Dimple Kilpatrick had no such thoughts. She had been in tight spots before, but this time was different. It had been her idea to spend the morning investigating the area near where Mae Martha Hawthorne had lived—and died; her idea to take shelter in the garden shed instead of taking a chance on making it to the car. If this crazy person managed to open the door and fire at them they would be like fish in a barrel. There was no way she could escape being shot, but first she would do as much damage with her shovel as possible and give the others a chance to escape. A pity, she thought, hoping a better solution would soon present itself, as she did look forward to the beautiful Christmas Eve service at her church and a pleasant dinner with friends on Christmas Day. And then, of course, there was Suzy. What was to become of her?
Whoever was out there made no effort to be quiet but tramped around on the muddy ground, seemingly circling the shed. Well, why should he be quiet? Dimple thought. He was the one with the gun. At least, she thought, he hadn’t tried to burst open the door.
The three clung together in the middle of the shed as the person outside stomped right up to the door and slid the metal bar back into place.
He’s barricading us inside! Miss Dimple turned to face the others and knew they were all thinking alike. Well, it’s no secret now that we’re in here, so what’s to lose? she thought, and began to make her displeasure known.
She was joined in shouting by Annie and Charlie, but whoever was outside remained ominously silent.
“Hey!” Annie shouted, thinking whoever locked them inside might not realize what they’d done. “We’re in here! Let us out!”
Still nothing.
Did he intend to leave them there until they died of exposure or starvation? Dimple wondered. Would Rebecca Wyatt sit inside by her warm stove with her warm cat while three people died in her garden shed?
Of course they weren’t going to die! Rebecca must have occasional visitors, although from the appearance of the driveway, they were few and far between. And Esau and his wife knew they were going there. When they didn’t return, Lou and her sister would surely trace them here. Wouldn’t they? Except they were working that day at the munitions plant!
“You’re taking this rather poorly, don’t you think?” Charlie shouted. “We only came to buy a few eggs!” Still no response from their captor except for the sound of muffled footsteps in the grass.
“I’m freezing,” Annie muttered thorough chattering teeth, and then wished she hadn’t because through the cracks of the old wooden shed came the distinct smell of smoke, and gray wisps began to curl through the crevices and waft toward the ceiling, consuming the air around them. Whoever was out there had set fire to the tall grass and dried underbrush surrounding the shed!
Somebody screamed. It was Annie, Charlie thought. No, it was her. It was both of them. “Save your breath!” Miss Dimple told them. “Get down on the floor, quickly!”
Charlie obeyed, remembering from her first aid training that smoke rises. She covered her mouth and nose with an arm and saw the others doing the same, but how long could they stay here? Already the walls were growing warm.
Beside her Annie began to cough. “Ugh! Dead rat!” she yelled, and turned her face away.
So, that was what smelled so bad, Charlie thought, but the rat was nothing compared to the realization that they could be burned alive if they weren’t first overcome by smoke. She coughed in an effort to breathe through the choking fumes and was aware of Miss Dimple doing the same. I would rather be shot than be roasted alive, she thought. They had to get out of here!
“Kick!” Miss Dimple shouted hoarsely, inching her way toward the wall. “We have to try!”
Charlie, eyeing cracks between the weathered boards in the shed’s wall, began to squirm along beside her, and together they kicked the loose boards as hard as they could. Some, she saw, had rotted at the bottom and would, she hoped, be easier to break. Annie, struggling to breathe through the suffocating smoke, wormed her way to join them and they were soon rewarded with a brief but precious gulp of fresh air as a splinter of the plank creaked and gave way.
“Harder!” Dimple Kilpatrick compelled them, pummeling the wall with her feet. All those morning walks were paying off. If only she could get enough air to continue! The wall felt hot through her heavy shoes and even the floor was becoming uncomfortably warm. Was the maniac with the rifle waiting out there to shoot them if they managed to escape?
But it was not a question of choice. “All together now!” she told them in a voice foggy with smoke, and the board cracked and gave way, creating an opening big enough for a small animal to crawl through—but not one of them.
