When he couldn’t dislodge the mistletoe with a long stick, Willie scampered up the tree squirrel-like while the two women waited below, gathering it as it fell. Charlie had already decided that she would be Willie’s first customer just in case Will could get a break from advanced flight training and somehow manage to make it to Elderberry. She smiled at the thought. Of course they wouldn’t need mistletoe! Annie’s fiancé, Frazier Duncan, had shipped out with his company a few weeks before and she wasn’t even sure where he was.
“All right, Willie, that’s enough!” Annie called as the pile grew. “You’ll be rich enough to buy out the store if you sell all this!”
“Come on down now!” Charlie shouted, joining in. “Be careful—watch your step.”
“I’m coming.” Willie reluctantly began his descent but hesitated halfway down the tree.
“Come on, Willie! It’s time to go! What are you waiting for?” Annie called.
“Miss Annie, there’s … somebody down there.…” The child spoke haltingly.
“What do you mean?” Annie strained to look about. “Where?”
“Over there—it looks like a man, and he’s lying in the creek!” Willie Elrod came down from the tree swinging like Tarzan from limb to limb and grabbed each of his teachers by the hand. “Oh, lordy! We gotta get outa here! It looks like he’s dead!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Willie Elrod, that’s not funny!” Annie leaned down to speak to him face-to-face, although as short as she was, she didn’t have far to lean.
But Charlie could see by the child’s expression he was genuinely frightened and tightened her grip on his hand. “Where is he, Willie? Show us.”
“Over there—in the creek.” Willie pointed but still hung back.
“He might be hurt,” Annie said, moving closer. “We have to make sure.”
“Be careful!” Charlie warned, following her. “Willie, you stay right there!”
The man lay facedown with his head and shoulders submerged in the muddy waters of a shallow creek, and Charlie knew as soon as she saw him, he was beyond help.
Annie knelt beside him and pulled at the wet, rough cloth of his jacket. “Oh! I can’t…” Turning her face away, she tugged once more and with Charlie’s help, managed to drag the inert body from the water. The man’s dark hair was plastered to his head with mud and water and Charlie hesitated before touching his face, but what if there was a chance he might still be breathing?
He wasn’t. The dead man’s face was cold and blue, and mud and debris from the creek had become lodged in his nose and mouth. His eyes were open and covered in a bluish film, but even with the distortions of death, Charlie recognized Mae Martha’s handyman, Bill Pitts.
“Oh, please, Miss Annie, let’s go!” Willie called. “I done got the heebie-jeebies! They’s haints around here—I just know it! Everybody knows ole’ Raw Head and Bloody Bones hangs around water, and he’s probably got his eye on us next. Come on, Miss Charlie! It’s almost dark.”
“Don’t pull that on me, Willie Elrod! You know that’s not true.” Charlie was familiar with the story of the frightening specter who carried off children who misbehaved, and while she knew it was only a folktale meant as a warning, she didn’t like the way darkness was closing around them, either. Bill’s face had abrasions from the bottom of the creek bed, where the water was only a foot or so deep. What or who had kept him from standing?
Annie was probably thinking the same thing. Without speaking, she called Charlie’s attention to a half-empty bottle of whiskey that had been tossed to the side under a nearby tree. Had Bill had too much to drink and then passed out while washing his face in the creek? Surely he hadn’t tried to drink water from the same source the Curtises’ cattle waded in, drank from, and sometimes even defecated in upstream. And even if he had lost consciousness momentarily, the cold water and frantic need for air would have brought him around. Had something or someone held him down?
Charlie felt a tug at her back. “Miss Charlie? I don’t like this!”
“I don’t either, Willie.” Putting an arm around him, she led him away. “We’re leaving right now, but we had first to find out if there was anything we could do to help. I think the poor man must have had a heart attack and fallen into the water.”
Oh, please make it so! she thought, but somehow, Charlie felt there was more to it than that. The back of Bill’s jacket was streaked with mud although it hadn’t been underwater, and a dead tree limb lay in the damp soil nearby.
