Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble (14 page)

Getting to his feet, Jasper took the money from the purse and jammed it deep into his pants pocket. Funny she should be the one he’d stolen it from. Made it easy, really, standing there talking to that mouthy woman, pocketbook gaping open like that. Well, there was more where that came from. Jasper remembered when her mama had taken in sewing, baked cakes to make ends meet. He tossed the change purse aside as he made his way to the other side of the hill.

Damned if every step he took didn’t sound like a stampede in all this dry grass. Even
he
could hear it, and him half-deaf. Jasper squatted behind a sumac and watched the shed. Nothing moved, only the clouds rolling in dirt up there, getting blacker, meaner. He stuck a twig in his mouth and settled down to wait. There were worse things than getting wet.

Jasper didn’t know who owned the shed. Empty now, it had once been used for storing fodder. About halfway between Leola’s property and an old tumbledown church, it had come in handy when he needed a place to sleep. He’d hoped for better before winter came, but had a plaguing deep-down feeling the person he saw at Leola’s that day had seen
him,
so he reckoned it would have to be somewhere as far from Elderberry, Georgia, as he could get.

Atlanta came to mind. Jasper had never seen Atlanta; heard about it, though. A person could get lost there. If he was lucky, he might be able to catch a ride, be in Atlanta before dark.

Now pine trees bowed in the wind in the open field before him. The old gray shed crouched under a sweet-gum tree, its sagging door banging against the wall. Jasper strained to listen, but all he could hear was the slapping of limbs above his head, the measured whack of the shed door.

He cringed as lightning cracked across the sky, then stood slowly, eyes on the shed. If he got his belongings out now, he could get a head start. Spend the night on the road if he had to, but Lord, he hoped he wouldn’t have to. Jasper paused to listen at the door of the shed, then braced himself before stepping inside. He wondered how long his money would last in Atlanta.

And that was the last thing he wondered.

*   *   *

“Help me, Miss Dimple! Save me!”

Miss Dimple clutched to her chest a small package containing a pad of notepaper and a bottle of Scripto ink she had purchased in town and held out an arm to ward off the oncoming collision with Willie Elrod, racing toward her at full speed. At eleven, Willie had grown almost as tall as she, and Dimple didn’t care to end up sprawling on the sidewalk in front of God and everybody.

The boy took one look at her face and stopped short, barely in time. With breathless gasps, he darted behind her.

“For heaven’s sake, William Elrod, what on earth has gotten into you? You almost made me fall, and if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather remain vertical.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Dimple, but you’ve got to protect me, please! She’s after me, and I’m much too young to die.”

“Who’s after you? Now, stop that this minute.” Miss Dimple grabbed a skinny shoulder and held him at arm’s length.

“It’s Marguerite! Mama makes me take her everywhere, and she’s ruining what’s left of my summer. I wish she’d hurry and go home.”

Dimple knew Willie’s cousin Marguerite was visiting next door for a few weeks with her mother, and since the two were close in age, Willie was expected to entertain her. “Why don’t you take her to the picture show?” she asked. “Abbott and Costello are playing at the Jewel.”

“We saw that yesterday.” Willie made a face. “And I had to sit with her, too.”

Dimple was about to tell him that most girls liked to play Tarzan and roller-skate and build forts in the woods just as boys did, but she was interrupted by a bloodcurdling screech as the dreaded Marguerite raced up with danger in her eyes and murder in her heart. “Prepare to die!” she announced, reaching for Willie.

“Just a minute!”
Miss Dimple eyed them both with her most severe “I mean business” expression. “Now, young lady, what’s this all about?” Of course she knew before the girl even answered that whatever it was must be Willie’s fault, but one had to try to be fair.

Marguerite recognized a voice of authority and stepped back an inch or two. “He keeps singing that awful song,” she said. “He sings it all the time—especially when we’re around any of his friends.” She stuck out her tongue at Willie. “If he
has
any friends!”

“And what song is that?” Miss Dimple asked, but Willie found something of keen interest to look at in the window of Total Perfection and didn’t answer.

Marguerite gave him a quick jab with her sandaled foot, as if to say,
Tell her, Willie!

