Miss Dimple Disappears (21 page)

She had been working on the window for several days, first carefully removing the broken corner of the glass so that it could be reinserted without looking noticeably different from the rest of the window. The rusted grille had been made of stronger material and Miss Dimple had to wait until she knew he had left before pounding one of the slender metal bars with an empty Coca-Cola bottle—one of several stored in a wooden case in an unused corner of the basement room—until the weathered metal finally bent and broke. She had never really cared for soft drinks before. The carbonation brought a most uncomfortable feeling of effervescence—as if one might explode—but she was beginning to change her mind about the drink’s usefulness.

The idea had come to her as she was rinsing her underwear in the bathroom sink, and she remembered that a wire clothes hanger, with one end bent to the approximate circumference of a fifty-cent piece, would make an acceptable bubble wand. Now, with a drinking cup frothing with suds, she climbed onto the table by the window and stood on a chair to put it to the test. The vehicle had pulled into the driveway on the other side of the house. Because of the loud, chugging noise, she thought it was probably an older car or maybe a truck. Possibly a delivery van of some sort, or the rural carrier bringing a package. Miss Dimple had heard it on several occasions, and this time she was ready.

It took only a second to remove the small wedge of glass from the window, and setting it carefully aside, Miss Dimple dipped her improvised wand in the suds, stood on her tiptoes, and sent bubbles the size of walnuts into the cold morning air. Minutes passed before the car door slammed and the rattling engine started up again.
Oh, please look this way! Just once … please, please look this way!
She had tried yelling, hollering at the top of her voice, but she was too far away for anyone to hear her.

Miss Dimple sent another flight of the delicate orbs skyward. Did anyone see them? All she could do now was hope.

*   *   *

Please, God, don’t let the lights come back on!
Smothered by layers of jackets that smelled strongly of mothballs, Charlie backed into the closet until there was nowhere left to go. The door opened and she heard him fumbling in the darkness for a hanger. Metal hangers were in short supply now and people who ran the laundry and dry cleaners offered a penny for every one that came in. Most people, including Elwin, she noticed, had started draping two or three garments together.

Wouldn’t you know Elwin would have to hang up his coat properly, Charlie thought. Anybody else would’ve just thrown it on the bed, but apparently the man was satisfied with his efforts and at last closed the door firmly behind him. Still Charlie didn’t move.

“Are you in there?” Annie asked a few minutes later in a voice so low Charlie could barely hear her. Only then did she shove aside the clothing and venture from her hiding place.

“I thought I was going to suffocate!” Charlie gasped, taking a deep breath. “And I was terrified that he would see you. Where in the world did you hide?”

“Under the bed, and there was a metal footlocker or something under there. I think I have a knot on my head,” Annie complained as they made their way to the door. “And if you get any more big ideas, Charlie Carr, you can count me out!”

“All this trouble and we didn’t learn a thing,” Charlie grumbled under her breath. “It wasn’t even worth the effort.”

“That’s what you think,” Annie said as they stepped quietly into the dark hallway and shut the door behind them.

“What do you mean?”

“Annie, is that you?” Miss Phoebe called from the kitchen. “I found some molasses cookies Odessa had hidden away and we’re in here having an air-raid party.”

“Sounds like ‘a dish fit for the gods.’ We were getting lonely upstairs,” Annie said, making her way across the hall.

“I’ll tell you later,” she whispered to Charlie.

“I do hope I haven’t left my little bedside lamp on upstairs,” Lily said when they joined the others. “You didn’t notice any light coming from my room, did you?”

Annie assured her that they hadn’t. “And Cornelia’s still up there. I’m sure she’d notice it.”

“Jesse Dean would’ve been pounding on the door by now if you had,” Phoebe told her. “If Elderberry gets bombed at night it won’t be because Jesse Dean didn’t do his job.”

“Oh, I wish you hadn’t said that!” Lily shivered. “Now I probably won’t sleep a wink all night.”

“Well, I, for one, plan to go to bed early,” Velma said. “Those children are going to be wild for the next three days with Thanksgiving coming up this week.”

“I’m glad you mentioned that,” Annie said. “I still haven’t bought my contribution to the basket for Paschall Kiker. Does anybody have an idea what he might need?”

