Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble (23 page)

Soon after that, Charlie turned onto a rutted dirt road immediately past the silo that Mary Joy’s husband had mentioned.

Maisie Hodges lived in a small farmhouse set back from the road, and it looked like it had been there almost as long as the ancient oaks on either side. The house, although unpainted, looked neat and welcoming with bright red geraniums in tin-can planters lining the front porch railings. An elderly Negro woman sat in a rocking chair, shelling field peas into an enamel pan, and chickens strutted around a bare-swept yard.

“Hello! You must be Maisie.” Miss Dimple stepped from the car to greet her. “I’m—”

The woman’s face lit up in a broad smile. “I reckon you be Miss Dimple. My Luther said you was comin’.” She started to rise. “Mary Joy, she out back hangin’ out the wash again. Had to bring it all in when it started to rain.”

“Ma Maisie, you sit yourself down and behave now, you hear?” Mary Joy, apron flapping, hurried around the side of the house and smiled at the newcomers. “Luther told us to look for you today. Come on up on the porch and have a seat. I’ll bring us some iced tea.”

Odessa had packed a Thermos of tea in their lunch basket, along with ham-salad sandwiches and a few tea cakes left over from Phoebe’s last meeting of the Jolly Jonquils Garden Club, but it would have been rude to refuse refreshment, so they all trooped onto the porch and sat in the welcome shade.

Mary Joy introduced Luther’s mother to everyone, explaining in a low voice that she was recuperating from
a female operation.

Miss Dimple murmured appropriate sentiments. “It feels twenty degrees cooler out here,” she said. “You must enjoy this nice shady porch.

“But tell me,” she added, addressing Mary Joy, “how did you know to expect us if you don’t have a telephone?”

“Oh, Mr. Mule Blackstock tell us when he come by with the mail,” Maisie said.

Annie smiled.
“Mule?”

Mary Joy laughed. “Well, his real name’s Thomas, but everybody calls him ‘Mule’ because he used to make his living selling them. He has a telephone and lives right down the road, so he doesn’t mind bringing messages when he can. I reckon Luther’s daddy worked for Mr. Mule forever, didn’t he, Ma Maisie?”

Maisie Hodges smiled and nodded. “More’n thirty years, I reckon.”

Luther, they learned, had received another call soon after Miss Dimple’s, from someone asking how to get in touch with Mary Joy.

“Man wouldn’t give his name and Luther didn’t know who he was or what he was up to,” Mary Joy said, “so he told him he didn’t know how to get in touch with me.”

The three visiting women exchanged glances. “So
that’s
why that car was following us,” Charlie said, and told the others what had happened.

“Did you recognize the car?” Mary Joy asked. But Charlie shook her head. “It was covered in mud and hard to see through all that rain, but I think it was black.”

The others hadn’t been able to see the car well, either, but as Annie pointed out, at least three-fourths of the automobiles made before the war were painted black. Manufacturers hadn’t been making many since, as the country needed those materials for the war effort.

Mary Joy frowned. “Do you think the person who called was the one who followed you here?” she whispered to Charlie.

“We turned off the road and waited behind this old mill until the car passed, and didn’t come out until it disappeared over the hill. I hope they’re still looking in the wrong direction. I didn’t notice anybody following us after we left it behind,” Charlie assured her.

“Among those we told about coming here, who would’ve passed the information along?” Miss Dimple said. “I can’t imagine who it would be.”

“It would only take two,” Charlie told her.

“And who would that be?” Annie asked.

Charlie shrugged. “Someone we told and Florence McCrary.”

Mary Joy sighed. “You mean that woman who works the switchboard at the telephone company? Oh, law! I reckon the whole town knows by now!”

“But they don’t know how to get here. If they did, they wouldn’t have been following us,” Charlie told her.

Miss Dimple sipped her tea. Mary Joy had garnished the drinks with a sprig of fresh mint, and that and the tinkle of ice almost made her forget it was over ninety degrees.

“There must have been a reason someone wanted to frighten your mother off her land,” she said to Mary Joy. “Has anyone approached you about wanting to buy it?”

She shook her head. “Not me, but I think there was somebody bothering Mama for a while.”

