Miss Dimple Suspects (27 page)

She stood trembling in the open door to the hallway, hugging herself for warmth. “Please, I’d like to come with you. I can’t stay here any longer.”

Suzy quickly snatched the blanket she’d just shed and wrapped it around Rebecca. “We have to get something warm in her now!” she said, seeming her confident self once again. “Her lips are turning blue. There should be enough fuel in that stove to heat a kettle of water.”

Minutes later they hovered around the kitchen table as Rebecca, her color slowly returning, sipped from a large mug of tea. “I want you to know I had nothing to do with setting fire to that shed,” she told them when her chattering subsided. “I’m just glad I got back in time to see the smoke.”

“So are we!” Charlie told her. “But you know who did it, don’t you, Rebecca?”

Rebecca twined thin fingers around the mug and took a long, slow swallow. It seemed she was about to answer when the yellow glare of headlights suddenly illuminated the room.

Annie ran to the window. “Oh, my gosh! Somebody’s here. What are we going to do?”

“Can you tell who it is?” Miss Dimple asked.

Charlie frowned as she joined her friend at the window. “It looks like … it is! It’s Esau and Coralee. We have to get Suzy out of sight!”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to go to the basement,” Miss Dimple directed. “Quickly, before they see you!” She glanced at Rebecca, who jumped to her feet, shoving her mug aside. “I’ll go with her,” Rebecca said. “We can leave by the outside door. There’s a shortcut to my place.”

“I remember.” Suzy nodded, following her. “Here! Don’t forget your shawl,” she reminded her, plucking it from the chair on the way out.

“What are we going to tell the Ingrams?” Annie asked Miss Dimple as they heard the basement door close behind them and the sound of feet descending the stairs.

“Don’t worry. I’ll think of something,” Dimple’s voice was calm, but Annie noticed a flicker of alarm in her eyes.

*   *   *

“Coralee thought she heard a car.” Esau Ingram stood in the open kitchen doorway, the light from his headlights glinting off the barrel of the shotgun in his hands. “What are you doing here?”

Dimple Kilpatrick sank sighing onto a chair at the kitchen table and rested her head in her hands. “I’m so terribly sorry about this, Mr. Ingram, but you’re aware, I know, of what happened to us at Rebecca Wyatt’s a few days ago.” Her voice trembled as she searched for a handkerchief and, finding it, dabbed at her eyes. Behind her, Charlie and Annie exchanged glances and wondered what trick the older teacher would come up with now.

Esau lowered his gun but stood his ground. “Just how did you manage to get in?” he demanded. “And for God’s sake, woman,
why
?”

Miss Dimple stiffened. She was not accustomed to hearing someone take the Lord’s name in vain, but it gave her time to think. “Why, we came through the basement. That door was unlocked, you know, and I thought we might find Rebecca Wyatt here. She hasn’t been seen since that unfortunate incident when the three of us were almost incinerated.” Miss Dimple allowed her voice to shake a little as she explained further. “I thought perhaps she might have come here.”

Esau tilted his head and frowned. “I don’t understand,” he began. “Why—”

Dimple straightened and looked him full in the face. “Why? Because the woman’s terrified, Mr. Ingram. She’s afraid for her life—just as the three of us were when someone locked us in and set fire to that shed.” Dimple Kilpatrick would never look or speak to a child in the manner she addressed Esau Ingram. She was either challenging the man or calling him a fool. Possibly both. Charlie took a deep breath and edged closer to Annie.

Esau leaned the gun against the wall and took a step forward. “Surely you don’t think I had anything to do with that? And everybody knows Rebecca’s a bit … well … addled. There’s no telling where she might be. Why, she’s probably holed up in her house until all this excitement dies down. As far as I know, the Fuller boy’s still taking care of her livestock.”

“Esau? What’s going on here?” Coralee Ingram stood in the doorway behind her husband and took in the scene, looking as if she had just come upon Hirohito himself.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” her husband told her with a weary sigh. “These ladies seem to think they’d find Rebecca Wyatt here, although why they’d want her, I don’t know. If I was you,” he added, addressing Miss Dimple, “I’d steer clear of that one.”

