Broke: (19 page)

"A scam, you mean."

"It's been done before. And it'll be done again."

Immy thanked him for getting the skinny on her semen.

Ralph hadn't come over
yet
. Drew was outside with Marshmallow, who no longer showed any interest in going to the third floor.
Immy took the opportunity to get out her file
folder
s. She didn't have one on The Case of the Canister, since its mystery had arisen and been solved so quickly. But had it?

No, it hadn't. She labeled a folder. She had discovered what it was: bull semen. And what it wasn't: semen that matched the label. But who had put it there? And why? From what Dr. Fox said, it must be part of a scam. A known scammer had been
in
her house. As much as she hated to admit it, Dewey was very likely involved in this. And maybe the other ex-cons that had been here with him.

But maybe not! Maybe the others, the dead guy
name
Lyle Cisneros, and
Abraham Grant,
the one called Grunt--maybe they were the crooks and Dewey just knew them from his old scamming days.
He could just be hanging out with them and not be in on this.
Yeah, right. And m
aybe Marshmallow would fly across the
backyard
.
Now she had to figure out how this tied in to a motive for killing Cisneros.

All those people trying to get into her house. They must have all been after the canister. She liked to
mentally
call it a "canister" rather than "bull semen". It sounded nicer.

"Mommy! Mommy!"

Immy ran to the back door to see what Drew was yelling about.

Drew ran up the porch steps and pulled on Immy's shirt. "The lady told me she wants to leave now."

"Where does she want to go?"

"Someplace else. The other side, she said."

Mrs. Tompkins wanted to cross over? That's what Immy wanted her to do, too. So why didn't she do it?

"She wants you to help her," Drew said.

"Did she say how I'm supposed to help her?"

Drew shrugged. Her message delivered, she tripped lightly down the stairs and resumed playing fetch with her pig.

Chapter
Twenty-
o
ne

Immy knew she had to do the smudging ritual she'd read about on page 45 of
The Moron's Compleat Guide to Ghosts
.
If Mrs. Tompkins wanted help leaving, Immy felt obliged to give it to her.

Though she'd pored over her contract
and had
n't f
ound
a clause that would reduce her rent for exorcising a ghost, and the rental agents hadn't been responsive to her repeated questions
,
still
, she'd already bought the dried sage.
Might as well try to help the poor old ghost out.

She'd need something to put
the bundle
in before she lit it.
She looked around the kitchen for
some sort of container
.

As soon as she got
onto
all fours to rummage through the pots and pans stored in a lower cabinet, she heard a knock on the front door.

When she
switched on the porch light and
opened
up
,
she saw
V
ance and his friend Quentin on the porch.

"Hi Immy," said
V
ance, not meeting her eyes. "We're here to pick something up. Geoff said it was fine for us to--"

"It's gone," Immy said
, more forcefully than she intended
. "You can tell Geoff to stop sending people here."

"Gone?" Quentin croaked. "It can't be gone."

"There is no semen in this house." She was going to be firm. No more searching in
her
third story
.

"Excuse me?"
Vance
met her eyes now
, his eyebrows raised
nearly
to his hairline
. "
What did you just say?"

"I said the semen is all gone." Maybe she should have said "canister" instead. She tried that out. "The canister.
It's not here.
I took it to Dr. Fox."

Vance
and Quentin stared at her,
as
their mouths
dropped
open. Quentin shut his first. "Imogene, we're here to pick up an antique dresser that Geoff sold to us."

"We paid him
a hundred dollars for it
this afternoon and he said to go ahead and pick it up,"
Vance
added.

"It wasn't in a dresser, it was in a canister. Please go away."

She tried to close the door. Quentin stuck his foot in the way.

"Are you all right, Immy?" asked
Vance
. "We're here for a piece of furniture."

"Well, I'm living here now and the furniture stays."

"Geoff," Quentin said, "owns the house, does he not?"

She didn't like his tone.
Immy pushed the
heavy wooden
door against his foot.
The foot
stayed where it was.

Vance
plucked his cell phone out of his shirt pocket. "I'll call
Geoff
. He'll straighten
this
out."

Vance
walked down the stairs and toward the street. Immy figured he didn't want her to hear him telling Geoff the semen was gone.
Vance
returned
after a minute
and handed the phone to Immy. "He wants to talk to you."

She quit trying to crush Quentin's foot and took the cell phone.

"Ms. Duckworthy, please let the two gentlemen remove the dresser. I sold it to them today
for a hundred dollars
.
It's a favor to Jersey's partner.
You're not using it, I'm pretty sure.
It's in one of the upper rooms.
"

"There's nothing in it, you know," she said.

"Yes, it's empty. It's been empty for years."

Immy hung up and shrugged. "Okay, go ahead. You win."

Could it be that they weren't after the semen?
Then what
were
they after? Old furniture?
She followed them to the third floor to make sure they didn't go rooting around for the canister.

The t
wo men were stronger than they appeared
. Especially the
squat,
toad-like Quentin. They spotted the dresser they wanted in a far corner of the same room that had held the canister. It was chilly on this floor, but they both worked up a sweat un
-
piling and re
-
piling boxes and small pieces of furniture. Large pieces, too. One arrangement near the door looked awfully precarious to Immy. They put a
heavy oak coffee
table on a
sagging
couch, then a cane-bottomed chair atop that, finally hoisting a large wooden chest onto the chair.
Boxes were shifted and scraped across the floor. They all looked heavy.

