Choke Read Free

cracked the door open after a discreet interval.
    Mother was going at a fast waddle down the road. Uncle Huey was in for a tongue-lashing, but since he’d never pinched Immy’s bottom, Huey wouldn’t know why the hell Hortense was screaming at him. Maybe Immy should hear what went on in case she needed to defend her lie to Mother or step up and confess.
    She would tail Mother. She needed the practice anyway. Immy entered the place in her head where she existed not as Imogene Duckworthy, overeager but sometimes ineffectual unwed parent of Drew, nor as the smothered only daughter of her doting but critical mother, nor as a clumsy waitress—no, none of these. In this nice place, where her stomach never hurt, Imogene was Detective Duckworthy, a daughter her father would have been proud of, but one whose existence her mother would prevent if she could.
    She watched until Hortense disappeared around the corner of the last trailer on the block. Then Immy dashed outside and ran in the opposite direction to get to the diner by another route. She could beat her mother there and hide in the doorway of the library next door. Would Mother really harm Uncle Huey? She sure did look mad enough to spit. Maybe madder. It worried Immy a little. She needed to keep track of what was going on.
    She hadn’t been honest with Uncle Huey, nor with Mother, because her dream was too fragile to take the ridicule she expected. When she made it come true, they would all sit up and take notice. She hoped.
    For now, Immy had no idea what to do about the situation. She hoped Detective Duckworthy would know.

Two
    Immy pressed herself tightly into the narrow doorway of the library. It was shallow but deep enough to hide her thin form. Her foot stuck when she tried to move it out of sight. Some jerk had spit gum on the sidewalk, right outside the library.
    I wonder if that’s where the term gumshoe comes from, hiding in dirty alleys and getting gum on your shoes.
    She scraped it off on the shallow step as best she could, then ducked back as she spied her mother sailing down the sidewalk, pink windbreaker flapping behind her like the wake of an ocean liner. She heard Hortense rattle the knob, then bang on the door of the diner. It wasn’t open for supper on Mondays, so it was closed down now until tomorrow, no doubt locked. Uncle Huey was most likely upstairs doing his books. Clem, the cook, was probably in the back, chopping vegetables and making gravy for tomorrow. Baxter should be around, washing dishes or cleaning up. If Immy still worked there, she would be in the dining room right now, refilling salt shakers and ketchups and wrapping forks and knives into paper napkin bundles.
    Hortense kept pounding, and eventually the door opened, then slammed shut. Immy peeked out. Her mother had entered the restaurant. How would a detective operate in this situation? She had no idea. She would have to get a book on the subject of being a PI next time she went to the book store in Wymee Falls. There were no PI books in the library, Immy knew, because she had read every book of crime fiction and mystery it held. If picking up her new business cards hadn’t taken longer than she’d thought it would, she would have looked for one today. Surely someone had written a guide for PIs, one of those Dummy or Idiot things. She had read one of those on child care once, and it had seemed pretty good.
    For now, she craned her neck out of her cubbyhole to search the sidewalk for onlookers. She didn’t want anyone to see that she was spying on her own mother. Next to Huey’s Hash, on the corner, stood the video rental place with the huge plate glass windows. No one was there at the moment. The library, where she hid, had closed at noon, since it closed early three days a week due to budget cuts. Beyond the library was the tiny hardware store, its pale yellow paint peeling from the west Texas sun. No one was outside.
    There was a time, Mother often said, when Saltlick seemed