Miss Dimple Disappears (9 page)

Brushing her hair from her face, Hugh kissed her forehead, her cheek, her lips, and buried his face in the nape of her neck. Charlie surprised herself by crying as she returned his kisses, and Hugh gently wiped them away with his fingers. “I’m not going to ask you to wait for me, but I want you to know, well, how I feel.…”

“And how
do
you feel?” Charlie had trouble speaking because of the elephant in her throat.

His hands were firm on her shoulders and she could barely see the outline of his face in the dark. “I think you know how much I care—”

She found his hand and raised it to her lips. “And how much is that?”

“Look, Charlie, nobody knows how long this war is going to last.” Even in the darkness she could see his resolute expression. “I can’t and don’t expect you to hang around waiting for me for what might turn out to be years … or maybe even—”

Charlie stopped him with a kiss before he could continue. She knew what he was going to say and she didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t even want to think about it.

*   *   *

“But you told me yourself you weren’t sure you’d accept even if he did propose,” Annie reminded her the following day as they stood in the shelter of the doorway watching the children at their morning recess. Several in Charlie’s class were choosing someone to be “it” for a game of hide-and-seek, chanting:

Eeny, meeny, miney mo,

Catch a Nazi by the toe!

If he hollers, make him say,

“I surrender to the U.S.A!”

O-U-T spells out you go,

You old dirty dishrag, you!

Ruthie Phillips, who had the misfortune to be chosen, hid her face against a tree and began to count as the rest of the children scattered.

“No peeking, Ruthie!” Charlie warned her, seeing the child peer slyly over one concealing arm.

“Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine …” Ruthie buried her face and continued.

*   *   *

“Well, would you?” Annie reminded her. “Would you have said yes to Hugh?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Charlie dug in her coat pocket for her gloves as a gust of frigid air sliced through her. She
was
in love with Hugh, wasn’t she? Or maybe she was just in love with love as were some of the women who married hastily before their men left for the front.

Annie must have been thinking the same thing. “You’d rather be left single and wondering than married and miserable like poor Janet Delaney, wouldn’t you?” And Charlie had to admit she didn’t envy Janet, who was six months pregnant and living with her new husband’s grim-faced mother and ailing old-maid aunt.

“Janet used to be such fun back in high school,” she said, “and now she goes around looking like the end of the world is just around the corner. I know I should go and visit her, but she makes me feel so sad, and I never know what to say.”

“From what I’ve heard about her mother-in-law, she’d probably rather you ask her to visit you,” Annie suggested. “At least she’s not running around on her husband with anything in pants.” She scowled as she drew her coat more closely about her. “You know that woman who works at the five-and-ten? The skinny one with the blue pop eyes?”

Charlie nodded. “Ruby somebody. Works in the housewares section?”

“Yeah. Well, she got engaged to a soldier right before he left for overseas. Showed me her ring and all, and he hadn’t been gone more than a month before she was cozying up to that Lem who works at the hardware store—and him old enough to be her father and married to boot!”

Charlie, whose sister had been a classmate of Ruby’s, didn’t doubt it for a minute. “I hear she’s always been the friendly type,” she said.

“
Friendly
? I’ll say she was friendly! I went in the hardware store to pick up batteries for my flashlight and that woman was sitting on the back counter in there with her skirt hiked up to kingdom come, and she was all over that Lem like honey on a hot biscuit.” Annie snorted. “So, you will see Hugh before he leaves for Virginia, won’t you?”

Charlie nodded. “Sunday. And guess what he wants to do?”

Annie giggled. “I can guess. Oh, ‘get thee to a nunnery!’ ”

“Oh, hush! Wants to take a picnic to Turtle Rock—roast marshmallows—that sort of thing. It’s kind of a special spot. We all went there a lot growing up—mostly in the summer, though. We’ll probably freeze.”

“Ahh!” Annie said, and smiled. “Somehow I doubt that.”

“Ahh, yourself,” Charlie said, as the bell summoned them inside.

It was a relief to be back in a warm building again after Froggie hired someone to replace Christmas Malone. She had caught a glimpse of the custodian at a distance earlier that morning when she arrived at school as the principal was showing him around the building. It wasn’t until later when Froggie introduced the new janitor to the school assembly that Charlie recognized her neighbor’s “beau,” Ollie Thigpen, who made the children laugh when he took a “sweeping” bow with his broom.

