Miss Dimple Disappears (7 page)

“Who—” Charlie glanced behind her to see Hugh’s mother, Emmaline Brumlow, thumbing through the greeting cards at the front of the store.

“I said,
don’t look!
”

Too late. Emmaline had noticed them. “Charlie. Annie.” She nodded in their direction, and Charlie thought she smiled, but it was hard to be sure.

Hugh’s family owned Brumlows’ Dry Goods, a small store that sold everything from shoes to hats, and his mother ruled the business and the family with a tight fist and a shrewd eye, and had, even before his father died when Hugh was twelve. At her mother’s insistence, Hugh’s sister Arden, who had graduated from high school with Charlie, left college early to help her mother manage the store.

“I wonder if she knows you’re going out with Hugh tonight,” Annie said, responding to the woman’s greeting with a wave of her fingers.

Charlie didn’t answer. She was trying hard to like Emmaline Brumlow even a little bit, but it was a difficult challenge. She couldn’t help feeling sorry for Arden. Her mother had put her foot down when Arden wanted to marry Barrett Gordon before he left for the navy. She wanted to spare her daughter the heartbreak if anything happened to Barrett, she said, but everyone knew she was just too cheap to hire somebody to run the register if Arden left to be near her husband.

The music of Glenn Miller’s “String of Pearls” bounced from a radio somewhere in the back and Annie’s fingers danced in rhythm along the tabletop. “Have you thought about what it would be like to have
her
for a mother-in-law?”

“Huh!” Charlie said and concentrated on fishing the ice from the bottom of her glass. She’d first noticed Hugh Brumlow when he sold her a pair of fire-engine-red sandals when she was sixteen. He was working in the store during a summer break from college and Charlie had saved her money for the shoes from a part-time job helping out at the library.

Now that all seemed very long ago. Hugh still took care of orders and shipping and kept the shelves stocked with fabric and clothing—at least when he could get them—but with the current shortages and rationing, none of the stores had anything like their prewar inventories. And the red sandals had rubbed painful blisters on her feet. Now, even if Hugh did propose tonight, Charlie wasn’t sure what her answer would be.

*   *   *

The two parted a few minutes later as Annie wanted to get a letter off to her brother, Joel. Annie corresponded with him faithfully as she did with Will and several others who were serving with the armed forces. Charlie wrote every week to Fain and kept up a steady correspondence with some of her high school classmates as well, plus a few of the men she had dated in college. She was particularly concerned about a friend of her brother’s, who, in August, had landed with the marines on Guadalcanal. Just about all the young men she knew had either enlisted, been drafted, or were waiting to be.

A short way down the block she spied Willie Elrod dodging behind a poster in front of the picture show and tried hard not to laugh when he peeked slyly over the top and quickly withdrew his head.

“Come out, come out wherever you are!” Charlie called, pausing until the boy showed himself. “What are you doing down here, Willie? Does your mother know where you are?”

“Yes’m, I guess so. She sent me to get her a spool of thread at the dime store.”

“And did you?” Charlie asked.

Willie shrugged. “No’me. Not yet.”

“Well, don’t you think you’d better hurry? It’s getting kind of late and you have homework for tomorrow. She might be worried about you.”

“She don’t care,” Willie said, shuffling along beside her.

“
Doesn’t
care.” Charlie smiled. “Except I happen to know she does.”

She stopped when they came to Murphy’s Five and Ten on the corner. “Well, this is where we part company. I’m on my way to Coopers.’ ”

Willie did an about-face. “I reckon I’ll go along with you.”

“William Elrod! If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were following me!” Charlie frowned. “Now, what’s all this about?”

The child’s face flushed. “There’s spies around, you know, and I ain’t takin’ no chances.”

Charlie made a face at the bad grammar. “But, Willie, why do you think they’d be interested in me?”

“They got Miss Dimple, didn’t they? I saw ’em. And you know what happened to Mr. Malone.”

Charlie sighed. “Mr. Malone probably had a stroke or a heart attack, Willie, and fell and hit his head … at least they’re almost sure that’s what happened. And what do you mean you
saw
someone taking Miss Dimple?”

“I saw her. That is, I did, and then I didn’t.” Willie turned in the direction of Murphys’ but Charlie put out a hand to stop him.

“Whoa! Wait just a minute. “Just when do you think you
might’ve
seen Miss Dimple, Willie?”

