Love Overboard - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,40

resist teasing. “Have a rough night?”

She glanced over her shoulder to make sure the dining room was empty. “Why am I the only one walking funny?”

“Because you’re the one who got greedy and woke me up in the middle of the night,” he said, covering her hand with his and smiling at her with such unabashed affection that she was sure anyone watching would instantly know they’d shared a bed.

“Don’t men get sore?”

“I try to keep in shape,” he bragged, polishing off a tumbler of fresh-squeezed orange juice. “Practice, practice, practice.”

Mr. and Mrs. Platz came in and took seats at the table. “It’s raining,” Mrs. Platz said morosely. “First no leaves, and now rain. And this is a lovely inn, but I hardly slept last night. The wind was howling, something terrible. And there were thumping noises and crashing noises. Lord, for a while there it sounded as if something was banging on my window.”

Melody served them pancakes and sausage and glasses of juice. “Must have been Tess. I warned you about putting Mr. and Mrs. Platz in that room.”

Eileen Platz put her hand to her throat. “Who’s Tess?”

“Tess is our ghost,” Melody told her cheerfully. “She’s really a nice old lady, but she only likes to have Ivan sleep in her bedroom.”

“Well,” Mrs. Platz said, sizing up Ivan, “I don’t suppose I blame her.”

Ivan tipped back in his chair. “Tess was the wife of Red Rasmussen, the pirate. She predates this house by about 150 years, but the current Haben was built directly over the foundation of the original Haben, and some believe she’s taken up residence here. Legend has it that Red died at sea, and Tess died waiting for him.”

“How romantic,” Mrs. Platz said. “How sad.”

“It wasn’t Tess that was at the window last night,” Stephanie said. “It was—” She paused and poured herself a cup of coffee. “It was the wind. It blew one of the branches from the oak tree into my window and smashed the glass. We’re going to have to trim that tree back,” she added lamely, looking at Ivan.

Mr. Platz dug into the sausages. “These are terrific. Are they homemade?”

“I get them from the butcher down the street,” Stephanie said. “He makes fresh sausage every Thursday.”

Melody brought herself a plate of pancakes and took her place at the table. She eyed the sausage critically.

“Does he add nitrates? Is the meat cured?” She opened her dark eyes extra wide. “I read about nitrates. They’re chemicals that they put in the meat to make it change color and stuff, and they give you cancer. They make your pancreas rot away, and you die writhing in pain. And if you drink beer while you eat the nitrates, you get huge cancerous tumors that grow all over your body. And do you know what they make sausage out of? Ground-up pigs. Have you ever seen a sausage pig? They’re big. We’re talking really big—”

“Excuse me,” Stephanie said, “I think we’ve already had the discussion about pigs.”

Melody blinked black mascara-caked lashes at her. “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

Mrs. Platz leaned forward. “About this ghost, has anyone ever seen her?”

“I talk to her all the time,” Melody said. She lowered her voice for emphasis. “We be mates.”

Mrs. Platz’s eyes glittered, and she sucked air through her narrow mouth. “Do you think she’d talk to me? I’ve always felt very strong cosmic vibrations, but I’ve never actually talked to a ghost.”

Melody shrugged. “She hangs out on the widow’s walk.”

“Does she materialize? Does she drip ectoplasm?”

Melody’s face was expressionless as she ate her pancakes. “Mostly she just hangs out.”

“Well, how do you contact her? Do you have to go into a trance? Do you need a white candle?”

“She likes cookies,” Melody said. “She has a real sweet tooth.”

Mrs. Platz looked confused. “How can a ghost eat cookies?”

“I eat them,” Melody said matter-of-factly. “Then I tell her about them, and she gets turned on by that.”

“Lord, I would love to see a ghost. My neighbor, Sophia Schroth, would die if she knew I’d talked to a ghost.” She looked at her husband. “I knew I should have gone to the window last night.”

“Ms. Lowe said it was the wind, and that’s what it was… the wind,” Mr. Platz told her.

“It was the wind at Ms. Lowe’s window, but it might have been Tess at ours. We were sleeping in her bedroom.”

Mr. Platz rolled his eyes. “You need to get help, Eileen. You’re beginning to sound like your aunt Rose.” Mr. Platz leaned toward