Smoke (16 page)

Three teardrops escaped Immy’s right eye.

“Are you all right, dear?” said Louise.

“No, she is not,” said Hortense.

“I don’t work for him,” Immy managed to say, her voice croaking like the tree toads outside.

She opened her eyes. Both women were staring at her, both mouths agape and, miraculously, both of them silent.

“He fired me today.”

“Oh, darling.” Hortense rushed to her daughter, hoisted her up, and smashed Immy’s face to her pillowy bosom. “I’m so sorry.” Hortense rubbed Immy’s back and Immy shook with silent sobs for a moment.

This was not at all the reaction Immy had expected. She raised her face to talk. “He told me to take all my stuff. But I forgot my book.”

“What book, Imogene?” asked Hortense.

“It’s for my course. I have to study for my next test. And I guess I left that envelope there, too.” She twisted her head from Hortense’s breast and looked at Louise. “The one your daughter had in the desk.”

Louise said she had no idea what Immy was talking about.

“The envelope with all the stuff about the Squire family. Amy JoBeth was saving clippings about them and I was trying to figure out why. And now I don’t even have it.”

Louise took a sip of coffee. “I can’t imagine why Amy JoBeth would be interested in
that
family. We have no connection with them.” She picked her purse up from the chair next to her. “I’d better be going. Think about my booth, ladies. I’ll be back in touch. Thanks for the cookies, Hortense.”

After she’d gone, Immy asked her mother what they were going to do about Louise’s booth.

“I’m not sure. I do not propose to bake vast quantities of brownies and give them to her for a lost cause. I wonder why she wanted to ask you about hiring Mr. Mallett. She wouldn’t need your permission for that, even if you still worked there.”

“She wants him for free.”

* * *

The next morning, Immy felt like crawling into Amy JoBeth’s tornado shelter. After all, she wasn’t using it as long as she was still in jail. Immy thought she had been depressed before in her twenty-two years, several times in fact, but she now realized those times had been mere sadness.

The worst had been when the trucker left her pregnant. However, her mother’s disapproval, the difficulty dealing with her high-school classmates, the physicality of pregnancy, and the thought of what she might have done to her future, were all balanced by the joy and wonder of the seed growing inside her. And, when that seed became Nancy Drew Duckworthy, nothing was left inside her but elation.

She had wanted a job exactly like the one with Mike Mallett for years. When she landed it she thought she was on her way to fulfilling her career goal. But the job hadn’t been what she’d thought it would be.

This morning, Hortense and Drew had walked to the park so Drew could play on the swings. The trailer was quiet now. She could hear Marshmallow grunting as he rooted in the backyard. The morning sun streamed in through her bedroom window. Her mother and her daughter had tip-toed around her while they got dressed, letting her sleep. She hadn’t been asleep, though, just too drained to move.

She pushed herself out of bed and walked to her dresser, opened her top drawer, and pulled out a scarf. She unwound it to reveal her father’s detective badge. He’d achieved the rank of detective in the Wymee Falls police force before his death by gunshot wound from a robber.

Hortense’s reaction to his death, when Immy was only twelve, had been to ban anyone from speaking his name, and to eat. In a few years she started referring to him again, but always as “Your dear, dead, sainted father” when talking to Immy; “My dear, dead sainted husband” when talking to others.

Her other reaction had been to forbid Immy from even thinking about becoming a detective. She hadn’t banned Immy from taking the PI job, maybe because it was actually a secretarial job, not, as Immy had deluded herself into thinking, an entry level position at Mike’s PI firm.

Immy ran her finger over the smooth metal of Detective Louis Duckworthy’s badge. She had been kidding herself. She was not on her way to being a detective of any sort. She’d been a lowly file clerk and typist. She had no qualifications. Wasn’t even qualified for the typist job, if she were honest with herself. She would never be a detective.

She carefully rewrapped the badge and placed it back into her drawer. The room seemed too small. She pulled on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and went to the kitchen to get something to drink, but the whole trailer felt too small. After she ran a brush through her hair, she got into the van and drove.

A hot wind blew into the open windows as she headed out of Saltlick. The highway felt only slightly less confining. Because the stricture was inside her.

