Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble (2 page)

Clay Jarrett, whose father owned the Peach Shed, had graduated in the class ahead of Prentice’s, and the two had been dating for a couple of years. Prentice had recently confided to Delia that Clay had proposed. He wanted to marry right away and planned to enlist in the navy, but she wasn’t ready for such a commitment. “I know it worked for you and Ned,” she said, “but I’ve always planned to go to college, and Clay knows that. Aunt Bertie will help, and I’ve saved some from my drugstore earnings. Besides,” she added, “Clay’s content to stay right here in Elderberry after the war, and I’m not sure that’s what I want.”

Leola, of course, had agreed. An excellent seamstress, she’d been looking forward to making additional clothing for Prentice’s college wardrobe, and the two had pored happily over pattern books, selected material, and shared excitement at the prospect of what was in store.

Prentice had been the one who found her body, and since then she hadn’t acted like the same person: moody, jumpy, quick to cry. But there was something else, too. Delia had noticed a change in her friend even before Leola died.

Sighing, Delia lifted the heavy hair from her neck and fanned herself with a newspaper.
“Prentice Blair!
Your drink’s getting warm! Don’t you want it?”

No answer.

“Prentice? Come on, now, answer me! Are you back there? This is
not
funny.”

Still no answer.

She was probably crying. Out there behind the Shed crying—just like yesterday and the day before, but couldn’t she at least answer? Or maybe she was emptying trash.

But not for this long.
Bracing herself, Delia walked slowly through the cluttered storage room, out the back door, and down the steps. Two large garbage cans sat to the right of the door, the top of each anchored with a rock to discourage stray dogs and raccoons. Nothing but dust stirred in the narrow, grassy clearing. Beyond it, a stand of scruffy cedars and underbrush led into several acres of woodland that served as a buffer between the Peach Shed and Knox Jarrett’s orchards and farm.

Why in the world would Prentice wander off into the woods unless somebody had called to her, needed her? Delia ventured to the edge of the knee-high weeds and called her friend’s name, hollered it as loud as she could. Queen Anne’s lace bobbed under the weight of bumblebees, and a small brown rabbit leapt from behind a clump of sumac and disappeared into the brambles. Nothing else moved.

Hattie McGee lived somewhere back there in a trashy old trailer. “Mad Hattie” everybody called her, and Delia was afraid of her. So was Prentice. The old woman thought she was Scarlett O’Hara and wore a tattered green skirt that dragged the ground—stole rosebushes, too. Dug them up in the middle of the night and planted them around her trailer. Prentice’s aunt Bertie was missing a Talisman, and Bessie Jenkins, her Mary Margaret McBride, a pretty pink hybrid she’d planted last spring, and neither would do anything about it. “Poor old Hattie’s harmless,” everybody said.

If it were up to Delia, she would make “poor old Hattie” dig them up and give them back—that is, if she weren’t such a chicken. And she knew Prentice wouldn’t have wandered anywhere
close
to Mad Hattie’s—not intentionally.

Circling the Shed for a second time, Delia spied a peach partially hidden in rusty weeds beside the back steps. Testily, she tapped it with her toe, expecting to see a smushed, rotting underside, but the fruit was whole, firm. Delia picked it up and squeezed it. In a day or so, the peach would be ripe. It might have fallen from a basket as the fruit was being unloaded, except they always unloaded in front so they wouldn’t have to carry it so far. She frowned. Customers usually parked in the gravel area out front, as well. It wouldn’t make sense to go all the way around to the back.

So why? Delia thought she knew why, but hoped it wasn’t true. Snatching open the screen door, she hurried inside.

Hardin Haynesworth Kirkland, crisp in beige linen and smelling of some demure scent that probably cost more than Delia’s entire wardrobe, stood at the cash register with her lips pursed. Delia hadn’t heard her drive up. The woman held a cantaloupe in one hand and a jar of jelly in the other and sighed loud enough to stir up a storm. Delia ignored her.

Rushing past the pouty-faced matron, Delia squatted behind the counter, stretched her arm as far as she could, and felt, pushed far back on the lower shelf, the thing she had dreaded to find: Prentice Blair’s purse.

