Broke: (26 page)

"What happened here?" he asked as soon as he got inside.

Immy was disappointed he couldn't figure that out. It was fairly obvious, what with the brick lying there and glass all over the floor.

"I was sleeping here, on the floor," said Ralph. "That brick came through the window."

"Did it hit you?"

Immy wanted to shake the man. "
Well,
I didn't stab him in the shoulder in the middle of the night.
Yes, it hit him. Are you calling CSI
to take fingerprints
?
Can you trail the perp with dogs?
"

"This is vandalism
," said Officer Ortiz
.
"
A misdemeanor. It's not worth taking prints. Probably wouldn’t get any anyway.
Do you want to file a report?
I can write it up and bring it around
for you to sign later."

"I guess I should," said Immy. "Are you
sure you can't
dust the
brick
for prints?
"

"I'm sure.
Call me
if anything else happens. I'll have someone swing by a couple times tonight."

He seemed to be in a hurry to leave. He hadn't even measured any angles or taken any notes. Immy didn't think having someone "swing by" was going to help anything.

After he left she realized he hadn't answered her about the dogs.
She was so tired she didn't mention
it to Ralph.

"I'm going to clean this up in the morning," she told him. "Glad this didn't wake up Mother or Drew."

"It woke up the pig," said Ralph, jerking his thumb toward the top of the stairs. Curious, small bl
ue
eyes peered down at them. When Immy started toward the stairs, he retreated and she heard him trot back to Drew's room.

"I'll put something over the window," Ralph said. "It's cold out."

Immy and Ralph stole upstairs, to the third floor and brought down three
emptied
cardboard boxes which Ralph cut up and taped over the window opening. When he finished, he raised his shoulder and examined his cut.

"Do you want to go to the emergency room?" asked Immy.

"Nah, it's
only
a cut. It'll be okay." It had almost quit bleeding.

"It's after four," said Ralph. "I'm gonna try to get a couple more hours of sleep. I'll put plywood on it tomorrow."

"Ralph, are you sure? I can get a bandage."

"On the window, Immy."

Thirty seconds after he laid his head on the folded blankets on the floor, he was asleep.

A few hours
later, Drew and Marshmallow stomped down the stairs, followed shortly by Hortense.

It was still dark in the
G
reat
Hall
and they passed through without pausing to notice the broken glass. Immy had pulled the heavy drapes so the broken window
and taped cardboard weren't
visible.

Hortense and Drew went into the kitchen and discussed whether it would be a good idea or not to make blueberry pancakes, since the only blueberries Immy had were frozen.

Ralph folded his blankets and joined them.
He'd put on his shirt and his wound
wasn't showing
.
He thought
pancakes and blueberries
would be a fine idea.

Immy went upstairs to take a shower before she tackled the mess.

When she came downstairs, dressed for her Saturday off, Ralph wasn't around.

"Emmett called," said Hortense. "He needed Ralph to go to Saltlick posthaste."

"
It's his day off.
An emergency?" Immy stuck a couple of pancakes on a plate and buttered them.

"More of a fracas. The over-sized hen, the one that is misnamed Larry Bird, has used h
er
mandible to assail the Rottweiler belonging to Mrs. Wilson. As a consequence, an almost logical one, Mrs. Wilson is aiming her shotgun at the bird, threatening its demise. The owners of Larry Bird are holding
both
a rifle and a pistol on Mrs. Wilson."

"
Wow!
A standoff.
I
n Saltlick."

"I doubt any of the firearms contain ammunition, but the law enforcement personnel cannot afford assumptions in cases like this."

"I guess not. I hope Mrs. Wilson doesn't drill Larry Bird. Couldn't blame her, though. I've wanted to myself." Having dowsed her pancakes with syrup
and topped them with blueberries
, Immy dug in.

Hortense gave a
disapproving
sigh and cleared the table of the other dishes.
Immy opened the Great Hall drapes and Hortense noticed the mess.

"What transpired here?" she asked.

"Someone threw a brick," Immy said. "It hit Ralph on the shoulder, but the cops refused to pursue the perp."

"Dear Lord, what next." Hortense went back to washing the dishes.

