Choke (18 page)

Minutes ticked past. The closet got more and more uncomfortable. Immy didn’t have room to shift her weight, and it started getting warmer and warmer. More minutes. Hotter still. She tried not to pant, so Xenia wouldn’t hear her, but sweat was dripping onto the plastic bag at her feet, making tiny plinking sounds. She moved her foot and the plastic bag crinkled.

“What the hell is that?” called Xenia. “Is there somebody in there? This place have rats?”

Xenia must have rung for the nurse because one yanked the metal door open a few minutes later.

It was the loud, cheerful nurse, but now she was loud and puzzled. “Well, what do we have here? What on earth…?”

Immy tried to get out of the closet but found she couldn’t. Her fat suit parts were wedged in so tightly she couldn’t budge. The Buns of Foam were squishable, but the Big Boobs N Belly was one piece of hard plastic, and there was not an inch of give to it.

“Get out of there,” the nurse commanded, still loud but no longer cheerful.

“I can’t,” said Immy, on the verge of tears. “I’m stuck.” She struggled, pushing against the sides of the locker, knocking her wig askew.

“Give me your hand.”

The nurse tugged on her until Immy thought her wrist would snap. “Ow!” Immy yelled. “That’s not going to work.”

“How did you get in there?” asked the nurse.

“And when?” said Xenia.

“While you were in the bathroom, I squeezed in here. But see? There’s this metal lip thingy I can’t get past. It’s gouging my Big Boobs N Belly.”

“Your what?” said the nurse.

“That’s the brand name. I’m wearing fat suit stuff. My buns squish, they’re Buns of Foam, but the front piece doesn’t.”

The nurse rapped her knuckles on Immy’s fake belly. “Yes, I can see that.”

A howling arose from Xenia’s bed. “It’s Immy, isn’t it? You look so…” She couldn’t finish. She was laughing too hard to speak.

Immy started to panic. Her heart thumped, and she couldn’t get enough air, even with the locker door open.

“Get the Jaws of Life!” yelled Immy. “Cut me out of here! I can’t breathe!”

Now the nurse started giggling, a high annoying gurgle. “You can’t use Jaws of Life for this.” She gurgled some more. Immy didn’t think it was very professional of her. “Scissors won’t cut that plastic, pretty sure. I’ll see if I can get an on-call surgeon from ER. He’ll be able to get through this thing.” She gave Immy’s belly another whack with her knuckle and whisked out of the room.

What hurt the most was the way Mother laughed when Immy got home and related the events of her day. She sounded just like Xenia and the nurse. And the ER doctor.

“It wasn’t all that funny,” Immy said.

Hortense wiped tears off her dimpling cheeks. “I’m just sorry you didn’t bring them home. I would like to have seen the costume in its entirety.”

“You couldn’t see it anyway. It’s in pieces. That young surgeon had to saw the plastic into three pieces to get me out. He laughed so hard I thought he was going to saw me in half. I was exposed right there in front of him, and he was young—and cute, too.”

Hortense had quit hooting, but she still shook, not unlike a bowlful of jalapeño jelly, in Immy’s opinion. “I’m sure he sees female bodies a lot in his line of work. You could have brought home the Buns of Foam, couldn’t you?”

“I could have been seriously injured.”

“Imogene, you look so much like Drew when you pout.” Immy’s mother gave a final snort and returned her attention to the television.

“Are they arresting Frank again?” Immy asked when she saw him being led into the police station in handcuffs.

“No, I think they’re saying something else happened. This picture is old footage from his last time. Be quiet and listen.”

They seemed to be showing the only pictures of Frankie they had. He was being sought by police for questioning after having fled the area.

“My gosh,” said Immy. “Frankie’s on the lam.”

“He has eluded the authorities, yes,” said Hortense.

The announcer droned on. “Laramie is regarded as a person of interest in the bizarre murder of Hugh Duckworthy, proprietor of the Saltlick eating establishment, Huey’s Hash. Laramie is said to have underworld connections and is considered dangerous. If sighted, please do not approach, but notify the police in Saltlick.” He gave the phone number.

“Uncle Guido,” murmured Immy.

“Uncle Huey, not Guido,” said Hortense.

“No, Guido is Frankie’s underworld connection. I heard them talking at the hospital last time I was there. So, with his running away, and the cigarette butt…”

“What cigarette butt?”

