Smoke (5 page)

“That would be charitable and generous, dear,” said Hortense. “It’s felicitous that some of my bakery products remain.” She bit off a piece of the jerky Immy had brought from Jerry’s Jerky Shoppe. It was the last piece. “Maybe you can stop by and get me some more of this.”

“They’re closed this late, Mother. It’s after seven. I’ll get you some tomorrow after my hair appointment.” The next day was Saturday, Drew’s party, and Immy had an early appointment—at eight—to give her plenty of time to get ready for the celebration.

Hortense heaved a giant-sized sigh, the only kind she ever heaved. “I guess that will have to do. My, that Rusty Bucket makes good jerky.”

“Why do they call the shop Jerry’s, Mother? Why not Rusty’s?”

“I believe it was already named when the Buckets bought it. The alliteration is pleasing, for one thing. For another, they probably decided it would be better for business to remain with a known name.”

“Who was Jerry, anyway?”

“I do believe he was an old family friend of the Squire family.”

The Squire family, of which Tinnie Bucket was a member, owned the biggest ranch in these parts. They were considered the local “rich” folks and everyone knew Tinnie’s money had bought the jerky business. The Buckets never had two dimes to rub together. Rusty had played outstanding high school football, though, so he was considered a good catch for the local rich girl. And, since Jerry had been a family friend, Tinnie and Rusty may even have gotten a good deal on the property.

“Louise tells me,” said Hortense, “that her daughter used to retreat to the tornado shelter on their ranch in times of distress. She has, in the past, suffered greatly from malaise.”

“I thought she had depression,” said Immy. “Mike Mallett told me my predecessor was put in the hospital a couple of times for depression when she worked there. I don’t think he should have told me that. But, since I know about it, I’m thinking it might be depression again.”

“Yes, but that’s such an ugly word.” Hortense finished chewing the last bit of jerky. “That batch of jerky tasted a bit different from the usual. I wonder if Mr. Bucket has a new ingredient, or a new process. I am unable to decide whether the taste is superior or inferior.”

“I’ll ask when I go by tomorrow. Right now, I want to get these brownies to Amy JoBeth and get her out of that hole in the ground.”

* * *

The poor woman was right where Immy had left her, but she was able to coax Amy JoBeth out from underground and into her own house. Immy was careful not to mention pigs while they sat at Amy JoBeth’s kitchen table sharing the brownies with sweating glasses of iced tea. Amy JoBeth must have turned off the AC in the house. How long had she meant to stay in the shelter?

Immy was congratulating herself for rescuing the poor, distressed woman, when a rattling pickup pulled up in front.

“Sounds like Vern,” said Amy JoBeth.

The vet assistant who had been stabbed with the syringe wandered in from the front of the house, evidently feeling at home enough to walk in. Amy JoBeth turned a fond smile on him and he stooped to peck her on the cheek. He on had the same ratty clothes he’d worn in the clinic earlier that day and carried a plastic bag.

So, Vern and Amy JoBeth. Small world, Immy thought.

“Evenin’, Immy.” His smile revealed those dimples.

He turned so Amy JoBeth saw his other arm and she sucked in her breath. “What happened to you?”

His short sleeved shirt revealed a length of gauze wound round his biceps where the needle had punctured him.

“Oh, an accident at work. That clumsy bitch, Betsy Wiggins. I oughta sue, get workman’s comp or disability or something.”

“I’m not sure you can get disability if you’re not disabled, Vernie.”

He frowned and the cute dimples disappeared. Immy didn’t know if it was because he was being denied his rights, or because of the ridiculous nickname. “Anyway, I brung you something. Your ma said you was feelin’ puny.”

“I… I guess I was. Still am, but Immy was kind enough to bring me some of Hortense’s brownies.”

“These are Hortense’s?” He scooped one up and mashed the entire thing into his mouth. “Tell her thanks, Immy,” he said around the chocolate goo filling his mouth.

“Okay.” Immy averted her head in case she wanted to eat another brownie.

“What did you bring me, Vernie Wernie?”

Immy stifled a groan. Vernie Wernie? What was with these two?

Amy JoBeth took the plastic bag from Vern, then shrieked. She jumped up so fast her chair crashed to the floor and she ran from the room.

“What in the hell did you bring her?” asked Immy.

He held up the package Amy JoBeth had flung to the floor. “I brung her some of Rusty’s new pork jerky.”

Immy’s mouth dropped open. Pork jerky? To a woman who had just lost her pet pig? This was far worse than Rusty mentioning pork jerky to Tinnie.

“He says it’ll be a real good seller. Tastes better than the beef to lotsa people. Wouldn’t you think a pig person would like pork jerky?”

Immy ran after Amy JoBeth, but she had fled to the shelter. And this time she had locked the door from the inside. Immy was almost relieved she wouldn’t be able to follow her.

Vern came up behind Immy and started pounding on the door. “Sweetcakes! Honey bun! I didn’t mean nothin’. C’mon out. Please? Pretty please with a cherry on top?”

But no amount of cajoling, shouting, or pounding raised a sound from within.

“Aw jeez.” Vern slumped onto the grass beside the tornado door. “What did I do now?”

“Vern, you’re not serious. You honestly don’t know what you did? You brought her a delicacy made from the body of a close relative of Gretchen.”

He raised his head and gazed at the darkening sky. “I never thought of it that way. Aw shit.” He got to his feet, dragged himself to his dusty black pickup and drove off.

Immy tried to coax her out for awhile longer. Telling Amy JoBeth that Vern was gone and there were more brownies failed to rouse her. Immy finally left, knowing Drew might be afraid if it started storming. She would tell Mother to call Louise. Maybe Amy JoBeth’s own mom could get her to come out. Staying there all night wouldn’t kill her, would it?

Chapter 4

There is nothing quite like the feeling of strong fingers massaging your scalp at the shampoo bowl, thought Immy. Cathy, of Cathy’s Kut and Kurl, was the best. She was the
only
beautician in Saltlick, that was true, but still….

This was a good opportunity to gain some information since Cathy was usually a fount of gossip. The trouble was, Immy wasn’t sure what questions to ask to track down a pig killer. Maybe an open-ended one?

“So,” she said, her eyes closed in pleasure from the head rub, “did you hear we got a pig for Drew?”

“Drew wants a pig? For a pet or to eat?”

“It’s a pet. A potbelly. She named it Marshmallow.”

“Did you see the
Saltlick Weekly
? There’s a funny article about a pig in it. It’s one of them potbellies, too.”

“The story is there already? What’s it say?”

Cathy rubbed conditioner into Immy’s hair and massaged some more. “It’s a sorta local color humor, I guess. This here pig got killed somehow and some poor woman is god awful upset about it, like it was a kid or something.”

Cathy dried her hands and left for a moment, then returned waving the paper.

“Here it is,” she said, skimming the article. “It says the pig got killed by a drunk hunter after Tinnie Bucket, the owner, didn’t shut the gate. I didn’t see it was Tinnie when I first read it.”

A voice piped up from the next shampoo bowl where old Mrs. Wilson was waiting for her perm to set. “I heard the darn pig dug under the fence. Tinnie’s pretty upset, you know.”

“I saw her,” said Immy, “and she was, but Amy JoBeth, who sold the pig, is more upset. She loved it.” She groaned as Cathy resumed scrubbing her head.

“You can’t trust a pig with a fence,” said Mrs. Wilson, who considered herself an authority on most things.

Immy knew Mrs. Wilson didn’t even trust their dog with a fence, since they kept their Rottweiler chained in the yard. She and Drew sometimes snuck stew bones to the poor creature.

“Well,” said Immy, trying to dig deeper, “does anyone know who the hunter was?”

“Someone pretty close to the pig pen, wouldn’t you say?” said Mrs. Wilson.

Cathy’s massage stopped as she straightened and confronted Mrs. Wilson. “It happened there at Jerry’s Jerky, on Rusty’s property. Are you saying it was Rusty? Cuz I don’t think you oughta be spreadin’ stories if you don’t know.”

Cathy turned on the hose and started rinsing Immy. “I haven’t knowed Rusty to be drunk all that often. So drunk he couldn’t see what was a pig and what wasn’t, anyways.”

Rusty had neither looked nor smelled drunk yesterday. “What time was Gretchen killed?” Immy asked.

“Who’s Gretchen?” asked Mrs. Wilson.

“That’s the pig. Says so in the
Weekly
,” said Cathy.

“Someone named a pig Gretchen? That’s disgraceful. My sister is named Gretchen, Gretchen Newhouse. Well, I never.” Mrs. Wilson rattled the pages of the magazine she’d been leafing through and went back to it, finished with this discussion.

“I don’t reckon anyone knows what time,” said Cathy. “But prob’ly late Thursday night. Maybe early Friday?”

