Poison Ivy Read online

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Praise for Misty Simon

  Poison Ivy

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  A word about the author...

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  The trouble started when I opened the small door to the broom-closet-sized room that led into the boudoir. The royal purple material, draped so becomingly yesterday, hung slightly askew. Not a big deal. Maybe someone brushed up against it on their way out yesterday. Maybe Jackie had jerked the material in her huff to get away from the likes of me. Who knew? Although I thought I would have seen it before leaving last night.

  I had my answer when I walked into the main part of the boudoir. It looked like a freaking cyclone had hit Frederick’s of Hollywood. Bras and crotchless panties hung from the previously romantic sconces, like leftovers from a bachelor party. Thigh-high stockings and garters littered the floor. After I did a thorough check, I found every single piece of lingerie, every sexy outfit, every panty or bra, was out of place.

  The strangest thing about all this was it appeared all the inventory was there except items over a size fourteen. Weird. Not a single plus-sized bra or panty lay among the ruins of the room. No sexy nightgowns with X-anything on the tags. Nothing. It appeared someone had broken in and made off with all the lingerie for the full-bodied woman.

  “What the hell is going on?” I said aloud to the wrecked room. As if on cue, the bell tinkled above the door I’d purposely locked behind me when I came in this morning.

  Praise for Misty Simon

  “Ms Simon's writing has warmth, her characters seem like real people, and her plotting drew me in as she wove this amazing story of a platonic friendship that's breaking new ground, but not without some doubts on both sides. Emotions run high among this couple and the interfering family and friends who have a vested interest in their happiness, and Misty Simon approaches the emotional element so well that, in the end, I even felt compassionate towards the self-centered man who left his pregnant teenage girlfriend to fend for herself a decade earlier. Put this one on your TO READ list because you won't be disappointed in this cake with added sprinkles.”

  ~Angie Just Read, The Romance Reviews

  ~*~

  Other Books by Misty Simon

  at The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  What’s Life Without the Sprinkles?

  Making Room at the Inn

  A Mother’s Heart

  And watch for more in the Ivy Morris Mysteries Series!

  Poison Ivy

  by

  Misty Simon

  Ivy Morris Mysteries, Book One

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Poison Ivy

  COPYRIGHT © 2014 by Misty Simon

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Debbie Taylor

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Crimson Rose Mainstream Mystery Edition, 2014

  Print ISBN 978-1-62830-235-6

  Digital ISBN 978-1-62830-236-3

  Ivy Morris Mysteries, Book One

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To Daniel and Noelle, as always.

  And to Jan Dunning Button—

  the first fan I did not know

  who told me how much she loved my books

  Prologue

  I think sometimes a defining moment in life can hit you out of left field. For example, I had no idea my life would change forever when I opened the mailbox on a bright and sunny September day.

  I expected the usual junk mail, and maybe a few bills to add to my growing collection. I found all of that along with a circular for the latest fashions at Sears and a letter from a law office in a place called Kilmarnock, Virginia.

  My great aunt lived in Virginia, but I knew she didn’t work for an attorney. Come to think of it, I hadn’t heard from her in a while.

  The thin letter felt heavy in my hand. I barely kept myself from ripping it open as I walked up the driveway. Before I hit the door, I heard my father’s booming voice. I could swear it rattled the fronds on the palm tree standing in the dinner-plate-sized front yard.

  “Anything good in the mail, Ivy?” my dad yelled from the living room of our old house as I entered the small foyer. “I’m waiting for the Sears catalog.”

  I was so entranced by the letter and the secrets it might hold, I didn’t answer him right away, which earned me yet another eardrum-shaking yell.

  “Yes, yes,” I said impatiently, and walked toward my father’s bellow. I handed him the Sears catalog. At least it would keep him entertained for some time and out of my hair while I read what an attorney from Virginia could want with a girl who’d lived in California all her twenty-four years.

  Leaving my father to drool over tools and the latest in flannel, I rushed up the stairs and into my room. My mom had decorated it all in pink shortly before she died, and I hadn’t managed to repaint it yet. At ten, the room was beautiful, but fourteen years later it needed an overhaul. I would have loved to paint it a nice taupe, but every time I made some noise about changing the color my dad would get this look of agony on his face and I’d drop the subject. It was a pattern he realized worked well on me, and he wasn’t one to change things when they worked, so we were at an impasse. Still, every time I entered the entirely pink domain, I got depressed and wanted out of the room, out of his house. I could keep on dreaming because, as the youngest of four girls and the only one not married, I was stuck here helping him, trying to be a good daughter, when all I really wanted was to break away. Plus, housing costs were so high, there was no way I could afford to live on my own.

