Love Overboard aka Ivan Takes a Wife

Chapter 6

Lucy Pederson had a mop of platinum blond curls. She was a year younger than her cousin Stephanie and an inch shorter-if you didn’t count the hair. “No sweat,” she said to Stephanie. “I’m going to fix this toilet for you.”

“You ever fix a toilet before?”

“No. But if that dunce Stanley could do it, I can do it.”

“I still don’t see why you couldn’t have married him for a little while. Just long enough for him to repair my plumbing. You owed me that!”

Lucy made a disgusted sound and peered into the tank. “I don’t know why you’re complaining. Most women would cut off a thumb to spend a week with Ivan Rasmussen.”

“Yeah, well, if I ever have to spend another week with him, it’s not going to be my appendage that gets cut off.”

Lucy looked at her cousin. “What happened? Did he make a pass at you?”

“I don’t know. I thought he did, but then it turned out that he might not have.”

“You want to elaborate on that?”

“No.”

“You didn’t do anything stupid like fall in love with him, did you?”

Stephanie sighed. Of course she’d fallen in love with him. It was like spending four years struggling through a desert with nothing to drink, then coming upon an ice-cream soda.

“Jeez, Stephanie, he’s so slippery. Girls have been running after Ivan for as long as I can remember. And he always runs two steps ahead of them.” She jiggled something in the tank and screeched when water sprayed up at her. “Shut it off!”

Water splashed against the ceiling and ran down the walls while Stephanie lunged for the shutoff valve.

“You know what I think?” Lucy said, wiping her face on her sleeve. “I think this sucker’s broken.”

“Doesn’t look good,” Ivan said, lounging against the doorjamb.

Stephanie jumped at the sound of his voice. “What are you doing here?”

“I have something to discuss with you. Melody was playing her guitar on your widow’s walk and shouted down that I should come on in.”

Lucy and Stephanie eyed each other.

“I’ll go get her,” Lucy said.

Ivan looked into the toilet tank. “She’s really a sight up there with all that blue hair and her electric guitar. She was the first thing I saw when we sailed into the harbor Saturday.”

“She’s ruining my inn’s image. I wanted it to be dignified, historic, tranquil.” Stephanie dropped a bath towel on the floor to sop up the water. “The neighborhood kids are calling her Elvira.”

“I think she’s just going through a rebellious stage.”

“Uh-huh. So what do you think I should do?”

“Lock her up in the cellar until she’s forty.”

Stephanie squeezed the towel out in the tub and remembered she was supposed to be mad at Ivan. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, she thought. That was her-slightly scorned and pretty much humiliated by it all. She wondered how much of her conversation with Lucy he’d heard and gave an involuntary shudder, trying to remember if she’d sounded majorly disappointed at his lack of interest. She stiffened her back and tried to look aloof. “You said you wanted to talk to me?”

“I have a business deal to propose.”

A business deal. She’d been hoping for an explanation to soothe her damaged ego, and he had a business deal. Men! She pressed her lips together. “I can hardly wait to get swindled.”

Ivan stooped to examine the outside of the toilet bowl. “Last week was the last cruise of the season. The Savage won’t sail again until spring.”

She already knew that. Lucy had moved into Haben last night. She’d given her a free room in exchange for being chief cook and dishwasher. “So?”

“So, I have no place to live. I thought you might rent me a room.”

“No!”

Ivan stood and shoved his hands in his pockets. “This toilet is shot. The bowl is cracked beyond repair, and someone’s broken the float.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “You know about toilets?”

Ivan tried not to smile. “I know enough. I also know that you’re going to have a hard time making ends meet until next summer’s tourists flood back to Camden. I’d be willing to pay a nominal amount for a room, and I’d be willing to serve as handyman for the winter.”

She needed the money, and she needed a handyman. Did she need Ivan Rasmussen, that was the real question. She needed him like a hole in the head, she decided. Ivan Rasmussen, running hot and cold, underfoot day and night. She might be able to keep her virginity, but she could kiss her sanity good-bye.

“I tell you what. I can sweeten the offer,” Ivan said. “You don’t have any furniture in this house, and my furniture is sitting unused in storage. If you let me live here, I’ll let you use my furniture, free of charge, for an entire year.”

Stephanie silently groaned. Ivan had wonderful furniture. Priceless antiques, many of which predated Haben. Mantel clocks, a grandfather clock, pineapple mahogany four-posters, Oriental rugs she would die for, original paintings of all the sea captains and sea captains’ wives. The list was endless. “Why do you want to rent a room here? I’d think you’d be anxious to get a place of your own.”

“I feel comfortable here, and I’m not sure what I want to do about a more permanent home for myself.”

It was true. His house had been put up for sale so quickly he hadn’t had time to consider other arrangements for himself. He’d simply put everything into storage and moved onto the Savage. Now that the hectic sailing season was over, he had time to reflect on his actions. It was no wonder Tess was in an uproar, he thought, looking around. Haben had been built to be a Rasmussen house, and she must feel just as displaced as he. He smiled inwardly at the human qualities he’d just given his ancestral ghost. As a kid he’d talked to her all the time. She’d never shown herself to him, but that was to be expected since only women ever saw Tess, and it had never stopped him from carrying on his one-sided conversations.

Stephanie saw his gaze shift to the hall and the window that looked out over the sea and knew she was a goner. For the sake of her wounded pride she told herself it was the grandfather clock that clinched it, but deep down inside she knew the clock was just an excuse. She felt a strong attraction and genuine affection for Ivan. He was hatefully irresistible. He was a teasing scoundrel, and this could prove to be the longest winter of her life. She caught herself gritting her teeth and made a conscious effort to relax.

“Okay,” she said, swallowing down a sigh of defeat. “The deal is that I get the use of your furniture for one full year, and you move out June 1. Lucy’s doing the cooking, Melody’s doing the cleaning, and you’re Mr. Fix-it. Now that I have furniture I’ll be able to advertise for guests. I don’t expect there’ll be many, but every little bit helps.”

Ivan grinned and checked out his new landlady: tousled brown hair; no makeup, although her cheeks were glowing; sweatshirt with sleeves pushed up to the elbows; and jeans with holes in the knees. She was beautiful, and he was crazy about her. He curled his hand around her neck, pulled her to him, and kissed her hard on the lips.

“I’m used to sleeping in the master bedroom,” he said, “and you’re going to have to buy a new toilet.”

He twirled one of her brown curls around his finger, kissed her on the nose, then seriously on the mouth. Then he sauntered off, down the stairs.

“Oh, gross,” Melody said. “A pork chop. Have you ever seen one of these pigs? They’re big. I mean big. And they feed them chemicals that cause cancer, then they feed them hormones and steroids and antibiotics so that if you eat enough of these chops you get sick and nothing can cure you because you have an immunity. And they make them live in filthy little pens with a thousand other pigs, and they pack them into a truck and drive them across the country, so that by the time they get to the packinghouse all their legs are broken. Then they hang them up by their broken hind legs and-”

“I think we get the idea,” Ivan said. “How about salad?”

Lucy sliced off a piece of pork chop. “I’d hate for this pig to have died in vain.”

Stephanie tenderly pushed her pork chop to one side and poked at her mashed potatoes. “You can’t mistreat a potato, can you?”

Melody crunched on a cucumber slice and looked around. “It’s nice to eat in the dining room on a real table. Better vibes. The house needed its furniture back.”

It was a screwy way to put it, Stephanie thought, but the furniture and the house definitely belonged together. Sounds no longer echoed through hollow rooms. Clocks ticked in soothing cadence. Etchings and oil paintings gave character to blank walls. It had taken only two days to get Ivan and his furniture moved in, and the transformation was amazing. Haben felt like a home. It felt like a haven. It wasn’t just the architecture that had given the house its stability. The furniture was an integral part of the building, and as much as Stephanie hated to admit it, so was Ivan.

