Smoke (11 page)

Immy wondered if the cops would have connected the confetti to Amy JoBeth if she, Immy, hadn’t pointed it out to Ralph. A spasm of guilt washed over her. “Isn’t being in your cellar an alibi?”

“I wasn’t
always
in my cellar. I have to go out sometimes.”

“Often?”

“Not too often. But my slop bucket needs emptying when it starts to stink.”

Ugh. How could she stay in that tiny space with a slop bucket? Double ugh.

“Why are you shivering? Are you cold, Immy?”

“So, the confetti was on the floor of the smokehouse. How do you suppose it got there?”

Amy JoBeth looked at Immy with admiration. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”

An unwelcome idea ran through Immy’s mind:
Is it because you had some on you and it got there when you killed him?
She used the interrogation technique from
The Moron’s Compleat PI Guidebook
of maintaining silence so the suspects will spill their guts.

But Amy JoBeth cleverly turned it around on her. “Have
you
thought about where the confetti came from, Immy?”

“Well…it could get there from you, of course.”

Amy JoBeth broke out in a shrieking wail. “Noooo! I didn’t kill him!” She beat her fists on the cot and squeezed tears from her eyes.

“Don’t cry, Amy JoBeth.” Immy fished a tissue from her purse and pushed it into Amy JoBeth’s hand. “I’m just saying that’s one way. We need to think of other ways it could get there. Would Rusty have any confetti on himself? Did they use it in their business?”

“Why on earth would they do that?” She had recovered enough composure to speak at a normal volume, but her tears still streamed and her lip quivered.

It came to Immy in a flash of pink. After all, she had seen the pink stuff in the smokehouse.

“It was under Gretchen. Not Rusty.”

“Huh?”

“I discovered his body, you know. And I saw the confetti underneath Gretchen.”

Amy JoBeth’s voice came out in a whisper. “You saw Gretchen? Dead?”

Immy nodded.

“How did she look? Do you think she suffered?”

“Um, no. She had, um, she had a peaceful look on her face.” Immy wondered what that would actually look like. Pigs always looked peaceful to her.

Amy JoBeth crumpled against the wall again and drew her knees up to her chest. “Oh good. I’d hate to think she suffered.”

Finally, she was making Amy JoBeth feel better. At least a little.

“What kind of person would kill a pig?” said Amy JoBeth.

“Well, slaughterhouses do. I think Rusty has to have dead ones to make jerky.”

At that Amy JoBeth flung herself face down onto the hard cot and wailed again, a high, wordless sob, and beat her fists harder than ever on the flat pillow.

Immy quit trying to cheer her up.

Chapter 9

Immy decided to shift her attention to The Case of The Missing Poppy. Since it was her newest one, maybe she’d make more progress on it. She should interview Poppy’s mother, Ophelia. Marshmallow had one of her special potbelly pig leashes, but maybe he should have another one.

That made a good excuse for calling on her, anyway. She lived in a white-painted wooden house half way between Saltlick and Cowtail.

The woman looked horrible. Her prominent eyes were red rimmed and she was so folded in on herself that her long neck appeared almost normal.

“You want a leash at a time like this?” Her voice was thin and tremulous.

“Well…. Um. I work for Mike Mallett, the PI. Is there anything I can help you with?”

“You can find Poppy.” She headed for a stiff, white couch and motioned Immy into an angular white chair. The whole room was white—walls, carpeting, furniture. The only touches of color were framed photographs of Poppy, some alone, some with her mother, some with her late father. Immy would have thought the woman’s favorite color would be red, naming her only child Poppy like that.

“She went somewhere Saturday, you told Mother.” Mrs. Wilson had told them today in church that Poppy had been missing since Saturday. “Yesterday, right?”

“Oh no, not yesterday! Last Saturday.”

“The day Rusty was killed?”

“That’s just it. I thought she was going to spend the night with him.” Ophelia dabbed at her eyes, then her nose, and straightened her spine. “Not that I approved of what she was doing. There’s no talking to that girl. I’m thankful she confides in me.”

Except she hadn’t, had she? Immy had been right about Rusty and Poppy planning a getaway. Unfortunately, Rusty hadn’t ever left his property.

“Is there anywhere else she might be?”

Mrs. Jenkins cocked her head so far over on her spindly neck, Immy thought it might fall off. “The deer lease. I hadn’t thought of that. Sometimes she holes up there in the shack, or the blind, when she wants solitude.”

