the road, her eyes on the spot where Willie said he had last seen her friend.
An ardent reader of mysteries, Dimple might have had time to leave a clue, Virginia thought, and with one foot, probed a soggy mound of leaves by the curb. Nothing. The ground next to the street was brown and bare … but what was this on one of the lower limbs of the crape myrtle? A tiny tuft of color. Purple.
Virginia plucked the bit of frayed yarn from the branch and tucked it inside her purse.
* * *
Although her father had been gone almost seven years, Charlie still looked for him behind the partition where pharmacists fill prescriptions at the back of the store and felt the familiar stab of emptiness it brought. The room was long and narrow with a black-and-white tile floor and pressed tin ceiling. In warmer weather a ceiling fan stirred the air above a scattering of tables in front of the soda fountain, but today the place felt stuffy and close. She smiled as Phil Lewellyn, Charles Carr’s former partner, looked at her over his glasses and raised a hand in salute.
The two women found an empty booth in the back and treated themselves to fountain Cokes in crushed ice. Sipping the drink slowly, Charlie could almost feel her headache melting away.
Annie swirled her drinking straw in the bell-shaped glass. “Have you decided what you’re wearing tonight?”
“That green suit, I guess. Remember? The one with the velvet collar.” Charlie had worn the suit in college but it was still good except for the length, and her mother had promised she would ask their neighbor, Bessie Jenkins, to take up the hem that afternoon. In addition to her part-time job at the ordnance plant, Miss Bessie sewed for many of the women in town and sold tickets to the picture show on Saturdays.
Charlie wished she would have time to do something different with her hair. She wore her straight blond hair in a long bob that turned under just below her chin line, and to achieve this effect, it was necessary to roll it in kid curlers, rags, or socks, and sometimes even the hated metal rollers.
Annie waved at a couple of her students who were browsing through the rack of comic books in the corner of the store. “If you want, you can borrow my brown—” She broke off in mid-sentence. “Uh-oh! ‘Double, double, toil and trouble’… Don’t look now, but there’s her royal snideness.”
“Who—” Charlie glanced behind her to see Hugh’s mother, Emmaline Brumlow, thumbing through the greeting cards at the front of the store.
“I said, don’t look! ”
Too late. Emmaline had noticed them. “Charlie. Annie.” She nodded in their direction, and Charlie thought she smiled, but it was hard to be sure.
Hugh’s family owned Brumlows’ Dry Goods, a small store that sold everything from shoes to hats, and his mother ruled the business and the family with a tight fist and a shrewd eye, and had, even before his father died when Hugh was twelve. At her mother’s insistence, Hugh’s sister Arden, who had graduated from high school with Charlie, left college early to help her mother manage the store.
“I wonder if she knows you’re going out with Hugh tonight,” Annie said, responding to the woman’s greeting with a wave of her fingers.
Charlie didn’t answer. She was trying hard to like Emmaline Brumlow even a little bit, but it was a difficult challenge. She couldn’t help feeling sorry for Arden. Her mother had put her foot down when Arden wanted to marry Barrett Gordon before he left for the navy. She wanted to spare her daughter the heartbreak if anything happened to Barrett, she said, but everyone knew she was just too cheap to hire somebody to run the register if Arden left to be near her husband.
The music of Glenn Miller’s “String of Pearls” bounced from a radio somewhere in the back and Annie’s fingers danced in rhythm along the tabletop. “Have you thought about what it would be like to have her for a
An ardent reader of mysteries, Dimple might have had time to leave a clue, Virginia thought, and with one foot, probed a soggy mound of leaves by the curb. Nothing. The ground next to the street was brown and bare … but what was this on one of the lower limbs of the crape myrtle? A tiny tuft of color. Purple.
Virginia plucked the bit of frayed yarn from the branch and tucked it inside her purse.
* * *
Although her father had been gone almost seven years, Charlie still looked for him behind the partition where pharmacists fill prescriptions at the back of the store and felt the familiar stab of emptiness it brought. The room was long and narrow with a black-and-white tile floor and pressed tin ceiling. In warmer weather a ceiling fan stirred the air above a scattering of tables in front of the soda fountain, but today the place felt stuffy and close. She smiled as Phil Lewellyn, Charles Carr’s former partner, looked at her over his glasses and raised a hand in salute.
The two women found an empty booth in the back and treated themselves to fountain Cokes in crushed ice. Sipping the drink slowly, Charlie could almost feel her headache melting away.
Annie swirled her drinking straw in the bell-shaped glass. “Have you decided what you’re wearing tonight?”
“That green suit, I guess. Remember? The one with the velvet collar.” Charlie had worn the suit in college but it was still good except for the length, and her mother had promised she would ask their neighbor, Bessie Jenkins, to take up the hem that afternoon. In addition to her part-time job at the ordnance plant, Miss Bessie sewed for many of the women in town and sold tickets to the picture show on Saturdays.
Charlie wished she would have time to do something different with her hair. She wore her straight blond hair in a long bob that turned under just below her chin line, and to achieve this effect, it was necessary to roll it in kid curlers, rags, or socks, and sometimes even the hated metal rollers.
Annie waved at a couple of her students who were browsing through the rack of comic books in the corner of the store. “If you want, you can borrow my brown—” She broke off in mid-sentence. “Uh-oh! ‘Double, double, toil and trouble’… Don’t look now, but there’s her royal snideness.”
“Who—” Charlie glanced behind her to see Hugh’s mother, Emmaline Brumlow, thumbing through the greeting cards at the front of the store.
“I said, don’t look! ”
Too late. Emmaline had noticed them. “Charlie. Annie.” She nodded in their direction, and Charlie thought she smiled, but it was hard to be sure.
Hugh’s family owned Brumlows’ Dry Goods, a small store that sold everything from shoes to hats, and his mother ruled the business and the family with a tight fist and a shrewd eye, and had, even before his father died when Hugh was twelve. At her mother’s insistence, Hugh’s sister Arden, who had graduated from high school with Charlie, left college early to help her mother manage the store.
“I wonder if she knows you’re going out with Hugh tonight,” Annie said, responding to the woman’s greeting with a wave of her fingers.
Charlie didn’t answer. She was trying hard to like Emmaline Brumlow even a little bit, but it was a difficult challenge. She couldn’t help feeling sorry for Arden. Her mother had put her foot down when Arden wanted to marry Barrett Gordon before he left for the navy. She wanted to spare her daughter the heartbreak if anything happened to Barrett, she said, but everyone knew she was just too cheap to hire somebody to run the register if Arden left to be near her husband.
The music of Glenn Miller’s “String of Pearls” bounced from a radio somewhere in the back and Annie’s fingers danced in rhythm along the tabletop. “Have you thought about what it would be like to have her for a
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