After Hortense left
with Drew to shop for new school shoes
, Immy got out the broom and dust pan and started sweeping. The broom caught on a piece of paper. She bent to pick it up and saw a broken rubber band
next to the spot
where it had been.

The brick must have had a note wrapped around it. The rubber band
would have
snapped when it hit the window, or
g
otten
cut by glass, and the note
had gone
unnoticed.

Since no one was going to dust for prints, she might as well unfold it and read it.

Take the can to the Dairy Queen parking lot at midnight
Saturday
and no one will get hurt.

Can? She wondered if this meant the bull semen canister. That thing had caused so many problems.
I
t was the root of everything, including Lyle's murder.
If she could take the canister to the Dairy Queen and make all the trouble stop, she would. The problem was that
she had left the damn thing with
Dr. Fox.

Could she make the murderer stop bothering her anyway? She could go to the parking lot
tonight
, but what then?

She continued sweeping, pondering how to handle this situation. The best thing would be to
apprehend
the perp red-handed when he picked up the
bait
.

So she would have to mock up a decoy, then nab him when he tried to grab it. It only took fifteen minutes of rummaging in the basement to discover an old butter churn in a cobwebbed corner. In the dark, it would look like the canister
, s
he hoped.

Chapter Twenty-eight

That night,
with Hortense once again in Immy's bed and
Ralph softly snoring on the floor beside her, Immy mounded her pillow and her blankets on the settee in the shape of her own slim body. She had earlier put the butter churn in her trunk, so all she had to do was
tiptoe
out
through
the kitchen
, using the
exit route
farthest from Ralph,
and drive to the Dairy Queen.

She arrived early for the midnight appointment. The parking lot was empty, as were the streets. It didn't feel like anyone was l
urking in the shadows or behind the cinder block wall that separated the lot from the Baptist church next door.
Nevertheless, she played it safe. She parked a block away and lugged the churn
back
. Where to put it? Probably not in plain sight, in case the wrong person might come by and take it. She set it next to the
rear
corner of the building. The bad guy would be able to see i
t
without too much looking around, but it would
n't
be standing out in public screaming, "Take me!"

Next, she looked for a place to hide. There wasn't much cover, but if she scrunched down right next to the wall in a spot where the streetlight didn't shine, she thought she'd avoid detection. This was the hard part--waiting.
She knew a PI's life wasn't all glamour, but she
didn't care that much for
the stake-out stuff. Could anything be more boring?

The streetlight buzzed. Insects and bats flew around the bulb, making flittering shadows on the parking lot.
She held her camera ready, balanced on her knees.
It started getting heavy and her knees wobbled a bit.
The wind had died
away
to almost nothing, for a change, and the air felt warmer than it had for days. Immy wondered if a front was coming through.
She sat the camera on the pavement beside her. She could quickly get it into position when the canister nabber showed up.

Someone gently shook her shoulder. She opened her eyes to find Ralph standing over her.

"Sh!" she
mouthed
. "Get down. Don't let anyone see you. What are you doing here?"

"I saw you leave and followed you." He didn't sit down. "But I can't figure out what in the hell you're doing. What was that thing you carried here?"

She yanked his
solid
arm
. He gave in and
sat beside her on the pavement. "Be quiet. I'm waiting for the perp to show up to take the bait."

"What bait?"

"The canister." She pointed to…where the butter churn had been before she fell asleep. "It's gone.
Did you see anyone? Did you just get here?
"

"I waited at your car for a few minutes.
Then I walked over
here."

Immy jumped up and ran to the corner of the building. "He took it and I didn't see him!"

She sniffed the air. Garlic.

A key ring lay on the ground with a
blue
tag attached that said 'Shorr RE'. Did Jersey Shorr have something to do with this? The key looked very much like the
original
one to Immy's house.

"Could you please explain what you're doing out here a
f
t
er
midnight?"
Ralph said.

She told him about the note she'd found and about using the butter churn for a decoy.

"Anything to get whoever it is out of my house and quit pestering me
,
"
she said.

"You don't think he'll be mad when he finds out he doesn't have what he came for?"

