Miss Dimple and the Slightly Bewildered Angel (5 page)

“I understand,” Augusta said, smiling, but it was obvious to Dimple that she didn't. The misunderstanding, however, was soon forgotten when they sat down to a succulent fish stew with yeast bread warm from the oven.

Phoebe started to ask where Augusta had found the fish, as she hadn't seen any lately at Shorty Skinner's, but she decided she really didn't care, and helped herself to a second bowl.

Miss Dimple was quiet as she and Annie cleared the table after supper. Augusta had declined offers to help, saying it would take her only a minute, but Dimple pretended she didn't hear, and Annie followed suit. Both were curious to find out how the new boarder accomplished things in such a great hurry. Annie smiled as she stacked empty bowls on a tray, while from the kitchen she heard Augusta humming to music from the radio. Was that Bing Crosby's recent recording of “Swinging on a Star”? Over Augusta's attempts at singing, it was hard to tell for sure.

Miss Dimple seemed preoccupied as she gathered the soiled silverware and added it to the tray with a clatter. “Is everything all right?” Annie asked. Her respect for the older teacher had deepened into friendship during her past two years in Elderberry, and she had learned that when Dimple Kilpatrick was concerned about something, there was usually a good reason.

Miss Dimple dismissed her question with a wave of her hand. “Oh, it's nothing really. It's just that the mention of that town in Tennessee made me think of some friends I once knew near there.”

“Lewisburg? Do you suppose they're still there?”

But Miss Dimple shook her head, and there was an expression in her eyes that Annie had never seen before. “I'm afraid it's been far too long,” she said. “Now, let's get these dishes into the kitchen and give Augusta a hand.”

But she couldn't hide the flicker of sadness in her eyes.

The scene that greeted them in the kitchen, however, made the two break into laughter. To the music of the King Cole Trio's “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” Augusta whirled about the room, twirling a dish towel in time to the music. Noticing she had company, Augusta reached for Annie's hand and drew her into the dance, while Dimple, finding it impossible to maintain her dignity, collapsed into a chair and laughed until the tears came.

“Oh my goodness,” she said, wiping her eyes with her ever-present handkerchief. “I don't know when I've laughed so hard.”

Before they knew it, Augusta had submerged the dishes in a sinkful of bubbles, and in a blink, it seemed, they were sparkling clean. “Laughter can be as cleansing as these suds,” she said, flinging her apron aside. “I find it wise to air one's emotions from time to time rather than holding them inside.

“And, by the way,” she said to Miss Dimple, “I looked in the reference book as you suggested, and you are right about the water oak. There are many things, I'm learning, that I need to review.”

Review what? And where had Augusta been that she found this necessary?

Miss Dimple thanked her and smiled, knowing she'd been right about the trees all along. But she had a very strong feeling Augusta's comment about emotions had been directed to her, and her alone.

How could she possibly know?

 

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

“Sure sounds like murder to me. Drat! Looks like I've been missing all the excitement!” Charlie Carr leaned against the back entrance of the faded brick building that housed grades one through four at Elderberry Grammar School and watched her small third-graders chase one another on the playground. As a child, Charlie had gone to school in these same classrooms, and two years before had returned to her hometown to teach, bringing along Annie, her college roommate, who now taught beside her.

“Fie, fie on you!” Annie told her, misquoting her favorite source, the bard. “The poor woman has ‘shuffled off her mortal coil!' I do believe you're ‘as cold as any stone.'”

Charlie looked silently at her friend for a moment and then brought her hands together. “Oh-h-h,
very
good, but I don't think they're holding auditions for Shakespeare this week.”

The day after Dora's tragic accident, the whole town of Elderberry had learned of her death, and of course Annie had filled Charlie in on the woman's disappearance from Phoebe's.

“The chief says her last name was Westbrook and she lived somewhere in south Georgia … but get this—he said she'd left home a couple of days before and nobody knew she was gone because her husband had spent the night on the farm with a sick calf and wasn't aware she'd left. Said her husband seemed—

“
Donald Lee Thompson, you put down that stick right now!

