The Grand Finale

by Janet Evanovich

  Berry self-consciously crossed her arms over her newfound cleavage. “Jake, about this grand finale. I’m sort of a traditional person.”

  “Damn, now I’ve made you nervous, too.” His eyes traveled around the crowded house. “If only we could find some nice quiet place we could still do it.”

  “Well, ah…no sense being hasty about this. Maybe it would be best if we waited.”

  “Aha!” His face lit up. “The bathroom. We can do it in the bathroom.”

  Eek, Berry thought. What the heck was he going to do to her in the bathroom?

  Jake draped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into the powder room adjacent to the kitchen. He locked the door behind him and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Um, maybe you’d better sit down.”

  Berry looked at the only possible seat and cracked her knuckles. “Do I have to sit? I mean, couldn’t we start out standing?”

  “Sure. I just thought—this is a little awkward.”

  Awkward? This wasn’t awkward. It was insane. The man had flipped. She must have flipped, too. Why else would she have followed him in here?

  Jake looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure how to begin.”

  Oh, boy, this was going to be another disaster. She could feel it coming. Her mother had lived for fifty-two years without ever losing a mitten, much less a car. Her mother had a sane, orderly life that never included exploding cereal, burning apartments, or being locked in the bathroom with a crazy man. How did it happen that someone who’d inherited those sensible Scandinavian genes could be fated to stumble through life in such an absurd fashion?

  “Listen, Jake, it isn’t exactly that I have anything against doing it in the bathroom. After all, it was great in the shower, but this is different. This is sort of strange.”

  Jake grinned. “You think I brought you in here to ravish your body?”

  “Of course not. That’s ridiculous.” She bit her lip. “Well, yes.”

  “Honey, that’s so naughty.”

  Berry’s cheeks flamed. “What the devil did you bring me in here for?”

  “To propose.”

  She closed the lid and sat down with a thud. “Maybe I’ll sit down after all.”

  Jake took a small blue velvet box from his pocket and assumed the traditional proposal position of kneeling on one knee. “Berry, will you…”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Occupied!” Jake shouted. He popped the ring box open, and a huge diamond twinkled at Berry. “I’d like to take more time with this, but someone wants to use the bathroom.” He quickly slipped the ring on her limp finger. “Will you marry me?”

  Berry sat absolutely mute, staring at the ring in dazed disbelief. What if she actually married him? Someday her children would ask how she got engaged, and she’d have to tell them it was while she was sitting on the toilet. Her mother got engaged at a church picnic. Her sister got engaged in a fancy restaurant. Lingonberry Knudsen got engaged on the toilet.

  Jake patted her hand. “Too excited to speak?”

  Berry opened her mouth, but no words emerged. Her mind was a blank. They hadn’t invented words yet that suited this occasion.

  “You feel okay? You’re not going to faint, are you?”

  Faint? Faint was the last thing she’d do. She was recovering from the shock, and she was damn mad. She was so mad her skin felt clammy and two bright red spots stained her cheeks. She clenched her fists and pressed her lips together.

  Jake took a step backward. “Uh-oh, you’re mad.”

  “Yes. No.” She threw her hands into the air. “I don’t know what I am!”

  “I had a speech prepared, but some senior citizen has to use the facility.”

  This was a special moment for Jake, Berry realized. A fragile moment. And she didn’t want to ruin it. She didn’t want to rain on his parade. Problem was she had this anger. It was just there, bubbling inside her.

  “I’m having issues,” Berry said.

  “Do you love me?”

  “Of course I love you.”

  Jake wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. “Then everything will work out just fine.”

  There was another loud rap at the door.

  Jake unlocked the door and ushered Berry past a wiry, gray-haired lady. “Sorry we took so long,” he apologized.

  “Merciful heavens,” the woman exclaimed in a sharp intake of breath. She looked disapprovingly at Berry and slammed the door.

  Mrs. Fitz suddenly appeared, shaking her finger. “I saw the two of you come out of the bathroom together. What the devil were you doing in there?”

  Jake held Berry’s hand up to display the ring. “Getting engaged.”

