And bit by bit, the others filled in the necessary—and sometimes unnecessary—details.
Later at the police station, the four gave the particulars to Chief Bobby Tinsley, who thanked them for the information and told them he would get in touch if anything further was needed.
“Maybe we’ll get our pictures in the paper,” Ruthie said when the interview was over. But Willie was disappointed. Having read just about every book in the Hardy Boys mystery series, he had expected to be included in the actual investigation.
* * *
“Are they sure it was Hattie’s body they found?” Annie asked Miss Dimple when she reported the news. The two sat at the kitchen table with Phoebe after supper that night, cutting up apples to make applesauce from the tree by the back steps.
“It seems so from what remained of the clothing … and of course the size.” She didn’t want to go into details about how animals and insects had destroyed most of the flesh, but Bobby Tinsley had conveyed as much when she’d questioned him earlier about the dead person’s identity.
Phoebe frowned. “Oh, that poor thing! How long do they think she’s been … er … I mean, can they tell when this might’ve happened?”
“Not exactly, but they believe she’s been dead for at least two weeks—possibly three,” Miss Dimple told her. “In this hot weather and with all the humidity, it wouldn’t have taken long.”
Annie added a handful of apple slices to the pan on the table. “But didn’t Grady Clinkscales say he saw Hattie pushing her wheelbarrow not too long ago? Remember? He said he called to her but she acted like she didn’t hear him.”
Miss Dimple nodded. “And Clay claimed to have seen her, too. She was collecting bottles somewhere near the high school.”
“But she didn’t turn them in,” Annie added. “We found the wheelbarrow still full of bottles behind her trailer.”
Phoebe frowned as she sliced an apple into fourths. “Then somebody must’ve been pretending to be Hattie. Why in the world would they do that?”
“I suppose they didn’t want anyone to know when she died,” Dimple said. “There doesn’t seem to be any doubt she was killed intentionally.”
“Do they know how?” Annie asked.
Together, Dimple and Phoebe lifted the full pan of apples to the stove, where they added lemon wedges and water. Dimple clamped a lid on the pot and paused to dry her hands on her apron. “Dr. Morrison said she probably died of a broken neck. He believes she either fell or was pushed from the ledge above the place where she was found. There’s a steep incline there and it must’ve been dark, as they found a flashlight beneath her.” She hesitated before telling them that investigators had also found what once had been rose petals scattered near the body.
“Well, she couldn’t have been killed by the Rose Petal Killer,” Annie pointed out. “He was already locked away by then.”
“I suppose whoever killed her didn’t know that,” Phoebe said. “It wouldn’t take much of a fall to break those brittle old bones.” She shook her head. “Bless her heart, the town won’t seem the same without her. I’m going to miss that old bird, even if she did help herself to my Queen of Denmark rose. Remember, Dimple? I had it out by the corner of the house, and then one morning I looked out and it was gone. Nothing left but a hole in the ground!”
Annie admitted the old woman had acquired quite a collection. “Maybe you could go over there and dig it up,” she suggested. But Phoebe made a face and shook her head. “No, thank you. The very idea would give me nightmares. I think I’ll just leave well enough alone. “What I can’t understand,” she added, “is what she was doing down there by the river in the first place, and it must have been dark, since she had a flashlight with her.”
“Chief Tinsley seems to think she was headed for that old fishing shack down there,” Dimple explained. “She’s used it some in the past, and he said she’d go there to collect bottles from time to time.”
“But the wheelbarrow wasn’t with her when she was found,” Phoebe began. “So…”
“So whoever took it was the one who killed her,” Annie finished.
But why? Why would anyone want to kill harmless Hattie McGee?
The pleasant smell of stewing apples filled the kitchen. When they were tender, they would put them through a food mill, add sugar and cinnamon, and simmer them a little longer. A cheerful late-summer task shared with friends. Dimple would have liked to bask in the comfort of it, but something was very wrong in this town, and she couldn’t rest until she learned the reason behind it.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Virginia Balliew stamped the return date in the mysteries Dimple had selected from the library and nuzzled the big orange cat in her lap. Cattus meowed a complaint and jumped to the window ledge behind her, almost knocking over a bud vase with its one yellow blossom from the bush by Virginia’s front steps. “Ungrateful wretch!” Virginia mumbled.
