Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble (25 page)

GOD HELP ME IF THIS IS A DUD

His life is in your hands!

Charlie threaded her arm through Annie’s and stood with her as people passed on the street; a truck with a load of chickens on the back stopped at one of the town’s two traffic lights, and two blocks away, the train whistle blew as the NC & St. L chugged through town. If she closed her eyes, she might pretend there was no war, no heartbreak, no worrying.

“We went through this when Fain was missing, remember?” Charlie began. “I’m not telling you not to worry. That would be impossible, but you have to try to find something to occupy your interest to get you through each day as it comes. Focus on that and what’s going on around you.”

Annie groaned. “Charlie, I’m sorry. I know I’m not easy to be around right now. It’s just that I feel like I’m at the bottom of a deep well and I can’t get out.”

Charlie knew how she felt, but right then she couldn’t think of a thing to say that would make either one of them feel better.

“Why don’t we do something for Clay?” she suggested. “Can you imagine how he feels locked away from everyone he cares about in that little cell with barely enough room to do more than turn around?”

Annie smiled, and Charlie was relieved to see a glimpse of her friend’s good humor return. “Well, sure, but I doubt if the authorities would take kindly to our giving him a file.”

“But they probably wouldn’t mind if we took cookies. I’ll ask Clay’s mother what he likes best. How many sugar ration coupons can you spare?”

*   *   *

“He loves those chewy molasses cookies with black walnuts,” Chloe Jarrett said when Charlie phoned later, “but our walnut tree didn’t bear last year, and I don’t know where you’re going to find them this early in the season.”

Charlie promised they would do their best. “How is he?” she asked. “And how are you?” She knew Miss Dimple had been concerned about Clay’s mother and had made a point to speak with her on a regular basis.

Chloe didn’t reply immediately. Finally, she said, “I just have to keep reminding myself that the good Lord knows my boy is innocent and the truth is on our side.”

Charlie assured her that many of their friends were on Clay’s side as well and that she had no doubt his name would soon be cleared.

But she wished she could feel sure of that herself.

“I asked Odessa where she got those black walnuts she used in that ‘poor man’s fruitcake’ she made last Christmas,” Annie reported later, “and she said there’s a woman who lives somewhere on the edge of town who sells them, but she’s not sure if she has any now.”

But Minnie Prescott, Phoebe told them, didn’t have a telephone. They would either have to drive or walk to her place out on River Bend Road to find out if the walnuts were still available.

Annie groaned. “Won’t pecans do as well? Sounds like an awful lot of trouble to me.”

Charlie agreed. “And then you have to crack them with a hammer or a rock, and they’re the dickens to pick out.”

Miss Dimple, who had been listening, was visibly perturbed. “For heaven’s sake, I walk out that way once in a while. I’ll be glad to get the walnuts if she has any.” She paused just long enough to fasten attention on Annie and Charlie. “And with
three
of us shelling them, it shouldn’t take long to have enough for a batch of cookies. If that boy wants walnuts in his molasses cookies, then he should have them.”

Charlie longed to be able to slip through a crack in the floor. Dimple Kilpatrick rarely lectured and would be aghast if she thought she had unintentionally made anyone think less of herself. However, she realized, this
was intentional.
She and Annie were meant to feel ashamed, and they were. At least enough to agree to accompany Miss Dimple on her walk the next morning when everybody but the milkman, and possibly Count Dracula, was hours away from waking.

Fortunately, Miss Dimple delayed starting out until a more suitable hour, but it was still cool enough to enjoy an early-morning breeze as they turned into the oak-laced shade of Katherine Street. Marjorie Mote paused to speak as she swept her front walk. She had lost her son Chester earlier in the war and the other, Jack, was now serving in England.

The stores hadn’t opened yet in town, but Arden Brumlow waved at them from across the street while rearranging the window of the family dry goods store, where Charlie had purchased her blouse the day before; and a glimpse into the dusty confines of the
Elderberry Eagle
revealed the silhouette of Linotype operator, Thad Autry, busily setting words in lead.

The fountain in the park trickled onto lily pads under which goldfish languidly swam, and the two magnolias on either side of the pathway cast Virginia’s log cabin library into deep shadow.