“I asked Ollie,” Charlie said, “but he wasn’t much help. I think he’s doing most of the cooking now, and I don’t see how in the world he finds the time. I just brought a bag of oranges and some sweet potatoes. Anybody can bake a potato.”

“Poor Paschall,” Phoebe quipped. “God help him!”

It had been Geneva’s idea for the faculty to contribute to a Thanksgiving basket for the ailing farmer since Ollie mentioned that he didn’t get about much anymore and spent a good bit of time in bed.

“Ollie said a woman who lives down the road comes in to see about him a few times a week and will fix him something to eat if Ollie can’t get there in the middle of the day, but he usually manages to get back to check on him,” Lily told them. “The man’s conscientious, I’ll have to hand it to him. That school hardly looks the same since Christmas left, bless his heart. Bessie Jenkins better grab him while she can.”

“Well, Annie, I suppose you and Alice Brady will be rehearsing the children for some kind of Christmas program as soon as Thanksgiving’s behind us,” Phoebe said, shoving the cookie platter across the table to Elwin. “You all might as well eat these up now. Odessa’s going to find out we’ve been into them as soon as she comes in tomorrow.”

“I think Alice has something in mind, and of course I’m always glad to help, but I don’t expect a big production,” Annie said. “There won’t be much time to rehearse before we get out for Christmas; I hate to eat the last cookie …”

Charlie laughed. “No, you don’t!”

She knew her friend would be miserable all week if she wasn’t allowed to help with the school’s Christmas show, and with Annie’s magic touch, it was sure to be entertaining.

“I hope you saved your icicles from last year’s tree,” she said to Phoebe. “Mama said they told her at the five-and-ten they wouldn’t be getting any because of the war.”

“You won’t be seeing anything else with metal in it, either,” Velma said. “My nephew has his heart set on a bicycle but I’m afraid he’s going to have to wait a while for that.”

And he wouldn’t be by himself, Charlie thought. She had tried to soft pedal the inevitable when her third graders discussed their wish lists. Most of the children in her class believed in Santa Claus and the few who didn’t had been threatened with dire consequences if they ruined another child’s sugarplum dreams. Even though Santa and his elves made the toys at the North Pole, she’d explained, they had to order some of their materials from distant places. Everyone has to sacrifice for the war effort, Charlie told them—even Santa. After all, she assured them, he’s on our side.

“This air-raid drill seems to be going on longer than usual, don’t you think?” Lily’s voice rose to a crescendo. “I do hope we’re not in any kind of trouble.”

As if by signal, the siren sounded alerting everyone the drill was over and Charlie had to bite her tongue to keep from congratulating Lily Moss on being allowed to live another day. All this talk of Christmas made her sad. She wondered if Fain had received the package they had sent weeks before, and where he was sleeping tonight.

The Christmas when Fain had been twelve and she, nine, her brother had received a new red bike for Christmas and Charlie, a blue one. The two of them had tired of riding in town and at Charlie’s suggestion, turned onto a dirt road leading into the country. They were gone so long their parents had driven out looking for them and they were not allowed to ride their new bikes or to eat any of their stocking candy for the rest of the week.

Charlie had told her mother it was all her brother’s fault when it had really been hers. Fain had gone along with her when she refused to turn back because he didn’t want her riding alone.

If only she could take it back!

When Charlie got home that night she wrote a six-page letter to Fain and told him she was sorry. She also wrote to Hugh and to a couple of the men who gave her their addresses at the town’s Thanksgiving party for the troops, and had every intention of writing more but when the lines began to blur from lack of sleep, she had to call it a night.

It didn’t occur to her until she finally crawled into bed that Annie never told her what she’d found in Elwin Vickery’s room.

*   *   *

Bessie Jenkins did a turn around the Carrs’ sitting room and posed in front of the fireplace. “Well, what do you think?” she asked.

“I think it’s lovely,” Jo said, putting aside her notes on Katie Ann Gallman’s sixteenth birthday party. “Gabardine, isn’t it?” She felt the material between her fingers. “And such a becoming color blue. Where in the world did you find it?”

