Free Go, Ivy, Go! by Lorena McCourtney

cigarette.”
    “It isn’t like an official reprimand for dereliction of duty,” I said kindly.
    She didn’t comment, just jiggled her shoulders as if trying to shake off Koop’s disapproval.
    “Is this an official visit?”I asked. “We found a few things in the yard that we thought we should show you.”
    I led her to the discarded sofa, where Mac had piled the photo of Elvis, the mannequin head, and the wine bottle. She examined and thanked us for conscientiously saving them, but dismissed them as meaningless to the case. My opinion also, although I’d been hoping she’d want to take them to a police lab. Now they were something more I’d have to dispose of myself. We went back to the chairs and our tea.
    “I came because I have some information I thought might interest you,” Officer DeLora said when she sat down again. “Some of it is official and some isn’t.”
    “Okay.”
    “I finally remembered why the Braxton name sounded familiar. Our Deputy Chief of Police got married a while back. To a woman whose last name was Braxton. Sylvia Braxton. So her name isn’t Braxton now, of course. It’s Haldebrand.”
    For a moment, the Haldebrand name bounced around in my head as if looking for a place to land. It sounded vaguely familiar. Had I heard it somewhere in connection with the Braxtons back at the trial?
    Then the more important part of what Officer DeLora said hit me like a blast of that smelly stuff in the refrigerator. The Braxtons had slyly placed a family member right there in the home of a top officer of the police force, in his bedroom, a setting notoriously favored by femme fatales for extracting secrets. Now, through her, the Braxtons would have access to all kinds of information, with databases available only to law enforcement. They’d have a nationwide network of police departments at their disposal. New and improved ways to run me down. I couldn’t escape their tentacles anywhere!
    Then I took a deep breath and put the brakes on my runaway panic. Surely not even a Braxton would go so far as to marry someone as a way of hunting me down.That was surely inflating my importance in the Braxton world. They must have bigger and better grudges and conspiracies to occupy their time. Besides, the Braxtons thought they’d already disposed of Ivy Malone. Although. . .
    “How long ago were they married?”
    “Last fall, I think. It was before I joined the force. I know about it only because the woman who had my desk at the station before me did a lousy job of cleaning out the desk, and the clipping about the wedding was in there. Along with some old coupons from Suzanne’s Donut Shop.” She rolled her eyes at the cliché of cops and donuts.
    So the wedding would have been before the Braxtons killed the woman they thought was me, and back then they were still looking for me.
    “How old is this Sylvia Braxton/Haldebrand?” I finally asked.
    “I have no idea. I’m just telling you what I saw in the clipping.” Officer DeLora impatiently shoved a wayward strand of red hair back in the bun and stabbed a pin in it. “What difference does it make how old she is?”
    “If she’s young, she’s probably a Braxton by birth. Taking me down is practically in her genes. If she’s older, maybe she was a Braxton by previous marriage.” In which case I could hope she’d signed off on the Braxton conspiracy, and her marriage link with a high-up member of the local police force was pure love. A comforting thought, though not one I could grab onto with much assurance. The Braxtons had a no-holds-barred mentality and a pit-bull tenacity that might even include a spy planted in a bedroom. “Do you know anything about her background?”
    “I didn’t do an in-depth investigation, no.” Full exasperation now, as if Officer DeLora wished she’d kept memory of where she’d heard the Braxton name to herself . She crunched down on a chunk of ice as if trying to reduce it to molecular level. “I think