Miss Dimple recognized the passage from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. “I believe we get the message,” she said, laughing. Of course everyone already knew what was in the letter Frazier had sent from Coustanus, a little town in Normandy. Several in his unit had been killed by Allied bombs during the breakout at Normandy in Operation Cobra in late July, and Frazier and another young officer became separated from the rest. Soon after that, the other officer was badly injured during fighting to take over a bridge from German troops.
Surrounded by the enemy and suffering himself with an infection from a wound on his leg, Frazier managed to get his injured captain to a bombed-out shell of a farmhouse, where the two survived on stale cheese and sprouting potatoes until American forces captured the bridges and neighboring towns, eventually driving the German army across France. The wounded officer was still recovering, but Frazier had since been reunited with his unit.
There was not one person in Phoebe Chadwick’s backyard that sunny September afternoon who didn’t join Annie in rejoicing over the news in her long-awaited letter, for all of them were united in the cause of victory, and every one of them had a loved one on some foreign shore.
And Miss Dimple Kilpatrick had more than anyone.
ALSO BY
Mignon F. Ballard
Miss Dimple Suspects
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 is the author of three previous Miss Dimple mysteries, along with seven mysteries featuring angelic sleuth Augusta Goodnight, The Christmas Cottage, and The War in Sallie’s Station, a novel about growing up in rural Georgia during World War II. She lives in her hometown of Calhoun, Georgia.
Visit her online 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 PICKS A PECK OF TROUBLE. Copyright © 2014 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 Gary Walton
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Ballard, Mignon F.
Miss Dimple picks a peck of trouble / Mignon F. Ballard. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-250-03562-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-03563-9 (e-book)
1. Women teachers—Fiction. 2. Elementary school teachers—Fiction. 3. Teenage girls—Crimes against—Fiction. 4. World War, 1939–1945—Georgia—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.A466M58 2014
813'.54—dc23
2013032597
e-ISBN 9781250035639
First Edition: February 2014
Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble: A Mystery (Miss Dimple Mysteries) Page 24
