MIGNON F. BALLARD grew up in a small town in Georgia, and now lives in Fort Mill, South Carolina.

CHAPTER ONE
 

Darkness was an ally and trees don’t tell. How deep was deep enough? The shovel struck a stone, a root, but the earth was softer here. Soon leaves would blanket this secluded spot. Oh, God, forgive me!
*   *   *
“Virginia?” Miss Dimple Kilpatrick stood in the doorway of the Elderberry Library and looked about. On low shelves beneath leaded casement windows, open now in early September, worn volumes tumbled against one another, waiting for the next reader, and Miss Dimple hesitated before rejecting the urge to straighten them. Cattus, the gray-striped resident cat, slept curled in the rocking chair by the empty stone fireplace, and a vase of wilting pink roses shed petals on the dark, glossy surface of the piano in the corner. Probably left over from the Woman’s Club meeting earlier in the week, Miss Dimple thought, stepping closer to inhale their dainty fragrance. Cattus, so named by the librarian, Virginia Balliew, who had taught Latin years ago before she married Albert, jumped down and curled around her ankles, and Dimple stooped briefly to stroke her. If she didn’t love teaching so, Dimple Kilpatrick thought she would be perfectly happy spending her days in this blissfully peaceful place, and she’d have to admit she was sometimes a little envious of her librarian friend.
“Virginia?” she called again, noticing the half-filled mug of coffee on the large oak desk where a stack of books waited to be checked in and her friend’s familiar blue raincoat on the coat rack behind it. Probably taking a restroom break, she thought, or chatting with a patron in the tiny nonfiction section in the rear. Virginia didn’t run what Dimple considered “a tight ship” and was more relaxed in her routine than she herself could possibly endure, but the tiny log building everyone called “the cabin” was the hub of their town, with people constantly drifting in and out to browse through books, catch up on local news, or stretch out on the old cracked leather chaise lounge to read. It wasn’t unusual to find somebody belting out the latest tune on the piano, and Virginia herself was known to entertain listeners with “Take Me Home Again, Kathleen,” when the mood struck her. It was the only song she could play all the way through.
The room smelled of old books, old wood smoke, and new fall apples heaped in a wooden bowl on the window sill, and Miss Dimple basked in the comfort of it. She added the two Christie mysteries she was returning to books that had come in earlier and stuck her head in the back room just as a figure darted between the stacks. She was just in time to glimpse the top of Virginia’s once-red hair over the row of fraying World Book Encyclopedias.
“What in the world are you doing back here, Virginia? I’ve called to you two times. You might want to consider getting your hearing checked,” Miss Dimple demanded.
“Oh, thank goodness it’s you!” Her friend emerged sneezing. “I really have to dust back here … I thought you were Emmaline. She’s supposed to be headed this way, and I’m just not in the mood to deal with her today.”
“What about tomorrow?” Dimple suggested, smiling.
“Then, either.” Virginia followed her back into the larger room and switched on an ancient electric fan in the window. “Must be almost ninety in here. I was hoping that shower this morning would cool things off.”
“I don’t suppose that new Eberhart book’s come in,” Miss Dimple said, frowning as she checked authors under E. “And what’s all this about Emmaline? Is she still after you about the War Bond Rally?”
Virginia held up a copy of Wolf in Man’s Clothing. “Came in just this morning. I hid it behind Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” She sighed, scooping Cattus onto her lap. “You know how Emmaline is—won’t take no for an answer. She’s been after me to ask her nephew to promote the rally, and I really don’t need the help, but Buddy’s between jobs again and she thinks it might be a good idea to give him something to do.”
Miss Dimple accepted the book with halfhearted dismay. “I know you shouldn’t have held this for me, but I’m so glad you did,” she said, setting the book aside with her bottomless handbag embroidered with multicolored yarn flowers. “Now, Buddy, he’s her brother’s son, isn’t he? Used to sell insurance.”
Virginia nodded. “And farm equipment … wholesale groceries … even furniture, if I remember right. Must be in his forties now, and too old for the service—thank the Lord—although I understand he drills with the Home Guard.” She laughed. “God help us if we have to depend on Buddy Oglesby to stand between us and the enemy!”
“But this is strictly volunteer. You’re not being paid to be in charge of the rally, and he certainly couldn’t expect compensation,” Miss Dimple pointed out as she selected a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery for Virginia to stamp.
“Emmaline thinks it will boost his confidence, and heaven knows he needs it.” Cattus leapt to the floor in pursuit of a shadow, and Virginia stood and studied the wisteria vines outside the window behind her. “She’s due here any minute for that meeting, and there’s no way I can avoid her, so I suppose I’ll just have to think of something to keep Buddy busy.” She sighed. “You know I’m glad to do whatever’s asked of me for the war effort, but if I had known Emmaline was going to take charge of entertainment for the rally, I might’ve had second thoughts.”
“What meeting?” Miss Dimple gathered up her books and started for the door.
“A planning meeting for the entertainment.” Virginia smiled. “Are you interested?”
She didn’t expect an answer, and she didn’t get one. “According to the Eagle, there’s to be some kind of pageant at the high school,” Dimple said, referring to the town newspaper. “I wondered who would direct it.”
“Well, wonder no longer,” Virginia said, shaking her head. “And I understand there will be a parade as well.”
Dimple Kilpatrick nodded, thinking of the reason for the rally. “I think we could all use a bit of festivity. You can put me down for ticket sales.”
The country was winding up its second full year in a war against the Axis, which included Germany, Japan, and Italy, and although the British Eighth Army had landed in Southern Italy, German troops still occupied Rome.
“Did I hear somebody mention a parade? That oughta liven things up around here!” Delia Varnadore, who had just turned twenty and looked even younger, maneuvered a baby carriage containing her six-month-old son through the doorway and wheeled it to one side. “Wonder if I could still remember how to twirl a baton,” she said, giving the carriage a jiggle.
Miss Dimple doubted if she could’ve forgotten in the three years since she’d graduated from high school and married...