Miss Dimple Disappears (24 page)

Jo entertained everybody with her account of a recent birthday party she’d written for the
Eagle
. The honoree was turning eleven and her mother, in keeping with the chilly autumn weather, had served sugar cookies and hot spiced punch, only somewhere down the line, the linotype operator had hit a wrong key and the town was aghast to read of their innocent children being served hot
spiked
punch.

*   *   *

While at Maxwell, the men had received extensive physical training, and during the classification stage were tested and examined mentally and physically to become classified as a navigator, bombardier, and pilot before their preflight training even began.

“What kind of planes will you be flying at Souther?” Charlie asked, turning to Joel.

His eyes brightened at the subject. “Probably the Boeing Stearman PT-17 to start with,” he said.

“She’s a two-seater,” Will said, joining in. “Gets up to about one hundred twenty-five miles an hour. Nimble in the air, but I hear she’s pretty tricky to handle on the ground.”

Both men had been classified as pilots, and Joel had also received a high rating as bombardier, while Will got an additional classification as navigator. It was easy to see they were eager to get on with the next stage of their training and to receive their wings so that they could join fighting squadrons in Europe or the Pacific Theater. Charlie looked at their young, enthusiastic faces and thought of Fain who, a few months ago, had seemed very much the same. At least Fain was fighting on the ground. If a plane was shot down, it would be a long way to fall, and even if they managed to parachute, the crew became sitting ducks for enemy gunners. She rose abruptly to poke the fire.

Will, who after a few more hands of poker had begun to accumulate a fair supply of pecans, cracked two of them together, ate the nut meats, and threw the shells into the fire.

“Hey, you’re not supposed to eat your winnings!” Annie told him, laughing, and he replied by snatching two of hers. The two seemed to have a friendly, relaxed relationship, and it was obvious they enjoyed being together.

“Annie’s been keeping us up-to-date on your missing Miss Dimple,” Joel said, throwing his cards down in disgust. “Any word yet?”

“No, and it’s been two weeks today,” Charlie told him.

Will shook his head. “And there’ve been no demands or evidence of any kind?”

“Very little that we know about.” Annie told him what Willie said he’d seen and how Virginia had found the scrap of yarn.

“That Willie!” Charlie laughed. “He’s convinced that spies are meeting behind that old toolshed in back of the school. Says he’s found cigarette butts out there.”

“Probably Delby O’Donnell’s,” Annie said. “I’ve heard he sleeps in there whenever his wife locks him out.”

“That’s what I told him, but Willie swears Delby only smokes cigars,” Charlie explained, “and he claims these were all Lucky Strikes.”

“Hey! I hear on the radio that Lucky Strikes have gone to war,” Joel chimed in. “They’re claiming the copper-based green dye on their old package can be better used to help manufacture tanks.”

“I’ve noticed they’ve switched to red,” Jo said, “but I think it’s all a lot of talk. They were probably going to change the color anyway.”

Charlie thought her mother looked tired, and suddenly she felt the same way. “I’m going to run up and light the fire in your bedroom so it will have time to take the chill off before you come up,” she told the two men, motioning for Annie to stay when she offered to help. “I’m sure you three want a chance to visit, so stay up as long as you like. Just remember to bank the coals before you turn in, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

She was already in bed a little while later when she heard footsteps going up the stairs.
One set of footsteps.
Joel was probably giving his sister and Will some private time to themselves.

Once in a while during the evening Charlie had felt Will looking at her with an expression she couldn’t quite fathom; probably her wistful imagination. She burrowed beneath the quilts and tried to think of Hugh.
Hugh. Hugh. Hugh.
But Hugh was only a good friend. Hadn’t the two of them agreed to leave it that way? Charlie sighed. The only way she was going to get through this weekend was to put as much distance as possible between herself and Will Sinclair.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-TWO

She was hot … no, she was cold. Dimple Kilpatrick propped on one elbow and shivered as she pulled the quilt to her chin. Her throat felt as if she’d swallowed hot burning coals. Across the room blue flames flickered in the gas heater and the gray light of early morning seeped through dirt-streaked windows casting the room in shadow. She reached for the glass of water on the table beside her bed, almost spilling it when the man loomed up beside her.