The flower reminded Dimple of Hattie and her strange passion for other people’s roses and she frowned as she accepted the books, stacking one on top of the other. The walk to the library that morning had refreshed her, and for a few minutes she had put the gloomy puzzle of Hattie’s death and the murder of young Prentice Blair from her mind.
Virginia looked up at her and smiled. “Why so sad and wan?” She knew, of course, that Dimple would be fretting over what had happened to Hattie McGee. “You must know, Dimple, that you can’t cure all the ills of the world. As much as you would like to, you can’t make all the bad things go away.”
Dimple sighed. “Well, at least I can try. I don’t understand this, Virginia, and I’m concerned about Chloe Jarrett and Clay, and … well, Knox, too. They’ve had to deal with this awful thing that happened to Prentice, and now Hattie has—”
“Well, from the look on your faces, I see you must’ve heard the news.” Lou Willingham, her arms full of books, bustled inside and bumped the door shut with her ample rear.
Virginia looked up. “Right. We were talking about Hattie McGee.”
Lou deposited her books on the return table and shook her head. “Poor Hattie! What a terrible way to go.… Makes me sick to think of it, but I was talking about Clay Jarrett. Did you know they arrested him this morning for Prentice Blair’s murder?”
Dimple reached out and gripped the corner of the desk in front of her. “Then they’ve made a big mistake,” she said. “Whatever led them to come to that conclusion?”
“It doesn’t look good, Dimple,” Lou said. “The police found Prentice’s high school class ring in the glove box of that old truck Clay drives.”
“What kind of evidence is that?” Dimple Kilpatrick came close to sputtering. “The two were a couple for over two years, weren’t they?”
“Whoa! Don’t shoot the messenger.” Lou held up a hand. “Bertie had planned to bury Prentice with that ring, but Prentice wasn’t wearing it when she died and Bertie was sure she’d had it on the morning she disappeared.”
“So why wait this long to mention it?” Virginia asked.
Lou shrugged. “I suppose she thought it would turn up, but after she searched through Prentice’s jewelry box and practically turned the house upside down looking for it, with no luck, Bertie finally called in Bobby Tinsley.
Virginia frowned. “How can they be sure how that ring got there? It seems to me Bobby Tinsley’s looking for easy answers.”
“There aren’t any easy answers,” Dimple said. “As I’ve said before, I believe this all hinges on what happened to Leola Parker.”
Lou pulled up a chair and dabbed her moist face with a pink-flowered hankie. “Law, it’s as hot as Hades already out there.… But that’s just the point, you see, now the police are beginning to think Clay Jarrett started that fire because he was upset with Leola.
“Listen, I know it doesn’t make sense,” she added when the others protested. “I can’t for the life of me imagine Clay doing anything so downright mean and underhanded. It’s simply not in him. It looks to me like
somebody was trying to frighten Leola off her land.”
“But why would they do that?” Virginia asked.
“Perhaps her daughter can give us some answers,” Dimple suggested. “I think Mary Joy still lives in Covington. I’ll try to get in touch.”
But first she must go, she decided, and lend her support to the Jarretts.
* * *
“Thank goodness you’re here,” Knox Jarrett said as he greeted Dimple when she arrived later that day. Chloe’s sitting in the parlor. It’s dark as pitch in there, but she won’t let me open the shades and I can’t get her to talk to me. I don’t know what to do.”
“I’ll speak to her,” Miss Dimple said softly, taking his hand in hers. She noticed he had at least two days’ growth of beard and his eyes were red and bleary with worry, and no doubt lack of sleep, as well. She left him there in a front porch rocker with an old Collie dog for comfort and company and was glad to see Walter Dunnagan, the family minister, arriving right behind her.
Chloe Jarrett sat rigidly in a Victorian chair that looked uncomfortable, but if it was, she didn’t seem to notice or to care. She wore a light cotton housedress and blue bedroom slippers—or at least Dimple thought they were blue. It was hard to see in the dimness of the room. Chloe’s hands were clasped on her lap and she didn’t seem to notice when Dimple entered the room, although Dimple made a point to close the door firmly behind her and walked with steady steps to approach her.
