Miss Dimple Suspects (29 page)

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-EIGHT

Lottie Nivens stood on the front porch and raised her hand to ring the bell. What if this was all a coincidence? He might think she had made it up. What if Jesse Dean wasn’t her brother after all? He would think she was crazy. She paused by the door until her feet felt as if they were encased in ice and her breath came in clouds.
For heaven’s sake, silly, you’ll never know if you don’t ask!

Lottie closed her eyes, held her breath, and rang the bell.

Jesse Dean seemed puzzled, but he smiled and invited her inside. “It’s nice of you to drop by. You look cold. Can I get you something hot to drink? I’ve just put on some coffee.”

She could tell he was surprised to see her there and was only being polite. Lottie said coffee would be nice and followed him into the kitchen, where a large brown-and-white dog lifted its head from where he was napping by the stove.

“This is Jake,” Jesse Dean said, rumpling the dog’s shaggy fur. “He won’t hurt you—he’s a friendly soul, and besides, he’s too lazy to move.” He took two cups and saucers from a cabinet and set them on the table. “We can go in the living room, but it’s warmer in here.”

Lottie sank gratefully onto a kitchen chair and clenched her hands together to keep them from shaking. “Miss Bessie said you had a doll,” she began. “Or, I mean your sister had a doll, and that your grandmother kept it.”

He nodded. “Lucy.”

“Do you mind if I see it, please?”

Jesse Dean poured coffee and set the cups on the table. “I don’t have any cream, but there’s milk and sugar.” He hesitated, still standing. “It’s packed away—the doll is—in my grandmother’s cedar chest.”

Lottie wrapped her cold hands around the cup and took a swallow, accepting it as it was. “She should have a grease stain on her chest,” she told him, “from camphorated oil.”

Jesse Dean turned even paler than usual and for a few seconds she thought he might pass out right there on the kitchen floor. “You mean … you think…”

“Please. I’d like to be sure.” Lottie remembered her mother scolding her for what she had done to the doll, but Lucy had a cold, the child had explained; her cough was getting worse, and she was sure she had a fever. Wasn’t that what she was supposed to do?

The doll, wrapped in layers of tissue, was about the size of an average newborn and smelled strongly of lavender and cedar. Jesse Dean’s hands shook as he unwrapped the paper while Lottie hovered over his shoulder. The red-and-blue cotton dress was buttoned to the neck and Jesse Dean, ever-shy, seemed reluctant to undress it. Lottie gently took the doll from him and slipped the little dress down to expose the chest.

“I don’t guess there’s any way you can wash camphorated oil from a rag doll,” she said, clutching Lucy to her chest. Through her tears, she could see that her brother was crying, too.

*   *   *

“It smells like snow.” Charlie glanced at the sky through the mullioned library window. “Looks like it, too.”

Virginia stamped a stack of books for Emmaline Brumlow and set them aside. “Wishful thinking,” she said with a smile. “You’re just hoping there’s no school tomorrow, but there is a chill in the air. And the new year is almost a month old already. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if 1944 brought an end to this war?”

Charlie thought of her brother, Fain, and of Will, her fiancé, who would soon be flying dangerous missions over enemy territory, and said if it ended tomorrow it wouldn’t be soon enough for her.

A wood fire cast a cheerful glow at one end of the room, where Emmaline sat leafing through another book to add to her stack for Hugh. “Isn’t that exciting news about little Cassie Greeson?” she said, looking up. “You know, I thought from the very first there was a resemblance between those two.”

Charlie turned away so Emmaline wouldn’t see her smile. “The woman who took her told Lottie her parents had been killed in an accident. Lottie said they moved around a lot, but she always believed she belonged
somewhere
.”

“It’s lucky for her that Kate Ashcroft decided to take a leave of absence, or those two might never have found each other,” Virginia said.

“Humph! I don’t think luck has anything to do with it,” Emmaline announced. “I happen to believe in fate.”

Charlie wondered if fate could be blamed for the fact that the woman who took Cassie happened to be fishing at Etowah Pond on the day of the picnic. Lottie said her “aunt’s” husband and baby had died in the influenza epidemic in the fall of 1918, and she believed the woman must’ve been looking for a child to take her place. Fate or not, Charlie thought, the two siblings had found each other now, and Lottie (or Cassie) continued to live with Bessie Jenkins and had taken a teaching position at one of the small county schools.

“I’m glad to hear they decided not to prosecute Rebecca Wyatt,” Virginia said, dislodging Cattus from her lap to tend the fire. “The poor woman’s suffered enough. Why, she was in the hospital for over a week with pneumonia, and Doc Morrison told me himself it was touch-and-go there for a while.”

“Well, she can thank our Suzy for pulling her through,” Emmaline said. “She nursed that woman day and night and rarely left her side. Hugh tells me Suzy has even put her in touch with a surgeon at Emory who might be able to help her.”

Our
Suzy? Was this the woman who was ready to round up a posse to have the young doctor tried for treason or worse? With one of the local doctors semiretired and the other in the service, Ben Morrison had welcomed Suzy with open arms and had taken her on as his assistant until she could find a permanent position. Charlie hoped she would decide to stay. She had also been working with Hugh in his preparations for applying to medical school, as well as helping him become adjusted to walking with his new prosthesis.

