Broke: (4 page)

"
What
'
s he look like?
"
asked Ralph.
Immy knew he was trying for casual too. He was failing, just like Immy was.
He must have sensed something in her
voice when she
talk
ed
about Vance.

"
Oh, I didn
'
t notice much. Just a guy.
"

Drew saved the moment by returning with three Barbies dressed
in crisp
new cloth
ing
. Two in bathing suits, one in
a
fur coat and hat with knee
-
high boots.

Ralph admired the dolls for a few minutes until his beeper went off.

"
Gotta go. It
'
s the chief.
"

"
Good heavens,
"
said Hortense.
"
It
'
s a busy evening in Saltlick.
"

"
Yeah.
"
Ralph grimaced.
"
There
'
s something about Friday nights when
the high school has
an away game. Nothing to do.
"
He took a deep whiff of the lingering smell of the pork roast they'd had for supper before he left.

When he was gone
, Immy
asked Hortense to tell her about Dewey.

"
There
'
s nothing to tell. He
'
s a miscreant, the family black sheep.
He swindled incautious persons out of their money.
You
'
re better off not knowing him. I
'
m sorry you had to see him.
"

"
Don
'
t you even want to know what he looked like? How he acted?
"

"
I would prefer n
ever to
hear his name again.
"

Immy gave up her cross-examination. She
pleaded exhaustion and retired to the bedroom she and Drew shared. It was almost Drew
'
s bedtime and
Immy
would be
in the other bed
shortly,
after Hortense gave
the child
a bath.

Immy pictured her Uncle Dewey in the Saltlick jail. Maybe she
'
d go visit him tomorrow.
He
'
d seemed like a nice man.
She had so many questions, and
Hortense wasn't going to answer them
.
Her m
other had
never
, before today, admitted
the existence of the poor man. He looked so much like her father. She hadn
'
t felt the pang of missing h
er dad
for a long time
. B
ut
, tonight,
the ache welled up inside her.

Chapter Five

In the morning, Immy walked over to the Saltlick police station. It housed the jail
,
which consisted of three cells. Immy had once spent a night there after a B&E, undertaken as part of a free-lance investigation, took a wrong turn. It wasn
'
t a horrible place, but neither was it very comfortable. The bed with the squeaky springs in the Tompkins house would have been better.

Immy pushed open the thick glass doors to the station and cross
ed
the small lobby to confront Tabitha, the official roadblock.

"
May I help you?
"

"
Yeah, Tabitha. I want to talk to the prisoner.
"

"
Which one? We
'
re full up.
"
She fluffed her champagne blond hair with her white tipped nails. Tabitha
'
s skin was almost the same
shade
as her bleached hair.

Immy remembered that the Yarborough twins were in.
"
I want to see the new guy.
"

Tabitha pushed a clipboard full of pages toward her.
"
State your name and the name of the person you wish to visit.
"

"
You know damn well who I am and who I want to visit.
"
That woman could be so infuriating. They
'
d gone to high school together, for chris
s
akes.

"
Oh, all right.
The vagrant named Duckworthy.
I
'
ll see if Chief will let him have visitors.
"
Tabitha pushed her slim frame up with a faked groan and sauntered out of her cage to the rear of the station. She tried to act like she was fifty years old instead of twenty-two.
And so put upon.
Like Immy
was
bothering her by requesting that she do her job.

It was Tabitha who opened the heavy door th
at
led to the cells.

"
Where
'
s the chief?
"
asked Immy.

"
I forgot. He
'
s out.
"

The whole permission charade had been a sham.
Damn that Tabitha, yanking her chain again.
"
And Ralph
'
s not here either?
"

"
They
'
re on a call together. Something about the guy in the bathtub yesterday.
I guess it wouldn't hurt anything for you to just talk to him.
"

"
Oh.
"
Immy wondered why that would concern the entire police force of Saltlick, which was made up of Ralph and Chief Emersen.

Her
U
ncle
Dewey
looked like he
'
d had a bad night. Maybe more than one. Tabitha hadn
'
t let her inside the cell, but had left her alone
in the corridor
outside the bars, so their conversation could at least be private.

"
You said your name is Imogene?
"
He
'
d remembered. He got off the
narrow
cot
, giving a groan,
and walked to the bars.
"
Are you Hugh
'
s daughter or Louie
'
s?
"

"
Hugh never got married.
"
Had the man not been in touch with any
of his
family for that long?
"
I
'
m Louie
'
s daughter.
"

"
How are they?
"

Immy stared.
"How are who?"

"My brothers." The words left a look of distaste on his face.

