Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause (28 page)

They had reached the middle of town before she realized she was crying. She didn’t try to hide it. Miss Dimple didn’t, either.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FIVE

“How did you know?” Virginia asked.

Miss Dimple set the bag of Halloween decorations inside the library door. “How did I know what?”

“You mentioned earlier that you were almost certain Jordan McGregor never contracted malaria from fighting in New Guinea. How did you know that?”

“Remember the blood drive at the Baptist church?” Miss Dimple carefully removed her purple hat with the velvet roses and set it aside. “I gave blood, of course, as did Coach McGregor.” She took time to tuck her hair into place before continuing. “The Red Cross would never have accepted blood from anyone who’d had malaria.”

*   *   *

H. G. Dobbins had just finished his shift at the county jail and was walking to his truck, thinking of that good-looking little teacher who had helped with the follies. He couldn’t get her off his mind. She pretended she didn’t want to have anything to do with him, but he knew she’d come around. Most of them did. A new restaurant had opened a few miles north of town—had a dance floor and everything, and he’d heard the food was pretty good. Maybe he’d just drive by that place where she lived and see if he could talk her into going with him.

He was about to back out of the parking lot when a city police car pulled in beside him and Bobby Tinsley got out and flagged him down.

“Whoa there a minute, will ya, H.G.? I need a word.”

H.G. rolled down his window. “Yeah? What’s going on, Bobby?” Maybe he should go home and change, he thought, before trying to see Annie. A shave and a change of clothes wouldn’t hurt.

Bobby Tinsley put one hand on the truck window and one on the door handle. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to come in with me, H.G. Shouldn’t take long, but we need a few minutes of your time.”

“What?” The deputy laughed. “Is this some kind of joke?”

But the police chief wasn’t smiling. “Some questions have come up, and we just want to be sure we have everything covered,” he said, opening the door of the truck and waiting for H.G. to step out of the vehicle.

“Questions about what? What’s this all about?” H.G. got out of the truck and slammed the driver’s-side door as hard as he could behind him. That little ass Bobby Tinsley had no right to treat him like this—no right at all, and he’d damn well better have a good explanation.

*   *   *

“Why didn’t you tell us you’d had a relationship with Cynthia Murphy?” Bobby asked him later at the police station.

“Cyn— Who told you that? My God! I thought the woman left here years ago—well, until that skeleton turned up.” H.G. looked about him. They had taken his revolver and had him sitting at a table in a little room not much bigger than a closet—like a common criminal!

“According to Reynolds Murphy, it hasn’t been that many years,” Bobby said. “Seems the two of you were seen together not too long before she disappeared. You wanna tell me about that?”

What H. G. Dobbins wanted to do was to take out a handkerchief and wipe his brow, but he knew that was a sure sign of guilt. “What makes you think I had anything to do with what happened to that woman?” he said.

Bobby smiled and shook his head. “A lot of folks call you Cowboy, don’t they? I mean you wear those boots and all.”

“So what? Is that some kind of crime?”

“Not that I know of,” the chief said, “but a couple of times Reynolds said he overheard a phone conversation between his wife and somebody she called Cowboy. She led him to believe, of course, it was perfectly innocent—”

H.G. slammed his hand on the table. “It’s been a long time since anybody called me that, and I’m not the only person with that nickname!”

“Probably not,” Bobby said, “and I doubt if Reynolds would’ve thought any more about it if he hadn’t learned recently that it used to be yours.”

“Now wait just a minute!” H.G. started to stand and then thought better of it. A second policeman, Fulton Padgett, was right outside the door, and he weighed more than two hundred and fifty pounds if he weighed an ounce. “I thought you were questioning Buddy Oglesby in that case. Weren’t he and Reynolds Murphy’s wife a pretty hot pair off and on for years? And I still think he might’ve had something to do with taking that War Bond money. You’re kinda wandering far afield, aren’t you?”

“We let Buddy go this morning,” the chief told him, “He said he was living in Savannah around the time Cynthia Reynolds disappeared, and the facts back him up. That doesn’t mean, of course, that he couldn’t have come back here and killed her. Right now we can’t pinpoint the date, but he’s not going anywhere. I can promise you that. As for the money, I don’t see how in the world we can hold him on that.”

