Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble (24 page)

Bertie told him what they suspected about the fire at Leola’s place, and Bo jumped to his feet. “The hell you say! Why haven’t I heard about that before?”

Charlie explained they hadn’t been sure but it was looking more and more likely that the fire had been deliberately set, especially after her mother and aunt found the remains of a charred cross.

If a storm could begin in a man’s eyes, Bo Keever’s would have been flashing lightning. “That woman was like a second mother to me, and I remember when my daddy sold that little parcel of land to Leola and Floyd,” he said. “Floyd Parker had worked side by side with him for Lord knows how long, and we were glad to have them as neighbors.” He sat and put his head in his hands. “Why in the world would anybody want that place bad enough to do a thing like that?”

That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Bertie told him. She spoke in a low, steady voice. “And if anybody approaches you, I hope you’ll—”

“I’ll sure let you know, Elberta,” he said, frowning. “You know I will.”

But Bertie shook her head. “Don’t let
me
know. Call the sheriff.”

*   *   *

“If Bo should hear from whoever’s trying to buy that land, the sheriff better get here quick,” Charlie said as they started back to Bertie’s.

“Why is that?” Bertie asked.

“From the look on Bo Keever’s face, I don’t think that fellow would stand much of a chance,” Charlie told her.

*   *   *

“I think you’d better come over right away,” Miss Dimple said. The telephone had been ringing when Charlie got home and she’d dashed through the house to answer it, hitting her shin on the cedar chest in the hall in her hurry. “Has something happened to Mary Joy?” she asked. “Were you able to get in touch with Luther?” What if the person who had been following them had waited until they left Maisie Hodges’s place, and then …

“No, Mary Joy’s all right—at least as far as I know. Just come,” Miss Dimple repeated, and Charlie did.

Frazier. It had to be Frazier … or Joel, Annie’s pilot brother and Will’s friend. Or maybe it was Phoebe’s young grandson, Harrison, who was serving in the South Pacific.
Charlie raced across Katherine Street, took a shortcut through a neighbor’s backyard, and arrived breathless and panting on Phoebe Chadwick’s porch. Phoebe, Velma, and Lily sat in a group at one end of the porch, talking quietly together, and when Phoebe saw Charlie, she hurried to meet her. “They’re in the parlor,” she said. “Annie and Miss Dimple…” And she gave Charlie an encouraging pat on the shoulder.

Charlie’s breath came fast and her mouth was so dry, she could hardly swallow. “Who? What is it? What happened? Did Annie get a telegram?”
Please God! Don’t let it be the boy on the black bicycle!

Phoebe held open the screen door. Her voice was gentle. “I’ll let them explain.”

She found Annie sitting ramrod-straight on one end of Phoebe’s worn velvet love seat. Miss Dimple sat next to her in a mahogany Sheffield side chair with the flowered needlepoint seat Phoebe had stitched years before. Only their hands were touching.

Charlie dropped to her knees in front of them. “Oh, Annie, I’m so sorry! Is it Frazier?”

Annie looked up and without a word put a letter into Charlie’s hands. It was written on the thin tissuelike paper issued to servicemen and women, and Charlie paused to get control of her trembling hands before reading it. At least, she thought, it wasn’t the horrible yellow telegram.

The brief message apparently had been scrawled hastily with a pencil and addressed to
Miss Annie Gardner, Elderberry, Georgia.
Glancing at the signature at the bottom, Charlie didn’t recognize the name. She glanced up. “Alex Carpenter?”

“Just read it,” Miss Dimple urged her.

Dear Annie,

I remembered you lived in a little Georgia town called Elderberry, so I’m hoping this will reach you okay. Frazier was in my unit, but we got separated after bombs killed several of our men. I couldn’t find Frazier among the dead, but we’ve been under fire and I haven’t seen him since that happened over a week ago. Knowing him, I reckon he’ll come out just fine, but it’s hard to send word from here with the Germans out to get us as much as we’re out to get them. He talks about you all the time and I know he’d want me to tell you how much he loves you. I hope by the time you get this you will have heard from him.

Lt. Alex Carpenter, U.S. Army

The letter was dated July 27, 1944.

