Miss Dimple Disappears (5 page)

“You can’t do it, Charlie. You can’t leave Mama alone,” Fain had told her. Her brother had been accepted into officers training school at the time, and Charlie knew he was right. Besides, Fain didn’t need anything else to worry him.

Although Delia’s letters home were upbeat and newsy, Charlie recognized a “brave front” when she saw one. She knew her mother worried over what her sister had obviously omitted, and once in a while she even felt guilty for resenting her.

Now Jo hung her damp dish towel on the back of the pantry door. “I think I’ll go ahead and take my bath before I get back to that wedding write-up. Want me to leave on the heater in the bathroom?”

Charlie felt suddenly tired, and a warm bath seemed tempting, but she had promised to meet Annie at Miss Phoebe’s, where they would then walk together to pay their respects to the Malones.

“I want to take those muffins over to Madge Malone before it gets too late. Maybe there’ll be a little warm water left when I get home.”

In order to have a hot bath in a warm room, first one had to light the iron gas monstrosity that would heat water in the tank, then the smaller heater in the bathroom, but it would be worth waiting for, Charlie thought as she grabbed her coat and stepped into the cold night air.

Phoebe Chadwick sent a loaf of Odessa’s homemade bread and a jar of peach preserves with Annie, and the two of them left their offerings on the Malones’ kitchen table along with numerous cakes and casseroles before paying their respects to the family. Charlie noticed that their neighbor, Bessie Jenkins, who was leaving as they arrived, had brought her customary contribution of orange nut bread, wrapped in wax paper and tied with a lavender ribbon.

Madge Malone, red-eyed and quiet, thanked them for coming and even smiled when Charlie told her she would always remember her husband’s joyful rendition of “Froggie Went A-Courtin’.” After speaking to several other members of the family, she was glad to work her way toward the door where Annie stood talking with a short, dumpy woman with obviously hennaed hair.

“I’ve been telling Wilson he works too hard,” she said, introducing herself as the Malones’ next-door neighbor. “Why, he was out here the other day cuttin’ stove wood, face as red as that chair cushion over there. I told him—‘Wilson,’ I said, ‘you’d better ease off on all that choppin’ or you’re liable to end up just like your daddy!’

“Wilson’s daddy had the high blood, too, you know. Keeled over playing softball at the church picnic. Didn’t even make it to second base.”

“Are they sure it was Chri— Wilson’s heart?” Charlie asked. “Someone mentioned earlier they thought it might’ve been a stroke.”

But the neighbor waved that idea aside. “Stroke, heart, what does it matter? If you’re not careful, that high blood will get you in the end.” She shook her head. “If only he’d listened to me—”

Her attention was distracted by a new arrival whom she snared by the arm. “Pearl, I was tellin’ these folks here I wasn’t a bit surprised—”

*   *   *

“Lord, I thought we’d never get away!” Annie said as they finally made their escape. “It’s peculiar that nobody seems to know exactly what it was that killed Christmas. Wouldn’t you think they’d have learned something definite by now?”

Charlie tucked her muffler closer under her chin. “I hated to ask Madge, and they might not ever know. I’ve heard he had more than one head wound, but nobody has explained that, either. Besides, we can’t bring him back, can we? Dead is dead.”

“I guess you’re right, but it does seem a shame. I wonder if the bell you heard was Christmas calling for help.” Annie pulled her tam about her ears and walked a little faster.

Charlie didn’t even want to think about that. Eager to reach home and relax in a hot bath, she hurried to catch up with Annie who waltzed along ahead of her to some unheard tune. It amazed her that somebody with such short legs could outpace her. There was no moon tonight and few streetlights in this part of town. The dull yellow glow from neighboring windows gave sporadic illumination to the dark streets where an occasional wind sent leaves rattling into gutters.

After parting with Annie at Miss Phoebe’s, Charlie walked even faster, periodically glancing over her shoulder. Had someone shadowed Miss Dimple on her last early-morning walk?

Threatening characters from every frightening movie she’d ever seen seemed to hover just out of sight: Lon Chaney, Peter Lorrie, Boris Karloff, and Bela Lugosi in his dark, sweeping cape, who, to Charlie was the scariest of all.