“Here, Willie, let’s gather up your mistletoe and head for the car,” Charlie said in an effort to distract him and calm his fears. “We’ll tell the sheriff as soon as we get home, and I’m sure he’ll be able to find out what happened. Don’t forget to save me a sprig of that mistletoe, now. I’ll bet my mother will want some to hang in the living room.”
Willie Elrod flushed and giggled. “Aw, Miss Charlie, I know good and well it ain’t your mama who wants that mistletoe.”
Charlie didn’t even correct him.
“We’ll need to stop by the sheriff’s office and report this before we do anything else,” Annie said as the three of them crammed into the car where the scent of cedar was almost overpowering.
Charlie admitted her friend was right although she disliked dragging Willie into another murder investigation—if it did turn out to be murder. He had been the first to notice the man lying in the creek, however. She sighed. They must be cursed or something. Why was it they always seemed to stumble into some kind of baffling foul play?
* * *
Sheriff Holland shook his head. “Don’t tell me you all have come upon another crime!” He meant it as a joke, but his smile faded when he realized they were serious. Quickly he closed his office door and gestured for them to sit down. “Well, what is it this time?”
Charlie didn’t want to sit, and neither did the others, but she held to the back of the straight chair as she told him about finding Bill Pitts. “It looks like he might have had a heart attack, and I believe he’s been dead for several hours at least.”
The sheriff glanced at the clock. “He isn’t going anywhere, I reckon, but I’d better notify Doc and get on out there, and one of you will need to come along. As dark as it is, it’ll be hard enough to see where we’re going.”
“I’ll come,” Charlie said. “But first let me take the others home. It’s so late I’m afraid Willie’s mother will be worried.”
Sheriff Holland reached for the phone. “We can remedy that,” he said, and put in a call to Emma Elrod. As soon as he had taken a brief statement from all of them, Charlie delivered her two passengers and one of the trees, which Annie, with Willie’s help, wrenched from the backseat.
Minutes later, parking the mud-splashed Studebaker in her driveway, she dashed in to tell her family of the latest development. “Ask Lottie to give you a hand with the trees!” she yelled to Delia just as the sheriff pulled in behind her.
Charlie was glad she had dressed warmly since Sheriff Holland’s car was as frigid as an icebox, and even in boots her feet were numb from the cold as they tramped over the now familiar pasture and climbed through the barbed-wire fence to the wooded section belonging to Isaac Ingram.
Doc Morrison had arrived at the same time they did and he and Peewee Cochran, the sheriff’s deputy of sorts, followed along behind while Charlie and Sheriff Holland led the way. Another deputy remained behind to wait for Harvey Thompson and his hearse. Flashlights did little to illuminate the woods that had been dark even in daytime, and Charlie hoped she could remember the way they had come. Everything looked different at night.
Catching herself after stumbling over a root, Charlie stood still and cast the beam of her light about. “Are you all right?” Turning, the sheriff took her arm, but Charlie put out a hand to silence him. Dry leaves rustled somewhere just ahead of them. Someone or something had moved in the underbrush—and it wasn’t Bill Pitts!
Shining his light ahead, the sheriff stepped in fro
nt of her. “Is anyone there?”
In the silence that followed Charlie could hear the sluggish sound of icy water forcing its way through stones in the creek and knew they were almost there.
“Probably a possum,” Peewee muttered. “Coon, maybe.”
Charlie hoped he was right. Both were nocturnal animals common to the area. Her father used to joke that possums were suicidal, throwing themselves under vehicles, as you saw so many flattened on the road.
“There it is! There’s the tree,” Charlie called out a few minutes later as the large oak where Willie had harvested mistletoe came into view. “He’s there by the creek just a little farther on.”
“Where? I don’t see anything here,” the sheriff said, pushing forward.
“There! On the creek bank!” How could he miss anything as large as a man? Charlie was tired, cold, and hungry. Did she have to take him by the hand and lead the way?
“Right over there!” she directed, plunging through winter-bare bushes that snagged at her clothing and clawed at her hair. But the body of Bill Pitts was not where they had left him.