Charlie felt relief wash over her, but her hands still shook as she read the note once again. “Annie, this is a
good
thing. He said he couldn’t find Frazier among the dead, and surely you would have heard by now if he’d been … if something had happened.”

Annie nodded and Charlie could see she was trying to smile. “You should call Frazier’s parents,” Charlie suggested. “Maybe
they’ve
heard something more by now.”

“I already have.” Annie held out her hand for the letter and folded it; then, as if thinking better of it, she opened it in her lap and stroked the paper lightly with her fingers.

“What did they say?” Charlie asked.

“His mother cried.” Annie seemed to disregard her own tears. “They haven’t heard from him, either.”

“
And also
no telegram from the War Department,” Miss Dimple reminded her. “I believe Frazier’s friend was attempting to reassure you—at least as best he could.”

“But that was written weeks ago, and Frazier had been missing a week already … and he said they were
under fire
from the Germans. We all knew that, of course. They’re having to fight their way inland a little at a time.… I don’t even want to think about it. Anything could’ve happened to him!” Annie stood suddenly and went to the window, as if she were hoping to see Frazier rounding the corner at the end of the block.
“Why doesn’t he write?”

“Probably because he doesn’t have the opportunity, or the means to send anything just now.” Miss Dimple spoke in a firm voice. “Until he does, I believe he would want you to try to go on with your life as best you can.”

Charlie gripped the back of Miss Dimple’s chair and looked away. How awful to live in limbo like this! This continued
not knowing
was eating away at everyone. But it could be worse, much worse. She wiped away tears with the back of her hand and took a deep, calming breath.

Although Miss Dimple had never discussed it, those close to her knew from the Elderberry grapevine that the older teacher had endured the loss of a loved one in an earlier war, and Annie wished with all her heart she could shake off the worry that gnawed at her until she could think of nothing else.

Well, she decided, this wasn’t helping Frazier or anyone else. She gave herself a few minutes to get her emotions under control before turning to face them. “Okay then, getting back to this other problem, tell us what you learned from Leola’s neighbor. Has he had an offer for his land?”

“Bertie and I went by there this afternoon,” Charlie told them, “but Bo hadn’t heard from anybody about it, and didn’t expect to. That property’s been in his family for over a century and he has no intention of letting any of it go.”

Dimple frowned. “And how is Elberta?”

“I guess she’s getting along about as well as she can,” Charlie told her. “She seems sort of … well … unsettled, but who could blame her after what happened to Prentice and Leola?”

Miss Dimple confessed that she hadn’t had a chance to telephone Luther Hodges but that she would do so immediately.

Charlie glanced at Phoebe’s porcelain clock on the mantel. “Uh-oh! It’s after five o’clock! Time for Mama to be home from the ordnance plant. I’d better hurry and help Delia with supper.” With practice, her sister had become a better cook than when she first came to live with them when her husband shipped overseas, but Charlie hadn’t quite managed to forget the Spam and rice casserole with canned peas the size of marbles Delia had presented her first month back home.

“I’ll let you know what he says,” Miss Dimple promised.

It wasn’t until the next day that they learned Luther had taken the neighbor’s advice seriously and brought his mother and wife (the former protesting audibly) to Covington in case the person who had attempted to buy Leola’s land found his way to Maisie Hodges’s.

*   *   *

Charlie was washing dishes after supper that night when the telephone rang in the hall. Jo Carr was enjoying a relaxing soak in the tub after a long day at the ordnance plant, and Delia, busy coaxing little Tommy to eat “just a little more” of his
yummy
dinner, shook her head, displaying a hand smeared in mashed potatoes. Hastily drying her hands on her apron, Charlie hurried to answer the phone.

“Well, I guess you’ve heard,” her aunt Lou began.

Charlie hadn’t, but she knew she was about to find out. “Heard what?”

“They’re burying poor old Hattie McGee tomorrow, or what’s left of her,” her aunt said, and then added the obligatory, “Bless her heart.”