At last they had the dresser out of the room. Drew and Marshmallow were
in the Great Hall
and Immy had to make sure they were out of the way so they didn't get stepped on when the two men horsed the dresser down the last flight of stairs.

"Where are those mens taking that
thing
?" asked Drew.

"I have no idea." Immy closed and locked the door, leaving the porch light on
so they could see
to get it loaded onto the
huge
pickup they'd parked at the curb.

Later, bathing Drew and putting her to bed, Immy wondered where "those mens"
were
taking the dresser. Why was Vance so interested in the furnishings of this house? His place must be packed with old, broken-down stuff.
Strange guy.

Immy
was usually good with men. They were easy for her to manipulate. She
knew that men let their guard down with their zippers. Trouble was, hers came down, too. Her guard, not her zipper. Unless she was wearing jeans, then both came down.
But she'd gotten nowhere near Vance's zipper.

When Ralph showed up, she didn't think to mention that Vance had been there.

***

Immy left the exorcism, or ghost banishing, or whatever it was she was doing, until the next night. It felt right to do it after dark, so she waited until Drew and Marshmallow were bedded down. No one knocked or rang the doorbell all evening, for a change.
No one even pushed her over the railing. Ralph was going to show up latish again. There was construction on the highway into Saltlick, and he and Chief Emmett were taking turns on the wrecks that seemed to pile up there every night. She wanted to
complete her project
before Ralph got there. She thought he might laugh at her.

After coming downstairs to the kitchen, she got out the Dutch oven she'd decided to use for burning the sage. She lit a match, which immediately blew out. The house was drafty, but not that drafty.
She looked around the kitchen.
The back door was standing open. Drew must have left it open when
she
came in from playing outside after supper. The screen door flapped in the breeze
, letting frigid air into the house.
Immy shut both doors tight and went back to her task.

Mrs. Tompkins didn't seem to be on this floor.
Immy
decided she should wait until she was upstairs before lighting the sage
. It would be hard to carry smoking sage up the stairs.

Immy poked her head into each bedroom, bathroom, and closet on the second story, but didn't find any signs that the ghost was there.

So she carried the pot, the herb bundle, and the matches to the third floor.

The door to the crowded room was slightly open. Vance and Quentin probably didn't shut it all the way last night. Immy didn't have to worry about keeping Marshmallow out of the room
any more,
since the canister was gone. He wasn't
at all
interested in going to the third floor.

When Immy entered the room, the hairs on her arms pricked up. Maybe Mrs. Tompkins was here.
Immy
left the light off
for atmosphere
and stooped to set the pot onto the floor. She caught a movement out of the corner of her eye
. Before she could turn her head
, the tower of
wooden
chest, chair, and table toppled onto her
, clattering on the wooden floor
.

The
massive
oak coffee table
lay
across her torso, pinning her. The door to the hallway swung open, then slammed shut.

Was Mrs. Tompkins trying to kill her? How dare she!
Immy was trying to help the old ghost. Didn't she know that?

Immy
tried to shove the table off her, but something was wrong with one of her arms.
The table
crushed
against
her chest and she couldn't draw a full breath.
She
wasn't sure how long she lay
trapped
in the cold, dark room.
Time slowed. Maybe it stopped.
She began to wonder how she was ever going to get out. Drew would look for her in the morning, but that was hours away.

"Immy? Immy?"

She must have passed out for a moment. But someone was here. She listened to
h
er name
being called
again.

Ralph! His voice was
faint
, far away.
She couldn't draw
in
enough air to yell.
Her "Help" came out on a light, nearly soundless breath.
She had to let him know where she was.
She drummed her heels on the floor.

His heavy tread sounded on the stairway and in the hallway. Immy banged her feet on the floor and Ralph opened the door cautiously
and
flick
ed
the light on.

"Help," she whimpered
once more
.

Ralph heaved the table off her and
tossed the other furniture aside, then
felt her all over.
She was too distressed to enjoy it.

"I think your arm might be broken," he said, th
en gathered her in his arms and
carried her downstairs.

Immy sat at the kitchen table and flexed her fingers. They seemed to work
fine
.
But h
er hand was full of pins and needles.

Ralph squeezed up and down her arm
with his strong, warm hands
. "No, I don't think you br
oke
it. Was something on top of your arm?"

"Maybe. I mostly noticed that table
on my chest
. I couldn't breathe."
The light in the kitchen was reassuring. She never wanted to be in that upstairs room in the dark again.

The
feeling
was
return
ing
to her arm and fingers
. "I think I'll be all right."

Ralph sat back and kept looking her over.
"What happened, Immy? How did you get under all that furniture?"

"It fell over. I think maybe Mrs. Tompkins pushed it on me."
She must be a mess, she thought.
She patted her hair with her good hand.

"The ghost that Drew talks to?
"

"Yes. And I was trying to be nice to her, too."

"Nice? How?"

"Well, I just was." She was embarrassed to admit she was trying to smudge Mrs. Tompkins away. That would be admitting she believed in ghosts.

Ralph got a glass of water for her.
"How could a ghost push furniture over? Don't they float through things?"

Immy
sipped the water and
tried to recall if the book had mentioned anything about that.

"Immy, a car was speeding away when I drove up.
The headlights were off and I couldn't see the plate, let alone the color and make of the car.
I think someone was in the house."

"That wouldn't surprise me a bit. Lots of people have been in here." She remembered the back door being open, and the door to the
fateful
room being ajar.

"A man was murdered here. I don't think you're safe."

She'd never seen him look so...earnest, so concerned.
"No one is going to murder me, Ralph."