Miss Dimple and the Slightly Bewildered Angel (14 page)

“Chief Tinsley just called, and—”

Annie, who had been grading classwork, jumped to her feet, scattering lined Blue Horse notepaper all over the floor. “Oh, my gosh! Has anything happened to your mother? What about Aunt Lou? They haven't had an accident, have they?”

“No, no, they're fine,” Charlie said. “Plan to start back home after breakfast tomorrow, but they found out something we didn't know before.” She paused to catch her breath while the others crowded closer.

“Seems Dora received a couple of letters from somebody in South Carolina.”

“You mean
after she died
?” Lily wiped whipped cream from her lips.

“Of course not, or she wouldn't have been able to read them, being dead and all,” Charlie said, and a giggle oozed out in spite of her efforts to control it.

“I'm sorry, Lily,” she added after a disapproving look from Miss Dimple. “No, it seems she received the letters a few weeks before she arrived here. They were from somebody in Columbia.”

“How did they find this out?” Dimple asked.

“It seems Mama and Aunt Lou learned about it from a woman who has a grocery store there, and
she
heard about it from the postman who delivered Dora's mail. After Dora was killed, he remembered seeing the Columbia postmark.”

Charlie collapsed into a chair and glanced at Lily's unfinished dessert. “Don't reckon there's any more of that cake, is there?”

“Of course.” Augusta started to rise, but Miss Dimple held up a hand to delay her. “I'll get it, Augusta,” she said, but turned and paused on her way to the kitchen. “Perhaps she had relatives there, but from the postman's reaction, it sounds very much as if it was rare for Dora to receive mail.”

“Why, they might have even followed her here.… Could be the same person who ransacked the library.” Phoebe looked fierce.

“Sounds like your mother and your aunt Lou made their trip to Fieldcroft worthwhile,” Velma said. “Wonder who else they spoke with there.”

“Chief Tinsley didn't say, but he did want to let me know they had gotten in touch with the police there and seemed to feel they'd accomplished what they came for.” She laughed. “The chief said he probably should've asked me not to say anything about it, but he had an idea Mama and Aunt Lou were going to tell everybody anyway.”

“I wish it didn't cost so much to call long-distance,” Annie said. “I can't wait to hear what else they found out down there. Wonder if they talked with Dora's husband or her mother-in-law.”

“Well, I'm more concerned with who wrote those letters to Dora from Columbia,” Phoebe said, frowning. “So what brought her here to Elderberry? It's beginning to sound like somebody lured that poor woman here in order to take something from her—something valuable.”

“But why Elderberry?” Charlie asked. “Why not Fieldcroft or somewhere else?”

“Oh, dear,” Lily said, shaking her head. “What do you think we should do?”

Augusta's voice was calm. “The first thing, I suppose, is to get all our chickens in a line.”

Annie laughed. “You mean ducks in a—”

“Whatever the fowl, Augusta's right,” Miss Dimple said. “We need to decide what to do first in order of importance. I believe we should try to learn where Dora went when she first arrived in Elderberry.”

Annie frowned. “You mean before she turned up at the library?”

“I suppose we could ask Clyde Jefferies at the Feed and Seed,” Phoebe suggested. “That's where the bus stops here. Maybe Dora asked for directions.”

Dimple smiled. “I taught all three of Clyde's boys. I believe the youngest, Richard, is with the navy somewhere in the Pacific. Why don't I give him a call, and we'll go on from there?”

The others could barely hear one end of Miss Dimple's muted telephone conversation in the hallway, but she was smiling when she reentered the room. “Clyde believes Richard is somewhere in the Philippines, but it's been a while since they last heard. He said he has a good feeling about it, though, and expects word any day now.”

“I hope and pray he's right,” Phoebe said. Her grandson, Harrison, had been a part of the invasion in the Marshall Islands, and like Clyde Jefferies and other families of those fighting overseas, she lived from day to day in fear of the dreaded telegram from the War Department.

Annie nodded. “I count each day as a good one when it ends without bad news,” she said, and Charlie agreed. Both wrote faithfully to fiancés facing danger on a daily basis.