“Now … where was I? Oh, yes … said her husband was worried to death and went out looking for her.”

Charlie frowned as she pulled her sweater closer about her. “Did the chief say why she left home?”

Annie told her of Bobby Tinsley's conversation with Dora's mother-in-law, and how police had now found the bag Dora carried. “He said as far as he knew, everything was still inside, including some money.”

“Where did they find it?” It was time for the bell to end morning recess, and Charlie clapped her hands to summon the children to form a line.

“In a trash can at the depot,” Annie told her, doing the same.

“Then how can they believe her death was an accident?” Charlie asked over the clanging of the bell.

The only reason Dora would climb that ladder would be to hide or get away from someone, she thought. Was her killer somebody who wanted whatever she carried—or what he
thought
she carried—in that paper bag?

“And now somebody has tried to drag Jesse Dean into it,” Annie said as they herded the children inside, and she told Charlie about the cookie delivery to the church. “What if it's somebody we know—somebody right here in Elderberry?”

What would Miss Dimple have to say about it? Charlie wondered. Unlike her, the older teacher usually reserved her opinions until she had more of the facts. Still, it seemed odd that no one had mentioned the woman's mysterious death when the three had chatted that morning before the children arrived. In fact, Miss Dimple had little to say at all.

“Does Miss Dimple seem unusually quiet today to you?” she whispered to Annie as the children lined up at the water fountain inside.

Her friend nodded. “Seems to have something to do with a town in Tennessee. Chief Tinsley said Dora had a sister there, and I noticed she didn't have much to say after he mentioned that place, only that she used to know somebody there.”

*   *   *

“Virginia,” Dimple said to her friend when she dropped in at the library that afternoon, “do you think I hold my emotions inside?”

Virginia looked up from her position on the floor, where she was reshelving books, and brushed a stray lock of once-red hair from her face. “Why do you ask?” she said, struggling to her feet.

“It's just a remark someone made about it being wise to air one's emotions rather than hold them inside.” Dimple stooped to stroke Cattus, who immediately jumped to the top of a shelf. “I feel certain it was directed at me.”

Virginia frowned. “Who? Who said that to you?”

“She didn't exactly say it
to me,
but I sensed the implication.”

“She? Who is
she
?” With one arm, Virginia scooped the cat from the shelf and set her on the floor.

“Augusta, our new boarder.” Dimple explained how the newcomer had come in answer to a notice Phoebe had posted in Cooper's Store. “It was the strangest thing,” she added. “She just appeared at the door wearing a huge green cape and carrying a handbag I believe I could climb inside.” She sighed and shook her head. “Most unusual woman—seems a bit fey, as if her feet aren't firmly on the ground, but I'll have to admit, she makes the best waffles I've ever put in my mouth, and her fish stew? Virginia, it's absolutely
heavenly
!”

“And she's staying at Phoebe's? Where?”

“In that room across from the kitchen. It's been used mainly for storage since the last boarder left. And that's another thing,” she added. “It took all of us most of an afternoon to clear that room of its contents, but by suppertime she had it looking like something out of
Good Housekeeping.
”

“Did she say where she's from?” Virginia asked.

“I assumed she was from some kind of agency, because she mentioned something about ‘being assigned'—and apparently in a hurry—but Phoebe seems to think she came because of her notice.”

“Dimple Kilpatrick.”
Virginia took her friend by the hand and led her to a chair. “Did it ever occur to you that this stranger might've had something to do with what happened to Dora?”

But Dimple smiled and shook her head. “Not at all,” she said.

Taking a seat beside her, Virginia Balliew sighed and wondered for a second or two if her friend wasn't the one who was fey. “Do you mean it hasn't occurred to you at all, or that you don't consider that a possibility?”

“Both. Augusta had nothing to do with Dora's death,” Dimple said.

“And how do you know this?”