“It’s to be a graveside service and I thought I’d try to go. Ed won’t be able to get away, but I thought you all might want to come. Walter Dunnagan’s going to take care of the service, I hear. Hot as it is, hope he’ll keep it short. That man can pray till the cows come home!”

Charlie wondered who was going to cover the expenses, since Hattie hadn’t had two nickels to rub together, but she didn’t have to wonder long.

“Ed says Knox Jarrett’s paying for the casket and all that—and him with all that worry over Clay, too, but then, who else is going to do it? I thought I’d bring some of my Portland roses from that bush by the cellar door. You know how Hattie loved roses, and this one’s bloomed for most of the summer in big old pink clusters. I’ll take some up there in a bucket and we can put them in a vase after everybody leaves the cemetery.”

Charlie said she would join her and was pretty sure her mother would, too. A phone call to Annie assured her that most of Phoebe’s guests would be there, as well.

*   *   *

The service was scheduled for midmorning, probably so those attending could get on about the business of living as soon as it was over, Charlie thought. She was surprised to see a large crowd gathered at the cemetery when they arrived in Uncle Ed’s Studebaker with the bucket of roses sloshing around at her feet in the backseat. The day promised to be hot, although clouds hid the sun now and then, and by the time they walked to the grave site at the end of a narrow graveled drive, she was glad to see the familiar blue canopy under the welcoming shade of a sycamore tree.

Miss Dimple and Annie stood outside the canopy with Phoebe, Velma, and Lily. Others congregated in small groups, waiting for the service to begin. Dora Delaney of the Total Perfection Beauty Salon whispered to Grady Clinkscales of the Gas ’n Eats, and Hardin Haynesworth Kirkland, handbag under her arm, made her way painstakingly up the hill behind Marjorie Mote and Emma Elrod. No one, it seemed, wanted to claim the few seats underneath where the casket waited beside the open grave and where Knox and Chloe Jarrett and their daughter, Loretta, sat alone in the first row.

With a nod from Miss Dimple, Charlie followed her and some of the others to fill the empty seats behind the Jarretts. There was no music and the Reverend Dunnagan’s words were surprisingly brief, but not brief enough for her not to be aware of the grief and worry etched on the faces of Knox and Chloe Jarrett. The tragedy of Hattie McGee’s death was overshadowed by the obvious suffering Clay’s family was enduring.

The single spray of red roses that had been on Hattie’s casket was set aside before her remains were lowered into the grave, and as soon as the minister gave his benediction, many people dispersed, but at her aunt’s direction, Charlie followed her back to the car to retrieve the bucket of roses while the grave was being filled. Later, as her mother and aunt arranged the bright pink roses and anchored them in place over the fresh red earth, her eyes burned with tears as one by one others followed suit until the raw mound over Hattie’s grave was covered in roses of every hue.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-THREE

“I guess you noticed how many people went to Hattie’s funeral yesterday,” Charlie mentioned to Annie as the two walked to town the next morning. Both needed to mail letters to their fiancés, and Charlie wanted another look at that yellow-striped blouse she’d noticed in the window of Brumlow’s Dry Goods. School would be starting soon and it would boost her spirits immensely if she had just
one new
thing to wear.

“Do you think Hattie realized she had so many friends?” Annie said. “To be honest, I was surprised at the number there.”

Charlie shrugged. “I hope she did. But who knows what Hattie knew? Obviously she knew too much, or she wouldn’t have been buried up there on Cemetery Hill yesterday.”

“Do you really think that’s why she was killed—that is, if she
was
killed?” Annie asked.

“If she
wasn’t
murdered, why would somebody throw rose petals over her body and then dress like Hattie and show up in town with her wheelbarrow?
Somebody
wanted us to think she died later than she actually did,” Charlie explained. “I wonder if the person who killed her was at the cemetery yesterday.”

“Oh my gosh, Charlie! You’re giving me chills! Do you really think they were?”

Charlie shrugged. “Who knows? I tried to look around when it was over, but several people left after the benediction, and Aunt Lou practically dragged me away to get those roses. Were you able to see who was there?”

But Annie didn’t answer. She was staring at a war bond poster in front of the post office showing a helmeted soldier preparing to throw a grenade. It read: