Smoke (3 page)

Near the door to the small wooden shop behind the Buckets’ modern brick ranch house, Immy nosed the van into a slot between two pickups, one orange and one white. There weren’t that many orange pickups around this far from Austin. And one had almost run them down at the vet’s today. This one’s license plate was as muddy as the one on the reckless driver’s truck. Ralph gave it a good look.

The buildings where the jerky was processed ranged behind and beside the shop, with the smokehouse standing on its own about a hundred feet from where she waited for Ralph to lift Drew from the van.

Immy glanced around the spread. Drew tried to convince Ralph to take Marshmallow into the jerky shop with them, but Ralph resisted. Immy took another look at the smokehouse. A woman with hard, glossy blonde hair disappeared behind the smokehouse, dragging a heavy-looking plastic bag. She didn’t appear to be a professional meat handler. She did appear, though, to be the annoying Betsy, the assistant from the vet’s clinic. How did Betsy get here so fast, if that’s who she was? And what in the heck was she doing?

Ralph held the door, so Immy broke off her mental questions. When Immy, Ralph, and Drew entered the shop, Tinnie Bucket was standing behind the counter with a man’s arm around her shoulder.

“Sweetheart, I know this is hard, but….” The man gave Tinnie’s shoulder a squeeze, picked up the well-worn cowboy hat from the counter, and slapped it on his head. Immy realized he was Sonny Squire, Tinnie’s filthy rich rancher-banker father. She hadn’t recognized the crusty old cowboy without his hat. He left a trail of eau de Old Crow as he passed them, nodding, on his way out.

“Bye, Daddy,” said Tinnie softly, just before the door clicked shut. She turned red-rimmed eyes toward them, greeted them with a limp howdy, climbed onto her stool, and began frowning at the computer screen in front of her. She would have been quite pretty, Immy thought, if she didn’t have such a deep vertical furrow between her eyebrows. And today, those red eyes. Her hair was naturally light blond, rather wispy in an appealing way, and her features were regular in her small face.

Her crying was probably due to losing the pig she had so recently gotten from Amy JoBeth, but that furrow was a more permanent feature. It must be stressful to own a jerky shop, thought Immy.

Tinnie’s stool stood behind the counter that topped a display case of combination packages they offered. In addition to jerky, the Buckets sold sausage, salsa, candies, and nuts that they purchased locally for sale. These were displayed, along with the two dozen or so varieties of jerky, on shelves lining the room. A large glass window behind Tinnie gave a view of the room where the meat was cut when it first arrived. That room was usually empty when Immy was there, but once she had been able to see Rusty and an employee, aproned in white, wielding large knives and hacking through a carcass. Both Rusty and the employee had the brawn to do it.

“I just heard about Gretchen,” said Immy. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you,” murmured Tinnie without taking her gaze away from the screen.

Immy mentally shrugged and got busy gathering Hortense’s favorites—teriyaki, hot ’n’ spicy, and black pepper. Ralph picked up some plain beef jerky for himself and paid for it.

A thin young woman, maybe late teens or early twenties, came into the shop from an inner door and started replenishing the shelves from a rolling cart she pulled behind her. Her long neck, along with eyes that threatened to bulge from their sockets, gave her a frightened rabbit look. Those features pegged her as Poppy Jenkins, Ophelia’s daughter. Ophelia, the maker of pig leashes, had the same neck and eyes.

Tinnie pursed her lips and squinted a malevolent glower at the young woman. Poppy stared back a moment, but her bulging eyes couldn’t compete with Tinnie’s hard ones. Poppy finished her task, then retreated through the same door without speaking a word.

As Immy inspected the shelves at the rear of the showroom, trying to ignore the interaction she’d witnessed, she heard two voices arguing behind the door Poppy had used. A female was throwing accusations at someone, berating him for “fooling around” on her with that something-something. Immy inched closer to the door.

“We haven’t been together for over a week,” the woman continued.

“I don’t even like her,” the man said. “She’s just…tell you what, we’ll go somewhere next weekend.” The man sounded like Rusty.

The voices grew quiet and Immy finished her shopping. As she took her selections to the counter to pay, Rusty, trailed by the silent Poppy, came in through the door that Immy could now see led to the packaging room. Rusty hoisted a pile of boxes in his impressive arms.

“Hi, hon,” he said to his wife, as relaxed and good-natured as if he hadn’t just been in a fierce battle.

