Love Overboard by Janet Evanovich
“I heard. She said you were great.”
“She said that?”
“Um-hmm. She said you even ate some of it.”
Ivan laughed. “I was hungry. Really hungry.” Mostly hungry for Stephanie, he remembered. There was something about her, right from the start, that was so damn attractive. He liked the way she’d rolled down the hill and landed on her back with a good healthy expletive on her lips. She wasn’t fragile. For some inexplicable reason that made him feel all the more protective of her.
The sound of loud laughter and breaking glass carried into the kitchen. “I’m hating this more all the time,” Lucy said.
Melody stomped in with a dustpan filled with glass shards. “These people have to go. They are boring.”
“I think we have to look at priorities here,” Lucy said to Melody. “Know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” Melody said, “we have to get rid of these disgusting people. And then we have to get Ivan and Stephanie out of that little room. The bed squeaks. You can hear it all through the house. I hardly slept a wink last night.”
Ivan got another beer. He wasn’t a prude, but he wasn’t an exhibitionist either. Going public with his sex life wasn’t high on his list of anticipated accomplishments. He felt himself blushing for the first time in his life and rested the cold bottle on his forehead.
Stephanie pushed through the kitchen door, went straight to the sink, and soaked a dish towel. She plopped the towel over her head, not caring that the water was running off and dripping onto the floor.
“I’m getting a migraine. I’ve never had a migraine in my life, but I’m getting one now.” She whipped the towel away and stood up straighter. “There. That feels better,” she said, turning to Lucy.
“All these people want dinner. That means we have to have two seatings. Ivan can preside over the first seating while Melody and I serve. Then I’ll take charge of the second seating while you and Melody serve.” Stephanie looked at everyone in the kitchen. “How does that sound?”
Lucy raised an eyebrow. “You think these people need a master of ceremonies?”
“No. I think they need keepers. Animal trainers. You think Sears sells cattle prods?”
Stephanie leaned against the counter. There has to be a better way of getting furniture money, she thought. Controlling this crowd of ghost chasers made police work seem tame. And Ivan was mad at her. She couldn’t blame him. She’d stripped Haben of its dignity.
She took a basket of toasted bread rounds and slid them into the microwave for ten seconds. When the house quieted down later, she’d have a chance to think. Right now all she wanted to do was get everyone fed as efficiently as possible. She removed the bread and grabbed a crock of butter from the refrigerator. “Melody, everyone starts out with a cup of chowder.”
Melody took the can of spray starch from the pantry shelf and freshened up her hair. Then she gave Lucy a thumbs-up and took a tray of chowder cups out to the dining room.
“You want some chowder?” she asked the man on Ivan’s left. Without waiting for a reply, she slammed a cup down in front of him. “Watch out for the fish eyes. I read someplace that fish eyes are poisonous. They make your tongue swell up so big it doesn’t fit in your mouth, and it turns black, then you choke to death. You ever see anyone choke to death?”
The man shook his head.
“It’s not pretty,” Melody said. “It’s slow. Real slow. Your eyes bug out of your head, your face gets purple, and your testicles swell up as big as watermelons, and when you finally die, you make a mess in your pants.”
“I read that article,” a woman at the other end of the table said. “It was in the May issue of Reader’s Digest, wasn’t it?”
The woman next to her shook her head. “I read Reader’s Digest from cover to cover, and I know for a fact that there was no such article. It was in one of those health magazines they have in doctors’ offices. I remember seeing it while I was waiting to get my blood pressure checked. I remember because the man in the photograph didn’t have any eyes. They’d fallen clear out of his head.”
Melody looked at Ivan and whispered from the side of her mouth, “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s being upstaged.”
She distributed two more cups of chowder and stopped beside a fat man with a florid face. “Sometimes the poison liquid leaks out of the eyeballs and contaminates the whole pot of chowder,” she said. “But that only happens when you overcook the eyeballs, and we were careful not to do that.”