She chose a straight chair and moved it to sit facing the woman. “Chloe,” she began, “why are you sitting in here in the dark? Preacher Dunnagan is here with Knox. Why don’t you come and join them on the porch?”
But Chloe didn’t answer and she didn’t change her expression, and for a few seconds, Dimple found herself thinking of Brer Rabbit’s conversation with the Tar Baby, a favorite tale of her schoolchildren.
Miss Dimple took a deep breath, asked her Creator for patience, and sat with the woman in silence until Chloe began to fidget ever so slightly, first by shifting one foot a half inch or so, then raising a couple of fingers.
“How is this helping Clay?” Dimple persisted. “He needs your support now more than ever, and so does your husband.” Reaching out, she took Chloe’s slender hand, worn and freckled with all the cooking, scrubbing, and canning from her years on the farm. “You’re bigger than this, Chloe Jarrett, and you’re not in this alone.”
A shiver went through Chloe’s frail body and then a sigh and a gasp. She began to cry, softly at first, and then the floodgates opened. Miss Dimple was glad she had thought to bring an extra handkerchief, as both were pressed into service.
“Oh, Dimple, you should’ve seen my boy when they took him away! I felt so helpless, like we had abandoned him, and there was nothing we could do.” Chloe pressed the first hankie to her mouth and reached for the second.
“He knows very well you haven’t abandoned him, and neither have we,” Dimple assured her. “We have to be strong for Clay, for each other.” Dimple went to the window and raised the shade to let sunlight stream across the floor.
“We’ve known Bobby Tinsley all his life and he’s known us. How can he possibly think our Clay did all the things they say he did? He swears he doesn’t know how that girl’s ring got in his car. Why won’t they believe him?” Chloe blinked in the sunlight and shifted in her chair. “Whoever put that ring in there is the one who killed Prentice Blair!
“Now they’re claiming he might’ve had something to do with what happened to Hattie McGee! Clay was fond of that crazy old woman, Dimple. He really cared about her. Why would he have wanted to hurt Hattie?” She sniffed and looked about for another handkerchief, but Dimple hadn’t brought another backup, so she made do with what she had.
“Of course he wouldn’t,” Dimple assured her. “We all know that.”
Chloe rose and went to the window, twitched at the lace curtain hanging there. “Did you know the only prints they found on that wheelbarrow were Hattie’s? Somebody brought it back here, Dimple, somebody dressed like Hattie. It was left behind her trailer—not far from the Shed.… Anybody could’ve done it.”
Through the open window they heard low voices from the porch, where the Methodist minister was consoling or attempting to console Knox, and Dimple took inspiration from it. “You must know, Chloe, that the community is behind you. We know Clay and we believe in his innocence.”
“So why did they arrest him?” Chloe asked, facing her.
“I assume it’s because the evidence—what there is of it—points to Clay. And there’s nobody else in the picture—at least right now. But I told you in the beginning I would help find out the truth, and I will.”
She was relieved to see a glimmer of hope in Chloe’s eyes. “The phone has been ringing all day, but I just didn’t have the courage to answer it,” Chloe said. She smiled as she held out a hand. “Knox and I will be mighty grateful, Dimple, for anything you can do … and now, I guess I’d better go out and speak to Walter.”
Dimple Kilpatrick straightened her shoulders. Like John Paul Jones, she had not yet begun to fight.
* * *
“I wonder who might have the telephone number for Leola’s daughter, Mary Joy,” Dimple remarked to Phoebe when she reached home that afternoon. “I suppose I could ask Elberta, but with Clay being arrested for what happened to Prentice, I don’t think that’s such a good idea right now.”
“Odessa might know,” Phoebe suggested. “I think a cousin of hers married one of Leola’s nieces, or something like that,” and she hurried to the kitchen, where Odessa was chopping vegetables for a pot of soup for supper.
“Odessa doesn’t know,” she said upon returning. “Her cousin moved to Detroit a couple of years ago and she doesn’t have his number, but she said Leola’s preacher might have it. It’s the Reverend Abraham Lincoln Hamilton and I think he lives over on Blossom Street. He should be in the phone book.”