The boy sighed. “Oh, Marguerite, go wash your feet! I smell them clean across the street!” he chanted, and then had the nerve to burst into giggles.

“When you get home, William, I think it would be a good idea to ask your mother to please invite some of the girls in your class over to visit with Marguerite. But right now, I believe I’ll treat myself to an ice-cream cone at the drugstore. Would the two of you like to join me?”

They would, of course, and that was when she heard about Jasper Totherow.

*   *   *

“I imagine Ruthie Phillips or Lee Anne Stephens would be happy to have someone new to play with,” Miss Dimple suggested as the three sat with chocolate cones at a small table in Lewellyn’s. She was certain the beleaguered Marguerite would welcome female company after her cousin’s constant badgering.

“Aw, you can’t believe a thing neither one of those girls says,” Willie said, licking a chocolate trail from his wrist. “That crazy Ruthie told me she and Lee Anne found a dead man in this old shed the other day, and Lee Anne—she was so scared, she almost wet her pa—”

Miss Dimple cleared her throat. “And where was this shed?”

He shrugged. “Out in the country somewhere. She said they were riding their bikes when it started to storm and they ran in this shed to get out of the rain. Lee Anne—she swears she almost stepped on him.”

“Stepped on who, Willie? Did the girls know who it was?”

“Ruthie thinks it was that old man who looks like a scarecrow and never takes a bath—Jasper somebody—but you know what, Miss Dimple? I think they made it all up, ’cause when the policeman came, there wasn’t nobody there.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

“How do they know it was Jasper?” Virginia asked.

“I spoke with Ruthie’s mother soon after I got home,” Miss Dimple said, “and it seems the police found some of his clothing in the rafters. It looks as if he’d been sleeping there.”

Virginia was taking advantage of an afternoon lull at the library to visit with her friend, and the two sat in rocking chairs on the rustic porch, shaded by wisteria vines and screened from passing traffic.

“This isn’t the first time Jasper’s passed out somewhere,” Virginia said. “He gets ahold of some liquor and doesn’t know when to stop. It’s a wonder it hasn’t killed him.”

“Maybe it has,” Dimple said. “Seems something did. Or somebody.”

“Then where’s the body? Dead people don’t just get up and wander away. Maybe he stumbled and hit his head. He might’ve been unconscious when those girls found him.”

Miss Dimple rocked faster, her feet tapping with the rhythm of the chair. “Or … whoever killed him was interrupted before he could get rid of the body. He might have been hiding somewhere close by when Ruthie and Lee Anne came along.”

“Why, Dimple Kilpatrick, that’s a comforting thought! I do believe you’re getting to be downright gruesome!” Virginia gasped in mock horror. “I’ll admit I’m not fond of Jasper, having run him off from sleeping on this very porch whenever he gets a chance, but what makes you think somebody would want to kill him?”

Dimple stopped rocking abruptly. “I can’t be sure, but I think it has something to do with what happened the day Leola died. Remember, Virginia, what Jasper said the other day when we found him at Leola’s?”

“And what was that? My goodness, he carries on so, I didn’t pay much attention to him.”

“He said
he knows who killed Leola
! He as good as admitted he saw what happened out there that day,” Dimple reminded her.

“And you believe he was telling the truth?” Virginia shooed away a fly with a cardboard fan with
The Last Supper
on the front and an advertisement for Riley’s Funeral Home on the back.

“I can’t be sure, of course, but there was something going on, and I think Prentice might’ve seen it, too.”

“Good heavens, Dimple! What makes you think that?”

Dimple reminded her about the fire. “Delia had a feeling Prentice was holding something back, that she was afraid of something, and Clay told me the same thing. He said at first he thought it was because Leola died—the
way
she died. Prentice seemed to get upset when anyone mentioned it. She didn’t want to talk about it.”

Virginia rose to help little Peggy Ashcroft, who had arrived for a new supply of Bobbsey Twins books. “Have you spoken to Bertie about this?” she whispered.

Dimple shook her head. “Not in so many words, but Elberta told me Prentice just couldn’t come to terms with Leola’s death. I think there might be more to it than that.”

