Broke: (13 page)

"So, you'll have to note that. If it's damaged, I didn't do it."

"I'll be back in daylight."
He scurried down the stairs, as quickly as his out
-
of
-
shape body could
go
.

"I work during the day," Immy called after him. "And there's a pig show Saturday."

She wasn't sure he heard her
, but she heard the front door slam as he left.

Chapter
Fourteen

The next knock
that evening
was Ralph's familiar rhythm.
Not many people used the doorbell
in this place
.
Drew was in the backyard,
otherwise
she would have run and jumped on him.

"You want some hot dogs?
" said Immy. "
There are three left."

"Uh, no thanks," said Ralph
, following her into the kitchen
. Was he turning up his nose at her hot dogs
?
It wasn't what he
got
when she lived with Mother, Immy had to admit.

"What's this?" He picked up one of her sketches.

"I'm trying to figure out how to make Marshmallow into a cow."

"He's a pig. You can't make him into a cow."

"
It's
for the contest
, silly
. I want to make him a cow costume."

"Ah, got i
t." Ralph sat and started
doing a sketch of his own.

Immy washed up their dishes, then peek
ed
over his shoulder. "Wow, you're good. I didn't know you could draw. You're a real artist."

She'd seen the water colors hanging on the wall in his house in Saltlick and knew his mother had done them, but she didn't know Ralph was, it seemed, as good as
his mother
had been.

"It's just rendering," he said. "I'm not an artist."

"
Whatever it is, that pig looks exactly
like Marshmallow."

In his picture, Marshmallow had longhorn horns coming out the side of his head, cowhide splotches on his skin, and a tufted tail.

Immy sat beside him. "Now, how are we going to do this? Too bad we can't enter your drawing."

"It shouldn't be too hard. When is the contest again?"

"Saturday."

"And today's Thursday?
I think we can do it. You have flour? I have chicken wire in the truck."

Ralph jumped up and hurried out t
o his truck
while Immy got her sack of flour out of the cupboard.

After Ralph started shaping and snipping the chicken wire, Immy called Drew and Marshmallow in to watch. The two
female
humans were rapt as the wire took form, almost magically
, under Ralph's strong hands
. He
had brought a stack of old newspapers
up from the basement
and now
set them cutting newspapers into strips.
While they did that,
Ralph looked
like a
professional
che
f mixing up the flour and water
with a little salt, to dip the strips in. They all three helped put the strips on the form.

By Drew's bedtime, Ralph had fashioned a small cap, fitted for Marshmallow's head, with eight-inch horns, out of chicken wire, and
they
had covered
the contraption
with
a
layers of
papier-mâché
.

"It looks great," said Immy. "Let's try it on."

"It's not done yet," Ralph said, frowning at his creation. "It needs more layers of paper. I think we can dry it in the oven."

After a short time in the oven, it was dry enough to add another layer.

"We can do another one or two tomorrow," Ralph said.

"Look at that." Immy stared at the creation. "It looks like Marshmallow will have horns."

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" said Drew, hopping around the table. "He's the cutest pig in the world!"

Immy thought she'd be able to make his tail out of cloth, and Ralph said
finger paint
would do for cowhide splotches. "Too bad we can't give him an udder," said Ralph.

Immy punched him on the arm. "That's silly. He's a boy."

"Well, he's also a pig," answered Ralph.

"And it's Drew's bedtime." She shooed Drew upstairs
to get ready
for a bath. During their goodbyes
on the front porch
, Immy asked if Ralph thought he could make a ramp for the inside stairs.

"Probably."

"How soon?"

"I don't think I can work on it--"

Immy gave him another goodbye kiss, this one a little stronger than the last two.

"I'll do it right after the pig show, okay?"

"Okay." Immy grinned and went upstairs to get Drew ready for bed.

***

"Last book," said Immy.
S
he usually read three to Drew at bedtime
and they were on the fourth
.

"Hooty wants one more after this one," said Drew.
She was sleeping in the Great Hall again, Marshmallow curled up on the floor beside her.

"You tell Hooty he needs his beauty sleep."

"How come?
He's not
bootyful
.
You can't see him. Nobody can but me."

That was certainly true. "He needs to look good for you, doesn't he?"

Drew shrugged. "I don't care how he looks. He looks better tha
n
the lady anyway."

Not "the lady" again!
Damn ghost.

Immy read the last book while Drew's eyes began to close
. T
hen
she
tucked her
daughter
in and
kissed her on
her
soft,
smooth
forehead.

"The lady tole me she doesn't want that man here," Drew said, her voice s
ounding
sleepy
already
.

"Which man?" They'd had a parade of them that night.

"That fat man that went
all the way
upstairs."

