The Darkness of Ivy

by Jessica King

  “Not just a lucky shot then,” Ivy said, looking up to where Vince stood over her with a crinkled brow.

  “Different killer?”

  Ivy nodded. “I don’t see a card anywhere,” she said. “But she was on the website, so.” She pressed forward onto her knees, which were aching from the crouch she’d been in. She picked up each of the woman’s hands and wrists. They were bruised with what had probably been a struggle, her right palm bloody with glass shards but cardless.

  When the body tugged, Ivy looked to Vince, who was pulling off the woman’s shoe.

  “Right laces were untied,” he said, slipping off the stylish sneaker and setting it on the patterned carpet that was giving Ivy a headache. He reached into the shoe, blue-gloved hands pulling out a card with the unmistakable symbol. Ivy bit at her upper lip as he dropped the card into its own plastic bag. “This is getting weird,” Vince said.

  Chief Marks took the bag in his own hands. “Where’d you find this?” he asked, pointing to the card.

  Vince pointed to the shoe.

  Chief Marks’ tawny eyes grew distant. “One of my best friends’ wives was killed nearly forty years ago,” he shook his head. “I thought maybe the symbol was just a coincidence.” He looked at the discarded heel on the floor.

  “They left the card in her shoe?” Ivy asked. She bit her tongue.

  The chief shook his head, turning haunted eyes to her and her partner. “No, it was branded into the sole of her foot. But the husband—when Marshall got there, he’d shot Marshall badly enough that no one could catch him.”

  Ivy tried to blink away the mental image of the Kingsmen fingerprint branded into skin. “Chief, what was her name?”

  “Barbra Harris.”

  Tuesday, February 14, 2017, 9:55 p.m.

  Ivy knocked on the door three times. It was navy and freshly painted—not a stray drop on the handle or doorbell, which she had found to be out of order. A man in his seventies with deep lines beneath his eyes answered the door.

  “Marshall Harris?” Ivy asked.

  His eyes narrowed a bit, noticing the badge on her uniform. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “We had some questions about your wife’s death,” she said, inspecting his outfit in turn. An Angel’s baseball cap and a checkered button-down. It looked dark inside, but Ivy could smell a collection of plants blooming somewhere in the house.

  “I’d rather not,” he said, beginning to close the door. “There should be a perfectly competent file with the police.”

  Ivy placed a hand on the door, though she put no force behind it. “Please,” she said, and the door paused. “I think the same man who killed your wife killed my mom.”

  There was a long, exhausted exhale of breath, but the door opened back up. He looked at her long and hard. Worn denim jean-eyes were overshadowed by thick brows and eyelids that slanted down at the ends, pulled down by age over time. One lid drooped more than the other, giving him the impression that he was about to wink but never would.

  “I’ll start some coffee,” he said, turning his back, though he left the door open.

  Ivy looked back at Vince, who shrugged, and they walked inside, following him to a small kitchen that had barely enough room to house the wooden table and chairs. It wasn’t where Barbra Harris had died. Chief Marks had told her the man had moved, had never wanted to see the house again after. But there were hints of his late wife everywhere—faded yellow curtains with white roses printed on them, a threadbare plastic tablecloth that had clearly been colorful at one point, and a crystal vase engraved with what was likely their wedding date.

  She and Vince sat at the table, and Ivy carefully tucked her legs beneath the tablecloth, doing her best not to disturb it. Marshall worked quietly with the coffee maker, until it started gurgling. He turned toward the two of them, bracing one hand on the counter.

  “Did your mom die recently?” he asked.

  “No,” Ivy said. “Fifteen years ago. But I think he’s back.”

  “Is he,” Marshall said, but it didn’t sound like a question. “I’m sorry to say that I just don’t really believe you. I searched for Barb’s killer for years. There was no trace of him. He dropped off the earth; the man’s a ghost.” Marshall dropped his gaze to the floor, his shoulders hunching. Birds chirped outside, landing on the windowsill where birdseed was piled up against the glass.