Dimple smiled. She knew the Reverend Hamilton. The two had worked together on a paper drive back in the spring, but the preacher wasn’t in and his wife said she knew they had that number somewhere but she just couldn’t put her hands on it.
Miss Dimple went to the porch and sat in the rocking chair in the lengthening shade of the willow oak in the front yard. Clay had been arrested and the truth wasn’t going to wait. She needed to get in touch with Mary Joy tonight. Surely somebody would know how to help her. It would have to be someone Leola had trusted to get in touch with her daughter if trouble arose or if she became ill. She could try the Reverend Hamilton later and hope he still had the number, and of course there was Elberta, but only as a last resort. Who else might Leola ask to contact Mary Joy in case of an emergency? Miss Dimple rocked a little faster … and then the answer came.
Inside in the hallway, she picked up the telephone. “Florence, get me Dr. Morrison, please.” And after a few minutes’ wait, the good doctor picked up the phone. Yes, of course he had the number, he said. He would never forget the dark day he’d had to call Mary Joy to tell her about her mother, and after a period of paper shuffling, he gave Dimple the information she wanted.
“I know it’s none of my business,” he said before hanging up, “but do you mind telling me just what you have in mind?”
“I’m hoping Mary Joy might have some idea about why anyone would want her mother off her land,” Dimple told him. “And remember, this is between the two of us, Ben.”
Ben Morrison smiled to himself. “And you remember, I’m very good at keeping secrets, Dimple Kilpatrick.” Never in this lifetime would he let anyone know she had a bright pink birthmark in the shape of a rabbit on the outside of her right thigh.
Mary Joy’s husband, Luther, answered the phone when she finally got connected almost ten minutes later, and Dimple could hear Florence McCrary’s loud breathing as she listened in from her switchboard. Florence had a touch of asthma and the rasping gave her away every time.
“Thank you, Florence!” Dimple spoke loudly before ide
ntifying herself to Luther and was gratified to hear a dead silence on the operator’s end. But Mary Joy, she learned, had left the day before to take care of Luther’s elderly mother after some kind of surgery he was reluctant to discuss, and he expected her to be away for at least a week.
“Do you have a phone number or some way I can get in touch?” Miss Dimple asked. But Luther’s mother didn’t have a telephone and lived several miles away, out in the country, not too far from Griffin, Georgia, he told her.
Determined now, Dimple persisted. “Just which side of Griffin? Can you give me some directions? I really need to see her and I don’t have much time.”
“Well … it’s between Zebulon and Orchard Hill, only you turn left before you get there. There’s a little old store on the right—has a rooster painted on it—and you’ll see a silo right before you turn, but don’t go past Robinson’s Mill. Road’s awful bad there and you’ll have to turn around and backtrack. Her name’s on the mailbox—Maisie Hodges. Can’t miss it,” Luther added.
Miss Dimple thanked him and, feeling thoroughly confused, went in search of pencil and paper to jot down the directions.
Annie eagerly agreed to go with her the next day, hoping it would keep her from dwelling on the weeks that had elapsed since she’d heard from Frazier. The night before, she had reread his letters until the words blurred together. She knew he had survived the D-day invasion of Normandy and was literally crawling inch by inch and foot by foot to help drive the German army out of France; and on July 28, American forces had captured the key town of Coustances. So where was Frazier Duncan?
Charlie was willing to drive if the others would share their gas rations, as gasoline was still in short supply. She hoped Mary Joy would be able to tell them something, as there didn’t seem to be any other leads.
Later in her room, Charlie sat down to write to Will and told him in her letter about the children finding what was left of Hattie McGee, but she didn’t tell him the authorities had determined it wasn’t a natural death. Although Will was entertained by her tales of adventures with Miss Dimple and Annie, he was concerned they were taking chances with their own safety after he learned of the danger they had encountered only a few months before. But it was nothing, she thought, to the perils he faced every day. He never mentioned his time in the air or the close calls she knew he’d had. She did know he had lost several good friends and she lived in fear the next one would be him.
Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble: A Mystery (Miss Dimple Mysteries) Page 16