  From the fuchsia desk on the far wall I picked up a letter opener and made a slit in the envelope. Questions tumbled over one another in my head. What could this be? Could it have something to do with my great-aunt Gertie, whom I hadn’t heard from in ages? Why the personal attention? Was it good news or bad news?

  Why was I getting worked up over a stupid envelope?

  Finally, I wrestled the cheap plastic opener through the heavy paper. For once I didn’t snag the letter and cut it in my haste to open the envelope.

  Yanking the single tri-folded sheet out, two words jumped out at me like that hot-looking guy my friends hired to burst from my oversized birthda
y cake last month: your inheritance.

  Chapter One

  I really appreciate you guys helping with this,” I said to the “Bouquet.” My three sisters are Daisy, Rose, and Magnolia, so it’s a family joke. My guess was our parents ran out of flowers when they reached me. I’ve often felt blessed I didn’t end up as Petunia. Ivy wasn’t much better, but I was stuck with it.

  They were helping me unpack the few things I’d brought with me to Martha’s Point, Virginia, from the pink room of horror. Thankfully, I didn’t need much because my newly inherited house came furnished. It turned out the one-page letter was notification of my great-aunt Gertie’s passing and my status as her sole heir. It was sad, but she’d been ninety-three and had lived a full life.

  “Dad decided not to come because he’s sure I’ll be back in two weeks, tops.” I was bound and determined to prove him wrong.

  “I can’t believe you’re going to run a costume shop, Ivy. You don’t know anything about retail,” Rose, the voice of reason, said. “You’re an administrative assistant, not a proprietress.” A small store, The Masked Shoppe, was part of the inheritance, too.

  “Good word, Rose,” I said. Using big words was a game we’d played for years. “And I will be a proprietress starting Monday. Mr. Winnet, the lawyer, said the store can open then, and I borrowed every book from the library on running a business. I’ll beef up my knowledge over the weekend and be ready for Monday. I shop all the time, so surely I can brazen my way through being on the other side of the counter. This will work. I can feel it.”

  A snort sounded from behind my right shoulder where Maggie was folding towels. “This strikes me as something that takes college classes and experience,” Maggie, the teacher, said. “I don’t believe you can simply jump in and wing it.” Magnolia was the oldest and often the damper on any party.

  I made a nasty face at Maggie. “There was a Mrs. Drake at the will reading, and she said she’d help me in any way she could. I got the impression she and Great-Aunt Gertie were tight before Gertie died. Anyway, Mrs. Drake said she used to work in the shop all the time during their busy seasons.”

  “Well, that’s something, at least,” Daisy said. “Maybe you won’t get into that much trouble with someone helping you. I thank God it’s you instead of me.” Daisy, the eternal optimist.

  A chorus of agreement filled the small bedroom. I knew none of them wanted the store. They were all living their fantasy lives with wonderful husbands and two kids each. In fact, two of them, Daisy and Maggie, had actual white picket fences surrounding their homes.

  “I’ll be fine, guys. And I want to thank you again for all your help. I feel better knowing you three are firmly in my corner.” Okay, so that was a facetious—another good word—statement. But I was out of my father’s house and on my own for the first time ever. I’d be damned if I didn’t take this opportunity and milk it for everything I could. I wouldn’t care if I were selling plastic doll arms and legs as long as I lived on my own. It was a bonus that I would get to sell something as interesting as costumes, from the ordinary to the exotic. Oh, plus I now lived three thousand miles away from the family home.

  Unpacking continued, and soon the dinner hour rolled around. We ordered pizza from the only delivery place within twenty miles and settled down with wine in jelly-jar glasses. The heady aroma of pepperoni scented the air. It was time to celebrate my first Friday night in my house.

  “So what’s your plan for Monday?” Daisy asked, with cheese dripping from the corner of her mouth.

  “I thought I’d go in and begin inventory with Mrs. Drake. She said I could familiarize myself with the stock, and she’d help with ordering and ringing up sales. She laughed a lot when talking about what’s for sale, which made me a little uneasy. Do you think it’s anything risqué or trashy?”

  The Bouquet laughed and started naming a variety of costumes they’d like to see me try to sell. The words dominatrix and streetwalker figured prominently in the conversation.

  “Promise me you won’t wear something beige for your first day,” Rose said, and had my back going up.

  With my mousy brown hair, fair complexion, and a little bit of extra weight, I thought I looked best in browns. Plus, it had been a way to not draw attention to myself at my last job. Everyone there was about the size of a #2 pencil, and then there was me, the big, fat permanent marker.

  “I’ll try,” I mumbled.

  “What?” asked Rose.

  Louder, I said, “I’ll try. I know I have some colorful things hanging in the armoire Great-Aunt Gertie left. I’ll look over the weekend and promise not to wear anything remotely brown. Not even beige. All right?”