It was Saturday morning now. Immy had been at the jerky shop Friday afternoon and Tinnie had been grieving then. But Amy JoBeth hadn’t heard about it yet. So maybe Gretchen was killed during the day on Friday. Hunters usually went out early in the morning, but they weren’t usually drunk until later. Immy had no idea when the crime had been committed. That was going to make it hard to investigate. She needed more details.

“One thing I heard ’bout that Jerry’s Jerky,” said Cathy. “There was a health inspector out there yesterday.”

Immy hoped the Buckets wouldn’t have a bad health inspection report to deal with, on top of everything else.

She tried to remember Dr. Fox telling them about Gretchen’s death. Who had told Dr. Fox about it? That’s who she needed to talk to. It might have been Tinnie. Dr. Fox said Tinnie wanted him to come autopsy the pig, which he hadn’t done. Maybe he should have. What would it hurt? He could determine the angle of the lethal bullet. Immy knew that was important at a crime scene. Her second-hand copy of
The Moron’s Compleat PI Guidebook
had an entire chapter on determining bullet angles.

But, right after her hair appointment, she had to drive into Wymee Falls to pick up Drew’s pig-shaped cake at the Fancy Frosting Bake Shop. She would be pleased if they hadn’t misspelled Drew’s name D-E-R-W, as they’d done on her cake when she turned three. No one had noticed it until Drew did. A tearful time was had that year because neither Hortense nor Immy was able to transpose the letters of icing.

When her hair was clean and blow-dried, Immy turned her van out of the nose-in space in front of Cathy’s Kut and Kurl, the vivid pink of the small wooden structure flashing so bright in the rearview mirror it made Immy’s stomach hurt.

Directly across Second Street from Cathy’s, where Huey’s Hash used to be, stood the only franchise establishment in Saltlick, the newly opened Tomato Garden, a faux Italian chain owned by the Giovanni family in El Paso. Frankie Laramie, a Giovanni on his mother’s side, was the manager, but most Saltlickians thought he didn’t have enough gumption to run the place. Some gave it three months, some six.

Immy wanted to wish the place luck. It was good to have an eatery in Saltlick. The nearest Dairy Queen was in Cowtail. But she couldn’t help the anger she felt when she passed by the door, never going in. She had owned the previous restaurant, a legacy from her Uncle Huey, and Frankie and his Uncle Guido had argued that the property was worth very little. They had argued so convincingly, she had sold it to them for very little. Afterwards, when she saw the booming business it did, she knew she’d been cheated. It was doing as well as the Wymee Falls franchise, which they also owned.

The restaurant was flanked by the glass windowed second-hand shop that used to be a video rental store and the town library, whose limited hours meant it was hardly ever open. The town had to save money somewhere, and replacing the yellow light bulbs in the blinking light on the main drag was expensive. The First Bank of Saltlick presented a staid façade next to Cathy’s garish Kut and Kurl. Immy pulled into the All Sips “inconvenience store”, as Hortense call it, across the street to fill the van’s voracious gas tank, then began her drive into town.

Immy usually liked to drive past the placid cattle, chewing grass in the vast fields between Saltlick and Wymee Falls, but today she was in a hurry and had a lot on her mind. Turkey buzzards circled ominously above a slight dip beyond a far herd and Immy hoped a dead calf was not their target.

Wymee Falls, the county seat of Wymee County, was the nearest town big enough to have a bakery, a mall, and multiple strip shopping centers. The town wasn’t exactly thriving, but it wasn’t dying as actively as Saltlick and some of the other small surrounding towns. The oil boom had made the area, but the decline in oil drilling had brought about a decline here, too.

Saltlick has specialized in supplying oil drilling equipment to many local refineries. Now yards full of rusty remnants pocked the town. No one seemed to know what to do with the stuff that nobody wanted any more. The biggest employer in Saltlick was the school system. The biggest events were football games on Thursdays and Fridays in the fall. These were replaced by Go-Kart and riding mower races when football season ended.

Wymee Falls, on the other hand, survived on a few other things. There was the shopping mall, the only one for miles around, the sporting events—rodeos and ice hockey, and a nearby Air Force Base to supply shoppers for the mall and attendees at the events. Oil was still an industry, and pump jacks still dotted the landscape, but it was a much smaller part of the economy than in prior years.

After she saw the turkey buzzards, Immy passed one big pump jack and two smaller ones on the way into town.