Broke: (9 page)

Chapter
Ten

The next day, Wednesday, Ralph again met Immy at the Wymee Falls house
after
they both left work
.
Vance had called saying he couldn't make it to her place tonight. Just as well. Ralph
carried
a roll of
mesh
to the
backyard
to string between the fence post
s
. Woven-wire, the vet said
when they first got the pig
, was the only fence that would hold
her
potbelly once Marshmallow got bigger.
They'd all decided to leave
in place
the fence
Ralph built behind the trailer in Saltlick
,
so Marshmallow could visit.

Immy wasn't sure how big Drew's pet would
eventually
be.
With Marshmallow a
t five months, Ralph could still lift the pig, but Immy had a hard tim
e. She'd seen full grown ones at Amy's Swine, where they got Marshmallow, but they came in a variety of sizes.

"Immy," Ralph called. "Would you get my cutter from my tool box?"

She headed for his truck
around front
and climbed into the bed. His metal tool box lived nestled next to the cab. It was unlocked, so she lifted the lid and found the pair of wire cutters. She slammed the lid
shut
with a clang
and jumped to the street. Before she returned to the backyard, she
stopped to
gaze fondly at her new house.
Looking at it
was so fun to do.
It needed work, but the lines were gracef
ul. Almost noble, she thought, gazing
up at the second story windows.

She took a second look
when she saw the gauzy curtain drop
into place. Someone was in
one of
the
bed
room
s
and had been peeking
out at her.

Not more squatters, she thought. She raced to get Ralph.

She handed him the cutter, but didn't let go, pulling him close so she could whisper. "Someone's in
side
. Upstairs. I saw a curtain move."

They crept into the kitchen through the back door and tiptoed to the front hallway. She guarded the stairway while Ralph looked into each room on the first floor.

"All clear," he whispered. "I'll go
up
first." He started up the stairs, armed with a heavy hammer in case he met an intruder
, since h
e didn't have his gun with him.

Immy heard him open one creaky door after another. She thought hard, trying to figure out which room was the one with the moving curtain. She tripped lightly up the stairs. Ralph was going down the
wrong
part
of the
dark
hallway.
Immy found a switch and turned on a series of heavy, iron light fixtures ranging
along
the ceiling.

"It has to be a room facing the street," she whispered, loud enough to carry halfway down the hall.

He gave her a nod and
went around the balcony to that side of the house
. As he turned the knob to
one
room
, the
door
next to it popped open. Out stepped Geoffrey
"
with a G
"
Tompkins.

He marched
out of the room
, preceded by his stomach. "Well, well, well." He smiled with his lips and his teeth. "What are you doing here?"

Immy stretched herself as tall as she could. "I
'm renting
th
is
house. What are
you
doing here?"

"Just came to make sure the, uh, the windows didn't need caulking."

"As a matter of fact," said Ralph, coming up behind him, making him jump, "they do. Did you bring a caulk gun?"

The man gave an ugly sneer,
just
for a split second, but Immy didn't miss it. He turned to face Ralph. "
L
ook here
, I
--"

All three turned their eyes
up as a
sound of
groaning came from the ceiling. The light fixture above Geoffrey's head swung once, then plummeted to the floor, narrowly missing his bald head.

Without another word, Geoffrey fled the hallway and scrambled down the stairs. Immy and Ralph heard the front door slam.

Immy ran to the window of the
bed
room he'd been in and saw him race to his Land Cruiser, parked half a block away.

"It's time now to get the locks changed," said Ralph.

"Yes, it is."

Immy and Ralph both examined the room, but other than displaced bedclothes and opened dresser drawers, they couldn't find out what he'd been doing there. Returning to the hallway, Immy thought she saw a narrow column of mist rise from the light fixture,
which sat
listing to one side on the floor.
The sturdy fixture
appeared undamaged.

"I'll have to get this put back up, too."

Ralph hefted it a few inches from the floor. "Heavy sucker. This
would
have cracked his skull if it had hit him."

Was that breathy, barely audible sound coming from the end of the hall where
the mist had seemed to float to
--was
it
laughter?

"Do you hear that?"
whispered
Immy.

But Ralph did
n't
hear anything. He didn't seem to see anything besides the light fixture either.