She looked at Stephanie, who was standing frozen with a basket of bread in her hand. “Lucy didn’t overcook the chowder again, did she?”
Stephanie only stared at her in astonishment. During the past couple of weeks she’d thought of Melody as a rebellious teenager, but she suddenly had a flash of insight, seeing her as an entirely different person. She suspected Melody wasn’t flaky at all. And she had serious doubts about her being a teenager. Melody was a performer; Stephanie was sure of it. And she had a wicked sense of humor.
Stephanie bit back a smile and wondered how she could have missed something that was now so obvious. She felt as if she were looking in that rearview mirror again, seeing an outlandish parody of herself as a cop being a teenager. She couldn’t even begin to guess what Melody was up to. Instinct told her it wasn’t anything bad. Self-preservation kept her from believing it one hundred percent.
“I’m sure the chowder’s fine,” Stephanie said. She leaned over Ivan’s shoulder, and whispered in his ear, “Better not eat it, just in case. I’d hate to see you try to fit a pair of watermelons in those tight jeans.”
“I understand you’re the young lady who talks to Tess,” one of the women said to Melody.
“Yup.”
“What sort of things does she say to you?”
Melody shrugged. “We talk about Eminem a lot. She’s heavy into Eminem.”
The woman looked confused. “You talk about M & Ms?”
“No. The rapper Eminem. Jeez.” Melody began collecting soup cups. “Mr. Jackson, you didn’t eat a drop of your chowder. How are you going to grow up big and strong that way? Oh, Mr. Billings, you didn’t eat yours either.”
“I’m saving myself for the main course,” Mr. Billings said. “What are we having tonight?”
Melody’s mouth curved ever so slightly. “Ham.”
Chapter 9
Stephanie left the cranberry glass hurricane lamp burning in the downstairs hall and crept up the stairs. She’d shut the widow’s walk down at ten and advised everyone to go to bed and wait for ghosts. Then she’d said a silent apology to Tess and warned her to stay away from the master bedroom. Mr. and Mrs. Billings were in the master bedroom, and they were enough to frighten the ectoplasm out of anyone, dead or alive. She went to her room and quickly changed into jeans, a black turtleneck, and a heavy black sweatshirt. Then she quietly went downstairs and out the back door.
She took a deep breath, letting the sharp night air fill her lungs while her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She waved acknowledgment when Ivan signaled from behind the concealing lower branches of a giant spruce. He’d chosen good cover, she thought, moving to join him. She wouldn’t have seen him if he hadn’t flashed the light at her. She drew closer, and the jaded cop part of her went momentarily speechless at the picniclike atmosphere Ivan had created. He’d spread a blanket on twenty years’ accumulation of pine needles and brought a second blanket, a searchlight, binoculars, and a thermos of coffee. “Looks as if you’re planning on spending the night,” she said.
“This is my first stakeout. I wanted to be prepared.” And he wanted to make her comfortable. He wanted to keep her warm and safe and entertained. He would have rented a Winnebago if he thought he could have gotten away with it. Or better yet, he would have hired a detective and let him sit out here, freezing his buns, while Stephanie was inside, soaking in a hot bubble bath. And after the bubble bath…
Stephanie shifted uncomfortably. She’d never had a stakeout partner
Maybe it would be worth it. It wasn’t much of a mystery, anyway. It wasn’t as if there were drugs involved. And in actuality, no one had gotten hurt. There was just a dead guy who turned up every now and then, and he’d been dead a long time. He could hang around a little longer while they took a night off to make love.
She took a moment to think about it seriously and decided there weren’t many things more important than making love to Ivan. She finally understood the enormous importance of the bedroom. It was a place where love was exchanged and strengthened, and the more time she spent with Ivan, the less she understood promiscuity and infidelity. There was a bond growing between them. A collection of shared intimacies, adventures, problems, and dreams. Private whisperings held them together as surely as steel bands, and she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to sever those ties.
