Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble (19 page)

“She should sell that place and go on and marry Adam Treadway,” Lou muttered. “He’s waited long enough and I think it might be a good idea for her to get a fresh start somewhere else. Elberta’s only in her forties, isn’t she?”

Jo nodded. Now in her mid-fifties, the forties didn’t seem so old anymore. “I think Bertie was reluctant to make any major changes until Prentice was more or less on her own. After all, this was her home, too.”

“But that’s not all that’s been holding her back,” Lou said. “You know as well as I do there’s more to it than that.”

And Jo did, but neither of them was going to say it aloud.

*   *   *

“It looks sad, doesn’t it?” Jo said as they approached Leola Parker’s place a few miles down the road. “Forlorn, and it’s only been a little over a month since Leola died.”

“It looks like somebody’s cut the grass,” Lou said, sniffing the fresh green smell as they turned into the long dirt road leading to Leola’s place. “Mary Joy’s husband must’ve been here, or else they paid somebody to take care of it.” She parked beneath the dark green canopy of a blackjack oak and glanced at her sister beside her. “Well, we’re here. What are we supposed to do now?”

Jo didn’t answer, but climbed out onto the hard-packed red earth and looked about. Leola’s small white cottage stood closed and shuttered at the top of a low hill with a series of stepping-stones leading to the front door. A crow cawed from somewhere in the woods behind the house and a blue jay scolded from a limb above them. It was such a peaceful place, she thought, and it saddened her to think something bad had happened here.
Something like murder.

Jo said as much to Lou, who, with great reluctance, had joined her. “What makes you think it was murder?” Lou asked. “From what I’ve heard, they seem to think Leola slipped and hit her head.”

“But don’t forget about the fire,” Jo reminded her. “I overheard Charlie telling Annie that it might have been deliberately set, and they’re planning to look into it with Dimple Kilpatrick. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they aren’t on their way here now.”

“And you want to beat them to the punch?”

Jo shrugged. “Something like that.”

“Well then, what are we waiting for?” Lou moved quickly past her to see if she could find anything suspicious near Leola’s closed-up house.

Jo Carr waited patiently while her sister circled the house, poking behind bushes and attempting to peek into shuttered windows. “I wish I knew what I was looking for!” Lou exclaimed at last.

“Well, you’re not going to find it here. If somebody meant to set that fire, he obviously did it closer to the road. The fire never reached as far as the house,” Jo pointed out. “I think we should look in the other direction.”

Walking slowly down the long drive that led to the road, Jo searched the area on one side and Lou covered the other. After crossing a narrow bridge, they discovered a wide splotch of scorched grass bordering the shallow stream that ran across the property. “This looks like where it might have been set,” Jo said. “See … it burned this patch here and then trailed off along the creek bank in one direction and meandered along the driveway to the main road in the other. I wonder if there’s anything under the bridge.” Climbing down from the road, she made her way through blackened singed grass where tender green blades were already beginning to peek through and shoved aside a head-high stalk of pokeweed to look underneath.

“See anything?” Lou knelt on her hands and knees on the bridge above her.

Jo shook her head. “Nope, but I don’t see how this fire could’ve been started by somebody tossing a cigarette from a passing car when this is the spot that received the most damage and it’s way too far from the road. It’s obvious the fire began here and then spread in two directions.” She looked about to see if anyone had left behind what would now have been the charred remains of a torch, but if that was what was used, it had been consumed in the fire.

Frowning, Lou climbed down to join her. “I think you’re right, Jo. I wonder if Leola surprised someone setting the fire and the person dropped the match or whatever he was using and ran.”

“Or it might’ve been started with kerosene,” Jo said. “I guess the smell would’ve washed away by now, wouldn’t it? Remember, we had a heavy rain not too long after that happened, so a lot of it probably would’ve run off into the creek.”

Her sister didn’t answer, but stood studying the narrow brown stream that moved sluggishly over rocks and between eroded banks before twisting out of sight under the main bridge at the road.

“What is it?” Jo demanded. Lou was seldom this still and quiet.

“I don’t know, but I think I see something. It’s caught on a tree root downstream.”

