The Grand Finale (3 page)

Berry smiled. It had been a long time since she’d had this sort of motherly attention. Her
own mother was miles away in McMinneville, Oregon, and Allen, her ex-husband, had never given her much attention. She was still amazed at how marriage could be such a lonely way of life. Four years of living with a man who never remembered her birthday or noticed a wayward tear. She’d been so impressed with his cool intelligence and professional aspirations that she’d jumped into marriage without considering his emotional limitations. Thank goodness all that was behind her. She was older and wiser and pleased with her hard-won independence.

“Hello,” Jake Sawyer called from the top of the stairs.

“Goodness,” Mrs. Fitz exclaimed, “who’s the hunk?”

“I’m Berry’s friend.”

Mrs. Dugan gaped at him in dumbfounded silence, her hand frozen in midair.

Jake noticed the water and blood dripping from Berry’s arm and gently removed the wet cloth from Mrs. Dugan’s fingers. He soaked the cloth and applied it to Berry’s scratches.

Having Mrs. Dugan swab away the dirt and blood was one thing. Having Jake Sawyer
minister to her wounds was another. It was disturbingly tender and caring and absolutely unwanted. Berry clenched her teeth, narrowed her eyes, and hoped she looked menacing.

“What are you doing here?” she asked Sawyer.

“Damned if I know,” he said. “I was sitting down there at the curb and couldn’t get myself to drive off. I kept getting this mental picture of you standing out on the highway, thumbing a ride with a pizza box stuck under your arm.”

“So?”

“So I didn’t like it.” His dark eyes searched hers. “You’re really in a bind, aren’t you?”

“I’ll figure something out.”

Jake’s mouth quirked into an embarrassed grin. “I have a confession to make. That was my neighbor’s cat in the tree. She gets up there all the time.”

Berry’s eyes opened wide. “You acted like I was a Peeping Tom.”

“Well? Were you peeping?”

“Only a little!”

She felt her blood pressure rise. It wasn’t her fault. She had been in that tree doing a good
deed, and he’d practically flaunted himself at her. She sprang out of the chair and stood with her fists on her hips.

“What was I supposed to do? You got undressed right in front of the window. Don’t you believe in shades? What are you, some kind of exhibitionist?”

“I just moved in. I haven’t had time to put shades up. Anyway, there aren’t any neighbors for miles.”

Berry turned on her heel and glared at the three ladies who were “tsking” behind her. She frowned and gave a look that said, One word out of any of you and it’s back to the train station.

Jake held his hands up. “Wait. I didn’t come up here to discuss your voyeuristic tendencies.”

“Voyeuristic tendencies! Of all the…You are the most…I am not!”

Berry closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. She opened her eyes and made a flamboyant gesture with her arm, pointing to the door.

“Out!”

Jake took a seat in the vacant rocking chair
and accepted a cup of cocoa from Mrs. Fitz. “Boy, she sure can get riled,” he said.

“Yeah, ain’t she a pip?”

That was the perfect description, Jake thought. Berry Knudsen was a pip. He’d dated lots of women and none of them had been exactly right, and now he realized none of them had been a
pip
.

Berry spun around and flapped her arms at Mrs. Fitz. “Mrs. Fitz, anyone can see this man is leaving. We don’t serve cocoa to men who are leaving.”

“Nonsense. He’s all settled in here.” Mrs. Fitz pressed her lips together in satisfaction. “Don’t he look nice and comfy.”

Mildred Gaspich brought him a plate of chocolate chip cookies. “We just baked these fresh tonight.” She turned to Mrs. Fitz. “Goodness, it’s nice to have a man in the house.”

“Makes me want to put on some fresh lipstick.” Mrs. Fitz laughed. “Too bad I haven’t got any.”

Miss Gaspich put her arm around plump little Lena Fitz. “That’s okay. Pretty soon you’ll have money to buy some lipstick.”

“Berry’s hired us,” Mrs. Fitz explained to Jake.
“We were just about scraping by on our social security checks, living in the Southside Hotel for Ladies, and then they decided to renovate the building and turn it into fancy condominiums. We couldn’t afford anyplace else. We looked real hard, but there just wasn’t a room cheap enough. Finally, they evicted us. We were temporarily holed up in the train station when we saw Berry’s ad in the paper.”

Mrs. Fitz grinned. She was five feet tall with short steel-gray hair that had been permed into two inches of frizz. She was apple-cheeked, with an ample chest and dimples in her elbows and stout knees.