  “That’s wonderful!” Mrs. Fitz said, clasping her hands to her chest.

  Berry snatched her hand away. “Actually, we were only talking about getting engaged. I don’t think—”

  “Listen up, everyone,” Mrs. Fitz shouted. “Berry and Jake got engaged.”

  A pretty brunette extended her hand to Berry. “I’m Jake’s sister Penny. I’m so relieved to see Jake’s finally fallen in love. We thought it’d never happen.” Penny grinned at her older brother. “Everyone in the family’s tried to find a girl for Mr. Picky, here, but nothing doing. Jake always said he’d know when the right one came along, and he wasn’t going to settle.”

  Jake slid his arm around Berry. “It’s true. I said that.”

  Berry looked at the beautiful ring and felt her stomach turn. Was getting engaged supposed to make a person nauseous?

  Chapter 9

  Berry stood in the doorway and watched the last of Mildred’s belongings get loaded into the back of the station wagon. She raised a hand and waved. “Good-bye,” she whispered.

  Jake put an arm around her. “Why so sad? Mildred and Bill will have a good life together.”

  Berry shrugged. She didn’t know why she was sad, but she was dangerously close to crying. Mrs. Dugan was gone. Now Mildred was gone. Her newly adopted family was disbanding, and she felt bereft. “Guess I’m pretty silly, huh?”

  “Yup.” Jake held her close, resting his cheek against her curls.

  “It isn’t as if I’ll never see them again. When Mildred and Bill come back from their honeymoon they’ll be working at the Pizza Place just like always.”

  “Yup.”

  “And Mrs. Dugan will be home in another week.”

  “Yup.”

  “And I’m engaged,” Berry added.

  “You make it sound like a dental appointment.”

  Berry turned to face him. “I don’t want you to take this personally, but being engaged upsets my stomach.”

  Jake looked down at her. “You don’t want me to take that personally?”

  “I didn’t sleep a wink last night. I lay there all night long thinking about the dog, the house, the ring…you. It’s like a dream come true. Everything I’ve always wanted has suddenly been dropped at my feet.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “Every time I look at this ring I get nauseous.”

  “Maybe you have the flu,” Jake said.

  “Maybe my stomach is smarter than my brain. Maybe it’s trying to tell me something.”

  “Are you serious about this?”

  “You think I’m crazy, huh?”

  “The word fruitcake did flit through my mind.”

  Berry nervously twisted the ring on her finger. “But my stomach…”

  “Don’t listen to your stomach. Stomachs are stupid.”

  Berry’s attention turned to the leggy kitten that strolled across the front lawn. “If it hadn’t been for that cat we probably wouldn’t be engaged.”

  Rrrrrf! Calamity Jane appeared in the doorway and raced down the lawn after the cat. The puppy stopped seven inches from the surprised kitten and bounced around. Rrrrf. Rrrrrf. The kitten narrowed its eyes and swiped at the dog’s nose. Jane yelped and bolted for the house.

  Just then Mrs. Fitz thundered down
the stairs. “I see you,” she said to Jane. “If I get hold of you there’s gonna be dog stew.” Mrs. Fitz waved a mangled piece of brown leather at Berry. “That blasted animal ate my pocketbook. It’s a hazard to live here. Good thing I’ve got plans.”

  Berry raised her eyebrows. “Plans?”

  Mrs. Fitz beamed. “Harry’s on his way over here. He borrowed his son’s motor home for a week, and we’re gonna go see the Grand Canyon. I’ve never been there. I was worried about going away and leaving you alone at the Pizza Place, but Jake said it was okay. He said the two of you could handle it just fine.”

  “Jake knew about this?”

  “Mrs. Fitz discussed it with me this morning while you were in the shower. I knew you wouldn’t want to stand in the way of the Grand Canyon.”

  “Well, no, of course not, but what about the lunch contracts? I can’t handle the lunch contracts alone, and you’ll be teaching.”

  Jake opened the patio door to let some air into the house. “My teaching career has been cut short. Mrs. Newfarmer is feeling better, and she’s returning to her class on Monday.”

