Miss Dimple Disappears (29 page)

Charlie didn’t blame them. In fact, she was feeling the same way, but she tried to speak calmly. “I’m sure he’s out playing somewhere and has just forgotten the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if his stomach didn’t remind him it’s time for supper before too long.”

“I hope you’re right …” Emma Elrod didn’t bother to hold back a sob. “I have to go now and help look for him. Can’t just sit here and do nothing!”

“Has anybody looked over at the school?” Charlie asked. “I have a key to the building. Maybe he got locked inside.”

Grabbing her jacket, she rushed out the door and dashed across the street and around the block to the school to find Annie already there, along with their principal and several other teachers.

“Any luck?” she asked Annie when they met in the front hall, but her friend shook her head.

“We’ve looked everywhere. It’s so dark now and he’s on his bike. I’m afraid …” Annie lowered her voice. “What if there’s been an accident?”

Charlie turned to leave. “I’ll get the car. Ride with me and you can look while I drive.”

But where?
Charlie wondered as they hurried back to the house. “There’s no telling what Willie might have gotten up to with his wild imagination about spies. Why, just this afternoon he was trying to tell me some crazy story about poor old Ollie Thigpen.”

“Then I guess that’s where we’ll start.” Annie paused at the corner. “Do you think we have enough gas? Remember, we did all that riding around last Friday.”

Charlie remembered. It wasn’t so much the gas that concerned her, but she wasn’t sure they had any rationing coupons left.

A car slowed as they crossed the street and Jesse Dean Greeson pulled over to the curb and rolled down his window. “Have they found the little Elrod boy yet?” he called to them.

“No, but we think we know where he might’ve gone,” Charlie told him. “We’re on the way to get the car right now. I’m just hoping it has enough gas to get us out to Paschall Kiker’s farm.”

“ ‘My kingdom for a horse!’ ” Annie muttered.

“Never mind that.” Jesse Dean reached across and opened the passenger door. “Get in! We’ll go together.”

Charlie hesitated, but only for a few seconds and glanced at Annie, who nodded in agreement. If they wanted to find Willie, they really didn’t have much choice.

“Maybe we should let Willie’s mother know where we’re going,” Annie suggested as she stepped onto the running board and slid into the seat beside Charlie.

“But what if he’s not there after all and we run into a dead end?” Charlie said. “I’d hate to get her hopes up for nothing.”

“I tried to get in touch with Chief Tinsley but he’s got some of his men out looking over at Etowah Pond,” Jesse Dean said. Traffic was sparse and he quickly eased back onto the street and maintained a moderate rate until they came to the edge of town where he startled both of them by a sudden burst of speed.

Etowah Pond? Charlie felt a tightening in her chest. Surely Willie wouldn’t have gone there this time of year! He knew how to swim, but he could’ve fallen in, panicked. “So you think he’s at the Kiker place, too. Why?” she asked Jesse Dean.

“I have several reasons,” he said, turning onto the two-lane dirt road, “but the main one is Ollie Thigpen.” He turned to her. “What about you?”

Charlie told her what Willie had said about Ollie that afternoon. “Or he
tried to,
” she said. “Some story about finding a grocery list in Miss Dimple’s handwriting in Ollie’s jacket pocket, but Willie’s always seeing spies, and I was distracted by a sick child. Frankly, I didn’t pay too much attention to him.”

Jesse Dean nodded. “Grocery list. That makes sense to me. That’s exactly what made me suspicious.” He told them how Ollie had purchased Miss Dimple’s favorite ginger mint tea, explaining that it was a gift for a friend. “Now she’s not the only one who drinks that kind, and that in itself wouldn’t have troubled me if it hadn’t been for the other things,” he added. “You know, like some of the peculiar ingredients she puts in those muffins she likes to make. He came in the store today and read them from a list.”

“Did you see the list?” Charlie asked. “Willie said it was in Miss Dimple’s handwriting.”

Jesse Dean frowned and leaned forward, concentrating on the rutted road ahead. “Never gave me the list, which I thought was kinda funny—and that’s not all …”

“What do you mean?” Annie held on to the strap to keep from bouncing about. Their driver’s eyesight was none too keen and she hoped they wouldn’t end up in a ditch.