“We know we’re a bunch of old ladies,” Mrs. Fitz said, “but we figured the three of us together might be able to hold down a job. Sort of a package deal.”

Miss Gaspich pulled a kitchen chair close to the rocker. “We walked all over town for days trying to get a job and then Berry hired us. We’d just about given up.”

“This business with the Jeep isn’t gonna change things, is it?” Mrs. Fitz worried. “How bad is the Jeep?”

“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put the Jeep back together again,” Berry told her.

Jake downed the last of the cocoa and stood to leave. “It’s okay, Mrs. Fitz. Berry’s going to use my car until she can replace the Jeep.”

Berry looked at him wide-eyed. “I can’t deliver pizzas in your car.”

Jake somberly chewed a cookie. “It was my cat that started this fiasco. I feel responsible.”

He leaned close to Berry and whispered in an aside, “Besides, I liked kissing you.”

Berry ignored the heat that burned in her cheeks. “I can’t deliver pizzas in a megabucks car!”

Mrs. Fitz whistled behind her. “You mean he looks like this, and he’s rich, too?”

“I invented Gunk.”

Mrs. Fitz’s eyes popped wide open. “That disgusting slimy stuff you can eat? I love that stuff.”

Jake turned to Berry. “My school is just three blocks from here. I’ll drop the car off on my way to work tomorrow morning.”

Berry looked at the stacks of pizza boxes and wondered how she was ever going to get them all into Jake Sawyer’s two-seater. Eighteen large pizzas and seven small, all due at Windmere Technicals by twelve-thirty. She groaned. If it hadn’t been for these lunch contracts she would never have accepted Jake’s offer. The car was too expensive, too powerful, too exotic. What if she scratched it? The car was perfect, for crying out loud. How could anything that old look so new? We aren’t talking about a two-hundred-dollar Jeep here. We’re talking about an outrageously extravagant toy in mint condition.

And what about Jake Sawyer? Another extravagant toy, Berry thought. Too powerful, too expensive, too exotic…and in mint condition. She’d spent half the night reviewing his kiss
and knew it was in her best interest to not have a repeat performance. Berry had interrupted her education once for a man, and she wasn’t about to make the same mistake again. She would borrow Jake’s car only until she could find a better solution to her problem, and she would steer clear of its owner.

She speared the car keys with her pinky finger and pushed through the front door, balancing six large pizza boxes in her outstretched arms. She squinted into the light drizzle, wondering where Jake had parked. He’d said the car was directly in front of the Pizza Place. Berry held the door open with her foot.

“Mrs. Fitz,” she called over her shoulder. “You took the keys from Jake this morning. Where’d he park the car?”

Mrs. Fitz wiped her hands on her big white apron and shook her head. “Goodness’ sakes, child, the car’s right in front of you. It’s right here in front of the store.” Mrs. Fitz walked to the front of the store, and her eyes opened extra wide. “Where’s the car?”

“Maybe Jake moved it. Maybe he changed his mind.”

“I don’t think so. We’ve got his keys.”

Berry felt her heart stutter. Jake’s expensive car was missing.

“There’s probably a simple explanation,” she said.

“Yup,” Mrs. Fitz said. “The explanation is simple all right. Someone stole Jake’s car.”

Berry staggered back into the store and deposited the pizza boxes on the counter. The car was stolen! She’d had possession of it exactly three and a half hours, and it now had gotten itself stolen. How was that possible? Why hadn’t they seen it happening?

“Jake’s not gonna be happy about this,” Mrs. Fitz said, shaking her head.

“One minute it was there, and then the next minute…poof!” Berry said.

“It was like aliens took it,” Mrs. Fitz said. “Like they just beamed it up. Right out from under our noses.” Mrs. Fitz dialed a number. “I’m calling a taxi so I can deliver the pizzas. You stay here and call the police. Maybe they’ll get the car back before Jake gets out of school.”

Berry’s face brightened. That was a hopeful
thought. It wasn’t exactly run-of-the-mill. The police would probably have an easy time finding it.

Four hours later, Mrs. Fitz placed a plate of cookies and a glass of milk in front of Jake. “It’s not so bad. Nobody’s been hurt. You just lost your car for a while.”

Jake stared glassy-eyed at the cookies, mumbling things Berry couldn’t quite catch. Things that might sound like…I knew I was doomed the minute I saw her.

Mrs. Dugan patted his hand. “We filed a police report. The officers said they’d be sure to find an unusual car like that.”