“Wait a minute!” Annie said and, gasping, crawled toward the door, eyes shut against the suffocating smoke, to feel in the darkness until her hand came in touch with the pickax she knew was there. “Stand back!” she warned them, and slammed it against the side. It thudded and bounced away.
“Give me something to pry off this board! Hurry!” A woman’s voice screamed at them from outside while at the same time they were soaked with a deluge of icy water. “Pass it through the opening and stand back.”
No one hesitated to comply. If this woman meant to kill them, why would she dash them with water? Quickly Annie thrust the pickax through the opening and they all held their breath as with a wonderful splitting noise, enough of the wall came away to permit them to crawl out into the cold, clear air, coughing and sputtering and thankful to be alive.
Miss Dimple, who was last to emerge, gratefully grasped the hand offered and was pulled to her feet. Scrambling to move away from the smoke and breathe, she opened her eyes to see the woman who had helped them. Rebecca Wyatt wore a man’s gray tweed overcoat over a baggy pair of overalls. A blue knitted shawl covered her head and part of her face. Annie and Charlie sat on the cold ground nearby, coughing and gasping until color finally returned to their faces. “Thank you,” Charlie said weakly, looking up. Behind them, one side of the garden shed, which had apparently been doused from a barrel of rainwater, still smoked and steamed but the flames had been extinguished.
“Who did this?” Dimple demanded when she could speak. “Why would somebody want to kill us?” She shivered, realizing her skirt was drenching wet. The others, too, were showing signs of being chilled. “We have to get dry,” she said, looking about, but Rebecca seemed to be alone. Dear, God, please don’t let this be the person who set that shed on fire!
“Yes. Yes, of course. Come to the house. I’ll get blankets,” Rebecca said.
The strange woman hurried inside ahead of them, leaving them to follow. The front of the shed, Dimple noticed, had been almost completely charred by the fire, which was probably why Rebecca chose to guide them out through the back. She looked around for a gun but all she saw were a hammer and some other tools lying on the grass. Of course she might’ve hidden it somewhere, but at this point, Dimple was willing to take that chance.
“What should we do?” Charlie whispered, taking Miss Dimple’s arm.
Dimple Kilpatrick sneezed. “I suggest we dry off, get warm, and go home,” she told her, “after we call the sheriff, of course.”
In the snug kitchen Rebecca built up a fire in the woodstove and doled out rough blankets smelling of mothballs. “This is terrible! I can’t imagine how it happened,” she said, putting a pot of coffee on the stove. “Are you sure you’re all right? Do you think you might need a doctor?”
“No, we’re not all right, and the person we need right now is the sheriff,” Dimple told her, moving closer to the stove with the others. Most of her skirt was wet, and Annie’s dungarees were steaming, but the water had hit Charlie full force. Although she had removed her jacket, her dress clung to her body, and sooty water dripped on the floor. “Surely you must have some idea who’s responsible for this,” Dimple continued, looking carefully about in case the person who wanted to kill them returned.
“Where were you?” Charlie’s voice trembled. “You must’ve noticed wha
t was going on—not that we aren’t grateful for what you did—but somebody just tried to burn us alive!”
Rebecca busied herself taking mugs from her cupboard before answering. She kept one side of her face averted, Charlie noticed, probably because of the ugly red scar that marred the lower part of her face. “I was down at the pasture mending the fence. One of my cows got out awhile ago and had almost reached the road before I found her. Can’t have that happening again.” She poured cream into a brown pitcher and set it on the table with a small bowl of sugar. “I didn’t see the smoke until I got back to the barn lot.”
Annie sighed. “Thank heavens for that! Did you see anyone? The person who set the fire—was he still there?”
Rebecca shook her head and turned back to the stove. “No. No, I told you, whoever did it was gone. Maybe somebody followed you here.” She poured steaming coffee into four mugs and carried them to the table. “Do you know anybody who might want to hurt you?”