“I found his cigarette butt at the diner and grassed.”

“You what?”

“I tipped the cops. That’s why they hauled him in the first time, but they couldn’t break him. Then he fingered Xenia, which is stupid. She didn’t even know Huey was dead. Like she said to me, if she killed him, she would know he was dead, right? I need my list. Where did it go?”

Immy had left it in the living room, she was certain, but after much searching, she found her list in her top dresser drawer, no doubt moved there when Mother “straightened up.” She added a check mark after FRANK LARAMIE under the heading, SUSPECTS, to indicate he had two strikes against him. The other names listed so far were XENIA BLOSSOM and BAXTER KILLROY, but she didn’t really suspect either of them. She would have liked to add HORTENSE DUCKWORTHY, so her list would include everyone the police suspected, but it wouldn’t do to have Mother find her name there. Obviously, Mother was the person who had put the notebook in Immy’s top dresser drawer. She would have to think of a code name for Mother. She needed a book on codes.

Should she list Uncle Guido, GUIDO GIOVANNI? That would be Frankie’s mother’s brother of the El Paso Giovannis. No, he seemed to enter the picture after Huey’s murder. If someone else got bumped off, though, he’d go to the top of her list. Frankie had said he wanted him to do just one more job. Did that mean he’d done one recently, or were they talking about jobs he did back in Sicily?

Immy realized that she hadn’t heard anything at all about Baxter being questioned. She had left the note for Ralph about his boot and everything. Why hadn’t he been grilled?

She looked up the non-emergency number for the Saltlick police station, recognizing it as the same one just given on TV for tips. Tabitha put Immy on hold for ten minutes. She probably didn’t even tell Ralph there was a call for him for nine minutes.

“Hey, Immy,” he said. He sounded so happy to be talking to her. “How’s it going?”

“I was wondering—”

“I’ve got a great place picked out. It’s new. My cousin went there over the weekend, Saturday night he went, and he said the servings are humungous.”

“Sounds nice, Ralph, but I was wondering—”

“It’s not fancy or anything. Jeans are fine. I guess you could dress up if you want to, but you don’t—”

“Ralph! Did you see that note I left…uh, someone left in your chair? I saw it when I was there.”

“What kind of note? In my chair? Let me look.”

Immy heard his chair squeak.

“Well, I’ll be. There’s a note here. I’ve been sitting on it.”

Immy clenched her eyelids tight. It seemed to help keep her mouth shut.

“Huh?” said Ralph.

A small growl of frustration must have escaped from her throat. “What does the note say? I didn’t read it.”

“I thought you said you left it.”

“No, no, I just saw it there. Well, I’ll talk to you later, Ralph. Looking forward to Friday night.”

Maybe now someone would find out if Baxter’s boot had made the footprint.

* * *

IMMY WANTED TO TRY AN ANONYMOUS note one more time. Surely it would work this time. She had tried to warn Clem in conversation that Frankie’s Uncle Guido might be gunning for him, but that hadn’t had any effect. The more she thought about it, the more she thought Clem must be on Guido’s hit list. Frankie had been asking for him to whack someone when she overheard them, and if Frankie had fled town, there was a good possibility he was the murderer of Hugh. He might have known all along that Xenia talked to Clem, not Hugh, right before her accident. Had he been trying to mislead Immy by pretending he thought Xenia talked to Hugh? Had he been thinking of fingering his moll for the crime all along? What a dirty, rotten rat.

So, if Guido was set to “do” Clem, Immy needed to make sure Clem knew about that. Maybe he could get police protection or hire a body guard.

It was Monday morning. Hortense had left to take a tearful Drew to preschool. Drew had realized, while gathering her things for school this morning, that she had left one of her new Barbies at Clem’s. How she could keep track of all of them, or even tell them apart, was beyond Immy. But Immy thought she would go to Clem’s, sneak in, get Drew’s Barbie, and leave a note warning Clem that his life was in danger. That was a whole mission.

Hortense had said she was going to drive into Wymee Falls to grocery shop after she dropped Drew, so Immy would probably have enough time, but none to waste.

