Janet Evanovich - Love Overboard aka Ivan Takes a Wife

“Then think about it.”

She nodded. “I’ll think about it as soon as I stop hyperventilating.”

He took the coffee cup from her and kicked the cabin door closed. “I know a good remedy for hyperventilation.”

The noxious odor still clung to the curtains and upholstery, but with the windows wide open and a table fan blowing full tilt, the upstairs bathroom was usable. Stephanie dashed from the shower, jumped into clothes purchased half an hour before, and ran from the house. Ivan snagged her on the front lawn and wrapped a dry towel around her wet hair. “Did you see the ghost from hell while you were in there?” he asked jokingly.

Stephanie patted her towel-wrapped head, and said, “The ghost from hell is probably in Kansas City right now with Melody.”

“I don’t think so.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“I recognized the truck she was driving, and it wasn’t from Kansas City.”

“Are you kidding me? Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

Ivan buttoned her into a new wool jacket. “We were busy last night.”

She felt a flush of heat at the memory. “Mmmm, so we were.”

“Since the inn is indefinitely closed, and we have some time on our hands, I think we should go for a drive in the country and look up Melody.”

Forty-five minutes later they left Route 1 for a secondary road. Stephanie studied the smooth leather upholstery of Ivan’s black SUV, thinking the car suited him-but then so would a Viper. He was a complicated person. Full of surprises and contradictions.

He’d been silent since they’d left Camden, and she knew he was giving her time to reorganize her thoughts about their relationship. About marriage. Marriage. Lord, she could hardly run the word through her mind without feeling hysteria bubble up in her throat. Ivan Rasmussen wanted to marry her. It was beyond her wildest dreams. It was flattering. It was frightening. It was hard to believe. Stephanie Rasmussen. Preposterous. And wonderful.

They passed a small town, nothing more than a gas station, an all-purpose store, and a small white church. A few unimaginative ranch-style houses had been built close to the road, a two-story farmhouse sat farther back, surrounded by bleak fields. The term hardscrabble farm came to mind. She wondered if the owner of the truck lived on one of these no-frills farms.

“You’ve been very quiet,” she said. “You haven’t told me who owns the truck Melody was driving.”

“Ted Grisham, the man who taught me how to make stink bombs.”

Stephanie rubbed her hands together. “The plot thickens. Who’s Ted Grisham?”

“A friend,” he said tersely.

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. That’s what I think, too.” Ivan slowed as they approached another little town of neat yards and small, well-tended houses. At the northern edge of town he pulled into the parking lot of a large brick structure that reminded her of the Knox Woolen Mill in Camden. “What is this?”

Ivan sighed and slumped in his seat. “This is”-he took a deep breath-“Rasmussen Leather Products. When I inherited Haben, I also inherited this.” He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “It’s a shoe factory.”

“You don’t look too happy about it.”

“I hate it. I’ve hated it all my life. I don’t even like to wear shoes.”

Stephanie grinned because the image of Ivan Rasmussen as a shoe baron was ludicrous, and because while he was trying to sound disgusted, it was obvious from the way his voice cracked that he saw the humor in it, too.

“It’s not funny,” he said, smiling. “Well, yeah, I guess it is sort of funny. Can you imagine me running a shoe factory?”

“No.”

“My great-great-grandfather started this leather business when there was an abundance of hides in the area. Over the years it evolved into a shoe factory. Unfortunately, as you saw during the ride here, this shoe factory is the only industry for miles. People in this town have lived and worked here for generations. Without Rasmussen Leather Products the town would die.”

He got out of the car and opened the passenger door for Stephanie. “We’ll walk to Ted’s house. It’s just down the street. Ted is the factory foreman. When I was a kid my dad used to bring me here to see the shoes. I hated the factory, but I loved Ted. He knew how to skip stones across the river behind the factory, and he could spit farther than anyone on the face of the earth…”

“And he knew how to make stink bombs.”

“Yup. He knew how to make stink bombs.”

He picked a stone up and sailed it through the air, into the back end of the parking lot. “When my dad died, I took a look at the books of this sad old factory and discovered it had been running in the red. I loved my dad. He was a good man, and he wasn’t stupid, but he had no talent for running a business. No one had made any improvements in this place in fifty years. It was in such bad shape, I couldn’t get anyone to loan me money to modernize it.”

Stephanie stopped walking and looked at him. “My Lord, you sold Haben to save this factory, didn’t you?”

“All these people would have been out of jobs. I couldn’t do that to them.” He threw his arm around her and started her walking again.

“Anyway, once I made some initial changes, I was able to persuade a bank to finance the rest. And I changed the direction of the product. Went back to making quality, hand-sewn shoes. Just a few styles. Docksiders and classic Wellingtons. It’ll take a while before it’s on its feet, but I think if the operation stays simple, it can eventually turn a nice profit. Hopefully I can get my nose out of it soon and let the factory go back to running itself.”

Stephanie felt a lump-in-the-throat surge of love and respect for the man next to her. She was proud of him. Proud to be his lover and his friend. And his wife? How about his wife? She shivered and took a deep breath. Stephanie Rasmussen. Yikes!

Ivan stopped in front of a freshly painted white house that looked like all the other white houses, and he pointed to a maroon pickup in the driveway. “Look familiar?”

The kitchen door to the little Cape Cod slammed shut. A dog barked, raced into the driveway, stopped short, and ran back into the yard. The sound of voices carried over the noise of the excited dog. Stephanie and Ivan exchanged glances.

“I know that voice,” Stephanie said.

“I think we hit the jackpot.”

No one noticed them when they walked around to the back, because everyone was too absorbed in the problem at hand. Melody and Lucy each had a handle on the black plastic body bag stuck half-in and half-out of the small basement window.