“Well, I make deliveries, you know. Been taking groceries out to old Mr. Kiker for a year or so now that he doesn’t get around so much, but the last couple of times I was out there, I could’ve sworn I saw bubbles coming from somewhere.”

“Bubbles?” Charlie smiled. Was he making that up? “What kind of bubbles?”

“Soap bubbles, I reckon. First time I thought I’d just imagined it, but then it happened again. It was the day before Thanksgiving and Ollie had phoned a couple of days before and said Mr. Kiker wanted a hen, but nobody answered the door when I got there so I left a note and told him he’d just have to come and pick it up—only he never did. That’s when I saw the bubbles again.”

“Did you find out where they were coming from?” Annie asked.

“Seemed like it was from somewhere in back, most likely from the basement, but they disappeared right quick, so it was hard to tell, and that day with all the orders and all, I didn’t have time to check it out like I wanted to, but it puzzled me, and it still does.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t pull all the way into the driveway,” Charlie suggested as they neared the Kiker farm. “If there is something going on, I wouldn’t want them to know we’re here.”

The other two agreed that was a good idea. Jesse Dean turned off the road and parked near a weed-choked cornfield just down the road from the house. Charlie was glad she wore her low-heeled oxfords as the ground was uneven and dotted with puddles. A cold wind forced them to turn up the collars of their jackets and walk a little faster. As they drew closer they saw a dim light shining in one of the front windows, and without saying a word, the three of them began walking single file through the long grass that bordered the drive, taking care not to speak as they approached the house. Jesse Dean, who was the tallest, crept through the thick shrubbery to look in a window but returned, shaking his head. “I can’t see anybody in there,” he whispered, “but I know somebody’s inside. Let’s see if we can see anything around back.”

“There’s a car back here,” Charlie said as they turned the corner of the house. It was hard to tell much about it in the dark, but she thought it looked vaguely familiar. Yellow squares of light lay across the back porch floor and Ollie Thigpen’s bicycle was propped against the wall of the house.

It became immediately obvious to them that the three of them would make too much of a disturbance walking up the steps to the porch while trying to avoid being seen, so it was decided that Annie, being the smallest and most agile, should try to peek in the window while the others waited on the edges of darkness. Charlie armed herself from the woodpile with a length of firewood as long as her arm and motioned for Jesse Dean to do the same. Still, she hoped Annie would come up with a good story if she was detected:
Her car gave out on the road …
or,
Her Sunday school class sent her to visit ailing Mr. Kiker.
Knowing Annie, she had no doubt she’d think of something.

But Annie was back before she’d had time to worry and even in the darkness, her face looked as pale as a specter. “We’ve gotta get out of here!” she urged them, tugging at Charlie’s sleeve. “They’re in there—all of them—Willie, and Miss Dimple, and Cornelia Emerson, too. He has them tied to chairs.”

“Who? Ollie?” Jesse Dean wanted to know.

“No, no, no! I didn’t see Ollie, so there’s no telling where he might be.” Annie looked wildly about. “Come on! We have to get help
now!
”

Charlie stumbled along behind her. “Then who? If not Ollie,
who
?”

“Our good friend Elwin Vickery, that’s who! Now
run!
”

The two women had turned the corner of the house when the back door opened and the porch light came on. “Who’s out there?” a man’s voice called. Elwin’s. Annie slid into the shadows of a grove of pine saplings, pulling Charlie with her, and together they froze as one.

But it was too late for Jesse Dean, who was caught like a rabbit in the headlights. “It’s only me—Jesse Dean. Just checkin’ on Mr. Kiker,” he said. “Thought I’d see if he needs something from the store so I can drop it by in the morning.”

Charlie noticed something gleam briefly in his hand as he tossed it into the grass a few feet away.

“Who’s with you?” Elwin called.

“Why, nobody. I was just on my way home, but if this isn’t a good time, I can check back with him tomorrow.” Jesse Dean sounded almost convincing.

The sound she heard next froze her inside as well as out. Charlie had heard it at the movies more times than she could count. It was the cocking of a pistol.

“I think not.” Elwin’s voice didn’t sound like Elwin at all. “Why don’t you come on up and join us? I’ll get another chair.”