Velma leaned forward. “So did Clyde remember seeing Dora?” she asked eagerly.

“He said the only reason he remembered her was because she was so shy,” Dimple explained. “Clyde said he thought she might have gotten off at the wrong stop and didn't know what to do, so he asked if she needed help.”

“And what did she say?” Charlie asked.

Dimple hesitated before answering in words barely above a whisper. “She asked directions to Cooper's Store,” she told them.

The silence seemed to shriek until Augusta asked if Dora had mentioned the store by name. “That afternoon at the library, you said she had a package of cheese crackers,” she reminded them. “She must've been hungry, and she had to buy them somewhere. Perhaps she only wanted to find a convenient place to get something to eat.”

“Augusta's right,” Phoebe said. “It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with Jesse Dean.”

But Dimple shook her head. “Clyde was certain she asked for Cooper's by name. It's just down the street, you know, and he remembered seeing her sitting on that bench out front when he went home for dinner at noon.”

Velma snorted. “Another passenger on the bus could've told her about Cooper's. Besides, a lot of people use that bench—use it myself, and the awning protects you from too much sun. She was probably waiting there for someone.”

Augusta caressed the stones in her necklace as she sat beside Velma, and the colors seemed to wrap them all in serenity: a cooling deep-in-the-forest green, sunset amber, and the smoky amethyst of twilight.

Velma immersed herself in the calmness and settled down to think. “Has anybody thought to ask who waited on Dora at Cooper's that day?” she asked.

Nobody had.

“Then that should be our next step.” From the corner of the room, Lily stood and spoke up, spindly arms on her hips, and announced in a take-charge voice that Jesse Dean Greeson didn't know the dead woman, and would never in this world do anything to hurt anyone. “Why, I've seen him go out of his way to avoid stepping on an ant on the sidewalk,” she told them. And her look let them know that anyone who disagreed would have her to deal with. But nobody did.

“I'll telephone Harris Cooper,” Phoebe volunteered. “Maybe he'll remember. I need to order eggs anyway, and we're getting low on milk.”

But that happened to be the day many of the stores were offering harvest specials, Harris told Phoebe, and there were more shoppers in town than usual. He might've waited on her, he said, but he couldn't be sure. He
could
be sure, he added, that Jesse Dean had had nothing to do with what happened to that woman, and it was beyond him how anybody could believe anything else.

“We know Clyde Jefferies saw Dora on the bench outside the grocery, and sometime later, she showed up at the library,” Dimple said. “That's not much to go on.”

“And she seemed to be afraid—remember?” Phoebe reminded them. “I suppose she thought whoever she was afraid of wouldn't think to look for her at the library.”

Augusta sat silently, watching the embers in the coal grate flicker and crumble into ash. “I believe it happened the other way around,” she said at last. “I don't know why Dora asked directions to Cooper's, unless someone suggested it to her, or perhaps she was told to wait there until it was time to meet at the library, but I think the library was meant to be her destination.”

Dimple nodded. “That could explain why she didn't want to leave. Virginia and I had trouble persuading her to come with us here to Phoebe's.”

“That must've been when she left something behind in the library,” Velma said.

“Either she left it there or somebody believes she did,” Phoebe added. “I suppose she planned to go back for it the next day.”

Annie shook her head. “Poor Dora. It looks like she was killed soon after she went inside the church. Bobby Tinsley said she'd been dead almost twenty-four hours when Bob Robert found her.”

“And I imagine she was already dead when Jesse Dean came by to leave those vanilla wafers in the kitchen,” Charlie said. “It's obvious that whoever called the store and ordered those cookies was trying to throw suspicion on Jesse Dean. Why, I doubt if he's ever been as far south as Fieldcroft, Georgia.”

As far as anyone knew, he probably hadn't, but Dimple Kilpatrick remembered that his father had come from that area. Just now, however, she didn't see the need to share that information.

