Smoke (15 page)

“Well, can I talk to Amy JoBeth?”

“Immy, you’re late for work. Come back after you’re through.”

She tried a cute little pout, eyelashes batting and head at an adorable angle, but Ralph stood in the doorway until she had to leave.

Sure enough, she was late for work.

* * *

Immy didn’t understand why Mike had been so upset she was late. Her filing was all caught up, and she might catch up with the billing notices today. She wasn’t that far behind. What a stickler. Maybe that went with being a private eye. She would know soon enough. She had her online course book in her top drawer and she studied the next lesson when Mike closed his door to work on the phone. The next chapter was on Using the Internet. It would be handy to try some of the techniques on her office computer, but too risky with Mike in the building. If he left for lunch, maybe she could visit some of the sites mentioned for researching felons.

With dismay, she watched ten o’clock come and go. She was missing the press conference. If Mike had left for a morning appointment, she would have tried to sneak in to the interview. Except, she realized, she had no idea where it was being held. Ralph hadn’t even told her that. She was getting more and more upset with Ralph. And with Mike.

She pulled out the envelope of clippings left behind by Amy JoBeth one more time, trying to decipher their importance. Most of them were about the Squire family. Some of them were about things going on at the Saltlick bank. Sonny was mentioned in most of these. The divorce of Sonny and Sally was included, and the engagement announcement of Tinnie and Rusty. Zack’s birth announcement wasn’t there.

Where on earth had Amy JoBeth gotten all these old articles? She hadn’t been back in this area that long. A year, her mother had said. Some of them were from the top of the newspaper page, some were cut from the middle of the page. But she thought most of them must have come from the
Saltlick Weekly
.

The bigger question was, why was the Squire family so intriguing to the Cotter family?

Immy vowed to stop by the office of the Saltlick paper and see if Amy JoBeth had been doing research there. Maybe someone there knew why she collected these clippings.

She hadn’t noticed Mike open his door, but there he was, at her elbow.

“How is this helping you get invoices typed, kiddo?” He reached for the brittle pieces of paper, but Immy quickly shoved them into the envelope and opened her drawer to put it away.

“Hey, what’s this?” He grabbed her course book where it lay open in her drawer. “You studying to take my job?”

Immy hoped her expression was indignant and self-righteous. “I’m studying to become a better employee. The more I know about how private detecting works, the more—”

“The less use you are to me. That’s the way I see it. I’m the detective here, sweetheart. You’re the file clerk and typist. So type. And file.”

He left the office and walked up the street, no doubt to have a leisurely, delicious, expensive lunch.

She pressed her lips together and blinked back the tears that threatened to fall. Those were the meanest words he had ever said to her. She’d show him. She got out the list of bills to be typed and started pounding the computer keys. But tears continued to blur the words in front of her and she mistyped every third word, having to hit backspace almost as often as she hit the space bar.

Chapter 13

By the time Mike returned to the office, an hour later, Immy had succeeded in completing two invoices from the stack.

He stopped at her desk. She continued typing, but made three typos. She would wait until he left to correct them.

“Sorry I yelled at ya, kid,” he said. “But I need to get the bills out or we don’t get paid. Ya know? I don’t get paid, means you don’t get paid. The dough’s gotta come in.”

She turned her chair and handed him the two she had finished.

“What’s this for?” he said.

“For you to sign. You always sign them.”

“Yeah, but why are these two special? Where’s the rest of ’em?”

Immy looked away.

Mike took a step back, then shook the papers in his hand. “Jesus Christ. You mean you only got two of ’em done? What you been doin’ all day?”

He raised his voice enough that Immy to tried to scoot her chair back, but she hit the computer keyboard and send it crashing to the floor. Two keys popped off.

The office was deadly silent. Mike rattled the papers again. Immy didn’t dare breathe. Mike slapped the invoices down on the edge of her desk and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Okay. Tell ya what. This isn’t workin’ out, kiddo. I’m gonna have to let you go.”

“Go?” Immy picked up the broken keyboard. “I can fix this.” She tried to push the key caps back onto the keys.

“Yeah, let you go.”

“I don’t need to go anywhere.” No, that wasn’t right. The W didn’t belong on the bottom row.

