Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble (20 page)

Willie frowned. He knew he should keep up with the war better than he did. He always paid attention when they showed
The March of Time
at the picture show, but when the rest of his family gathered around the radio for news broadcasts, he was always outside somewhere, it seemed.

That morning, however, Willie had overheard his mama and Mrs. Sullivan from across the street talking about something that had happened a few days before in Prussia.

“Well, I’ll bet I know something you don’t, Mr. Smarty!” Willie looked around and dropped his voice. “Couple of days ago, some of Hitler’s own men tried to do the old devil in. They were gonna get rid of him for once and all, but I guess he got wise to them, and—” Willie made a schlepping noise and drew his finger across his throat. “I reckon that’s the end of them.”

“That’s too bad,” Junior said. “They would’ve done us all a favor.”

Willie grinned. “Hey, I know! You can be Hitler and I’ll be one of the—”

But Junior was having none of it. “How come
you
always get to be the good guy and
I’m
the enemy? Besides, I’m tired of playing war all the time. Let’s play something else.”

The day before, the two had been to see the film
Tarzan Triumphs,
in which Tarzan fights the Nazis, and Willie agreed that would be the next best thing to playing war. They found the two girls dressing paper dolls on Ruthie’s front porch, and armed with stout sticks to make their way through the jungle, the four started out for their favorite Tarzan setting, since their school principal, “Froggy” Faulkenberry, forbade them to climb in the big oak tree on the playground.

“I wish we had some alligators,” Willie said as they neared the bridge over the Oconee River. “Seems like Tarzan’s always fighting alligators.”

Lee Anne shivered. “Well, I’m glad we don’t. You’ll just have to fight pretend alligators.”

Turning off the road, they picked their way single file along the path beside the river. “My mama told me I wasn’t to go close to the water,” Ruthie announced. “Even if you’re a good swimmer, that current can catch you before you know what’s happening and sweep you away.”

“Aw, I’m not afraid of any river!” Willie’s mother had told him the same thing, but he wasn’t going to admit it.

“Then let’s see you go down there and stick your foot in the water,” Junior dared.

“You’d better not, Willie.” Lee Anne clutched at his sleeve. “Really. You might fall in and drown.”

Of course that was all Willie needed—that and the fact that Lee Anne actually cared if he drowned or not. Lee Anne Stephens was pretty, with light brown hair that curled around her face, and her pink cotton halter top concealed small buds that would soon become breasts. Although Willie had learned to swim at Boy Scout camp, he had a deep respect for the river. It was swift and dark and deep, and far too wide for him to swim across it.

“Well … what are you waiting for?” Junior urged. “I double-dog dare you!”

There was no way he was going to back down from a double-dog dare. Gingerly, Willie plunged down the steep bank, stopping short at the water’s edge.
What was that awful smell?

He grabbed a slender sapling to keep from sliding farther. Something that looked like a sack of old clothes was bundled at the foot of a sycamore tree whose branches hung over the rushing water. The odor of rotting flesh was almost suffocating in its intensity.

Willie stumbled backward. “Gah!” he shouted, turning away in an effort not to throw up.

“What’s the matter, chicken?” Junior taunted. “I thought you weren’t afraid!”

“There’s something down here—
somebody
. I think they’re dead.” Willie scrambled up the bank to join the others. He had come across decaying animals before and knew the smell of death, but never anything like this, never a
person.
“We’ve got to go find somebody.… We’ve gotta get help.” Willie clamped his hand over his nose and mouth to shut out the smell. He wanted to go home and scrub with Octagon soap from his head to his feet, and then do it all over again.

“How do you know they’re dead?” Ruthie asked. “I think you’re just making that up.”

“Aw, that’s only a bunch of old clothes,” Junior persisted. “You’re just scared to get near the water.”

“Okay, go see for yourself if you’re so brave,” Willie challenged.
“I’m
going to call Chief Tinsley.”

“Huh! Just wait and I’ll prove it,” Junior said, and not to be outdone, he made his way down to where the pathetic bundle lay. The smell was worse than his grandpa’s outhouse, but he held his breath and gave the pile a hasty poke with his foot.

