Smoke (7 page)

The air conditioning was cranking out all the cool air it could, but it was hard to battle the triple-digit Texas heat of late June. After sunset, the temperature dipped into the nineties, but not that far into them, and not for long.

Immy surveyed the happy wreckage of ribbons, toys, and pig confetti tracked everywhere and decided to do cleanup later. Drew and Zack had been bathed, separately—Immy wasn’t quite sure at what age it was appropriate or inappropriate to bathe together—and tucked into bed. Drew took her youth bed in Immy’s room, as always, and Zack was bedded down in Immy’s single bed. Immy planned to sleep on the couch until Zack returned home.

He had said a disturbing thing to Immy as she tucked him in. “That lady that works in the shop, that Poppy lady, told Mommy she gonna eat—” His soft chin quivered. “—eat Gwetchen. Soon as she’s smoked, she said.”

“Oh, darlin’.” Immy sat on the edge of the bed and gathered him in her arms. The child shook with sobs for a good five minutes. Immy dried his tears with a tissue. “We might find Gretchen somewhere,” she lied. “Or we might be able to get you another pig. Would you like that?”

“I want Gwetchen.”

“But if we can’t find Gretchen?”

He nodded. “‘Nother pig would be awright. Mommy said Gwetchen is dead. Somebody shot her. But not Daddy.”

The child fell asleep in her arms and she gently laid him on the bed and covered him.

After Immy’d seen the grotesque body of Zack’s father, skewered through the shoulder onto a meat hook and swinging slightly from the breeze of the open smokehouse door, she’d shoved the heavy door shut and run back to the house. The thought had flitted through her head that she should take her time and investigate the scene of the crime, but she was afraid she might throw up all over the evidence if she lingered.

After a whispered consultation with Tinnie, they’d agreed Immy would take Zack to her house immediately while Tinnie phoned 911. Tinnie had relayed a message to Immy that she should be ready to give a statement later that day or the next.

It didn’t occur to Immy until much later, after Drew’s party that night, that Tinnie hadn’t seemed grief-stricken about her husband being dead.

Mother was now watching a lawyer show in the living room.

“I think I’ll call Tinnie and see what happened after I left.”

“Why? Was something happening?”

“Oh!” Immy hadn’t had a chance to tell her mother about Rusty. “Yes, something was happening. Or had already happened. Let me make sure the kids are sound asleep.”

She peeked in and they were sleeping like a pair of rosy-cheeked cherubs. The room was sweet with bubble bath smell.

“You would think three recitations of
Goodnight, Moon
would induce somnolence, wouldn’t you?” said Hortense when she returned.

“I don’t know. Drew usually takes four.”

“But tonight it was five. My word, I almost fell asleep myself.”

“Mother, that Rusty Bucket is dead.”

“Yes, I know. I noticed a hole in it the last time I watered the irises. Just throw it away.”

“No, not
our
rusty bucket, Zack’s father, Rusty Bucket.”

“Zack’s father is dead? Heart attack?”

“Not exactly. I found him...hanging in the smokehouse. On a meathook.”

Hortense’s eyes grew to their fullest, then spilled tears. “Oh, my poor baby. You had to find him?” She rose and pressed Immy to her bosom. “Life is not fair.”

When Hortense returned to her television viewing chair, Immy said, “He was murdered, Mother. He had to have been.”

“I don’t suppose one could commit suicide that way,” said Hortense.

“Well, he should have killed himself. You know who else was in there?”

“Two people were hanging from meat hooks?” Hortense muted the television and set her iced tea on the wobbly table next to the recliner. She must have been feeling a tad better because a thick layer of sugar lay on the bottom of her glass.

“No, the other body was on the floor. Not a person. Gretchen. The pig that got shot. She hasn’t been skinned yet. I could see two bullet holes in her dear head. Poor thing. It looked to me like Rusty was thinking of making jerky out of her. Can you believe that?”

“I presume his spouse doesn’t know of those intentions.”

“Zack just told me that she does. I’m going to call Tinnie to see what’s going on and how she’s doing. Unless she’s left for her mother’s.”

“Offer her a casserole, dear.”

“Of course.”

The phone at Tinnie’s house rang and rang. Immy didn’t have a cell phone number for her. “I guess I’ll ask Ralph. Oh gosh! I’ll bet the chief and Ralph had to go there to suss out the scene.”

“One would hope so.”

