Wicked Haunts (An Ivy Morgan Mystery Book 12)

by Lily Harper Hart

  “What message?”

  “You know ... the message.”

  Phoebe made a face. “I didn’t write a message on your window. Are you saying someone wrote a message on your window? Who would do that?”

  Ivy honestly didn’t have an answer for the question. “I don’t know. I ... .” She lost her train of thought when she heard a creak behind her, shifting quickly to find the greenhouse door hanging open. There, standing in the opening, his chest heaving, was Brad.

  He didn’t look happy.

  “Omigod!” Phoebe squealed, hopping to her feet and scrambling in the opposite direction from her father. “I can’t believe you brought him here. How could you?”

  “I didn’t bring him here,” Ivy replied, her mind busy as she tried to gain control of her senses and come up with a plan. She slowly got to her feet and put herself between Brad and his daughter. “What are you doing on my property, Brad?”

  “What are you doing with my daughter?” Brad shot back, his eyes blazing with fury. “What are you doing out here, Phoebe? Everyone has been looking for you for days. Do you have any idea what you’ve put me through? I mean ... your mother is dead. You know that, right?”

  “Of course I know that,” Phoebe spat, her temper taking center stage. “I saw what you did to her. I saw everything.”

  “You saw what?”

  “You killed my mother!”

  “I did not,” Brad protested, his cheeks flooding with color. “I wasn’t even in town when your mother died. She knows.” He jerked his thumb in Ivy’s direction. “Tell her I was out of town. I know your boyfriend shares information with you. He verified my alibi.”

  “Chicago is only five hours away,” Ivy countered. “You could’ve driven back.”

  “Oh, but I didn’t. Why would I? What good would killing Janice do me now? The damage was already done. This town is never going to forgive me. I’ve made peace with that.”

  Ivy was beyond confused as she tried to wrap her head around what was happening. “Phoebe saw you kill her mother. You chased her into the woods after the fact. She’s your daughter. How could you?”

  “I didn’t do that!” Brad was vehement, so much so, Ivy found she almost believed him.

  “We need to call Jack,” she said, holding her hands up in a placating manner. “He’ll be able to figure this out. He’ll sort things through. We just all need to agree to disagree.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” a fresh voice said, causing Ivy to snap her head up when she realized someone else had joined the greenhouse party. “This all ends here.”

  Nikki, a gun in her hand, appeared in the doorway.

  For a split second, Ivy understood what Phoebe said about being trapped in a dream. That’s how she felt now. Then, as if in slow motion, Nikki raised the gun.

  Instinctively, Ivy moved so she was in front of Phoebe. She thought Nikki was going to try and take the young woman out. Instead, Nikki aimed the gun at Brad’s chest and pulled the trigger without a second’s hesitation. He didn’t even have a chance to turn and face her.

  Surprise registered on Brad’s face, and then regret. His eyes were already rolling into the back of his head when he started falling. It was only then that Ivy realized she didn’t understand anything, and things were about to go from bad to worse.

  Nineteen

  A niggling voice inside Jack’s head forced him to check on Ivy. Brian thought he was being ridiculous, even going so far as to suggest he drop Jack back at the station so he could head home early if only to get him to stop whining, but Jack refused. He demanded Brian take him to the cottage, so that’s exactly what the older police detective did.

  “She’s not here,” Jack seethed as he angrily kicked his foot against the carpet. “I can’t believe it, but she’s not here.”

  Brian cast him a sympathetic look. “Have you considered that she’s in the backyard?”

  “No. She’s not there.” Jack’s eyes fell on Nicodemus, who sat on the dining room table with a smug look on his face. The cat and Jack had something of a tempestuous relationship. Jack was convinced it was because the cat was convinced Jack had somehow stolen Ivy from him. “You’re not supposed to be on the table, Nicodemus.”

  Brian smirked. “Do you think the cat can understand you?”

  “I think that cat understands more than he lets on.” Jack swore under his breath as he strode toward the cat. “Get off the table.”