“How many bottoms do you suppose have sat on this chair?” Melody asked. “Think about it. A hundred years’ worth of bottoms. And now my bottom is added to the list. It makes me feel so existential. It makes me feel at one with all the ghosts of bottoms past.”

Lucy looked at Stephanie. “All the ghosts of bottoms past?” she repeated. “Excuse me?”

Melody turned her black-rimmed eyes to Ivan. “Tess is happier, too. Boy, was she ticked off at you.”

Ivan buttered a herb biscuit. “You’ve been talking to Tess?”

“I met her on the widow’s walk the other day, and we’ve gotten real tight.”

Ivan nodded. “Give her my best.”

Stephanie reconsidered her pork chop. She sliced into it, stared at it for a second on the end of her fork, and decided she wasn’t hungry after all. “I rented a room today.” She took a slip of paper from her shirt pocket and read from it. “Mr. and Mrs. Platz from Lanham, Maryland. Apparently one of the guests on board the Savage told them about Haben. They’re coming up to see the foliage. They’ll be here tomorrow.”

Ivan, Melody, and Lucy simultaneously turned to look out the big bay window.

“There isn’t any more foliage,” Lucy said. “Peak color was last week, and the storm blew all the leaves off the trees.”

“Are you sure?” Stephanie had been so busy trying not to think about Ivan that she hadn’t had time to think about anything else. She went to the window to take a better look. They were right.

“Well, it’s too late now. They’re on their way. Besides, it isn’t as if we don’t have any foliage. It’s just that the foliage is on the ground, right?” she rationalized. She started to clear the table. “While we’ve got guests in the house, I’d like everyone to look nice for dinner. Melody, I know this is going to cramp your style, but I’d like your hair to be all one color. And please don’t play your electric guitar on the widow’s walk. And don’t tell them about the pork chops and the pigs’ legs getting broken.”

Ivan collected plates and followed Stephanie into the kitchen. “Any instructions for me?”

Stephanie gave him a slow, considering look. She had a list of instructions a mile long, and they didn’t have anything to do with the guests. They had to do with amorous kisses and sensuous fondlings and the fact that she wasn’t getting any. Ivan Rasmussen flirted with her. He watched her every move. And his body language was friendly, very friendly. But he was definitely avoiding a more intimate relationship.

She took the dishes from Ivan and put them in the dishwasher. “No instructions,” she said, “but I have a problem with the closet door in my bedroom. It’s locked, and I haven’t got a key.”

Ivan looked puzzled. “How did it get locked? Those closet doors haven’t been locked for a hundred years. Nobody has a key.”

“Well, somebody has one. I’m telling you, my door is locked.”

Ivan took a cookie from the cookie jar. “Let’s go take a look at it.”

They climbed the wide spiral stairs leading to the second floor and traveled the short hallway, which was now carpeted with a burgundy-and-beige Oriental runner. Stephanie had chosen the smallest of the guest rooms for herself. Melody was living in the maids’ quarters in the attic, under the cupola. Lucy and Ivan occupied two other rooms. That left the master bedroom and two adjoining rooms for guests.

Ivan looked in at the master bedroom. “You weren’t planning on putting Mr. and Mrs. Platz in there, were you?”

“As a matter of fact, I was. It’s our nicest room.”

“Aunt Tess isn’t going to like having strangers sleeping in her bedroom.”

“And I suppose Aunt Tess would prefer to have you in the master bedroom?”

“Absolutely. If you don’t believe me, you can ask Melody.”

“Melody’s credibility is a little shaky in the ghost department. Yesterday she told me Tess wanted chocolate chip cookies.”

Ivan stopped in the middle of Stephanie’s room, looked at the closed closet door, and looped his arms around Stephanie’s waist. “You know what I think? I think you just want me in your bedroom.”