 

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

“I hope you're satisfied,” Lou said as her sister backed out of the Westbrooks' driveway on Lucia Lane. “I told you she wouldn't talk to us—Watch out, Jo! You almost backed over that quince bush.”

“So what? Prickly thing! I'll bet that evil witch in there planted it.”

On the other side of the street, several soldiers, probably headed back to Camp Gordon, hurried to the bus stop on the corner. On the way to Fieldcroft, Jo had given a lift to a young corporal returning from leave, and to a sergeant who had hitchhiked all the way from his grandfather's funeral in North Carolina. Those in the armed services were seldom left waiting long for a ride.

“What do you suppose she meant by saying that Dora was a thief?” Lou wondered.

“She probably saved up the grocery money to buy her bus ticket,” Jo said. “And speaking of tickets, something just occurred to me,” she added, turning into the street. “The stub they found in her bag was dated on the day
before
she showed up in Elderberry, so she must have stopped somewhere Friday night and then bought another ticket.”

“You're right, Jo. And here I was thinking
I
had all the brains in the family. I guess we'll have to find out where that bus stopped along the route. Dora had to have spent the night in one of those places. Wonder why she kept only the one stub?”

“Maybe she didn't want anyone to know where she'd stopped. I suppose we'd better drop by the police station and find out what Reece Cagle thinks about this, and we should tell him what we learned from Edna at the grocery store, too,” Jo said.

Lou frowned. “You mean about the letters from Columbia? Don't you think he already knows?”

Jo shrugged. “We'll soon find out.”

But he didn't. “Well, ladies, back again so soon?” Reece smiled and jumped to his feet, and maybe she was imagining things, but Lou thought it obvious the officer didn't expect them to have anything important to share.

“And Edna said the letters were postmarked from Columbia?” he said when they told him what they'd heard. Rearing back in his chair, Reece twiddled a pencil in his fingers, as if that might help to clear things up.

“That's what the postman—what's his name?—Eli told her,” Jo explained.

The policeman tossed the pencil aside. “I wonder if Leonard Westbrook might still have those letters around,” he said, picking up the phone. “On the other hand, it might be a better idea to find out in person.” Abruptly, he returned the receiver to its cradle.

Lou nudged her sister and both stood expectantly. “I don't suppose we—”

“Not a good idea.” Reece shook his head, but he smiled when he said it. “You've helped quite a bit and I thank you, but this is police business, and I think you'd best stay in the background.”

“But you will let us know what you find out, won't you?” Jo asked. “After all…” She was going to say, “Turnabout is fair play,” but that might be pushing it. “After all, we're leaving for Elderberry in the morning.”

“We did give you our telephone number, didn't we?” Lou asked, and just in case, she scribbled it on a piece of paper.

He touched his hat in a farewell salute. “I'll call. I promise.”

“Well … if that doesn't beat all!” Jo muttered as they drove away. “We do all the work and he gets all the glory.”

“What glory? You've been watching way too many war movies, Jo.”

“Maybe so, but do you think he'll call?”

“I guess we'll just have to wait and see.” Lou yawned. “Wonder what kind of apple dish our cousin is serving tonight?”

*   *   *

“Oh, do have some more stewed apples,” Cousin Claudia urged, “and how about another muffin?”

Lou helped herself to a second muffin—also apple—but politely declined the other. “The apples are delicious, but I've eaten way too much already, Claudia.”

Claudia smiled. “I added a second stick of cinnamon this time and a little sliced lemon. Really perks it up, don't you think?”

Lou agreed that it did and nibbled at her muffin. If only Claudia had a telephone! They would have to wait until they drove all the way home to find out if Dora's husband knew about the letters from Columbia.

“So, did you learn anything interesting—about Dora, I mean?” Esther asked as she served a dessert of apple turnovers.

Jo told her about Dora's unaccounted-for stop along the way and the rumored letters from Columbia. “But, of course, we don't know if there's any truth in that or not. We heard this second—no, thirdhand,” and she explained about Edna and the postman.

But Esther waved that away with one hand. “Oh, Eli never forgets anything,” she assured them.