Ivy Morgan Mystery Box Set 5

by Lily Harper Hart

  “Fair enough. I—” She frowned when someone knocked on the front door. “Who would be up at this hour?”

  “I’ve got it.” Jack strode to the door and opened it without checking to see who was on the front porch. Shadow Lake wasn’t the sort of place where people were afraid to answer their doors. To absolutely nobody’s surprise, Jack’s partner Brian Nixon stood on the other side of the threshold ... and he didn’t look happy. “Do I even want to know what you’re doing here so early?”

  Brian shrugged as he stepped inside, offering Ivy a small wave before focusing on Jack. “I just got a call. They found a body discarded on the highway. It looks like it’s been there overnight. We have to get out there.”

  “Well, great.” Jack’s expression twisted as he carried his coffee mug into the kitchen. “That’s exactly how I wanted to start my Monday.”

  “Sorry to ruin your after-vacation buzz but duty calls.” Brian was unnaturally chipper as he watched his partner upend the mug into the sink and kiss Ivy’s forehead before sliding behind her.

  “It’s fine. I’m ready.” Jack focused on Ivy. “Have fun at work. How about I bring home dinner?”

  “That’s fine. Or we can go out.”

  “I’ll text you later.” He went back for a full kiss. “Have fun gossiping with your father.”

  Ivy was taken aback. “Who says we’re going to be gossiping?”

  “You just spent a weekend with Max’s new girlfriend, a woman he hasn’t met yet. Your whole day is going to be taken up with gossiping.”

  Ivy was fairly certain there was an insult hidden beneath the words somewhere, but she was too cheery to look for it. “Call me later and we’ll discuss dinner. Make sure you’re careful, too. Even death won’t be an allowable excuse for missing the wedding.”

  Jack’s expression softened. “There is nothing in this world that will cause me to miss our wedding. Nothing. I want to be married to you more than anything.”

  “Me, too.” She gave him a half-salute. “I’ll try to get all the gossiping out of my system before I come home.”

  “Don’t do that.” He shook his head. “I want to hear what your father says. I like to gossip, too.”

  “Good to know.”

  JACK WAS RIGHT ABOUT MICHAEL MORGAN launching straight into the gossip. Ivy was barely out of her coat before he attacked her with questions.

  “So?”

  “So ... things around here look pretty good,” Ivy replied, opting to torture him for a bit longer. “I guess the business didn’t come off the rails while I was gone, huh?”

  Michael drew his eyebrows together. “I don’t know who taught you to be such a pain in the behind, but it certainly wasn’t me. I blame your mother.”

  “I’m sure you do.” Ivy’s amusement was obvious as she ran her fingers over the leaves of a hydrangea plant. “Were you guys busy?”

  “It was a normal weekend in June,” Michael replied dryly. “We were fine. This isn’t the first time you’ve left me in charge. It won’t be the last. I don’t want to talk about the nursery.”

  “Oh, really?” Ivy feigned innocence. “What is it that you want to talk about?”

  Michael had no shame so he simply blurted it out. “I want to talk about your brother’s new girlfriend.”

  “Amy? She’s a lovely woman.” Ivy put on a big show of being demure. “I absolutely adored spending time with her.”

  “Oh, stop that.” Michael flicked the ridge of Ivy’s ear, causing her to yelp. “Give me the dirt. There must be something wrong with her if your brother is interested.”

  Ivy would’ve laughed at the joke if he uttered it before they left on their trip. Given what happened, though, she was more sympathetic to Amy’s plight. “You know what? I like her.” That was true, Ivy realized. Even though Amy was shy and often reticent, when she looked, Ivy saw a thoughtful woman trying to make her way in a harsh world. There was nothing to dislike about that.

  Michael was having none of it. “I’m going to need more than that. I can’t remember the last time your brother actually referred to a woman as his girlfriend. This woman must be special. Is she a stripper or something?”

  Ivy could see why her father would assume that. Her brother wasn’t known for being a good judge of character much of the time. “No. She’s a bartender out at that place on the highway.”