“It was just the other night—well … more like morning, but still dark, and I went out to put Rags back in his box—Rags is my dog—when I seen—saw this car pull up out front, and that was when they got Miss Dimple.”

“Are you sure it was Miss Dimple? You said yourself it was dark.” Charlie glanced up at the courthouse clock. She would have to hurry if she was going to stop by the grocery store and get home in time to try on her skirt.

“Sure looked like her to me.” Willie searched in his pocket for a lint-covered jawbreaker, which he popped into his mouth.

Charlie stooped to face him. “Now, Willie, did you actually see anyone snatch her? Did she cry out?”

The child switched the jawbreaker to the other side of his mouth. “No’me, but I’m as good as sure it was her. It ain’t my fault nobody will believe me!”

Charlie shook her head as she watched him walk away. She knew exactly why nobody would believe Willie Elrod. Back in September he had terrified half the girls in the class by telling them a dragon lurked in the drainage ditch that ran behind the school, and only a few weeks ago Froggie had whaled the daylights out of him for reporting there was a
big fight
out on the playground. Turned out it was pudgy fifth-grader Amelia Fite, who had to wear her mother’s altered dresses because she couldn’t find children’s clothing to fit.

*   *   *

Jesse Dean, who was straightening shelves of canned goods, hurried to the front counter when Charlie entered the store.

“And what can I get for you today?” he asked, resting scrawny arms on the glass-topped showcase.

The bell jangled as she closed the door behind her and Charlie smiled. “Let’s see … I need a couple of pounds of White Lily flour, and I hope you can sell me a little butter if you have any. My mother was supposed to call and ask Mr. Cooper to set some aside.” The store smelled of stale peppermints and pickles, and faintly of the live chickens that were kept in crates in the back. Even if she were blindfolded, Charlie thought, she would know exactly where she was.

“I believe he did,” Jesse said. “Just let me go and check.”

Charlie took out her precious ration book, noticing again his peculiar gait, as he hurried to the refrigerated section in the back of the store. He took short galloping steps, pumping his arms up and down like a child riding a stick horse. Although Jesse Dean had been a few years ahead of her in school, Charlie knew he had suffered from a lot of cruel teasing, especially from other boys, and she had hoped he might overcome his awkwardness as he got older. Instead, it seemed to be getting worse.

“Miss Phoebe called earlier and said if you or Miss Gardner happened to come by, would you please bring her some baking powder and a bunch of bananas? That is, if you don’t mind. She said to just put it on her bill.” The young man flushed as he spoke and his hand trembled slightly as he put Charlie’s purchases in a bag.

“Well, sure, Jesse Dean. Annie—Miss Gardner—is just down the street at the post office. I’ll be glad to take them to her.” She watched him tear the stamps from her book and was paying for the groceries when her aunt Louise practically blew in with a gust of wind.

“Jesse Dean,” she began, “tell Mr. Cooper I want a small, plump hen, not like that tough old sister he sold me last time.” She parked her worn black handbag on the counter and gave Charlie’s arm a squeeze.

“Tell me, sugar, what’s the latest on the evasive Miss Dimple?” Louise Willingham was as large as her sister Jo was small and her sizable bosom now rested on the counter alongside her purse. “First that poor Malone fellow, and now this! I’m just waiting for the next shoe to drop. Don’t suppose there’s any news?”

Charlie didn’t even try to figure out the analogy of somebody with three feet. “Not much,” she said, shaking her head. “They’re trying to locate her brother.” If she told her aunt about the newly discovered phone number, she was sure an entirely different version would be all over town by morning.

“From what I heard at choir practice last night, the woman was afraid for her life.” Aunt Lou waited until Jesse Dean went to see about the hen and dropped her voice. “Ida Ellerby—you know Ida—lives in that little yellow house on Melrose Street out past the cotton gin …”

Charlie nodded. She was almost certain, though, that Mrs. Ellerby’s red brick was one block over on Settlemyer.

“She told us that Dimple Kilpatrick pounded on her door one morning so early the sun was barely up. Why, Ida wasn’t even dressed, and here was poor old Ralph still in his long johns …” Lou paused to get her breath. “Anyway, she was hollering to wake the dead out there on the porch. Ida thought the poor soul must be dying.”

“So what
was
the matter? What happened?”