  Berry jammed her fists onto her hips. “Nobody ever tells me anything. Why am I always the last to know what’s going on around here?”

  Mrs. Fitz pressed her lips together. “Because you either got your nose in a schoolbook or your hand in the refrigerator. And when you’re not doing either of those, you’re in the shower. Never seen anybody take so many showers. It’s a wonder you haven’t grown webbed feet.”

  “Showers relax me.”

  Jake looked at her sidewise.

  “Sometimes they relax me.”

  A horn tooted outside, and Mrs. Fitz scrambled back upstairs. “That’s Harry. Tell him I’ll be right there. I’m just going to fetch my things.”

  Berry held tight to Jake’s hand. “Mrs. Fitz is leaving! Do something.”

  “I offered to help with her luggage, but she said she was traveling light.”

  Berry grunted in exasperation. “I’m not talking about luggage. I’m talking about Mrs. Fitz and Harry. We have to stop them.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? There are lots of good reasons.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “They’re old. What if they have a heart attack going through the desert? What if Mrs. Fitz forgets her blood pressure medicine? What if she can’t find prune juice?”

  “You sound like June Cleaver waiting for Wally to come home from his first date.”

  “Hell.” She sat on the lowest step, resting her elbows on her knees, and her chin in her hands. Okay, Berry, she thought, what’s the real because? Because I don’t want to live all alone in this terrific house with Jake. Things were happening too fast. One minute she was delivering pizza to Quasimodo, and three weeks later she was engaged. Her stomach told her to take the ring off, but she couldn’t—it was stuck. Stuck on her swollen finger, stuck to her love-struck heart. What a mess.

  Mrs. Fitz sidled past her wearing jeans and a backpack. “What do you think?” she said, modeling her outfit. “Harry got these duds for me. Pretty nice, huh?”

  Harry waved from the front door, and Mrs. Fitz hugged Berry. “Boy, this is gonna be great. Harry and I are gonna live in sin and see the Grand Canyon all at the same time. Isn’t that something?”

  Berry followed Mrs. Fitz to the front porch and watched the motor home rumble away. “When I grow up I want to be just like Mrs. Fitz.”

  There was the sound of glass breaking, followed by puppy feet clattering across the kitchen floor. Cat and dog burst out the front door and ran straight for Berry and Jake.

  Jake snared Jane and carried her into the house. The cat held her ground on the porch, refusing to set foot inside.

  “Smart cat,” Berry said. “This house suddenly smells awful.”

  Jake’s voice faltered. “I don’t notice any smell.”

  “Are you kidding me? Any minute now the paint’s going to start peeling off the walls. It smells like my apartment!”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “I’d know that stench anywhere. It reminds me of rotten fish in a gym locker.”

  Her face reflected total bafflement, and then the significance of the familiar odor began to register in her mind. She held a kitchen towel across her nose and headed for the basement.

  “That smell is coming from your lab,” Berry said.

  Jake handed Jane over. “I’ll go down and survey the damage.”

  Seconds later Jake rushed up the stairs and slammed the door behind him, gasping for air and grinning sheepishly. The expression on his flushed face was half embarrassed little boy and half unrepentant scoundrel.

  “Looks like the animals chased each other around some down there and knocked over a few beakers. Nothing dangerous, but this house is going to smell like a dead groundhog for a few days. Even if I shut all the vents and doors, the fumes will still travel through the air-conditioning system.”

  The light bulb flicked on in Berry’s head. That stinking odor had kept her from returning to her apartment. And it was manufactured in Jake Sawyer’s cellar. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand,” she said to him, “it’s a sneaky chemist!”

  “I prefer to think of myself as clever. I was a man on a mission.”

  Berry blew out a sigh. No one was ever going to accuse Jake Sawyer of being a quitter. And that was good, right? Tenacity was an admirable quality.

  “Anyway, I only tricked you a little,” Jake said. “In the beginning your apartment smelled bad all by itself.”

  “You’ve probably lied to me about all sorts of things. You’ve probably got a wife somewhere. Kids. More dogs.”

