Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble (6 page)

“Why do you keep talking about things like that?” she asked, getting to her feet. “Prentice is missing, probably dead, and all you can talk about are things that don’t matter!
Where is she
?
What’s happened to her?”
And suddenly, she began to cry. She hadn’t meant to cry. It just happened, and she couldn’t do a thing to stop it. “People are dying every day—young people just like Prentice—and they aren’t ever coming back!”

Phoebe made a move to go to her, but Dimple stayed her with a hand and quietly led the younger woman inside. Annie’s pilot brother, Joel, who had barely escaped being shot down during the D-day invasion in June, continued to risk his life on subsequent missions, and the last she’d heard from her fiancé, Frazier Duncan, he was fighting somewhere in France.

Years ago, Dimple had found herself in a similar situation when her sweetheart fought the Spaniards and yellow fever with Teddy Roosevelt during the Spanish American War. Unfortunately, yellow fever won. His face was only a memory now, but her heart never forgot, and it ached for Annie and all the others who lived in fear of that dreaded telegram from the War Department.

But first they must get through this never-ending night. It was never too hot or too late, Dimple believed, for her favorite remedy of ginger mint tea, and later in the darkened kitchen, the two women sipped quietly and waited for a brighter tomorrow.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

Clay knew his mother was hurting. She’d barely picked at her supper. It was too hot to eat, she’d said. They left her there in the dusk on the screened porch with her glass of tea and her radio. She liked to listen to soap operas—
Young Widow Brown
and
One Man’s Family,
soppy as lukewarm oatmeal, and old-time music so slow, he wanted to build a fire under it.

“Chloe? We’ll be back in a little while,” his dad said when they left. And she didn’t ask where they were going. Clay had a pretty strong hunch she knew.

His mama didn’t like Elberta Stackhouse, and Clay couldn’t understand why. He’d gotten along fine in her class in high school, never made less than a B, but every time that woman’s name came up, his mother acted real funny. It had something to do with his dad, he thought. His sister told him once she’d heard the two of them had dated when they were younger, but then sometimes Loretta got carried away with romantic notions. And even if it were true, if there
had
been something between them, his mom had won out in the end. So what was her problem?

They drove in silence with the window down while air that must have been close to a hundred degrees blasted in their faces. “I don’t know why you want to go there,” Clay said. “She isn’t going to want to see us, Dad—especially me. We’ll only be wasting our time.”

His father glanced at him but didn’t speak as they turned onto Court Street. The stores had closed for the day and the streets were deserted. Most of Elderberry’s men had gone to war—at least those who weren’t too young or too old to fight. Everyone but him, Clay thought.
Why hadn’t he enlisted sooner
? He had been too young when the war started; then his dad needed help on the farm, for at least a few months longer, he’d said, and of course his mother had backed him up. Well, the few months had turned into more than a year, and still his number hadn’t been called. He should be over there like the sailor with the duffel bag on the poster in Lewellyn’s Drug Store window, who warned,
If You Tell Where He’s Going … He May Never Get There!
When this mess was finally cleared up, Clay Jarrett would be going, too.

On the courthouse lawn, a recruiting sign for the U.S. Army Air Force featured an airman holding a large bomb against a backdrop of clouds and planes.
O’er the Ramparts We Watch,
it reminded everyone. Being in the service would give him a chance to travel, Clay thought, to get as far from the farm as possible. Why, he’d never even seen the ocean! Then, when the war was over, he’d come back home to Elderberry. Maybe.

Except for the fountain splashing in the park by the town library and a mutt lifting its leg on a geranium-filled planter in front of the Total Perfection Beauty Salon, Elderberry seemed asleep. Clay wondered if he’d ever sleep again.

“Maybe you’d better tell us what you know,” Clay’s father said at last.

“What do you mean?”

“Son, if Prentice doesn’t turn up, you could be in big trouble, and don’t pretend you don’t know it. Seems you’ve done gone and stepped in a pile of shit. You think I can’t tell you’re holding something back?”

