The Murder of Ivy Erin

Chapter 1

Autumn 1872

Jarrod stood staring at the body with a sadness deeper than he thought he'd ever felt. He'd seen plenty of bodies before – he'd been the war, for heaven's sake – so he was not revolted by the sight. He was broken-hearted instead. This did not have to be. She was barely 20 years old, only a child, but somebody thought she had to stop living, and somebody made her stop living, with a bullet through her throat.

Sheriff Lyman came over beside him. "Jarrod, the undertaker's here. I think we better let her go."

Jarrod sighed. "She was my client. She wanted to meet me back here for some reason, instead of my office. She said she had something to tell me."

"Looks like somebody didn't want her to tell you whatever it was."

"She was only 20. Making her way alone since she was 13. She deserved better. I know, lots of girls only 20 years old die in the back alleys or men's hotel rooms and I can't begin to save even a small percentage of them. But I should have saved Ivy. I should have seen this coming."

"I don't know how. Stop blaming yourself, Jarrod. This isn't your fault. It's the fault of whoever killed her, and we'll find out who that is."

"You bet we will, Harry," Jarrod said and turned away.

Jarrod walked back out to the street and toward the livery where he'd left his horse almost 12 hours ago, but he wondered if he really wanted to put this behind him for now and go home. He thought maybe he'd stay in town, so he could stay focused on finding who did this to Ivy and why. Someone put a gun to her throat. Whoever it was was going to have a noose around his.

Jarrod decided to forget his horse and going home. He went to his office instead. It was dark, and he bumped into his secretary's desk as he made his way to his inner office. Once there, he lit a lamp by his desk. Ivy's file was still on the corner of the desk. He sat down and opened the file, and for the next few hours he read his notes very, very carefully. He read about how she had lost her parents when she was 13, to a flu epidemic. She'd been sent to an orphanage but ran away because they beat her for stealing some milk from the kitchen. She started working in saloons almost as soon as she ran away. Some man had told her she was cute enough to do that. She was, but not at 13, Jarrod thought. No child that age should be working in saloons.

In his mind's eye, he saw her lying dead in the alley. He kept reading. Somewhere, at some time, she might have told him something that held a clue to what had happened in that alley tonight. Jarrod was going to find it.

As he read, he thought about meeting her. Pretty girl, long brown hair and dark eyes. When she first came to him, in the saloon, she had said simply, "Mr. Barkley, I need a lawyer." She looked frightened.

He had looked at her and saw her desperation. "Of course. Do you want to talk now?"

"Not here," she had said. "I'll come to your office early tomorrow morning. Can I come at seven?"

Jarrod had nodded. "I'll be there."

And she had come, at seven on the dot. Jarrod's secretary was not in yet, so he let her in himself. They talked for half an hour before she grew nervous about being seen there and left. But half an hour was long enough for Jarrod to at least begin to understand her problem.

Jarrod read his notes and read the most important paragraph over several times as the night hours crept on. Ivy Erin said she was on the run from an extortion charge in Kansas, and she was afraid a bounty hunter had caught up to her. Jarrod wondered how a bounty on an extortion charge could be high enough to attract a bounty hunter and bring him all the way from Kansas. He sent a wire to the sheriff in Topeka and learned it wasn't only extortion she was charged with. Murder was in there, too.

Ivy was supposed to have murdered the man she was blackmailing, a businessman in Topeka. Jarrod never got the chance to learn more than that, or to ask her why she hadn't mentioned that to him. But now he thought about murder, about why she might have murdered the man after extorting from him. Did he abuse her in some way? Had he driven her to anger, or had she just done it in cold blood, to avoid punishment for the extortion somehow? People committed murder for various reasons. Why did she murder the businessman? Were some reasons she might have murdered him more excusable than others? Did she murder at all, or was she being blamed when she hadn't really committed a murder?

Ivy was dead in the alley now, and he'd have no answers for why she had murdered, if she had. What he was left with now was, who murdered her? The logical suspect was the bounty hunter. But a bounty hunter would never have just left her there. He'd have taken her to the sheriff for the bounty. So it was unlikely the bounty hunter had killed her, but if not him – then who, and why?