Jo looked where her sister was pointing. “Just looks like a stick to me.…” But Lou had already plunged ahead, and, breaking off a fragrant limb of sassafras that hung over the bank, she fished the blackened object in question from its muddy enclosure. The top part of the vertical stick had been burned to within an inch or so of where it was lashed to a crosspiece and the part that remained was wrapped in strips of cloth, now soggy and stained with ashes and mud.

Lou held it up for her sister to see, wishing for all the world that she could scrub away the awful significance of what she had found. “It’s a cross, Jo. That’s what it was meant to be before part of it burned away. Somebody tried to burn a cross on Leola’s property.
Why would anybody have done that to her?”

Jo Carr didn’t know. She only knew she wanted to cry, and to get as far away from this hateful place as she could. Leola had owned the land she lived on for as long as she could remember. Why had somebody objected to that all this time later and attempted to frighten her away?

Lou shivered and tossed the hateful thing aside. “We’ve got to tell the sheriff about this, Jo. This should prove that fire was no accident.”

Jo agreed, and reluctantly picked up the remains of the charred cross. “I don’t want to take a chance on leaving this here. You can show him later where you found it.”

Neither spoke until they were on their way back to town, when Jo turned to her sister and smiled.

Lou frowned. “What do you find so amusing?”

“I was just thinking how surprised Miss Dimple and the others will be when they learn what we found out.”

*   *   *

But Dimple was busy for most of the day, heading up a scrap-metal drive, and didn’t learn of the sisters’ discovery until she returned for supper at Phoebe’s, where Annie told them of the news.

This was met with stunned silence all around until the horror of the discovery struck home. “I find this hard to believe,” Phoebe uttered under her breath in case Odessa might overhear from the kitchen. “I don’t know of anyone who didn’t think the world of Leola Parker. Whoever’s responsible must be mean to the core!”

“Add stupid and ignorant to that,” Velma Anderson sputtered. “It takes a special kind of idiot to do a thing like that.”

“Oh dear!” Lily Moss clutched a napkin to her lips and looked about, as if she expected someone to tell her it wasn’t so.

“Does this kind of thing happen very much around here?” Annie asked. “I thought all that Klan business was a thing of the past.”

Miss Dimple spoke at last. “Unfortunately not. But I haven’t heard of any recent activity, and frankly, I wonder if someone else might be behind this.”

“But who?” Phoebe asked. “And for heaven’s sake,
why
?”

Dimple helped herself to the pineapple-carrot gelatin salad and passed the mold along to Velma. “That’s what we have to find out,” she said, “and the sooner, the better.”

“I wonder why Sheriff Holland and his bunch didn’t notice that before?” Velma asked. “They’ve been out there several times now, haven’t they?” She shook her head. “It must’ve been embarrassing to have two women show them up like that.”

“Charlie said her mother told her he got kind of flustered and turned as red as a strawberry,” Annie said. “He told her it was probably lodged under the bridge or something until a heavy rain washed it downstream, but Charlie’s mother believes it was tossed onto the grass on the other side of the bridge from the house. She said it looks like that’s where the fire began to spread.”

“So what do they plan to do now?” Phoebe asked. “I hope it’s not too late to find out who’s responsible.”

“I imagine Sheriff Holland’s familiar with the hoodlums associated with the Klan,” Miss Dimple said. “I would think he’d begin there.”

But she doubted if it would do any good.

After supper, everyone gathered around the radio in Phoebe Chadwick’s parlor to listen to the war news on the radio. Sometimes the commentator would be H. V. Kaltenborn or gentle-voiced Gabriel Heatter, who often began his broadcasts with “Ah, there’s good [or bad] news tonight.” Tonight’s announcer was Edward R. Murrow.

Phoebe’s young grandson, Harrison, had been part of the taking of Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific with the Seventh Division of the 111th Infantry Regiment the winter before and was still somewhere in the Marshall Islands. Annie’s fiancé, Frazier, had been among those landing on Normandy beach on D-day in June and was now with the troops attempting to break out of the beachhead and push on to Paris. Her brother, Joel, was a bomber pilot somewhere in Europe, and for Annie, the most difficult part of her day was listening to the news. Sometimes she wanted to cover her ears and hide, but for days on end it was the only link she had to two of the most important men in her life.

