’ “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.” Joel held out his hand for Charlie and both couples went through several nickels until Annie switched partners to dance with her brother to the “Pennsylvania Polka,” leaving Charlie no choice but to dance with Will.

Will was a smooth dancer, leading her with only the slightest touch. The floor was of wide oak boards, worn and scuffed over the years, and the four of them had the whole space to themselves. Charlie started to go back to her seat when the record ended, but Will stubbornly refused to let go of her hand. “Just one more,” he said with a grin and a tug, and Charlie sent up a silent plea for another fast one.