  Vince rubbed a fingernail along a seam of the tablecloth. “Then we might just be Ghostbusters,” he said.

  Marshall peered at Vince, then at Ivy. “Hmmph,” was his only answer, though he seemed slightly amused by Vince.

  Ivy waited for the right words to come to her, but all she could do was stare at the pile of potted plants against the back door. There was an old schoolroom clock next to them, and the plants seemed to be waiting to be taken outside.

  “I assume you’ve read whatever they have in that file about Barb,” Marshall said.

  “Yes,” Ivy said. “The report you gave that day is in there.”

  “The whole file is my work,” Marshall said. “I know what’s in it.” He bristled a bit, but he handed them each a mug of coffee all the same, fishing half and half out of the refrigerator. He took a sip of his own, plain black.

  Ivy let the smell of coffee mix in her nostrils with the blueberry-muffin smell that had her mouthwatering the moment they’d walked into the kitchen. She’d never ask for one, but wherever they were, they smelled heavenly. “In your report, you mentioned finding some sort of threat after the fact that was not included in the file. Did it not seem relevant?”

  “There was no way of tracing them, really,” Marshall said.

  “Them?” Ivy said.

  Marshall sighed. “There were a lot of them. She had gotten a few before she had died, and we thought that our address had gotten mixed up with some crazy person’s home, or that it was some kids playing a prank. Never thought it would—” He shook his head. “Anyway.” He shifted uncomfortably in his house slippers, a brown corduroy that looked old despite their pristine condition. “I put them in the file at first, but I decided to keep them when I went to retire. They didn’t prove to be useful evidence, so they were returned to me.”

  “Could we—” Vince began, but Marshall cut him off, waving a hand.

  He took another sip from his mug. “I’ll get them.”

  In his absence, Ivy whispered, “Do you smell muffins?”

  Vince pointed behind her, to where a blue candle flickered. On the floor beneath the table was a collection of candles burned down to the bottom, each a different color of blue. “Blueberry candle connoisseur?”

  When Marshall returned with a bulging grocery bag, Ivy blinked in a double take.

  “Most of them actually arrived at the house a day or two after her death. Like, maybe they’d been written before, but didn’t make it in time to scare us enough to leave,” he said. He pressed his lips into a fine line, handing them over to Ivy. “I guess it was some sort of secret society and word moved a little slow. Dunno. They’re awful.”

  Ivy pulled out a stack of envelopes. They’d all been ripped open at the top like Marshall had torn them open in an angry frenzy all those years ago. “When I moved, they kept coming, as if her being dead in the ground still wasn’t enough.” He shook his head.

  “I’m so sorry,” Ivy said.

  He shook his head again as if he’d already mourned all he cared to mourn. “She was an ordinary woman, you know,” he said. “Extraordinary to me, but ordinary.”

  Ivy sifted through the letters. Some were simple death threats, anonymous mail from people who wished her a slow, painful, and permanent death. Some were more complicated, claiming that they never would have suspected her of being capable of such darkness—like they’d known her personally. A few even threatened to reveal her secret to her husband if she didn’t send them money.

  “These that asked for money sent to an address,” Ivy said, holding up one of the pieces of blackmail.

  �
��Each and every one had alibis. I got a few of them charged with blackmail or extortion, but none of them actually did it.” He took a closer look at the letter Ivy held. “That one was sent by a woman named Eunice, and she did this for a living. Dunno how the word spread before the internet was a thing, but there was a following even back then of the killings. She would blackmail supposed witches all over the country, blackmail people locally based on gossip—and it worked.”

  “That’s…I don’t want to say incredible, because that’s not the right word,” Vince said. “But it’s—”

  “It’s something,” Marshall said, agreeing.

  The sounds of shuffling paper filled the house for the next twenty minutes as she and Vince made their way through the rest of the notes. All different handwriting, writing styles, stamps—nothing that would point to one source sending the notes.

