Miss Dimple Disappears (10 page)

Velma spoke up. “I should think he would be worried. Did you ask him about an older sister?”

“It’s just as Odessa remembered,” Phoebe said. “Dimple’s sister died of scarlet fever, and Henry’s wife is the only sister-in-law she has.”

“And just what
is
he planning to do about it?” Elwin asked, and he set down his cup so suddenly coffee splashed into the saucer. “Miss Dimple’s been missing for three days now. I’m terribly afraid something dreadful may have happened.”

“Oh, dear! Where in the world could she be? I just can’t bear to think of it! Dimple Kilpatrick is the kindest, dearest soul you’d ever hope to meet, and who knows who might be next?” Lily Moss clutched her napkin to her mouth and began to cry silently, her shoulders shaking.

“My God, woman, get a hold of yourself!” Elwin turned almost as red as Odessa’s pickled beets and looked as if he’d like to vault over the table and throttle the cringing Lily.

“Will everyone please calm down?” Phoebe said, and Charlie was startled that anyone so tiny could speak in a drill sergeant’s commanding voice. “They’re doing their best to find Dimple. Bobby Tinsley has had several men out searching this town from top to bottom. He even checked the depot and the bus station and there’s no record of her buying a ticket.”

“She didn’t have a car and couldn’t drive one if she did,” Annie said. “Good heavens, you don’t suppose she
hitchhiked,
do you?”

Charlie laughed at the image of the decorous Miss Dimple holding up her skirt to reveal her knees, like Claudette Colbert did in the movie,
It Happened One Night.

“I don’t find that one bit amusing,” Elwin informed her, including in his look the several who laughed. “It shocks me to hear you make light of a friend’s possible misfortune, and I’m sure Miss Dimple would never—”

“They’re not there.” Geneva stood in the door silhouetted in the gray light from the hallway and she spoke so softly it was hard to hear her above the steady drumming of the rain. Slowly she made her way back to her seat and took a sip of water. “Froggie said the key and the screwdriver are both missing from my cabinet. It looks like my screwdriver is the one Alma found on her desk, but my key to Miss Dimple’s room is gone.”

“Won’t Alma have a fit when she hears that?” Annie said. “After today, she’s already scared of her own shadow. I’m afraid Froggie’s going to have an awful time finding somebody to take that class.”

Phoebe rang a bell to let Odessa know they were ready for dessert. “Fortunately that won’t be necessary,” she announced. “I’m told a replacement for Miss Dimple will be arriving soon. In fact, I’m expecting her sometime this weekend.”

*   *   *

“Cornelia Emerson,” Annie muttered as they hurried back to school after lunch. “Sounds like a heroine from a Victorian novel. I wonder where Froggie found that one—and so soon, too.”

Earlier, their principal had told Geneva that Bobby Tinsley would be at the school to speak with as many of the faculty as possible that afternoon, and even though the rain had slacked, the two struggled to keep their umbrellas from sailing away in the wind.

“She has to be an improvement on Alma,” Charlie said. “Of course when the poor woman hears what’s been going on here, she might turn tail and run. I wonder if she knows why she’s taking Miss Dimple’s place.”

Head down, Annie frowned as she walked. “Does it bother you about Miss Dimple leaving that note?”

“You mean the handwriting?”

Annie shook her head. “I mean the fact that nobody saw it at first until Bobby Tinsley happened to notice it on the floor under the hall table.”

“A little too convenient, you mean?” Charlie had questioned that as well. “Do you think it was put there later by somebody else? I can’t imagine who it would be … unless … maybe … Elwin Vickery.”

“
Aunt Mildred
? I think Elwin’s sweet on Miss Dimple,” Annie said. “I’ve never seen him get so hot under the collar. I thought he was going to bean us with the gravy ladle.”

“I’ve seen the two of them walking to the library together a couple of times, but I don’t think she considers him anything more than a friend. Maybe he became outraged because she rebuffed his attentions.” Charlie sidestepped a puddle as they crossed the street. “I can’t imagine Miss Dimple having a beau, but who knows what she might have on her mind?”

“Only
The Shadow
knows, I guess,” Annie said, referring to a popular radio program. “And speaking of being shadowed, I believe there’s one behind us.”