Miss Dimple frowned. “What do you mean?”

“She didn’t say much about it, but I remember her getting several phone calls. I think it was back in the spring or the first part of the summer. You know, Mama was pretty patient, but this was getting on her nerves. She finally told them to leave her alone.”

“Did she receive anything in writing?” Dimple asked.

“No, I don’t think so. Mostly it was just phone calls, but a man came out one time to talk to her about it.”

“What man?” Charlie asked.

Mary Joy shook her head. “Mama didn’t know him. Said she never saw him before.”

Miss Dimple paused to stroke a gray-striped cat that curled about her ankles. “And did he come back after that?” she asked.

“I don’t think so. At least not that I know of,” Mary Joy told her.

“He will,” Annie said. “You can count on it.”

“I think he already has,” Miss Dimple said.

Mary Joy leaned forward in alarm. “Do you think
he set that fire
? That it was deliberate?”

Dimple nodded. “Either
he
did or he told someone to do it.”

“I always thought we’d go back there one day—Luther and me,” Mary Joy said. “It was only Mama and me after Papa died, and that place is home to me.

“That little piece of land between the house and the road isn’t big enough to farm. Mama put in soybeans a couple of times, and once in a while she’d plant a little corn. You could put a few head of cattle on it I reckon, but other than that, I don’t see what anybody would want it for.”

“How many acres?” Charlie asked.

Mary Joy shrugged. “About fifty, I guess, or close to it. Papa bought it from Mr. Claude Keever. He’s dead now, but he owned the farm next to us. His son Bo has it now, and I know he’s not gonna let go of any of his.

“What makes you think somebody set that fire on purpose?”

Dimple explained that it looked like the fire had started away from the road, closer to the house. “Fortunately, the creek stopped it from going any farther.”

“And that’s not all,” Annie began. “Charlie’s mother and her aunt Lou found—”

“Found the place where it looks like it might have started.” Miss Dimple spoke up, shooting a warning look at Annie. It was tragedy enough to lose one’s mother, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell Mary Joy that Leola might have been frightened to death.

As they were leaving, Miss Dimple remembered to ask Mary Joy if she had any idea what might have been bothering Prentice or if she knew whether the girl was seeing someone other than Clay.

Mary Joy smiled. “Why, Mama wouldn’t have mentioned it to me if she was,” she said as she followed them to the car. “They kept their secrets, those two. I didn’t get back home as much as I wish I had, so I really didn’t see much of Prentice this summer—or Mama, either,” she added sadly.

*   *   *

Although they had parked in the shade, the car felt like a furnace as they left Maisie Hodges’s place behind, and even Miss Dimple admitted discomfort as she blotted her face with a lace-trimmed handkerchief.

Everyone was hungry, but they agreed it would be best to wait until they were clear of the area to stop and eat the sandwiches Odessa had packed with a container of ice.

“Let’s stop for a minute,” Miss Dimple suggested before Charlie reentered the roadway. “If someone did follow us here, they could be waiting nearby.”

But no other cars were in sight as Charlie nudged cautiously onto the road.

“Didn’t we see another mailbox on the way in?” Dimple asked, looking about. “There should be a neighboring house close by.”

“Right. I noticed it when we passed,” Charlie said. “Do you want to stop there?”

Dimple nodded. “I think perhaps it would be a good idea. What if someone
did
follow us here or succeeded in locating Mary Joy on his own? I don’t like leaving those two women out here by themselves without anyone to keep an eye out for them.”

*   *   *

Olin Frix and his wife, Lila, agreed when they spoke with them a few minutes later. The couple, who looked to be in their fifties, had just finished their midday meal and invited the visitors into their small, dark parlor, where they sat on equally dark, scratchy upholstered furniture. And this time the offer of tea was politely declined as the three thought, no doubt, of the quickly melting supply of ice meant to keep their lunch chilled.

“We see most everybody who comes down this road,” Lila told them, fanning her moist red face with a current copy of
The Saturday Evening Post.
“I hadn’t noticed anybody today but the Hicks boys, who live up the road apiece—and you all, of course.”

