Go, Ivy, Go! by Lorena McCourtney Read Free Book Online Page A

wanted to know what brand of undies I wore. She’d already asked about everything else, including whether I had false teeth. Fortunately she didn’t try to check for herself, because by then I might have given her a demonstration of LOL tooth power.
    Finally we both went outside again, which is when I realized the small but curious crowd was on the far side of a newly-erected barrier of yellow crime scene tape. Mac was already on the other side of the barrier, and Officer DeLora took me over there too. I tried to ask her about the crime scene aspect of this, but she headed back to the house without telling me anything. A little later she returned and asked permission of both Mac and me to search our motorhomes. It was a politely phrased request, but I knew the clout behind it. If we didn’t agree, they’d just get an official search warrant. Mac shrugged and said okay, and I did too.
    A little later, two men came out of the house carrying a stretcher with a dark body bag on it. I’d never known the dead woman, and I didn’t know how she’d died, but this was such a bleak ending to anyone’s life that I had to blink back tears. Who was she? Did she have family to mourn her? Would anyone come to claim her body? The stretcher disappeared into the back of a van.
    Now what? Both Mac’s and my motorhomes were included within that barrier of yellow tape, officers now going through them. I couldn’t think there was anything to find, but who knew what innocent item they might target as incriminating evidence? This was obviously going to complicate my plans to move into the house. I suddenly doubted that even after I could move in that I’d ever be able to use that upstairs bathroom again, no matter how much bubble bath I dumped in the tub.
    Mac and I drifted together to watch what was going on. An officer came out of the house with a video camera and panned the outside area, including us in the cluster of people standing around. Were they thinking a killer might return to the scene of the crime?
    I rejected that question. No killer. No crime. Just a dead woman who happened to expire and tumble into my tub. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
    “Did you find out anything while you were being questioned?” Mac asked.
    “No, it was all questions, no answers. Although Officer DeLora did let slip that the dead woman had a library card and some mail with the name Ivy Malone on them. And I already know that someone ran up some utility bills when there wasn’t supposed to be anyone living here.”
    “She was passing herself off as you?”
    “It looks that way.”
    Mac gave that some thought while an officer came out of the house carrying an armload of items individually packed in plastic evidence bags and placed them in a police car. Mac nodded thoughtfully.
    “At least now you know why the Braxtons haven’t been trying to kill you for the last few months,” he said.
    “Why’s that?”
    “Because they thought you were dead, of course. They thought they’d already killed you. And dumped you in the bathtub.”
     
     

 
    Chapter Five
     
    “You don’t know that!” I objected. Too vehemently.
    Because what Mac said made all too much sense. Tasha had said the dead body had a “big hole” in it. There was that stain in the bedroom, which I now realized was more likely blood than wine. The ominous circling of crime-scene tape was a plain indication of how the police viewed this. And the Braxtons hadn’t made any threatening moves on me in the last few months.
    The Braxtons had discovered someone living in the house, someone identifying herself as Ivy Malone, and then they’d done what Braxtons did when they encountered an Ivy Malone. They finished her off. Why did they put her in the tub? Maybe something about taking longer for the body to be discovered or to contain the odor? Or maybe just some morbid Braxton whimsy?
    Guilt hit me like an avalanche. This unknown woman had wound up dead in a tub and then a