“It’s unique. I had it specially restored. There’s not another one like it in the whole world.”

Be sympathetic, Berry thought. Remember how devastated you were when your car jumped off that cliff?

Yes, she answered herself, but I needed that car to exist.
This
car was a toy. And
this
car was insured.

Berry, Berry, Berry, she chanted. Men love their toys. And everyone knows there’s this
whole complicated connection between men and their cars and their cock-a-doodle. Although from what she’d seen, Jake’s cock-a-doodle really didn’t need automotive fortification. Still, it was hard to be sympathetic when there was that business with him mumbling about being doomed. She suspected he was mumbling about her…as if she was a disaster or something.

She pounded pizza dough on the large wooden counter behind Jake. I am
not
a disaster, she thought. Okay, so I fell out of a tree. Big deal. It could happen to anyone. And then my Jeep committed suicide. I don’t really see where that was my fault. Finally, did I ask him to loan me his car? No! Did I tell him to park it on this street? No! And I didn’t ask him to kiss me, either!

Mrs. Fitz peered across the counter at Berry. “Good heavens, child, you’re just about beating that poor dough to death.”

Berry blew out a sigh. For a full year after her divorce she’d taken her frustrations out on pizza dough. If it hadn’t been for pizza dough she might have turned into a homicidal maniac. Then little by little her life had fallen into place, her sunny
disposition had returned, peace and purpose had replaced the disorder of disillusionment.

Berry poked at the massacred lump. She’d known Jake Sawyer for less than twenty-four hours and here she was smashing innocent pizza dough again. The man was a threat to her sanity. He gave her an upset stomach. He made her act like a boob, blushing and stammering and falling out of trees.

You don’t need this, Berry thought, taking a vicious swipe at the dough with her wooden rolling pin. Someday she would be ready for another relationship—but not now. First, she had to get the Pizza Place on its feet. Second, she’d get her bachelor’s degree. Third…

Third was interrupted by the phone ringing. Mrs. Fitz answered and smiled. “It’s the police. They’ve found the car!”

Jake stared at the address Mrs. Fitz had written. “The corner of Grande and Seventeenth Street.”

Berry pulled her quilted vest over a gray hooded sweatshirt. “I know where that is. It’s less than half a mile from here. We can walk.”

Jake stood in the doorway, zipped his parka, and took a grim assessment. A cold mist driz
zled down the grimy brick facades of nearby stores, and intermittent gusts of wind buffeted plate-glass windows. Sodden newspapers and assorted litter slapped against doorways and clogged gutters. This part of town wasn’t attractive, and it obviously wasn’t safe. And it was
not
the ideal neighborhood for a defenseless, pretty little blond and three little old ladies, Jake thought.

Berry knew what Jake was seeing. He was seeing bars at first-floor windows installed to prevent burglaries. He was seeing the empty beer cans and wine bottles that hadn’t made it into trash cans. He was imagining thugs lurking in the alleys, and poverty hiding behind closed doors.

“It’s not all that bad,” Berry said to Jake. “You see that cheery yellow light in the window above Giovanni’s Grocery? That’s Mrs. Giovanni making supper. In the summer she hangs window boxes from her kitchen window and fills them with red geraniums. The apartment building next to me houses four generations of Lings. Last year Charlie Ling won first prize at his school science fair.”

“So you really like this neighborhood?”

Berry shrugged. “It’s okay. I’d rather look out my window and see a meadow or a mountain, but instead I have Mrs. Giovanni’s bold red geraniums. I try to make the best of it.”

Jake smiled down at her. Damned if she wasn’t getting to him. He added
loyal
and
positive
to his earlier assessments of
kind to old ladies, resilient
, and
slightly daffy
.

Nice smile, Berry thought, but she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know what was going on inside his head. He looked like the wolf that wanted to eat Red Riding Hood’s grandma.

“This way,” Berry said, heading for Grande.

Jake snagged her arm. “Hold it, Goldilocks, where’s your umbrella?”

“I don’t own an umbrella.”

“Then at least put your hood up.”

“I hate wearing hoods.”

“Mrs. Dugan would take her wooden spoon to you if she caught you out in the rain like this without a hat.”

“Back off!” Berry said.

Jake Sawyer mentally checked off the boxes labeled
temper
and
stubborn
. And then he de
cided it was all adorable on her, so he kissed her.

“Good grief,” Berry said.

Jake rocked back on his heels and smiled. He was infatuated.