Charlie pressed against the tree so hard she could feel the imprint of its bark in her back, and beside her Annie was doing the same. She heard Annie’s sharp intake of breath as Elwin left the porch and came down into the yard to usher Jesse Dean inside. Would he see them? Would he see the ignition key Jesse Dean had tossed into the grass?

Jesse Dean distracted him by arguing as he was being shoved unceremoniously across the back lawn. “Well, I sure don’t know what this is all about … you’re funnin’ me, aren’t you? Come to think of it, though, it ain’t too funny …”

Annie waited until she heard the door close behind them, and although the porch light remained on, darted across the lawn to comb the grass for what Jesse Dean had tossed away. Thank heavens it didn’t take long to find the key. “I hope you can drive this thing,” she told Charlie when, out of breath, they reached the cornfield where they had parked the car, “because I don’t have the faintest notion how.”

Not daring to turn on the headlights until they were safely out of sight, Charlie backed the car into the road, praying they wouldn’t get stuck, and headed for town. She didn’t remember it being this noisy on the way out. “If I didn’t know how to drive it now, I’d sure learn in a hurry!” she said.

And ‘a plague on both your houses!’ ” Annie yelled over her shoulder, meaning the curse, of course, for the wretched Elwin and Ollie. But only when they were a far-enough distance away.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-SEVEN

Miss Dimple tugged at the bonds that held her hands behind her and tried to send a comforting look to poor little Willie Elrod who was bound to the chair across from her. Elwin Vickery of all people! His treachery was beyond comprehension. And what was this strange woman doing here? Maybe she had something to do with law enforcement because she seemed to have been armed with some sort of gun. Elwin had been holding it along with his own when he escorted the two inside.

What was this evil man planning to do with them? She wasn’t keen on the idea of dying at all, but the child concerned her even more. Would this animal harm an innocent little boy? Not if Dimple Kilpatrick could help it!

At least she had put that disgraceful Ollie Thigpen out of commission, but you would have thought that by now at least someone in Elderberry might have caught on to one of her clues. She knew she wasn’t the only mystery reader in town, but she had hoped Virginia might see the note she left in one of the books Mr. Smith had checked out for her from the library. The problem was that he’d probably never returned it, which was, to Dimple Kilpatrick, a sin in itself. And apparently no one had noticed her signal of bubbles, but Jesse Dean Greeson knew very well the ingredients in her Victory Muffins. She’d counted on better from him. Still, it wasn’t too late.

Or was it?

Miss Dimple stiffened at the sight of Jesse Dean stumbling into the room, prodded from behind by the man who held them all. She had been snugly bound when that strange woman and Willie stumbled onto the scene and Elwin had forced the woman to bind Willie before he secured her to a chair, threatening to harm the child if she didn’t cooperate. Now, scowling, he bound Jesse Dean. And while he was being tied along with the rest of them, Jesse Dean Greeson gave her the first sign of hope she’d had since she had been here. He looked up at her and winked.

The noise from the basement stairs alerted her before he stumbled into the doorway. Ollie Thigpen, bruised and bleeding, held the door frame for support and looked about him. “I don’t know what you plan to do, and I don’t want to know, but you can count me out,” he said to Elwin. “I’ve done my part and I want my share.” Leaning against the table he gave Dimple Kilpatrick a belligerent glance and turned away. “Just give me what’s mine,” he told Elwin, “and I’ll go where nobody will ever find me.”

Elwin’s smile made Dimple want to cover her face. “Oh, come now! The colonel would be disappointed to hear you talk like that. He’s been looking forward to meeting you.”

Ollie turned away. “What about the plant? They’re not planning to do anything tonight?”

“What’s done is done, so don’t concern yourself about it,” Elwin told him. “What happens at that plant is not our problem anymore.”

Ollie’s voice trembled. “It’s one thing to hold this old woman to get whatever it is you’re after, but people I know work at that plant, some of them at night. Frankly, I don’t care if they blow the place to blazes, but not while somebody’s in it!”

“Well, isn’t that just too bad? You should’ve thought of that before you gave us all those helpful little details about the layout, don’t you think?”

Ollie closed his eyes. He really did look terrible, Miss Dimple thought, as if he might keel over at any second. “There are guards,” he mumbled, wincing. “And they’re armed.”