  Nicodemus didn’t move, instead resting his paw on a sheet of paper. Jack saw it just before he swiped at the cat in an attempt to get him to move. Instead, he grabbed the note and made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat.

  “She went back to the greenhouse.”

  “How do you know?” Brian was legitimately curious.

  “She left a note.” Jack handed it to his partner and ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I swear I’m going to kill her. Seriously, you’re going to have to lock me up.”

  “Are you going to kill her before or after you kiss her?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.” Jack headed toward the door. “You can go. I’ll have Ivy drive me into town tomorrow morning and pick up my truck then.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Where do you think?”

  Brian sighed, resigned. “I’ll go with you. I want to make sure she’s okay, too.”

  “Well, come on. You’re going to miss the huge screaming match if you dawdle.”

  “Yes, and I would hate to miss that.”

  IVY WAS FROZEN IN FEAR.

  She had no idea what to do. Brad was on the floor about five feet from her, blood seeping from his chest and his eyes closed. Nikki stood in the doorway, a gun in her hand and a diabolical look on her face, and somewhere behind her — although Ivy was too terrified to turn her back on Nikki and check — Phoebe was cowering in the corner of the building.

  When she left the cottage, Ivy was certain she would find answers to the mystery that had been plaguing her days. She had no idea she would find answers this way.

  “Well, Phoebe, it’s about time I found you,” Nikki said, her voice laced with annoyance. “Do you have any idea how much time I’ve spent looking for you?”

  Ivy expected a timid whimper from Phoebe. Instead, the young woman lashed out with a fury that Ivy couldn’t fathom.

  “This is all your fault, you idiot,” Phoebe snapped, her volume telling Ivy she was closer than she initially realized. “You’ve done nothing but screw this up from the start.”

  Even though she couldn’t wrap her head around what was happening, Ivy recognized quickly that she didn’t have all the facts. Phoebe was not some tortured young woman who lost her mother days before and was now traumatized to see her father bleeding out on the floor. No, she was something else entirely.

  Instinctively, Ivy increased the distance between herself and both Phoebe and Nikki. She might not have understood exactly what was going on, but she recognized she was in real trouble ... and it was her responsibility to get herself out of it.

  “How is this my fault?” Nikki was incredulous. “You’re the one who disappeared for a week. No, seriously, you’ve been gone for a freaking week. What were you thinking?”

  “I was following the plan.”

  “The plan was for you to show up after a few days,” Nikki corrected. “You were supposed to be a mess, no makeup and bad hair, and you were supposed to claim that a stranger had abducted you and killed your mother.

  “Instead, you screwed everything up and never came back,” she continued, her voice turning screechy. “Now look what has happened! I had to kill your father and we may never get our hands on that money.”

  Ivy finally found her voice. “What money?”

  Nikki cast her a derisive look. “Oh, I forgot you were still here. You know I’m going to have to kill you, too, right? I don’t have a choice. You can blame Phoebe for that.”

  “Oh, don’t blame me,” Phoebe sneered. “I’ve been stuck
in the woods, lost a few times, with bugs biting me … and I swear there are ghosts or something out here. It was your idea to hide in that old shack. Let me tell you something, that was a bad idea. I swear there is some sort of creature living out there.”

  Despite the serious situation, Ivy was intrigued. “Did you see a woman?”

  “Actually, I did.” Phoebe tilted her head to the side. “How do you know I saw a woman?”

  “Because I’ve seen her, too.”

  “Really? Who is she?”

  “Her name is Susan Bishop. The shack was her home until she was killed in the forties. People in town thought she was a witch.”

  “Kind of like you, huh?” Phoebe challenged. She was clearly enjoying herself. “People think you’re a witch because of the pink hair ... and the fact that you’re always running around barefoot and gardening ... and the fact that you wander off into the woods for hours on end. That’s not normal. You know that, right?”