"
They, they
'
re both dead.
"

He grabbed a bar with one hand and ran the other over his stubbly jaw.
"
Damnation. When did that happen?
"

"
Dad got shot years ago. There was a robbery. He was off duty, but
he
was checking up on the diner.
The one your parents owned?
He and Huey owned it together.
"

"
They took over Pop
'
s place, huh?
"

"
They both
worked it at first
. But Dad was a cop
when he died
.
"

"
A cop?
"
He shook his head.
"
How did that happen?
"

"
Well, he studied and took the exam.
"

Dewey seemed to see her for the first time.
"
You
'
re a strange girl, aren
'
t you?
"

Immy straightened.
"
No. I
'
m not strange. I
'
m following in my father
'
s footsteps.
"

"
You
'
re a cop, too?
"
He gripped the bars with
two callused
hands and brought his face closer.
H
is breath no longer reeked of
alcohol, but it wasn’t sweet.

Immy
put an additional foot of space between them
.
"
Not a cop. A PI.
"
Well, she was studying to be one. She worked for one. She was almost one. It wasn
'
t too far from the truth.

"
Hey
, maybe you could do me a favor, seeing ‘s how we
'
re family.
"

Immy
nodded and listened
.

"
I'm here on a vagrancy charge now, but
I have a feelin
'
they
'
re about to charge me with Lyle
'
s death. They told me they found him dead in that dump.
"

"
It
'
s not a dump! I
'
m going to live there.
"

"
Huh. Looked like a dump to me.
You oughta get rid of the squatters and homeless before you move in.
"

"How did you get in my house?" It wasn't her house yet when he'd gotten in, but she liked calling it that.

"Lyle's friend let us in."

She was about to ask him how Lyle's friend got in when h
e sat back on his cot
and said,
"
How good a PI are you anyway?
"

"
Good enough. Listen, I want to know more about you. When did you leave Saltlick? Where
'
ve you been? What have you been doing? And what were you in for?
"

"
You have to know all that to take my case?
"

"
Case?
"

"
You need to find evidence that I didn
'
t kill Lyle. I didn
'
t do it. I don
'
t remember much of last night, but I know I
'
d never kill Lyle.
"

"
A case. Yes, I can do that.
"
A
warm
thrill
spread through
Immy
'
s heart. Someone was asking her to take a case. What would she call it? The Case of The Body in the Bathtub?
The Haunted House Murder? She
'
d have to give that some thought.

"
You hear what I said?
"
Dewey asked.

"
No, I was thinking
.
"

"
You
'
ll do it for free? Investigate for me? We
'
re family.
"

"
Oh
,
sure.
"
No one had ever paid her for a case before. Why start now?
"
Sure, you
'
re family.
"
She whipped out the notebook and pen she
always
carried
,
in case she needed to jot down license numbers.
"
I
'
ll need some background.
"

He gave her his name, Dwight Duckworthy, and his birth date. He was the youngest of the three brothers by about five years, which made him fifty-seven. Her parents had been in their forties when she
'
d been born.

"
Address?
"

He gave a mirthless chuckle.
"
This is it for now.
"

She wrote
"
Homeless
"
.

"
Any family, besides your brothers?
"

He turned his face toward
the ceiling and closed his eyes for a moment.
After a deep breath, he said,
"
No, no family.
"

"
Are you sure?
"

"
They won
'
t claim me. I have an ex-wife and a son I haven
'
t seen in, I guess about twenty years.
"

"
A son? I have a cousin?
"

"
Ye
ah
, I reckon you do.
How old are you, Imogene?
"

"
Everybody calls me Immy. I
'
m twenty-two, almost twenty-three.
"

"
And you
'
re a private eye? I thought you needed a training period
of a few years
or something.
"

"
I
'
m not quite full-fledged.
"

He laughed
, sounding a little like a barking seal
.

"
But I can take cases,
"
she hurried to add.
"
I
'
ve taken lots of cases. Solved most of them, too. What
'
s my cousin
'
s name?
"

"
Junior. Dwight Junior.
Fr
ie
da
had high hopes. For me,
and for him
. That we
'
d both turn out okay.
"

"
Did he? Turn out okay?
"

"
I don
'
t know. He was twelve when I last saw him.
"

"
Do you call him Junior?
"

"
I did. I reckon
Fr
ie
da
might have changed his name by now. Or he might have.
"

Immy took notes as Dewey told her what he remembered of the night before. He and Lyle Cisneros had been looking for a place to crash. They
'
d been cellmates at the Allblue Unit, but he wouldn
'
t say what they
'
d been in for.
Probably swindling.
Her mother had said he swindled people. Dewey had
been released three nights ago
, two nights after Lyle had been let out,
and
they
had been crashing wherever they could find
a space
.
They'd spent o
ne night in the
apartment
of a woman they met in a bar, the next night in a park. Then Lyle had run into a guy he
'
d known on the outside years ago, name of Abe. Dewey didn
'
t know Abe
'
s last name
, but
Lyle called him Grunt.
Grunt
said he knew the owner of an empty house and they could all stay there.