  “A bartender, huh?” Michael rubbed his chin. “Do you think she has other goals besides that?”

  Ivy arched a challenging eyebrow. “Does it matter? There’s nothing wrong with being a bartender.”

  “Of course not.” Michael made a face. “It’s just ... is this a temporary stop? Does she plan to stay here for a bit and then move on? I don’t want your brother getting attached to her if she’s going to leave. That’s only going to exacerbate things.”

  “Oh.” Realization dawned on Ivy. She understood what her father was saying. “I honestly don’t know. Her parents were friends with Caroline Atwood. She lives in that cabin out by the lake.”

  “I know her.” Michael bobbed his head. “She’s never been married to my knowledge, no children of her own. It’s good that Amy is there to take care of her.”

  “I think they’re taking care of each other.” Ivy volunteered what little she’d been able to glean from Amy. When she was done, Michael was thoughtful.

  “So, basically you’re saying that she’s painfully shy and your brother seems head-over-heels for her. I don’t know how I feel about that.”

  “It’s not just that she’s shy,” Ivy cautioned. She’d jumped to that conclusion at first, too, and now realized she’d been off the mark. “She’s measured. She lost her parents when she was young. I didn’t hear an exact age, but I’m pretty sure she was barely twenty when it happened. She didn’t have any other family, so that meant she was on her own.”

  “Even though she was technically an adult that didn’t mean she was ready to take care of herself,” Michael mused. “She probably had no choice but to get serious quickly.”

  “She said she had a job at an insurance office and then lost it to layoffs,” Ivy volunteered. “She was in trouble before Caroline volunteered to give her a place to stay. She seems profoundly grateful. She also said Max asked her out four times before she agreed.”

  “Really?” Michael’s interest was officially piqued. “When was the last time your brother asked out a woman more than once? If they’re not interested, he moves on to the next one right away.”

  Ivy thought back to the way he reacted when he thought Amy was dead on the ground. “I think there’s something different about Amy. He feels it here.” Ivy tapped the spot above her heart. “She might be the one for him.”

  “Well, that will be interesting.” Michael’s eyes were thoughtful as they locked with those of his only daughter. “Did you feel it there, in your heart I mean, when you met Jack?”

  “Sometimes I think Jack somehow touched my soul from the moment we met,” she admitted. “I don’t know how to explain it. Max is definitely feeling a lot for Amy right now. I don’t know if it’s going to last, but my gut says she may be the final stop on his dating journey.”

  Michael grinned at the way she phrased it. “That will be exciting, huh? I kind of hope it’s true. I’m ready for grandchildren.”

  Ivy pinned him with a dour look. “You’re not getting grandchildren from Jack and me for a few years.”

  “I’m fine with that.”

  Ivy wasn’t so sure. Still, she had work to do. “Let’s get on it. I want to tell you about the other thing that happened on our trip and it’s not nearly as happy as the previous news.”

  “You’ve officially made me curious. Let’s do it.”

  “WHERE DID SHE COME FROM?”

  Jack crouched next to the broken body that had been tossed in the median of the highway and studied the woman’s bruised and battered face with pity.

  “She was obviously in a vehicle,” Brian replied as he jotted down notes regarding the
woman’s appearance. “The wallet in the bag found next to her says her name is Becky Morris. She lived three towns over, in Petoskey.”

  Jack furrowed his brow. “So, she wasn’t local.”

  “Not that I know of.” Brian was all business as he moved to the woman’s feet and stared at her shoes. “These look like expensive boots. I’ll have to do some research. I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen this woman before, though. What about you?”

  Jack wasn’t as sure as his partner. “I don’t know,” he replied after a beat. “There’s something about her that seems familiar. I can’t put my finger on it, though.”

  Brian’s eyebrows migrated higher. “Do you think you knew her?”

  “Not particularly. I think it’s possible I saw her face somewhere, though. Before you ask, I’m not sure where. It’s just an odd feeling.”

