Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble (3 page)

“Do you think Hattie McGee might’ve had something to do with this?” Delia asked. “She lives back there, you know, somewhere in all that jungle of underbrush and trees.”

He smiled. “Old Hattie’s harmless, but we’ll check into it if your friend doesn’t turn up soon. “That property belongs to the Jarretts, and if they don’t object to her being there, it shouldn’t matter to the rest of us.”

The chief paused to flip through his notebook, and Delia guessed he was probably marking time before expressing what was on his mind. “Do you think you might have heard her if your friend called out for help while you were across the road?” he asked.

But Delia shook her head. She was inside most of the time and a train had passed while she was there, so she didn’t believe she would have heard anything. “But,” she told him, “Miss Dimple thought she heard somebody scream while she was picking peaches in the orchard just down the road.”

“How can you be so sure Prentice didn’t decide to go off with her boyfriend somewhere?” he asked. “Hasn’t she been seeing Clay Jarrett? I’ve noticed the two of them around town together, and the Jarrett place is just a ways behind us.”

Delia nodded. “Yes, but she broke off with him a few weeks ago, and I really don’t think Prentice wanted to be around Clay right now.”

“Still, it wouldn’t hurt to check. I’ll have to speak with the Jarretts anyway. They’ll want to send somebody over to take care of the Shed, but first we need to pay a visit to Miss Stackhouse, find out if she’s heard anything from her niece.”

Delia drew in her breath and glanced at her sister, who stood in the doorway with Miss Dimple and Annie.
This wasn’t the time to cry again!

“Chief Tinsley, I hope you won’t object if we speak with Bertie Stackhouse first,” Miss Dimple said, stepping forward. “I’m afraid she might become alarmed at seeing the police at her front door.”

He nodded. “I see your point. We’ll give you a few minutes, and if everything’s all right there, you can wave us along.”

Delia gave the cash box to Chief Tinsley to turn over to the Jarretts but kept Prentice’s handbag to return to her friend. Charlie hadn’t thought to park in the shade, and the car felt hot enough to bake a potato. Climbing into the backseat beside Annie, Delia remembered the Hershey bar she had left in her skirt pocket earlier and discovered it a brown syrupy mess.
Won’t Prentice laugh when she hears about this!
she thought, forgetting for a minute the alarming circumstances.

If only she didn’t have to think! If she could start the day over and begin anew. Delia looked at Miss Dimple, who sat in front, holding in her lap the straw hat with its trim of purple ribbon she had worn that morning. At least Miss Dimple was the same, always calm and reliable. She would know what to do. Delia was glad she was there.

During the drive to Prentice’s, Delia prayed there had been some kind of emergency and that her friend’s aunt Bertie had come and whisked her away, or that Prentice had experienced a sudden attack of appendicitis, flagged down a passing motorist, and was safely anesthetized and under the care of Doc Morrison.

But that wasn’t to be.

*   *   *

Why couldn’t he get her out of his mind?
It had been over two weeks now, and he’d never thought it would come to this.
And the things she’d told him!
Prentice.
His
Prentice. He’d always thought she looked like the yellow-haired angel in that big book of Bible stories his grandmamma gave him one Christmas. Some angel she turned out to be!

Clay Jarrett skimmed down the ladder and carefully rolled his last basket of peaches into the waiting truck. The Georgia Belles bruised easily and his dad would have his hide if he brought in a damaged load. He had been picking since sunup and didn’t have a dry thread on him. Even with the long-sleeved cotton shirt, his arms stung with the hateful peach fuzz.

He fanned his wet face with a dirty visored cap that said
Purina Feed
on the front and drew a sleeve across his forehead. Trickles of sweat mixed with tears drizzled salty into his mouth. Damn it! This was the last time he was going to cry over Prentice Blair, but she had been on his mind all morning and there was nobody around to see him cry. Nobody but those blasted yellow jackets and the mean sun that followed him wherever he went. Clay felt like somebody had poured acid into his heart, and when he thought of the flawless face of Prentice Blair, the awful bitterness rose in his chest.