“Yeah, you do, kid. You need to go wherever it is you been goin’ when you’re supposed to workin’ here, for me.”

“You…you’re firing me?” She dropped the keyboard again. Two more key caps popped off.

“You’re a nice girl, Immy, but this hasn’t worked out.”

He was firing her? The words didn’t seem to make sense. She had lost her job? Her PI job? Her face felt numb.

“Go ahead. Get your purse and leave.”

“What about two weeks? Don’t I get two weeks?”

“No, I don’t think you do. Go on.” He waved his hand toward the file drawer that held her purse. She pulled it open, dropped her purse on her first try, then picked it up. Her body was having trouble responding to the commands she, and Mike, were giving it. She stood up. Mike backed to give her room to leave and she walked out the door.

* * *

Immy had forgotten Ralph was coming for supper that night. Hortense had spent the afternoon brewing her special spaghetti sauce, fragrant with oregano and thyme, using tomatoes from Ralph’s vegetable plot behind his house. Immy heard him arrive, but stayed in her bedroom until Hortense called her to eat.

Ralph was helping set the table, but putting the flatware on all wrong. He put the fork on the same side of the plate as the knife. Immy’s waitressing experience at her uncle’s diner had taught her how to lay a table, if nothing else. But she was too weary to correct him. What did it matter anyway?

She sat in her usual chair to watch Hortense dish up the sauce and spaghetti noodles.

“Imogene, would you be so kind as to grate the cheese, please?” said Hortense.

Were there not bigger words for grate, or cheese? Immy tried to think of some, but she couldn’t. With lead in her limbs, she rubbed the wedge of Parmesan against the raspy metal barbs. She felt like her heart was being grated with the cheese. She hadn’t realized she’d left her course textbook in her desk drawer until she was home, in her room. She’d been studying the section on Using the Internet. She wouldn’t be able to study the internet without her book, or without Mike’s computer.

When she nicked a knuckle she dropped the cheese and the grater and stared at her finger.

“Immy, you’ve cut yourself.” Ralph wet a paper towel to sop up the dot of blood.

“Yes, I see that,” she said, making a point of not holding out her hand to him.

“What’s the matter?” He lowered his face and tried to peer into hers. She held her chin firmly against her chest, refusing to meet his eyes. She was afraid she would start crying if she told someone she’d lost her job.

Since walking in the door and shutting herself into her room, she hadn’t spoken to anyone. She had sat on the edge of her bed, letting silent tears flow and imagining what Mother would say when she found out. The last time she left a job, Mother hadn’t taken it well. Not at all.

“I can’t persuade her to communicate with me, Ralph,” said Hortense, ignoring the fact that Immy was standing right there in the kitchen. “I’ve been trying ever since she got home from work, but it has been akin to extracting incisors. Maybe prandial nourishment will make her feel better.”

Food. Mother’s cure for everything, thought Immy. She sat and pushed the spaghetti around on her plate and swirled the sauce, but took very few bites. When she did, they were difficult to swallow. Her pain lay like a lump in her throat.

Drew chattered about Marshmallow’s amazing accomplishments of the day. They mostly consisted of eating enormous amounts of food and using the litter pan.

When the dishes were cleared, Hortense pulled a plate from the cupboard. “There are cinnamon cookies for dessert,” she said, her voice brittle with forced gaiety, an obvious effort to counteract Immy’s gloom.

“None for me, thanks,” said Ralph. “Immy, let’s go for a walk.”

Immy started to shake her head, but Ralph pulled her up by her elbows and propelled her toward the door.

“No dessert, Ralph?” called Hortense. “Are you sure? I’ll save you some.”

“I want dessert, please,” Drew was saying as the front door closed behind them.

“Okay,” he said, once they reached the road. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Immy opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“Something happen at work?”

“Work!” she wailed and buried her head in his chest. Ralph patted her back and stroked her hair and the tension she’d been holding all afternoon and all evening drained out of her. She lifted her face, damp now with tears. “I got fired.”

“Wow.” His jaw dropped. “Fired.”

“He fired me. He let me go. He said I wasn’t…” she paused to blubber, “…wasn’t doing the work.”

“Were you?”