“I think the people here will accept Suzy when they’ve had a chance to get to know her,” Virginia said, forcing herself not to look at Emmaline. “However, we have to understand there are a lot of bad feelings against anything or anyone associated with Japan, so I expect it might take time.”

Emmaline shut her book with a bang. “Well, they’ll just have to get over it. Suzy may come from Japanese heritage, but she’s as American as you or I!”

A cold draft swept the room as Miss Dimple stepped inside and parked her purple umbrella by the door, setting aside a small bag of groceries. “Odessa needed a few more onions for tomorrow’s soup, so I told her I’d stop at Mr. Cooper’s.” She warmed her hands at the fire. “Isn’t it wonderful about Jesse Dean and his sister? He can’t seem to stop smiling.”

Virginia joined her in front of the blaze. “It’s almost like a miracle.”

“And that’s not the only one,” Dimple said under her breath with a sidelong glance at Charlie. “By the way,” she told her, “I know what happened to those missing paintings Isaac was looking for. Coralee told Sheriff Holland Mae Martha had asked her to hide them for her.”

“Where?” Charlie asked. “We looked in all the outbuildings there.”

Miss Dimple laughed. “But we didn’t look under her bed.”

Charlie smiled at her old teacher, feeling warmth not only from the fire but also from the closeness she felt with Dimple Kilpatrick. Rebecca had told them later that Isaac Ingram had been alone in her house to collect some of her work when the three of them went there to look for the paintings. Watching from a window, he saw them searching in the barn and knew they had probably seen what was stored there. When they ran inside the shed to escape the gunfire, he quickly slid the bar across the door so they couldn’t escape, and left them there after starting the fire. Rebecca saw the smoke as she was returning from mending the pasture fence and rushed to extinguish it, not realizing at first that there was anyone inside.

“Do you really think he meant to burn us alive?” Charlie had asked Rebecca.

“I honestly don’t believe he cared,” she told her. “But when I found you there and put out that fire, I realized he would be after me next. I knew what he had done to you and suspected he was responsible for killing Mrs. Hawthorne and Bill. He couldn’t afford to let me live.”

“Why didn’t you leave with us? Why not go to the police then?” Charlie asked.

“I was afraid. He had frightened me so about selling those paintings under Mrs. Hawthorne’s signature, I didn’t feel safe anywhere! Thank goodness he didn’t think to look for me at Mae Martha’s, or I don’t know what he might’ve done.”

*   *   *

Now Emmaline added the book to her stack and bundled herself into her coat, buttoning it to her chin. “I’d best get back and help Arden with supper,” she said, waiting for Virginia to stamp the latest addition, and Dimple could see she wanted to say more.

“Suzy tells us you all had been locked in that barn for several hours before she was able to reach a phone and call the sheriff,” Emmaline said. “You must’ve been terrified. What in the world do you think of at a time like that?”

“I thought of what I’d like to do to Isaac Ingram if I ever got my hands on him,” Charlie lied. What she’d actually done was compose in her head a long letter to Will—and pray a lot, of course.

“Well, he won’t be killing anyone else,” Virginia assured them. “The sheriff’s men found him loading his truck with Mrs. Hawthorne’s paintings—no telling how many he had in there. He’d been selling the ones Rebecca turned out and keeping most of hers for himself. It was obvious he was getting ready to clear out.”

Emmaline scooped up her armload of books and started for the door. “I wonder if he meant to come back and set fire to that barn.”

“I don’t think so,” Dimple told her, not daring to look at Charlie. “I believe all that wicked man wanted to do was put distance between us and those paintings.”

As she spoke, a stab as sharp and cruel as a hot poker began in her throat and plunged to the pit of her stomach. After Isaac left them in the barn that night she had heard something that filled her with dread, something the others hadn’t noticed:
Isaac Ingram had opened the stalls and led the cattle from the barn. He had been a farmer too long to destroy livestock unnecessarily.

“Oh, look!” she said as Emmaline stepped outside. “I think it’s beginning to snow!”

ALSO BY

Mignon F. Ballard

Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause

Miss Dimple Disappears

THE AUGUSTA GOODNIGHT MYSTERIES

Hark! The Herald Angel Screamed

The Angel and the Jabberwocky Murders

Too Late for Angels

The Angel Whispered Danger

Shadow of an Angel

An Angel to Die For

Angel at Troublesome Creek

The Christmas Cottage

The War in Sallie’s Station

Minerva Cries Murder

Final Curtain

The Widow’s Woods

Deadly Promise

Cry at Dusk

Raven Rock

Aunt Matilda’s Ghost

About the Author

Mignon F. Ballard grew up in a small town in Georgia. She is the author of
Miss Dimple Disappears
and
Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause
, along with seven mysteries featuring angelic sleuth Augusta Goodnight, and
The War in Sallie’s Station,
a novel about growing up in rural Georgia during World War II. She lives in Fort Mill, South Carolina, with her husband, Gene. Visit her on the Web at
www.mignonballard.com
.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

MISS DIMPLE SUSPECTS.
Copyright © 2013 by Mignon F. Ballard. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

Cover illustration by Jeff Foster

ISBN 978-1-250-00967-8 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-250-01280-7 (e-book)

First Edition: January 2013