Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble: A Mystery (Miss Dimple Mysteries)

by Ballard, Mignon F.

  “I’m afraid not,” Charlie mumbled. Somebody had to say something, she thought. She looked at the bookshelves, the walls, searching for a photograph of the man’s fiancée, but she didn’t see one. Annie, on the other end of the daybed, looked as if she might explode at any minute.

  “We came to see if we might get a copy of Prentice’s script from her last play,” Miss Dimple said at last. “The role was important to her, and I believe her aunt Elberta would like to have it as a reminder of happier times.”

  “That would be H.M.S. Pinafore.” He frowned. “I’m afraid I mailed those back. Have to pay a fee, you know, if you don’t return them on time. Some of the leads paid for theirs, didn’t want to give them up, but I’m almost sure Prentice turned hers in.” He started to say something more, then shook his head. “She was wonderful in that role,” he whispered finally.

  “Oh,” Miss Dimple said. She looked as if she might burst into tears at any moment. “Well, that’s a shame. We were hoping—”

  “Look, I won’t be able to get the same script Prentice used, but I can order one if you like,” Seth said. “At least I’d like to try.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Miss Dimple said, standing. She paused. “You knew Prentice, well, didn’t you, Mr. Reardon?”

  He flushed. “Of course … yes … I directed Prentice in several productions. She was a talented young lady.”

  Seth Reardon had started for the door and now he stood in the middle of the room, waiting for them to follow him and leave.

  “I wonder,” Miss Dimple continued, “if you might have noticed any interest she may have taken in a particular young man … an interest of a … well … a romantic nature, I mean.”

  If their mission hadn’t been so serious, Charlie would have been tempted to laugh at the older teacher’s demure act as Dimple fumbled in her purse for the familiar lavender-trimmed handkerchief and held it to her lips.

  He attempted a smile, and it was easy to see he was searching for a reply. “It’s been over a year since Prentice graduated, you know, but during that time I believe she was going with Clay Jarrett.”

  Looking him steadily in the eye, Miss Dimple tucked her hankie away. “Prentice admired you, Mr. Reardon, and shared your enthusiasm for the theater. I thought perhaps she might have stayed in touch.”

  His smiled vanished as he moved toward the door. “Other than running across her in town now and then, I haven’t maintained a relationship with Prentice Blair,” he said curtly. “I’ll see what I can do about getting the script you wanted, and will let you know when it arrives.”

  This is not going the way we planned it. Letting the others start downstairs ahead of her, Charlie turned when she reached the landing, to see Seth Reardon watching them from his doorway. “I wish you’d just tell us the truth,” she said. “Was there something going on between you and Prentice?”

  The man looked as if he’d been slapped. She wasn’t surprised when he didn’t answer.

  “Because if there was, Clay Jarrett’s getting the blame for something he didn’t do,” Charlie continued. “How long do you mean to let it go on?”

  Charlie gripped the stair railing. What had she done? Did she really expect the shock of her accusation to jar the man into confessing? The others stood at the foot of the stairs, mutely looking up at her. Now she’d done it for sure! She turned back to apologize, to try to explain her irrational behavior. For all she knew, the man could sue her for what she’d said.

  Seth Reardon stood silently crying.

  * * *

  “Believe me, I had nothing to do with what happened to Prentice,” he explained as they regrouped in his apartment a few minutes later. “I was attracted to her, I’ll admit. She was like someone out of a poem—so beautiful.… I don’t think she realized how beautiful she was. And kind.” Again he sat in the kitchen chair, his head in his hands. “And, too, we shared a love of the theater, so naturally I was drawn to her.”

  “So you were the one.” Charlie spoke without thinking, but it was too late to care.

  “‘The one’?”

  He raised his head and she saw that his face was flushed and streaked with tears. Miss Dimple looked at her with a warning glint, but Charlie continued in spite of it. “The one Prentice went all the—the person Prentice slept with,” she told him. Slept wasn’t exactly what she meant, but she wasn’t going to mention the word sex in the presence of Miss Dimple Kilpatrick.

