Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble (5 page)

Hattie smoothed her stained taffeta skirt beneath her and made herself comfortable on a bed of grass. Ashley had always liked that dress. She remembered how he’d looked at her when she wore it to the ball at that big plantation house with all the stairs. She couldn’t think of the name of the place. Seems she couldn’t remember a lot of things lately. What would Ashley think of her if he could see her now? Old and gray and thick around the middle—her with a waist so small, Mammy’d had to take in all her dresses. Dear Ashley! He would love her anyway. Of course he would.

But Ashley was gone now; Mammy, too. Everybody she knew and loved. Only she, Scarlett, was left to defend and protect what remained of their heritage. Hattie’s eyes burned and she wiped her nose with a tattered handkerchief that once had been lace and tucked it inside the frayed neck of her dress. Sometimes she felt so lonely. So afraid. It was awful being
the last one.
Now it was all up to her.

With her long skirt spread around her, Hattie hunched in her den of twigs and vines and took a pack of cheese crackers from a string bag. The bag was attached to her wrist by a length of Christmas ribbon that at one time might have been red. Jesse Dean, who worked at the grocery store, had given her the crackers, so she knew they were all right. She had known Jesse Dean Greeson since he was a tiny little boy with skin so pale you could almost see through it and hair that wanted to be yellow but couldn’t quite make it. Hattie reckoned God must’ve run low on paint when He made Jesse Dean, but he turned out fine just the same. Once in a while he would treat her to a cup of ice cream they kept in a freezer at the store, the kind with a movie star on the lid. She wished she had some now.

At least it was cooler here than it was inside that stuffy trailer. The enemy was watching the trailer; she heard them stomping bull-like through the tall grass, banging on her dented metal door. Hattie smiled to herself. Well, let them try to find her here! She had covered her tracks well. They would never know anybody had passed this way.

A blue jay scolded her from a tree stump beside her crawl-through doorway. Hattie threw the raucous bird a crumb to shut him up, then yawned and went to sleep.

*   *   *

“Dimple, you’ve hardly eaten a bite,” Phoebe Chadwick said, frowning. “Doc Morrison brought us that cantaloupe this morning fresh from his victory garden.”

Dimple Kilpatrick shook her head and pushed aside her plate. “I’m sorry, Phoebe. I just don’t believe I can get anything down right now.”

“I don’t suppose they’ve heard anything?” Phoebe turned to Annie, who was silently toying with her tuna salad. Tonight the three women ate alone in the Chadwick kitchen, where blue checkered curtains hung limply in the open windows. A third boarder, Lily Moss, was visiting relatives in Atlanta, and Velma Anderson, who taught with Bertie at the high school, had gone to lend what support she could to her longtime friend.

“I’m sure Charlie would’ve telephoned if they had any news,” Annie said. “Delia’s so worried, she’s threatened to go out and look for Prentice herself, and I can imagine how helpless she feels. I only wish I could do something—
anything
—to help. If only we’d listened to you, Miss Dimple, when you heard that scream! Maybe we could’ve helped her.”

But Miss Dimple shook her head. “Think how long it would’ve taken us to get back to the car, Annie, and then drive out to the main road and around that long curve to the Shed. I doubt if we would’ve been there in time to make a difference.”

“But we could’ve
tried
!” Annie rejected the comfort of her words.

Annie Gardner and Charlie Carr, who had been roommates all during college, would soon begin their third year of teaching at Elderberry Grammar School, and she would be the first to admit that Phoebe Chadwick’s rooming house was beginning to be almost as much like home to her as the place where she grew up. Charlie lived only a block away with her mother, Jo, her sister, and Tommy, the small son Delia called “Pooh.”

“Delia’s mother finally convinced her she’d be more help if she made phone calls from home to some of Prentice’s friends,” Annie continued. “Maybe
somebody
has seen her or at least might have an idea where she is.

“Charlie took little Tommy to her aunt Lou’s for a while just to get him out of the house. Poor little thing doesn’t understand why his mother’s so upset.”

Dimple took her plate to the sink and filled a dishpan with hot water. She had to do something to get her mind off the memory of the dainty little girl who had sat in her classroom twelve years before and delighted in entertaining her classmates with a wide selection of spirituals in her sweet soprano voice. Dimple knew without asking that Prentice hadn’t learned them from Elberta Stackhouse, who was somewhat of a freethinker in spite of her longtime membership in the Presbyterian church.