Priorities, she thought. It was important to get her priorities straight. Ivan and Haben were at the top of the list, but it was a toss-up for the number one slot. Her emotional choice was definitely Ivan, but her more practical intellect insisted on Haben. She owned Haben. She was responsible for it, and it would guarantee her security in her old age. Someone was threatening her success as an innkeeper, and she had to find out who and why.
Ivan had watched the transformation take place inside her by studying her face. For a minute there, he’d almost had her. Then a variety of emotions had tramped across, ending in steely-eyed resignation, and he knew they’d be playing cop for a while longer. “Determined to get to the root of it?”
Stephanie looked grim, not completely happy with her choice. “Yeah. I hope this works. I’d dearly love to know who broke my toilet.”
Ivan pulled her onto the blanket. “I think you have a toilet fixation. You’re almost as bad as Melody and pork chops. Besides, how do you know the flying dead man has anything to do with your bathroom?”
“Woman’s intuition.” Stephanie sprawled on her stomach and felt Ivan move next to her, cuddling into her side, throwing his leg over hers. “Ivan Rasmussen, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Sharing body heat.”
“As long as you don’t share too much. I wouldn’t want to be so distracted that I missed the corpse dangler.”
“Spoilsport.” His hand inched under her sweatshirt. Stephanie murmured an unintelligible warning, and Ivan responded with a gentle squeeze. “Just warming my hand.”
Yeah, right. Stephanie didn’t think his hand felt cold at all. It felt nice and warm. And it was performing skillful manipulations that were encouraging more of the doodah humming.
“You know what you need? You need some hot coffee. Hot coffee will warm you up,” she said, pushing at Ivan, trying to wriggle out from under him.
“Maybe later. I’m warming up just fine now.”
“Yes, but will you be able to sprint across that yard if you have to?”
Ivan sighed. “I bet you were a terrific cop. Certainly never corrupted by forbidden temptations.”
“I had my moments.” She sat cross-legged and tugged her sweatshirt into place, turning her attention to the house. “What do you think of Melody?”
“I think she’s a fraud.”
“You have any idea who she is?”
“Not a clue, but she has a lot of nerve and a sinful sense of humor.” Ivan opened the thermos, and the rich aroma of strong coffee rushed out in a swirl of steam. “I didn’t pick up on her until tonight at the dinner table. I saw the expression on your face and knew you’d caught on, too.”
“I’ve been thinking about it. The reason we finally caught on is that she shifted her position. Up until tonight, we were the ones being tricked. Tonight she changed sides and threw in with us—at least for a while.”
“You sound cynical.”
Stephanie took a sip of coffee and returned the cup to Ivan. “She lied to us. You should be cynical, too.”
“You lied to a lot of people when you went undercover. Sometimes there are good reasons.”
She knew he was right, and she liked Melody, but she knew the danger of being betrayed by someone close. You kept your eyes open for the bad guys, but if you misjudged a friend, you were left hideously vulnerable. In undercover work it could cost you your life. She’d learned that the hard way. She reminded herself that this wasn’t undercover work and was most likely some goofy prank, but that was an intellectual conclusion and had little effect on the apprehension she felt.
They sat on the blanket in companionable silence for a long time. Finally, Ivan looked at his watch and sighed. “For two nights now, some idiot has dangled a dead body in front of the rear windows. Where is he tonight? Why is it you can never find a sicko when you want one?”
Stephanie kept her eyes on the house. “Now you know the truth about police work. Hours of tedium, occasionally livened up by a few moments of sheer terror.”
A chill ran along Ivan’s spine. He didn’t know what sort of terrors she’d experienced in the past, but he was going to make sure her future was free from that sort of fear. He wrapped her in the extra blanket and drew her into the circle of his arms so they were sitting her back to his front. “I’m glad I didn’t know you when you were undercover. I wouldn’t have been able to deal with the terror.”