“I know she would never do anything evil. You'll understand when you meet her.” The woman was curiously perplexing, and, yes, Dimple thought, a bit full of herself. Yet Augusta appeared to have a way of getting people to do as she wanted without their ever knowing it. And what's more, they seemed to enjoy doing it.

Virginia helped Dimple select a book on home decorating that Phoebe had requested, as she'd decided to spruce up her bedroom, and her friend was getting ready to leave when Virginia asked if she'd heard from her brother.

Dimple hesitated at the door. “Henry?”

“Yes,
Henry.
As far as I know, that's the only brother you have,” Virginia said.

Having remembered what she'd promised, Dimple was eager to avoid the question. “Not yet, I'm afraid,” she murmured.

“Then you know what you have to do,” Virginia reminded her.

“But don't you think that's a bit harsh? Poor Henry! A telegram might frighten him to death.”

“He deserves to be frightened. Besides, Henry's a big boy now, Dimple. He should be ashamed for worrying you so.”

“All right, Virginia. I'll send the telegram tomorrow.”

“Would you like me to go with you to the telegraph office?” Her friend's voice was soft.

Dimple smiled. “Thank you, Virginia, but I'm a big girl now, too, you know.”

She had started across the street before it occurred to her that her friend hadn't answered the question she'd gone there to ask.

*   *   *

Dimple didn't know what made her look back, other than the fact that she always liked looking at this peaceful place set surely by God's hand among the glossy magnolias and winding walks. But today it didn't seem peaceful, and Dimple didn't know why. There seemed to be an aura about it, a cold, gray, shivery something, and Dimple drew her purple tweed jacket closer and clutched Phoebe's decorating book to her chest like a shield. Peering through bifocals, she looked closer. Was that someone standing under the magnolia by the porch? A slight breeze ruffled the tree's dark leaves and she thought she saw movement there. A limb shifting with the wind? The shadow of a person?

“You are letting your imagination run away with you, Dimple,” her mother would have told her, as she had many times years before. “You're too old now to believe in fantasies.”

But Dimple Kilpatrick had never grown too old for fantasies. And this, she decided, was no fantasy. Straightening her shoulders, Dimple marched right back across the street to the library and burst without ceremony into the book-lined room.

Virginia, who had been tossing a handful of wilted chrysanthemums into the trash can, looked up, startled, empty vase in hand. “Good heavens, Dimple! You look like the hounds of hell are on your trail. What on earth is the matter?”

Dimple had to stop and calm herself before she could speak, and she was perturbed at the tremor in her voice. “I don't mean to alarm you, Virginia, but I believe there is someone just outside who might possibly be up to no good.”

“How do you know? Did you see somebody?” Virginia set the vase aside and wiped her hands on her skirt.

With effort, Dimple resisted the impulse to offer her friend the use of her lace-edged handkerchief. “I just know, Virginia. You're going to have to believe me. Something is very wrong. I want you to telephone the police, and tell them to come quickly.” And with those words, she stepped briskly to the door and slid the bolt into place.

Virginia Balliew had depended on her friend in too many times of trouble to ignore her now, and so she did as she was told.

Of course Officer Warren Nelson, who answered the phone, wanted to know the emergency.

“Will you just get over here, Warren? If Dimple Kilpatrick says there's cause for alarm, then there's cause for alarm. Now, hurry!”

And being familiar with Miss Dimple, the policeman didn't argue, but checked the revolver at his hip, grabbed his hat, and drove the three blocks to the library, going at least ten miles an hour over the speed limit.

Watching from the window behind the checkout desk, the two women saw the police car pull up out front and heard Warren shout “Halt!” as he stepped from the vehicle. “Halt!” he yelled again, and then disappeared from view.

“Where is he?” Virginia asked. “Can you see where he went?”

Dimple hurried to a window by the porch and leaned against the glass, but the light was already fading, pitching the area into deep shadow. Hardly daring to breathe, she listened until the crackling of branches and rustling footsteps faded into silence. Had something happened to Warren? Thank goodness she hadn't heard gunfire. Still, Dimple began to wish they hadn't called for help.