Miss Dimple Disappears (14 page)

“Must cost them a fortune. I hear he’s going up on his prices next month and we’re paying eighteen cents a quart already. Outrageous!” Lou muttered as she maneuvered the car silently forward.

“And last week ours was nothing but that nasty old ‘blue john,’ ” Jo added. “No cream in it at all that I could tell. And if Amos lets his cows get into the wild onions like he did last summer, I’ll have to buy from somebody else.” She frowned. “Uh-oh! I think he’s seen us.”

“So what?” Lou snorted. “We have just as much right to be here as he does.”

Jo shivered and wrapped her coat closer about her. The car had no heater. Lou’s husband, Ed, had bought the Studebaker before the war and rarely used it now that gasoline had become rationed. She thought of that now as they crept at a respectable distance behind the other vehicle. “Maybe we ought to turn back, Lou. Ed won’t like it if we use up his gas.”

“Don’t guess we’d like it, either,” Lou reminded her, “since we’d have to walk all the way home. But don’t worry. I’m sure there’s plenty.”

“What do you mean, ‘sure’? Don’t you know?”

Lou tapped the gas gauge with the tip of her finger. Well, this thingamabob’s a little persnickety, but I know Ed put gas in the tank last week … or maybe it was the week before.”

The sun was beginning to come up as they drove out of town, and, following a cloud of dust behind Amos Schuler’s once-black pickup, turned onto a two lane dirt road edged with tall overhanging cedars. “I wonder who lives down here,” Jo said.

Her sister didn’t know but thought it possible he might be leading them to where he had hidden Miss Dimple, and wouldn’t it be exciting if they found her? Jo Carr didn’t believe for a minute the morose milkman was guilty of abducting Dimple Kilpatrick, but her sister’s outlandish schemes took her mind off Fain and the war for a little time at least, so she let herself be carried along with the plan.

Winter pastures on either side were brown and bare of all but sparse patches of green and there wasn’t a house or a living creature in sight. Jo thought with anticipation of the small ration of coffee that awaited her at home. At this point, she would even welcome a hot cup of the hated substitute, Postum. She scanned the road in front of them for a sign of the dust-streaked truck but the milkman seemed to have disappeared. Jo yawned. “I’m afraid we’ve lost him, Lou.”

“Or he’s lost us.” Lou sighed as she looked for a place to turn around. “Oh well, tomorrow is another day.”

Her sister laughed. “I think that’s already been said, Scarlett.” But her laughter faded, along with the noise of the car’s engine as the vehicle shuddered to a protesting stop.

“I thought you said Ed put gas in the tank,” Jo said, eyeing the desolate road behind and before them.

“He did. I’m just not sure when.” Avoiding her sister’s accusing eyes, Lou twirled a red knitted muffler around her head and tucked it into the neck of her coat. “Guess we’re going to have to walk, at least until somebody comes along to give us a ride home.”

Jo didn’t speak but pulled on her gloves and reached for the door handle. Why did she let her sister rope her into these crazy escapades? Well, never again! She had one foot on the ground when Lou pulled her back inside. “Wait! We’re in luck. There’s a car coming this way now!”

It was not until the vehicle drew closer that they recognized Amos Schuler’s truck.

*   *   *

“Did you notice how soon Cornelia showed up after Miss Dimple disappeared?” Charlie asked Annie as they walked to Phoebe’s during the noontime break. “It’s almost as if she’d been waiting in the wings.”

Annie jammed both hands in her coat pockets as they waited to cross the street. “She’s pleasant enough, but seems to want to keep to herself. You don’t think she might’ve had something to do with Miss Dimple’s disappearance, do you?”

Charlie shrugged. “At this point, I don’t know what to think. I meant to try and speak with Miss Dimple’s brother by telephone last night if we could get the number from Phoebe, but Hugh dropped by to tell me good-bye and I never got around to it.”

“Ahh! And, by any chance, did he ask—”

“Annie Gardener, you’re hopeless! He
asked
me to write to him, which I will. I’m sure Hugh knows I’m not ready for anything permanent, and neither is he.” Charlie gave her friend’s arm a tug. “And I still want to see if we can talk Miss Phoebe into giving us Henry Kilpatrick’s phone number—
after
I call to see if my wandering mother has returned.”