“Here now, we can’t have you gettin’ sick.” He doled two small white pills into her trembling hand. “Take these aspirin and I’ll bring you some of that tea you like. Won’t take a minute.”

She glanced at the pills to be sure he wasn’t dosing her with poison and obediently swallowed them. They looked like aspirin and tasted like aspirin, but if he had given her something that would kill her, she felt she wouldn’t have far to go.

As soon as he left the room she shoved the covers aside and pulled on her robe and slippers. The quilt seemed to weigh a ton and her legs wobbled so she had to hold on to a chair until she felt capable of walking to the bathroom. She must’ve picked up a germ somehow, she thought. Well, this wouldn’t do. This wouldn’t do at all! She needed every ounce of her strength if she wanted to get out of this place.

By the time her clown-faced captor returned, she had made her way to the rocking chair, and, wrapped in the shell of the quilt she’d pieced together, pulled the chair as close to the heater as possible. Her head felt as if someone had been playing kickball with it and every inch of her body ached.

Silently he handed her the mug of tea and put a pan of steaming water on top of the heater. “More hot water there as I reckon you’re gonna need it,” he told her. “I can’t find a teapot, but there’s a box of that tea and one of them little metal strainers over there on the table.”

She noticed that he was keeping his distance, probably because he was afraid of germs, or it had occurred to him she would consider him a likely target for the pan of hot water—as she most certainly had. The tea was her favorite, ginger mint, and oh, it went down like a warm caress! Where had he found it? And was anyone paying attention or had they given up on her entirely?

Miss Dimple sipped every comforting drop and waited for the man to leave, but instead he pulled a straight chair up to the table and took out a pad and pencil. “If you’ll tell me how to put them muffins together, I’ll see what I can do,” he directed.

“I think you’ll find it much easier if I just write that down for you,” she said, reaching for a sheet of her own note paper on her bedside table. She had given him a list earlier that had included ingredients for the muffins along with her request for ginger mint tea, but this time she made a point to print the lettering as large as possible. He hesitated for a moment as if thinking it over, then carefully laid his writing utensils aside. “I can’t think of a more nutritious way to begin your day,” she croaked as she began to print out the ingredients for the recipe in her own distinct style, so elegant it resembled illumination from ancient texts. “You’ll be surprised at how much better you’ll feel after using vitamin-enriched wheat flour, and soy if you can find it. I’m positively certain you have a deficiency somewhere … take your fingernails for instance—not a healthy color at all.”

Later she heard him moving about upstairs in the kitchen, or at least she assumed it was the kitchen. Miss Dimple drank another cup of tea, ate a few spoonfuls of the oatmeal he’d brought her, and longed to go back to sleep, but she forced herself to get up and dress. By and by, if the aspirin did its work as it should, her fever would break and she must be ready for any event. She hadn’t lied about noticing the man’s fingernails, but the nails weren’t discolored because of a vitamin deficiency. His nails were stained with soil, as if he’d been digging in the dirt. Had he been preparing a place for her?

Dimple Kilpatrick poured herself a third mug of tea and sat down to read a five-year-old issue of
The Woman’s Home Companion
for at least the third time. She looked at her watch. It was half after eight Thanksgiving morning, and for now she was thankful to be alive.

*   *   *

Aunt Louise took right away to Joel and Will, and Charlie’s uncle Ed asked them so many questions, you might think he was writing a research paper on the subject, but the two men were happy to discuss the training behind them, and what would be expected in the challenging months ahead. They wouldn’t receive their rank of second lieutenant, Will explained, until their training was complete.

They sat on scratchy horsehair chairs around her aunt’s dining-room table and ate turkey and dressing with rice, gravy, and sweet potatoes, complete with most of the trimmings they were accustomed to with the exception of a few that were in short supply. Joel sat in Fain’s usual place next to her uncle Ed, and Charlie was glad they wouldn’t have to look at an empty chair. Annie sat next to him in Delia’s accustomed place, with Will on her other side. The house was filled with the smells of turkey, spicy jam cake, and wood smoke from the big stone fireplace in the living room, and Charlie wondered where her brother was now and if he was thinking of home.

