Broke: Read Online Free PDF

stone building that housed the library stood next to what had been Huey's Hash when Uncle Huey was alive. It was now occupied by The Tomato Garden, a franchise restaurant run by Frankie Laramie . Saltlickians were surprised it was still open, given Frankie's aversion to work.
    Immy missed the small pot of parsley that used to sit in the window when her family worked there. She had waited tables for her Uncle Huey until his death.
    She mounted the stone steps and entered the serene, qui e t space of the library . Cornelia Puffin, the librarian who reign ed over the entrance from her high counter , kept her beady eyes on Immy. Even with Ms. Puffin peering at her over wire-rim glasses, Immy felt comfortable here , maybe because her own mother had been the librarian during much of her childhood and she'd spent many happy hours curled up in a chair, reading mysteries . She inhaled the fusty , heady scent of old books and headed for the two computers.
    She liked to use the computer close r to the front window so she could keep track of who was going where. But today she got so absorbed in her search for Dwight Junior, she w ouldn't have noticed if a cowboy drove a herd of cattle along the street.
    Thumbing through t he text book for her online course , she came to the chapter for this week. It was only the second week of the current course and the first week had been introductory. Immy was disappointed to see the concentration of the course in Missing Persons was on finding dead people. How hard could that be? They probably mostly stayed in one place for years at a time, maybe forever. They wouldn't be trying to cover their tracks or evade detection.
    Sighing, she opened the screen to the entry page for the Stangford Institute of Higher Learning. Pausing to admire the logo--the super fancy S of Stangford was what had convinced her that this was a trustworthy institute--she typed her ID and password.
    She couldn't progress to the next subject online until she passed the test of locating dead p eo ple. She'd never tried to skip ahead in her courses, had always plowed through them page by page, absorbing the fascinating material on C rime S cene I nvestigations, U sing the I nternet, and I nterrogation T echniques. So far, she'd gotten A pluses on every test. It would be best if she stuck to the material and read it in order, but she had to know how to find people who were alive. So she flipped pages in the course book until she came to that section. After a few paragraphs, though, she discovered that the best resources for finding live people cost money. She also found that it would have been better had she had her cousin's birth date and place of birth. Uncle Dewey had said his son was twelve when he'd last seen him. H e' d said it was about twenty years ago. So he would be thirty-two now? An older cousin .
    With a start, Immy realized she'd been twelve when she lost her dad, too. They already had something in common besides DNA, and they'd never met. In fact, Junior still didn't know of her existence.
    She twisted a strand of her straigh t hair around a finger, w ondering how she could find a person when all she had was a name--a name that may have been changed. Maybe it would be easier for her cousin to find her.
    The tinkling of her cell phone startled her. She'd forgotten to turn it off. Ms. Puffin's throat clearing could be easily heard over the cell phone. Immy grabbed it and ran to the sidewalk outside to answer the call, leaving her purse and book inside.
    "Yes?" She didn't recognize the number.
    "Are you all right? You sound out of breath."
    "I'm fine. I just had to run outdoors to talk." Where had she heard that voice? "Who is this?"
    "I'm hurt you don't remember me. It's Vance. "
    "Oh, Vance. Yes." Oh yes. Vance Valentin, the Greek god of real estate agents.
    "I have a few more questions for you about the house. When we were there it wasn't a good time to bring them up."
    "It wasn't a good time at all, Vance. There was