H.G. forced a laugh. “So you plan to arrest me on the flimsy evidence that I’m sometimes called Cowboy! You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Oh, we can do a lot better than that. When Reynolds learned your nickname, he went to a few of those places outside of town he suspected his wife might’ve frequented, and a couple of people said the two of you were seen there together on more than one occasion—in fact, you were there with her just before she disappeared. They identified you by your picture in the
Eagle
. Remember? It was on the front page after they made that photo of all those folks in the womanless wedding.”

H.G. laced his fingers together and clenched them tight. Damn that woman! Cindy Murphy had been some doll, and when she got all decked out she looked like a million dollars. At the end of a night with Cindy, he’d never been disappointed, but she wasn’t worth this. Hell, no!

“I want a lawyer,” he said.

*   *   *

“I suppose that tale about her husband serving in New Guinea was just one of the many lies Millie McGregor told,” Virginia said. “I wonder why she did that?

“Give me a hand with this, will you, please, Dimple?” She was determined to carve a jack-o’-lantern for her upcoming Halloween party for Elderberry’s young readers. “You should be an expert at this you’ve carved so many. Should I draw the face on first?”

“I’m afraid the poor soul must have been a compulsive liar, and I suppose it made her feel important … such a shame … My goodness, Virginia, first, let’s make sure all the seeds are out!” With a large spoon, Miss Dimple raked and scraped the inside of the hollowed-out pumpkin and deposited the few remaining seeds in a large dishpan with the others. The two were taking advantage of a Sunday afternoon while the library was closed to decorate the cabin, and Virginia had spread layers of newspapers on the large rectangular table to protect it.

“Should we make it scary or funny?” Virginia asked. “I vote for scary,” she said, not waiting for an answer. “What about Adolph Hitler? He’s the scariest thing I know of. I could paint on the hair and the black mustache.”

“Good heavens, not
that
scary!” Dimple laughed when she realized her friend was joking. “How about a cat? We could use Cattus here for a model.”

And after a half hour or so of carving, in spite of Cattus’s refusal to cooperate, the pumpkin began to take on definite feline features, with long whiskers, slanted eyes, and sharp, pointed teeth.

Virginia dripped candle wax in the bottom to hold the stub of a candle and laughed as the jack-o’-lantern cast its flickering yellow glow about the dim room. “It does look like a cat, doesn’t it? The children will love it!”

Miss Dimple smiled. Virginia’s childlike delight in simple pleasures and her love of books and children were some of the things she especially liked about her friend because she shared them, too—although perhaps a bit more serenely. The smells of candle wax and pumpkin evoked happy autumn memories of her own childhood as well as the many years of Halloween festivities in her familiar classroom at Elderberry Grammar School, when grade mothers usually provided punch, candy corn, and cookies shaped like ghosts and goblins and entertained the children with games and stories.

“I think our children need a break from all the horrors of war, even if it’s just pretend—we all do,” Virginia said, as if she could read her mind. “I’ll bring some fall leaves from the yard to decorate the mantel, and Harris Cooper said he’d let me have some cornstalks from his victory garden.” She planned the party for Wednesday after school, and the children were invited to wear their scariest costumes.

Dimple scooped the pumpkin seeds into a pail to take back to Odessa, who would bake them slowly with oil and seasonings as a snack for everyone to enjoy, and they had finished cleaning up the mess they had made when someone tapped at the door.

Virginia frowned. She was in the process of buttoning her coat to leave. “Is that somebody at the door? Surely they know we’re not open today.”

“I’ll see,” Dimple said as the tapping came again. She opened the door to find Buddy Oglesby standing on the porch with a troubled expression on his face and a basket of apples in his hands.

“I was looking for Virginia, but I’m glad to see you’re here, too, Miss Dimple. I saw your car out front, Virginia, and hoped I might catch you here.”

“Come on in, Buddy,” Virginia said. “The library’s officially closed today, but if you came for a book I’ll be glad to help you. Mind you don’t bump into the skeleton there.”

