Choke
Choke
by
Kaye George
copyright 2011 by Kaye George
Cover Designer: Karen A. Phillips
Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
~ For Mom ~
I’ve been helped in my writing career by more people than I can name here, but I can mention a few, at least. Thanks so much to Avery Aames, Krista Davis, Sharon Oliver, Susan Schreyer, and Pat Brown who all read early versions of this title. The Austin Mystery Writers have been shaping my writing for years: Karen McInerney, Mary Jo Powell, Kimberley Sandman, Mark Bentsen, and more recently, Kathy Waller and Gale Albright.
My wonderful Guppy critique group, James Montgomery Jackson, Cathy Sonnenberg, Kristy Blank Makansi, and Cher’ley Grogg gave me loads and loads of helpful input. Classes I’ve taken from Mary Buckham, Kris Neri, Margie Lawson, and Pat Kay improved my writing abilities, and I wholeheartedly recommend their classes. The encour-agement I’ve gotten from Nan Higginson and Janet Reid, and the help from Melissa Collier, Joel at Pak Mail, have kept me going. I know I’ve left some out, but thank you all.
“That’s it, Uncle Huey!” Imogene Duckworthy whipped off her apron and flung it onto the slick, stainless steel counter. “I quit!” If only her voice didn’t sound so young. Her order pad, pencil, even the straws skittered out of their pouches and across the floor. She took a step back, her shoes sticking to the trod-upon-after-lunch debris of squished lettuce, blobs of gravy, and bits of unidentifiable brown stuff.
“You can’t quit, darlin’,” drawled Uncle Huey in that thin, nasal voice that made him seem six inches shorter than his five-ten. “You’re family.” He dipped a scoop of mashed potatoes onto a plate, ladled thick brown gravy on top, and handed it to the cook.
“I’m not working double shifts again next week.” Immy hoped she sounded serious. Mature. Convincing.
“Well, you’ll just have to, won’t you? Since Xenia just quit on me today, you and April are all the waitresses I’ve got left.”
Clem, the portly cook, piled the hot plate with thick slabs of meatloaf, spooned green beans beside them, and shoved it into April’s waiting hands. Immy hadn’t eaten lunch yet, and the oniony smell of the meatloaf kicked up some saliva under her tongue. She watched April swing through the double doors and glimpsed the whitewashed dining room full of scarred wooden tables and chairs, almost empty of customers now.
She’d worked and played in this restaurant her entire twenty-two years. It had been started by her grandparents and handed down to her father and her uncle. Since her father’s death, of course, Uncle Huey had run it alone.
Would she miss this place? Maybe, but she was quitting anyway.
Immy pounded her fist on the work counter. Hugh Duckworthy jumped. “No, Uncle Huey. April is all you’ve got left, and if you’d kept your mitts to yourself, you’d still have Xenia.” Immy’s hands shook as she snatched her purse and jacket from her cubby, but she succeeded in stomping out the back door of the diner, past the cook and busboy who were staring open-mouthed. Aside from troublesome customers, she didn’t talk back to people often, even when she wanted to.
Uncle Huey may have been her father’s brother, but he was a first class jerk.
In the alley she paused beside the dumpster. Leaned against the sun-warmed metal. Gulped a big breath of relief. And choked on the stench of rotting vegetables. She moved a little farther from the dumpster for her next breath and collapsed against the brick wall, trembling in the aftermath of her bravery.
Immy closed her eyes and let the Texas sun soak into her upturned face, willing it to calm her. She turned her mind to the future. A purchase was waiting for her in Wymee Falls, but she had no transportation to pick it up. What should she do now? She tried to focus.
“What in the hell got into you, Immy?”
Her eyes flew open at the sound of the deep voice. Baxter, one of Huey’s two busboys, emptied a bin of food scraps into the dumpster, plunked it onto the alley paving, and strolled over to stand a couple of feet from her. Her pulse raced at the closeness of his lean, hard body. Damn, that man was handsome.
Immy had had a crush on Baxter Killroy since he started to work in the diner two and a half years ago, even though he was at least ten years older than Immy, mid-thirties.
“I never heard you talk back to the boss like that before.”
That lazy smile drew her closer. She pushed off the brick wall and took a step toward him. Her mind always messed up in front of a handsome man. “Well, I guess I never did before.”
“Gotta admire that in a woman. That’s spunk, Immy.”
She glowed at his approval, feeling her face flush. She didn’t think Baxter had ever thought of her as a woman before. To avoid falling into those deep, dark eyes, she looked over Baxter’s shoulder. On the other side of the dumpster stood two pickups, Huey’s and Baxter’s. An idea formed.
“Say, I have a little problem,” she said. “You don’t suppose I could borrow your pickup to go into Wymee Falls, do you?”
He shrugged. “Don’t see why not. I’m tied up here until the end of my shift, since I’m not quitting today. It needs gas. Can you bring it back full and have it here by closing?” He reached into his back jeans pocket and tossed her the keys.
Immy surprised herself by catching them.
“Hey,” said Baxter. “You catch pretty good for such a scrawny gal.”
She wasn’t certain scrawny was a compliment, but being a good catch was. She’d take what she could get from him. She climbed into the pickup and backed into the alley, giving Baxter a wave. As she drove out of Saltlick, she couldn’t help clenching a fist, yelling, “Yee haw,” and pounding Baxter’s grimy steering wheel. She was free. She had quit. Little, mousy Immy had shown gumption. Yes, she had. Even Baxter admired her for it. And she had an important, secret errand to run. The world was wide open to her without that job tying her down.