Stephanie flinched. That hit home. It hadn’t been her motive for bringing him upstairs, but there was enough truth to it to make her uncomfortable. She was becoming more attracted to him with each passing day. And he loved making her uncomfortable, she thought grimly. Rather than ignoring the fact that he’d spurned her advances on board the Savage, he continually teased her. The man had a diabolical sense of humor.

Justice really should be served, she decided. Ivan Rasmussen deserved to sweat a little. And all she had to do was turn up the heat. She leaned back in his arms and looked at him. “You’re right. I want you in my bedroom. What are you going to do about it?”

There was a flicker of surprise, then his grin widened. “I don’t know. Suppose I don’t do anything?”

Stephanie moved closer. “Do it my way, or hit the highway, big guy.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“You bet. I was at the top of my class in police brutality and sexual harassment. I know how to do things to a man’s body that would make your hair stand on end.”

“I love it when you talk dirty.”

“I wasn’t talking dirty!” She punched him lightly in the chest. “This isn’t working, is it? Why aren’t you getting nervous? You always throw me off-balance. Why can’t I get you off- balance?”

His eyes grew serious. “I’m always off-balance. I just hide it better.”

“Really?” She wasn’t sure if she believed him. Pirates were known to fabricate every now and then.

Ivan noted the skepticism in her voice. She held the winning hand and didn’t even know it, he thought. He was in way over his head and sinking fast.

He had his arms around her, and she felt pliant and relaxed now that she was teasing him back. It’d be easy to kiss her, he thought. Her lips were parted in silent laughter and looked soft and inviting. Too tempting to resist. His hand trailed along her neck and the slope of her shoulder, and his mouth took hers

Stephanie had expected to be kissed, but she hadn’t counted on this sort of kiss. She’d expected the kiss to be impudent, like the bathroom kiss two days ago. The bathroom kiss had been a pirate’s kiss-infuriating but fun. Exactly what you’d expect from a charming rat. The kiss they were sharing now was fragile. It was a serious kiss, more demanding in an entirely new way-and much more confusing. Stephanie pulled away and looked into Ivan’s eyes, not sure of what she saw there.

Pay attention, Stephanie, Ivan thought. This is love. He kissed her again, pulling her in deeper, persuading her to respond to him. “Are you still off-balance?” he asked.

“More than ever.”

“Good. I hate being the only one who feels insecure and desperate.”

Ivan Rasmussen? Insecure? And then it hit her. He wasn’t going so slowly because he wasn’t interested in her. He was going slowly because he cared about her. Really cared. He didn’t want to rush things. Didn’t want to lessen their relationship by pressing the physical aspect of it. A smile surfaced.

“I think I’ve been dumb,” Stephanie said. “You like me, don’t you?”

Like her? Ivan groaned. She was his reason for getting up in the morning. She was the sun, and he felt himself revolving around her, held tight by some mysterious, overwhelming force that was much more inescapable than mere gravity. “Yeah. I like you.” His voice was husky. “I like you a lot.”

“I like you, too,” Stephanie said. She ran the flat of her palm across his chest, enjoying the feel of hard muscle and warm flesh beneath his shirt. Her fingertip stroked up the side of his neck and along the line of his bearded jaw. She wasn’t sure of his ultimate intentions, but she knew he’d shown her a part of himself that was very private. And she knew from the pressure against his zipper that the intimate web he’d woven around them was fueling more aggressive desires in him. He was a pirate after all, she thought happily. And he was making love to her, seducing her slowly and thoroughly.

“This is special, isn’t it?” she asked, winding her arms around his neck and sensuously brushing her lips across his. She felt his hand tighten at the small of her back, felt him stir when she pressed her hips forward.

She was taunting him, Ivan thought. She finally recognized her power. She was making him burn with each erotic movement of her body. She was telling him that she wanted him. And Lord knew, he wanted her.

“I’m probably making a mistake by not locking the bedroom door right now,” he said, “but I think we should put this on hold. I don’t want to make love to you, then discover Lucy and Melody have been listening on the other side of the door.”

“Speaking of doors-the closet is definitely locked.”