Coralee didn’t answer and Charlie got the idea the woman might not agree with her husband. “Look, I’m sorry if we alarmed you,” Charlie said, speaking directly to Coralee, “but we’re worried about Rebecca. The police haven’t been able to find her, and we’re afraid she might be in danger.”

“Do you still think she might be here?” Coralee asked, stepping inside.

“If she was, she’s gone now,” Annie said, hoping the woman wouldn’t notice Rebecca’s empty mug on the table. “We’ve checked every room.”

“We’ll have another look at any rate,” Esau said, making his way into the room. “And I don’t reckon you all meant any harm, but if I was you, I’d stay away from other folks’ property, especially when nobody’s home.”

“We certainly will, thank you, and again, we apologize for any distress we might’ve caused you.” Miss Dimple spoke primly, as if she had only stepped on somebody’s foot or accidentally bumped into a person on the street. The three of them walked sedately to the car and didn’t speak until they had reached the bottom of the hill.

“Whew!” Annie sighed. “What do you think he meant by that?”

“By what?” Charlie slowed to maneuver a curve in the narrow road.

“That comment about staying away when nobody’s at home. Do you think he
knows
we’ve been poking about the outbuildings around here?”

“I don’t doubt that he does for a minute,” Dimple said. “I’d just like to find out what else he might know.”

“I hope Suzy and Rebecca have had time to get to Rebecca’s place.” Charlie turned the car in that direction and groaned, remembering the terrible condition of the woman’s driveway. “I’ll park the car on the side of the road, and Miss Dimple, you can wait there while Annie and I walk up to the house to get the others. There’s no need for all of us sliding around in the dark.”

Dimple Kilpatrick only laughed. “Oh come now, surely you don’t think I’m going to let you two have all the excitement. Of course I’m going with you!”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-SIX

Lottie Nivens had looked at the big magnolia tree on the Sullivans’ lawn every morning when she walked to school and again when she took her noon meal with Phoebe Chadwick across the street. She noticed the tree when she walked to town or to church and passed it again on her return.

“Do you remember who used to live in the Sullivans’ house on the corner?” she asked Bessie Jenkins at breakfast one morning. It was the day after Christmas and the two had skipped church after sleeping later than usual and were enjoying a leisurely breakfast of fresh oranges, coffee, and applesauce muffins hot from the oven. Lottie’s aunt Agnes, who had raised her, had seldom allowed her to help with the cooking and she was slowly learning her way around a kitchen. Wouldn’t Hal be surprised when he came home after the war?

Bessie broke open a muffin and added a dab of margarine, smiling as she inhaled the spicy fragrance. “The Overtons lived there for a good while until he took a job in Atlanta, I believe, and they sold the place to the Sullivans.” Bessie washed down her first bite of muffin with coffee. “I do believe these are even better than the ones you baked before, Lottie.”

“But before the Overtons?” Lottie persisted. “Who lived there then?”

Bessie frowned. “Oh, goodness! Let me see … that must’ve been the Greesons—Jesse Dean’s folks. Such a tragedy that was! The whole town was just torn up by it!”

“By what?” Lottie picked up her muffin and put it down again. Suddenly she wasn’t so hungry.

“Jesse Dean’s older sister, little Cassie, disappeared during a picnic that summer and we never did know what happened to her. Some say she drowned in Etowah Pond, but most believe she was kidnapped. Jesse Dean was born a few months later and his mama—Eugenia—well, she didn’t live long after that.”

“What about the father?”

“Sanford? He left here after Jesse Dean was born and nobody ever saw him again. Something happened to Sanford over there during the war and he just never seemed right when he got back. Old Addie Montgomery, Jesse Dean’s grandmamma, raised him. Tried to turn him into a girl—to replace the one who was lost, I guess. She was a strange one, Addie was. It’s a wonder he’s turned out so well.”

*   *   *

The china tea set was white with pink and blue flowers and a green border. It had been a present from Santa and she was not supposed to play with it outside. But her mama never looked under the sweeping limbs of the big magnolia and no one could see her there. She only took enough plates and cups for the two of them, and in her secret place under the big tree she served dark mud pies decorated with the glossy red seeds from the tree. Only her rag doll, Lucy, was invited to feast off the dainty flowered china. That day, however, the person she knew as Mama called to her in a hurry to go somewhere. The summer afternoon was sweltering and her mama was cross, but it was cool under the tree and Lottie didn’t want to leave.
I’ll come back tomorrow,
she thought, and she left the tiny dishes hidden away in her secret place in the roots of the big magnolia.