“Well, nooooo.” She felt like sitting down on the road and bawling like a newborn calf. She stuffed a fist into her mouth to stifle the loud wails that wanted to escape.

“Why would anyone fire you, Immy? I would never fire you.”

“You don’t hire anybody. Nobody works for you.”

“True. But if I did hire people, I’d hire you, and I’d never fire you.”

“That’s because….”

“Because, Immy, I love you.”

Ralph had never said that before. But Immy realized she had known if for awhile. A warm feeling trickled inside her, then spread, starting with her curling toes and ending up prickling her scalp. A smile slowly spread across her face and her tears stopped. The pain of being fired shriveled up into a corner inside her.

“You’re so sweet, Ralph.”

They kissed.

* * *

Immy and Ralph returned to the singlewide, strolling through the dry grass and holding hands. They spotted Louise Cotter’s car, a perpetually dusty, old brown Buick, parked in front.

“Wonder what she wants now?” muttered Immy.

“Be nice. Her daughter’s in jail.”

Ralph’s phone beeped and he looked at the screen. “Call out. Looks like one of the Yarborough twins peed in the neighbor’s yard again. Gotta go pick him up and dry him out.”

He gave her a brief peck that was nothing like their last kiss, but was still nice, and off he drove.

Louise sat at the kitchen table, having cookies and coffee with Hortense. Drew must have gone to the bedroom.

“You look improved, Imogene,” Hortense said.

Immy realized she wore a goofy grin. She tried to tamp it down, but it sprung up again.

“Is Ralph not coming in for dessert?”

“He got beeped. I don’t know if he’s coming back or not.” Immy sat at the table.

“Oh, Immy, just the person I want to see,” chirped Louise, at her normal full volume.

Immy squeezed her eyes shut, but that didn’t stop Louise’s voice. Although Immy could feel Ralph’s lips again with her eyes closed.

“I’m been so beside myself, what with Amy JoBeth being in prison and all.”

“She’s not, technically, in prison,” said Hortense. “She is merely in the Saltlick jail. She is, however, awaiting an arraignment that will determine whether or not she stands trial for a capital offense.”

“Exactly,” said Louise. “And we don’t have a lawyer for that arrangement thing. We can’t pay for one.”

“You have to be given a public defender if you can’t afford to pay a lawyer,” said Immy. “Have they assigned you one?”

“They keep trying to, but I’ve advised my daughter not to accept one of those free ones. They’re probably no good.”

Immy and Hortense passed a look between them.

“How do you propose to proceed?” said Hortense. “You seem to be tying your own hands behind your back. It is imperative that you either accept the legal representative chosen for you by the state of Texas, or that you engage an attorney on your daughter’s behalf. One or the other.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to y’all about.” Louise flashed a hopeful smile. “The Hail County Rodeo is coming up. Next weekend, in fact. Now here’s what I’ve decided we should do. Sell Hortense’s brownies at a booth to raise money for Amy JoBeth’s defense.”

Visions of Immy doing all the shopping for ingredients, decorating the booth, and shelling out her own cash flitted through her head. Not that there was much left of Immy’s cash.

Hortense didn’t give her opinion away on her face, but Immy must have. Louise turned to her.

“It’s for poor Amy JoBeth. It would cheer her up so much to know that people are on her side.”

Immy tried to hide her grin of disbelief in the woman’s brass.

Hortense opened her mouth, closed it, then decided to go ahead and speak. “It is doubtful, no improbable, that enough currency would be obtained in the vending of my bakery products to employ a member of the bar.”

“Oh no, we wouldn’t have a bar. They’ll have the usual booth for beer and—”

“You wouldn’t,” said Immy, stifling a guffaw, “raise enough money for a lawyer that way.” She put two fingers to her left temple, where a headache was threatening to erupt.

“But you’ll bake brownies for it, won’t you?” Louise’s voice still sounded hopeful, eager. “Maybe we don’t need a fancy lawyer. Maybe a PI. Do you think you can ask the detective you work for to look into Amy JoBeth’s case?”

That stopped Immy’s grin. A couple tears sprang from her left eye.

“Amy JoBeth says he might be able to do some good,” Louise continued. “She thought so much of him when she worked there. Great guy, she always said. The only reason she quit was that her depression got so bad, you know.”