Ivan turned and tugged, but the door wouldn’t open. “Wait here. There’s a big old skeleton key in the master bedroom that might work.”

He returned a couple of moments later, tried the key, and gave Stephanie a wink when the lock tumbled. He swung the door open with a flourish, and a cadaver fell out, crashing onto the floor at Stephanie’s feet.

Stephanie made a strangled sound and clamped her hand over her mouth.

Ivan hung on to the door and took a deep breath to steady his heart. “Jeez!”

Both took a step back from the body.

“This guy’s been embalmed!” Ivan said. “He’s wearing makeup.”

“Looks to be in his seventies,” Stephanie said.

“This is sick. This is really sick!”

Stephanie reached out for Ivan with a shaky hand. “You know what’s even sicker? Me. I hate to be a wimp about this, but I think I’m going to throw up. Yes, I’m definitely going to throw up,” she said, rushing to the bathroom.

Five minutes later, she was seated on the tile floor, resting her back against the tub with a wet towel draped over her head.

Ivan massaged her shoulders. “You feel better?”

Stephanie nodded. “This is embarrassing.”

“I thought cops got used to seeing stiffs.”

“I was in narcotics, not homicide, and believe it or not, I’ve never had a dead person fall out of a closet at me.”

“I hope you’re not going to blame this on Aunt Tess.”

“Ivan, your house is a loony bin.”

“Honey, this is your house.”

She removed the towel and pushed herself to her feet. “We should call the police. Some undertaker is going nuts looking for that poor old man.”

They walked down the hall to her bedroom and stopped at the door, not able to believe their eyes. The body was gone.

“Am I imagining this?” Stephanie asked. “Did I just throw up over a figment of my imagination?”

“I can guarantee you he didn’t walk away.”

“So someone took the dead guy. While I was in the bathroom, someone came in here and bodynapped him.”

They exchanged glances and knew they were both thinking the same thing. “Melody!” they called in unison.

Melody came to the head of the stairs. “What do you want?”

“There was a dead body here, and now it’s gone. I don’t suppose you know anything about this?”

Melody looked interested. “A dead body? A grossly dead body?”

Stephanie furiously pushed her damp hair back from her forehead, feeling herself teetering on the edge of civility. She’d tried to be philosophical about the toilet, the porch, the water heater, and the multitude of bizarre things that had happened to her, but this was the end. Disappearing bodies were not part of the bargain.

She glared at Melody. “Someone took that body. That body did not just up and walk away. Even Ivan said so. Someone took it, and there’s only one person in this house who would be nutso enough to do it. You. I know you took that body. Now where is it?”

“She’s getting a little weird,” Melody said to Ivan. “Probably PMS.”

Lucy came up behind Melody. “What’s all the racket about?”

“They think I took a body,” Melody said. “They’re missing one.”

Lucy looked from Melody to Stephanie to Ivan. “Uh-huh.”

“It’s true,” Stephanie said to Lucy. “There was a body here.” She lifted the dust ruffle and looked under her bed. “My closet door was locked, so Ivan came up to unlock it, and this dead guy fell out at me, and I threw up, and then poof, the body is missing.”

Lucy looked doubtful. “You’re putting me on, right?”

“No.” Ivan sat on the edge of the bed. “That actually happened… I think.”

“And they think I took it.” Melody rolled her huge black-rimmed eyes. “What do I look like, a body snatcher?”

“This body, did it have a knife sticking in it? Was there a bullet hole in the forehead? A rope tied around the neck?” Lucy asked.

“No. It was an old guy in a gray suit with a maroon tie,” Stephanie told her. “He was fine, except he was dead, and he should have had a different tie. Maybe something with stripes.”

“Why do you think Melody took him?”

Stephanie looked under the bed one more time. “It seemed like something Melody would do.”

“Mmmm, that’s true. But Melody was with me, cleaning the kitchen.”

Melody’s eyes looked even wider than usual. “Are you going to call the police?”