  “Don’t forget the fact that she managed to snag the new guy five minutes after he came into town,” Nikki interjected. “He didn’t as much as look at anyone else because he was too busy staring at her. If that wasn’t a witch spell, I don’t know what else to call it.”

  “Love,” Ivy said simply. “It’s called love, and it’s clearly something the two of you don’t understand.” She cast a sidelong look to Brad. He appeared to be breathing, but just barely. She had to get him help, but she had no idea how. She recognized she created this situation and felt like a complete and total idiot. She couldn’t focus on that now, though. “So ... you guys were partners in this the whole time, huh?”

  “We were,” Nikki agreed. “We came up with a plan and put it into action together, but Phoebe fouled it all up and now it’s going to take forever to correct this mess. I mean ... we’re going to have to kill you and make it look as if Brad did it. Then Phoebe is going to have to call the cops, say she was hiding here when her father found her, and you stepped in and tried to save her before he killed you and she managed to fight him off and save herself. I mean ... it’s a total mess.”

  Ivy licked her lips, determined to buy herself time to think of an escape plan. “I don’t understand why you would do this, Phoebe.” She was earnest when she flicked her eyes to the young woman. “You killed your own mother.”

  “Actually, Nikki did that,” Phoebe countered.

  “That’s right. Phoebe was too much of a coward,” Nikki offered. “She couldn’t kill mommy so I had to do it.”

  “I still don’t understand why you did it,” Ivy hedged, her discomfort on full display. “Why would you kill your own mother? Was anything you told me before your father arrived true?”

  “Some of it.” Phoebe was unnaturally blasé. “My mother did demand that I choose between her and my father. I took her side because I decided he was a complete and total pig, but recently I’ve come to the conclusion that was a bad idea.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because my mother cut me off,” Phoebe replied without hesitation. “She agreed to put me through school, which was her responsibility even though she acted as if she was doing me a favor. When I graduated, though, she said I had to get a job and contribute to the household finances if I expected to stay with her. Can you believe that?”

  “I’m not sure why that’s a bad thing,” Ivy supplied. “I mean ... you’re twenty-three. You should have a job.”

  “Agreed, but I went to school to be a radio personality,” Phoebe said. “I want a job on the radio. Working at the resort and the Dairy Twist is not the same thing as working for the radio station.”

  “So, why didn’t you work for the radio station?”

  “They didn’t have any openings.”

  “I’m guessing you thought you should be able to do nothing and have your mother foot the bill until something opened up, huh?”

  Phoebe nodded without hesitation. “That’s exactly what I thought. I don’t understand what the big deal is. I had every right to get the job that I wanted.”

  “Preferred employment is not a right,” Ivy said dryly, shaking her head. “Are you telling me you killed your mother for money?”

  “Well, I found out that she had very little savings,” Phoebe explained. “I needed money and thought she had more put away. It turns out, she used the leftover money she got from my father after the divorce to pay off the house. That should’ve been my money.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “I’m her child. I should get everything.”

  “Ah.” Ivy felt sick to her stomach and briefly pressed her eyes shut to center herself. “Let me guess, your mother had a life insurance policy, right?”

  “She did.” Phoebe bobbed her head. “Come to find out, though, the money goes into a trust until I’m thirty. I can’t have it right away. I knew my father had a similar life insurance policy, so I started talking to Nikki and we came up with a plan.”

  “We were going to kill Janice and trigger the life insurance policy, which was to be invested until Phoebe turned thirty,” Nikki volunteered. “That’s seven years away. We figured if we framed Brad — he would make for an easy scapegoat — that he would have no choice but to cash in his own life insurance policy early to fund his defense. We would get the bulk of that money to live on until Phoebe got her inheritance, and then we’d split it right down the middle.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ivy was baffled by the plan. “Who brought up the idea first?”

  “Phoebe approached me,” Nikki replied. “She knew I was good at executing plans. The first day we talked was mostly insults. After that, we came to a meeting of the minds, so to speak.”