  Jake hadn’t lied to her but he did have a secret, he thought. Eventually she’d find out, but not right now. He’d tell her when the time was right. After he was certain she loved him. The fact that she still had the ring on her finger was a good sign, right? It had to mean she was actually considering marrying him. He knew he was rushing her, but he had no choice.

  Jake parked in front of the Pizza Place and reached behind him for Calamity Jane. He grabbed an armful of clothes from the backseat and waited patiently while the puppy wandered aimlessly around on the sidewalk.

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Berry said. “My apartment is tiny, and I haven’t had a chance to replace my furniture.” And more to the point, there were no ladies to act as chaperones. They would be living together as if they were married, Berry thought. Her fear was that she would like it and she might be wearing a wedding band beside the engagement ring much sooner than she wanted. Act in haste, regret at leisure, her mother had always said.

  “It will only be for a couple days,” Jake told her. “As soon as my house gets back to normal we can move out of here.”

  Berry twisted the ring on her finger. She should have immediately taken it off, but she’d given in to circumstances. And now she was giving in to circumstances again. She wanted to believe she was being kind and sensitive, but she suspected she was just being a wimp. Not to mention there was a scary part of her that loved the ring and all it promised.

  “Maybe she’s empty,” Jake said after a few minutes of no action from Jane.

  He scooped the puppy up in his arms, and they all trooped upstairs. Berry opened windows that were still barren of curtains, and Jake set Jane down on the new carpet.

  “Your apartment doesn’t smell bad,” Jake said. “The chemical is potent but not long-lived. It lasts two to three days at most, and I haven’t been here since mid-week.”

  If and when there’s a marriage, there will have to be clauses written into the vows, Berry thought. Thou shalt not give your wife experimental cereal, and thou shalt not brew and distribute stink oil without permission.

  Jane was in the middle of the floor, sitting quietly.

  “She has a strange expression on her face,” Berry said.

  Jake agreed. “She looks like she’s concentrating.”

  And then without warning, Jane sto
od and burped and pooped on the new carpet.

  Berry was speechless.

  “Maybe we should have one of these rooms carpeted with grass,” Jake said.

  Ten minutes later the poop was bagged and carted outside to the trash, and the carpet had been cleaned to within an inch of its life. Jane was running in circles, and Berry was at the kitchen sink doing a surgical-quality scrub on her hands. She had soapsuds up to her elbows, and she was wondering if she was cut out for motherhood. The floppy-eared dogs and the kids sounded good on paper, but this was reality and her apartment was back to smelling stinky. She lathered herself one last time and the diamond ring slipped off her finger, sailed through the air, and bounced onto the carpet in front of Jane. In an instant the ring was nowhere to be seen.

  Berry’s eyes opened wide. “I think Jane just ate the ring.”

  Jake looked skeptically at the little dog. “That’s impossible.”

  “Honest to goodness, I think she swallowed the ring.”

  Jake dropped to his knees and raked his hand through the carpet. “Jane, you canine garbage pail, tell me you didn’t eat that expensive, undigestible ring.”

  “Oh, Lord, what’s going to happen to her?” Berry carefully cradled the fat puppy. “Will she be all right? Will she die? Dogs can’t eat rings, can they?”

  “To begin with, we’re not even sure if she ate the ring.”

  They crawled around on the rug for several minutes, searching in vain for the diamond.

  Berry had difficulty finding her voice. “It’s not here. Maybe we should take her to a vet.”

  Jake stroked a soft, floppy ear. “I suppose we should.”

  Berry held the dog close and headed for the stairs. “There’s a veterinary clinic just a couple blocks from here. I pass it on my way to school. I think it’s one of those twenty-four-hour emergency things so maybe it will be open on Sunday.”

  Jake drove, and Berry held Jane while she whimpered and wriggled.

  “It’s okay, Jane,” Berry said. “We’re almost there. The vet will know what to do.”

  Jake opened the clinic door to an empty well-lit waiting room. “Guess there’s not much happening in the veterinary world on Sunday morning.”