“Have you been there?”

“No, but I should.” She jerked her head up and drilled Immy with wide, buggy eyes. She looked frightened. “Will you go with me, Immy?”

Immy was afraid of what they might find there. Poppy had been missing for a week. What if she was dead? What if she’d been dead this whole time? Finding Rusty’s relatively fresh body was one thing. Finding one that was a week old might be, well, repulsive. Sickening. It was warm out, after all.

But, was she a detective or not? She had to take the tough stuff with the rest of it. If being a detective were a breeze, everyone would do it.

Immy decided she wasn’t going to get a leash for Marshmallow today.

“Point the way. Maybe we can find her.”

The property Mrs. Jenkins owned was out of town a ways. Immy drove as Mrs. Jenkins directed her down one county road after another, until they were on one Immy had never seen before. Mesquite crowded the rutted dirt road, scraping against the sides of the van in places.

“Here,” said Mrs. Jenkins, and Immy pulled onto a patch of dried grass beside a tiny wooden house. Its peeling paint had probably been white quite a few years ago. A porch, one step up from the ground, ran across the front. Two weathered rockers flanked the front door. Immy stifled a shudder at the slight gap in the door.

“Do you leave it unlocked?”

“Oh, lordie, yes. There’s nothing to steal in there.”

“Do you shut the front door, though?” Immy imagined possums and coons, maybe rattlers, nesting inside.

“The latch don’t work right all the time. It swings open sometimes.”

So maybe the door wasn’t ajar just because someone had murdered Poppy and hurried away without closing it.

Immy let Ophelia lead the way. When they entered the house, it was empty, except for dried droppings from raccoons and possums that had probably nested there in the spring.

“We should try the blind,” said Ophelia. “That’s where she goes when she’s upset.”

Immy wondered if she should find a place to go when she was upset. Was she the only local gal who didn’t have a hiding place?

The two women traipsed through the brush, following a rude, overgrown trail. Immy tried to discern signs of recent passage. She hadn’t read up on tracking, but the trail seemed unused. No prior footprints disturbed the layer of soft dirt they were kicking up. Deer season was in the fall, so, if Poppy hadn’t been here, it was possible no one else had for months.

The afternoon was wearing on and they were in the height of its heat. Immy reached behind her and pulled her wet shirt away from her sticky back.

“How much farther?” she asked.

Ophelia, in front, twisted her head on that stalk of a neck of hers to answer. “Just ahead a ways.”

“A ways” turned out to be another fifteen minutes of walking, but they finally got to an open patch of ground where the hunters scattered corn to lure the deer. At the edge of the clearing stood the deer blind, a wooden box on stilts where the hunters hid and picked off deer from the rifle slits. Immy couldn’t understand where the sport was in luring the poor things to a spot where you just shot them. But it seemed to hold great appeal for many Texas men.

Ophelia craned her neck to stare at the structure. “Maybe you could go up the ladder,” she suggested. “You’re younger.”

But not braver, Immy wanted to add. She put a foot on the first wooden step, then another foot on the second, until she was at the top, holding her breath all the way. There was a crude door, shut tight. Immy tested the air with a cautious sniff, but didn’t detect the odor of death, so maybe it would be okay.

When she pushed the door open, a furry demon sprang at her, chattering at her rude invasion of his quarters.

She lost her grip and tumbled down, hitting only a few of the steps on her way to the ground, eight feet below.

The triumphant squirrel stood on his hind legs and warned her to stay away.

“Oh dear, are you hurt?” Ophelia hovered over her, those buggy eyes full of concern.

Immy raised her head, then stood up. She patted her legs and stretched her arms. Everything worked and she wasn’t dizzy. “I guess I’m okay.”

“But where could Poppy be?” Ophelia broke into noisy sobs.

* * *

“Mommy, we’re out of Cheerios.” Drew pouted as thoroughly as only a child can and plopped her chin into her hands at the kitchen table.

“You never eat Cheerios, honey,” said Immy. “I thought you hated them.”

“I eat them now.”

Yes, that was true. Ever since Zack had, apparently, come to live with them, Drew had switched from Raisin Bran. Zack ate Honey Nut Cheerios for almost every meal. He could be coaxed into eating an occasional carrot, and once an apple, but his diet was mostly sugared oats. Immy was surprised he didn’t whinny.