Accustomed to her aunt’s inclination for spontaneous adventures, Charlie hadn’t been seriously concerned about her mother’s sudden absence; surely she would be back at home by noon. Standing in Phoebe Chadwick’s hallway, she listened to the telephone ring six … seven … eight times, before asking to be connected to her aunt’s number.

“You’re not going to find her at home,” Florence McCrary, the operator, told her. “Myrtle Abercrombie was trying to get in touch with her a couple of minutes ago—something about that Thanksgiving basket for her church circle, I think—and Harris Cooper just called to tell her he didn’t have any cranberries in yet but he reckons they’ll be in by tomorrow.”

“Well, ring her anyway, would you, please, Florence? Sometimes it takes her a while to get to the phone.” Charlie tried to keep the anxiety out of her voice, as the local telephone operator was a notorious gossip, but when no one answered after multiple rings that seemed to go on forever, she finally gave up.

Annie frowned as she hovered nearby. “What about your aunt’s husband? Maybe he knows where they went.”

But Ed Willingham had left his office on some kind of errand an hour or so before and hadn’t returned, his receptionist told her, adding that he might’ve dropped by the drugstore for a sandwich.

Probably because her aunt Louise wasn’t at home to give him dinner, Charlie thought as she hung up the phone.
Where in the world could they possibly be?

“Now, Uncle Ed’s gone, too,” Charlie said, telling Annie of the conversation. “And I’m really getting worried.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and eat, then give your uncle another call?” Annie suggested. “He’s sure to be back by then.”

The other diners had gathered at the table and Charlie signaled them to start without her. She had lost her appetite. “Don’t wait on me, please,” she advised Annie. “There’s one more person I want to try first.… Hello, Florence, would you ring Bessie Jenkins for me, please?”

“I’m sure she’s all right,” her neighbor said, but the hesitation in her voice didn’t do much to calm Charlie’s fears. “I slept later than usual this morning since we didn’t have to work at the ordnance plant today, so I didn’t see your mother leave. Still …”

“Still what? Miss Bessie, you know it’s not like Mama to go off for this length of time. If you know anything—”

“It’s probably nothing,” Bessie began, “but I have noticed that young man who works for Harris Cooper—the Greeson boy, you know—”

“Jessie Dean? What about him?”

“Well, he was standing out in my yard last night—just standing there—and then I heard him walking about, around the house and all. It unnerved me, I can tell you! Said he was taking over your uncle Ed’s route as air-raid warden and wanted to become familiar with the neighborhood, but he stayed out there a little too long to suit me. I just don’t know about that one. Why isn’t he serving his country like everybody else?”

“He did try, Miss Bessie,” Charlie explained. “They wouldn’t take him because of his eyes.”

“Huh! So
he
says, but if he wanted to become familiar with the homes on his route, why didn’t he do it in the daytime?” Miss Bessie made a hissing sound. “I’m telling you, Charlie, something isn’t right about Jesse Dean Greeson.”

Charlie hung up the receiver feeling worse than ever, but Odessa, who was replenishing the creamed potatoes, caught her eye. “You best get in here and eat your dinner before them biscuits get plumb cold.” She lowered her voice as Charlie approached the table. “And I made some of them butterscotch squares you like for dessert.”

Charlie thanked her and took her seat knowing it wouldn’t do a bit of good to argue with Odessa Kirby. Besides, she would have to give Uncle Ed a chance to get back to his office before calling him again.

Odessa had just passed around the dessert tray when Phoebe rose with an irate look on her face to answer the telephone’s shrill ringing. “Now, who can that be? Everybody in this town should know we’re all sitting down to eat.

“Charlie?” Her hostess held the receiver at arm’s length. “Your uncle Ed’s on the phone.” Lowering her voice, she whispered, “And he sounds a bit put out to me.”

Charlie could feel everyone’s eyes on her as she answered the phone but the French doors to the dining room stood wide open and there was nowhere to hide.

“Well, you’ll never guess what your mother and your aunt Lou have been up to!” Her uncle’s booming voice was so loud Charlie could imagine the chandelier shaking over the heads of the diners and she was sure they could hear every word. She had a good idea what the two had been up to, but were they all right?

“Amos Schuler called to tell me those two were way out on Tuckers’ Pond Road this morning
picking up pecans!
At least that’s what they told him.”