“Oh dear!” Miss Dimple paused to take a second look as they passed. “I hope that’s not who I think it is. And I heard he’d been doing so well lately.”

“Who? Where?” Charlie shaded her eyes to see where Miss Dimple was looking.

“There, on the porch of the library. It looks like someone’s sleeping there on the bench.” Miss Dimple pursed her lips. “I suppose Virginia will just have to run him off. Well, it won’t be the first time.”

“Run
who
off?” Annie asked.

“Delby O’Donnell, of course.” Everyone knew his wife locked him out when he’d had too much to drink.

“Wait a minute!” Charlie ventured a few steps down the path. “I don’t think that’s—it doesn’t look like Delby from here.”

Miss Dimple followed, shoving aside a low-hanging magnolia limb with her umbrella. “You’re right. It isn’t Delby.… My goodness, I do believe that’s
Jasper Totherow
!
”

Hearing remnants of their conversation, the person in question raised his head from the bench where he’d been sleeping and looked about. Seeing he’d been discovered, he shook his head, rubbed his eyes, and bolted, grabbing a bundle—probably clothing—at his feet. Then, to their astonishment, Jasper cleared the camellia bush at the edge of the porch in one leap and disappeared behind the building.

“Jasper Totherow, you come right back here!” Miss Dimple demanded, but of course he ignored her and kept right on running. When they followed, there wasn’t one sign of that man in sight.

“I suppose we should report this,” Charlie said after they had looked in every possible hiding place, “but I doubt if they’ll ever catch him now.”

Crossing the street, they found the door of the
Elderberry Eagle
unlocked, and Thad pointed out the telephone without even asking why they seemed so eager to use it, then went back to his Linotype.

“Well, I guess that means the scalawag isn’t dead,” Chief Tinsley said when Charlie told him whom they’d seen. “I figured Jasper was too slippery to stand still long enough for somebody to catch up with him.”

“Then why did Lee Anne and Ruthie
say
he was dead?” Charlie asked.

“I reckon he could’ve been sleeping, but it seems more likely he got stunned by lightning,” the chief explained. “That was a pretty bad storm and there was a big scorch mark on a pine tree not three feet from where they said they found him.”

Miss Dimple and Annie had chosen to wait on the sidewalk to avoid the dense fog of cigar smoke inside, and after telephoning, Charlie hurried to join them. “The chief said he’d send somebody over here to try to round Jasper up,” she told them. She was hoping the delay would encourage Miss Dimple to forget about the walnuts, but of course it didn’t.

The courthouse clock was striking ten by the time they returned from Minnie Prescott’s with a paper bag filled with black walnuts, and the two younger teachers sat on Phoebe’s back steps and cracked them with a hammer while Miss Dimple picked out the nut meats. When the cookies were ready, the three went together to deliver them to Clay at the city jail.

They were relieved to find him playing checkers with Dickson Perry, who delivered meals to the jail from Ray’s Café, and the tantalizing smell of fried chicken wafted from a covered container on the counter. Miss Dimple took comfort in the knowledge that at least Clay wasn’t going hungry.

When the others arrived, Dickson made excuses to leave, and it was a good thing, Charlie thought, as there was barely room for the four of them in Clay’s tiny cell. She thought Clay looked thinner in spite of Ray’s famous fried okra, cream gravy, and biscuits, and his healthy tan seemed to have paled, even though he had been locked away for only a short time.

“How are you, Clay?” Miss Dimple asked.

He shrugged. “I’m all right.”

“No,
really.
How
are
you?” she repeated.

“Have you ever wished you would wake up and discover you’d been dreaming? I keep hoping that will happen to me. It’s all like a horrible nightmare, and the worst part is, I know I’m
not
going to wake up,” Clay said. “I was working in the orchard all morning the day Prentice was taken, but unfortunately, nobody saw me there to prove it.”

Miss Dimple sat in the chair Dickson had vacated so that Clay, who had stood when they entered, would take the other seat on his bunk. Charlie and Annie lingered close to the barred door, which had shut with an echoing clang behind their backs.

Now Dimple leaned forward in her chair. “Clay, are you
certain
that you saw Hattie McGee as recently as you say?”