  Seth Reardon sat straighter. “I came close to falling in love with Prentice Blair—and would have if I hadn’t stopped myself.” He spoke calmly, with a tinge of sadness in his voice. “Because of the age difference, you see … it would’ve been unfair to her. I had to come to terms with that.”

  Charlie looked at Miss Dimple, expecting her to speak, but Miss Dimple simply eyed him silently, as if she might be examining every molecule in the man’s body. Her expression didn’t change.

  “But not before you had your fun,” Charlie said. From what Clay reported, it had been fun for Prentice as well, but that wasn’t the point. “Isn’t there a rule against that sort of thing between teachers and students?”

  The man had the audacity to appear offended. “You are referring, I believe, to something that took place when that was no longer the case.”

  Annie leaned forward. “So when?” she asked.

  He looked from one to the other, as if deciding whether or not to reply, and finally took a deep breath and sighed. “Prentice asked for my help last spring while she was assisting with an Easter pageant for the children at her church,” he began. “It felt comfortable working with her again, and it all began on friendly terms. I assure you I had no intentions of it developing into a more personal relationship. After the pageant, our contact mainly took place by phone, and that’s when I learned she and Clay were having problems about the college issue. She needed someone to talk to, and I guess I made a sympathetic sounding board … and … well, after a time the two of us became intimate. I honestly didn’t mean for it to go as far as it did.”

  “When did you end this relationship?” Miss Dimple asked, her expression unchanging.

  He almost smiled. “Soon after it began. We were on the verge of becoming serious—too serious—and both of us agreed it was the right decision. Prentice looked forward to going away to college and I wanted her to enjoy the opportunities that accompany that—including dating. You may have heard I’m engaged to be married in December and I want you to know I do care deeply for Deborah. Now I suppose this will all come out.…”

  Miss Dimple’s words were swift and cold. “Surely you don’t expect us to be concerned about your marriage prospects when a young woman is dead. How are we to know you didn’t kill Prentice when she objected to your ending the relationship? Perhaps she threatened to tell your fiancée what had taken place.”

  The chair tottered as Seth Reardon jumped to his feet. “Prentice would never have done that! You must understand it was a mutual agreement, and I would never have hurt Prentice—never! It made me physically ill when I heard what happened.… I can hardly sleep for thinking about it. Believe me, I want to find the person responsible as much as, or even more than, most. Surely you don’t think I had anything to do with her death.”

  Silence hung like a dark, hovering cloud as the three faced him in accusation.

  “No! You don’t understand! I couldn’t have killed Prentice. I wasn’t even here when that happened. Ask—” He looked about, as if searching for a name. “Ask Florence McCrary downstairs—or Alma. They saw me leave. Ask anybody who knows me and they’ll tell you I was in Virginia visiting Deborah and her parents.

  “Here … wait a minute.…” Seth left the room abruptly and returned a few minutes later with two ticket stubs. “These were still in the pocket of the suit I wore on the bus. You can check with Clyde Jefferies at the Feed and Seed. He’s the one who sold me the ticket.”

  What could you say to that? Charlie found herself waiting for Miss Dimple to spea
k and noticed that Annie did the same.

  Dimple stood slowly. “Then who?” she said, and without looking to the left or to the right, walked sedately to the door.

  * * *

  “He could’ve gotten off the bus somewhere and come back without anyone seeing him,” Annie suggested as they walked slowly back to Phoebe’s. But Miss Dimple shook her head. “He had the return ticket as well. He’s telling the truth. I noticed the dates.”

  “I suppose he could’ve gotten those tickets from somebody else,” Charlie said, “but he knows we could check out his story with Clyde Jefferies.”

  “He did seem genuinely upset,” Annie mumbled almost to herself. “But of course that doesn’t excuse what he did,” she added after a look from Miss Dimple.

