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.”
Chapter 7
Eileen Platz was a small woman in her early fifties. She was rail thin with short jet-black hair and sharp, dark eyes. Her husband had the large frame of an athlete and the soft paunch of a man gone sedentary. They stood on Haben’s newly reconstructed front porch and looked at the ground, which was covered with leaves, then looked at the bare trees and briefly exchanged glares.
“I told you we should have come last week,” Eileen Platz said, her mouth pressed into a mean little line.
“Don’t start, Eileen. It wasn’t my idea to drive fourteen hours to see a bunch of dying leaves.”
Lucy watched them from the front window. “What do you think? Do you think we should let them slug it out, or should we invite them in?”
“I need the money,” Stephanie told her. “Let’s haul them in here and feed them some sparkling cider and crackers and cheese.” She opened the door, introduced herself, and was pleased to see their attitude change once they were inside the house.
“This is lovely,” Eileen Platz said. “This is like living in a museum. It’s absolutely beautiful.”
“Eileen’s a big history buff,” her husband explained. “And she’s a real antique hound.”
“Then I’m sure you’ll enjoy Haben.” Stephanie gave them a room key and directed them to the master bedroom. “When you’re settled in, you can come downstairs for cheese and cider.”
Melody swept into the foyer and stopped short at coming face-to-face with Mr. and Mrs. Platz. She was dressed entirely in black: short black boots, black tights, short black skirt, black leather jacket, and big, dangly black earrings. Her face was pancake white with her usual raccoon eye makeup, and her hair was brilliant orange.
Stephanie stifled a gasp at the orange hair and reminded herself that she’d only asked Melody to make her hair all one color. Probably she should be more specific after this. Probably Melody thought this would be appropriate since Halloween was coming up.
“Melody, this is Mr. and Mrs. Platz. They’re going to be staying in the master bedroom. Would you mind helping them with their bags?”
“No sweat. Just call me Cinderella.” She hefted a suitcase and smiled at Mrs. Platz. “I like your hair. Is that Clairol Ebony? I had my hair that color in March.”
Stephanie turned to Ivan. “Maybe I’m not cut out for this. I have a nagging premonition of disaster.”
“You’ll get used to it. This is a lot like running a schooner. For the most part, it’s fun. You get to meet a lot of new people, and you get to share a part of the past with them.”
“Mmmm, but you never had Melody for a bellhop.”
“No. I was blessed with Ace.”
Stephanie grinned. “I guess we each have our own cross to bear. You never answered my question last night. Does it bother you to see Haben turned into an inn?”
He slung his arm around her shoulders. It didn’t bother him to see Haben turned into an inn, but he wasn’t sure about turning Stephanie into an innkeeper. He’d rather see her turned into a wife and mother. Selfish attitude, he told himself. There wasn’t any reason why she couldn’t be wife, mother, and innkeeper. This was the twentieth-first century. Women wore many hats.
Ivan sighed. Right now, he didn’t care about Stephanie’s hats. At this particular moment he was more interested in her lingerie. He wondered if that made him a sexist oaf. Probably. Probably he should drag his mind out of t
he bedroom and keep it in the foyer for a while.
He pushed away all thoughts of lingerie and forced himself to concentrate on her question. “I think it’s a great idea. If I’d kept Haben, I might have done the same. Mrs. Platz is right. This is like a museum. It’d be a shame not to share it.”
“I know I’m prying, but why did you sell?”
He shrugged. “I needed the money. I offered the house to relatives first, but no one wanted to buy it. It’s big and expensive to maintain.”
“It must have been difficult for you to part with Haben.”
Ivan nodded. “Sometimes you don’t fully appreciate something until you’ve lost it. I have to admit, while I was living here, I considered it to be something of an albatross.”
“Have you always lived in this house?”
He shook his head. “I did when I was a kid, but after I graduated from high school, I went away to college. Then, when I quit college, I got my own apartment. Actually, apartment is glorifying it. What I had was a room over Gerty’s Bait Shop.”
“Why did you quit college?”
“I was in my junior year when my grandfather died and left me the Savage. It was just a forgotten wreck of a ship, dying a slow death in Nantucket, but he owned it, and he willed it to me. As soon as I saw it, I was in love. I was a lot like you. I really didn’t know why I was in college, except that was what had been expected of me. Anyway, I quit school and got a job on a trawler to pay for the restoration. Most of it I did myself.
“Two years ago my mother died, and last year my dad died. I gave up my room over Gerty’s and moved back into Haben while I straightened out the estate. I love this house, but it’s much too big for a bachelor. It was built to hold lots of noisy people. It needs to have kids running around in it, and dogs barking, and it needs a big orange cat curled up in the Queen Anne wing chair.”
“You could have managed that. All you had to do was find a wife.”
“Seemed like a high price to pay for noise.”