The mound of garments shifted, exposing a grinning skull. Spiders scurried from the empty eye sockets and the claw of a skeletal hand slid from a shredded sleeve.

Junior’s scream echoed in his head and continued until his throat hurt so much, he couldn’t scream anymore. The others had been hollering, too, but now the only sound he heard was his own sobbing breath, and Junior realized he was still standing barely two feet away from a horror he had never imagined even in his worst nightmares. And his friends had left him there.

Somebody tugged at his shirt and he turned and struck at the air. “Leave me alone! Stop it! Leave me alone!”

“It’s just me, dummy! Come on, let’s get outta here!” Grabbing Junior’s hand, Willie half-pulled, half-shoved him the rest of the way up the steep hill and back along the path to where the two girls waited, trembling by the bridge.

“What
was
that?” Ruthie gulped between sobs. “I’ve never been so scared in my life!”

“A dead body,” Lee Anne said, and she suddenly felt cold in the heat of a Georgia summer. “I wonder how long it’s been there.” She had seen a dead person before—but not one like that. Her great-grandma had been laid out properly on a lace pillow, with her hands all folded in front of her like she was done with all her work on earth and ready to rest.

“How you reckon it got there?” Junior asked, now that he could get his breath. “Oh gosh! What if it was a
murder
?”

“Oh, hush, Junior,” Lee Anne said, racing on ahead. “You always make things sound worse than they are. It’s probably just a tramp who was passing through and got sick and died there.”

Willie thought he knew who the dead person was, but he wasn’t going to say anything. Chief Tinsley would know what to do, and since they were the ones who’d found the corpse—or what was left of it—maybe the chief would let them in on the investigation.

“It
might’ve
been a murder,” Junior persisted as they hurried back to town. “And whoever did it
might even have come back
to see if the body has been discovered. They could’ve been watching us the whole time! Did you ever think of that?”

Nobody had, and nobody answered, but everyone ran just a little faster.

*   *   *

Willie Elrod didn’t even think of crying until he spied Miss Dimple Kilpatrick crossing the street on her way back from town and he ran right up to her and buried his head in her middle. She was his bastion, his refuge, and the two of them had been through trying times together.

“Why, Willie, what in the world is wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” With a calming hand, she brushed his strawlike hair from his brow and held him at arm’s length, although she would have liked nothing better than to hold him close. It wouldn’t do to show favoritism to one child above another, although he would always have a special place in her heart. It made her smile to remember six-year-old Willie’s gift to her of a small box of Valentine candy when he was in her first-grade classroom. “Now, if you don’t like candy, Miss Dimple,” he’d said, “you can give it back to me—but you can keep the box!” Of course she had shared the chocolates with him.

“It’s worse than a ghost, Miss Dimple. We just saw a
dead person
—nothing left but a bunch of bones!” Junior told her. “No tellin’ how long it’s been there.”

And bit by bit, the others filled in the necessary—and sometimes unnecessary—details.

Later at the police station, the four gave the particulars to Chief Bobby Tinsley, who thanked them for the information and told them he would get in touch if anything further was needed.

“Maybe we’ll get our pictures in the paper,” Ruthie said when the interview was over. But Willie was disappointed. Having read just about every book in the Hardy Boys mystery series, he had expected to be included in the actual investigation.

*   *   *

“Are they sure it was Hattie’s body they found?” Annie asked Miss Dimple when she reported the news. The two sat at the kitchen table with Phoebe after supper that night, cutting up apples to make applesauce from the tree by the back steps.

“It seems so from what remained of the clothing … and of course the size.” She didn’t want to go into details about how animals and insects had destroyed most of the flesh, but Bobby Tinsley had conveyed as much when she’d questioned him earlier about the dead person’s identity.

Phoebe frowned. “Oh, that poor thing! How long do they think she’s been … er … I mean, can they tell when this might’ve happened?”

“Not exactly, but they believe she’s been dead for at least two weeks—possibly three,” Miss Dimple told her. “In this hot weather and with all the humidity, it wouldn’t have taken long.”

