Miss Dimple Suspects (16 page)

“I’m grabbing my coat! Wait for you at the corner.”

*   *   *

Charlie was surprised when she pulled up at the corner a few minutes later to find Annie accompanied by her student and neighbor, Willie Elrod.

“Do you mind if Willie comes, too?” Annie asked, slipping in beside her. “He wants to see if he can find some mistletoe. And he’s had a major disappointment,” she whispered aside to her. “He’s threatening to resign from the Lone Ranger Club.”

“I thought you liked the Lone Ranger,” Charlie said as Annie made room for him beside her. “What happened?”

“It took forever but I finally got my secret code in the mail yesterday,” Willie said, disgusted. “You have to listen to the radio show to get the message and I thought it was going to be something really important—something I could do to help win the war.”

“Well, what was it?” Charlie asked. “What did it say?”

Willie Elrod stuck out his lip. “It said, ‘Buy delicious, nutritious Merita Bread!’”

Charlie turned away so he wouldn’t see her smile. “Well then, I think we can find something more exciting to do than that. Let’s go hunt some mistletoe.”

“What are you going to do with all that mistletoe, Willie?” Annie asked him.

“I can sell it downtown tomorrow,” Willie said. “I ain’t got any money for presents and I want to get Mama something nice.”

“Haven’t!”
Charlie and Annie said together.

“How do you plan to get that mistletoe down?” Charlie asked as they drove the few miles into the country. “You certainly aren’t going to shoot it.”

“Well, I could if I had a gun, but Mama won’t let me. Shoot, I reckon I could knock an acorn off a fencepost at fifty yards!” Willie boasted.

“Fifty?”
Annie narrowed her eyes.

“Well, okay. Twenty-five then. But I can poke some down with a long stick or even shinny up a tree if I have to.”

They parked on the dirt road beside the Curtises’ pasture, ducked under a fence, and walked through a herd of grazing Hereford cattle, who ignored them in favor of the next mouthful of grass. Harriet Curtis hadn’t mentioned anything about a bull, and Charlie hoped they wouldn’t meet one. The meadow was dotted with cow pies as well as small, fluffy cedars, and Charlie was glad she’d thought to wear her old rubber boots. Thank goodness it didn’t take long to find three cedars just the right shape and size that met with their approval because it was getting darker by the minute. Charlie had brought rope, and after shoving one tree in the backseat and one in the trunk, the three managed with much difficulty to tie the third to the roof of the car.

“It’s getting late,” Charlie said, glancing at the sky. “You’d better hurry, Willie, if you want to find any mistletoe.”

“And cold!” Annie shivered. “Come on! Let’s see if we can find some in the woods.”

“Mrs. Curtis said that property belongs to Isaac Ingram,” Charlie pointed out, “but I don’t guess he’d mind if we took some mistletoe.”

“I don’t see any
No trespassing!
signs so it must be okay,” Annie said, holding up barbed wire for the others to step under.

Charlie thought of Miss Dimple and little Peggy Ashcroft as they tramped through the winter woods. Today the sun hadn’t yet gone down and it was already cold and beginning to be difficult to see what was ahead. She could only imagine how the two of them must have felt when they became lost not very far from here with night quickly descending.

“I haven’t seen any mistletoe yet!” Annie called, venturing ahead with Willie. “Usually it seems to be on every tree.”

Charlie looked about her, hoping to find the telltale cluster of the green parasite in an otherwise winter bare tree. She hoped Willie would be able to find some to sell, but if they stayed any longer it was going to be too dark to see.

“I’m afraid your mother’s going to be worried if we don’t—” she began but was interrupted by the little boy’s shouting.

“I see some! It’s in that big oak—right up ahead, and I think I can reach it!” Willie began to run, and the others followed closely behind him.

When he couldn’t dislodge the mistletoe with a long stick, Willie scampered up the tree squirrel-like while the two women waited below, gathering it as it fell. Charlie had already decided that she would be Willie’s first customer just in case Will could get a break from advanced flight training and somehow manage to make it to Elderberry. She smiled at the thought.
Of course they wouldn’t need mistletoe!
Annie’s fiancé, Frazier Duncan, had shipped out with his company a few weeks before and she wasn’t even sure where he was.