“A dog, she
said
. Ida snatched her inside, gave her a cup of coffee to kind of settle her down some, and Miss Dimple told her a big old dog had frightened her … chased her all the way up on the porch, she said.” Her aunt paused to thumb through her ration book. “Of course you have to wonder about somebody crazy enough to walk all over town before even the chickens are up. You’d think she’d be old enough to know better.”

Charlie frowned. “But, Aunt Lou, I don’t see how a dog could’ve had anything to do with Miss Dimple’s leaving.”

“That’s just it, you see. Ida said nobody on her street even has a dog like that, but just the same, it could’ve been a stray, so Ralph got out in his truck and looked for it after he dropped Miss Dimple off at school. They have small grandchildren, you know, and you can’t have a dangerous animal like that running loose.”

“Did she say when this happened?” Charlie asked.

“I believe it was a day or so before she pulled that disappearing act. Of course Ida didn’t know anything about Miss Dimple’s vanishing the way she did until we told her about it last night.” Aunt Lou pulled a grocery list from her purse and smoothed it out on the counter. “Jesse Dean,” she hollered, “give me about a half a pound of streak-o-lean, too, if you have it. I’m going to cook me up a good mess of greens tomorrow.”

“I hope she told Bobby Tinsley about this,” Charlie said, making a face. She hated turnip greens.

“Said she was going to. Ralph never did find that dog, either. Now you know that doesn’t mean I don’t believe there
was
one.”

“Uh-huh.” Charlie knew that was exactly what her aunt did believe. She gathered her groceries along with Miss Phoebe’s order and gave her aunt a kiss on the cheek. “Gotta run!” It was already getting dark and she still hadn’t done a thing about her hair.

“Tell your mama if she’ll bring me the sugar, I’ll bake some of my teacakes for her circle meeting next week,” her aunt called after her. Charlie hoped she would bake enough to have some left over. That was another thing the sisters didn’t have in common. Aunt Louise was a fantastic cook.

*   *   *

“Stand still and let me see if this hem is even,” Miss Bessie said. Charlie stood in front of the fireplace in her underwear while her neighbor slipped the skirt over her head. Charlie’s daddy had claimed Bessie Jenkins was so buck-toothed she could eat an apple through a picket fence, and she had a slight lisp to her speech, but that didn’t seem to bother Bessie’s longtime boyfriend, Ollie Thigpen. Ollie helped out on Paschall Kiker’s farm just outside of town and looked after the old man now that he wasn’t able to get around much anymore. He didn’t own a car and rode a bicycle just about everywhere he went, so most of their neighbor’s “outings” took place at her house unless the couple walked to church or to the movies, although once in a while Ollie treated her to supper downtown at Ray’s Cafe.

Turning slowly as she was directed, Charlie couldn’t help but notice the woman’s thinning reddish hair as she knelt below her. Now, humming a slightly off-key version of “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” she painstakingly measured the length of the skirt.

“You were gone so long I just had to guess at this.” Miss Bessie sputtered pins as she spoke. “So don’t blame me if the hem dips.”

Charlie didn’t care if it dipped or not. She had hurried home from town to take a quick “splash” bath and to roll her hair under in those hateful metal curlers that pinched and pulled, and she was not in a patient mood. “I saw Aunt Lou in Cooper’s Store,” she said to her mother. “Said to tell you if you supply the sugar, she’ll bake teacakes for your circle meeting.”

Charlie also told the two women what her aunt had said about Miss Dimple’s frightening experience with the dog.

“You know you have to take some of the things your aunt tells you with a grain … no, make that a big spoonful of salt,” Jo told her. “She’s always had a wild imagination. Still, if there’s anything to it, I’m sure Ida Ellerby mentioned it to the police.”

Bessie removed the pins from Charlie’s skirt and stuck them into the pincushion she wore on her arm, groaning as she stood. “Huh! Sounds to me like your aunt Lou’s been listening to too many ghost tales.”

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

It wouldn’t be long now. He had done what he was supposed to do. Now, it was up to the others. If only that old woman would cooperate! Why couldn’t she eat like everybody else? He had no idea she would be so hard to please. And now she claimed she was going to die if he didn’t bring her some sort of pills she kept in her desk at school. For her heart, she said. You’d think she’d keep something as important as that in that big old bag she hauled around with her, but they weren’t there. He’d searched every purple crevice, so he reckoned they had to be in her classroom at school, like she said. And hadn’t he made a big snafu the last time he went there?