***

By the weekend, Immy thought she could start moving in.
The
fall
weather was cooling each day.
On Saturday morning
Ralph had helped her carry two of the
old
beds to the third story. That level was made up of small rooms, maybe servants' quarters a long time ago. It had been used for storage
more recently
. Most of the rooms held boxes and a couple had large trunks, but no furniture. Immy and Drew had shared a room in the single-wide, but now they would each have a bedroom. Her twin bed
, after she and
Ralph set it up,
looked lonely in the rather large bedroom she'
d
chosen
. She'd picked
the first one at the top of the stairs, facing the street. Ralph put Drew's small cot in the room
next to hers
and
her bed
looked even lonelier.

When Immy's room held the dresser she'
d
shared with Drew
,
it looked a little better. They'd left an old dresser from the
original furnishings
in Drew's room, having clea
r
ed linens out of the drawers and carried them to one of the trunks upstairs.

After Immy had brought her mother the footstool with the needlepoint cover,
Hortense had gone through her pots and pans and dishes and given Immy a box of things she considered extra. There were
already
dishes in the tall cupboards, and pans on the shelves underneath the counter, but none of the stuff had been used for years and
everything
would require a thorough washing. For now, Immy left her things
from Mother
in a box on the kitchen counter.

They had made
several trips from Saltlick
and
now almost everything Immy ow
n
ed was in the house
. But
her
possessions seemed
few and
paltry, especially in a
place
cluttered with such an overabundance of accumulated furniture and knick-knacks. Ralph must have sensed her disappointment.

"Hey, let's get outta here," he said. "Let's go get
supper
somewhere. I'll treat."

They'd eaten
thick ham
sandwiches supplied by Hortense for lunch, standing in the kitchen because Immy hadn't cleaned off the ancient wooden table and chairs yet. Th
ose
were some of the few pieces of furniture not protected by dust cloths and the dust was piled in drifts on the surface of the table.

"DQ!" Drew hopped up and down. "DQ! I wanna
B
lizzard!"

Before Immy could say she'd have to eat
supper
before dessert, Ralph promised her a
B
lizzard. Immy shrugged and they buckled Drew into her car seat in Immy's Hyundai
and took off for the bright lights of Wymee Falls.
The lights were especially bright at the DQ because it was next to the main highway through town.

They could have walked there, the house was that close to the DQ, but there was that highway in
between.

After hamburgers, and a Blizzard
for Drew
,
Ralph drove Immy's car to the house. She thought that was gallant of him. Ralph could be so sweet sometimes.
While h
e hopped out to unbuckle Drew
,
Immy leaned against
her
own
passenger
door
, gazing fondly
again at her
own
house.

Well damn. "The light's on in the living room," she said. More intruders?

"I switched it on when we left," said Ralph. "I didn't
want
us coming back to a dark house."

They walked up the sidewa
lk
, swinging Drew off the ground between them every third step.

"Are we s
w
eeping here tonight?" Drew asked.

"We have to," said Immy
,
laughing. "Our beds are here. If we slept at Geemaw's we'd have to sleep on the floor."

Drew stopped walking a
nd process
ed this information. "But Marshmallow isn't here."

"I have to finish the gate in his fence, then he can move in."

"When, Unca Ralph?"

"Tomorrow, I promise."

Satisfied, Drew ran up the porch steps and waited for someone to unlock the door.
Immy turned her key, but only succeeded in locking it. "Did we lock it when we left?" she asked Ralph.

"Yes." His voice had turned grim. "I'll go in first. You wait on the porch."

Immy wished he had his gun. He didn't even have a hammer this time
. I
t sat in his toolbox in his truck at the curb.

Ralph pushed the door open silently. Immy heard a squeaky voice oohing and aahing.

Ralph took a step inside
.
Immy heard the voice say, "Be still, my heart."

She and Ralph gave each other puzzled looks. Ralph backed out and closed the door
as
soundlessly
as he had opened it
. Then he
banged on
it, hard
. "Open up. Police
,
"
he said in his official voice

Immy loved it when he did that.

"Oh my," said
the
squeaky voice.

Ralph
shove
d the door
wide
open.
Immy
saw a small, squat man with thick glasses, holding a corner of a dust cloth.
The m
an eyed the trio and the worry
left his face. "Where's your badge? And your gun?" His voice still squeaked, but
a note lower, and
Immy figured that was his natural sound.

"I'm off duty," said Ralph.

"What are you doing in my house?" asked Immy.

"Are you a toad man?" asked Drew.

"Hush," said Immy. "Well? Who are you?"

"Are you off duty too?" asked the toad man. He really did resemble one. His face was warty and his body spread out as it went from this shoulders to his hips. "Vance said it would be
okay
."

"Said
what
would be
okay
?" asked Ralph, taking a menacing step toward him.

The man dropped the corner of the cloth and shrank
so that he was even shorter than he had been
.