“All right, Willie, that’s enough!” Annie called as the pile grew. “You’ll be rich enough to buy out the store if you sell all this!”

“Come on down now!” Charlie shouted, joining in. “Be careful—watch your step.”

“I’m coming.” Willie reluctantly began his descent but hesitated halfway down the tree.

“Come on, Willie! It’s time to go! What are you waiting for?” Annie called.

“Miss Annie, there’s … somebody down there.…” The child spoke haltingly.

“What do you mean?” Annie strained to look about. “Where?”

“Over there—it looks like a man, and he’s lying in the creek!” Willie Elrod came down from the tree swinging like Tarzan from limb to limb and grabbed each of his teachers by the hand. “Oh, lordy! We gotta get outa here! It looks like he’s dead!”

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

“Willie Elrod, that’s not funny!” Annie leaned down to speak to him face-to-face, although as short as she was, she didn’t have far to lean.

But Charlie could see by the child’s expression he was genuinely frightened and tightened her grip on his hand. “Where is he, Willie? Show us.”

“Over there—in the creek.” Willie pointed but still hung back.

“He might be hurt,” Annie said, moving closer. “We have to make sure.”

“Be careful!” Charlie warned, following her. “Willie, you stay right there!”

The man lay facedown with his head and shoulders submerged in the muddy waters of a shallow creek, and Charlie knew as soon as she saw him, he was beyond help.

Annie knelt beside him and pulled at the wet, rough cloth of his jacket. “Oh! I can’t…” Turning her face away, she tugged once more and with Charlie’s help, managed to drag the inert body from the water. The man’s dark hair was plastered to his head with mud and water and Charlie hesitated before touching his face, but what if there was a chance he might still be breathing?

He wasn’t. The dead man’s face was cold and blue, and mud and debris from the creek had become lodged in his nose and mouth. His eyes were open and covered in a bluish film, but even with the distortions of death, Charlie recognized Mae Martha’s handyman, Bill Pitts.

“Oh, please, Miss Annie, let’s go!” Willie called. “I done got the heebie-jeebies! They’s haints around here—I just know it! Everybody knows ole’ Raw Head and Bloody Bones hangs around water, and he’s probably got his eye on us next. Come on, Miss Charlie! It’s almost dark.”

“Don’t pull that on me, Willie Elrod! You know that’s not true.” Charlie was familiar with the story of the frightening specter who carried off children who misbehaved, and while she knew it was only a folktale meant as a warning, she didn’t like the way darkness was closing around them, either. Bill’s face had abrasions from the bottom of the creek bed, where the water was only a foot or so deep. What or
who
had kept him from standing?

Annie was probably thinking the same thing. Without speaking, she called Charlie’s attention to a half-empty bottle of whiskey that had been tossed to the side under a nearby tree. Had Bill had too much to drink and then passed out while washing his face in the creek? Surely he hadn’t tried to drink water from the same source the Curtises’ cattle waded in, drank from, and sometimes even defecated in upstream. And even if he had lost consciousness momentarily, the cold water and frantic need for air would have brought him around. Had something or someone held him down?

Charlie felt a tug at her back. “Miss Charlie? I don’t like this!”

“I don’t either, Willie.” Putting an arm around him, she led him away. “We’re leaving right now, but we had first to find out if there was anything we could do to help. I think the poor man must have had a heart attack and fallen into the water.”

Oh, please make it so!
she thought, but somehow, Charlie felt there was more to it than that. The back of Bill’s jacket was streaked with mud although it hadn’t been underwater, and a dead tree limb lay in the damp soil nearby.

“Here, Willie, let’s gather up your mistletoe and head for the car,” Charlie said in an effort to distract him and calm his fears. “We’ll tell the sheriff as soon as we get home, and I’m sure he’ll be able to find out what happened. Don’t forget to save me a sprig of that mistletoe, now. I’ll bet my mother will want some to hang in the living room.”

Willie Elrod flushed and giggled. “Aw, Miss Charlie, I know good and well it ain’t your mama who wants that mistletoe.”

Charlie didn’t even correct him.

“We’ll need to stop by the sheriff’s office and report this before we do anything else,” Annie said as the three of them crammed into the car where the scent of cedar was almost overpowering.