“Undercover was cushy. I was always scared to death they might reassign me to traffic detail. I knew a school crossing guard who got her toes run over by a Volkswagen.”
He understood what she was saying, just as he understood that statistically air travel was safer than driving in a car, but those statistics didn’t make planes or police work any more appealing to him. He touched her hair with the tips of his fingers and wondered how she got it so silky. He felt the heat return and searched for a diversion. “Tell me more about being a cop. Did you like it?”
“Yup. It was the right thing for me to do at that point in my life. It wasn’t dramatic like on television. It was a job, and it gave me a sense of purpose. I think I basically have a blue-collar mentality. I like jobs that are physical. I wouldn’t be good sitting behind a desk all day making decisions or analyzing computer printouts.”
“I bet you were a good cop.”
“I was okay. Until the end.”
More silence stretched between them while Stephanie ran through the end in her mind, just as she always did when she thought of her life in Jersey City. She could feel Ivan watching her, feel the invisible support his presence always brought, and she knew he wanted to know more. She was surprised to find that she wanted to tell him more. He was a good partner. A good listener. A good friend.
He stretched his legs and leaned back on one elbow. “Are you going to tell me about it?”
“About being a cop?” She was hedging, she thought. Old habits die hard.
“About the end. Why did you quit?”
“Going for the jugular, huh?” Stephanie asked.
“I’ve been patient.”
She nodded. It was true. He’d been patient. And besides, the wound had healed. The embarrassment and disillusionment of her past had faded beside the glorious vitality of love and lust. “Okay. You want the long story or the short story?”
“The long story.”
Stephanie poured out the last cup of coffee and sipped slowly.
“When I graduated from the Police Academy, I didn’t look a day over sixteen, so I was the perfect person to plant in the schools. It was very small-time crime. All they wanted was to find out who the abusers were so they could get them into rehab and get rid of the pushers in the hallways and playgrounds. As I got older I gradually did more counseling and PR than undercover work.
“Then last fall two college kids I knew got hold of some bad stuff and died. They were good kids. Played basketball and thoug
She made a disgusted sound. “It was stupid of me to accept the assignment. I let my emotions and my ego override my good sense. I didn’t fit into the college scene, and I didn’t have the professional maturity to play with the big boys.
“Anyway, I graduated from high school to college and went undercover for four months. I was working with a federal agent named Amos Anderson, and one day he set up a meeting with a dealer at one of the Prentice Avenue piers. It was February, and the wind was blowing so bad across the pier the seagulls were flying backward. We stood there waiting, and after a while a big black limo pulled up and four people got out. Three kneebreakers and a suit, and as soon as I saw them I started to sweat. We were out there on this godforsaken pier with no place to go, and my knees were knocking together so bad you could hear them in Hoboken.
“The man in the suit walked right up to us, holding his hat on his head with both hands. ‘Windy,’ he shouted to us. ‘Yeah,’ we answered. ‘Lonely out here on a Sunday.’ ”
Stephanie gave her head a disbelieving shake. “No kidding. Who else but two crazy cops would be standing on a deserted pier in gale-force winds with a chill factor of twenty below?
“So the guy looked at Amos and said, ‘I understand you want to buy.’ Amos was such a pro. He came from Miami, and he’d been through this a hundred times. He just shrugged and said, maybe. They started talking, and in the middle of the transaction, the man turned to me, looked me in the eye, and said, ‘You’re a cop, aren’t you?’ It was the first time I’d ever known absolute, total terror. I heard an overcoat rustle open, and the guy behind me put a gun to my head… right here.”
She pointed to a spot just to the side of her temple and realized her hand was shaking and thought it would probably shake for the rest of her life, every time she told this story. “I swear, my heart was pounding so loud it drowned out all other sounds. I was so scared, I was dizzy, and the next thing I knew, I was flying through the air and sinking like a stone in the river. I came up next to the cement pilings, and by the time I got myself to shore, there must have been forty agents on the pier.