“Hattie or somebody dressed like Hattie. Grady saw her, too.”

“I wonder if anyone else did,” Miss Dimple said. “It’s obvious that whoever was posing as Hattie wanted to be noticed.”

Charlie spoke up suddenly. “Miss Bertie saw her, too. Remember when she went with me to talk with Bo Keever the other day? When we were driving back, I said something about finding Hattie’s wheelbarrow with bottles still in it in back of her place, and Miss Bertie told me she’d seen her in town not too long ago. It was a hot day and she called to her to offer a ride, but Hattie acted like she didn’t hear her.”

Clay spoke in a monotone. “Because it wasn’t Hattie,” he said.

“Then who was it?” Annie asked. “And why would anybody go to all that trouble when he or she knew Hattie was already dead?”

Clay looked from one to the other. “I think somebody was looking for something and wanted more time to search.”

“Looking for what?” Charlie asked.

Clay shook his head. “I wish I knew, but whoever it was didn’t take time to put things back the way they were. That trailer’s in a mess.”

“Whoever it was certainly wasn’t thinking clearly if the intention was to get everyone to believe Hattie died later than she did simply to throw the investigators off track.” Miss Dimple rose to leave. “That might have some effect in the cold of winter, but…”

She didn’t have to finish her sentence. Everyone understood what she was trying to say.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FOUR

Well, that was a close one! He wouldn’t be sleeping on the library porch again, but it had been so dark, and he had been so tired, he just couldn’t go another step farther. Jasper Totherow groaned as he rose from his rumpled bed of tow sacks and rubbed his aching back. That blasted bench at the library had been as hard as granite, but at least he would’ve been out of the rain. He was going to have to find a better place to sleep than this drafty old shed. It had rained some during the night and enough water had blown through the cracks to dampen his clothes and his spirits. He was getting too old to live like this. If he got chilled by a little rain in August, what would it be like in the colder months ahead?

Jasper rubbed his arms and shivered. He knew the shed where he’d spent the night was used as a temporary storage place for cotton before it went to the gin, and in a few short weeks, the fields around him would be dotted with pickers—mostly women and older children now that most of the men were in the armed services. A lot of the county schools let out for that purpose. If he could just get by until then, Jasper was sure they would take him on to help, maybe even give him a place to stay, at least until the crop had been picked.

And then what? He stretched and relieved himself behind the shed. He would worry about that when the time came. Right now, he was hungry. Last night, he’d eaten tomatoes and cantaloupe he’d taken from a garden down the road, and he needed something to hold him, something solid. Jasper thought of his grandma’s biscuits, fluffy white inside and crusty gold on top. He’d give anything for one right now—steaming hot, with butter and honey—but Grandma was long gone and laid to rest in an overgrown churchyard. Jasper wiped a couple of tears away with a grimy hand, unaware himself if he shed them for the biscuits or for his grandmother.

If he couldn’t have biscuits, loaf bread would have to do, and there was a little store about a mile or so down the road. The fact that he didn’t have any money didn’t concern him.

Jasper waited until a couple of customers had the attention of the store clerk. One, an older woman in a skirt down to her ankles, wanted a can of Garrett sweet snuff, which the clerk had to stoop and look for underneath the counter. At that moment, Jasper took the opportunity to help himself to a loaf of bread, and if he had stopped there, he might’ve gotten away with it, but a couple of cans of Vienna sausage would taste mighty good with that bread, Jasper thought, and he might as well treat himself to a Nehi orange to wash it all down.

It was the drink that got him into trouble, as one of the cans of sausage slid from beneath his shirt as he lifted the bottle of orange drink from its ice-water bath, and it startled him so that he grabbed up the other items and bolted, not even taking time to pry the cap from the bottle of Nehi with the opener on the ice chest.

“Hey! Come back here! You haven’t paid for that!” the clerk yelled after him, and a tall bearded man standing on the front porch of the store, who happened to be the husband of the woman buying the snuff, reached out a giant hand, grabbed Jasper by his shirttail, and swung him around, pinning him against the wall. And there is where he stayed while the clerk telephoned the sheriff, and Deputy Peewee Cochran came out to collect him in his 1931 Model A Ford truck.