Her husband stood in the doorway, obviously eager to get back to work. “We’ll keep an eye out,” he said, frowning, “but to be on the safe side, Maisie and her daughter-in-law oughta go back and stay with Luther until whatever this is blows over.”

Miss Dimple looked at Charlie and then at Annie. “I think you could be right. I’ll phone Luther tonight.”

“I wish you luck getting Maisie Hodges to leave that house,” Lila said, smiling. “That woman’s more stubborn than any mule.”

Her husband jammed on his hat and made for the door. “You should know,” Olin told her, and with a grin, he hurried outside.

*   *   *

“They might be perfectly all right,” Miss Dimple said as they walked back to the car, “but I’d feel better if they were with Luther in Covington.”

“‘Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none,’” Annie said, quoting from Shakespeare’s
All’s Well That Ends Well,
and Miss Dimple reminded her that
she
was more concerned about those who had already done wrong and meant to do more.

They stopped for a brief lunch under a shade tree on the way home, narrowly avoiding another quick shower, but aside from that, the trip was uneventful.

“What now?” Charlie asked as she turned into Phoebe Chadwick’s driveway.

Annie paused with her hand on the door. “Don’t you think we should say something to Leola’s neighbor? Maybe someone has been interested in his land, too.”

“Bo Keever. I think you’re right. I taught his sister, but I know him only to speak to,” Miss Dimple said.

“I’ll bet I know someone who does,” Charlie told them. “Elberta Stackhouse. They’re practically neighbors. She lives right down the road.”

“Good. I’ll phone Luther tonight, and you can speak with Elberta,” Miss Dimple said. “It should be obvious to anyone now that someone set that fire at Leola’s to frighten her off her land. All we have to do is find out who.”

“And
why,
” Annie added.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-TWO

The skies were overcast when Charlie drove out to the tidy brick bungalow on the outskirts of town, where Prentice Blair had lived with her aunt. As she approached the house, Charlie blinked back tears as she recalled the July day not long ago when they had come here expecting Prentice to have returned home early from her job at the Peach Shed.

*   *   *

“Well, of course I know Bo Keever,” Bertie Stackhouse said. “Known him all his life.” The two sat in Bertie’s kitchen over a plate of muffins neither of them touched while Charlie explained what they suspected about the fire at Leola’s.

Bertie frowned. “I remember her mentioning something about somebody wanting to buy her land—said it was aggravating—but she didn’t take it too seriously.” Bertie’s eyes misted. “Leola didn’t complain a lot. She was a very private person. Why, I doubt if she would’ve even let on if she’d felt threatened.” She found a handkerchief in her pocket and blew her nose. “God, how I miss her! Miss them both!”

“School will be starting soon,” Charlie said gently. “It should help to keep your mind occupied with other things. I hope you’re planning to continue teaching.”

Of course she was. That was who she was, what she did.
For the first time, Elberta Stackhouse allowed herself to think about her future, a future without Prentice. Did she really want to stay here? Adam Treadway wasn’t going to be patient forever. Was she willing to face life without him, as well?

But first she would have to face the ghost of a tragedy and the man who was responsible for it.

“You know Bo Keever better than I do.” Charlie’s voice brought her back to the present. “Would you call him for me? If he’s had the same offer, maybe he can tell us who was interested.”

But instead of contacting her neighbor by phone, Bertie decided it might be best to visit him in person, and a few minutes later they found him mending a pasture fence when they turned in from the main road.

Mopping his red face, Bo welcomed the two and invited them into the shade of a large red oak where watercress grew in a clear spring. There he offered his visitors a seat on a makeshift bench, then knelt and splashed cold water over his face, shook his head, and sputtered.

“Bertie,” he began, and the old plank creaked as he sat beside her, “not a day goes by that Maggie and I don’t think about you. What can I do for you, sugar? Just say the word.”

But he shook his head when Bertie asked him if anyone had expressed an interest in buying some of his land.

“I reckon anybody around here would know they’d be wasting their time there. Why, this farm’s been in our family for over a hundred years. My daddy would whirl in his grave if I let so much as an inch of it go.” He frowned. “Why you askin’ me that?”