The handbag was of tan imitation leather, but it looked almost like the real thing, Delia had assured her, and had been a gift from Clay when Prentice turned eighteen in May.
How could she simply disappear?
Delia crouched behind the counter until her heartbeat slowed. She had been across the street for hardly more than ten minutes. Only long enough to use the rest room, dash water on her face, and comb her hair. Then she’d had to wait to pay for the drinks while Grady went out to put gas in the tank for Emmaline Brumlow, who, of course, wanted her windshields cleaned front and back. She’d been held up by the train before crossing the tracks, she said, and her car had been showered with cinders.

“My dear, I am in rather a hurry. If you don’t mind…” Delia’s waiting customer drummed fingers on the counter and sighed again.

Delia stood slowly. She felt as if she had a stick jammed down her throat all the way into her chest. This couldn’t be happening!

But it was. “Mrs. Kirkland, I’m afraid something’s happened to Prentice.”
Whose voice was this? It didn’t sound like hers.
“I can’t find her anywhere and I know she wouldn’t just go off like this.”

The woman tossed a dollar onto the counter to pay for her purchases and brushed an invisible hair from her cheek. “Now, Delia … it is Delia, isn’t it?” She smiled like it pained her, and Delia wanted to vault over the counter and shake her. “She’s probably in the back somewhere, or maybe she went across to the filling station. I’m afraid you’ve let yourself get overwrought.”

“You don’t understand! I just came from there and I’ve looked
everywhere.
Prentice is gone. GONE!” Her voice was only a notch below screaming. It was becoming obvious that Prentice had left with somebody, probably against her will, since she’d left her purse behind and the cash register untended.

“Exactly what is it you want me to do?” Hardin asked in a voice as stiff as her shoulders. Delia could tell she didn’t believe her.

“I’m going over to Grady’s to call the police, but my sister, Charlie, and some of her friends are picking peaches this morning in the orchard right up the road. Would you see if you can find them and tell them to come? And hurry, please hurry!”

Whoever drove off with Prentice must have parked behind the Shed and enticed her into the car on the pretext of needing help to load the peaches, Delia thought, and since this had taken place while she was gone,
the abductor had to have been watching.

*   *   *

“Who
is
this?” It was obvious that the woman who answered the phone at the local police station believed it was a prank. Delia gave her name and repeated the message. “My friend’s been taken—probably kidnapped, and this is no joke! Please get somebody out to the Peach Shed as fast as you can. We’ve got to find her!” When the woman hesitated, Delia demanded to speak with Bobby Tinsley, Elderberry’s chief of police. “Just tell him I’m Charlie Carr’s sister and she’s a friend of Miss Dimple Kilpatrick,” she added, knowing that from past experience the chief was familiar with the two of them.

Minutes later, Delia stood among the knobby roots of the old oak, waiting for the police to respond. The tree had been there for over a hundred years, people said, withstanding drought, wind, and storms. Delia ran a finger along its dark, crusty bark.
If she could only draw strength from the massive trunk, calmness to ease the turmoil inside her.
Looking off in the distance, she saw a vehicle approaching and hoped it was Charlie driving the old family car. Delia prayed under her breath that Mrs. Kirkland had been able to find them.

Seconds later, the familiar Studebaker skidded into the parking lot beside the Peach Shed and came to a jolting stop, scattering gravel in its wake. Running out to meet them, Delia Varnadore finally allowed the tears to come.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

“Delia, honey, what’s wrong? Mrs. Kirkland said Prentice seems to be missing.” Charlie Carr held her younger sister until the sobbing subsided. “Are you sure she didn’t go across the street?”

Delia shook her head. “Oh, please don’t make me have to go through this again!” But she rehashed what had happened earlier, adding that Prentice’s handbag as well as the money in the cash drawer seemed to be untouched. “This isn’t like Prentice, Charlie. You know it isn’t.”

“You’re right. It isn’t.” Stepping from the car behind them, Miss Dimple Kilpatrick spoke up. “I believe we should get in touch with Bertie Stackhouse. Perhaps she can shed some light on this. After all, there may have been a reason Prentice needed to return home.”