“I have to admit, it’s a little unnerving knowing you’ve seen me naked,” he said to Berry. Actually,
unnerving
wasn’t precisely correct, Jake thought. A better word might be
erotic
.

“I didn’t see you naked. I fell out of the tree before you got to the really good stuff.”

Jake was glad she thought he had good stuff, but he was sort of disappointed she hadn’t seen it. He’d had a really good fantasy going for a while there.

He pulled her hood over her head and tied the drawstring securely into a bow in his best first-grade-teacher fashion. Without saying another word he took her hand and pulled her along beside him.

As they approached Grande Street Berry felt his grip tighten. Big, strong Jake Sawyer was nervous. He really did like his flashy car. Berry didn’t know much about cars, but she knew about losing things you love. She knew about
the pain and anxiety such a loss produced. Berry felt an overwhelming urge to rush out and buy Jake Sawyer a pint of his favorite ice cream. Instead she squeezed his hand and sent him her most comforting smile.

He glanced down at her. “I’m kind of nervous.”

“I guessed.”

“Probably it’s okay.”

“Probably,” Berry said, not entirely believing it. With the way her luck had been running, the car would be picked cleaner than a turkey carcass the day after Thanksgiving.

They turned the corner and found several officers standing hands on hips by a black-and-white squad car, inspecting an article at curbside. It took several seconds before Jake and Berry recognized the object of their curiosity. At first glance it seemed to be a piece of scrap metal resting on four cinder blocks.

Jake expelled a well-chosen expletive that caused the officers to turn in his direction.

“Is that my car?” Jake asked.

“If you’re Jake Sawyer, that’s your car. What’s left of it,” one of the cops said.

Jake stretched his hands out in despair. “What the…oh…man! Look at this. How could this happen so fast?”

“Modern technology,” one of the cops said.

Jake kicked at the cinder block and swore some more.

Berry trotted beside him as he paced back and forth the length of the car carcass. “It’s not so bad. The insurance will buy you a new one. You do have insurance, don’t you?”

“Of course I have insurance. Who cares about insurance? This car was irreplaceable.”

“Nonsense. There must be parts somewhere. Just put it back together.”

“Put it back together? Berry, this isn’t a fruitcake we’re talking about. This was an exquisitely tuned, handcrafted piece of machinery. This was a part of history.” Jake stopped pacing and plunged his hands into his pockets. “Anyway, this was my Gunk car. It was special,” he added quietly.

Berry was beginning to understand why he loved the flashy car so much. He’d given himself a present. It wasn’t just a car, it represented a new life. No more fluorescent lights. No more
boring glue. She thought maybe squandering all his money on a house and a car had been an act of confidence for Jake Sawyer. It was a way of saying, It’s okay to spend all the Gunk money, because I’m going to be a success at my new career. I’m going to make a lot more money. And now he’d lost his Gunk car, and maybe he was a little afraid he’d never be able to replace it.

Jake turned to the officer. “Do you know who did this?”

“We’ll ask around. Sometimes we get lucky and come up with a name.”

Jake stared morosely at his car. “This is damn depressing.”

Berry linked her arm through his and narrowed her eyes in mock annoyance. “This will never do, Sawyer,” she said. “You’re an inventor. You’re supposed to be happy.”

“Yeah, but this sad hunk of scrap metal was my toy.”

“Don’t you have any other toys?”

He shook his head. “I’m really a very dull person. Work, work, work.”

“That was back in your glue days. Now you’re an inventor. Now it’s play, play, play.”

He studied her for a moment. She was trying to cheer him up. And she was doing a halfway okay job of it.

“Are you sure you didn’t see me naked?” he asked her.

Berry opened one eye and grimaced. Six o’clock in the morning and Mrs. Fitz was making tea.

“Mrs. Fitz, don’t you ever sleep?” Berry asked.

“Old people don’t need so much sleep. Anyway, it isn’t any fun sleeping with those two. They snore.” Mrs. Fitz added a dollop of honey to her tea. “Now, if I had a man in my bed, well, that’d be something different.”

Berry straightened her flannel nightie and swung her legs over the side of the couch. The large front room of her apartment served as living room, dining room, and efficiency kitchen. The other smaller room, her bedroom, had been turned into a dormitory for the ladies. She liked the ladies and enjoyed their company, but she dearly missed the comfort of her nice, big bed. She rubbed a sore spot on her back and slid her feet into a pair of slippers that looked like raccoons.