“But they both got food poisoning too.”

Hortense had gotten up and dipped a finger in the icing of the left-over cake. If she was feeling better, maybe the other two were recovered. “Maybe you should offer to bring them the rest of my Kaopectate.”

“Mother, you drank it from the bottle.”

She nodded. “Yes, I’d forgotten about that. You should wipe the brim.”

Hortense unmuted the drama and Immy went outside to call Ralph. She knew that he and the chief would be handling the call since they had jurisdiction for Cowtail, which was too small for its own police force.

The front yard was louder than inside the singlewide. Katydids were in the full bloom of their summer lust, jangling their mating calls from the live oaks and salt cedars overhead. A faint sliver of moon trickled its light through the small, hard live oak leaves and caught a few glints of metallic confetti in the grass, the tiny pigs turning to pinkish silver in the moonlight.

Ralph answered right away. “Immy? Are you all right?”

“Me? Yeah, I didn’t have any jerky.”

“Didn’t you find Bucket’s body? I thought Chief said—”

“Oh, yes, I did.” She squeezed her eyes shut and the vivid sight of her discovery came back to her. Was this going to happen every time she closed her eyes? “I don’t think I’ll go to sleep tonight.”

“Chief told me to get a statement from you. You want me to come over now? I’ll be right there.”

Before she could decide if she wanted to protest or not, the connection was dead. Ralph was, presumably, on his way.

* * *

Immy ran inside to grab her book before Ralph arrived. The index of
The Moron’s Compleat PI Guidebook
had an entry Immy had marked with a black Sharpie, “questioning of suspects”. She quickly reviewed the tactics so she could pump Ralph. Being a cop, he should be wise to them. In fact, Immy thought, he should be using them, but Immy had never noticed him doing so. Maybe he was too polite to use cop tactics to grill her.

Immy returned to the front steps to meet Ralph. He leapt out of his truck and rushed over to stand at the foot of the stairs, looking up at Immy with genuine concern on his wide, ingenuous face. “Are you okay? How much did you see?”

She gulped and shut her eyes. She’d seen more than she ever wanted to. A blackened, naked, dry-looking body, speared through the shoulder, swinging, slowly swinging from a huge, thick, metal hook. Or had she imagined some of that, embellished the horrific sight with her mind’s eye to the point it was even worse than what her real eyes had seen? Having a vivid imagination was a curse, Mother always said. Mother was, as usual, right.

This would never do. Immy opened her eyes and vowed to keep them open.

“I saw that it was Rusty.”

Ralph wrote something in a notebook he’d taken from his pocket. Then he stowed it and put his warm hand on her shoulder. She turned to him, her tears spilling out in spite of her rapid blinking. Ralph pulled her up, lifted her off the step, and smothered her in a long, comforting bear hug. She wanted it to never end. Maybe the images would stay away if Ralph held her for a couple of days, or a week.

“I’m so sorry, Immy,” Ralph crooned, over and over. “Next time you’re going to discover a body, call me first.”

Immy suppressed a half-hysterical giggle and pulled away. “Now, Ralph, how in the hell am I going to know before I discover it?”

She had him there. “Ralph, what do you know so far?”

“About?”

“About how he died. Did Rusty die in the smokehouse? Was he…smoked to death?” There hadn’t been a puddle of blood under his body, so the skewering, which it seems was bloodless, hadn’t killed him. Was he dead when someone stuck him there? He must have been.

“The autopsy isn’t back. Won’t be for a couple days, probably. Chief said it looked like he died of smoke inhalation, but that’s not official.”

If the cause and time of death weren’t known yet, what info should she pump Ralph for? Then she remembered her original resolve to solve Gretchen’s death.

“Did you see that Gretchen’s body was there, too?” she asked. “With the confetti?”

“Confetti?”

Immy pointed to some pinkness glinting in the yard. “Like that.”

Ralph got up and picked up a few pieces. “Yeah, this same stuff was found with that pig on the floor.”

“Are you through getting my statement?”

“I can fill the rest in,” he said, tucking his notebook back into his inside pocket.

That was kind of disappointing. She’d wanted to see what he wrote about her.

“Was it really Gretchen in the smokehouse? That pig was pure white, just like Marshmallow.”

“Tinnie sure thought it was when she saw it.” Ralph gave her a look of admiration. “You noticed a lot, didn’t you?”

