Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble by Mignon F. Ballard Page A

their main meal in the middle of the day, most people referred to it as “dinner.”
    Velma Anderson agreed. “It’s tragic enough to come upon a stranger like that, but to find someone you love…” She shook her head. “I just can’t imagine.”
    Miss Dimple helped herself to the homegrown tomatoes. “You taught Prentice, didn’t you, Velma? Did you ever hear her speak of seeing someone other than Clay Jarrett?”
    “I only had her for typing her junior year,” Velma said, “and as far as I know, Clay was her one and only.” Slowly, she stirred saccharin into her iced tea. Sugar had been rationed since the beginning of the war, and although most objected to the aftertaste of the substitute, they rarely complained. After all, what good would it do? “Prentice was a good student,” she continued. “Well behaved, and so lovely. She had a leading role in her senior play, you know, and I believe she had some talent. Seth Reardon seemed to think so, too. I know he encouraged her.”
    “Ah,” Miss Dimple said, and made a mental note to return to that subject later. However, first things first, she thought, and as soon as dinner was over and everyone was seated in Phoebe’s comfortable parlor, where an electric fan whirred without much effect, she returned to the subject of Leola Parker’s death.
    “Do they know exactly how Leola died?” she asked Charlie.
    “The coroner said her heart gave out when she apparently slipped and hit her head on the bottom step,” Charlie said. “There was a gash on the back of her head.”
    She stood and went to the window, as if the sight of the pink climbing rose on the trellis by the porch would somehow lessen the grim reality of Leola Parker’s death.
    “Delia said Prentice told her Leola’s hands were still warm, but she couldn’t find a pulse, and her frantic attempts to revive her failed. That was when she saw the smoke.”
    “What smoke?” Annie asked.
    “It came from the underbrush on the other side of that little stream that crosses Leola’s property,” Charlie said, “and Prentice said it began as a wispy little curl and quickly spread into a billowing curtain of gray. She didn’t want to leave Leola, but what else could she do? Prentice ran inside and called an ambulance and the fire department, but she said it seemed to take them forever to come. Meanwhile, she sat out there and held Leola’s head in her lap while the fire spread along the dry grass until a section of the bank next to the road was smoking black.”
    Phoebe shook her head. “Poor child. She must’ve felt so alone. You know how far Leola’s house is from the road, and her driveway is almost lost in all those trees. Imagine having to wait there like that without a soul to call on for help.”
    Restless, Charlie leaned on the back of the sofa. She simply couldn’t sit and do nothing. It was too late to help Prentice, but it galled her to think the person responsible for her death was running around free. “Actually, the ambulance got there in less than ten minutes, but it must’ve seemed like hours to Prentice,” she said.
    “Leola probably saw or smelled the smoke and went outside to see what was going on,” Miss Dimple suggested.
    “That’s what Sheriff Holland thinks,” Charlie said.
    Velma nodded. “Some careless motorist must’ve thrown a cigarette into that dry grass, and that’s all it took, but I doubt if Leola’s place would’ve been in danger with that creek between her house and the road.”
    It was true, Charlie told them, that the fire had burned itself out by the time it reached the shallow brown water.
    But that hadn’t helped Leola Parker.
    *   *   *
     
    Dimple Kilpatrick experienced a brief surge of satisfaction as she walked past the Presbyterian church where Delia Varnadore played London Bridge with a number of five-year-olds in the grassy area in the building’s shade. Good. That should keep her safe for a while. She knew Delia was determined to