Was his own dad accusing him of doing something to Prentice?
Clay felt like he’d swallowed fire; he struggled to find his breath. “You don’t think I had anything to do with Prentice disappearing, do you? Dad, I thought you knew me better than that!”

“I know
you didn’t have anything to do with it, but the police don’t. I heard how Bobby Tinsley was questioning you this afternoon. Seems everybody knows the two of you broke up after some kind of quarrel, and now you’re the likely suspect. Son, if you’ve got the sense of a gnat—and I kinda believe you have—you’ll use anything you know to help yourself.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Clay muttered.

“I
mean
what if something … well …
bad
has happened to Prentice? She’s been missing since this morning and I’m afraid it doesn’t look good. The longer they concentrate on you, the longer it’ll take to find out who’s really responsible. Is that what you want? Do you think she would?”

Clay felt those treacherous tears welling up in him again. Damned if he knew what Prentice would want.

“Well, do you?” his father demanded.

Silently, Clay shook his head. But then everybody in town would know Prentice had been screwing around with somebody else.

“Elberta, we came to offer our help.” Knox Jarrett spoke softly through the screen door. Bertie, on the other side, showed no signs of opening it.

“I think you’ve done enough,” she said. Her eyes were red and swollen and her face splotched from crying. She didn’t even look like the same woman who had stood in front of Clay’s high school English class and lectured them on the evils of attempting to compare the word
unique
to any other word; the woman who’d served them cookies and hot chocolate when he brought Prentice home from a movie.

It hurt him that she’d feel that way, but he knew she was hurting, too. Clay thought he might choke on the tears in his throat. “Miss Bertie, I wish I knew where Prentice was. If I did, I’d tell you, but I didn’t have anything to do with this. Please believe me! I love Prentice! You must know that by now.”
And, oh damn! Those blasted tears again!

How long were the three of them going to stand there staring silently at one another? Clay felt his father’s hand on his shoulder and knew it was a signal to leave. He hadn’t wanted to come here, but now he didn’t want to go, not with all this hurt and pain straining through the screen door from both sides.

His father spoke again. “Elberta, I’ll do everything I can to help find Prentice. I promise you that.”

The two of them had turned to go, when Clay heard the hook dangle free on the door and Bertie stood aside to let them in. She walked, Clay thought, as though her shoes pinched as she led them into the familiar living room with the radio on the small side table by the squat lumpy club chair and a sofa slipcovered in a rose-flowered print that Prentice always said reminded her of squashed peaches. Clay headed for the armchair, leaving the sofa to the other two, who sat as far apart as they could. A plate of cookies, probably brought by a friend, sat on the coffee table in front of them, but nobody took one, nor were they offered. Why was it that people brought food whenever something bad happened? When his grandma Gladys had died, he hadn’t been able to eat a thing.

“Clay?” Bertie leaned forward. “I know you cared for Prentice. I don’t want to believe you would do anything to hurt her, but it’s been hours now, and we’ve heard nothing. I’m about to go crazy thinking about all the things that could be happening to her. I’m so afraid … I’m afraid I’ll never see her again.”

Twisting a handkerchief into a rope, she looked at him with eyes that mirrored his own hurt. “If you can think of any reason for this to happen, or
anyone
who might have had something to do with this,
please
tell me now.”

He knew his dad was waiting for him to tell what he knew, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell Prentice’s aunt what she’d told him—not all of it anyway. “She said she was seeing somebody else,” he admitted. “That’s why we broke up. Prentice was—is—going away to college and she wants to see other people.”

“But who?” Bertie stood and towered over him. “Who, Clay? Didn’t she tell you who?”

He shook his head. “I wish she had. I wish I’d asked, but to tell you the truth, right then I didn’t want to know.” If he did know, Clay thought, he would probably have killed him.

*   *   *

Rose petals. He’d heard them talking about rose petals, although they hadn’t meant for him to hear. In the hallway outside the room where he sat, people talked in low, mumbling voices, their words muffled, like they were standing in a coat-jammed closet where consonants burrowed into pockets, vowels disappeared through a crack in the door.