She ended up at Amy JoBeth’s pig farm. How had that happened? Maybe because they had something in common. So much was wrong in her life, and nothing was right for Amy JoBeth. Both their lives were in chaos.

The van door sounded loud when she slammed it. Several pigs answered the noise with grunts from in back of the house, but Immy ignored them and walked slowly toward the tornado shelter. She pulled the door up and let it drop fully open, then descended the steep steps.

Under normal circumstances, Immy’s heart would be hammering at entering the dark, underground cavern, but her senses were so dulled that her fear didn’t register more than a light frisson up the back of her neck. She wondered if her heart were broken and just couldn’t hold any more. She plopped onto the mattress Amy JoBeth had spent so much time on lately.

It sat directly on the concrete floor and wasn’t any more comfortable than the one in the cell poor Amy JoBeth was presently using. The portable toilet was clean, Immy noted. She wondered if Amy JoBeth had cleaned it before she left. Or maybe Louise or Vern had come over and tidied up.

No, no one had tidied. The floor became more visible as Immy got used to the light coming through the small rectangle of the door opening. Three Styrofoam coffee cups, some fast food hamburger wrappers, and a small container half full of French fries littered the cement.

At least Immy could clean up the debris. She picked up a couple of cups and looked around for something to put the trash in. The edge of a white plastic WellMart bag poked up from between the mattress and the wall. She reached for it and gave it a yank. It must be stuck, she thought, so she put the cups back on the floor and pulled out the mattress. There were three bags, not one, stuffed behind the mattress and they each contained something. She pulled one bag out. It held a few bottles of pills. She reached in and pulled out another. The second bag held a box addressed to Dr. Fox.

Immy’s numbness vanished. The bag tingled in her fingers. She had found the stolen drugs.

The rattle of a vehicle pulling up outside alerted Immy. The engine cut off and Vern’s voice called out.

“Immy? Immy, you down there?”

Oh shit.

By the time his shadow blocked the light from above, the bags were back behind the mattress, the mattress pushed to the wall, and Immy was sitting on the edge of it, trying to act calm and remember what she’d felt like, being depressed, so she could pretend she still was.

“Oh hi, Vern.” She made her voice flat, but her heart whooshed in her ears.

“I saw your van. What the hell you doin’ here?” he snarled. He clattered to the bottom of the steps in an instant. His first glance was toward the wall, then he riveted her with his blazing, angry eyes.

“I was so depressed.” She kept her voice quiet and her hands still in her lap.

“What the hell you depressed about?”

“I lost my job, Vern.” She didn’t have to act to put a quaver in her words.

The edge came off his anger, just a tad. “Yeah, I know, I heard about that at the bank. I lost mine, too.” The moment of semi-softness vanished. “But so what?”

“I wondered if it would make me feel better to curl up here. Since this is where Amy JoBeth goes when she’s sad about things. I guess it makes her feel better, huh?”

“It don’t make her feel better. Makes her feel worse. How long you been here?”

“I… I just got here. Just right before you pulled up. Just reached the bottom of the stairs when I heard your car. I think you’re right about this place. I think I’ll go now.” She stood up but he blocked her exit. “Excuse me.”

“You sure that’s all you’re doing here? You’re not doing nothing else?”

Immy looked around at the bare space, avoiding focusing on the place where the mattress met the wall. “What else would I be doing? There’s no TV or anything.”

Vern stepped aside. “Don’t come back here.” His tone was hard with anger.

Immy, thoroughly chilled, fled up the steps.

Chapter 14

Immy was no longer depressed. But she sure was frightened. Did Vern know those drugs were there? If he did, he wouldn’t want Immy to find them, would he? That might be why he got so angry and wanted her to leave, and not come back.

It also seemed that what Betsy Wiggins had told her must be true. Vern must have stolen horse tranquilizers from Dr. Fox, and been fired when they came up missing.

Did that mean Vern had used the drugs on Rusty? And Poppy? He had plenty of access to syringes, too. But why on earth would Vern want to kill either of them?

Wait a minute, Immy thought. It might make sense.