  Marshall had been standing beside her as she worked, and when she picked up a blue envelope, he said, “I found the man who sent that. Inpatient in a mental health facility. He said he’d been driven mad by the ‘blonde demon.’” He pointed to the handwriting, messy and slanted on the white paper. “He said my wife, who he hadn’t seen since she was a child, had driven him mad with fear. He said she inspired his alcoholic father to beat him. Said she was the reason he had suffered from addiction through his teen years. My wife.”

  The end of the letter simply said: “Do not come back; you have already brought hell to me.”

  “I just don’t understand some of these people,” he said.

  Ivy found two more threatening Barb not to return, to make that life her last one. One letter said they knew she was selfish and knew she would enter into a new body and promised they would find and kill her.

  “I’m glad she never saw those,” Marshall said, as Ivy and Vince stuffed them back into the bag.

  Ivy felt a prickle of memory at the bag, again so full of mail, and remembered doing this once before.

  “Thank you for letting us dig through them,” Ivy said. “I’m sure it’s not easy.”

  “It’s not,” Marshall said. His voice was curt again, any warmth he had tucked into the bag alongside the death threats to his wife. “If you find anything, you’ll let me know.” Not a question, a command.

  “Of course. You will be hearing from us,” Ivy said, reflecting the same confidence as the old man as he walked them out.

  “That was weird,” Vince said as he dropped into the passenger seat of the car.

  “Yeah, weird,” Ivy said, staring at the house. She noticed a camera fastened to the gutter aiming at the mailbox. He was still waiting.

  “You good?” Vince asked, grabbing her shoulder and shaking a bit.

  “I’m good,” she said. The car hummed to life. “Mind a quick detour?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Tuesday, February 14, 2017, 12:10 p.m.

  Ivy pulled up to the home she and her father had moved to shortly after her mother’s death. Even though she missed her childhood home and assumed that Marshall missed the home he’d made with his wife, she understood that even the happiest of houses could be destroyed by death.

  There were no cars in the driveway, and Ivy noted that all the lights were off inside. “I know I lived here for like eight years, but I feel like I’m breaking in,” Ivy said as she unlocked the front door. Her father and his wife must have changed the door handle to something more modern and elegant in recent months but not the lock.

  “Imagine how I feel,” Vince said. “I usually have to get a warrant to come into someone’s home if they’re not there.”

  Ivy huffed a laugh, and they both shuffled their feet over the welcome mat before heading immediately to the stairs, through the guest bedroom’s closet, and into the attic.

  “Most of my mom’s old stuff is in here,” Ivy said to Vince, who was only a pair of legs behind the crouch-only door of the attic. She searched around, her head ducked against the decline of the roof above, her feet testing each step before she put her full weight onto the ricketier parts of their attic’s floor.

  She made her way over to the boxes marked “Beth.” Old memories stretched and yawned as Ivy made quick searches through each box. Small cloths of a blue and yellow Scottish tartan her mother had snagged from her parents’ house when they’d moved to an assisted living facility and unique candy wrappers with foreign languages scrawled across them and old crystal candle holders covered in melted wax. Dusty Spice Girls records and old comic books and stacks of pictures that were supposed to go in albums one day.

  Cardboard flaps scraped against one another as she finally found what she’d been looking for—a trash bag filled with old envelopes. Her father had told her not to bother sorting through them when they’d first packed up their old house and dumped the bags into one of the many moving boxes.

  “Probably mostly Christmas cards and stuff,” he’d said when she had first asked if they should sort through the bag. “I’ll do it later,” he had assured her.

  But when she tore through the thin plastic at the top of the bag, she saw an eerily familiar sight—torn-open letter after torn-open letter. None of them looked like old Christmas cards. She slid her hand into the bag, pulling up the letter closest to the top. It was addressed to Mary Caste.

  “I found them. It seems like the internet means a lot more people know to send you death threats,” Ivy said, her voice lost to the stuffy air and dust. “Lovely.” She pushed the bag out in front of her as she left the attic before quickly putting the tiny door back in place. “We should leave before my dad gets back,” she said.

