Smoke by Kaye George Page B

maybe he should have another one.
    That made a good excuse for calling on her, anyway. She lived in a white-painted wooden house half way between Saltlick and Cowtail.
    The woman looked horrible. Her prominent eyes were red rimmed and she was so folded in on herself that her long neck appeared almost normal.
    “You want a leash at a time like this?” Her voice was thin and tremulous.
    “Well…. Um. I work for Mike Mallett, the PI. Is there anything I can help you with?”
    “You can find Poppy.” She headed for a stiff, white couch and motioned Immy into an angular white chair. The whole room was white—walls, carpeting, furniture. The only touches of color were framed photographs of Poppy, some alone, some with her mother, some with her late father. Immy would have thought the woman’s favorite color would be red, naming her only child Poppy like that.
    “She went somewhere Saturday, you told Mother.” Mrs. Wilson had told them today in church that Poppy had been missing since Saturday. “Yesterday, right?”
    “Oh no, not yesterday! Last Saturday.”
    “The day Rusty was killed?”
    “That’s just it. I thought she was going to spend the night with him.” Ophelia dabbed at her eyes, then her nose, and straightened her spine. “Not that I approved of what she was doing. There’s no talking to that girl. I’m thankful she confides in me.”
    Except she hadn’t, had she? Immy had been right about Rusty and Poppy planning a getaway. Unfortunately, Rusty hadn’t ever left his property.
    “Is there anywhere else she might be?”
    Mrs. Jenkins cocked her head so far over on her spindly neck, Immy thought it might fall off. “The deer lease. I hadn’t thought of that. Sometimes she holes up there in the shack, or the blind, when she wants solitude.”
    “Have you been there?”
    “No, but I should.” She jerked her head up and drilled Immy with wide, buggy eyes. She looked frightened. “Will you go with me, Immy?”
    Immy was afraid of what they might find there. Poppy had been missing for a week. What if she was dead? What if she’d been dead this whole time? Finding Rusty’s relatively fresh body was one thing. Finding one that was a week old might be, well, repulsive. Sickening. It was warm out, after all.
    But, was she a detective or not? She had to take the tough stuff with the rest of it. If being a detective were a breeze, everyone would do it.
    Immy decided she wasn’t going to get a leash for Marshmallow today.
    “Point the way. Maybe we can find her.”
    The property Mrs. Jenkins owned was out of town a ways. Immy drove as Mrs. Jenkins directed her down one county road after another, until they were on one Immy had never seen before. Mesquite crowded the rutted dirt road, scraping against the sides of the van in places.
    “Here,” said Mrs. Jenkins, and Immy pulled onto a patch of dried grass beside a tiny wooden house. Its peeling paint had probably been white quite a few years ago. A porch, one step up from the ground, ran across the front. Two weathered rockers flanked the front door. Immy stifled a shudder at the slight gap in the door.
    “Do you leave it unlocked?”
    “Oh, lordie, yes. There’s nothing to steal in there.”
    “Do you shut the front door, though?” Immy imagined possums and coons, maybe rattlers, nesting inside.
    “The latch don’t work right all the time. It swings open sometimes.”
    So maybe the door wasn’t ajar just because someone had murdered Poppy and hurried away without closing it.
    Immy let Ophelia lead the way. When they entered the house, it was empty, except for dried droppings from raccoons and possums that had probably nested there in the spring.
    “We should try the blind,” said Ophelia. “That’s where she goes when she’s upset.”
    Immy wondered if she should find a place to go when she was upset. Was she the only local gal who didn’t have a hiding place?
    The two women traipsed through the brush, following a rude, overgrown trail.