Anyone who didn’t know her mother, probably wouldn’t have noticed that Jo Carr was doing her best to “keep a stiff upper lip” as the British were fond of saying, but Charlie could tell from the look in her mother’s eyes she was thinking of Fain and missing him. Jo dutifully kept up her end of the conversation as she and her sister told the men a little about their work at the ordnance plant in Milledgeville. They didn’t speak about it often, and when they did it was only to a trustworthy few. Their jobs there weren’t complicated, Jo explained, but munitions were essential to winning the war, and they were constantly being reminded that “Enemy agents are always near. If you don’t talk, they won’t hear!”

“I wonder if there
are
any spies around here,” Annie said. “I can’t imagine what they’d learn in Elderberry.”

“I wish you’d convince Willie Elrod of that,” Charlie reminded her. “But if there are any here, you can count on Willie to find them.” She laughed when she said it, but she still had a feeling Miss Dimple’s disappearance had something to do with her brother’s work at the Bell Bomber Plant in Marietta.

After an early-afternoon dinner, Aunt Lou served rich boiled custard flavored with sherry and nutmeg with slices of her homemade jam cake. “But only a small one this year,” she explained, “and from all I hear, I’m afraid next year’s will be even smaller.”

After the table was cleared, they all sat in front of the fire, too full and too comfortable in its warmth to do much of anything until Joel suggested Will entertain them at the piano.

Will sighed and stretched. “Would you mind bringing the piano over here to me? I don’t think I can walk that far.” But with a little encouragement and a lot of exaggerated groaning, he gave the piano stool a couple of spins and sat down to play, only on condition that the others join him in singing.

They warmed up with “She’ll Be Comin’ ’Round the Mountain
,
” moved on to “Casey Jones,” and were well into the third verse of “Home on the Range,” when the telephone rang.

Jo’s eyes lit up in expectation as she turned to Lou. “Oh, do you think it might be …”

It couldn’t be Fain, of course, but Delia and Ned had access to a telephone at the base where they lived, and all eyes followed her aunt as she hurried to answer.

“It’s for you,” she said to Charlie, upon returning to the room. “Somebody important, I suspect.” And then she winked and fluttered her eyelashes.

Charlie could feel the blood rushing to her face as she hurried from the room. Why couldn’t she have normal relatives like everybody else?

“Can’t talk but a minute,” Hugh said. “Just wanted to wish you a happy Thanksgiving and let you know I’m thinking of you.”

Charlie was so surprised to hear from him she was momentarily speechless. “And I’ve been thinking of you,” she told him. “How did you know where to find me?”

He laughed. “Where else would you be on Thanksgiving? You’ve told me about your mother’s cooking.” He sounded surprisingly close, not at all like he was as far away as Virginia.

He told her that he was staying so busy with classes and drills, he fell asleep almost before his head hit the pillow every night. “I look forward to your letters,” he said before ending the conversation. “Please keep them coming. And Charlie,” he whispered, “don’t forget me!”

“I won’t, Hugh, I promise.” Of course she wouldn’t forget him! Charlie shook her head as she replaced the receiver. She’d detected a note of homesickness in his voice. It was Thanksgiving and Hugh was away from home. Just as he’d felt during the picnic at Turtle Rock, he was longing for familiar ground. Who could blame him?

Of course she’d continue to write … but things weren’t exactly the same between them.

Annie grinned. “W-e-e-l-l,” she said, making the word go on forever. “And how is Hugh?”

Charlie felt the hateful flush returning. “Busy,” she told her. “He said to tell everybody hello.” He hadn’t.

“I need to get out and stretch my legs after all that good food,” Joel said. “Why don’t you two show us the town?”

“It won’t take long to see Elderberry,” Charlie told him. “The three of you go on and I’ll stay and help Aunt Lou with the dishes.”

Her aunt frowned. “Since when have you been so concerned about that? The dishes aren’t going anywhere, so scat! Get on out of here and get some fresh air.” She waved them along. “And take your uncle Ed with you!”