  “Are we actually trespassing, Hart?” Vince said, picking the bag up from the bottom, so as not to allow the top of the bag to rip open completely.

  “No, no,” Ivy said. “I just don’t want him to know that I have these.” She pushed Vince’s shoulders out of the closet and toward the carpeted stairs, which creaked under their weight. The house echoed more than she remembered, and when she took a moment to peek, it looked like an entirely different place. The countertops were granite, and there was a new couch—leather to replace the cloth one, which had been heavily stained by chicken marinades and dog paws.

  “Good, so we really are stealing,” Vince said as she opened the door in front of him.

  “Borrowing,” Ivy corrected.

  “Remind me how you became a cop,” Vince said, toting the bag into the back seat of their car.

  “Let’s take these back to the station,” Ivy said.

  “That’s fifty-two blackmail threats for money,” Vince said, adding his last letter to the pile. “Guess Miss Eunice Blackmailer was just the beginning in a long line of scumbags. Should I get an intern on these?” he asked. “Alibis and all that?”

  “Yes,” Ivy said, gathering a toppling pile of envelopes together. “One hundred and ninety-five death threats,” she said, pointing to their largest pile by far. “Anonymous.”

  “Forty post-death ‘Don’t Come Back’ threats,” Vince said, pointing to the pile closest to him. “Anonymous.”

  “So that leaves the professional threats,” Ivy said. It wasn’t something they’d run into with Barb, who hadn’t been active in a professional sphere in her adult life. “Four of these,” she held up the first envelope, “don’t accept the promotion.” She held up another. “Pay your subordinates more, essentially,” she said. She held up two more. “This one is a threat to the company overall, that they were going to reveal that she was using magic to enchant ads into addicting customers to products or selling a client’s failure to their competitors, for the right price.” Ivy rolled her eyes. “And this one is a threat to make sure one of the ads failed. Interesting.”

  Vince closed his eyes and breathed out deeply. “As annoying as it might be, I think we need to go through that stack of mail we saw at Aline’s. Might be something there. She said that a lot of those letters were likely to not be friendly,” he said. “We can call Emily and ask her to bag them up for us.”

  Ivy sat i
n her chair and pressed her forehead to the edge of her desk. “You’re right.” She lightly tapped her forehead against the metal. “There were so many in that mountain.”

  “Let’s get a snack first,” he said.

  The snack had been an entire meal for each of them: burgers, fries, shakes. Vince was still slurping at his strawberry milkshake when they showed up on the front step of the L.A. mansion. Aline and Emily weren’t at the house, which left Nathan to bag up the mail atop the piano, beside the piano, and in an entire closet, they hadn’t seen before into large cardboard boxes.

  “Most of her fan mail comes by email,” he said. “Do you want me to run a search for specific keywords? I can send them over to you.” Ivy gave him a series of words as well as the names of the women in Aline’s line of witches.

  They had to be pickier this time, setting aside anything that seemed to be too vague to be a real threat. By 10 p.m., Vince and Ivy were sprawled on the floor surrounded by open letters, and Joyce was clicking through the plethora of emails Nathan had forwarded at Ivy’s desk.

  “I think time is moving all around me, but I’m standing still,” Vince said, tilting his energy drink to the ceiling.

  Ivy took a sip from her own Red Bull. She did feel like she’d turned to stone sometime after dinner. She’d been on the ground so long that her body felt like it’d been officially merged with the tiling, and the movement around them of officers answering emergency calls and finishing their own paperwork did make her feel as though she were moving at a glacial pace. Joyce had taken pity on her after her shift was over and offered to start going through the emails when she realized they still had four more boxes to go through.

  They’d had to call in the department’s only pickup truck to get all the boxes to the station.

  “A lot of these threats have nothing to do with witchcraft,” Joyce said, swiveling back and forth behind the desk. “Some people just hate her because she’s too short or too tall or too blonde or not blonde enough—this is ridiculous!”