Miss Dimple Disappears (22 page)

Designed to reach Japan from Pacific Island bases, the four-engine B-29 would be capable of carrying up to nine tons of bombs internally and it was only a matter of months before they hoped to put it into action. Those investigating suspected the puzzling death of the school’s janitor might have something to do with his sister’s abduction and had taken the town’s police chief, as well as the local doctor, into their confidence on a limited basis, explaining only that Henry Kilpatrick was involved in a matter of national security. Henry Kilpatrick was a man accustomed to finding solutions, but now he was fit to be tied. He would do anything to protect the sister who had raised him—almost anything. For there was no question that he would never betray his country.

Glass in hand, Henry watched the morning steal in slowly and cursed under his breath. He wasn’t surprised it had been Dimple they chose to abduct instead of Hazel, who seldom left the house except in the company of her sister Imogene. How many times had he warned Dimple about walking alone in the predawn darkness while sensible people still slept? You never knew who was about at that hour or what they were up to—and now look what had happened. Damn stubborn woman!

Henry sat in his armchair sipping his brandy and reached for his pipe. He might as well smoke for a while. He couldn’t do anything else. He smiled. Hazel hated it when he smoked.

*   *   *

Charlie cornered Annie in the faculty restroom the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. “You have five minutes,” she said, looking at her watch, “to tell me what you found out about Elwin Sunday night.”

The day before, Annie had spent most of her spare time, including her lunch hour, helping Alice Brady and some of her expression students plan an impromptu program for assembly before classes were dismissed on Wednesday, and Charlie hadn’t been able to find an appropriate time to approach her.

Annie peeked under the toilet cubicle to see if they were alone and ran a comb through her unruly dark curls. It seemed to Charlie her friend had been taking a lot more time with her grooming lately. “ ‘Oh, how poor are they that have not patience!’ ” Annie struck a dramatic pose. “I couldn’t very well call you from that telephone in Miss Phoebe’s front hall, and yesterday I hardly had a minute to breathe,” she told her.

“Well, you seem to be breathing now, so cut the drama,” Charlie demanded. “And hurry. The bell’s about to ring.” Leaning against the wall, she waited while Annie added a dab of lipstick in that new color, Fighting Red, and smiled at herself in the mirror. She smiled more often than usual, Charlie thought, probably because Will was coming for Thanksgiving. Annie had told her she’d received a letter from him just the other day and that Will was looking forward to spending time with her.

“I don’t think we need to worry about Elwin being involved.” Annie spoke so softly Charlie had to strain to hear her. “I believe he’s keeping a secret, all right, but it isn’t about Miss Dimple.”

“Then what—”

“Excuse me, but is anyone in the toilet?” Cornelia Emerson marched in just then, slamming the bathroom door back on its hinges. “The children will be lining up any minute and I won’t have another chance to go until recess.”

“No, go ahead.” Charlie stepped back, exchanging glances with Annie. The woman acted like she was the only person who was inconvenienced in that way. “We were just leaving.

“You were saying?” she whispered to Annie as the two stepped into the hallway.

“I think Elwin has a lover,” Annie began.

“Really?” Charlie grinned. “Why would he keep that a secret? Do you know who she is?”

Annie tried to suppress a giggle, but she could see it was useless.

“What?”
Charlie wanted to shake her. “What’s so funny?”

“Look, I feel awful about this. We had no business prying into things that don’t concern us.…” Laughing, she gripped Charlie’s shoulders with both hands. “But I think we can stop worrying about Elwin being straitlaced and prudish!”

“What
are
you talking about? Does he have a girlfriend or not?”

Annie nodded vigorously. “I’ll say he does!”

Charlie glanced behind her to see if anyone was around, but the hallway was clear. “So why would he want to keep it a secret?”

Annie shrugged. “Beats me, unless maybe she’s married to somebody else … or he is. I mean, what do we actually know about him?”

“What makes you think that?”

They heard the toilet flush in the room behind them and knew Cornelia would soon be emerging. Annie took Charlie’s arm and more or less propelled her down the hall to the back steps just as the bell began to ring. “There were framed photographs in his desk drawer, all of the same woman, somebody named Leila Mae, and they were signed … well, I won’t go into how they were signed, but I can tell you for sure she’s not his sister! And I found a couple of snapshots of her, too, and if her dress were cut any lower it would be down to her waist.”

