Miss Dimple Suspects by Mignon F. Ballard Page A

holly, and there’s a grove of short leaf pine there, too.”
    “How long were you gone?” Virginia asked.
    Suzy frowned. “An hour at least … couldn’t have been much longer. It felt good to be out in the cold air, and Max here went with me.” She smiled as the dog licked her fingers. “It gave him a chance to run, and he loves to chase sticks. I think we both needed the exercise.”
    Suzy’s face clouded. “Mrs. Hawthorne was in her studio when I left but she said she was going to start some stock to make soup for supper, so I thought I’d smell it simmering on the stove when I got back.” She smiled. “When she gets—got—all wrapped up in her painting, she tended to forget about everything else, so I thought about starting it for her … but then Max practically went wild barking.” Suzy set aside her mug, her eyes filled with tears. “And that was when I found her.”
    “Did you touch anything?” Annie asked. “Move her?”
    “Of course I moved her!” Suzy sat up straighter, her eyes sparked with anger. “She was on her stomach and I turned her over, tried my best to revive her, but it was too late. She’d been struck in the back of the head and there was no way she could’ve injured herself that way!”
    “Are you sure she was dead?” Charlie asked.
    Suzy looked at her silently. “Very sure,” she said finally.
    “And so you telephoned me from Esau’s,” Miss Dimple said.
    Suzy nodded. “No one was there but the door was unlocked. I had your number and didn’t know who else to call. I heard a truck drive up while I was talking to you and saw that it was Bill.” Suzy paused to dry her feet as Annie removed the tub of water. “Of all the people I might’ve turned to for help, Bill would be the last one I’d ask! He’s made it obvious from the start that he doesn’t trust me.”
    “Why?” Virginia and Annie spoke at the same time.
    Suzy spoke softly. “I imagine it’s because of my heritage. My parents came here from Japan.”
    Charlie held back a gasp. Would the silence never end? Although Miss Dimple had mentioned the possibility earlier, she had assumed, as had the others, that Suzy was of Chinese extraction. She and Annie had attended college with a girl from China, but she had never seen anyone from Japan except for the cruel soldiers in the newsreels. How had Suzy come to live among them during a time when most people cursed at the very mention of the name? The people of Japan weren’t only disliked; they, like the Germans, were hated by a good portion of the American public, and with good reason.
    And there, in Virginia’s green-painted kitchen by the heat of the Magic Chef oven, Suzy explained her presence there.
    *   *   *
    Although Mrs. Hawthorne’s grandson, Madison, was a couple of years behind her in medical school, she explained, they had been in some of the same classes at Emory, and the two had become friends while working on a project together. The war was into its seventh month when Suzy had received her medical degree the year before.
    She had planned to join her parents in California, where she was raised, Suzy told them, and go into practice there, but they had warned her not to return to the West Coast, as people of Japanese heritage were being moved to war relocation camps as far inland as possible from what the government had designated “military areas.”
    “They told me to stay where I was until things got better,” she said, her voice breaking. “They never got better. My father had to sell their home, and let his business go for practically nothing when my family was relocated to a camp in Utah, where they live with thousands of other people in barracks made of tar paper and wood.
    “One of my professors asked me to stay on as his assistant,” Suzy continued, “but he left to join the military just before Christmas. Then Madison enlisted soon after that and told me about his grandmother. Miss Mae Martha was suffering that winter from