“This is impossible,” Lucy said. “We should have taken him up the stairs the way I wanted.”

Melody dug her heels in and pulled. “It seemed like a shortcut. I mean, we always dumped him out of windows before.”

“Yes, but they were big windows,” Ivan said.

Both women yelped and dropped the bag. The body slid back through the window and landed with a muffled thunk. A third familiar voice could be heard cursing in the basement.

Ivan raised his eyebrows. “Ace?”

“I’ve sort of adopted him,” Melody said. “Daddy’s giving him a job at the factory.”

Things began to come together in Ivan’s mind. “My Lord, you’re Ted’s daughter. The skinny kid who went to Juilliard.”

“And when I graduated from Juilliard, I went on tour with a band, but I found out I wasn’t the touring type, so I came home. Thanks to you, I have a home to come home to.”

Ivan turned his attention to Lucy. “What are you doing here?”

“Helping cousin Melody. We have to return Mr. Kulecza.”

“I didn’t know Melody was a cousin,” Stephanie said.

Lucy nodded. “On my mother’s side. I guess that makes you cousins-in-law or something.”

There were a lot of scuffing and thumping noises coming from the house. The door was flung open, and Ace backed out, dragging the bag. He saw Ivan and paled. “Oh crap!”

Ivan pointed at the bag. “Mr. Kulecza?”

“It’s not really as bad as it seems,” Melody said. “I can explain.”

Ivan had a flashback of past conversations about broken pigs’ legs and cancerous growths and wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the explanation.

Melody saw the tense set to his mouth and decided not to wait for encouragement.

“Everyone in town was really upset when they found out you had to put Haben up for sale to save the factory. We tried to raise enough money to pay for the changes ourselves, but we couldn’t even come close. Then Lucy had a brainstorm. She found out Stephanie had just come into a ton of money and wanted to leave New Jersey. It was too good to be true. Not only would Stephanie be the perfect person to buy Haben, but she’d be the perfect person to match up with you. All we had to do was get you two to fall in love and get married, and you could live Habenly ever after.”

Ivan stood statue still while he absorbed what he’d just heard. The whole damn town had plotted to get him married. And worse than that, they’d plotted to get him back into Haben. He felt like a gold digger! An opportunist! He was touched by their concern, and he was furious at their meddling.

“Just exactly what did you do to ensure we’d fall in love?”

Melody backed up a step at the controlled anger in his voice. “Well, we thought it would be good if we could get Stephanie to take a cruise, but she wouldn’t cooperate. Lucy tried all summer to get her on the boat, but no, Stephanie didn’t have time. So as a last resort we came up with this plan to get her on board as cook. We broke a whole lot of stuff and set her up with workmen who would overcharge, then when we knew her money was short, we offered her Stanley Shelton.”

Stephanie gasped. “You wasted my money! How could you do that? I needed that money.”

“We couldn’t think of anything else to do. Besides, we have almost all of it in a bank account for you. Lenny Schneider fixed your porch for free, and Hyram Mayler didn’t actually give you a new water heater… he gave you your old water heater back. The only thing we didn’t count on was the toilet. It got cracked by accident. I haven’t any idea how your toilet got cracked.”

A muscle twitched in Ivan’s jaw. “Why did you stow away on the Savage?”

“To keep an eye on you.” Melody defiantly stuck her nose into the air in response to his threatening tone. “We weren’t sure how much pirate blood you’d inherited.”

“I see.” He looked at Stephanie, who was standing rigid at his side. Her face was set in a mask of grim disbelief. He curled his hand around her waist, nestling her a little closer, and gestured at the body bag. “Mr. Kulecza. Doesn’t he have any relatives? I can’t believe someone gave you this guy to throw out of windows.”

Laughter flashed across Melody’s face. “He’s just a dummy. We borrowed him from Zembrowsky’s Funeral Home. My cousin Joey works there. They use Mr. Kulecza to show off the caskets. They named him Mr. Kulecza because he looks like Bucky Kulecza. Remember old Bucky? Used to make lasts?” Melody stooped to unzip the bag. “He’s really lifelike. They use this same stuff to make the robots at Disneyland.

“Things didn’t look as if they were going so well between you guys, so we thought we’d borrow Mr. Kulecza, dangle him in front of Stephanie’s window in the middle of the night, and she’d get scared and turn to you. It sounded great when we thought of it, but dopey Ace stashed Mr. Kulecza in the wrong closet. Then when we tried to dangle him and make ghost sounds, the wind picked up, and he crashed through Stephanie’s window.”

Ivan thought Mr. Kulecza was lucky not to have a bullet hole in the middle of his plastic forehead. He put out a tentative finger and touched the mannequin’s cheek. “What about Mr. and Mrs. Platz?”

“It was a pity haunt. An act of mercy.”

Stephanie knew from police work that surprise and stress were capable of distorting perception. She silently repeated that truth over and over as she rode back to Camden with Ivan.

Melody and Lucy and Ace and possibly seven hundred other people had connived to return Haben to the Rasmussen family. Ivan had nothing to do with it, she told herself. He had proposed because he loved her. It had never occurred to him that he could regain Haben through marriage, right? Right. Why was she even thinking such trash?

She closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat. She couldn’t shake the doubt. If it had occurred to all those shoemakers, it could have occurred to Ivan. She waged a mental debate. Low self-esteem, she told herself. She couldn’t believe Ivan would want to marry her for herself. That was ridiculous, she decided. She liked herself. Her esteem was just fine and dandy. He’d be lucky to get a prize like her. Oh yeah? came the reply. What about Steve? He didn’t want her. Stephanie smacked her forehead. Steve was gay, for crying out loud. He wanted Roger Beldon! She shook her head. She was getting weird. Her CPU was overloaded.