“Has anyone thought to check the cemetery behind Leola’s church?” Phoebe asked. “The child has grieved so over Leola’s death, she might’ve gone there to try to find some kind of comfort. It’s bad enough to lose someone suddenly like that, but poor little Prentice was the one who found her.” She poured herself another glass of tea. “Odessa says Leola was in good health as far as she knew,” she added, speaking of her longtime cook, Odessa Kirby. “They were cousins once removed, you know. She thinks she must’ve slipped on something and hit her head.”

“Prentice’s aunt Bertie seems to believe Clay Jarrett has something to do with Prentice’s disappearance,” Annie said as she added her plate to the pan of soapy water and began drying dishes. “What do you think, Miss Dimple?”

Miss Dimple rinsed out the dishpan and dried her hands on a flour-sack towel somebody had embroidered with a basket of daisies. “Clay’s far from perfect, but I can’t imagine him doing anything like this,” she said. “I imagine his family is as worried as we are.”

“Maybe the two of them eloped,” Phoebe suggested, but Annie shook her head. “Not the way Prentice was feeling. Even if she changed her mind, she’d never worry her aunt like this, and from what Charlie tells me, this is not like her at all.”

“There’s still plenty of daylight left,” Phoebe reminded them. “Maybe we’ll hear some good news soon.”

*   *   *

For a while, Delia thought everything was going to turn out all right, or at least some part of her did. She had been raised on fairy tales. The prince would kiss Sleeping Beauty and rouse her from her one-hundred-year nap; the woodcutter would hear Red Riding Hood’s cries and save her from the wolf.

But nobody had come to rescue Prentice.

“It’s sweltering out here, honey. Don’t you want to go back inside? They’ll call you if anything turns up.” Delia’s mother sat beside her on the porch swing, fanning them both with an old seed catalog.

“You go on, Mama, I’ll be okay.” Delia wanted to be there if anybody arrived with news, good or bad. Her eyes scanned the street—left, right, then left again. Prentice didn’t own a car, but she sometimes drove her aunt’s old blue Ford. Whenever Delia rode with her, Prentice beeped the horn twice as she pulled into the driveway, then turned around in back of the house and beeped twice more as she drew level with the porch. Delia closed her eyes and replayed the sound of tires on gravel, the playful toot of the horn, willing the ritual to happen.

She felt the warm touch of her mother’s hand on her arm and the swing jostled as Jo stood. “I’ll get us some lemonade,” her mother said, shutting the screen door quietly behind her.

People acted like Prentice was already dead, Delia thought. Even her mother whispered around her, and Josephine Carr wasn’t the whispering type.

Was the sun going to shine forever? It seemed like the day would never end. Late-afternoon shadows wrapped around the dogwood tree in the front yard and teased thirsty zinnias in the flower bed by the porch. It should be midnight by now, yet the sun was still blasting yellow heat over the town.

After leaving Bertie’s, Delia had spent over an hour at the police station, going over details with first one person and then another. Had Prentice said or done anything to lead her to believe she might be planning to go away? How many times had they asked her that question? How many times had she asked it of herself? And the answer was always the same:
No! No! No!

And her friend’s aunt Bertie! She had tried to console her, to give her a wispy fiber of hope to hang on to, even if it eluded her own grasp. If only she hadn’t taken so much time across the road at Grady’s! If only the train hadn’t made so much noise. If only she’d been more observant.

Delia had spent most of the afternoon on the phone, trying to track down
anybody
who might have seen or heard from Prentice, but it was as if she had disappeared down the rabbit hole like Alice did in Wonderland.

After she gave her information at the police station, Delia was asked to wait in a small, narrow room lined with mismatched chairs and smelling of stale cigarette butts and dirty ashtrays. It was sweltering in there and she was grateful when someone offered Cokes from the cooler. Thank goodness Charlie was with her. Delia had never felt so lonely or so desolate since her Ned left to be shipped overseas.

She heard Clay Jarrett’s voice outside in the corridor. “What’s happened to Prentice? Won’t anybody tell me? What’s wrong? Is she all right?”