Charlie did an abrupt about-face. “Willie Elrod, what
are
you doing out here in the rain. You go on home right now!”

The little boy slowed but didn’t stop. “I’m not gonna bother nobody, honest, but I gotta keep an eye on things.”

Charlie stood her ground. “What things?”

Willie jammed his hands into the pockets of his slicker and rolled his eyes heavenward. “I heard about what happened to Miss Dimple’s desk drawer and I’m pretty sure I know who did it.”

The raincoat, passed down from an older brother, was much too large for him, Charlie noticed, and almost touched the ground. “And who might that be?” she asked.

“Don’t you trust us, Willie?” Annie’s voice was soft. “We might be able to help, you know.”

The child sighed in impatience, or maybe it was relief, and hesitated. Knowing he had their full attention, he apparently planned to make the best of it.

“Willie!”
Charlie shook her umbrella at him.

“Well, you know that old man who lives in that little green house over on Fox Grape Hill?”

“Mr. Scarborough?” With impatience, Charlie shifted from foot to foot. Not only was she chilled to the bone, but she had to go to the bathroom. “What about him?”

Willie shrugged. “German spy,” he whispered. “Carries secrets in his cane, don’t you know. I’ve been following him, only he don’t know it, and he sits on that wall next to the playground just about every day waitin’ for his accomplice to meet him, but he can’t fool me!”

“And have you seen this accomplice?” Annie struggled to keep a straight face.

“Not yet, but he’ll show up, just you wait. And I’ll be hot on his trail. I reckon President Roosevelt himself will give me a medal!”

“What you’ll
get,
Willie Elrod, is a cold from being out in this awful weather,” Charlie told him. “And poor Mr. Scarborough rests on that wall because he’s
tired
! Why, that old fellow’s probably never been out of the county, so you can forget about following him.”

The little boy looked so crestfallen Charlie felt sorry for him. “You go on home and get on some dry clothes,” she said, speaking softly now. “There are a lot of other ways you can help with the war effort, you know.”

“That’s right,” Annie said. “I know there’s a drive to collect metal, like aluminum cooking pots and things like that. Tomorrow’s Saturday, and you have a wagon, don’t you? I bet they’d be glad if you’d help them collect some.

“Some spy, that Willie!” she added aside to Charlie as they watched the child race home, apparently inspired with patriotic zeal. “I could hear his galoshes flopping almost a block away.”

C
HAPTER
N
INE

Jesse Dean adjusted his helmet and admired himself in the mirror. Too bad about old Hiram Hopkins breaking his hip! Fell down the back steps, they said. Well, somebody had to take his place, and it might as well be him. And if he kept his eyes open, he might just learn a thing or two. Let them laugh now!

*   *   *

Dishes clanged when he thumped the tray on the table, but Miss Dimple didn’t look up. Something had upset him and she knew she would hear about it sooner or later. She would prefer later, or not at all. He wasn’t the only one who was upset.

Earlier, she had discovered in an old chest of drawers in the bathroom a small sewing kit and a bag of quilting squares, intended no doubt for a long-ago project never completed. Miss Dimple had never enjoyed sewing and certainly didn’t plan to undertake anything as involved as a quilt, but what was she to do with her time? Other than an age-spotted copy of
Oliver Twist
and someone’s old geography text, the only books on hand were syrupy-sweet and featured such spineless, milque-toast characters she wanted to be sick.

Now she adjusted her glasses and concentrated on threading her needle.

“Have you written that note I asked you about?” Mr. Smith’s voice was muffled behind the mask but not enough to drown out his impatience.

“I beg your pardon?” She doubled the thread and knotted it at the end just as her grandmother had taught her when she was six.

“I’m sure you remember—the one to your brother.” He held up a small glass bottle she recognized as the one containing her pills for arthritis pain and rattled them about before putting the bottle in his pocket. “I managed to get this medicine you seem to find so important. It’s yours as soon as you write that note.”

She looked up as he approached, stopping only a few feet away. His shoes, she noticed, were scuffed and his tan socks had a run in them. And tonight he wore a Halloween witch mask. Murphy’s Five and Dime must’ve had a sale, she thought.

“I’ll manage to get by without them,” she told him, returning to her stitching.

He sighed. Heavily. “Now, there’s no need for that. I’m only asking for a short note in your handwriting so your brother will know you’re all right. I’m sure you wouldn’t want him to worry, now, would you?”