Geneva Odom, seated behind Charlie, leaned over to whisper, “Let’s hope he can manage to get to work on time. The man rides a bicycle everywhere he goes. I don’t think he even owns a car.”

Charlie told her she didn’t care if he came on roller skates if only he would keep that monster of a furnace going.

The old auditorium smelled of the oily cleaning compound Christmas Malone had used on the hardwood floors whenever the mood struck him, and chairs were arranged in rigid rows, evidence that the newly hired custodian had already been at work. Both sides of the stage were decorated with dried cornstalks, pumpkins, and squash, and even the upright piano, where the music teacher sat in anticipation, looked as if it had been polished. The children had been assembled for a special program to commemorate the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, and the students in Miss Brady’s expression classes, dressed as Pilgrims, Indians, turkeys, and a variety of vegetables, waited expectantly behind the canvas backdrop as the floor reverberated with the shuffling of restless feet.

Annie, Charlie noticed, had left two of her mothers in charge of her class while she waited backstage with a small group of sixth graders dressed in patriotic colors. After weeks of rehearsal, the young dancers would end the program with a loosely choreographed jitterbug to “American Patrol,” a song Glenn Miller had made popular.

The large white oak tree just outside the building clawed the wind with bare branches, sending its remaining brown leaves twirling past the window. The sky was heavy with clouds and it looked as if rain might be coming soon. Charlie thought of the missing Miss Dimple and hoped she would be warm and dry—and safe—wherever she was. Annie reported earlier that the police had not yet been able to locate her brother and Charlie was beginning to wonder if he had disappeared as well.

The blue velvet stage curtains, now worn bare in spots, began to part with a tantalizing rattle. A loud harrumph and a warning glare from Froggie finally subdued Alma’s squirming first graders into quiet attentiveness. The pianist raised her hands as a signal, and crashed down with a chord. As one, the entire student body stood amid scraping of chairs to begin singing “America the Beautiful.” The program had begun.

It wasn’t until everyone returned to their homerooms that Alma discovered someone had broken into Miss Dimple’s locked desk drawer.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

Elderberry? What kind of place was that? She was going to have her work cut out for her here, but that was what happened when you dropped your guard—even for a minute. You couldn’t trust a soul. Well, no one would be the wiser for it, and she’d soon straighten things out in short order. They didn’t call her “The Eagle” for nothing, and she didn’t have time … no … not even a minute to waste. She wasn’t looking forward to this, but she didn’t have a choice, did she? After all, her country was depending on her.

*   *   *

“Are you sure the desk was locked?” Charlie asked Alma as they stood in the hallway after the children were dismissed for the day. They were joined there by Annie and Geneva Odom. The rain had started in earnest and because the school had no lunchroom facilities, their principal had declared a one-session day, which enabled the students to go home at one o’clock.

“The wood’s been splintered around it,” Alma explained, absently fingering the pin at her throat. “Must’ve happened while we were all at assembly, and it looks like whoever did it used a screwdriver to force it open because they left it right there on my desk.” She frowned. “I’m afraid Miss Dimple’s going to be most upset.”

Charlie thought that was the least of their worries. “That screwdriver might have prints on it. Where is it now?”

“Mr. Faulkenberry has everything locked away in his office until Bobby Tinsley can get here,” Alma said, fumbling inside the bodice of her dress for a handkerchief, which she used to blow her nose. “All this has been most upsetting! I just don’t know how much more I can take.”

Make that two of us,
Charlie thought as she put an arm around her. “Try to get some rest over the weekend. You might feel differently by Monday,” she said, although she doubted if the fidgety woman would last another week.

“I can’t imagine why anybody would be interested in the contents of Miss Dimple’s desk,” Annie said. “It just doesn’t make sense … but then neither has anything else that’s been happening around here lately.”

“I’ll have to admit, I’m dying of curiosity,” Charlie said. “What
was
in that drawer, anyway?” Miss Dimple had kept the mysterious drawer locked even when six-year-old Charlie was reading about
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
and singing the alphabet song.

“I’ve always wondered about that, too,” Geneva added. “She seemed to have sort of a hush-hush air about it like she was guarding some great secret.”

Alma shrugged. “I can’t see anything secret about a can of Ovaltine, a couple of Hershey bars, and some vanilla wafers.”

“Ah-ha!” Charlie laughed. “I guess one can’t live by muffins alone.”