A door closed down the hall and Delia couldn’t hear him anymore, but she did hear his father’s loud, angry words as he was apparently being ushered into another office. “Look, can’t you see how upset my son is over this? He loves that girl! My God, how do you think I feel? She was working for me. If anything’s happened to Prentice, I’ll find the bastard who did it. You have my word for that, but it sure as hell wasn’t Clay!”

Earlier, Chief Tinsley had talked with Delia privately about Prentice’s relationship with Clay and asked if it was true they had quarreled and weren’t seeing each other anymore. Delia had told him the truth. She liked Clay, considered him a friend, as did her husband, Ned. Why, he had been in their wedding! But if he had hurt Prentice, she would turn on him in a flash.

“About how long did the two of them date?” the chief asked.

“Over two years, I guess. Almost three.”

“And who was responsible for bringing this relationship to an end?”

He meant, of course, who had dumped who. Prentice would’ve smiled at his description.

“She was,” Delia told him.

“So Prentice broke off with Clay. Do you know why?”

Delia nodded. “She’s going away to school. Believes they should date others.”

“And her boyfriend didn’t agree with this?”

“No, I don’t think he did.”

Chief Tinsley stood and walked to the window, and Delia noticed a dark oval of sweat on the back of his shirt. “I want you to tell me the truth about this next question,” he said, turning to face her. “Think about it before you answer. As far as you know, has Clay ever become violent with your friend? Struck her? Threatened her in any way?”

“No,” Delia told him. She didn’t have to think about it. It was hard to believe Clay would ever hurt Prentice.

But it was beginning to look as if somebody had.

*   *   *

It was too hot to stay inside and Miss Dimple didn’t think she’d be able to sleep a wink anyway, nor did any of the others, so the three of them were sitting on Phoebe’s front porch later that night when Velma Anderson pulled into the driveway in her cherished Ford V-8.

“Still no word,” she announced without waiting for the inevitable question. “Doc Morrison gave Bertie something to help calm her, but I doubt if it will. Adam’s with her now and Evan just left. He’s been with her all afternoon.”

Dimple nodded. She liked the Presbyterian minister and thought if anyone would be able to bring comfort to Elberta Stackhouse, it would be Evan Mitchell.

“I’m glad Adam’s there,” Dimple added. “She needs a steadying influence right now, and he’s always seemed level-headed to me.”

Phoebe spoke up. “Well, he’s certainly been persistent! My goodness, Adam Treadway’s been after Bertie to marry him for years now, and it’s obvious he adores her. I don’t know what’s been holding her back.”

“I’m not sure Bertie has room for anyone but Prentice in her life right now,” Velma told them, then drew in her breath when she realized what she’d said.

“And doesn’t Adam live in Clifford?” Dimple asked, coming to her friend’s rescue. “That must be—what?—at least forty miles from here.”

“Yes, but they’re looking to replace the head of the English Department at the high school there,” Velma said, “and Bertie tells me they’ve been trying to talk her into coming for an interview. Adam owns a little bookstore in Clifford, you know.”

Dimple knew. The Novel Pastime. She had shopped there with her brother, Henry, earlier that summer and found the small store doing a thriving business. Widowed, and the father of two grown sons, Adam Treadway seemed content with his life as it was, but it was obvious he’d prefer to have Elberta in it.

Velma sighed as she sat in the wicker porch swing, and no one spoke for a while as they listened to the creaking of the swing, the sawing of July flies in a nearby oak. Soothing summer sounds. The grass had been cut that day and everything smelled green and new. Now and then a car stopped for the light at the intersection on Katherine Street, and except for a pale square of yellow from the living room window, the porch was steeped in a soft summer darkness. But there was nothing soft about this night.

“I wonder,” Phoebe said finally, “how Chloe Jarrett is going to take all this. The police are bound to believe Clay had something to do with this girl’s disappearance, and you know how she dotes on that boy.”

Dimple had rolled countless bandages with Chloe for the American Red Cross; the two had volunteered to head up the scrap drive, and served together on several PTA committees. Chloe Jarrett had more gumption than people gave her credit for, Dimple thought, and was on the point of saying so when Annie spoke up from her seat on the front steps.