“No kidding? Who’d have thought it!” Charlie whispered. “What’s she look like?”

Annie shrugged. “Frankly, I thought she was kind of plain, but she must have something. From what I read in her letters, they’re planning to be together. Kinda hot stuff, if you know what I mean.”

“Do you think that might be why he bought that farmhouse? Maybe this Leila Mae plans to join him there. Or, it could be she’s there already,” she added, remembering the dishes in the sink.

“If they really are having an illicit relationship, that would be an ideal place to meet, I guess. You know, sort of away from everything,” Annie said as the children gathered in energetic clusters at the foot of the steps.

Maybe so, Charlie thought, but what was Cornelia Emerson doing out there?

*   *   *

The day before Thanksgiving the children were so excited they were like a roomful of jumping beans. After a brief assembly program during which Willie Elrod got to play the part of a friendly Indian and the school chorus sang, “Come Ye Thankful People, Come” and “Over the River and Through the Woods,” it was a major effort to keep their minds on work. Several of the children in Charlie’s class said that they wouldn’t be traveling to celebrate Thanksgiving with their grandparents this year as they didn’t have enough gas to get there and most of the space on trains and buses were reserved for those serving in the military. Willie, who proudly wore his Indian makeup the rest of the day, announced that his grandmother Cochran, who lived in Atlanta, was coming to spend the holiday with them because his two uncles were both away in the army.

“If they’re this excited about Thanksgiving, I hate to think what they’ll be like before Christmas. Why don’t we combine our classes and create two teams for a spelling bee?” Annie suggested after lunch, and Charlie agreed. As soon as the children returned from their noon break, they lined them up facing one another in Annie’s room, and since it wouldn’t be fair to pit third graders against those a year ahead, they mixed up the classes into different teams.

“Why not call one team Indians and the other Pilgrims?” Charlie suggested, but Junior Henderson wanted his side to be the Americans and the other the Japanese.

“I’m not going to be on any old Jap team!” Willie protested. “I wanna be on the Indian side. If I was an Indian I’d sneak out at night and catch spies. Indians were so quiet you wouldn’t even know they were there until it was
too late
!” And he jumped a little girl from behind and made her scream with fright.

“That’s enough of that, William Elrod,” Charlie said sternly. “If you’re going to behave like that you won’t be an Indian, a Pilgrim, or even a Japanese. Now, apologize to Shirley this minute.”

“I’m sorry, Shirley. I didn’t mean to scare you, honest. You can even have my moon rocket kit I got from Cheerios. I was kinda tired of it anyway.”

And after a moment’s hesitation, Shirley accepted gracefully. “Well, okay, I guess. Who you gonna spy on, Willie? Can I come, too?”

“Naw, you’d probably scream or something and scare them away, but I know how to be quiet, and I know where to find them, too, because I’ve seen the ev-i-dence.”

The child was so good-natured, Charlie couldn’t find it in her to punish him, and so it was determined that each student would draw a number from a hat. Those who drew a one would be Indians and the ones who drew a two would be on the Pilgrim team. Unfortunately Willie drew a two but in a matter of seconds he had talked Ruthie Phillips into swapping with him.

“I want to see you after class,” Charlie told Willie when the spelling bee was over with only one fourth-grade Indian left standing.

“But, Miss Charlie, I promise I won’t scare anybody no more, and Shirley’s gonna come by my house to get that rocket kit soon as school’s out.”

“It’s not about that and I won’t keep you long. Shirley can wait for you on the playground,” she assured him.

When the dismissal bell rang a short while later Charlie waited until the room emptied before taking a seat on the desktop across from Willie’s and addressing him face-to-face. “I want you to promise me you won’t even think of sneaking out alone at night, Willie. We all want to help with the war effort and we know how brave you are, but everybody would feel terrible if anything happened to you. If you want to help win the war, try not to be wasteful, and keep on buying savings stamps and collecting tinfoil. How big is that tinfoil ball of yours now?”

He beamed. “Bigger that a baseball, and heavy, too. I peel the foil off every piece of chewing gum I can find but Mama says she heard they’re gonna start wrapping it in just plain paper.”