*   *   *

How do you ask someone for permission to dig underneath their tree?
Lottie Nivens couldn’t think of a suitable explanation and so she waited until she saw Clarissa Sullivan start for town the next day, wheeling her baby wrapped like a blue cocoon in his carriage.

Was anyone looking?
The streets seemed deserted as Lottie parted the heavy branches and ducked beneath them to the musky, dusky shade of the tree. Even in late December it smelled of mud and summer and black, sooty bark, and brittle leaves rattled under her feet. Lottie took the small trowel she had borrowed from Miss Bessie’s toolshed and began to scrape near the base of the tree.
Which side had she hidden them on? There should be an indentation in the roots somewhere … but what if this wasn’t the right tree? There were countless magnolia trees in countless Southern towns.

On her hands and knees she crawled around the base of the magnolia, scraping away the surface of the soil. Years of dirt, twigs, stones, and leaves had filled in the crevices but Lottie, now resorting to her fingers, carefully swept them away.
This must be how an archeologist works,
she thought, smiling at the comparison.

But when her fingers felt the dirt-encrusted surface of the tiny china cup, Cassie Greeson Nivens knew she was finally home.

*   *   *

“I don’t see a light. They must not have gotten here yet,” Charlie said as the three women made their way up the mud-slicked driveway that led to Rebecca Wyatt’s. The beam from her flashlight sent a pale sliver through the dark night, briefly revealing the scorched shed by the garden where the smell of burned wood lingered, reminding them of their close brush with death.

“I hope they’re all right,” Miss Dimple said. “They had to make their way through the woods with no light, and Rebecca didn’t look at all well.”

“I guess all we can do is wait,” Annie said. “They should be here soon, but it’s freezing out here and I’m sure the house is locked.”

“The barn isn’t,” Charlie reminded her. “At least we’ll be out of the wind and we should be able to see the house from there.”

Later, Dimple Kilpatrick would tell herself she had a
feeling
something wasn’t right as the three of them hurried to the barn that cold December night, but then things had seemed topsy-turvy all evening long, not unlike their world since this dreadful war began. It was good to be out of the frigid night air, and the barn smelled as barns should: of animals, manure, leather, and fodder. The only sound she heard was an occasional lowing of a cow, the chickens having long gone to sleep.

Dimple was the first to notice the canvases were gone. The small storage room still held an assortment of tools and implements, but the art materials that had been there before had been moved. “I wonder if Rebecca put them somewhere else,” she said.

Annie frowned. “When would she have time?”

“You’re right. She wouldn’t,” a voice said behind them, and they turned to find Isaac Ingram in the doorway with a gun.

*   *   *

Suzy gripped Rebecca’s hand as they stumbled over the rough terrain, feeling their way in the dark. “I can’t see a thing!” she said, tripping on a fallen limb.

“Just hang on to me,” Rebecca said. “I’ve come this way plenty of times before. I should be able to get us there before long.”

Rebecca had thrown her shawl over her head and was still bundled in the blanket Suzy had wrapped around her. It dragged the ground as she walked and now and then she had to stop and cough, holding on to a tree until the spasm passed. Suzy frowned at the sound of it, hoping they didn’t have much farther to walk. Rebecca needed dry clothing, warmth, and steam for that worrisome rattle in her chest, and the sooner, the better.

“How much farther?” Suzy asked, shoving aside a limb. “We need to get you out of this cold.” She could tell earlier by Rebecca’s flushed face that the woman was probably feverish.

“Not too far now.” Rebecca coughed again. “Just watch out for that ditch ahead, then there’re a couple of hills and we should come out near the barn lot.”

Suzy shivered, wishing she had worn warmer clothing. She had left her belongings in a paper bag in the small closet in her old room at Mrs. Hawthorne’s and hoped Esau and his wife wouldn’t notice it if they decided to search the house. She couldn’t imagine what Miss Dimple had told the couple to explain their presence there, but Suzy had known Dimple Kilpatrick long enough to believe she would come up with something credible. After all, who would
not
believe Miss Dimple Kilpatrick?