Buddy stepped hesitantly inside the door, ducking under a jointed cardboard skeleton suspended from a rafter. Virginia had bought it for a dime at Murphy’s along with a ghost, a witch, and a haunted house, now scattered about the room. He didn’t seem to know what to do with the basket of apples and finally walked over and set it on her desk. “These are for you,” he told Virginia. “Winesaps. They’re supposed to be good … Oh, hell, Virginia, I don’t want a book. I just want you to forgive me. I did a stupid thing—well, several stupid things. I know I caused you a lot of grief. I didn’t mean to, and I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”

Dimple Kilpatrick walked quietly to a seat by the window, feeling very much the intruder. This was not her show. Virginia looked as if she didn’t know whether to continue standing or to sit. She finally decided to sit and invited Buddy to do the same.

She spoke in a low, halting voice. “Well, of course I’m disappointed, but the bond money was returned, and I’m thankful for that … Buddy, what in the world made you do such a thing? Stealing from the United States government—and at a time when our country needs—”

“What? Wait a minute!” Buddy held up a hand. “I didn’t take that money!”

“Then who did?” Virginia asked. “I thought you were trying to tell me you stole the money on the night you so conveniently disappeared.”

Buddy went to the door and opened it to see if anyone was outside, then stood with his back to the closed door. “Millie McGregor took that money, Virginia. It had to have been her, but it was my fault for trusting her.”

Apparently forgetting the presumed eavesdropper, he left his station by the door and began to pace. “Intermission was almost over, and you’d gone back to your seat when I—well—I had to use the bathroom. You and I had already tallied up the money, and Millie was keeping me company at the table in the lobby while we waited for somebody from the police department to come and collect it and put it in their vault until they could get it to the bank. She suggested I take advantage of her being there and take a quick bathroom break.” He ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “I got back in less than five minutes, I swear, so she had barely enough to time to take all the cash. It was already wrapped, labeled, and tucked neatly away in the bag. All she had to do was replace what she took with leftover programs from the follies.”

Virginia sat with a dazed look on her face. “I wonder if Millie was the one who called in that false report to the police station to keep them from getting there sooner.”

“Chief Tinsley thinks so,” Buddy said. “He checked with Hoot Mullins over at that Pure Oil station across the road, and Hoot said a woman came in and asked to use the phone just as they were getting ready to close. She must’ve called from there just before the follies started.”

“She planned it from the beginning…” Virginia Balliew looked as if someone had just told her the library was on fire. “Then it must’ve been Jordan who brought it back. Do you suppose he
knew
?”

Buddy frowned. “I really doubt it. Certainly not at first, and that must’ve been a difficult thing for him to do, don’t you think? I believe he ran across it while going through her things. She probably had it tucked away in her closet or a dresser drawer—someplace her husband wouldn’t ordinarily look.”

Virginia nodded. “I imagine he was looking for something for her to wear in the hospital … what a sad, sad development! I wonder—will we ever get past this?”

“We will, I think, when they know for sure who killed Cynthia Murphy.” Buddy turned and faced them. “And it wasn’t me!

“I’ll tell you why I left so abruptly the night of the follies,” he said, finally allowing himself to sit. “I was helping out at the props table on stage left when the shot was fired, and I knew whoever fired it thought I was on the other side. I feel awful about Jesse Dean, but thank God he’s going to be all right!”

Miss Dimple moved closer and took a seat next to Virginia. “Why do you think someone wanted to kill you, Buddy?”

His laughter had no humor. “Not
wanted. Wants,
because I think I know who killed Cindy Murphy, and I made the mistake of making him aware of it. Another stupid thing! If I’d just kept my mouth shut, he never would’ve suspected.”

“He? He who?”
Virginia asked him.

“Your friendly deputy, H.G. Dobbins, that’s who. He and Cindy were seeing one another right up until just before she disappeared, and she was in love with him. I know because she told me.”

“She
told
you?” Virginia took Cattus on her lap. She was soft and comforting and warm.

“That’s right. We dated some in high school and college, and even after she married she’d write or call me once in a while when she felt like getting together, but that stopped after Ross was born. I came back to find out if she’d see me again—just for old times’ sake, you know. You never got Cynthia Noland out of your system. I found that out the hard way, but she wasn’t interested. Told me she was in love with that imitation cowboy. Said they planned to run off together.