Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble (12 page)

Dimple fanned herself with an outdated issue of the
Elderberry Eagle.
Because of heavy red dust from the unpaved road, Virginia insisted on keeping her car windows closed, and the interior felt like a hundred degrees.

Finally, relief at last! She rolled down her window as they turned onto the paved street and drove past the high school, which seemed bleak and forlorn behind a row of drooping crepe myrtles. As they entered town, a black-and-white-spotted terrier took its time crossing the street in front of them and two women chatted in the shade of the awning in front of Harris Cooper’s grocery. Most people, it seemed, were wisely staying inside during the heat of the day.

Virginia darted a look at the empty streets and sighed. “Don’t you miss them?” she asked.

“Miss who?”

“The men, Dimple,
the men.
Since the war, so many of them have gone.… It just isn’t natural,” Virginia insisted. “The town seems so empty without them. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all!”

Dimple didn’t like it, either, and she knew others who felt their absence even more. Annie Gardner had been so worried about her Frazier lately, she seemed to have lost her appetite, and Charlie, as well as young Delia, were aware of how permanent their loss might be whenever they saw the boy on the black bicycle who delivered telegrams no one wanted to receive.

Years before in an earlier war, young Dimple had experienced such a loss, and no words of comfort, no matter how well meant, had been able to mend her heart.

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

A few minutes later at Sheriff Holland’s office, Miss Dimple told him what Jasper had said.

“We’ll send somebody out there to pick him up, Miss Dimple, but I wouldn’t put too much faith in Jasper’s tales. Why, I reckon he’d still believe in the tooth fairy if he had a tooth left to trade.”

Miss Dimple smiled at the sheriff’s jest, remembering his pranks during his early school years. When she’d taught him in the first grade, the child had been so slight, you could’ve slipped him into an envelope and mailed him first class, but it seemed he had more than made up for that in the years that followed, and he’d proved to be a competent and dependable law-enforcement officer. Dimple had learned by experience she could put her trust in Zeb Holland in a tense situation.

Still, she felt there was some truth in Jasper’s claims and hoped they would be able to learn whom he’d seen the day Leola died before that person got wind of Jasper’s bragging. “You might want to get in touch with Leola’s daughter, Mary Joy. I believe she lives in Covington now,” she suggested before leaving. “There’s no telling what kind of disarray that Jasper’s left behind.”

It had been over a week since Prentice’s death, and they seemed no closer to finding the person responsible. Dimple remembered Velma Anderson mentioning that the drama coach, Seth Reardon, had directed Prentice and others in the cast of their senior play, and although she doubted if Prentice would have mentioned anything as personal as a love interest to him, there was a chance he might have overheard bits of conversation among the cast. As she hurried back to Phoebe’s, Dimple reminded herself to ask Velma if she remembered who else had taught Prentice during her senior year. Perhaps one of them might have an idea who the girl had been seeing.

*   *   *

Hattie stepped cautiously into the trailer and looked about. Whoever had been here was gone now, but it was obvious they’d been looking for something. To most people, it would seem her place was in constant disarray, but she knew where everything was, and could put her hands on it if necessary. Today, things had been shoved aside, tossed about. The china mug with a bear on it she’d drunk from as a child now lay on its side on the shelf above the makeshift sink. The seashells Chloe Jarrett had brought her from a vacation in Florida were scattered all over the floor. Hattie chuckled to herself. She
knew
what they’d been looking for, but they would never find it in her special place.

But what was to keep them from coming back? She wouldn’t be safe here anymore, at least not for a while, not while the Nazis knew where to find her, but where could she go?

Hattie thought of the old fishing shack down by the river. She could make do there as long as it was warm, and she could always turn in bottles left behind by fishermen to keep her in peanut butter and bread, and maybe a candy bar now and then, until she felt it was safe to come back.

