Go, Ivy, Go! (9 page)

A cop with a crib note on her hand.

“I put it there so I wouldn’t make another mistake and tell someone else we’d provide him with an alligator. Or who knows what might pop out of my mouth?” she added gloomily. “Asparagus. Accordion. Alfalfa.”

I nodded. Other unfortunate possibilities came to mind. Albatross. Anteater. Aardvark. I didn’t mention them. No point in putting words into her head that might pop out at some inopportune moment.

“Some officers carry a little card where it’s all written down, and then they just pull that out and read the warning to the person when they need it,” I suggested.

“Good idea.” Her mouth drooped. “But with my luck I’d make a mistake and pull out a recipe card and find myself telling him to take a cup of chopped green peppers and add a half cup of chopped onion.”

“That could be a problem.”

“My older sister Shannon is a police detective down in Texas. She almost single-handedly solved a murder case involving a wife killing her husband, and she made a spectacular jump off a burning building in the process.”

“Impressive.”

“This after being valedictorian and prom queen of her high-school class and getting a full college scholarship to study criminology. We used to play cops and robbers when we were kids. I always had to be the robber, and she always caught me and snapped her play handcuffs on me. I’ve been handcuffed so many times I can’t even stand to wear a bracelet,” she added with more gloom.

“You haven’t been on the police force long?”

“Is it that obvious?” she asked with a morose rattle of ice cubes in her glass. She answered her own question. “Of course it is. Shannon would
never
make that dumb alligator mistake like I did. Our folks are so proud of her.”

I realized now why she had the stern hairdo and cultivated the even more stern expression. She was going to catch up with her sister, whatever it took. Probably up to and including jumping off a burning building, perhaps with much more disastrous results than sister Shannon had.

“What’s your name? I mean, besides Officer DeLora.”

“Maggie. No,
Margaret
,” she corrected firmly. “I was always Maggie back home, but now I’m Margaret.”

“So you came up here from Texas to be a police officer and get out from under your sister’s shadow?” I asked.

“It’s a big shadow down there.”

“I’ll call you Officer DeLora,” I offered, thinking maybe that would help her professional image of herself.

“Margaret is fine when I’m not on duty.” She hesitated, shrugged. “Maggie’s okay too. Sometimes I forget to answer to Margaret.”

Margaret/Maggie and Tasha/Tammy, both struggling with names. I’m glad I’ve always been fine with my Ivy.

“Did you always want to be a police officer like your sister?”

“I wanted to be a chef. A vegan chef.
I like creating new recipes.” Her face brightened perceptibly. “A new gazpacho I made last week turned out great.” The light dimmed. “But a new recipe for gazpacho is so . . . insignificant compared to bringing justice in the world like Shannon does.”

“Is your family vegetarian?”

“Are you kidding? If a meal doesn’t include a slab of meat the size of a barn door, it isn’t a real meal.”

“I’m sure the Lord appreciates a good vegan chef as well as a good police officer. Not everyone is meant to be a cop. Maybe you should think about doing what you’d really like to do. Live up to your own dreams, not your sister’s.”

“I’ve thought about quitting the force,” she admitted. Then her voice turned fierce. “But I won’t do it without accomplishing
something worthwhile and meaningful. So far all I’ve accomplished is the alligator mistake that created a new by-word for the force. If anyone does anything really dumb now, he’s ‘pulled a DeLora.’”

“And you’re determined to change that.”

“I don’t want to go out a loser, which is what I am right now. I want to catch Lillian Hunnicutt’s killer.” She looked at her palm again,
then squeezed her eyes shut, and I could see her repeating the word to herself.
Attorney, attorney, attorney.
“I
will
catch Lillian Hunnicutt’s killer.”

She jumped up with an alacrity that suggested a blast into immediate action.

“You’re going to go catch the killer right this minute?”

“Well, no. A homicide detective is leading the investigation, not me. I haven’t made Detective yet.”

“You mean you won’t be working the case officially?” I felt a guilty flicker of relief. Lillian Hunnicutt’s murder needed more than a cop with a crib note on her hand. But a second flicker was regret. Whatever Officer DeLora lacked in expertise or experience, I was sure she made up for in determination.