When they came for him that morning, he’d been eating breakfast with his parents: eggs and grits and some of his mama’s buttermilk biscuits with sourwood honey. Now it seemed Clay Jarrett had been inside this room since he was born. Ages ago, a gruff man had talked to him, then Chief Tinsley again, not so gruff, but his anger was barely concealed. Both had asked questions about Prentice. Some of them, he couldn’t answer; some, he just flat out wouldn’t. For a long time, he’d been sitting alone, sagging forward in the cane-bottomed chair, or pacing the length of the room—seven steps if he didn’t take very large ones. The one window looked down on a mulberry tree that dropped dark, squishy berries onto the rusting tin roof of Red Campbell’s Shoe Repair next door.

Something had happened to Prentice and nobody would tell him what it was. Whatever it was, it was obvious they thought he had something to do with it.
And, oh, God, he didn’t want to know!
But how could they think he could do anything to hurt Prentice? Okay, so he’d been madder than hell when she’d told him what she’d done, but even then he had no desire to hurt her. Not physically. But a cold, dark feeling had come over him and for the longest time he simply couldn’t function. Clay stood at the dirt-streaked window and watched a squirrel leap from one branch to another. Sometimes he couldn’t even remember how he’d made it through the last couple of weeks.

He jumped at a touch on his shoulder and a tall graying man in a navy blue suit smiled slightly and stuck out his hand. He looked like he’d stepped right out of an advertisement for Parks Chambers, that store in Atlanta that sold menswear.

“Clay? Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you. Curtis Tisdale. Your parents have asked me to represent you.”

“Represent me for what?” Clay slung the man’s hand away from him. This guy wasn’t from around here. He’d never seen him before. “Look, will you please tell me what’s going on?”

With one sweeping motion, the man drew two of the chairs at right angles to each other. “Sit down please, Clay. There are some things we need to talk about.” His voice seemed gentle, almost fatherly. “Can I get you anything? Something to drink?”

Numbly, Clay shook his head. Still standing, he grasped the back of the chair. “It’s Prentice. She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Son, I’m so sorry.…”

Clay turned away, but there was nowhere to go. His plastic face was melting all the way down to his stomach and it hurt. He didn’t know this man, but when Curtis Tisdale offered an arm, Clay took it, and for the next few minutes he cried himself empty against the stranger’s chest.

*   *   *

“We should’ve let him enlist, or go away to college—
something.”
Chloe Jarrett said.

“He didn’t want to go away.” Knox looked at her across the small, shaky table in the back of Lewellyn’s Drug Store, a block from the police station where Clay was being questioned. Coffee sloshed on the tabletop as he lifted the mug to his lips. “Clay belongs here. When his number comes up in the draft, he’ll go, of course, but he knows where his future lies.”

“But we didn’t give him a choice.”

“Didn’t want a choice. Seemed satisfied to me. Spoiled is all. Never had to do without.”

The words were meant for her, like it was all her fault. “What’s that supposed to mean? Clay works hard, always has. And if I remember correctly, you went to college, Knox. And just when did you have to do without?”

A bell jingled as the front door opened, and Chloe glanced up in time to see Dimple Kilpatrick walking purposefully toward them. If it had been anyone else, she would have wanted to hide behind the lotion display, but Miss Dimple had a calmness about her that seemed to affect everyone around her. “I’m so glad I found you here,” she told them. “I know this is a most difficult time for all of you, and I want you to know I’ll do anything I can to help.”

Knox jumped to his feet and offered a chair. He’d always admired Miss Dimple and was truly fond of her, even though a few years back she’d made him clean the blackboards after school for throwing spitballs at Thelma Sue Honeycutt. But she waved the chair aside. “Thank you, no. I can see you have things to discuss, but I’m afraid we’re facing some dreadful times ahead, and if you will, I’d like you to tell Clay I have great confidence in him.” Miss Dimple reached across the table and took Chloe’s hand. “We’ll all get through this together,” she said.