Stephanie flipped her palms up. “I don’t know what I’d say to them. Some refugee from a funeral home fell out of my closet, then disappeared while I was throwing up? They’d give me a breathalizer.”

Ivan took Stephanie by the hand. “Come on. We’re going to check out this entire house, then we’re going to have dessert.”

Two hours later Ivan and Stephanie sat in the kitchen, eating ice-cream sundaes.

“This is very creepy,” Stephanie said. “This is one of the creepiest things that’s ever happened to me.”

“Coming from you, that’s quite a statement.”

Stephanie spooned more fudge sauce over her ice cream. “Being a narc wasn’t usually creepy. It was boring, dangerous, scary, and frustrating. Mostly frustrating.”

Ivan was curious about her past. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that she’d been a cop. If she’d been a secretary or a second-grade teacher, he would have been equally curious. He simply wanted to know about Stephanie. “Why did you become a cop? Can you talk about it?”

“Yeah, the beginning is easy to talk about. It’s the end that’s tough.”

She mashed her ice cream into mush. “I was in college, majoring in art for lack of something better. Lots of kids go to college and have this passion to learn or to go out into the world and be a doctor, or a CPA, or an astronaut. I didn’t have a passion for anything. I was just drifting through life. I was an average person, getting average grades, going to college because that was the average thing to do. Then one day my mom called and said my little brother was in the hospital from a drug overdose. My little brother!” She shook her head, still wondering how such a thing could have happened.

“He was a good kid. We lived in a decent neighborhood. It just blew my mind. There I was, marking time in college as if I were some zombie, and my brother was lying in a hospital bed, fighting for his life. My brother got over it, but I never did. I decided I wanted to do something about the drugs in my neighborhood, so I quit college and became a cop.”

“Any regrets about leaving college?”

She scraped the bottom of her sundae glass. “No. College just wasn’t for me.”

“Any regrets about buying my house?”

Stephanie laughed. “Lots!”

Ivan tapped his spoon against the rim of his glass. “There’s something strange going on here, Steph. Someone cracked that upstairs toilet. And someone purposely weakened the boards in the front porch. And someone put a corpse in your closet.”

“You think someone’s out to get me?”

“Someone is trying to make your life difficult here. You think someone from New Jersey followed you? Someone with a vendetta?”

She snorted. “If someone from New Jersey was after me, I’d have a bullet in my head. At the very least they’d burn the house to the ground.”

“How about someone local?”

“I don’t know many people. You’d be my only suspect. This house was in your family for generations. Maybe you want it back-at a lowered price.”

He slouched in his chair. “Sorry, it’s not me. I’m broke. I couldn’t buy it back at any price.”

Stephanie watched him, waiting for an explanation, but he didn’t offer any. How could he be broke? He’d just sold a house that probably didn’t even have a mortgage on it. He had a successful cruise business. He wasn’t supporting a wife and kids.

He stood and took his glass to the dishwasher. “You know, it really bothers me that we couldn’t find the corpse. Melody and Lucy were in the kitchen. You and I were in the bathroom. And in the space of ten minutes, someone got that body out of the house.”

Stephanie agreed. “There’s something else that bothers me. Whoever locked the body in my closet knew about the skeleton key. Do you have any secret passages in this house? Any long-lost deranged relatives living in concealed rooms?”

“You’ve been watching too many movies.”

She pushed back in her chair. “Lucy called every mortuary within a forty-mile radius, and no one was missing an old man in a gray suit. I can’t believe we’ve hit a dead end on this. What have we overlooked?”

He pulled her to her feet and hooked his arm around her waist. “And you thought Maine was going to be dull.” He nestled her against him, pleased at the feel of her in his arms.

“Tell me the truth, do you mind that I’ve turned Haben into a bed-and-breakfast inn?”

A small, tight, humorless smile curved his mouth. “You think I’m behind all of this, don’t you?”

Stephanie smiled back at him-a broad, brash, teasing smile. “Let’s just say you’re not above suspicion.”