  “Well, I’m not sure how she died,” Brian admitted, exhaling heavily as he focused on the high ridges of the woman’s cheekbones. “She’s a bloody mess. I’m not sure if this happened because she was thrown from a moving vehicle or if someone did this to her and then simply tossed her out like the trash.”

  “I don’t know either.” Jack moved so he could study the woman’s fingernails. “I can’t be sure because there’s a decent amount of dirt and grime here, but it’s possible she got a piece of her killer. This looks like skin under her fingernails.”

  “We’ll make sure to note that for the medical examiner,” Brian confirmed. “She’s got head contusions, scrapes and bruises all over her body, and what looks to be a broken neck. The odd angle of her head means that something is going on there.”

  Jack’s mind wandered, unbidden, to Stacy Shepherd. “Her neck could’ve broken when she was pushed out of the vehicle,” he noted. “Odds are she wasn’t alive for that. I don’t think anyone worried about being caught would push a woman out of a car or truck and just assume she was going to die. That’s not a given, especially since the speed limit here is sixty-five miles.”

  “That’s enough to kill her,” Brian pointed out. “Maybe the goal wasn’t to kill her but just to get rid of her. I mean ... I hate to say it ... but it’s possible she’s a working girl.”

  Jack lifted his eyes. “You mean a prostitute?” He glanced back toward the body. “She doesn’t look like any prostitute I’ve ever seen and I ran across a fair number during my days in Detroit.”

  “Country prostitutes are different from city prostitutes,” Brian replied without hesitation. “Up here they’re meant to look like country girls. That’s what keeps them from standing out and getting picked up by law enforcement.”

  Oddly enough, that made sense to Jack. “So ... you think she was a pro, do you? Does that mean she was with a john, things got rough, and then he pushed her out of a moving vehicle so he wouldn’t have to pay her?”

  “I’m not saying I’m leaning either way yet,” Brian cautioned. “We have to run this woman to see what sort of background we can dig up. I’m just pointing out that prostitutes aren’t unheard of in this area and I can see it going down the way you described. Our perp might’ve simply wanted to get rid of her and thought she would survive the fall.”

  “Maybe.” Jack chewed on his bottom lip as he shifted to look at the woman’s other hand. “There are marks on her fingers, a few broken fingernails. She looks to have had a nice manicure before this went down. I’m sure that it’s possible those fingernails broke in the fall, but it’s also possible they broke during a struggle.”

  “Are you seeing something I’m not seeing?”

  “I don’t know what I’m seeing yet.” Jack straightened. “I want to run her information. I think we’re wasting time circling until we know more about her.”

  “I agree. We can’t do anything until the medical examiner gets here, though, and they’re running behind.”

  “Then we’ll wait.” Jack was grim as he moved closer to the road to study a few of the spots where she might’ve hit if she really was shoved from a moving vehicle. “Do you think it’s possible for somebody to stop out here in the middle of the night and dump a body without anybody seeing?”

  Brian nodded without hesitation. “Absolutely. There’s very little traffic on this highway, even during peak periods. If that’s what happened, my guess would be that someone had the body covered in the bed of a pickup truck, pulled over by the side of the road and feigned looking at tires or something until he was sure traffic was clear, then dragged her out of the truck and threw her in the ditch. The whole thing wouldn’t have taken more than three minutes ... and we’ve only seen two vehicles since we’ve been out here.”

  “Yeah. I noticed that, too.” Jack rolled his neck. “We need her background. We can’t determine a thing until we know more about her.”

  Ten

  Tracking down information on Becky Morris wasn’t as easy as Jack anticipated. Since she lived in a nearby town, he figured he would have to drive over there to interview her friends and family. An alert on his computer changed his opinion.

  “Look at this,” Brian muttered, shaking his head as he bent over his desk and read the same alert. “There’s a BOLO on our dead woman.”

  “There is.” Jack was grim. “She went missing at the St. Ignace rest area yesterday. She was traveling with her husband. They both went into the bathroom and when he came out he headed to the vending machines. When she didn’t come find him he assumed she went back to the car … only she didn’t. She disappeared.”