It was all that old woman’s fault. Leola. Prentice listened to whatever Leola Parker told her. “Go away to school, see something of the world,” she’d told her. And Prentice had listened, hadn’t she? Listened to Leola instead of to him. Well, she wouldn’t be listening to her anymore. Clay felt kind of bad about that, about what had happened. And Prentice—Lord, he’d never seen her so crazy upset. And then there’d been all that talk about dating other people and she’d given him back his ring. Thrown it at him in the end.

That was when she’d told him. Knowing the way he loved her the way he did, she told him
that.

It was almost noon by the time Clay got his peaches to the sorting shed, and he started to peel away his clothing even before he reached the house. In the shower, needles of hot water pounded him, renewed him, but it couldn’t wash away the wound that festered inside.

In less than an hour, he would begin his shift at Mr. Cooper’s grocery. Harris Cooper didn’t pay as much as his dad did, but the grocer didn’t mind if he stopped for a sandwich if the schedule wasn’t too tight, and this week his clerk, Jesse Dean Greeson, was taking care of the store so the Coopers could spend some time with their new grandbaby in Columbus. Their son-in-law was serving there with the army at Fort Benning, where Clay would probably go if he was drafted into the army, although he preferred to enlist in the navy—and the sooner, the better, he thought. He would’ve signed up already if his mother hadn’t carried on so.

Clay tried to slick down his wet straw-colored hair, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. It would be sticking up in all the wrong places as soon as he got out the door. He glowered at himself in the mirror. What did it matter now anyway?

Easing out the front door, which the family rarely used, Clay tried to slip away unnoticed. It didn’t work.

“Clay? Clay, honey, don’t you want some dinner? There’s ham from last night and I saved some of that tomato pie you like. Won’t take a minute to heat.”

“No thanks, Mom. Gotta go—running late. I’ll grab something in town.” He gave her a blink of a kiss and hurried to climb into the old Chevrolet truck, its once-black sides now stained rust red with Georgia dust. He really wasn’t late, but he didn’t want to stay around the kitchen with her constantly hanging over him. Clay loved his mother and would fight anybody who said he didn’t, but she was just about to drive him nuts since his breakup with Prentice. Lately he couldn’t stand to be around anybody who expected him to carry on a conversation longer than two sentences.

Driving past the Peach Shed, he raised a hand to Miss Dimple, who was standing outside with a couple of others. If it had been anybody else, he wouldn’t have even acknowledged them, the way he was feeling, but there was something about his first-grade teacher that made him want to “do the right thing.” He didn’t see Prentice and didn’t want to, but he knew she was working there today.

Jesse Dean had an order ready when Clay pulled up in back of the store. A lot of Harris Cooper’s customers were older people who either couldn’t shop for themselves or didn’t want to, and they were accustomed to special treatment. Whoever was delivering that day not only took the groceries to the door but carried them inside, and, on occasion, put them away. That was fine with Clay as long as he didn’t have to talk.

Today his first delivery went to Miss Iona Satterlee, a retired teacher a few miles north of town on Russells’ Mill Road. To get there, Clay had to pass the “special place”—his and Prentice’s—an old logging road that meandered into nothing behind the vine-draped ruins of an old mill. When they had first parked there, they thought the spot entirely their own, but later, evidence led them to believe otherwise, and according to some unwritten code, they didn’t take advantage of their secluded spot, but chose their nights selectively, infrequently, rationing the heady rapture of their visits. Or Prentice did. Clay would’ve parked there every night if she’d allowed it.

Her kisses sent him soaring into some sweet, wild place he’d never been before and didn’t ever want to leave. And when he felt Prentice’s firm young breast against his own, everything in him surged. Once, carried away by the thrill of his scoring the winning touchdown in a game with their archrivals in the next town and the dizzying essence of the autumn air, she had let him touch her breast. It was as smooth as a peach; soft yet firm, it fit into the palm of his hand as if God had made it that way. Her nipple felt like warm rubber and she moaned when he explored it.

Clay moaned, too. His hands moved urgently to the tentlike area beneath her corduroy skirt. Her stomach was flat, hot, shuddered when he touched it. Outside the car, an owl called, and through the windshield a honey-dipped moon hung from the top of a bare oak. Clay closed his eyes. At that moment, he could speak love in foreign tongues, hear music that had never been written.