For heaven’s sake! This is ridiculous! What would your third graders think of you now?
Charlie deliberately slowed her steps and sang all she could remember of “Chattanooga Choo Choo” until she finally reached the safety of her own front porch, where she hurried inside and locked the door behind her.

A light shone from beneath the sitting room door and Charlie peeked in to find her mother dozing by the dying fireside with what looked like the completed wedding write-up still in the notebook on her lap. Charlie tiptoed past to quietly add a couple of coals to the grate, but Jo Carr sat up with a start.

“My goodness! I must’ve dozed off. What time is it?”

Charlie kissed her mother’s warm cheek. “Time for you to go to bed, and I’ll be doing the same after I’ve thawed out in the tub. I think it’s getting colder out there.”

“I can’t help thinking of poor Miss Dimple. Wherever she is, I hope she’s safe and warm.” Jo covered a yawn. “And how did you find Madge Malone? Any word on what happened to Wilson?”

“I didn’t ask, but their neighbor thinks it must’ve been his heart. Said he had high blood pressure, and I suppose that could’ve contributed to it.” Charlie sat to pull off her shoes and held her cold feet to the flickering blaze. “Frankly, I think Madge is still numb, but they have two teenaged daughters. What will happen to them now?”

*   *   *

What must it be like to lose your life’s mate? she thought later as she relaxed in lilac-scented water using crystals someone had given her the Christmas before. Her own parents had been especially close and she knew her mother still had difficulty with her husband’s death, although most of the time she tried not to show it.

Her sister Delia had loved Ned from their first date when she was fifteen and had never given anyone else a second look. Boyish and handsome in his uniform with his cap set at a jaunty angle, Ned smiled from the photograph they kept on the sitting-room mantel across from her brother’s more serious pose.

Would she be willing to live on some remote army base to be with Hugh? Charlie sank lower in the tub until water covered her shoulders. What did it matter? On their last date, he had seemed unusually quiet, almost impersonal, as if his thoughts were somewhere far away. She would probably never have a chance to find out. Closing her eyes, she pictured Hugh in uniform; pictured how her head came almost to his shoulder so that she could smell the spicy scent of his aftershave as she had when they had kissed good night. The delicious memory of it sent an electric tingle through the secret places of her body and Charlie’s face grew warm at the thought of what it might be like to make love with Hugh Brumlow.

But she wasn’t going to think of him. Charlie pulled the bathtub plug with her toe and wrapped a towel around her as the water gurgled down the drain. And that was when the telephone rang.

Shivering, she clutched the towel around her and hurried down the cold hall to answer the demanding summons.

“About the other night …” Hugh began. The pause was so heavy Charlie could hear him breathing. “I feel—well, I feel I should apologize.”

Charlie didn’t reply.

“I had a few things on my mind,” he continued, “and some major decisions to make.”

“Uh-huh,” Charlie said. She wasn’t going to make this easy.

“How about dinner tomorrow night? There’s a rumor Rusty’s might have steak.”

Rusty’s was a cozy little restaurant on the outskirts of town where people went for special occasions. Soft music played in the background while guests dined by candlelight on tablecloths wedding-cake white. And
steak!
Charlie couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten steak since rationing began.

“What time?” she said.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

How long was she going to sleep? The woman was as still as … he wasn’t even going to think that. And small. Smaller than he’d expected. What if she died? What good was she then? He hadn’t planned to kill that janitor. How was he to know the man would be at the school that early in the morning? From all he’d heard, Miss Dimple was always the first one there and everybody complained that janitor fellow was never on time. It would’ve been so easy to knock her out with chloroform and lower her out the window to the waiting car below. It was still dark that early. Who would see?

So what was he to do? He remembered the panic on the janitor’s face when he unlocked Miss Dimple’s classroom door and found him waiting there. Didn’t waste a minute before he bolted to the school office across the hall to call for help. He had to stop him, didn’t he? Malone, the man’s name was. Wilson Malone. It was too bad, really. He hadn’t counted on that. When Malone didn’t have time to unlock the office door, he ran upstairs—grabbing the bell rope in that storage room up there before he could stop him.