“Well, you and Zack have eaten them all and I have to go to work in a few minutes.”

“That was Ophelia,” said Hortense, hanging up the phone and joining the children at the table. Immy stood at the cupboard, searching for something the kids would eat. “Don’t worry about it, dear,” Hortense told her. “I’ll take them out for something at All Sips.”

“Dairy Queen!” insisted Drew.

“We will not have a vehicle after your maternal parent departs. Dairy Queen is in Cowtail. We will be able to transport ourselves by perambulation only. So it will be All Sips.”

Drew understood the first and last parts anyway, and gave up her sulk.

Immy picked up her purse, ready to bolt out the door to be only, she hoped, ten minutes late for work. “What did Ophelia have to say?”

“She was remiss in not thanking you for taking her to the deer lease to ascertain that Poppy was not there. The poor, unfortunate woman is quite distraught. Her offspring hasn’t been espied since a week ago Saturday. There has been no communication, even by cellular telephony. I cannot seem to forego obsessive thoughts about both Ophelia and Poppy.”

She had been missing an awfully long time. Ophelia had turned down Immy’s offer to call in the police, or even Mike Mallett.

Hadn’t Rusty been telling Poppy something about the weekend when Immy overheard them in the packing room? She tried to picture little popeyed Poppy and big, strong Rusty together. That would have been Saturday before last.

Then she realized she was picturing them together at the sleazy motel at the far edge of Cowtail, misnamed Cowtail’s Finest. Yes, that’s where they probably would have gone. If they had made it there.

Rusty hadn’t. By Saturday, he’d been dead.

* * *

Mike was waiting beside Immy’s desk when she rushed into the office. He’d taken the unfiled folders from where she’d hidden them in her desk drawer and strewn them on the surface. He raised his skinny eyebrows above his small, narrowed eyes. Immy had never thought Mike would be able to appear menacing, but his words chilled her.

“Keep showing up late, kiddo, and you’ll blow this job. I gotta have someone here when we open, not a half hour later.”

“I… I’ve had a lot going on. But I’ll try very, very hard to be on time. And I’ll stay late this week to get everything done.”

“Good thinkin’.” He swept his arm in an arc above her full desk. “You got a lot to get done here.” He went to his own office to close the door and make phone calls.

Even after that unaccustomed lecture, it was hard for Immy to keep her mind on the mounds of filing on her desk. But it got easier after Mike gave her another stern look as he left for lunch.

“The rest of that filing has got to get done today, kiddo. I couldn’t find a couple receipts this morning before you got here. No more excuses.” He clapped his hat on his head and stumped out.

Was he getting angry that she was taking so much time off? The ill-fated shower was done with and most of Immy’s cases were, too, so she ought to have time to do her real job. The one she got paid for. She gave a sigh of regret for not being a PI yet. She had to wait until Friday to get the results of her first exam in her online course.

Immy ran through her cases with part of her mind while another part recited the alphabet over and over, her hands automatically grabbing paper after paper and stuffing them into folder after folder, pausing to make new folders a few times. Her arms were a little stiff where she’d caught herself, tumbling down the ladder of the deer blind. She suspected she’d find a bruise on her hind end when she showered tonight, too.

She took a moment to set aside a few new file folders. She labeled two of them with her own cases: The Case of the Slaughtered Pig and The Case of the Poisoned Jerky Eaters. As she filed, she glanced at the folders.

The Case of the Slaughtered Pig. Rusty told Vern he killed Gretchen, but Rusty was dead, so no justice was to be had there. That case was finished for Immy. Did Rusty really kill the pig? Probably. Why would he have lied about it? And then why did he tell Vern? He should know Vern would tell Amy JoBeth, since they were engaged. Did Rusty want to hurt Amy JoBeth?

The Case of the Poisoned Jerky Eaters. Rusty again, as evidenced by the failed health inspection. And again, Rusty was dead. He wouldn’t have poisoned his own customers on purpose. Bad for business. That was probably just an accident, sloppy cleaning, as Tinnie had indicated.

She hadn’t ever labeled Amy JoBeth’s problem. Maybe she should, The Case of the Depressed Pig Lady. But Amy JoBeth didn’t need anything solved, she needed cheering up. Getting out of jail would do that. Solving Rusty’s murder would do it.