“Why would they be doing that? Aunt Lou said she couldn’t keep up with the pecan trees you have in your own yard.”

“Exactly.” Charlie could picture her uncle’s red face. “Amos said he thought they might’ve run out of gas and even offered to give them a ride back to town, but they insisted they were out there looking for some woman he never heard of who said they could have all the pecans they wanted. Of course there wasn’t a bit of truth in it!”

“Where are they now?” Charlie pictured her middle-aged relatives plodding through miles of mud in their sensible oxfords, and it was enough to make her shiver.

“Should be home by now. Had to borrow a car from Asa Weatherby at the Gulf Station. Thank God he let me have enough gas to get them back!” Charlie thought she detected a chuckle. “They’ll have to use a shovel to get all that mud off their shoes!”

Well, so much for that!
Charlie thought as she replaced the receiver. She could hardly wait to get home and ask her mother about her disastrous adventure. She was about to join the others in the dining room for dessert when Charlie saw the name and number scribbled on a notepad by the telephone and quickly copied it on a scrap of paper. She would try her best to reach Henry Kilpatrick tonight.

*   *   *

“I’ll be embarrassed to look Amos Schuler in the face,” she confessed to Annie as they walked back to school. “He must wonder why they wouldn’t accept a ride with him.”

Annie laughed. “I wouldn’t want to ride with the old sourpuss, either.”

“His face would curdle milk, I know, but that doesn’t mean he had anything to do with Miss Dimple’s disappearance,” Charlie said.

Annie was silent for a minute. “But who else is out that early every morning?”

“The paperboy for one, but Ernie Adams is only twelve and he’d have to stuff Miss Dimple into his bicycle basket.” Charlie paused to scoop up a drifting scrap of paper from a candy bar and thought of Miss Dimple’s tidy habit of collecting litter. “Maybe her brother can give us an idea of who might have taken her—and why.”

“What makes you think you’ll actually reach him?” Annie asked.

“Because I mean to keep trying until I do.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

Dear Private Mote,

I am in the third grade at Elderberry Grammar School. Miss Charlie—she’s my teacher—says you went to school here, too. We got new swings and a slide for our playground last year but I’d rather play ball. Do you like ball, too? We had an air raid last week and had to crawl under our desks, but I don’t think that would do much good if a bomb dropped through the roof. I’m not scared though because we know you are fighting to protect us. My tinfoil ball is almost as big as a grapefruit and I’m real careful not to waste paper but I sure do miss bubble gum!

Your friend,

Junior Henderson

*   *   *

Charlie smiled as she read through the letters her class had written for their language assignment that afternoon. Jack Mote had been a couple of years behind her in school and was currently undergoing training for the army at Fort McClellan in Alabama. His older brother Chester had been killed in April when his plane ran out of fuel and crashed during General Dolittle’s bombing raid over Japan. When school was over that day Charlie planned to take the letters to the boys’ mother, Marjorie, whose neat white bungalow was a few blocks from town. Her mother and Aunt Lou made it a point to visit the Motes often, sometimes taking a loaf of homemade bread or a few flowers from the garden, but Charlie could hardly bear to pass by the sad home with the gold star in the window. That would now be joined by a banner with the familiar blue star like the one they had in their window for Fain. There was scarcely a house in town without one.

*   *   *

“Charlie! Do come in and tell me all about school. It seems like yesterday that you and Jack were children there yourselves … and what do you hear from Delia? I hear you’re going to be an aunt.”

Marjorie Mote greeted her at the door as if she’d been watching from the window, and Charlie followed her into the room, momentarily relieved that so far they had avoided the subject of Chester’s death. His photograph and Jack’s faced one another on a table by the window.

“I thought you might like to see these before I send them on to Jack,” she said, giving her the folder of letters. “Some of them are kind of funny and I expect he can probably use a laugh.”

“That he can, and it was thoughtful of you to think of him. He’s doing all right—or at least he wants me to think he is—and I know he loves mail from home.”

Charlie sat in a large overstuffed chair by the fireplace and sipped homemade blackberry wine while nibbling on ginger cookies as they talked of her sister’s pregnancy, Jack’s news from Fort McClellan, the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, and, of course, Miss Dimple’s mysterious disappearance.