"That's her nephew
, Geoff
."
Geoff
didn't seem to like
his deceased aunt
. It was reasonable she wouldn't like him.

What
am I
doing
, Immy thought, a
cting like this ghost
is
real! Immy refused to believe that.

She started to protest, to tell Drew that
"
the lady" was no more real than Hooty, but Drew was asleep.

Immy tip-toed into the kitchen to study. Her test on Missing Persons was tomorrow. She'd have to go to the Saltlick Library
after work
to take the test
,
unless Mike was out of the office long enough for her to use th
e office
computer. Maybe she should get a Wymee Falls Library card
so she wouldn't have to trek to Saltlick
.

She'
d
been neglecting her
studying
and
was behind, so she
read until well after one in the morning. When she finished, she felt she knew the material.
And now that she knew so much about Missing Persons, she would look up some information on Mrs. Tompkins, right a
fter the pig show. If she was a ghost and if she was haunting this house, maybe Immy could get her to leave. But first she'd have to know more about her.

A finger of cold brushed the
side
of her neck.
Immy
didn't turn around
. She
shivered and
sat still and waited. Nothing more happened that night.

***

Mike was called out on surveillance
for most of
Friday, so Immy was able to log onto
the site for
Stangford Institute of Higher Learning and take her test. She whizzed through the questions and was even able to catch up on the stack of filing that had been building all week.
Mike would like that. He'd return to find the stack gone.
N
ot shoved in her
desk
drawer
to hide it
, as sometimes happened.
She left work happy, eager to finish up Marshmallow's costume.
Hortense
had agreed to make the tail and pick up some
finger paint
for his camouflage

Hortense had been picking Drew up from school ever since they'd moved to Wymee Falls. The arrangement was working out all right, but it was
sort of
inconvenient for Immy to drive twenty miles to Saltlick and twenty miles back after a long day in the office. At least she wouldn't have to make the drive tonight.
She was meeting
her mother and her daughter
at the Tompkins--no, at
her
house in half an hour.

When she got home,
Ralph's truck
and Hortense's green van were both
parked
at the curb
.
Immy
was glad they were all here. As soon as she
got out of
her little Sonata
, she heard raised voices coming from the backyard. Now what?

Sadie McMudgeon, her hag
of a
neighbor, ro
unded the corner from the direction of the
backyard
. The old woman rushed toward Immy,
shaking a bony finger at her.
Immy
staggered and fell
against her car.

"You're all crazy," she shrieked. "Alice Tompkins was crazy when she lived here. Then her nephew, Geoff, stayed in the house about a week and he's crazy, too. Now y
'
all got a whole family of crazies living here."

"My family is not crazy!" Immy stood
up and
tower
ed
over the bent, shriveled woman.

Sadie wasn't intimidated by Immy's superior height.
"What do you call dressing a pig to look like a steer? That's crazy."

"Oh,
you can tell he's a steer? T
hat's good.
It
's his costume for the pig show."

"Pig show." The woman almost spat. "This house makes people crazy. Oughta be torn down. Shouldn't be allowed to stand. Making me crazy, too."

Sadie stalked off toward her own house, hidden in the overgrowth down the road. Immy thought
maybe
Sadie didn't need the help of th
is
house to make her crazy. Such an angry woman. She
must be
unhappy about something
beside
s
the house
, and
Immy
wondered what.

Immy thought she heard the woman muttering something about the city council. Surely she wouldn't tell them that the house should be torn down because it was making people crazy? Oh well, if she did, they'd know who was crazy.

When she got to the backyard,
Marshmallow was fully decked out in his horns and tail. Drew was applying
finger paint
in cow-
ish
splotches, under Ralph's direction.

"How did you get the horns finished?" Immy asked. "I thought they needed two more layers."

"I had some time coming," he said. "I came over early
and got 'em done."

"How did you get into the house?"

"You'd left the front door unlocked. I was gonna call you at work to let me in, but I didn't n
eed to. You really should lock up when you leave
, Immy."

She must have been distracted by her test. She'd have to be more careful. People traipsed in
,
even
when the doors were locked and she didn't want to make it any easier for them.

"No, dear," Hortense said to Drew.
Hortense dipped two chubby fingers full of paint and demonstrated.
"Shape them
in an irregular fashion. They
simulate the
bovine
aspect more accurately
that way."

Drew looked to Immy for help.

"It'll make him more bovine," she said.

"Marshmallow is bovine?" said Drew.

"He's technically porcine,
" Hortense said, "
but he'll be bovine for the competition."

"And he'll be the Cutest Pig in the world."

Immy wondered if Drew thought that was the title he was going for. Her delusion wouldn't hurt anything. This delusion, that is. She wasn't so sure about the imaginary people.