Miss Dimple Disappears (6 page)

Phoebe Chadwick was a small woman, but she seemed to have shrunk even more in the last two days, Charlie thought. Usually immaculate in her appearance, she looked as if she had slept in her clothes.

“And her purse,” Phoebe continued, “you know, the one she always carries? Well, that’s gone, too.”

“The one with the yarn flowers on it?” Velma asked. “She probably had it with her. Dimple carries that bag everywhere.”

It would’ve been hard not to remember Miss Dimple’s handbag. Made of purple leather with a drawstring, it was adorned with yarn flowers of every hue, and Charlie was certain it dated back to the War Between the States.

“We’ve looked everywhere to try to find any kind of correspondence with her brother,” their hostess said, ladling chow-chow onto her turnip greens. “She spends most holidays and part of her summers with him and his wife. If only we knew how to get in touch with him!”

Lily Moss spoke up. “I’ve tried my best to think of his name and it seems his first name is Henry, but I haven’t the faintest idea where he lives.”

“That’s at least a start,” Charlie said. “What made you remember that?”

Lily shrugged. “Henry’s my father’s name and I remembered Miss Dimple mentioning her brother’s name when he sent us that big box of fruit last Christmas.”

“Of course!” Velma laid down her napkin and abruptly pushed back her chair. “How could I forget? I got his address from Miss Dimple to send him a thank-you note. I’m sure I still have it somewhere.” She rushed from the room.

“Here it is!” Velma Anderson was more excited than Charlie had ever seen her when she reentered the room, flushed and breathless, a few minutes later. “He lives in that little town near Atlanta. There’s a mountain there where they fought a big battle … Kennesaw—that’s it! I have the address right here.” She presented the small slip of paper to Phoebe Chadwick as if it had been a guarded treasure.

“I don’t suppose you have a phone number,” Elwin said.

“No, but we can call the operator and find out,” Phoebe said, frowning as she studied Velma’s spidery handwriting. “Now, where did I put my glasses?”

Annie laughed. “They’re around your neck.”

“Where’s everybody going? We got that prune cake you all like for dessert.” Odessa bustled in from the kitchen as the group filed out of the dining room and gathered around the telephone in the hallway while Phoebe again studied the address.

“We’re going to call Miss Dimple’s brother,” Charlie explained above the hubbub.

“Will everybody please be quiet? I’m trying to get the operator and I can’t even hear myself think!” Phoebe exclaimed. “Hello, Florence? I need to get long distance, please … that’s right, long distance. I need the number for Henry Kilpatrick in Kennesaw, Georgia. Kennesaw, that’s right … no, Florence, Miss Dimple’s not in Kennesaw—at least not that I know of. We don’t know where she is. That’s why I’m … thank you!” She repeated her request and hastily scribbled a number on the back of the paper Velma had given her.

“It’s ringing,” she announced to the others after what seemed like hours dragged by.

But apparently no one at that number was at home although the operator rang several times. Charlie looked about her at the downcast group. She almost felt like crying herself.

“I suppose we ought to pass this number along to Bobby Tinsley,” Annie suggested. “The police should follow up on this.

“Don’t worry,” she added, apparently noticing Phoebe’s disappointed expression. “We can try again later.”

*   *   *

“Okay, out with it,” Annie said as she and Charlie walked back to school after lunch. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” Charlie walked a little faster.

Annie stepped in front to block her way. “What do you think? Have you heard from Hugh? You know you’re going to tell me sooner or later.”

She was right, of course. It was hard to keep anything from Annie. Even though they had only met in college, she felt the two of them might as well have grown up together.

“That sounds serious,” Annie said when Charlie told her about her telephone conversation with Hugh the night before.

“Oh it is. We hardly ever smile.” Charlie managed with great difficulty to maintain a straight face, but Annie let the comment pass without so much as a blink.

“I’ll bet that
something on his mind
is you.” She stopped suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk. “Do you think he might be planning to propose?”

“I think it’s more likely he’s going to enlist.” Charlie glanced at her watch and walked faster. The first bell would ring in about five minutes.

Annie nodded. “Maybe both.”

“His mother would have a fit.”

“Why?” Annie asked. “Because he proposes to you or plans to join the service?”