  Brian rubbed the back of his neck as he shifted from one foot to the other. “What do you think?” he asked finally. “It’s possible he made up that story. He could’ve killed her in the Upper Peninsula and waited until he got down here to dispose of her.”

  Jack cocked his head to the side, considering. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,” he said after a beat. “They live in Petoskey. Shadow Lake isn’t exactly a convenient stop.”

  “No. We need to talk to him, though.” Brian started typing. “I’m going to update the state police that we have the body and it’s likely Becky Morris. Hopefully that will be enough to get the husband re-directed here.”

  “Hopefully we’ll luck out,” Jack agreed. “Until then, I’m going to start digging into our victim’s background. Maybe something will jump out at me.”

  “I’m going to see what I can get from the trooper who filed the missing person’s report. He might have some background for us.”

  IVY WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF a transplanting project when she heard a familiar voice. She furrowed her brow, shifted from her spot in the middle of her greenhouse, and frowned when her mother strolled through the open door.

  Luna Morgan was a handsome woman, one of those people who looked twenty years younger and could entrance a room in three seconds flat. Ivy was close with her mother, got along well with her in fact, but she was also often agitated with her mother’s insistence on invading her life.

  “What are you doing here?” Ivy blurted out before she thought better about how obnoxious she sounded.

  Luna arched an eyebrow and planted her hands on her hips. “And that’s a fine ‘hello, how are you, mother’ to you, too,” she drawled.

  Ivy made a rueful face. “I wasn’t trying to be insulting. I just … am surprised you’re here. I didn’t realize you were coming for a visit today. I would’ve marked it down on my calendar if I knew.”

  “And I didn’t realize that visits from your mother were the sort of things that had to be marked down on a calendar. You learn something new every day.”

  Ivy scowled. “I can tell you’re in a mood. I don’t really have time to deal with … whatever this is. I was thinking perhaps you were here for a specific reason, but now I believe that’s not the case because you would’ve already clobbered me over the head with intent if you had any.”

  Luna’s smile only widened. “That was a very smart sentence, young lady. I’m proud to see that you put your vocabulary to work for you on a regular basis.”

  “
Oh, geez.” Ivy rolled her eyes. “You do have an agenda. Whatever it is, I’m not interested. Why don’t you go and bother Dad or something? I think he’d appreciate the company.”

  Luna didn’t bother acknowledging the lame attempt to distract her with anything other than a dismissive wave. “So, I hear you had a fun weekend. How is Jack?”

  Ivy narrowed her eyes. She sensed trouble. “Jack is lovely. He sends his regards.”

  “He’s always been a friendly and amiable man.” Luna’s smile was brutally pleasant, which only made Ivy more suspicious. “How did he get along with your brother? I know there was some strife because Jack wanted to spend time alone with you. Did things work out okay, though?”

  Ivy had a feeling she knew exactly where her mother was going with this conversation … and she wasn’t happy. “Actually, Jack remained petulant for the bulk of the trip. He wasn’t happy about our alone time being taken from us.”

  “That is terrible. I’m sorry things were so rough on Jack.” Luna barreled forward and finally arrived at the real topic she wanted to discuss. “And I believe your brother brought a friend, correct? A girlfriend. He’s even referring to her as his girlfriend, something he hasn’t done for a long time.”

  “Yes, I believe he was in high school and trying to talk a certain cheerleader out of her brightly-colored skirt when last he used that term,” Ivy agreed. “Mother—”

  Luna waved her hand to stop Ivy from talking. “Tell me about her. She must be something special if she’s captured your brother’s eye and put him off other women entirely.”

  Ivy really should’ve seen this coming. She wanted to kick herself for not realizing her mother was going to turn this into a thing. “She’s nice, Mom. She’s sweet … and Max dotes on her. She’s a little on the quiet side, but I’m guessing she’ll start talking about herself more when she feels comfortable with us.”

  “Hmm. Uh-huh. Do you think she was uncomfortable with you because you’re surly or is she really the nervous sort?”