Smoke (19 page)

She fiddled with the mouse, making circles on the screen while she waited for the screen with the test scores to load. The library used a dialup connection which was much slower than Mike’s nice cable connection. She sure wished she still had that job.

Finally, the list appeared and she clicked on her name. The number 97 appeared beside her name. For a moment, she wondered what that meant. Was that her student number? Then it dawned on her. She’d gotten an A on her first test! Imogene Duckworthy was Detective Material. Here was the proof. She printed the sheet, wondering if it would prompt Mike to give her back her job.

“Silence, please.”

Immy must have squealed. “Sorry. I just found out I got an A.”

“Very nice for you, I’m sure. I didn’t realize you hadn’t graduated from high school yet,” said Ms. Puffin.

Immy stood and walked, holding her paper, to Ms. Puffin’s counter. “I finished high school some time ago. This is a graduate class.”

Ms. Puffin straightened her back even further than her usual ramrod posture and patted her graying bun. “How nice for you. My, that’s a nasty bruise on your face.”

Immy left before the librarian could question her. She wasn’t sure this was actually a graduate class, not being sure what that meant. But she knew she’d finished high school. What an old biddy Cornelia Puffin was. Hortense didn’t like her much either, but that might be because Cornelia now had the job that Hortense had loved for so many years before her retirement.

After carefully folding the paper that had her stellar grade emblazoned on it and tucking it into her purse, she pondered, what would a detective do next, upon her release from stir? What cases should she work on? Maybe The Case of The Mysterious Papers, the missing clippings. She thought she knew where she might be able to find copies.

Chapter 16

Around the corner and down a block from the library stood the
Saltlick Weekly
. In its former life, the building had been the home of the Bunyun family. Technically, it still was, even though the Bunyun family today consisted only of Paul. He lived in the back of the house and conducted his newspaper business in what used to be the living and dining rooms.

Immy stepped onto the small porch, shady under the overhang of a sagging square roof, and fanned herself from the exertion of the short walk. The day was becoming very warm. She squinted at the tiny hand-lettered sign tacked to the wooden door.

“Hours of Operation Th-F 11-3”

It was three minutes past 11:00, so she was in luck. She pushed the door open and entered the cool flagstone house. Editor Bunyan had erected a plywood counter across part of the living room and, propped beside a stack of newsprint and a box of print cartridges, stood a sign proclaiming him Editor. The man himself sat at his computer, tapping out a story and, probably, she thought, putting the latest issue to bed. Bunyan was not only the Editor, he was the Reporter, the Photographer, the Newspaper Boy, and everything else.

“Mr. Bunyun,” Immy said softly. He didn’t seem to have heard her come in and she didn’t want to startle him into making a typo. There were enough of those in the paper already. Hortense complained about them in every issue.

He jumped up and dashed to the counter. He was so short he had to raise his arms above his shoulders to rest them on its linoleum surface. Immy wondered why he had made it so tall.

“Can I help you, Immy?” he asked, pushing heavy glasses up his small, sweaty nose with a stubby forefinger. “Do you have a story for this week’s edition? I have room.”

“No, I wanted to see if you kept old editions around. I’m looking for some information you published awhile ago.” She wondered if his eyeglass prescription was up to date. He hadn’t commented on her bruise.

“I keep all my issues in the morgue.” He waved an arm toward an archway that led to the dining room. Immy had been inside a few times to drop off notices of Hortense’s librarian meetings, but had never noticed that all four walls of the former dining room were lined with boxes, to the extent of blocking the windows. “Can I help you find something specific? Do you have a date?”

He darted into the makeshift morgue and flipped on the chandelier that hung from the ceiling, the only remnant of the room’s former use. The boxes had date ranges on the ends, printed with a thick black marker.

“Um, no.” One announcement not among the missing clippings had been Rusty and Tinnie’s wedding. She wondered why it hadn’t been there. “Do you have wedding announcements in a separate place?”

“No, but I remember most of the dates. Whose wedding?”

“Rusty and Tinnie Bucket.”

“Oh yes, I remember that one well. The Squire family knows some prit-tee important people in Wymee Falls. It was a big affair. Shame about Rusty.” He shook his head, then turned to a stack of boxes and pulled one out. Immy saw that they were on shelves, not just stacks of boxes as she’d first thought. He set the box on the floor and squatted in front of it. She watched him rummage through the papers, then sit back on his heels and frown, scratching his balding head.

