Miss Dimple and the Slightly Bewildered Angel (18 page)

When Celeste brought a platter filled with thick slices of homemade bread toasted under the broiler and spread with butter and honey, both claimed they couldn't eat another bite. Instead, they found they could eat several. And did.

After breakfast, Celeste washed the bowls, cups, and spoons in a pan of hot soapy water while Lou rinsed them for her sister to dry. Each bowl was patterned with a different flower. Bright blue morning glories twined around the one Celeste had used; Jo's was a sunny cup of daisies; and pink-and-white hollyhocks marched around Lou's bowl. Lou wished she could find some like them, but something told her the set was one of a kind.

“Celeste,” Jo began as she hung the dish towel to dry, “do you know anyone we can ask to help with my car? I'm afraid it's hopelessly stuck, and our families must be worried sick not knowing where we are.”

Celeste tossed her apron over the back of a chair. “I'm sorry, I don't have a telephone, but your car has been taken care of.” She smiled. “I think you'll find it ready to go.”

“Really?” That sounded too good to be true. Would a fictional beast, who was really a prince, come stomping through the door and bellow that they would be required to remain here until they had accomplished some impossible task?

“How did they ever manage to get it out?” Lou asked. “Who can we thank for this?”

But Celeste kind of shrugged that away. “Friends. Good friends. It's a blessing, don't you think, to have friends we can count on? But no thanks will be necessary.”

“I don't understand. When did this happen? I didn't hear a thing,” Jo said.

“You fell asleep soon after supper,” Celeste reminded her. “Both of you were so very weary. You must have had a tiring day.”

They agreed that they had, and hurried to see the car, all polished and shiny, parked in front of the house.

“Why, it looks like it's been washed and waxed,” Jo said. Now and then, she and her daughters rinsed off the car with a hose, but she'd never had it waxed.

Celeste stood behind them. “And ready for the road,” she added.

“My goodness!” Lou couldn't think of anything else to say, and then she remembered the tree. “Do you know of another way back to the road?” she asked.

“Oh, you can get out the way you came in,” Celeste told her. “That tree's out of the way now. Roots must've been weakened in that heavy rain we had yesterday.”

“My goodness!” Lou said again. “Who moved it? Your friends, I suppose. Please thank them for us.”

“It was only a sapling,” Celeste said as she helped them carry luggage to the car. “Didn't take long at all. Now, I'm sure you'll find a telephone in the town up the road, and I know your families will be relieved to hear from you.”

After many thanks and minus two jars of apple butter and three of applesauce, the two finally got on the road back to Elderberry. “Lou?” Jo said after a few minutes of driving in silence. “Do you believe somebody really was following us yesterday, or was it our imaginations?”

Lou warmed her hands by the heater and turned up the collar of her coat. “I don't know, Jo, but I have a weird feeling if we were to try to find Celeste's place again, it probably wouldn't be there.”

It was not until they got home that Jo discovered in her luggage a beautiful ceramic bowl covered inside and out with daisies, and Lou was delighted to find its twin in a colorful hollyhock design.

*   *   *

“Well, did everyone get away as planned?” Virginia asked Phoebe that Friday when she came to help decorate for the Halloween party.

“Whew! Finally. They left this morning, with Dimple dragging her feet the whole time. Planned to leave yesterday, but Velma discovered a crack in her fuel line and had a dickens of a time finding another.” Phoebe sat down and began cutting orange crepe paper into streamers, a task Cattus found highly entertaining.

“Time for a little fresh air,” Virginia said, depositing the cat on the porch and out of the way. “We'll never get anything done with that cat in here.

“But I'm a bit worrried about Dimple,” she added, searching in a box of cardboard cutouts. “She hasn't been herself at all lately. Why, you'd have to lock the Dimple I know in a closet to keep her from going somewhere new—especially if it concerns solving a murder.”

“I think it has something to do with her fiancé. She doesn't like to talk about him, but she did tell me once he died of yellow fever during the Spanish American War,” Phoebe said. “I believe she met him when she was teaching at a small school somewhere in rural Tennessee.”