  “That’s not to say May-December romances are always a mistake.” Miss Dimple spoke almost as an afterthought, thinking of her own parents. Although in that case, her mother was a good bit older than her father. “I would imagine it depends on the people involved. It saddens me, though, that Prentice didn’t get the chance to go away to college.”

  “Or for anything else,” Annie added.

  * * *

  Later that evening, Annie and Charlie sat in deepening twilight on the Carrs’ large front porch, discussing what had happened that day. Earlier, Annie had attempted to get in touch with Frazier’s parents, but no one had answered the phone. Taking that as a positive sign, the two had spent the rest of the afternoon at the picture show to see the musical Girl Crazy with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, hoping it would take their minds off the troubles of war and the perplexing tragedy of Prentice’s death.

  For a while, it did exactly that, and afterward the two had danced all the way home, humming the music to “Fascinating Rhythm.”

  “I don’t think anybody can match Judy Garland’s voice,” Annie said later.

  “Prentice had a sweet voice,” Charlie commented. “Not in the same league as Judy Garland’s, of course, but she did have talent. I wonder what she might’ve done if she’d had the opportunity.”

  Annie reached out to touch her friend’s shoulder. “Well, don’t wonder,” she advised, speaking softly. “It only makes you sad and it won’t do any good.”

  “You’re right.” Charlie drank the last of her iced tea and set the glass on the floor with a thump. “It’s driving me crazy that we keep hitting a brick wall at every turn. There’s a murderer running around right under our noses, Annie, and you know as well as I do that the longer it takes, the fewer the chances they’ll ever find out who did it.”

  Annie watched their neighbors Bessie Jenkins and Marjorie Mote meet at the corner for their customary after-supper stroll around the block. “Leola must’ve seen something—or somebody thinks she did—and whoever it was probably suspected Prentice saw it, too, or that Leola told her about it right before she died.”

  Charlie nodded. “Thank goodness the creek stopped that fire before it got close to Leola’s. I think the police think it probably started when somebody threw a cigarette out of a car window, but I don’t know about that.”

  “What do you mean?” Annie asked.

  “I’m not sure, but you can bet your boots Miss Dimple has given it some thought. I’ll ask her about it tomorrow.”

  The screen door slammed as Jo Carr stepped onto the porch. “There’s pimento cheese in the Frigidaire if you two want to make sandwiches, and I think Delia left a few pieces of your aunt Lou’s chocolate meringue pie.”

  “What are we waiting for?” Charlie jumped to her feet. Her aunt was a fantastic cook, and with rationing, her pies were a rare delicacy. “Race you!” she challenged.

  * * *

  Her mother waited until they were safely inside before she hurried down the street to her sister’s house in the next block. She’d thought all along that fire hadn’t been an accident, and since she and Lou didn’t have to work at the ordnance plant tomorrow, it would be as good a time as any to see what they could find out.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “I don’t know about this, Josephine,” Lou Willingham said the next morning when her sister climbed into the car beside her.

  “Don’t know about what? Didn’t you say just the other day you wished you knew what Dimple Kilpatrick was planning? You know very well she’s up to her knees digging into that awful thing that happened to Prentice Blair—and your own niece and Annie Gardner right along with her.”

  Lou shifted gears to back into the street and stuck her arm out the window to signal a right turn at the corner. “But the police have already searched Leola’s place several times, haven’t they? What makes you think we can find out anything new?”

  Jo Carr gave her sister a bewildered look. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Louise! They’re men, aren’t they? When have you ever heard of a man finding anything? All I want to do is take a look around with a fresh eye so to speak.”

  Lou had to admit Jo had a point and she guessed it wouldn’t do any harm to take a quick look. “Well, I hope we don’t run into that weasel Jasper Totherow. Wasn’t it somewhere out there those two children stumbled onto what they thought was his body? And now it appears he just up and walked away. I don’t want anything to do with that one, dead or alive!”