But he had stopped him, stopped him with the first thing that came to hand. Came down on him hard with that big wooden bird. There was no question he was dead. Too bad.

And now this. From across the room he stared at the figure on the bed. If only she had stuck to her usual route, all that could’ve been avoided, but he reckoned the woman got spooked that day in the park. Well, he’d done what was expected of him, hadn’t he? But that was only the first step. He sighed, rubbing his neck to ease the tension. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Maybe he’d made a mistake. And then he thought of his papa and how hard he’d worked to make ends meet. What did the government ever do for him? Drove him into an early grave, that’s what! He clenched his teeth to keep from crying out with anger and resentment.

*   *   *

Dimple Kilpatrick slowly pulled herself erect and carefully placed her feet on the floor. The room was dark and smelled of mothballs and mildew. Why did her head hurt so? She felt faintly nauseated and her mouth was dry. Had she eaten something that didn’t agree with her?

And then she remembered.

As she sat on the side of the bed, her eyes became gradually accustomed to the darkness and she could distinguish the pattern of a quilt that had been thrown over her. It was of an intricate log-cabin pattern, and old. Very old. Her feet rested on a rag rug, the kind made of scraps of cloth, like her mother used to make. A glass of water sat on the table beside her along with a lamp and her glasses. Miss Dimple reached for the glasses first, then drank the water. It hurt at first to swallow.

She was reaching for the lamp when the man spoke.

“Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you.”

He sat in a chair on the other side of the room. He must have been there all along, and on closer look, she saw that he wore a Halloween mask like the kind you could buy for a nickel at Murphys’ Five-and-Ten. A Harlequin, she thought. “What do you want from me?” she demanded, and her voice, usually calm and authoritative, surprised her with its rusty pitch.

He stood and placed pen and paper on the table beside her. “First, I’ll have to ask you to write a brief note. We don’t want your friends worrying now, do we?”

Dimple Kilpatrick wanted everyone to worry. She wanted them to worry day and night. She wanted the whole town of Elderberry, the entire state of Georgia turned upside down until they found her. “Why have you done this? What do you want?” she asked again.

His silence was as terrifying as the shocking answer she suspected, and although Miss Dimple wasn’t much of a one for bothering her Maker on a regular basis, she prayed it wasn’t so.

*   *   *

“I know what happened to Miss Dimple!” Willie Elrod said the next morning at school as he offered his dime for a savings stamp.

“Is that right, Willie? And what would that be?” Charlie gave him the stamp and made sure he pasted it in the book for that purpose. She noticed that Willie’s mother had made an attempt that morning to smooth down his wild, haystack hair.

Junior Henderson plonked down three dimes for his purchase. “I’ll bet it was Martians that took her! She’s probably in a spaceship right now.” And he glanced out the window as if he expected to see the missing teacher waving from afar.

“Naw! I reckon the Japs got her … or maybe it was the Germans,” Willie insisted. “I saw—”

“We’ll probably never see her again.” Lee Anne Stephens looked as if she might break into tears, and Willie, noticing that, continued. “And they’ll question her until they make her talk. No tellin’ what they might—”

“That’s quite enough of that, Willie,” Charlie said, sending him to his seat. “I can’t imagine what information Miss Dimple might have that would be useful to the enemy. Now, let’s all get out our
Adventures in Arithmetic.
I’m sure we’ll hear from Miss Dimple soon, perhaps even today.”

But they didn’t.

The mood was somber during the noon meal at Miss Phoebe’s. Lily Moss declared she just couldn’t bear to think of what had happened to Poor Miss Dimple, and it was all she could do to keep from crying. “But of course I have to put on a brave front for my students,” she added, sniffing. “Sixth graders can be so emotional, you know.”

“Crying isn’t going to get her back,” Elwin said, buttering a biscuit. Because Phoebe Chadwick purchased milk and butter from a local farmer, her boarders continued to enjoy at least some of the dairy products that had become in short supply.

“Haven’t they heard
anything
more?” Annie asked their hostess, but Phoebe concentrated on passing the black-eyed peas and didn’t answer.

“What about her address book?” Annie persisted. “Hasn’t that turned up yet?”

Phoebe’s voice was as bleak as her face. “We can’t find it anywhere. She must’ve taken it with her.”