It was almost dark when Hattie trundled her wheelbarrow, piled high with extra clothing, blankets, and the meager contents of her larder, along the edge of the pine thicket that bordered the road, then made her way across the railroad tracks to the bridge that spanned the Oconee River. Stepping carefully over ruts in the road, she turned off right before the bridge, bumping her burden along a narrow trail that followed the river. She heard the dark water rushing below, smelled the dank, muddy odor of its banks. Hattie paused as the moon went behind a cloud. The darkness made it hard to see, but she knew the shack was somewhere up ahead. Not many people used it now, probably didn’t even know it was there—so much the better. It wasn’t much, but she could make do for a while and no one would bother her here.

Tall grass brushed her ankles and briars clutched at her skirt as Hattie plodded along. She had brought along a flashlight, but the batteries were weak, striping the night with a dim yellow beam that seemed to make shadows loom even larger. But … yes … there it was just up ahead on that little knoll in the bend of the river.

Hattie froze at the sound of rustling grass behind her.
Someone was here. Someone was following her! Well, she would never tell those Yankees her secret—never! Or maybe it was a Nazi come to carry her away like they did that pretty young girl. Her world wasn’t safe anymore. She couldn’t trust anybody now. Hattie waited, afraid to go forward, but she would never make it back to the road. What happened to the people who’d loved her, cared for her? What happened to the time when she wasn’t afraid?

*   *   *

After forcing down a piece of dry toast with her morning coffee, Bertie took one look at her silent, empty house and stepped outside. Everything around her reminded her of Prentice: the water pitcher with multicolored stripes her niece had given her last Christmas; the framed crayon drawing of a horse with an unusually large head that Prentice colored when she was six; and, on the back porch, the once brown-and-white oxfords, now caked with dried mud from a not-too-recent rain. How could she bear living here without her? She had to get out of this house!

And where else could she go but to her familiar classroom? Bertie parked in the back of the high school so no one would see her car and let herself inside with her own key. She was one of the few allowed that privilege. The classroom was stuffy and hot, and Bertie turned on the electric fan on her desk and opened some of the windows. The back of the building, where she taught, had no shade except for a small magnolia, presented by Prentice’s class, that stood by the back door next to a plaque marking the year of its planting.

Elberta pulled down a window shade to block the view. There seemed to be no escape. By the time she retired, the tree would be taller than the building, and she would pack up her belongings, move out of her sunny, multiwindowed classroom, and go home. But home to what?

She had thought that when the time came for her to leave Elderberry High School forever, Prentice would be out of college and either married or settled in a career of her own. Bertie had hoped for both. She had wanted for Prentice more than she had for herself. Much more. Elberta Stackhouse didn’t believe in Prince Charming—hadn’t for a long time—but for her niece she’d wished the joy and security of having someone to laugh with, love with. Someone to share her days, her nights, and the years that would come later, when she qualified for the senior discount at Lewellyn’s Drug Store.

And what did she have now?
Nothing,
that was what.

A shell of a person walking around with so much sadness festering inside, Bertie felt it might begin to ooze from her pores. And her friends? God help them, they smothered her with kindness; she saw her grief mirrored in their eyes, and longed to run away and hide until she—and they—didn’t hurt so much anymore.

Bertie opened her desk drawer and pulled out the roster of upcoming juniors she could expect when school began in a little over a month. This year, she would start with
A Tale of Two Cities
instead of postponing it until after the Christmas holiday—hit the ground running, she thought, with no pause to catch her breath. Or to think. And from now on, she wouldn’t require her classes to memorize “Thanatopsis”—such a long, dreary poem, all about death. Most of the students dreaded it anyway, but Bertie had always thought memory work good for the brain, and maybe it was, but this year she would have her classes concentrate on something else. Some of Shakespeare’s sonnets perhaps. Something light with a nice rhythm to it.

And for the first time since Prentice died, Bertie almost smiled. That was before she remembered she had agreed to let Adam drop by tonight for cake and coffee. He had been the very soul of patience to listen when she wanted to talk and allowed her time to be alone. Adam Treadway comforted her with his silence as only he knew how, but she knew he was suffering because she was, so when he’d phoned earlier and asked to see her, Bertie had reluctantly agreed. Thoughtful friends and neighbors had supplied her with so much food, she’d finally asked them to stop, and she would have no shortage of sweets to offer him when he came. Louise Willingham had brought over one of her sought-after almond pound cakes the day before, and Bertie had only nibbled at a slice, although she found it delicious as usual.