“What kind of reason?” Frowning, Delia glanced at the woman who had taught her, as well as her sister and generations of others, in her big high-ceilinged first-grade classroom at Elderberry Grammar School, and recognized the wordless communication understood by all women. In her modest way, Miss Dimple was reminding her that Prentice might have started her period and had found it necessary to go home.

“Oh,” she said. “But how would she get there? She didn’t even take her purse. And wouldn’t she be back by now?”

“Did she seem sick?” Annie asked. “It’s been so hot this summer, she might have come down with a bad cold … or something.”

The four of them exchanged looks in silence. Everyone knew what “or something” meant. Swimming pools were practically empty in spite of the heat, and people tried to avoid crowded places because of the threat of polio. Their own president, Franklin Roosevelt, who had been stricken with infantile paralysis, often came to Georgia for treatments at Warm Springs, less than two hours away. Delia shuddered at the thought of having to spend the rest of her life in an iron lung with only her head sticking out, and although no one in Elderberry had come down with the dreaded disease, most of them knew of someone who
knew
someone who had it. The threat was as real as it was frightening.

“She’s been upset since Leola died,” Delia told them, “but she didn’t act
sick.
Besides, she would’ve at least left a note if she meant to leave.”

“Oh, Miss Dimple, you don’t suppose…” Charlie turned to the older woman. “You thought you heard somebody scream.… Do you think it might’ve been Prentice
?”

“When?”
Delia demanded. “Do you know how long it’s been?”

Annie frowned. “I’d say about thirty minutes.” She clasped a hand to her mouth. “Oh, if only we’d—”

“Now, let’s not jump to conclusions.” Miss Dimple spoke calmly. “Quite possibly I could’ve heard children playing, as you suggested.”

“Have you heard anything?” Mrs. Kirkland, who had parked behind Charlie, hurried to join them. “I’m sure there must be a rational explanation,” she said when told the situation was unchanged.

Yet if Hardin Haynesworth Kirkland were a smoker, she would have worked through half a pack, Delia thought as they waited for the police to arrive. The woman paced from her car to the Shed and back again, pausing now and then to glance at her watch. She moved jerkily, like a mechanical toy. Thin, almost child-size, she seemed hardly large enough to bear her name.

Delia had never heard anyone refer to Mrs. Kirkland by two names. It was always
Hardin Haynesworth Kirkland,
Haynesworth being her maiden name. Prentice’s aunt Bertie had grown up with Hardin Haynesworth and their mothers had belonged to the same garden club. Hardin still belonged, but Bertie claimed she didn’t care a fig about spending time with a bunch of women who wouldn’t know a hoe from a spade, and besides, teaching English and literature at Elderberry High demanded most of her time.

Bertie had taken her niece to raise after the child’s parents were killed when a train derailed during a picnic excursion. The little girl, then three, had been with them, but, except for a few minor scrapes and bruises, she had escaped unharmed. Bertie had never married, and Prentice was the only family she had.

“Perhaps we should wait until the police arrive to get in touch with Elberta,” Miss Dimple suggested, and the others agreed. If Prentice had returned home because of illness or for whatever reason, they would find out soon enough, but if the young woman was indeed missing, as Delia feared, it would be best to inform her aunt in person.

*   *   *

Chief Tinsley, who had been on another call, arrived a few minutes later, and as soon as he saw Miss Dimple and her cohorts, he acted as though he intended to get back in his car and leave. “Well, Miss Dimple, I see you’re here with your two accomplices. What kind of trouble have you three brought me this time?” he asked, shaking his head.

But he soon found out Prentice Blair’s disappearance was no joking matter. After searching the area around the Shed, the chief sent another policeman, Fulton Padgett, to find out what he could learn from Grady Clinkscales at the Gas ’n Eats. Mrs. Kirkland gave her account to Chief Tinsley and left immediately afterward. Then, leaning on the counter inside the Shed, the chief spoke with Delia.

“You say Miss Bessie Jenkins and Dora Delaney were here earlier?” he said, taking a notebook from his pocket. “We’ll follow up on that and find out if they saw anything, and of course I’ll speak with Mrs. Brumlow, as well. It sounds likely she stopped over there for gas at about the same time your friend disappeared …
if
that’s what happened,” he added. “For all we know, she could be at home by now.”