He sat back in his chair, thinking, rubbing his tired eyes and fighting an approaching headache. After a while he checked his watch and saw it was after midnight. No point in heading back to the ranch tonight. In the morning he'd have to talk to the doctor who would have checked Ivy's body for any evidence about her death that wasn't readily visible. Then he would have to arrange a funeral with the undertaker.

The next thing he knew someone was pounding at his outer door. He jumped awake. The room was full of light. With an uncomfortable moan, he realized he'd fallen asleep in his chair. He slowly sat up, moving joints and bones that did not want to move. The pounding at the door continued.

Jarrod got up, slowly unfolding his cramped body and yelling, "I'm coming!"

He made it to the door and opened it. His brother Nick came in, saying, "Where the hell have you been all night? You didn't come down this morning, we checked and you hadn't been home. Mother's worried sick."

"No, she's not," Jarrod said closing the door. "Plenty of times I've stayed at the office and not come home. You're the one who's worried. You're the biggest worrier in the whole family. What do you want?"

"Well, like you said, I'm the worrier," Nick said. "Why didn't you come home?"

"One of my clients was found dead last night in an alley," Jarrod said, rubbing his aching forehead. "I've been trying to figure out why, and I just fell asleep behind my desk."

"Oh," Nick said. "I'm sorry. Who was killed?"

"Ivy Erin," Jarrod said, leading the way into his inner office while checking his watch. It was just after six in the morning. With a groan, he sat down behind his desk. "I need to check with Dr. Merar and arrange for a burial as soon as the rest of the world wakes up. You can go on home. Tell everyone I'll be back later today."

"Slow down," Nick said. "You never mentioned any Ivy Erin."

"I know. I don't mention a lot of clients. No reason to."

Nick heaved a sigh. "Fair enough. How can I help you with this?"

"You can't," Jarrod said. "I have to review the file one more time and then track down some things before I even know where to begin to find out who did this to her."

"You need some sleep."

"Yeah, I do, but that will have to wait until tonight."

"Ivy Erin. That's a pretty name."

"She was a pretty girl, about 20. Never had one break in her entire life." Jarrod sighed and closed his eyes.

Jarrod had lost a client or two before in his career, but to Nick's knowledge this was the first who had been murdered. Nick could tell his brother was taking this one hard, but Jarrod didn't feel like talking about it right now. Maybe later, at home, when his professional brain let him go and he was able to let himself grieve.

Nick got up. "I'll head home and let them know you're still alive. We'll see you at dinner," he said as he went out the door.

"Yeah," Jarrod said after him, and then he began to look at Ivy Erin's file again, lying open in front of him where he'd left it when he fell asleep during the night.

XXXXXXX

A couple hours later, Jarrod stood looking at Ivy's body again, this time on a table in the undertaker's place of business. She was cleaned up now, the blood removed from her throat, but now you could see the awful damage that bullet did to her.

"I'm not gonna be able to reconstruct her throat very well," the undertaker said. "There's just too much damage. If you can find a dress with a high collar, I can disguise it a bit."

Jarrod shook his head. "There's only me, Jack. Maybe one or two of the girls where she worked might care, but there isn't gonna be an open casket viewing or any viewing at all. I'll see what kind of dress I can find for her and get it over here fast as I can."

"She's got no family?"

"No. None at all that I know of."

"So, I guess, no funeral, just the burial."

Jarrod nodded. "We'll have it soon as we can. Has Dr. Merar finished looking at her?"

"Yeah, you might want to go see him. He made his notes and released the body, so we can have the burial anytime."

Jarrod nodded. "I'll get back to you today on that. Put the bill together and I'll pay you this afternoon. Let's bury her tomorrow at the latest."

"No hurry on the bill, Jarrod. I know you're good for it."

Jarrod smiled a little. "Did you ever see her at the Gold Nugget, Jack?"

"No, never went in there," the undertaker said.

"That's where she first came to me saying she needed a lawyer."

"Knowing you, you never even brought up what she was going to pay you."

"I knew she couldn't do it. You seen a bounty hunter around town?"

"No, can't say I have."

"But nobody brought you a body over the last couple days."

"Only this one, and no bounty hunter brought it in."

Jarrod sighed and nodded. "All right. Get her ready. Make it a decent coffin, will you? A step up from the pine box."

"All right, Jarrod. I'll give you a good price, too."

"Thanks, Jack. I'll be over at Dr. Merar's."