“Then I think you should go to the police,” Virginia said. “When she was here earlier, Emmaline Brumlow told me she’d heard they’d arrested somebody for those murders in Atlanta—the Rose Petal Killer, they call him. He might’ve had something to do with what happened to Jasper, and possibly Prentice, as well.”

*   *   *

The courthouse clock whirred as it always did before striking the hour, but at five o’clock sidewalks still sizzled on the sunny side of the street, and the faded purple umbrella Miss Dimple carried to ward off the sun was of little help in the heat. Even the soldier on the recruiting poster in front of the post office looked miserable in his heavy uniform as she passed by on her way to the police station.

Bobby Tinsley had stepped out, she was told, but Officer Warren Nelson welcomed her into a small cubicle of an office where an electric fan stirred hot air, ruffling papers on his desk.

Miss Dimple had not taught Warren, as his family hadn’t moved to Elderberry until he was in the third grade, but his younger sister Eugenia had been in her class, so she spent the first few minutes of her visit catching up on Eugenia’s experiences as an army nurse in Liverpool, England, where they struggled with blackouts, air raids, and the constantly cold, rainy weather. Miss Dimple thought fondly of the shy little girl who tucked a tongue in her cheek as she labored over her letters and wished she could send a hug along with a warm blanket.

“I wondered if you’d had any word on what happened to Jasper Totherow?” she asked finally.

Because that area came under county jurisdiction, Sheriff Holland’s department had been called to the scene of the shed where the two frightened girls had stumbled upon Jasper, Warren told her, but he understood they undertook a thorough search of the area.

“No telling where that fellow’s gotten to,” he added, shaking his head. “Probably sleeping it off somewhere. I reckon he’ll turn up sooner or later.”

Miss Dimple pulled her chair closer and leaned forward. “I believe there might be more to it than that,” she said, and told him what Jasper had claimed to see.

Officer Nelson listened intently, nodding his head from time to time. He knew from experience that it was not customary for Miss Dimple Kilpatrick to jump to conclusions.

“If he saw whoever set that fire, he should’ve reported it then and there,” he told her. “Do you know if anyone else was aware of this?”

“It seems Prentice Blair might have noticed it, as well. Several people have commented that she seemed to be worried about something—something she was reluctant to talk about.”

“And you think this might have had something to do with her death?” Warren Nelson gripped the sides of his desk until his knuckles were white and his face crimson.

Miss Dimple gathered her purse and umbrella and prepared to leave. “I think it’s something you certainly need to investigate … and I hope you won’t waste any time.”

She hesitated at the door. “I heard they arrested someone for the rose petal murders. Could there be a connection there?” Her question sounded like an afterthought, although, of course, it wasn’t.

The officer stood politely. “They got a confession from him this morning. Wish we
could
tie this thing up, but this man had nothing to do with killing Prentice Blair.”

“Are you sure? How do you know?”

Warren Nelson glanced at the closed door behind her and lowered his voice. “This guy was in jail over in Gainesville at the time that young woman was killed. Police caught him trying to break into somebody’s house. Actually, that’s how they finally got him. Man has a record for assaults against women. Been in trouble before.”

“But the rose petals…” Miss Dimple began.

Warren sat on the desk and crossed his arms. “I’m going to let you in on something before the newspapers get ahold of it, so please keep this confidential. We’ve known it all along, but now that this guy’s confessed, it will all come out in the open.…” Officer Nelson paused, his expression grave. “The Atlanta Rose Petal Killer used only white petals. Whoever killed Prentice Blair covered her in petals of every color.”

*   *   *

When she reached home, Dimple found Annie in the kitchen, helping Phoebe put together a fruit salad for supper, Odessa having gone home for the day.

“We’re having cold fried chicken and potato salad left over from dinner, and I thought some fruit would go well with that,” Phoebe said, mixing a marinade of lime juice, mint, and honey. “It’s just too hot to cook.” She paused, acknowledging Dimple. “Don’t suppose you’ve heard any more about what happened to that Jasper fellow. Doesn’t make sense, him disappearing like that.”