“Both,” Charlie said, wondering what she would say if he did. “Anyway, he hasn’t done either one.”

“Yet,” Annie reminded her.

The closer they came to the school, the more Charlie found herself dreading going back into the building. Alma Owens had been delegated to take Miss Dimple’s class until she returned or a permanent replacement could be found, and the children across the hall had been boisterous all morning.

“I wonder what Alma plans to do with them this afternoon,” Annie whispered as they waited at the top of the steps for the second bell. “For a while this morning I thought a train was coming right through the building.”

Plump, jolly, and fortyish, Alma considered herself to be a friend to the children and played with them accordingly. That morning she had kept them entertained with games of fruit basket turnover and musical chairs, with Alma playing the xylophone. During recess she led them around the playground in a parade of rhythm band instruments she had apparently pilfered from the supply closet.

“They should be worn out by now. Maybe they’ll nap this afternoon,” Charlie said, knowing it was too good to be true.

And of course it was. After several rounds of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and “Are You Sleeping, Brother John?” Alma had the class competing in some kind of quiz in which the answers were shouted, and by the end of the day, Charlie felt as if someone were pounding an anvil inside her head.

“Take an aspirin and rest for a while,” Annie suggested as they left school that afternoon.

“I can’t. I told Mama I’d pick up a few groceries from Mr. Cooper. We’re completely out of butter, and I planned to make macaroni and cheese tomorrow.” Charlie fumbled in her purse as she spoke. “Thank goodness I remembered to bring my ration book. Maybe they’ll have some real butter today instead of that disgusting imitation stuff with the blob of food coloring in the middle.”

“Let me drop off some of these papers at Phoebe’s and I’ll go with you,” Annie said. “I need to get some writing paper from the dime store and I’m almost out of hand lotion, too.”

“Heard anything from Will?” Charlie asked. She knew Annie was waiting to hear from a friend of her brother’s she’d dated in college. Both men were training as pilots in the Army Air Corps.

But Annie frowned and shook her head. “They’re just beginning their training and it sounds like they have a long way to go. The last time he wrote, though, he said he might try to get down here to see me.”

Charlie laughed. “Maybe you’re the one who’ll get the proposal.”

But Annie only grinned. “And maybe the war will be over tomorrow.”

“Find out if they’ve heard any more from Miss Dimple,” Charlie said as Annie hurried inside. But one look at her friend’s face when she emerged a few minutes later told her nothing had changed.

“Phoebe said she passed the phone number along to Bobby at the police department but he hasn’t been able to get an answer yet,” Annie reported. “Bobby said he’d ask the police there to try and locate Miss Dimple’s brother. He’s hoping he’ll hear something by tonight.”

As far as Charlie could remember, nothing especially unusual had ever happened in Elderberry, but she had a horrible feeling that the events around the teacher’s disappearance were going to involve them in something they weren’t prepared for.

A brisk wind had picked up earlier in the afternoon and she buttoned her coat a little higher as dry leaves swirled in its wake. “Why would Miss Dimple leave a note saying she was going to be with her sister if she doesn’t have one?” Charlie said as they hurried the few blocks to town. “And why didn’t she tell anybody she was leaving?”

“Beats me. Maybe she was referring to a sister-in-law or a stepsister. Wherever she is, I wish she’d hurry back! I don’t think I can stand another day of Alma’s racket.” Annie groaned. “Poor Froggie’s tried just about everybody in town to find somebody to replace her. I heard he even plans to advertise in the newspapers.”

She paused as they neared Lewellyn’s Drugstore. “Don’t look now, but I think we’re being followed.” Annie lowered her voice. “Willie Elrod’s been behind us since we left Phoebe’s. I think he has a crush on you.”

Charlie looked behind her in time to see the boy dart into a store front. “Hello, Willie!” she called. “Is that you?”

The child emerged just long enough to hold a hand to his lips and wave her away.

“Probably some kind of game,” Annie said, laughing. “Okay if we run in here for a minute? I want to see if they have that new lipstick in.” But Charlie continued walking as if she didn’t hear her.

Annie, noticing she didn’t follow, hurried to catch up with her. “Charlie! Wait up! Didn’t you hear me?” She grinned. “Or are you in just too much of a hurry to see Jesse Dean?”