Their neighbor smiled. “Promise you won’t tell? I cut it down from an old suit of Ella’s. It’s been hanging in the closet for ages so I’m hoping she’s forgotten about it.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Jo assured her. Bessie’s younger sister had been married and gone now for at least fifteen years. “You’re getting to be a regular clothes horse. Is this for some special occasion?”

“I’m having Ollie over for Thanksgiving dinner, and I wanted to look especially nice.” Bessie smoothed the collar of her jacket.

Charlie, who had been in the kitchen grinding cranberries for a Thanksgiving salad, overheard her as she entered the room. “What about Paschall Kiker?” she asked. “Ollie said he wasn’t doing well, so some of the teachers are getting a basket together.”

“Oh, he’ll have his dinner in the middle of the day, and I think Ollie’s asked Aileen Spragg to come and stay with him for a while. She lives just down the road.” Bessie laced her fingers together and flushed. “I’m thinking—well, I’ve been seeing Ollie for a good long time now and I have a feeling something’s about to change. I want everything to be just right when he comes Thursday, and I wondered if you’d mind if I borrowed your silver candlesticks. They’d look perfect on my table with my grandmother’s crocheted cloth, and I promise to take good care of them.”

“Well, of course you can!” Laying her notepad aside, Jo Carr got up from her chair and wrapped her arms about her neighbor. “I’ll even polish them for you, but I’m sure the shine of the candles won’t be able to compete with the light in your eyes.”

*   *   *

“I didn’t know we were Irish,” Charlie said after their neighbor left.

“Maybe a little. Your great-grandmother O’Neal on my mother’s side …” She frowned. “What makes you mention that?”

“Because you’re full of blarney! All that bit about the light in Bessie’s eyes. Where’d that come from?”

“I do write for the society page,” Jo reminded her. “I’ll have you know I’ve used every adjective in the book, and probably most of the adverbs, but I do want things to go well for our Bessie. She’s always been a good friend and a good neighbor, and we all could use a little flattery from time to time.”

“But Ollie!” Charlie made a face. “I mean, I like him okay and he does a great job at school, but I can’t see the attraction.”

“The attraction is that Bessie’s almost fifty and has never had many beaus. She feels comfortable with Ollie, and apparently he, with her. I imagine she’s lonely, Charlie.”

Charlie caught the note of sadness in her mother’s voice and stooped to give her a kiss. Once in a while she forgot there were times her mother was lonely, too. She was relieved when Jo began to smile. “I remember when Ollie’s father, Reece, used to work for the post office,” she said, “and we were on his route. It took him forever to cover it and you never knew whose mail you were going to get. People on our street had to run back and forth to exchange letters. It got to be kind of a joke.” She laughed. “Of course there was this one neighbor—Esther Tuttle—dead and gone now … you wouldn’t remember her, but I hated for her to get our mail.”

“Why was that?” Charlie asked.

“Because you knew she always read it first.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

It would be two weeks tomorrow! Where in the hell was she? Henry Kilpatrick fumbled for his carpet slippers in the dark and reached for his robe on the back of the chair. There was no use trying to sleep.

His wife raised her head halfway from the pillow. “What is it, Henry? It’s pitch black dark … you’re not getting up already?”

“I just want a drink of water. Go on back to sleep, Hazel.” She had no idea why he hadn’t been able to sleep more than a few hours since Dimple disappeared—no idea at all. Hardly anyone did. He had told his wife and her sister, Imogene, who lived with them, that Dimple had suffered a nervous breakdown and was being treated in a private sanitarium. Naturally, he explained, she didn’t want the cause of her illness made known. Not that Hazel actually gave a hoot. No love lost there.

The stalwart Dimple Kilpatrick giving in to a nervous breakdown! The idea almost made him laugh. Henry made his way into his study, poured himself a brandy, and stood at the window looking out at the empty street. Those bastards better not have hurt her! If he had his way, he’d tear out of here this very minute and knock down doors to find her, but his hands were tied. As one of a select group of engineers working to improve the design of an advanced bomber, the B-29 Superfortress, he knew he was to blame for his sister’s abduction and it nearly tore him in two. Other than a few officials in the Office of Strategic Services, no one knew he had been approached to turn over the plans for the plane in exchange for his sister’s safe return.