“Then I guess that explains it. It must've been near the area they're planning to visit, the one where Dora's sister lives.” Virginia climbed onto a step stool to tape a trio of fiery-eyed bats over the door, and Phoebe stood to help her down.

“Poor Dimple! She must've been awfully young,” Virginia said. “I don't think she was ever interested in anyone else.”

Phoebe smiled as she began on another streamer. “You know our Dimple—loyal to the end and beyond, but I really don't think she ever cared about another man. Not that they weren't interested in her. She was still young when she came to live with us. My husband was alive then and active in the community. Young men were often in our home on some business or other, and I remember that some of them reached out to Dimple.”

Virginia shook out a jointed scarecrow. “And what happened?” she asked.

Phoebe shrugged. “Dimple didn't reach back.”

Just then, a blast of cold air ushered in Emmaline Brumlow, who was in search of the latest Dorothy L. Sayers mystery featuring her character Lord Peter Wimsey. “I've read most of them now,” she said, adding a book to the stack by Virginia's desk, where she began to shuffle through the recent returns. “Has
Busman's Honeymoon
come back yet? Looks like whoever checked it out last is taking forever and a day. Why, it only took me three days to read
Nine Tailors.
Would've been two, but I had to host the church circle this week.”

Noticing the festive preparations, she frowned at the shopworn scarecrow. “If you must put that up, why not hang it in the children's section?”

Virginia, who had an identical scarecrow for that area, said that was a fine idea and that Emmaline could find the book she wanted on the shelf under
S.

*   *   *

“I don't know how I could ever manage this library without that woman's help,” she said after Emmaline checked out her book and left.

Phoebe laughed. “So good of her to offer to help with the decorating.”

Virginia stepped back to admire the scarecrow, now suspended from the rafters, which was where she'd planned to hang it in the first place. “I wonder what Dimple was doing in Tennessee,” she said, continuing their interrupted conversation. “She must not have stayed very long.”

“I imagine teaching jobs were few and far between then, and she was just out of what they called ‘normal' school,” Phoebe explained. “Her brother, Henry, would've been about twelve then, which meant she probably had to leave him at home with their father, and Henry, you know, was like her own child. I think she was offered a position closer to home a year or so later, and soon after Henry started at Georgia Tech, our Dimple came to Elderberry.”

Later, during a break, Phoebe told Virginia about Dimple's conversation with Amos McIntyre. “She thinks there might be a connection to Jesse Dean's father, who left here years ago, and that town where Dora lived,” she said. “Turns out Sanford Greeson probably did live there, or somewhere near there, before he came here.”

“So what?” Virginia unwound herself from a clinging streamer. “The man's been gone for years. What difference could that possibly make?”

“None, except it connects Jesse Dean with Dora Westbrook.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake! Jesse Dean Greeson has probably never been to Fieldcroft, Georgia, and I would bet a rib roast on that—if I had one, that is!” And Phoebe let the scissors slip to the floor, barely missing her foot.

Virginia laughed. “And so would I, but somebody—somebody who knows about Jesse Dean's background—obviously tried to use that to make it look like there's a connection between Dora Westbrook and Jesse Dean.”

Phoebe frowned. “But who would do that? And why?”

“I assume it's the person who killed her, desperate, no doubt, to find somebody to blame in case suspicion was cast on him. He knew Jesse Dean delivers for Cooper's Store and that his father once lived in Fieldcroft.”

“I've lived here for longer than I care to remember, and I had no idea Sanford Greeson lived in Fieldcroft,” Phoebe said.

“But
somebody
did.” Virginia set a fat orange pumpkin in the center of the table. “Somebody whose knowledge of goings-on in Elderberry goes way, way back.”

“Well, that's just plain scary, Virginia.” Phoebe shivered. “Maybe we don't even have to decorate for Halloween. It's spooky enough already.