“I’ve requested assignment to work with Detective Sergeant Atkinson on the case, but I don’t know if I’ll get it.”

“Don’t forget the Braxtons. They’re involved.”

“Right now I’m going home and get this stuff off my hand.”

“And after the hand scrubbing, you’re going to eat a slab of meat the size of a barn door?”

“Why would I do that? I’m a vegan.” Then Officer DeLora narrowed her eyes at me. “Oh, I get it. You’re making a point aren’t you? That I don’t need to be a cop like Shannon any more than I need to eat like my family.”

Okay, I’d made my point. Not subtly, but Officer DeLora got it. Subtlety is way over-rated anyway. “I suppose this is off the subject, but Tasha, the woman who was upstairs with the body when you first got here, was giving out tofu sausage samples at Heartland Grocery the other day.”

“Really?
I’ve never tried tofu sausage. Hey, maybe I’ll stop over there and pick up some. It might be just what my new lasagna recipe needs.”

“Happy eating.”

***

Mac got back from the store right after Officer DeLora left. I passed along to him what she’d told me, that the dead woman was, at least for the moment, Lillian Hunnicutt, and the Deputy Chief of Police had a Braxton in his bedroom.

Mac’s response wasn’t unexpected. “Time to get out of Dodge, right?”

“No rush. I’m thinking the news that the real Ivy is back in town won’t instantly work its way up to the Deputy Chief of Police, especially with the convenience store killings to solve. So the Braxton wife shouldn’t hear anything through him about me for a while. And the Braxtons surely aren’t watching the house now since they think they already killed Ivy Malone.”

“Let’s see about the headstone for Colin first thing tomorrow then,” Mac said, apparently assuming that was what was holding me here now.

That was part of it, of course. But with the house clean and yard spruced up, this was beginning to feel more like home. Except for the hillbilly ambiance of the pile of smelly furniture in the back yard, and the slightly morbid touch added by the mannequin’s head. “I’d like to get all that stuff hauled off too.”

“Sure. We can do that with the pickup.”

We watched another DVD that evening, then took a hand-holding stroll around the neighborhood. Afterward, we made separate trips into the house for showers in the downstairs bathroom, I guess because neither of us wanted to use that upstairs bathroom even if it was all cleaned and disinfected now. The hot water felt great, but I kept my shower short. Even in the downstairs bathroom, the shower scene in that old
Psycho
movie kept cranking around in my head. I didn’t want to star in a Madison Street bathtub version of it.

And then I couldn’t sleep.

I got up and listened to the radio. What I wanted was some soothing golden-oldies music, but what I got was call-in talk shows with callers spouting off about everything from crop circles to Bigfoot to conspiracies among toilet-paper manufacturers to make their paper ever thinner.

So I turned off the radio and just stared out the window at the house. Koop draped himself around the back of my neck, and I absentmindedly stroked both ends of him. His soothing purr rumbled through my body. I thought about my old home and Lillian Hunnicutt living in it, about the sadness of her life and the murderous Braxtons, about Maggie DeLora’s mixed-up ambitions, about Mac and me.

He hadn’t said anything more about getting married. Maybe the proposal had a
delete by
date that had already passed. Did I want to be married? Sometimes it sounded like the happy-ever-after ending to a romance novel; sometimes it felt like a wrong turn down a one-way street. Maybe I’d just sell my motorhome and settle down to life by myself here on Madison Street.

A big pang instantly hit me. I’d miss Mac. Miss him a
lot
. The thought of Mac not being in my life felt like a big hole, not one that could be covered by moving a piece of furniture. And if I stayed here, the Braxtons would, sooner or later, come after me.

Could I outwit them, like that kid in the Home Alone movies? Rig up booby traps. Ensnare their feet in glue. Fix a net to fall on them. Dump cans of paint on them.

More likely, since the Braxtons weren’t into slapstick, I’d wind up dead in the bathtub. Or dumped in a country creek. Or blown to unidentifiable itsy-bitsy pieces. Maybe I’d just disappear, and no one would ever know what became of me. Magnolia and Geoff would mourn me, and so would my niece and family down in Arkansas. Good friend Abilene out in Colorado, and Mac too. For a while.
But eventually I’d just fade away, forgotten by all.

