Ok, on my silly little problem... ( Motor Control? I can't get the debugger to talk..)
There is a pullup resistor from MCLR to Vdd. (yes, it should be there)
I measured the Vdrop across it, and it's 2.083V, when plugged into the ICD2. If not plugged in, there's no Vdrop.
The resistor measures 4.53KOhms. That's solidly in the 1K > 10K range Microchip specs.
All the other connections on the circuit board are just what they should be.
It seems strange that it pulls down to 2.86V when the debugger is not doing anything. The ICD manual shows a brief internal circuit around the connection stuff, and there is no pull-down resistor mentioned. The connection to MCLR is internally +5V or GND.