Charlie sneezed. “Of course not!” she said. But obviously someone did.
“You should get out of that wet dress,” Rebecca told her. “I’m not as tall as you are, but I think I have something that will do, at least until you get home.”
“No thanks. I’ll be okay.” Charlie sneezed again. That coffee looked like heaven but she was afraid to drink any until she saw Rebecca stir sugar into hers and take a couple of swallows.
“For goodness sake, Charlie, do change into something dry,” Miss Dimple said, sipping from her steaming mug. “You don’t want to be sick here at Christmas. Meanwhile,” she added, addressing Rebecca, “we need to call Sheriff Holland. Whoever locked us in that shed is probably gone by now, but he might be able to trace his footprints in this wet ground.”
Rebecca shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t have a telephone, but you should be able to call from Esau and Coralee’s place down the road.”
* * *
While Rebecca went to look for dry clothing, Charlie stepped out of her dress and wrapped the blanket around her. “We’ll leave as soon as I’m dressed,” she told them. “I’m not staying in this place one minute longer than I have to!”
“We can’t get out of here soon enough for me, but what if he’s still out there?” Annie reminded her. “The man with the gun? He could shoot us before we get to the car.”
Rebecca stood in the doorway with a dress over her arm. “I’ll walk there with you if you think it’ll help, but whoever did that is probably long gone by now.”
“Perhaps it might be a good idea if you accompanied us to the road,” Dimple told her. If Rebecca Wyatt had been the one who tried to kill them, at least they would be able to keep an eye on her until they reached the car.
* * *
“I think Rebecca was just as eager for us to leave as we were,” Charlie said as they at last drove back down the narrow country road. She tugged at the sleeves of the blue plaid dress that was tight under her arms. “That story about the cows and the fence … how do we know that’s true?”
“I’m sure Sheriff Holland will look into that,” Dimple said. “I don’t believe the woman tried to kill us, but something is definitely not right, and I think it’s best that we not stop to telephone from the Ingrams’. For all we know, it might have been one of them who set fire to that shed.”
“You’re right,” Charlie said. “They were the only ones who knew we were going there. We can stop by the sheriff’s office when we get to town.”
“We seem to be getting too close to something,” Annie said. “And you must be psychic, Miss Dimple—you tried to rush us away from there even before we heard the gunfire.”
Dimple’s laugh was fragile. “Hocus-pocus had nothing to do with it, dear. I became suspicious because of something I saw in that storage room in the barn. There was a whole shelf stacked with canvases.”
Charlie frowned. “Canvases?”
“Blank canvases. The kind an artist uses for oil paintings,” Miss Dimple explained.
Annie leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes. “Well, I’m sure of one thing. I’m never going to go looking to buy eggs from anybody again!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Charlie,” Delia said, “Sheriff Holland’s here to talk to you.” She frowned. “What’s going on?”
“It’s a long story! Tell you later—I promise.” Charlie paused to listen. “Do I hear Pooh waking up from his nap?”
After her sister hurried upstairs to check on her baby, Charlie dressed hastily in warm corduroy slacks and a sweater and towel-dried her hair. No matter how many times she’d shampooed, it still seemed to smell of smoke. They had gone directly to the sheriff’s office on the way home to explain what had happened at Rebecca Wyatt’s, and after only a brief period of questioning, Sheriff Holland and two of his deputies had left to investigate.
She hadn’t told her sister about the experience as she didn’t want to frighten her, and their mother hadn’t returned from the ordnance plant in nearby Milledgeville. All Charlie wanted to do was lie in a tub of warm water and wash the dirt, smoke, and fear away. One out of three was the best she could do.
With grim face the sheriff stood waiting in the living room. “This isn’t good,” he told her, shaking his head. “I don’t mind telling you, Charlie. It doesn’t look good at all.”
I could’ve told you that! Charlie thought. It wasn’t looking all that grand when we were almost barbecued in that garden shed, either.