The body swung before her again, but this time her eyes were open. Was she always going to see it? The tears sprang again. “Yes, I did.”

* * *

On Sundays Immy usually took the opportunity to sleep in and have the trailer to herself, but she wanted a distraction from the recurring pictures that had interrupted her sleep half the night. So she decided to go to church the next morning with Mother and Drew, and Zack of course.

The sanctuary was dark and cool, welcome after the glare outside. Immy felt her body un-tense a bit, singing the old familiar hymns and listening to the rambling sermon from the elderly Reverend Klinger. He’d headed up the small Baptist congregation for most of Immy’s life. Listening to him was easy, comfortable, and soothing.

Sonny Squire saw them enter and beckoned his grandson to come sit with them, but Zack stuck his lower lip out and shook his head. Immy recognized the expression. When Drew made it, her mind was made up and no one could change it.

This was awkward. Immy shooed Hortense and the children into a pew and went to speak with Sonny.

“He’s not feeling well,” Immy whispered. Whispering seemed called for after the recent events.

“Then he’d better be with his family.” Sonny squinted and gave her a hard look.

Immy drew back from the whiskey fumes. “Speaking of family, where’s Tinnie?” She and Zack usually sat with Sonny in church.

Sonny turned away from Immy without answering, so she made her way back to the pew, four rows behind and contemplated the back of Sonny Squire’s head.

Immy probably only imagined she could smell Sonny from here. Came from being a wealthy rancher, Immy supposed. He was the only wealthy rancher who attended Holiness Baptist, but she knew he wasn’t the only one who swilled whiskey when he drove his four-door, long-bed pickup across his land to survey the herds. She tried to keep her mind on Sonny Squire to prevent the other pictures that wanted to pop up in the dark places in her mind. Sonny also owned the First Bank of Saltlick but rarely put in an appearance there.

As they rose after the last Amen, Immy decided she was going to be able to go forward, to get past the crisis of finding Rusty’s body. The service seemed to finalize his death. All she had to concern herself about in the coming week was her job, and she looked forward to that. She got a thrill seeing the words, “Private Detective,” on the door every weekday morning.

Immy edged her way to the end of the pew behind Drew and Zack, Mother following at a slower pace, trailing them on their way to the door to file past Rev. Klinger to shake his soft, dry hand.

“Remember,” Hortense said, “Chief is coming to dinner. He said he seemed sufficiently recovered to partake of my provisions. I assured him I would be serving poultry, one of his favorites.”

“I’ll shuck some sweet corn if you want,” offered Immy.

“That would be—”

“Howdy, ladies,” called Louise Cotter from the other side of the sanctuary. “Wait up, I’m acomin’.”

Immy marveled that being a librarian hadn’t affected Louise’s speech the way it had Hortense’s. Her vocabulary, in fact, seemed paltry for a woman who had probably read lots of books. And it was way too loud for a librarian.

Louise squeezed through a row of pews while Drew tugged on Immy’s hand.

“Mommy, I wanna go see Marshmallow,” Drew said.

“Wait a sec,” said Immy, watching Louise’s approach.

Sonny walked by and gave Zack a hug. He threw a glare at Immy, but didn’t say anything to them. At close range, Immy again caught the brunt of Sonny’s fragrance. It was strong today. She fanned her face after he walked away.

Louise emerged from her row and took a breath while they waited in the middle of the church, left behind by the departing crowd. Negotiating the small space between the pews was probably not easy for someone as rotund as she was. Mother barely fit.

“Tell you what, I’ve been trying to think of something to cheer up Amy JoBeth, and I’ve decided she needs a shower,” said Louise.

“She didn’t smell too bad when I was there Friday,” said Immy.

Louise’s sharp cackle made the departing parishioners stop and startle, alarmed. When they saw it was Louise, and not someone in the throes of death, they continued leaving the church.

“Aren’t you a hoot! She doesn’t need a bath shower, she needs a wedding shower.”

“She’s getting married?” said Immy.

“To Vern Linder. She’s been so happy with him. She hasn’t been in the tornado shelter for months and months until now. Not since she started on pigs. She said, after we lost the ranch and her daddy took his life, poor soul, and after her divorce, she wasn’t inclined to even come back here. I had an idea we’d ranch together someday, but the family tragedy eventually turned Amy JoBeth clean away from cattle, straight into pigs. Fact is, the reason she divorced Ernie is because he wanted to take up ranching. She couldn’t face that.”