“Poppy,” said Tinnie. “You’re not needed in the shop.”

Poppy left and Tinnie whirled on her husband. “What’s she doing here today? I thought she was going to part-time.”

“Aw, hon—”

The furrow between her eyes deepened. “Don’t you ‘hon’ me, you son of a—”

Their small tow-headed son, Zack, followed his father into the retail space. He was small-boned and delicate, like his mother.

Zack was a pre-school classmate of Drew. He’d been the first friend Drew wanted to invite to her upcoming birthday party. He ran to her and she started babbling about her new pig.

Tinnie lowered her voice, but Immy could make out every word.

“You just want her here for the quick, occasional blow job, don’t tell me you don’t. Are you now taking our son with you when you go to see your other whore?”

Rusty’s face froze mid-grin. He threw a nervous glance at his customers.

Immy had wanted to ask him if that was his orange truck that almost ran them over at the vet’s, but this didn’t seem like the right time.

“I’ll just take these,” Immy said, trying to deflect Tinnie’s attention to business.

It didn’t work.

Tinnie slid off her stool and stood, tall and willowy, facing her square, hard, cowboy-garbed husband. The air in the place seemed to stand still. Immy had no desire to see another face-off.

“Tinnie, I want to pay for these.”

“Wait on the lady, hon.” Rusty’s voice cracked. “We’ll talk later.”

“No, we will not. We’ll talk now. I saw that whore out there at the smokehouse. What the hell is she—”

“Zack, go outside and play,” said Rusty, giving his son a shove toward the door.

He was a little late with that, Immy thought. “Drew, go with Zack.” She was late, too. She could kick herself for not shooing Drew out earlier, before she had heard all the ugly language. Maybe the children hadn’t noticed through their chatter.

The two children ran out the door and the tension in the room seemed to let up a bit. Immy felt her shoulders relax a notch.

Tinnie waited on Immy, taking her money and sacking her purchases without looking her in the eye.

“I was goin’ to tell you a shipment of pork just came in,” said Rusty, coming to stand beside his wife.

Tinnie whirled on him again. “Pork! How can you talk about pork at a time like this?”

Rusty blew out a breath. “You’re right, hon. I forgot about Gretchen.”

It was Immy’s turn to whirl on him, in disbelief. “You forgot about Gretchen? Your wife’s pet has just been killed and you forgot about it?”

“Are you through here?” asked Rusty, giving Immy a cold look.

“Yes, I’m leaving.” Immy gathered her package and her purse and she and Ralph fled the quarrelsome scene.

“How rude,” she said to Ralph when they were outside.

The white truck was gone. It must have been Sonny Squire’s. The orange one was still there.

Drew and Zack knelt in the dirt at the edge of the parking lot, drawing pigs with sticks they’d found on the ground under the scrub oaks there.

Drew looked up and spotted them, then said goodbye to Zack and ran to them.

“Hi, Unca Ralph.” Drew wrapped her arms around his legs and he nearly fell over. “I wanna see Marshmallow.”

He opened the back and she got a reassuring glimpse of her new pig before he buckled her in.

This was a development Immy wasn’t ready for, Drew calling Ralph her Uncle. It could have permanent, fixed connotations she wasn’t prepared to face.

Vern Linder pulled into a parking space and said “Howdy” to Immy before he entered the jerky shop. He didn’t give her a chance to “Howdy” him back. Popular place, thought Immy. Everyone comes here, seems like.

“Damn,” she said to Ralph before she took the driver’s seat. “I forgot to ask for a sample of pork jerky.”

“The timing wasn’t good for that, Immy,” said Ralph.

“You’re right. Bad timing all around, today.”

* * *

While Ralph and Drew took Marshmallow around to his pen behind the singlewide, Immy mounted the wooden steps to her front door. The smell of Hortense’s incredible brownies greeted her nose and she let out a whoop.

“Brownies! Exactly what I need.”

“They’re fresh out of the oven, dear,” called her mother. “Come give Louise your salutations. Where’s the animal?”

Immy entered the kitchen to find her mother’s recent friend, Louise Cotter, at the kitchen table, making quick work of a gooey-looking, chocolaty-smelling lump of goodness. Two months ago the women had met in Wymee Falls at a meeting of the Association for Retired Librarians. Louise had moved to Wymee Falls about a year ago, after retiring from the library in Bootstrap, way out west, she’d said.