  “Much better. You need a splash of color.” This from Maggie, who had beautiful midnight black hair and looked stunning in anything she put on. She could wear the jewel tones, pastels, black, or stark white. I’m comfortable in brown. But I guess I could step out of my monochromatic wardrobe for one day and try something new. Then again, maybe not. Besides, they wouldn’t be here to see what I wore anyway. They’d all leave Martha’s Point tomorrow to go back to their perfect lives.

  I told them as much, and then wanted to pull the words back because it meant a trip to the closet. They pronounced the lone black skirt in my closet perfect when matched with a purple silk blouse—a Christmas gift from my boss last year. Under penalty of death and the threatened horror of extended stays, they told me to wear that outfit. Being the confrontation wimp that I am, I agreed. The color brown wasn’t worth dying over.

  As much as I loved my sisters, I was never so happy as the day they all left my dad’s house. I finally got first crack at the bathroom each morning. My new house had two bathrooms, but they still managed to push me to the back of the line during their stay with me.

  When we’d finally stuffed ourselves silly and drunk enough wine to float a small boat, everyone bunked down in my two available bedrooms to sleep off the effects of our carb overdose.

  That Sunday, I spent a lazy morning studying my books and looking at the outfit my sisters had set out for me. The Bouquet had left on a plane out of D.C. the day before without incident, and they’d all called to confirm they arrived home safely. Each took a turn hounding me about not wearing brown tomorrow.

  I tried the skirt on three different times throughout the day, and each time my legs still looked like tree stumps coming out from under the knee-length hem. No way was I going to wear something that made me feel like a lumberjack on my first day in my new shop.

  I’d wear something brown. But as a concession to the promise I made my three sisters, I’d check out the other businesses in the area for a decent salon. If I happened to find one, I’d see about doing something with my mop of lifeless, dull brown hair.

  The air was fresh and turning crisp with the onset of October. Red, gold, and orange leaves hung suspended from the trees standing back from the sidewalk. I hoped the shop would be bustling tomorrow, with Harvest and Halloween parties right around the corner. I couldn’t help but compare my new life with my old.

  In California it would be another ninety-degree day and few, if any, leaves actually fell from the trees unless the tree was dead. And palm trees never changed color. In the neighborhood where my dad lived—it was no longer my home because I had one to call my own, thank you, Great-Aunt Gertie—city workers had put a ton of the tall, broad-leafed giants along the street when the neighborhood was new. Almost every house had one. But here, they had so many different varieties of trees it was breathtaking.

  As I passed a woman raking fallen leaves in her front yard, I added a sturdy rake to my list of things I needed to purchase. It went on the mental list under sweaters and extra jeans. My blood wasn’t very thick yet, and it was already cold, which I understood lasted until sometime in March.

  The woman, dressed warmly with a bright red sweater, lifted her hand to wave as I walked by. The week I’d been a resident of Martha’s Point had taught me that almost everyone here was friendly, unless
you were an outsider. I couldn’t forget the dead fish I’d found on the hood of my car my first night here. Disgusting, but I’d heard Californians were not wanted in this part of the country. Or any part of the country, for that matter. I had a friend who’d moved to Washington State and changed her license plates in Oregon before the last leg of her trip to avoid the label “damned Californian.”

  I hoped people would forget where I hailed from as I continued to live here and tried to slip in with the locals. Running The Masked Shoppe ought to help. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone was toilet-papering my house or trying to poison me in the local restaurant.

  I waved back to the woman and continued down the street. I hadn’t spent much time out in the town yet because I’d been busy unpacking. But if I wanted business to come into my shop, I knew I had to give business to other shops. In a town this small, that wasn’t a guarantee, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.

  The street was only two blocks long and you’d probably miss it if you sneezed while driving 35 miles per hour through town. Halfway through the second block I came to a shop named Bella’s Best. The name didn’t give me a hint as to the nature of the business, but I couldn’t miss the large picture with a silhouette of scissors cutting a big head of hair. I’d already walked by all the other shops and this appeared to be the only one to offer women’s hairstyling. There was a barber, with one of those rotating candy-striped poles out front, but I wasn’t trusting my hair, mousy or not, to someone who probably still used the strop to sharpen his blades.

  I won’t say this shop with its big-hair advertising looked any more promising, but I walked in anyway. It couldn’t hurt. And since it was the only beauty shop, I had no other choice. If I chickened out when I saw the hairdresser (visions of big teased hair the color of autumn maple leaves ran through my mind), I could always get a trim and still have given a local some of my business.

  “I’ll be right there, hon,” I heard a voice yell from the back of the shop as I pushed open the glass-and-chrome door. The vision crowding my head suddenly had a huge beehive hairdo and a bright red mouth furiously working a piece of gum. Someone who wore tight, bright, nubby sweaters and vinyl pants like Dolly Parton in Steel Magnolias.