Annie added a handful of apple slices to the pan on the table. “But didn’t Grady Clinkscales say he
saw
Hattie pushing her wheelbarrow not too long ago? Remember? He said he called to her but she acted like she didn’t hear him.”

Miss Dimple nodded. “And Clay claimed to have seen her, too. She was collecting bottles somewhere near the high school.”

“But she didn’t turn them in,” Annie added. “We found the wheelbarrow still full of bottles behind her trailer.”

Phoebe frowned as she sliced an apple into fourths. “Then somebody must’ve been pretending to be Hattie. Why in the world would they do that?”

“I suppose they didn’t want anyone to know when she died,” Dimple said. “There doesn’t seem to be any doubt she was killed intentionally.”

“Do they know how?” Annie asked.

Together, Dimple and Phoebe lifted the full pan of apples to the stove, where they added lemon wedges and water. Dimple clamped a lid on the pot and paused to dry her hands on her apron. “Dr. Morrison said she probably died of a broken neck. He believes she either fell or was pushed from the ledge above the place where she was found. There’s a steep incline there and it must’ve been dark, as they found a flashlight beneath her.” She hesitated before telling them that investigators had also found what once had been rose petals scattered near the body.

“Well, she couldn’t have been killed by the Rose Petal Killer,” Annie pointed out. “He was already locked away by then.”

“I suppose whoever killed her didn’t know that,” Phoebe said. “It wouldn’t take much of a fall to break those brittle old bones.” She shook her head. “Bless her heart, the town won’t seem the same without her. I’m going to miss that old bird, even if she did help herself to my Queen of Denmark rose. Remember, Dimple? I had it out by the corner of the house, and then one morning I looked out and it was gone. Nothing left but a hole in the ground!”

Annie admitted the old woman had acquired quite a collection. “Maybe you could go over there and dig it up,” she suggested. But Phoebe made a face and shook her head. “No, thank you. The very idea would give me nightmares. I think I’ll just leave well enough alone. “What I can’t understand,” she added, “is what she was doing down there by the river in the first place, and it must have been dark, since she had a flashlight with her.”

“Chief Tinsley seems to think she was headed for that old fishing shack down there,” Dimple explained. “She’s used it some in the past, and he said she’d go there to collect bottles from time to time.”

“But the wheelbarrow wasn’t with her when she was found,” Phoebe began. “So…”

“So whoever took it was the one who killed her,” Annie finished.

But why? Why would anyone want to kill harmless Hattie McGee?

The pleasant smell of stewing apples filled the kitchen. When they were tender, they would put them through a food mill, add sugar and cinnamon, and simmer them a little longer. A cheerful late-summer task shared with friends. Dimple would have liked to bask in the comfort of it, but something was very wrong in this town, and she couldn’t rest until she learned the reason behind it.

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

Virginia Balliew stamped the return date in the mysteries Dimple had selected from the library and nuzzled the big orange cat in her lap. Cattus meowed a complaint and jumped to the window ledge behind her, almost knocking over a bud vase with its one yellow blossom from the bush by Virginia’s front steps. “Ungrateful wretch!” Virginia mumbled.

The flower reminded Dimple of Hattie and her strange passion for other people’s roses and she frowned as she accepted the books, stacking one on top of the other. The walk to the library that morning had refreshed her, and for a few minutes she had put the gloomy puzzle of Hattie’s death and the murder of young Prentice Blair from her mind.

Virginia looked up at her and smiled. “Why so sad and wan?” She knew, of course, that Dimple would be fretting over what had happened to Hattie McGee. “You must know, Dimple, that you can’t cure all the ills of the world. As much as you would like to, you can’t make all the bad things go away.”

Dimple sighed. “Well, at least I can try. I don’t understand this, Virginia, and I’m concerned about Chloe Jarrett and Clay, and … well, Knox, too. They’ve had to deal with this awful thing that happened to Prentice, and now Hattie has—”

“Well, from the look on your faces, I see you must’ve heard the news.” Lou Willingham, her arms full of books, bustled inside and bumped the door shut with her ample rear.