“That’s odd,” he muttered, and pawed through the papers again. He finally pulled an issue out of the back of the box. “Misfiled,” he snarled as he snatched it. But when he unfolded it to the page of wedding announcements, Immy saw a rectangular hole neatly cut from the middle of the page.

“Someone mutilated the archival copy,” Mr. Bunyun said softly. He shook the page as if he could make the missing paper materialize, then quietly, sadly folded it and filed it in its proper place, in date order.

“Do you have Zack Bucket’s birth announcement?” That was another clipping that might tie some things together.

He pulled down a second box with the same result, a cutout instead of an announcement, and more muttering and head scratching. “How could anyone do this?”

Someone who wanted to hide articles about the Squire family, Immy thought. Amy JoBeth had told Immy to throw away the ones from her desk, too. Was it her, and what was she trying to hide?

Immy left the little man pulling boxes out and trying to find more mutilated issues to fret over. This was damage Immy couldn’t be blamed for, anyway.

She walked toward home, kicking the chunks of graveled tar that had come loose in the road and pondering The Case of the Missing Clippings, which is what The Case of the Mysterious Papers had morphed into.

What could be so valuable about newspaper clippings that someone would steal them, first from Bunyun’s dining room archives, then from her desk at Mike Mallett’s office? Amy JoBeth? Immy would go see her after lunch to try to shake some information out of her somehow. She’d review the Interrogation chapter of her
Compleat Guidebook
first.

* * *

Immy leafed through the
The Moron’s Compleat PI Guidebook
, propped on the kitchen table, until she got to the section labeled Interrogation. She munched her PBJ sandwich while she studied it. She had used some of these tactics in the past: she had answered questions with questions, let silence impel the perp to talk, acted friendly and casual at first to put them off guard. There was one effective way, though—put the perp in an uncomfortable chair in a stark, empty room. She would probably never be able to do that last one. At least uncomfortable chairs were still allowed. It was a pity rubber hoses and hot lights were out of favor these days.

“Mommy,” said Drew. “Can I play with Marshmallow now?”

“You were with him all morning,” said Hortense. “He might be getting weary of being pursued.”

“You’re chasing him?” asked Immy.

“It’s Pig Scramble tomorrow,” said Drew. “At the rodeo. I hafta practice.”

“Tomorrow? The rodeo’s tomorrow?”

On cue, Louise Cotter yoo-hooed at the front door and walked in. “Rodeo’s tomorrow,” she shrieked. “I got the permit for the booth.” She waved a piece of paper at Hortense as she plopped into a kitchen chair.

Hortense rose with a grunt and carried her plate to the sink. “How nice for you.”

“So, are you doing brownies?”

Hortense turned to face the brazen woman. “I do not intend to swelter in my kitchen all day for the sake of raising a paltry sum for your daughter’s no doubt astronomical defensive costs.”

Louise looked blank.

“No,” said Immy. “She’s not.”

The woman’s face caved in on itself and she lowered her head. Immy had never seen Louise so deflated.

Hortense’s voice was softer when she continued. “I regret that I’m unable to assist you, Louise, but it’s just not possible at this moment in time. I’m so sorry.”

Of course it was possible for Hortense to bake all day, even in July. She’d done it before. She wasn’t saying that she didn’t
want
to do it, but Immy knew that’s what she meant. Louise must have known it, too. When she raised her head, her face had hardened and her expression was black.

“You’re not going to help us. I got lawyer’s fees, you know. How are we going to pay them, Hortense? I had to put down a retainer when she was first arrested.”

“You could probably get the retainer back,” Immy said.

Louise pushed herself up, took an apple from the bowl in the middle of the table, and took herself off with a strut in her step that Immy thought was to mask her defeat. She slammed the door loudly on her way through it.

After they heard her car drive away, Hortense’s shoulders slumped. “That woman.”

“You can’t, Mother. You can’t give her an inch. We know that.”

“Yes, we do. But I regret the whole situation.”

“I hope she’s not there when I go see Amy JoBeth.”

“Why are you seeing her?”

“I have to find out about those stupid articles. I’m missing something. I can’t see why they’re so important.”