Peewee chuckled. “Are you sure he was dead, ma’am?”
Charlie chose to ignore that. This had to be the right place. She looked closer. Here. It was right here. “This is where Annie and I pulled him out of the water. After we were sure he was dead, we didn’t move him any farther than this.”
Peewee grinned and shook his head but Doc Morrison focused his light on the muddy bank. “Look! I can see where somebody has been dragged along here, but where is he?”
Sheriff Holland stepped to the side and swung his light in a circle. “The last I heard, dead men don’t get up and walk, so what’s he doing here?”
Charlie looked where he was pointing, and there, propped against a tree with the liquor bottle in his lap, sat the late Bill Pitts looking every bit as dead as he had before.
Doc Morrison knelt beside him. “Hard to say how long he’s been dead in this cold weather but I should be able to tell more tomorrow.”
“Footprints everywhere,” the sheriff grumbled, “and a lot of them are ours. It’ll be impossible to tell anything from all this mess.”
Charlie stooped to look closer. She never wanted to see that ghastly face again, but something didn’t look right—besides him being dead. Someone had attempted to clean him up!
“Now, why in the world would anybody do such a thing as that?” Peewee wanted to know when she told them what she suspected.
“Probably because they wanted whoever found him to think he died a natural death,” Sheriff Holland said. “Now, don’t anybody touch him until I’ve had a chance to get some pictures.” With his flash camera he took photographs from several angles before moving in closer to get a better look at the body. “I’ll swear, if this don’t beat all! It’s pretty clear he’s been moved here and tidied up.” He turned the dead man over just long enough to get a look at his back. “Shine your light here, Doc.… Sure enough, there’s a streak of mud across there that might’ve come from being struck or held down by a log. Can’t tell much tonight. We’ll have to come back in the morning when I’ll be able to get a better look at the surroundings, and my wife isn’t going to like that one bit! We’re supposed to go to her aunt Ora’s for an early Christmas dinner.”
“Why would whoever killed him leave him in the creek and then come back and move him?” Charlie asked. “Surely, they must have noticed we had already pulled him out of the water.”
The sheriff shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe they heard you all coming and didn’t have time to get him cleaned up. They’re probably hoping nobody will believe you. Isn’t this Isaac Ingram’s property? This fellow Bill Pitts—he lived around here somewhere, didn’t he?”
Nobody had an answer for that, but Doc Morrison suggested one of the Ingrams might know.
Charlie could hardly feel her feet, and even in gloves, her hands were so cold they hurt. She stuck them inside her jacket and stamped her feet. The others seemed impatient, too, and a stiff wind whipping the trees around them made matters even worse.
“What in the devil is keeping Harvey?” Sheriff Holland stormed. “I called him the same time I called you, Doc. If he doesn’t get here soon, we’ll all be as cold and stiff as poor old Bill there.”
Minutes later a light flickered in the darkness and someone called out from the direction they had come.
“Here’s Harvey, finally!” Doc went to meet him while Sheriff Holland stayed at the scene. Charlie never thought she would be so glad to see the local funeral director when he arrived with his assistant and the deputy who had stayed behind where they’d left the car.
Fighting her way back through the tangle of trees and underbrush, Charlie tried to stay as close to Doc as possible. He had kindly offered to take her home while the sheriff lingered to talk with those responsible for transporting the body. What a relief at last to duck under the barbed-wire fence that separated the densely wooded area from the Curtises’ pasture! In her haste she snagged her sleeve on the wire, but Charlie didn’t care. All she could think about was the possibility that someone might have been watching the whole time she and Annie dragged Bill Pitts’s body from the water. And they could be watching them now!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
With Christmas only five days away, Phoebe Chadwick could think of nothing else, but even with Miss Dimple and Annie joining her at the table, why, my goodness, the three of them would rattle like peas in a gourd in that big house! Why not invite that new young music teacher, Lottie Nivens, who was staying with Bessie Jenkins? And of course, she would include Bessie as well. Phoebe’s cook, Odessa, and her husband, Bob Robert, would be joining relatives for the holidays, but with Odessa’s help, Phoebe was preparing as much ahead of time as possible. Odessa had already made corn bread for the dressing, and baked two loaves of her wonderful orange marmalade nut bread to be served later with cream cheese, and Phoebe filled a tin with sugar cookies cut in the shapes of trees, stars and angels.