He refused to sit down and had twisted and mangled his hat until it had no shape at all. “You saw the shed?” she said.
He nodded, his face taut. “I’ve investigated a lot of crime scenes over the years, but never—never have I heard of anybody with such evil intent. Miss Dimple! My God, Miss Dimple! All three of you would’ve died in that shed.”
Charlie felt a tremor that left her weak. She didn’t need to be reminded. “Did you speak to Rebecca Wyatt?”
“That’s another thing. Couldn’t find her.” Sighing, he paced to the window as if the elusive woman might be standing outside on the front porch.
“But she was there when we left. Where else could she be? She has no car and no phone, and her cows have to be milked. She can’t be gone long. Did you check with the neighbors?”
He nodded, and finally but reluctantly took a seat in the gold brocaded Victorian chair that had belonged to Charlie’s grandmother. “Isaac Ingram wasn’t there, and his brother—what’s his name…?”
“Esau,” Charlie told him.
“Right. Well, Esau had gone into town, his wife said, but according to her, neither of them had seen Rebecca Wyatt.” He shifted in an attempt to get comfortable in a chair intended, no doubt, for brief visits, and finally perched on the edge of the seat. “And Stanley Curtis and his wife, I understand, have gone to their daughter’s for Christmas.”
“I suppose you asked Coralee Ingram if they told anybody we planned to stop by Rebecca Wyatt’s. Her husband was the one who suggested we might buy eggs there.” Not that they cared a whit about eggs, Charlie thought, but she wasn’t ready to share that with the sheriff.
“Of course I did,” he said, giving up on the chair to stand. “And she vowed they hadn’t mentioned it to a soul. The woman was all broken up when I told her what had happened … or at least she appeared to be. Said she couldn’t imagine anybody doing a thing like that.
“I left Peewee and another deputy out at Rebecca Wyatt’s. They’ll be waiting when she finally does show up, and I’ll talk to Esau and his brother soon as I can track ’em down.”
“Speaking of tracks,” Charlie began. “Were you able to tell anything from the footprints out there?”
Sheriff Holland almost smiled. “Whose prints? It’s almost impossible to get a cast in all that stirred-up mud. We’ve got footprints on top of footprints out there, but I do want to take a look at each of your shoes—Rebecca’s, too. At least we might find out if there were others involved.”
The sheriff was a large man, a
nd when he stepped in front of someone, as he was doing now, it was hard to look anywhere else. “Now, listen here, I don’t know what you three were doing out there, but if you have reason to suspect what’s going on, you need to tell me now. I don’t think I have to remind you that you’re dealing with an extremely dangerous person, and one who would just as soon kill you as step on a cockroach.”
Sighing, he leaned on the mantel where Jo Carr had arranged a bowl of holly and pyracantha berries and where baby Tommy’s stocking would soon hang. “Is there anything you want to talk about, Charlie?”
Charlie wandered over to the Christmas tree in the window and touched the celluloid angel ornament her Sunday school teacher had given her when she was six. The smell of cedar permeated the room; brightly wrapped presents were piled beneath. It was almost Christmas. Wasn’t it enough that they were mired in this horrible war? And now they were being forced to deal with a lunatic!
“I suppose you’ve spoken with Miss Dimple and Annie,” she said.
He nodded. “And now I’m speaking with you.”
What had the others told him? She would have to be careful what she said.
“We didn’t intend to get mixed up in all this, Sheriff. I can’t explain why we always seem to be the ones who stumble onto murder scenes, but, believe me, we didn’t plan it that way! Obviously they’re connected: Mae Martha Hawthorne’s murder; that awful thing that happened to Bill Pitts; and the fire today in Rebecca Wyatt’s toolshed. I can’t imagine why somebody tried to kill us unless whoever did it thinks we know something.”
“And do you?”
“If I did, I’d tell you,” Charlie said, and meant it. At least she was sure Suzy had nothing to do with it, and there was nothing to gain by exposing her to danger.
Miss Dimple Suspects: A Mystery Page 18