Immy shuffled through the magazines on the coffee table:
House Beautiful, Southern Living, TV Digest
…ah, here’s what she needed,
Reader’s Digest.
Hortense never picked that one up again after she read the jokes, but she leafed through the others until the pages curled. Immy put on a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves and set to work with scissors and Drew’s school paste, putting together her message. She had learned her lesson on the note for Ralph, and she would be better prepared this time.

The note should be dire, ominous, and maybe a little illiterate so the author couldn’t be guessed. Immy decided on her wording:

WARNNING

A HIT MAN HAS A CONTRACT OUT ON YOU

BEWEAR FOR YOUR LIFE

SEEK PROTECTIoN FoR YoURSELF

She found most of the letters she needed in large titles for articles. The only letters she ran short of were capital O’s. That was good. She tacked them onto a piece of plain white paper, which she hoped would be untraceable, and made the letters a little crooked on purpose. The anonymous notes she had seen on TV were always a little crooked. She admired her finished note for a moment and got her shoes on while the paste dried.

Time for another B and E. If the PI thing didn’t work out, maybe she would make a good criminal.

It might be easier to break into people’s houses at night, Immy thought. She had had such good luck at her after-dark B & Es. During the day like this, she would have to be extra careful she didn’t get caught. This was the time of day when Clem was at the diner, though, so this was when she would have to do her deeds. She couldn’t very well break in while he was at home. Also, Hortense was occupied for a while, and she didn’t leave home all that often.

She remembered Clem’s back door had been unlocked last time she broke in. It should still be unlocked today. People either always or never lock doors, she figured. She thought she should dress as if she were going out for a stroll. She rarely strolled, but some people did. Immy pondered her closet for a few minutes. A jogging suit would be perfect. However, lacking a jogging suit, she wore jeans, tee shirt, and sneakers, which was no different than her usual daily dress. Anyway, she wasn’t going to jog, she was just going to be strolling.

She strolled around Clem’s block three times before the coast was clear. The other times, the neighbors were out planting flowers in the front. They waved as she passed. The third time, no one was in sight. She dashed around to the back. To her relief, she found that the door was again unlocked.

He really ought to lock it. No telling who might get in.

Immy looked for the huge cat she had seen last time she was there, but it must have been hiding. The first thing she did was prop her anonymous note next to his coffee maker on the kitchen counter. Then she started looking for the Barbie. Drew had said this one was Superstar Barbie and she was attired in a floor-length fuchsia frock. That shouldn’t be too hard to spot. Drew didn’t know the word fuchsia, but there was a TV ad that played frequently for Superstar Barbie, one of the newest models.

Fifteen minutes later, Immy changed her mind. There was no way she was going to find Superstar Barbie. Clem’s little stone house was tidy and clean, and there weren’t many places a doll like that could hide. She had found the cat under Clem’s bed, but no Barbie. She was surprised to see a sugar packet fort standing on his kitchen table. He must have been reluctant to take Drew’s handiwork apart. Maybe he thought she would be back soon, and Hortense would come with her. Maybe Drew had even made him promise to leave it. That was something Drew would do.

When Immy returned home, Hortense wasn’t there yet, but the chief was. His shiny cruiser idled in the front yard, and Emmett sat behind the wheel, drumming his fingers on his steering wheel.

“How soon will your mother be back?” he said, getting out of the car.

“What now?” Immy stopped beside him, trying to assess his mood. “Did you find the killer? Is it Baxter?”

Emmett narrowed his eyes. “Why do you ask that?”

“Well, you yourself warned me about him. I just thought maybe…”

“We matched Baxter’s boot heel to the print left in the sausage, but there’s no evidence he killed Hugh. Baxter repeated an accusation, though, that I have to check out.”

An accusation to check out with Mother? An accusation
of
Mother?

With atrocious timing, the green van swung around the corner and pulled up beside Emmett’s cruiser. Why couldn’t she stay away until Chief left so Immy could hide her?

“Hi, there, Emmett.” Hortense smiled at him as she climbed out and went to the rear of her vehicle to fetch the groceries. “You’re just in time to help.”

She certainly seemed chipper, Immy thought. Of course, having a house full of new groceries always cheered her up.

“Come over here and help carry,” Hortense ordered the police chief. He walked around to the back of the van, and she thrust two grocery sacks at him.

He gave her a chance to put away most of the foodstuffs, then drove away with Hortense in the back seat. Again.