The tree, however, left something to be desired and sat in the parlor window strung with colored lights and very little else. “I don’t know what happened to all my ornaments,” Phoebe said, searching her hall closet for the third time. “The few I have left look just plain lonely hanging there. We can’t even get icicles anymore because of tinfoil being used in the war, and the ones made out of cellophane aren’t worth putting on the tree.”
“Why don’t we just use popcorn chains and candy canes?” Annie suggested. “I’ll be glad to pick up what we need from Mr. Cooper’s store.”
Phoebe thought that was a fine idea and said that while Annie was there, why not invite that nice Jesse Dean Greeson to Christmas dinner, too, as she’d learned Harris Cooper and his wife were spending the holidays with their daughter in Covington? “And you’d better order another hen as well,” she added, as it looked as if one chicken might not stretch for the six of them.
Although agreeable to running an errand, Annie was eager to hear a report from Charlie about the activities of the night before. She had told Miss Dimple about finding the lifeless body of Bill Pitts, but hadn’t shared the information with anyone else. She didn’t want to destroy Miss Phoebe’s Christmas spirit with such a grim tale, and besides, they weren’t really sure what had killed him.
Bundling into her warm jacket, Annie started off for town, hoping to avoid her next-door neighbor, Willie Elrod, who she was sure would want to elaborate about their grisly discovery.
So far, so good! Annie thought as she waited at the corner for the light to change. On the other side of the street Lottie Nivens waved to her and waited for her to join her.
“How thoughtful of Phoebe to invite us for Christmas dinner!” Lottie said as they fell into step together. “Miss Bessie and I are looking forward to it and I thought I’d look for a little gift to show our appreciation. Any suggestions?”
Annie laughed. “I’m sure she’d tell you that isn’t necessary, but we are a little sho
rt of decorations for the tree. I’m on my way to Cooper’s for popcorn and candy canes if he has any left.”
“That isn’t what I had in mind, but our tree could use a little help, too. Maybe he’ll have enough for both of us. And isn’t there a little gift shop on the corner? It won’t hurt to look in there.”
Bennie Alexander usually carried gift items in his jewelry store, and although Annie had finished most of her shopping, she did want to look for something for Miss Dimple so they decided to stop there first.
Lottie frowned as they passed Brumlow’s Dry Goods. “Why do they have all those posters in the window? I’ve seen them on every tree and telephone pole. Haven’t they found that Japanese woman yet?”
Annie did her best to look nonchalant. “Guess not. Seems to me Emmaline’s the only one really serious about looking for her.”
“But didn’t she kill that woman, the artist she was supposed to be taking care of?”
“As far as I know, the police haven’t learned who killed Mrs. Hawthorne.” Annie stopped to admire a small picture frame in Bennie’s window.
“Then why did she run away?”
Before Annie could answer, Willie Elrod hailed her from across the street and Annie held her breath as she watched him weave through the traffic on Court Street.
“Tell Miss Charlie I saved her my best piece of mistletoe, and it has berries on it, too!” he announced, waving a paper bag with a sprig of the plant inside.
“And I’m sure she’ll be happy to get it, but not at the risk of your getting run over crossing the street! You know you’re to cross at the light, Willie Elrod! You just about scared me to death!” Annie accepted the mistletoe for her friend and reached in her pocketbook for change.
“No’me.” Willie shook his head and grinned. “That’s my Christmas present, and there’s something in there for you and Miss Dimple, too. I got ’em at Murphy’s with some of my mistletoe money. I sold every bit of it, too. Wish I had some more!”
Miss Dimple Suspects: A Mystery Page 13