For the last two of the three years they had been seeing each other, Adam had tried his best to entice her to Clifford, a small town several miles away, where he owned and operated a small bookstore. Widowed for almost a decade, Adam had raised his two sons, now grown, and didn’t bother to hide the fact that he had marriage on his mind. Recently, Adam had heard rumors, he told her, that the head of the high school English Department there would soon be retiring and the school board was already looking for a replacement.

It had been only a few days before Prentice died and the two were sipping lemonade on her front porch. “With your experience and credentials, I know you’d have a good chance at the job,” he’d assured her. Adam raised his glass to hers. “Why not give it a try?”

Bertie looked down at her glass and took a swallow, touching his fingers as if in apology. “Let’s just wait and see,” she said.

“Wait until when, Elberta?”

“I don’t know.” She couldn’t bring herself to look into his eyes. Gray like April skies, campfire smoke, kitten fur. Cozy things. Happy things. Her willpower would wilt like a violet, wouldn’t stand a chance. Still handsome at forty-seven, Adam appealed to her more than any man she’d known since Knox Jarrett, although there hadn’t been many. But did she love him enough for marriage? Bertie wasn’t sure.

And the thought of leaving Elderberry … well, frankly, it scared her a little. After all, this was Prentice’s home, too. She had to think of Prentice, didn’t she?

*   *   *

Harris Cooper’s grocery wasn’t crowded this late in the afternoon when Bertie started for home. It would be refreshing, she decided, to have ice cream on hand to go with Lou’s pound cake, so she parked out front and dashed in for a pint of vanilla. It was hard to ignore the fact that Jesse Dean Greeson, who clerked there, went quickly to the back of the store when he saw her come in, and returned weepy-eyed to wait on her. Prentice had been fond of Jesse Dean, since, knowing how much she liked them, he always put chocolate BB Bats—penny taffy on a stick—in their grocery order.

Today, both of them managed to maintain composure under circumstances that wrung out their emotions and hung them up to dry.

Declining Jesse Dean’s offer to carry her one small purchase to the car, Elberta tossed her carton of bagged groceries on the seat beside her and backed into the street. She was almost at the end of the block when she saw Hattie McGee, still wearing her black veil of mourning, pushing her wheelbarrow at a plodding pace on the other side of the street.

The voluminous skirts must weigh a ton, and Hattie was still blocks from home. If she had to, Bertie supposed, she could wedge the wheelbarrow in her trunk. Slowing, she waved and blew her horn, but Hattie didn’t respond.

Must not be in a sociable mood.
Well, that made two of them. Bertie turned toward home for a cold glass of tea and a long soak in the tub. She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t relieved.

*   *   *

The Elderberry Woman’s Club, minus Geneva Odom, who was shopping in Atlanta with her college-bound daughter, and Mabel Rankin, who wasn’t speaking to the hostess, met that week on Tuesday afternoon at the home of their president, Emmaline Brumlow. It wasn’t their usual meeting day, but Emmaline had wanted to host the meeting, and this was the only day she could do it. “It’s only a few days’ difference,” Emmaline said. “I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t suit.”

It didn’t suit Hardin Kirkland, but she was too meek to speak out, as were most of the members. The Elderberry Woman’s Club was not a democracy, and Emmaline, as president, was supreme dictator. Her mother had been a Hughes, and her grandmother, Winifred Hughes, had been one of the original members of the club. Hardin knew this because she had been told, first by her mother and then by her husband, and she was also aware that the marker on the courthouse lawn in honor of the Confederate dead had been donated by one of Emmaline’s illustrious Hughes ancestors.

Now Hardin sat in the Windsor chair by the mahogany drop-leaf table that had belonged to Emmaline’s grandmother and balanced a Limoges plate on her lap. She knew they were all dying to question her about the day Prentice Blair disappeared, but it wouldn’t be proper to ask outright. They would have to find a way to lead up to it.