“Stop!”
She covered herself with her hands, curled away from him, and cried, struggling to button her blouse. “I can’t. I’m sorry, it’s wrong.”

“Oh God, Prentice, don’t do this to me! Sweetheart,
please.
It’s me, honey, Clay, and I love you. You know I love you. It’s all right, really.”

“No, it’s not all right. I love you, too, Clay, but it’s too soon. I’m not ready. And what if something happened? What if I got pregnant?”

“You won’t. Listen, I’ve got protection. I’ll take care of you. Nothing like that will happen, I promise.” Silently, Clay thanked his dad for the advice given more like a warning during one of their rare father-son moments.

She sat as if snapped by a rubber band and plopped her tempting bottom as far away as she could. “You mean you’ve been carrying around
rubbers
all this time? Clay Jarrett! I can’t believe the nerve of you—the conceit! What would people think if they knew you had those things?”

He hoped the darkness hid his smile. “I don’t wear ’em on a chain around my neck, but if they did happen to see them, I guess they’d think I was planning ahead.”

“Well, you can just plan ahead with somebody else! Take me home.” Prentice scrambled in her purse for lipstick and a comb. Her fair hair billowed to rival the moon.

“Prentice, look, sugar, I’m sorry. It’s just that … well, other people do it. I don’t see why we—”

“I’m not
other people.
” She dabbed on lipstick in the dark, and when she twisted her mouth in that funny little way, his heart turned to pudding.

“Besides,” she said. “I made a promise.”

“What kind of promise? Who did you promise?” But he already knew.

“Leola. I promised Leola I’d wait until I’m old enough to know what I’m doing.”

“But Prentice, sugar, I know what I’m doing. Isn’t that enough?”

He made her laugh and she forgave him, and that was the end of that. But in all the time they went together, they never made love. Not once. Oh, they petted some, but after that night, Prentice always knew when to call a halt before they “went too far,” as she called it. And because Clay loved her, he would wait just as long as it took.

And then she had to go
and tell him that.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

When Elberta Stackhouse looked at Clay Jarrett with that hay-colored thatch so like his dad’s, her yearning cut deep and cruel. Not that he could have been her son, but that hers could’ve been much like him.

In a little while, she would have to collect Prentice and Delia from the Shed, and God forbid that she should run into Knox Jarrett. Bertie wasn’t comfortable with Prentice working for Knox; in fact, she didn’t like it worth a damn. Of course she couldn’t voice her objections without explaining why, and Bertie didn’t plan to explain why. Ever.

The romance between Bertie Stackhouse and Knox Jarrett had gone to dust long before Prentice was born, but the bitter aftermath of that affair cursed her every day of her life. It was hard to live in the same town all those years and pretend nothing had happened.

If the child had lived, he (or she—Bertie had miscarried at three months) would either be in the armed services or possibly married, with a child of his own, and Bertie would write to him faithfully or brag about her grandchildren. Instead, each year Elberta Stackhouse counted the would-have-beens. Her child would be twenty-six if she had carried it full term.

Her periods had never been regular and she had been over two months along when she told Knox about her suspected pregnancy. In his sophomore year at Georgia Tech, he was less than pleased at the news. “We’ll marry, of course, but first let’s be absolutely sure. I’ll need some time to decide how to tell my folks,” he told her with a face as bleak as a January morning. “I’m afraid this is going to kill them.”

“And what about
mine
?” Bertie had been carrying this all alone. Now, reaching for him, she needed the comfort of his arms. He held her stiffly and told her not to worry. They would do what they had to do.

They never told their parents about the pregnancy, and when she lost the baby a few weeks later, it was obvious Knox was relieved. For a short time, he consoled her as best he could, but when he came home for the summer, it was as though they had never been together. When Bertie saw him with Chloe Albright at a square dance on the Fourth of July, it was as if somebody had plunged a pitchfork right into her heart. Even after all this time, she would almost rather have a tooth pulled without anesthetic that be around Knox Jarrett, so when her niece Prentice broke off with his son, she was secretly relieved.