“We did hear some good news, though,” she said, eager to change the subject. “Lou and Jo got home safely late yesterday and they said Dora didn't come here directly from Fieldcroft. Seems she spent the night in Macon.”

“Macon? I wonder why she went to Macon.”

“Went to school there, Bobby Tinsley says. Wesleyan. He phoned her sister to find out who Dora might've been visiting there, but she wasn't much help. Said she'd look through some old letters and see if she can find the names of some of her sister's college friends.”

“So I guess she knows the Elderberry Detective Agency is on the way.” The floor was littered with bits of black and orange construction paper, ancient cardboard cutouts, and strands of crepe paper, and Virginia, being unable to see her feet, looked around for the broom.

“That poor sister!” Phoebe said, grabbing a trash can. “She has no idea what she's in for.”

And that was when Rose McGinnis breezed in and plopped Cattus in the middle of the debris. “Poor kitty was lonesome out there. Why did you shut him on the porch?” And she shuffled through the litter to browse among the books and perform her one-finger solo at the piano.

Having accomplished what they set out to do in the way of decorating, Virginia made a point to sweep under Rose's feet, hoping she would take the hint and go home, while Phoebe gathered the colorful litter into a bag to take to the trash. “I'll just get rid of this, Virginia, and we'll be ready to leave,” she said in a voice barely below a holler, and stepped out the front door, almost colliding with her neighbor Willie Elrod.

“Oh, Miz Chadwick! I'm sorry! Hope I didn't step on your toes,” Willie said, hurrying past her to speak with Virginia. “I was afraid you might already be closed and thought I'd check just one more time to see if anybody brought back
Huckleberry Finn.
I been wanting to read that book for ages, and we've got three whole days before we have to go back to school.”

Virginia smiled as she stamped the desired book. “You just happen to be in luck, Willie, but aren't you picking cotton this weekend?”

He grinned. “Shoot! Picked I don't know how many pounds today—earned a whole dollar—but Mama's taking me to Atlanta tomorrow. We're going to Rich's. You know, that big store with the escalators! I've just about outgrown all my clothes.”

“My goodness, Willie!” Phoebe looked closer at the boy's face and attempted to lift his chin. “What in the world happened to your eye?”

He dodged her hand and stepped away. “Oh, nothing much.”

Frowning, Virginia looked closer. “Looks like you have a black eye to me. Must've been some fight.”

Phoebe shook her head. “What were you fighting about?”

Willie Elrod tucked the book under his arm and grunted. “That R. W. Hawkins tried to take my cotton sack. We were standing in line to get it weighed and mine had way more in it than his did. He was trying to get me to trade.” He grinned. “Guess I showed him! Nose bled like a river—you shoulda seen it! Hope he didn't bleed on the cotton.”

Both women were familiar with R. W. Hawkins, who had repeated the seventh grade twice and held the school record for visits to the principal's office. Neither condoned fighting, but in this case, assumed R. W. probably got what was coming to him.

“Well, just try to stay away from him, Willie, and hurry home now before it gets dark,” Phoebe warned. “We'll expect a fashion show when you get back from Atlanta.”

 

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-ONE

They had driven through the small town of Covington and were nearing the outskirts of Atlanta when Augusta began to laugh. She and Annie shared the backseat, while Miss Dimple sat up front with Velma.

Dimple had removed her lavender felt hat with a hint of a veil and now held it in her lap. “What's so funny?” she asked, turning to glance behind her.

Augusta leaned forward for a closer look out the window, and her laughter sparkled like soap bubbles, making everyone smile. “It's the signs,” she said, pressing her forehead against the glass. “Look, there are more coming!”

Annie read them aloud as they passed:

At ease, she said

Maneuvers begin

When you get those whiskers

Off your chin

Burma-Shave

A few miles up the road, they all laughed at another series of signs advertising the popular shaving cream:

Many a wolf

Is never let in

Because of the hair

On his chinny-chin-chin

“My goodness,” Augusta said, once again taking needlework from her bag, “I'd almost forgotten those funny little verses.”