Louise could probably stand to lose a few pounds, but not a hundred, like Hortense, whose apron ties had been augmented with string to stretch around her girth.

“Mmm. Let me at ’em.” Immy washed her hands and poured herself a glass of milk. “Ralph and Drew are showing Marshmallow his new home.”

Hortense went to the window to watch the pig get acquainted with the yard.

“Marshmallow?” Louise’s cackle could probably be heard outside by Ralph and Drew. And Marshmallow. “Does Amy JoBeth know you named him that? She’ll love it.”

“You know Amy JoBeth?”

Louise’s bright gray eyes lit up. “She’s my daughter, silly goose. I’m glad we’re living so close now.”

“She’s your daughter? Small world. I have the job she used to have, PI assistant for Mike Mallett. She acted like she approved of the pig’s name,” answered Immy around a mouthful of brownie. Ralph was going to be extra glad he came with them today. Hortense only baked brownies when she was moved by some mysterious spirit.

Immy handed her mother the bag of jerky as she came back to the table. “I got all your favorites.”

Hortense took the bag and plopped into a chair. “Did you procure the pork?” Her thinly penciled eyebrows rose high above her many chins, and Immy felt chastised. She hated the way her mother could make her feel like a small child.

“Well, I couldn’t, really. There was, there were…things going on.” She didn’t want to mention the dead Gretchen in front of Louise. She might have been attached to the pig. Her daughter sure was. “But Rusty did say a shipment of pork had just arrived, so maybe next time.”

“I suppose it would be rude to eat pork jerky in front of Drew’s new porcine pet.” Hortense laughed at what she perceived as a joke, wobbling her topmost chins.

Louise snorted, not a happy snort, and her gray eyes darkened. Immy concluded that, with Amy JoBeth for a daughter, she probably took pigs seriously. Louise raised her nose into the air to signify her disapproval and spotted the crepe paper Immy had strung across the room for Drew’s party tomorrow.

“I nearly forgot to mention the piñatas to y’all,” Louise said to Immy. “Amy JoBeth makes the most marvelous pig-shaped piñatas. Would you like one for the children?”

“Most definitely,” said Immy. “They would get a kick out of that.”

Louise hauled her cell phone from her saddlebag-sized purse and called her daughter. “You do?” she said after asking if she had any available. To Immy she said, “She made a bunch last weekend. You can pick one up tonight it you want.”

“Too bad we didn’t know about them when we were there just now,” said Immy.

“Yes,” agreed Hortense. “Legal tender for gasoline doesn’t spring fully formed from large botanical vegetation.”

Immy mentally rolled her eyes. Louise did the same physically.

“I’ll pick it up after supper,” said Immy. Not that anyone would be hungry for a meal after scarfing down Hortense’s wonderful baking. “Tell her I’ll be by around six.”

“Will do. Well, I’d better get going.” Louise rose from her chair and hefted her purse onto her rounded shoulder. “Amy JoBeth and I are going to a movie later tonight. She’s been so awful upset about having to sell Gretchen. Her business started out good, but it’s been slow. She needed the money bad and those Buckets gave her a pile of it. I thought I’d take her out tonight and cheer her up some.”

“Oh.” Immy’s quiet syllable drew the attention of both women. “Maybe I should tell you. Amy JoBeth doesn’t know yet, I’ll bet, since this is brand new news.”

Louise and Hortense both leaned toward Immy.

“Gretchen’s dead. A drunk hunter shot her.”

It was a good thing Louise was standing next to her chair. Otherwise Immy could not have managed to shove her onto it as she fainted.

Chapter 3

Hortense could move surprisingly fast for a large woman. By the time Immy had propped up the fainting Louise Cotter in the kitchen chair, Hortense was there, swabbing Louise’s face with wet kitchen towels.

She gave her daughter a disappointed look. “Imogene, you could have used more sensitivity in revealing that distressing communication to Louise.”

Immy nodded, still holding Louise as upright as she could. “I realize that. How was I to know she’d faint at the thought of a dead pig, though?” Maybe it would be better to lay Louise out on the floor.

“Not jus’…a pig.” Louise was coming around, although her words slurred and slid from her plump lips. “Amy… JoBeff…pig.” Louise batted a dripping towel away from her cheek. Her words solidified into a long wail. “Amy! Her prize, her pet, her most beloved pig. What will she do without Gretchen?”

“She was already sold to the Buckets,” said Immy.