Tossing the quilting scraps aside, Miss Dimple stood suddenly, completely forgetting her ruse of fragile health. “You leave my brother out of this! He has no money to speak of. What could you possibly want of him?”

“Oh, come now, Miss Dimple. You’re an intelligent woman. You must realize it isn’t money we’re after.”

Dimple Kilpatrick had never been a violent person. In all her forty years of teaching she had never spanked one of her small charges, but at that moment she understood how someone could be driven to murder. Lifting her chin and straightening her shoulders, she spoke in a calm but chilling voice.

“How can you live with yourself? Do you realize what you’re doing? Whatever it is you want from my brother, you’re never going to get it, and I refuse to be a part of it!”

His silence seemed to go on forever as he looked at her from behind his mask. “How easy it would be,” he said, in a voice as soft as quicksand, “to collect one of the children from your class as they walk home after school—”

Her responding gasp was audible and she knew it would be impossible to disguise her reaction. “Surely you can’t be serious! How can you even think of such a thing?”

“You can imagine how frightening it would be,” he continued, “but then that’s entirely up to you. I’ll expect that note by morning, if you please.”

Dimple Kilpatrick closed her eyes and held her breath until she heard him ascend the stairs and lock the door behind him.

*   *   *

“Did you know that just one pound of waste fat makes enough glycerin to fire four thirty-seven-millimeter aircraft shells?” Charlie’s aunt Lou rattled the pages of the
Elderberry Eagle
and peered over the top.

“Kinda makes me wish I hadn’t eaten all that sausage back when we could get it,” her sister said, looking a little bilious.

“I try to save as much as I can. Turned some in to Shorty Skinner at the butcher shop just last week,” Lou said, “although I do like to keep a little bacon grease to cook with.”

“Better lock up your aluminum pots tomorrow if you don’t want Willie Elrod to get them,” Charlie warned them, and she told them about the little boy’s obsession with imaginary spies.

Her mother shook her head. “I’m afraid he’s wasting his time trailing old Luther Scarborough, but there is something peculiar going on over at that school. They don’t seem to have the slightest notion what happened to poor Miss Dimple, and nobody’s yet been able to give us a satisfactory explanation about the way Wilson Malone died. Makes me uneasy about your being there, Charlie.”

“They seem to think Wilson had a heart attack, Mama, and hit his head when he fell,” Charlie said. “Or maybe a stroke. You know how he—”

“They? They
think
? They who?” Jo’s voice rose. “I’ll tell you this: if I were Madge Malone, I’d demand a better answer than that!”

Charlie didn’t want to worry the older women, but she was beginning to think along the same lines. The local police, and even the doctor who had examined him, seemed strangely vague about explaining the reason for the janitor’s death. She was almost sure Ebenezer, the school’s carved wooden eagle, along with his broken wing, was being held as evidence at the local police headquarters, and their principal seemed curiously uncertain about its whereabouts. Also, no one had been able to explain exactly how Wilson Malone came by his mysterious head wounds.

Aunt Lou laid the paper aside. “I’ve been giving this some thought, and it appears to me that whoever took Dimple—if indeed that was what happened—it must have been someone who was familiar with her early-morning routine.”

Charlie shrugged. “That would be pretty much everybody, wouldn’t it?”

“Not necessarily,” her mother said. “Most of us are asleep at that ungodly hour. It’s more likely to be somebody who’s usually out and about at the time Dimple takes her walks.”

Her sister slapped the table with the palm of her hand causing teacups to clatter in saucers. “Exactly! Someone who has to be out early because of his job.” She looked knowingly from Jo to Charlie. “Like Amos Schuler.”

Jo laughed. “The
milkman
? I think his face would break if the man ever smiled, but I can’t see him carting away Dimple Kilpatrick. Why would he want to do that?”

Why would anybody?
Charlie wondered, yet someone obviously had. According to Phoebe, Henry Kilpatrick didn’t seem to know what had happened to his sister and seemed to be making an effort to hide his concern. Perhaps he didn’t want her friends in Elderberry to become unduly worried, but they were
already
worried! His suggestion about his sister visiting distant relatives certainly didn’t sound like the Miss Dimple she knew, but maybe he knew something they didn’t.