  “Well, bully for you.” Ivy shook her head as she wiped her sweaty palms on her capris. “I don’t understand the part where Phoebe was going to hide in the woods and blame a stranger. If framing Brad was part of the plan, why blame a stranger at all?”

  “Because we needed to cover both sides,” Phoebe answered. “My father made a compelling individual to blame – and there was always Hank if all else failed, which is why I had to put it out there that I was thinking about approaching him – but there was always the chance the police wouldn’t go for the bait. I needed to act scared and confused, say I wasn’t certain who grabbed me but point them toward my father at the same time. I couldn’t come right out and accuse him because then things would fall apart if he was somehow cleared. Then people would’ve started looking at me.”

  “We couldn’t have that,” Nikki agreed. “That’s why Phoebe was supposed to head to the woods, actually hide out in the shack for a few days, and then stumble back to town claiming no memory of how she got to the woods but a dim recollection that something terrible had happened to her mother.

  “Instead, you blew everything apart by discovering Janice’s body early,” she continued. “I don’t understand how you knew she was dead, by the way. That makes no sense to me. How did you know to go to the house?”

  “We found Phoebe’s purse in the woods by the shack,” Ivy said dully.

  “Oh, I knew losing that thing was going to come back to bite me,” Phoebe complained. “I wanted it with me in case I couldn’t take being in the woods and needed to rent a room for the night, but I was in the shack that first night and I swear someone was there with me. I heard footsteps and everything.”

  Nikki shot her a withering look. “Oh, please.”

  “It’s true.” Phoebe turned earnest. “I heard someone, a voice, she told me to get out. I was afraid and got confused. In my hurry to escape, I dropped my purse and I was too afraid to go back and find it. That was after I injured my hand.”

  “You heard a voice, huh?” Ivy rubbed her bottom lip. Susan. She was convinced that Susan somehow showed herself to Phoebe. True, there was always the possibility that normal sounds of the night spooked Phoebe, but Ivy was starting to get a clearer picture of how things went down. “Don’t give up.”

  “Don’t give what up?” Nikki asked, confused.

&
nbsp; “The writing on my window. Don’t give up.” Ivy was lost in thought. “Phoebe didn’t write that.”

  “I most certainly didn’t,” Phoebe agreed. “Why would I write on your window?”

  “Susan wrote it,” Ivy said. “She made it in and out of the shed without detection because she’s a ghost. She wanted me to see the answer was closer than I realized, but I couldn’t get past the words to see the truth.

  “Don’t give up,” she repeated. “She didn’t mean not to give up on Phoebe. She meant to keep chasing the investigation because the answer was always out there.”

  “That’s exactly what I meant,” Susan agreed, appearing on the other side of the greenhouse.

  Ivy was so taken aback, she almost gasped. A quick look at Nikki and Phoebe told her that neither of the women saw the new visitor. They were focused on each other, not on Ivy or Susan. That was probably for the best.

  “You’re starting to weird me out,” Phoebe chastised. “I don’t like it. I want to finish this so I can take a shower. We need to stage the scene correctly. You’re the expert at that, Nikki, so how do you want to do it?”

  “Well, let’s see.” Nikki furrowed her brow as she looked around the greenhouse, allowing Ivy to completely focus on Susan.

  “Jack and his partner are outside,” Susan volunteered. “Jack is very upset, by the way. He says you’re in big trouble.”

  Ivy didn’t respond.

  “He’s worried that you’ll be hurt in the crossfire if they go in with their weapons drawn,” Susan continued. “They think there’s a possibility Phoebe is armed. I’ve tried telling him she’s not, but there are some times I think he hears me and other times I think he doesn’t. What you need is a distraction so you can hop through that window behind you.”

  Ivy briefly flicked her eyes to the window in question and realized Susan was onto something. She could fit through that window. It was overly large for a reason. It also doubled as an emergency escape.

  “I suggest that I hit the lever on the roof,” Susan said, pointing for emphasis. “That will cause a ruckus and distract Phoebe and Nikki. While that’s happening, you can escape through the window. How does that sound?”