Others felt much the same. Phoebe usually found something to do with her hands, such as mending or crocheting, but even so, she listened with a statuelike countenance until the broadcast ended. And Annie knew that everything came to a standstill in the Carr household as Jo Carr and her daughters paid strict attention for any mention of the areas where Fain, Ned, or Will might be fighting.

Dimple sat silently, so as not to miss a word, and prayed that the children she had watched become men would make it safely home. The names of those who hadn’t were already written on her heart.

The dreadful violence and the resulting grief that came with this war could not be avoided, but the needless death of a young woman and the hurtful incident directed at Leola Parker stirred an innate longing deep inside her that yearned to put things right.

Phoebe tucked her mending away in her basket when the broadcast came to an end, and Lily and Velma went outside to sit on the porch after Edward R. Murrow signed off in his customary manner, wishing everyone “Good night and good luck.” Dimple had little doubt they were going to need it. Annie, she noticed, seemed so restless, it was almost painful to watch her.

Dimple approached her as she stood by the window. Outside, a lawn sprinkler swish-swished in the grass, showering the pink impatiens in the side yard with glistening drops. “Why don’t you try to speak with your young man’s parents again,” she suggested. “They’re sure to be at home by now, don’t you think?”

Annie turned with a startled look, and Miss Dimple could see she was trying to hold back the tears. “I’m afraid of what they might tell me,” she admitted in a voice so low, Dimple could hardly hear her.

Sooner or later, you’ll have to know the truth,
Dimple thought, but it would have been cruel to speak it aloud, so she said nothing and remained where she was.

“Will you go with me? I mean, stand there with me while I make the call?” Annie said at last.

Dimple slipped her arm through Annie’s. “Of course I will,” she said.

*   *   *

It seemed to take forever for Florence McCrary to connect them with Frazier’s parents in the little town of Ringgold, Georgia, and Annie felt herself stiffen as the telephone rang two … three … four times before someone picked up the receiver. Watching her, Miss Dimple started to move away, but Annie motioned for her to stay.

“Oh, Annie dear, it’s so good to hear from you,” Frazier’s mother said after Annie told her who was calling. “We all can’t wait to meet you! Why, from all Frazier has told us, we feel like we know you already.”

Annie smiled, relaxing a little. If the Duncans had received bad news, they would be having a different conversation.

“No, we haven’t heard in several weeks,” his mother said, answering Annie’s question, “but we have to keep in mind he probably hasn’t had an opportunity to write with all that’s going on. I expect we’ll hear something before too long. Sometimes we even receive several letters at once.” Her words were warm and comforting, and they embraced Annie like an enveloping hug. “I’ll telephone when we hear,” Mrs. Duncan assured her, “and, Annie, I hope you’ll do the same.”

Annie turned to Miss Dimple, smiling. “She sounds so nice, Miss Dimple. I think I’m going to love Frazier’s mother.”

“Now, aren’t you glad you called?” Dimple said. “I hope you’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep.”

Annie agreed, and went upstairs to bed with a lighter heart, but in spite of her assurances, something Frazier’s mother had said haunted her still: “… he probably hasn’t had an opportunity to write with all that’s been going on.”

She knew what was going on over there and it wasn’t encouraging.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

“Let’s play war,” Willie Elrod suggested to his friend Junior Henderson. “We can pretend to be soldiers and Ruthie and Lee Anne will be the enemy. We’ll take ’em prisoner and lock ’em in your garage.”

“Oh no we won’t! The last time we did that, Lee Anne broke all the fruit jars in there that my mama was saving to put up all that stuff out of the garden.”

“Okay, then, let’s pretend like it’s D-day and I’ll be one of our soldiers landing on the beach. You can be the Japanese—you can even be Tojo if you want to,” Willie promised.

Junior groaned. “Don’t you know
anything
? Old Tojo resigned the other day. He’s not chief minister anymore. He might not even be a general.”