Would you like chips with that pity party?

I made a decision.

Chapter Eight

I invited Mac over for breakfast, and we had waffles made on the microwave thingy I picked up at a yard sale. It was a great 50-cent investment. The waffles are crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and I fixed bacon and scrambled eggs and fresh-cut cantaloupe to accompany them. Afterward, we took our coffee out to the lawn chairs under the maple tree.

From down the street, I could hear Eric Ockunzzi pounding in his shop. Birds twittered in the tree above us. A boy coasted by on a bicycle, feet on the handlebars. Across the street, the automatic sprinkler system was spreading a summertime fragrance of growing green things in Magnolia and Geoff’s yard. A box sat in front of the yellow house down the street, slanted to show the cucumber contents. A big sign said FREE! RECIPES INCLUDED! Koop perched on a branch high in the maple tree, Cat-King of the world, first time I’d ever known him to do something like that.

It was one of those moments that said,
You’re home, and all’s right with the world.
Yes, I’d made the right decision.

“Great breakfast,” Mac said.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it. I was thinking shrimp salad for lunch.” One of Mac’s favorites.

He sat in silence for another minute before he said, “You’re buttering me up, aren’t you?”

I made an innocent gesture of hand to throat. Who,
moi?

“Because you have something to tell me, and you figure I don’t want to hear it.”

“I’ve had a few thoughts after talking to Officer DeLora yesterday,” I said cautiously.

“Such as?”

“Officer DeLora is a dedicated police officer, and she’s determined to find Lillian Hunnicutt’s killer. But she’s so sure the impeccable Deputy Chief of Police wouldn’t get mixed up with a family of unscrupulous criminals that she’s downgrading my suspicions about the Braxtons.”

“Downgrading as in pooh-poohing?”

Probably not a technical police term, but it worked for me.
I nodded. “They think the killer was someone Lillian already knew and had trouble with in the past. Someone she was afraid of, which was why she was hiding out here.”

“And your theory of Braxton involvement is just the rambling of a paranoid LOL.”

I nodded again. Officer DeLora was more polite than that, and she might not even be consciously aware of the attitude, but it surely lurked down there in her subconscious. “I also keep thinking about the sad story of Lillian Hunnicutt herself. If they can’t find any family, she may be in the morgue for who knows how long? With no one who cares about her. And it isn’t right that her killers are just running around loose.”

“I can agree with that, sure. But—”

“And the bottom line is, she’s dead because of me.” I held up a hand when Mac started to protest. “I know. I can try to squirm around that line of thinking. But it’s true. I don’t think any killer came out of the past to murder Lillian. The Braxtons did it
.
If it weren’t for their vendetta against me, Lillian would still be alive.”

“So you feel responsible for her death.”

“Yes.” The thought also occurred to me that maybe the Lord had been working on a different agenda all along. Maybe my coming back to Madison Street had more to do with the dead woman than with me. Had the Lord called me back because of her? First to find her there in the tub, and then to help bring her killers to justice?
“I can’t just run off and abandon her, as if her death were insignificant and trivial.”

Mac drummed his fingers on his thigh. Finally he said, “You do realize the Braxtons aren’t going to shrug and ignore you if you’re right here under their noses, don’t you?”

“I intend to convince Officer DeLora that the Braxtons are where the investigation should be focused.”

“And jump right in to do it yourself if she doesn’t go after them. Or even if she does,” he added, still in gloom and doom mode.

I wasn’t exactly planning to
jump
in. Though I might kind of
peek
in to see if I could help bring the Braxtons down.
And I had an advantage Mac was forgetting, an advantage that even your average caped and masked superhero doesn’t have.
Invisibility
. It was some time ago that I made the disconcerting discovery that I’ve aged into this state. People just don’t
see
me anymore. That troubled me at first, but I’d quickly decided invisibility can be a handy asset. As it could be now.

“Ivy Malone, senior sleuth,” Mac muttered. “Championing the cause of right over wrong. Bringing the evil to justice. You’d better get that cape patched up, and make sure it’s in flying shape. And maybe practice some bullet-dodging.”