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working in a PI’s office. Yes!” She pumped her hands skyward toward her ascending fortunes.
    Now, should she tell her mother? Hortense probably wouldn’t take it well. Immy would decide later about when to tell her—and exactly what.
    As she fired up the van she wondered just where she was going to go to investigate, but when she cruised down Second Street, the main artery of Saltlick, the van seemed to know what to do. It nosed into the curb in front of Cathy’s Kut and Kurl. A glance at the clock told her it was after nine-thirty. The shop should be open now.
    Yellow tape festooned the door of Huey’s Hash across the street. How could such a bright, happy color look so gloomy?
    The Pepto Bismol pink exterior of Cathy’s lent a festive gaiety to the block, though. Immy pushed through the glass door with its tinkling bell and asked Cathy if she had time to do a shampoo. That was the cheapest thing Immy could think of on the spur of the moment as a cover for her inquisition.
    “Sure, honey, not too busy this time of day. C’mon back.” Cathy, rail thin with bleached white straw on her head where most people had hair, scurried to the back room and motioned Immy to a seat in front of the first of her three black sinks. Immy sat, and Cathy ran a quick brush through Immy’s straight locks, whipped a plastic cape around her shoulders, tilted her onto the spongy sink lip, and sprayed her head with scalding water.
    “What’s goin’ on with that mama of yours, Immy?”
    “What do you mean?” She had read in her PI guidebook that answering questions with questions elicited information from informants.
    “Well, that po -liceman Ralph, you know, that big deputy or somethin’, came around and axe me if I seen her day before yesterday. You know, Ralph? That ex-jock. Kinda cute.”
    Of course she knew Ralph. Everyone did. Immy shivered under Cathy’s strong fingers, which were digging into her scalp. Another question, she reminded herself. “What did you tell him?”
    “I tole him what I seen.”
    Another tactic Immy had read about was that of remaining silent. Suspects, the book said, will sometimes give information to fill the gaps in conversation. So she tried that next. She closed her eyes and kept her mouth shut. It worked.
    “Your mama went in there and then ran out like a bat outta hell not fifteen minutes later. Then Hugh was found dead the next day.” Cathy’s fingers gouged into Immy’s scalp harder. “I didn’t know what to think, but I hadda tell him. I’m sure Hortense wouldn’t hurt a fly, but I hadda tell Ralph. He’s the po -lice.”
    Somehow, Immy kept her eyes closed and kept from flinching under Cathy’s death grip massage. Had Cathy seen her in the doorway of the library or entering the diner? She would say so if she had, wouldn’t she?
    “That floozy waitress, what’s her name?” said Cathy.
    “Xenia?” Xenia Blossom was the one who had quit the same day Immy did, in the morning, the one who actually had quit because Uncle Huey pinched her bottom.
    “Yeah, her and that gangster-lookin’ boyfriend of hers was there a little before your mama was. They left like they was all steamed up about somethin’.”
    “Do you know if Ralph talked to anyone else?”
    “Can’t say I do.”
    “You see any other cars or people there yesterday?” Immy cringed, waiting for the answer to include herself.
    “Nope. I was back and forth from front to back all afternoon.”
    So if Xenia was there before her Mother, Xenia and Frank, her boyfriend, hadn’t killed Uncle Huey. She had heard Hortense and Huey arguing with her own ears. He had been alive when Mother was there. Mother , Immy thought, made a big mistake lying to Emmett like that. I wonder how much trouble she’s in. Why in the hell did she lie to him if she didn’t kill Huey?
    Half an hour later Immy left the shop with clean, shiny hair and no idea where to go next. Maybe she should talk to Huey’s longtime cook Clem. The diner,