“Well, it sounds to me like you’re doing your part. Now I want you to forget all about this spying business.” Charlie rose to dismiss him.

“But, Miss Charlie …” Willie’s eyes grew wide. “I really do think somebody’s been hanging around that old toolshed back behind the school. Why won’t anybody believe me?”

“I think Mr. O’Donnell sleeps in there from time to time when he forgets the key to his house,” Charlie explained in an effort to spare the man’s reputation—or what was left of it.

“Aw, Miss Charlie, everybody knows Delby O’Donnell’s wife locks him out when he comes home drunk, but this ain’t Delby O’Donnell. There’s cigarette butts all over the ground out there—and it’s always Lucky Strikes. I’ve examined them.”

Charlie smiled. “And I’m sure you have the makings of a fine detective some day, but how do you know they weren’t Mr. O’Donnell’s?”

“ ’Cause Delby O’Donnell smokes cigars. Ain’t never seen him smoke nothin’ else.”

Charlie sighed. After assuring Willie the cigarettes were probably smoked by teenaged boys who could burn down the school with their carelessness and had no business out there, she wished him a happy Thanksgiving and sent him on his way. She really was going to have to do something about that child’s English!

The basket for Paschall Kiker waited in the front hall underneath the stairs and Charlie was glad to see it was heaped with jars of home-canned fruits and vegetables as well as a couple of contributions of pickles and jams. True to her word, Charlie had donated oranges and sweet potatoes and Annie, who was from South Carolina, brought olives and a bag of rice. No table, she claimed, Thanksgiving or otherwise, was complete without rice and gravy.

“I hope you know how to make gravy,” Charlie teased Ollie when he showed up a few minutes later to clean the hallway with the familiar cedar-smelling compound.

“No’me, but I reckon Mrs. Spragg does. She’s coming over to help out with dinner. We’ve ordered a nice hen from Cooper’s and it sure looks like we won’t go hungry, at least not anytime soon.”

Charlie knew Mrs. Spragg was coming over because Bessie had told her earlier, but of course she didn’t let on. She wondered if Ollie had any idea that Bessie Jenkins expected more from him than a polite “thank you, ma’am” for his upcoming holiday dinner.

Annie was already locking her classroom door behind her when Charlie started back to her room to put assignments on the board for the next school day.

“You’re in a hurry to leave,” Charlie said. “What’s the rush?”

Annie smiled and Charlie could swear her friend blushed. “Gotta run. I’m getting my hair cut this afternoon … well, just trimmed, you know, so it won’t look so shaggy.”

“You want to look your best for Will, I know—even though the two of you really aren’t serious or anything like that!” Charlie grinned as Annie shrugged into her coat, shedding papers all over the floor.

“ ‘Et tu, Brute?’ ” She made a face. “I’m not … he’s not!” With Charlie’s help, Annie scrambled to collect the papers. “I just want to look nice for Thanksgiving, that’s all.”

Charlie shook her head as she watched her hurry out the door. She had never seen her friend so excited, and she didn’t think it had anything to do with the turkey and cornbread dressing her aunt would be serving—or even the rice and gravy.

*   *   *

Tomorrow would be Thanksgiving. Dimple Kilpatrick sat on the edge of her bed and thought about the children in her class. Most of them should be ready to move up into the more advanced primer by now but she worried about the few who lagged behind, the ones who didn’t get enough sleep, or sometimes not even enough to eat, and whose parents were either too tired or too shiftless to care if they studied at home. Were they getting the extra help they needed at school? Certainly not if that silly Alma Owens had taken her place!

The book with the story about Tomochichi was still in her bag as it had been the morning she was taken and she drew it out and browsed through the pages. She always looked forward to reading that story to her children and telling them about how the Indians taught the settlers to bury a fish to fertilize the seeds when they planted corn. And her classes loved the improvised game,
This is what I’d take if I were going to the new world.
The first person listed something that started with an A, the next person added an item beginning with B, and so on, to see how far they could get down the alphabet. The ones near the end had a harder time of it, of course, because they had to remember all the subjects mentioned earlier, and the entire collection was always ridiculous and created much laughter.