She hadn't thought of that.
She pictured Vance
,
Quentin, Abe-Grunt,
and
even Jersey Shorr popping up out of the shadows and aiming a gun at her head because she'd given them a butter churn.

"Let's get out of here." Ralph took her hand and pulled her to her car. His was parked a block farther away.

Back at the house, Ralph
sat at the kitchen table drinking
hot chocolate while Immy ate some marshmallows. "I have a thought," he said.
"
Y
our uncle was staying
here in the house
when the bull juice was put here. What if he's part of this? What if he
was the one who showed up
to get the semen?"

Dewey?
"Dewey wasn't…he isn't…."
He'd denied killing Lyle, and had said he wasn't part of the bull semen scam, but did she believe him? Maybe he hadn't killed Lyle, but was part of the scan?
"I don't know what to think about Dewey. But the person who wrote this note is pretty dumb. Doesn't he know
how easily
he can get caught? Why didn't he say to leave it on a street corner somewhere?
And he should have said not to call the cops.
"

"A canister of semen would be pretty obvious sitting on a street corner.
And he didn't get caught.
"

Immy got herself a glass of milk and sat to drink it while Ralph paced
the floor. "He must have been behind the building
," he said
.
"
I would have seen him if he'd come from the street."

"Maybe he was still there when we left. We should have checked."

"I did, before I woke you up.
Were you going to confront a person who may be a dangerous killer?
"

"No, I was going to take his picture."

"It was kinda dark."

"My camera has a…oh. I guess I'd give my position away if I used the flash."

"I wish you'd shown me the note and let me, or the Wymee Falls cops, take it from there."

***

Sunday morning came far too early. Hortense insisted that everyone go to church in Saltlick. "Your immortal soul will thank you, believe me. We can dine at IHOP when the services are concluded."

"Sounds good," said Ralph. He didn't even look tired.

Immy pouted through half-closed eyes for a few minutes, then got dressed and followed her mother, Drew, and Ralph to the green van.

She nodded off on the way into Saltlick, again during the sermon, and started to fall asleep on the trip back to Wymee Falls.

"Ralph," Hortense said. "Do you deem it safe for me to return to my own domicile? I do feel I am imposing on Imogene's hospitality by staying overly long."

Ralph was driving. He glanced at Hortense in the passenger seat beside him. "I'm not sure it's a good idea quite yet. We still don't know who took you."

"Or why," said Immy. Her head felt impossibly heavy and she quit trying to hold it up, even though they were only a few blocks from her home.

The van slowed almost to a stop.

"Look at the big smoke," Drew said.

"I saw it," Ralph said.

Immy jerked awake at his grim tone. She peered out the windshield between Hortense and Ralph. There was, as Drew said, a big amount of smoke. It seemed to be rising from right about where her house was
, into the blue, noon sky
.

"I wonder if Sadie McMudgeon burned her house down again
,
"
Immy said.

"How can she burn it down again, Imogene? If she
immolated
it once, it would be gone."

"She burned another house down, Mother, a few years ago."

"Th
at
isn't her house." Ralph's voice was tighter. He stepped on the gas and careened around the corner onto Immy's street.

Smoke billowed from where the roof had been. Fire licked out the windows on the third story. The street was filled with red and yellow vehicles. Firefighters streamed water onto the bottom two stories. Another fireman in a cherry picker sprayed the flames coming out the windows.
The blue sky was no longer visible.

The van jerked to a halt
a yard or so
short of the nearest fire engine.
The roar of the fire was as intense as the heat of the flames.
Ralph jumped out of the car. "Keep hold of Drew," he shouted over his shoulder as he ran toward the burning building.
Over the din, Immy heard a pig squealing in terror.

"Marshmallow!" screamed Drew. She unsnapped her carseat belt and opened the door. Immy ran around the van to intercept her.
It was all Immy could do
to hang onto the child
. Drew fought and kicked. "I hafta go get Marshmallow!"

"Ralph is getting him," said Immy, trying to keep her voice calm wh
ile
she held her struggling daughter
in the
smoke-
dark
ened
street, lit by the eerie glow of the flames
. "Ralph will get him. Marshmallow will be okay."

She hoped she was right.