“Is that all you found?” Annie asked.

“The only thing of value was a couple of sheets of savings stamps and a coin purse with a few bills and some change in it,” Alma told them, “so it doesn’t look like whoever did it was after money or it seems they would’ve taken all of it.”

“Then what were they after?” Geneva said.

*   *   *

That was what everybody at Phoebe Chadwick’s boardinghouse wanted to know as they sat around the table a short while later. Elwin Vickery gnawed the last shred of meat from his chicken drumstick and placed the bone carefully in his plate. “How did this person get into the room if the door was locked?”

“That’s just it,” Annie explained. “Alma
thinks
she locked it behind her when they went to assembly but she said she couldn’t be absolutely sure.”

“Alma Owens couldn’t be absolutely sure she put on her drawers in the morning,” Geneva, sitting beside Charlie, mumbled under her breath.

“Aren’t her windows fairly low to the ground?” Phoebe asked. “I’d think anyone who was fairly agile might climb in. The shrubbery around the concessions area would screen them from view.”

“Do you think it might’ve been that Ollie fellow who took Chr— uh, Wilson’s place?” Lily Moss pressed praying hands to her lips. “He’s always seemed kind of peculiar to me. A grown man like that riding a bicycle!”

“Ollie Thigpen’s been courting our neighbor for years,” Charlie said. “And I can’t imagine why he’d want to get into Miss Dimple’s drawers.”

Her face grew warm at the resulting undercurrent of laughter when she realized what she’d said.

“Why would anybody?” Annie whispered, barely suppressing a giggle.

“Well, it felt great to walk into a warm building this morning,” Geneva added, obviously feeling sorry for Charlie’s embarrassment.

“Ollie’s been working for Paschall Kiker for as long as I can remember, and he’s a pretty fair carpenter, too. He built a sweet little gazebo for my cousin Eunice, and put a new porch floor in the Methodist parsonage.” Phoebe said. “I’m sure Mr. Faulkenberry is familiar with his background.”

“Poor Alma was really shaken about all this,” Annie said. “And I don’t blame her. “It would make me nervous, too, to think a stranger might enter my classroom when I wasn’t there—or even worse, when I was. What if she had returned with the children and surprised him?”

“Who, besides the principal, has a key to Miss Dimple’s classroom?” Velma asked.

Geneva, who was reaching for a second yeast roll, paused with her hand in midair. “Ollie would, of course … and, well, I guess I’m the only other one.”

“Do you still have it?” Charlie asked. “Where would it be?”

All eyes were on Geneva as she spoke in a flat, measured voice. “On a nail inside my supply cabinet, where I also keep a screwdriver. That blasted roller that holds the maps is always coming loose and I finally bought one of my own so I wouldn’t have to keep bothering Christmas.”

“Was your room locked during assembly?” Phoebe asked her.

“Of course—but not during recess. One of us is always close by, so I didn’t see the need. There’s nothing in there of any value, and of course I keep my desk drawer locked.”

Lily’s face paled. “So, it could’ve been anyone.”

Geneva shoved back her chair. “Well, don’t look at me. I’m not
that
desperate for stale Hershey bars and a few vanilla wafers. Still, Miss Phoebe, if I might use your phone, I’ll try to catch Froggie before he leaves school and ask him if those things are still in my cabinet.”

But it had to have happened while everyone was at assembly, Charlie thought, as Annie explained to the others about the edible contents of Miss Dimple’s desk drawer. And as far as she knew, everyone, including Ollie Thigpen, had been in the auditorium for the Thanksgiving program.

Phoebe Chadwick ladled cream gravy over her rice and passed the gravy boat to Velma. “Speaking of telephones, I’m afraid we’ve hit a bit of a dead end with Miss Dimple’s brother.”

Elwin frowned. “Don’t tell me they were still unable to find him!”

“Oh, they found him all right,” Phoebe explained, “but Henry said he hasn’t heard from her and wasn’t even aware she was missing. He seemed concerned, of course, but gave me the impression there was probably a rational explanation.” She shook her head as if trying to rid herself of a bad dream. “Naturally, I didn’t believe that for a minute, and, frankly, I don’t think he does, either. He phoned me here after speaking with Bobby to say there was a possibility she might be visiting some distant relatives and that he planned to do some investigating on his own.” She sighed. “Poor man! I could tell he was worried to death, although he was making an effort to hide it.”