During the noon rush, Immy had watched in jaw-dropping awe as Xenia whirled on Uncle Huey, who had just pinched her bottom for the ten thousandth time, smacked his hand, as usual, then walked out, which had never happened before.
Soon after, when most of the lunch crowd was gone, something had reared up inside Immy, something she could no longer deny. It wasn’t that she minded hard work. She could sling hash and run her legs off with the best of them, but that wasn’t what she wanted to do with her life. It didn’t coincide with her burning desire, her goal.
She had talked herself into thinking she hated working in the diner, hated working for Uncle Huey, hated waiting tables, period. There was a big, wide world outside Saltlick, Texas, population one thousand, two hundred, thirty-four, and it was waiting for Imogene Duckworthy. First step, pick up the purchase that would be a stepping stone.
It shouldn’t be a problem getting another job to tide her over until she could land her dream position. The Wymee Falls paper was full of want ads every day, wasn’t it? True, she hadn’t looked lately, but it used to be.
She drove toward Wymee Falls, the nearest sizeable town and the county seat, to pick up the order she had placed over a week ago. On her way, driving past barbed-wire-fenced stretches of flat, sparse grassland dotted with distant cattle herds, she rehearsed what she would tell her mother. She rejected one scenario after another.
Immy drove past the fake, man-made waterfall at the edge of town. Her life lately reminded her of that waterfall, pointlessly going up and down, in and out, over and over, never making progress. It was time for her to do something for herself. Days, weeks, months were fleeting past, leaving her in the dust with a minimum wage job while her dream floated out of reach, seeming to recede more and more rapidly into the distance. She was going after that dream before it disappeared.
* * *
IMMY CROSSED HER SPARESELY GRASSED West Texas front yard. The lawn hadn’t greened up so early in the season that passes for spring in these parts. She tiptoed up the steps to the single-wide and opened the door. After returning Baxter’s truck to the diner, she had walked the short distance home.
“Imogene, dear? Is that you?”
Busted by those ancient, squeaky hinges.
“Yes, Mother,” she shouted over the strains of a soap opera theme. Even though she didn’t see Mother in her recliner, Immy was not going to make it to her bedroom undetected.
Her mother filled the doorway from the kitchen, a frown above her wobbling chins. “What are you doing home this time of day?”
Immy gritted her teeth and smiled. “Uncle Huey let me go early today, Mother.” Her carefully rehearsed excuse sounded phony as she said it. She was such a lousy liar. Immy shrugged her sweater off and threw it onto the battered pine bench next to the door, attempting casual, ordinary movement. Did she look as stiff as she felt? She also didn’t want to tell her mother where she’d been for the last hour. Mother would not approve of her purchase.
Her mother’s look changed from almost worried to definitely worried. “What about your remuneration? Will he compensate you for the remainder of your shift?”
A small knot formed in Immy’s stomach. “Um, sure. I’m sure he will. I’ll go back, um, tomorrow and he’ll—”
“What aren’t you telling me, Imogene? You know I can always perceive your prevarications.”
Big sigh
.
Yes, she always could. Might as well fess up. “I, well, I don’t work there anymore.” Immy cringed, anticipating the explosion.
“He fired you? He terminated his niece? His only living relative? That scumbag. Who does he think he is? He’s gonna hear from me, I’ll tell ya.” Hortense stumped to the hall closet, shaking the whole trailer, and yanked her jacket off its hanger.
Immy had previously noticed that her mother’s erudite vocabulary vanished under stress. It made her chuckle sometimes, but not now. Her stomach roiled around a hard, growing knot. She had never lied to her mother, except for a small fib or two, nothing like this.
“Mother, wait.”
But Mrs. Hortense Duckworthy was out the door, stomping down the wooden steps.
“Dammit, listen to me,” Immy yelled from the doorway. “He didn’t terminate me, I quit.” Whew. That felt good. Even at her advanced age of twenty-two, Immy wasn’t accustomed to cussing at her mother. Cussing and lying in the same day. She was going to hell.
When Hortense reached the asphalt road at the edge of the yard, she stopped, hunched her shoulders, then turned and called back, “Why the hell did you quit? Where do y’all think money’s gonna come from? The moon?”
“Mother, stop yelling. Come back here, and I’ll tell you about it.”
Immy returned to the worn living room and sagged into the soft couch. Her mother must have refilled the lemon-scented plug-in recently. Immy could tell because her nose started to drip. She kicked off her clunky waitress shoes and lifted a foot into her lap to rub her aching arch.
The television emitted her mother’s soap opera at full volume. Immy dully watched a heartbroken man pleading with a bleached blonde to take him back. It cut to an even louder commercial for hair coloring. Immy reached over and snatched the remote from the arm of the recliner and clicked the damn thing off, waiting for Mother’s slow return. She wasn’t rushing now, it seemed. Immy’s elbow knocked her mother’s glass of iced sweet tea to the carpet.
Now I’ll hear it. Her precious sweet tea and her precious carpet.
The tea sank into the thin gray mat that her mother vacuumed every day to within an inch, no, to within a millimeter of its life. When the green plaid couch and recliner had been new and the carpeting thicker, they had looked distinguished in the dark paneled room. Sort of British, Immy had thought back then. She had always loved this room and still did.