Jesse Dean Greeson helped stock shelves and deliver groceries for Cooper’s Grocery and it was obvious that he had a crush on Charlie. He had a prominent Adam’s apple, wore gold-rimmed glasses with lenses thick enough to distinguish planets, and was so pale it was hard to tell where his face stopped and his fair hair began. Charlie felt sorry for Jesse Dean and made an effort to be kind to him because he was 4-F on account of his eyes, which made him ineligible for the service and he was sometimes taunted by others.

“Sorry. I was thinking about something Miss Dimple said. Guess I wasn’t listening.”

“About what? Do you think it might be important?” Annie asked.

“It was the day they found Christmas Malone and we were all waiting in Lily’s classroom. Remember? You said something about Christmas ringing the bell to summon help, and Miss Dimple said maybe he was trying to warn us.”

Annie frowned. “Warn us? Warn us about what?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “But thinking about it makes me wonder about something else. What was Christmas doing up there in the storage closet that early in the morning? It’s used mainly to store props and things for school assemblies and Alice Brady’s expression recitals. I don’t think he ever goes—went—in there.”

“You’re right. He usually started by stoking the furnace and worked his way up. If he wanted to summon help, he could’ve used the phone in the office or even rung the bell from in there.” Annie shrugged. “Well, we’ll never know now. Come on, let’s go get a Co-Cola and think about something else.”

C
HAPTER
S
IX

Virginia Balliew locked the door of the library behind her and wondered what she would have for supper. There was the last of the meat loaf, of course, but she was tired of meat loaf, and it was monotonous having to cook for one. Albert had been gone almost four years now, and although he had been a bit prosaic, he was a kind man and good. She missed him. And Dimple! What on earth had happened to Dimple? Surely someone must know something by now. Really, it was quite frustrating! If her friend were here, she could invite her to share her meal, as she often did.

And even though it was two blocks out of her way, Virginia turned up the street by Phoebe Chadwick’s rooming house where, according to his mother, the child Willie claimed he had seen Dimple Kilpatrick abducted. The evening shadows were deepening as she crossed the road, her eyes on the spot where Willie said he had last seen her friend.

An ardent reader of mysteries, Dimple might have had time to leave a clue, Virginia thought, and with one foot, probed a soggy mound of leaves by the curb. Nothing. The ground next to the street was brown and bare … but what was this on one of the lower limbs of the crape myrtle? A tiny tuft of color. Purple.

Virginia plucked the bit of frayed yarn from the branch and tucked it inside her purse.

*   *   *

Although her father had been gone almost seven years, Charlie still looked for him behind the partition where pharmacists fill prescriptions at the back of the store and felt the familiar stab of emptiness it brought. The room was long and narrow with a black-and-white tile floor and pressed tin ceiling. In warmer weather a ceiling fan stirred the air above a scattering of tables in front of the soda fountain, but today the place felt stuffy and close. She smiled as Phil Lewellyn, Charles Carr’s former partner, looked at her over his glasses and raised a hand in salute.

The two women found an empty booth in the back and treated themselves to fountain Cokes in crushed ice. Sipping the drink slowly, Charlie could almost feel her headache melting away.

Annie swirled her drinking straw in the bell-shaped glass. “Have you decided what you’re wearing tonight?”

“That green suit, I guess. Remember? The one with the velvet collar.” Charlie had worn the suit in college but it was still good except for the length, and her mother had promised she would ask their neighbor, Bessie Jenkins, to take up the hem that afternoon. In addition to her part-time job at the ordnance plant, Miss Bessie sewed for many of the women in town and sold tickets to the picture show on Saturdays.

Charlie wished she would have time to do something different with her hair. She wore her straight blond hair in a long bob that turned under just below her chin line, and to achieve this effect, it was necessary to roll it in kid curlers, rags, or socks, and sometimes even the hated metal rollers.

Annie waved at a couple of her students who were browsing through the rack of comic books in the corner of the store. “If you want, you can borrow my brown—” She broke off in mid-sentence. “Uh-oh! ‘Double, double, toil and trouble’… Don’t look now, but there’s her royal snideness.”