Amy JoBeth was in jail for killing Rusty, and that was because she thought Rusty killed Gretchen. Maybe the cops were almost right. Maybe Rusty did die for killing Gretchen, but maybe, instead of Amy JoBeth, it was Vern who killed him in a twisted attempt to set things right for Amy JoBeth. He’d made clumsy messes before. If Vern thought a powerful lot of Amy JoBeth, he had odd ways of showing it.

No matter what, Immy had to tell someone about the drugs. She drove toward the Saltlick police station.

Vern’s black pickup came up behind her on the highway and she slowed to let him pass, but he rode her tail, following much too closely. A glance in her rearview mirror showed a scowl on his angry face. No sign of dimples. Immy couldn’t believe she’d ever thought he was cute.

She slowed further. His front bumper disappeared from her rear view mirror as he crowded her vehicle. He crept closer. His grill disappeared. Then his windshield was all she could see, with Vern’s enraged face behind it. His car had to be inches from her rear bumper. She held the steering wheel tight and braced for an impact.

Her mind raced. He must have figured out that she’d seen the drugs.

What if he ran her off the road and she rolled over and died? She looked around frantically. The ditch beside the road was deep. She might not be found for days.

What if he rammed her from behind and pushed her into oncoming traffic, causing a fatal head-on collision? That wasn’t usually much traffic on this highway, but, just her luck, a steady row of eighteen-wheelers headed toward her.

His car nudged hers with a jolt. She skidded sideways, toward the oncoming behemoths.

Her van shuddered in their slipstreams as two of them roared by, inches from her door.

She jerked the wheel to the right. What if a long haul driver fell asleep for a moment, right when she was meeting his truck? She stayed as close to the far edge of the road as she could.

Vern dropped back and Immy assumed he would hit her again, maybe push her into the next bunch of eighteen-wheelers.

She waited for impact. It didn’t come.

What the hell was he trying to do? Follow her until she stopped, then drug her and kill her? She considered that the most likely scenario.

She wouldn’t stop, that was for sure. Vern drove closer and gave her car another jolt, this one harder than before.

She sped up and kept her course for Saltlick. Her mind furiously ran through the index of her PI Guidebook. She’d glanced at a chapter on losing a tail.

Approaching the outskirts of Saltlick, she swerved onto the first street, just before the stop light, but Vern followed her.

She made a hard left, then a hard right. The left wheels of the van left the pavement, squealing for a sickening moment, then crashed down.

There weren’t too many more streets in Saltlick, so Immy was relieved when she lost Vern a block from the police station.

Should she wait in the van to make sure he didn’t double back, or should she make a run for it? Maybe both. Immy waited a long ten minutes in the van to make sure Vern wasn’t around before she got out. Then she fled the van as quickly as she could and ran inside the glass double doors, catching a glance of a dirty passing truck, hoping it wasn’t Vern.

It was—and it wasn’t—convenient having Tabitha on vacation. When she was on the job, at least someone was present to ignore Immy. She stood at the window in the lobby calling Ralph’s name, pacing and glancing out the front window, expecting Vern to storm in any minute and haul her off in his truck. Finally, the chief poked his head through the door.

“Can I help you, Immy? Ralph is out talking to Mrs. Jefferson about her barking Basset hound again.”

“She’s too deaf to hear it,” said Immy.

“I know. It’s kind of a problem. What can I do for you?”

“I found something.” Immy looked around to see if Vern had showed up yet. No sign of him. But she didn’t want him to see her talking to the chief. “Can we go to your office?”

Chief positioned a guest chair beside his desk and sat, waiting for Immy to begin. Some framed photos of a much younger chief with his late wife perched on the edge of the desk. A picture of the chief shaking hands with the mayor of Saltlick hung prominently over his desk. It was the mayor before this one, Immy thought, or maybe the one before that. The chief had held this job for many years.

Where to begin? Was Ralph supposed to have told her about the autopsy results? Did the cops know Vern had been fired for stealing drugs?

“I have some other things to do, you know,” said Chief. He lowered his blonde-white eyebrows.

“I know. But, well, I found some drugs.”

The chief waited for her to elaborate. She waited for him to interrogate her. The chief won.