Charlie admitted her friend was right although she disliked dragging Willie into another murder investigation—if it did turn out to be murder. He had been the first to notice the man lying in the creek, however. She sighed. They must be cursed or something. Why was it they always seemed to stumble into some kind of baffling foul play?

*   *   *

Sheriff Holland shook his head. “Don’t tell me you all have come upon another crime!” He meant it as a joke, but his smile faded when he realized they were serious. Quickly he closed his office door and gestured for them to sit down. “Well, what is it this time?”

Charlie didn’t want to sit, and neither did the others, but she held to the back of the straight chair as she told him about finding Bill Pitts. “It looks like he might have had a heart attack, and I believe he’s been dead for several hours at least.”

The sheriff glanced at the clock. “He isn’t going anywhere, I reckon, but I’d better notify Doc and get on out there, and one of you will need to come along. As dark as it is, it’ll be hard enough to see where we’re going.”

“I’ll come,” Charlie said. “But first let me take the others home. It’s so late I’m afraid Willie’s mother will be worried.”

Sheriff Holland reached for the phone. “We can remedy that,” he said, and put in a call to Emma Elrod. As soon as he had taken a brief statement from all of them, Charlie delivered her two passengers and one of the trees, which Annie, with Willie’s help, wrenched from the backseat.

Minutes later, parking the mud-splashed Studebaker in her driveway, she dashed in to tell her family of the latest development. “Ask Lottie to give you a hand with the trees!” she yelled to Delia just as the sheriff pulled in behind her.

Charlie was glad she had dressed warmly since Sheriff Holland’s car was as frigid as an icebox, and even in boots her feet were numb from the cold as they tramped over the now familiar pasture and climbed through the barbed-wire fence to the wooded section belonging to Isaac Ingram.

Doc Morrison had arrived at the same time they did and he and Peewee Cochran, the sheriff’s deputy of sorts, followed along behind while Charlie and Sheriff Holland led the way. Another deputy remained behind to wait for Harvey Thompson and his hearse. Flashlights did little to illuminate the woods that had been dark even in daytime, and Charlie hoped she could remember the way they had come. Everything looked different at night.

Catching herself after stumbling over a root, Charlie stood still and cast the beam of her light about. “Are you all right?” Turning, the sheriff took her arm, but Charlie put out a hand to silence him. Dry leaves rustled somewhere just ahead of them.
Someone or something had moved in the underbrush—and it wasn’t Bill Pitts!

Shining his light ahead, the sheriff stepped in front of her. “Is anyone there?”

In the silence that followed Charlie could hear the sluggish sound of icy water forcing its way through stones in the creek and knew they were almost there.

“Probably a possum,” Peewee muttered. “Coon, maybe.”

Charlie hoped he was right. Both were nocturnal animals common to the area. Her father used to joke that possums were suicidal, throwing themselves under vehicles, as you saw so many flattened on the road.

“There it is! There’s the tree,” Charlie called out a few minutes later as the large oak where Willie had harvested mistletoe came into view. “He’s there by the creek just a little farther on.”

“Where? I don’t see anything here,” the sheriff said, pushing forward.

“There! On the creek bank!” How could he miss anything as large as a man? Charlie was tired, cold, and hungry. Did she have to take him by the hand and lead the way?

“Right over there!” she directed, plunging through winter-bare bushes that snagged at her clothing and clawed at her hair. But the body of Bill Pitts was not where they had left him.

Peewee chuckled. “Are you sure he was dead, ma’am?”

Charlie chose to ignore that. This had to be the right place. She looked closer.
Here. It was right here.
“This is where Annie and I pulled him out of the water. After we were sure he was dead, we didn’t move him any farther than this.”

Peewee grinned and shook his head but Doc Morrison focused his light on the muddy bank. “Look! I can see where somebody has been dragged along here, but where is he?”

Sheriff Holland stepped to the side and swung his light in a circle. “The last I heard, dead men don’t get up and walk, so what’s he doing here?”

Charlie looked where he was pointing, and there, propped against a tree with the liquor bottle in his lap, sat the late Bill Pitts looking every bit as dead as he had before.

Doc Morrison knelt beside him. “Hard to say how long he’s been dead in this cold weather but I should be able to tell more tomorrow.”