  Jo agreed. It did seem Jasper had a habit of turning up like a bad penny when you least expected him. “I wonder how Bertie Stackhouse is doing,” she said as they passed the home she had shared with Prentice. “I wish there were something we could do for her, but nothing can ease the pain of losing a child.” Jo could empathize to a certain degree with that kind of grief, as her son Fain had been reported missing in action for several months earlier in the war. Later she learned he was recuperating from his wounds on a British hospital ship before returning to his unit in Tunisia. Now Fain was fighting in the European theater with Charlie’s Will, Delia’s young husband Ned, Frazier Duncan, and countless others, and she counted as a blessing every day without a visit from the boy on the black bicycle who delivered the dreaded telegrams.

  “She should sell that place and go on and marry Adam Treadway,” Lou muttered. “He’s waited long enough and I think it might be a good idea for her to get a fresh start somewhere else. Elberta’s only in her forties, isn’t she?”

  Jo nodded. Now in her mid-fifties, the forties didn’t seem so old anymore. “I think Bertie was reluctant to make any major changes until Prentice was more or less on her own. After all, this was her home, too.”

  “But that’s not all that’s been holding her back,” Lou said. “You know as well as I do there’s more to it than that.”

  And Jo did, but neither of them was going to say it aloud.

  * * *

  “It looks sad, doesn’t it?” Jo said as they approached Leola Parker’s place a few miles down the road. “Forlorn, and it’s only been a little over a month since Leola died.”

  “It looks like somebody’s cut the grass,” Lou said, sniffing the fresh green smell as they turned into the long dirt road leading to Leola’s place. “Mary Joy’s husband must’ve been here, or else they paid somebody to take care of it.” She parked beneath the dark green canopy of a blackjack oak and glanced at her sister beside her. “Well, we’re here. What are we supposed to do now?”

  Jo didn’t answer, but climbed out onto the hard-packed red earth and looked about. Leola’s small white cottage stood closed and shuttered at the top of a low hill with a series of stepping-stones leading to the front door. A crow cawed from somewhere in the woods behind the house and a blue jay scolded from a limb above them. It was such a peaceful place, she thought, and it saddened her to think something bad had happened here. Something like murder.

  Jo said as much to Lou, who, with great reluctance, had joined her. “What makes you think it was murder?” Lou asked. “From what I’ve heard, they seem to think Leola slipped and hit her head.”

  “But don’t forget about the fire,” Jo reminded her. “I overheard Charlie telling Annie that it might have been deliberatel
y set, and they’re planning to look into it with Dimple Kilpatrick. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they aren’t on their way here now.”

  “And you want to beat them to the punch?”

  Jo shrugged. “Something like that.”

  “Well then, what are we waiting for?” Lou moved quickly past her to see if she could find anything suspicious near Leola’s closed-up house.

  Jo Carr waited patiently while her sister circled the house, poking behind bushes and attempting to peek into shuttered windows. “I wish I knew what I was looking for!” Lou exclaimed at last.

  “Well, you’re not going to find it here. If somebody meant to set that fire, he obviously did it closer to the road. The fire never reached as far as the house,” Jo pointed out. “I think we should look in the other direction.”

  Walking slowly down the long drive that led to the road, Jo searched the area on one side and Lou covered the other. After crossing a narrow bridge, they discovered a wide splotch of scorched grass bordering the shallow stream that ran across the property. “This looks like where it might have been set,” Jo said. “See … it burned this patch here and then trailed off along the creek bank in one direction and meandered along the driveway to the main road in the other. I wonder if there’s anything under the bridge.” Climbing down from the road, she made her way through blackened singed grass where tender green blades were already beginning to peek through and shoved aside a head-high stalk of pokeweed to look underneath.

  “See anything?” Lou knelt on her hands and knees on the bridge above her.

  Jo shook her head. “Nope, but I don’t see how this fire could’ve been started by somebody tossing a cigarette from a passing car when this is the spot that received the most damage and it’s way too far from the road. It’s obvious the fire began here and then spread in two directions.” She looked about to see if anyone had left behind what would now have been the charred remains of a torch, but if that was what was used, it had been consumed in the fire.