“Do be careful, Imogene. If Louise is present, bide your time. Come back later to talk to Amy JoBeth.”

“I think I’ll do that.”

“I’m gonna practice some more.” Drew dashed out to the backyard.

“I think I’ll bake one small batch of brownies,” said Hortense.

Chapter 17

Immy knocked on the front door for the third time. She’d been around to the back of Amy’s Swine and the pigs were the only live beings there. Amy JoBeth’s white pickup was parked beside the house in its usual place. It was not as clean as usual, though.

Immy turned and watched dust that her van had raised on the dirt road, still floating in the hot afternoon wind. She knew, of course, where Amy JoBeth was. And she didn’t want to go there right now. But she had to find out about those clippings.

When Immy raised the hatch on the tornado shelter she was surprised to find the inside lit. The ceiling light must work, after all, she thought. Amy JoBeth sat on the mattress wiping moist, red-rimmed eyes. Immy picked her way down the steps.

The shelter was hotter than it had ever been and reeked of the unemptied toilet in the corner. Immy concentrated on the heat and the bad smell to keep her fear of closed in spaces at bay.

“Hi Immy.” Amy JoBeth’s voice was dull and flat, like the first time Immy had found her here.

“Aw, Amy JoBeth. Why are you here again?”

“Wouldn’t you be if you were engaged to marry a murderer?”

“I’d probably just stay in bed at home. It’s a lot more comfortable. And cooler.” Immy fanned herself and she felt a stream of sweat trickle down between her breasts. Amy JoBeth shivered as if the place were cold.

“Are you sure Vern killed Rusty?”

“Heee,” she wailed, “he told me he did. He whispered to me in the jail.”

Immy lowered herself to sit beside her on the mattress and stroked Amy JoBeth’s corkscrew hair. It didn’t appear that she’d brushed it lately. There weren’t any tissues handy.

“Are you sure you heard him right? The acoustics aren’t that good in jail.”

“I heard him,” she blubbered. “He said he killed Rusty. For me. For
me
. How
could
he? How could I think I loved that, that, that horrible Vern?”

Immy didn’t have one single answer to any of those questions. She dug for tissue in her purse and handed one to Amy JoBeth. It looked like it might have been used to wipe Drew’s face, but Amy JoBeth didn’t seem to notice. She stuffed it against her streaming nose, then smashed her face into her hands.

“Vern told you he killed Rusty? He actually confessed? Do Ralph and the chief know he said that?”

Amy JoBeth shrugged without lifting her face. The tissue had disappeared somewhere. Immy would make sure the cops knew about Vern’s confession.

If Vern had suddenly started telling the truth, he had killed Rusty. But she’d bet Rusty hadn’t killed the pig. So who killed Gretchen? This was all so confusing!

Immy couldn’t talk Amy JoBeth up the steps, so she left with a mission. She was back to trying to solve The Case of the Slaughtered Pig. And she had clean forgot to ask Amy JoBeth about those damn clippings.

* * *

Immy worked on the case until late into the night, jumping at the frequent firecrackers the younger citizens of Saltlick were tossing in the streets on the night before the Fourth of July. Drew had fallen into bed exhausted and confident of winning the Pig Scramble, a contest for youngsters in which they attempted to catch a young pig and stuff it into a sack. The rules forbade harming the piglets, but Immy was sure none of the piglets enjoyed being chased, caught by a hind foot, and deposited in a dark place. The rules also gave the winner—that is, the child who caught the first pig—the chance to keep the pig if they wished. Immy devoutly hoped Marshmallow would not be joined by another pig. This one would not be a cute miniature potbelly, it would be one of the regular kind that grow into huge porkers.

Immy still thought, as she had right at the first part of this case, that Amy JoBeth could be helped by finding out for sure who killed Gretchen. She would make sure Vern didn’t find out, though, until he was convicted and in prison, so he wouldn’t go off half-cocked and kill that person.

Immy had been around and around the scarce facts she knew. Gretchen had been shot, so the person who killed her had a gun. In her top dresser drawer, Immy still had the two bullets she’d dug out of Gretchen’s head. But they were useless if didn’t have other bullets or a gun to compare them to. Narrowing down Gretchen’s killer to someone with a gun, in Saltlick, was like narrowing down a Texan to one with a pickup. It was easier to cross off people who didn’t have them. Guns as well as pickups.