“Okay, if you say so.”
“That’s if you’re still up for the plan we talked about.”
“The three of us? Sure, I’m all for that. Hell, you were right about that. I shouldn’t be keeping secrets from him. No matter what. I need to be the kind of person I want to be and not the kind of person he is. And I don’t want to be someone with secrets.”
“You do love him, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I wish I didn’t but…”
“He provides well for you. Are you sure you want to know this stuff?”
“I don’t give a shit about that. Like I said, I’d rather live in a trailer house and know where I stand than live in a mansion with a guy whose just trying to avoid me.”
“According to this, he should be in Copenhagen right now and return on Thursday. Want to have supper? Out? I don’t cook.”
“Sure, then we can go to my place?”
The two women smiled at each other as they walked to a nearby Thai restaurant.
--
“Would you like a Syrah? Or here’s a nice Cabernet.”
“Either one is fine with me.” Angela sat in one of the velvet armchairs in the living room while Ronda opened and poured the Cabernet.
“How did you ever start- I mean, I wanted to make love with a woman for a long time, but I never could. I was afraid that…” Ronda set the two glasses on the teak coffee table, sat in the other armchair, and lifted her glass to Angela.
Angela returned the salute. “Ah, that was a long time ago.”
“Can you tell me?”
“Sure. It started when I was a kid, I guess. It was all very innocent. I masturbated from the time I was in kindergarten at least. I didn’t know what it was, just that it felt good to touch myself down there. My mom told me that it was okay but that it was like going to the bathroom, something I should do by myself. She also warned me that nobody else should touch me there.”
“Sure, everyone masturbates, even if they don’t know it. I used to hump my stuffed animals. I was masturbating but didn’t know what I was doing. How did that become making love with women?”
“By the time I was twelve I was doing sleepovers with my best friend. She lived in the same neighborhood and we often slept at her place or mine. When we did that we’d sleep in the same bed. One night it was hot and we took off our pajamas. She asked me if I liked to touch myself ‘down there’. I was so embarrassed I didn’t know what to do. But I said yes. She asked if I would touch her there. My mom had told me not to let others touch me, but never mentioned me touching someone else. So I did.”
“Did you have your psychic powers yet?”
“Not the same way I do now. They were just coming in, but I had enough to figure out what to do-what she enjoyed. She asked if I knew how to kiss. I didn’t. We had both seen people doing it in movies and on TV, but we didn’t know how. So we experimented and it wasn’t long ‘til we mastered that. We both liked it. I kept touching her with my fingers and she began to tremble the way I did when I was doing it to myself. I knew what she was experiencing and knew it was good. Then, in spite of what my mom told me, she did me. That was the first time.”
“What happened then?”
“We didn’t connect any of that to sex. But then we got our periods and we began to figure things out a little bit. The boy-girl thing. We got our boobs and boys were trying to kiss us and feel our boobs.”
“I guess that’s the same everywhere.”
“Maybe. Anyway, she moved away and I never saw her again. End of story.”
“Until now?”
“No. End of that story. I had a boyfriend in high school. He said he loved me and if I loved him I’d let him fuck me. I knew that one and I knew I didn’t want to get pregnant or get an STD. So I kept my legs crossed unless it was my hand between them. I lost my virginity when I was seventeen in college. All I knew was that I was ready. I didn’t know who or when or where. I was available for the first guy who asked, the first one who tried anything. That was anticlimactic…”
Ronda giggled at the pun.
“Thanks. It was anticlimactic but at least I knew enough about sex to keep up with the other girls in the dorm. Anyway, I never did like it much. I didn’t have any special feelings for any of the guys. They were just guys. It was like a game the girls played. Who’s fucking who. Keeping score.”
Angela was silent as she sipped her wine. “But there was a girl on the rowing team. The coxswain, the boss of the boat?”
“She’s the little one that tells people what to do?”
“Yeah. She invited me to her place one night and it was just like being twelve again. It was pleasant, nice, innocent, but entirely sexual and wonderful. Almost as good as when I’m with you. Much better than any man.”
“Say that again.” Ronda refilled her glass.
“So that’s when I knew it wasn’t just a childish fluke. And I was hearing all this stuff about lesbians in college. But I knew I wasn’t like the lesbians I knew.”
“You were still doing guys?”
“Yeah. Too many. And I could tell what they were thinking. Half the time they were fantasizing about some other woman while they were fucking me. That ruined it. I couldn’t come like that. It made them mad when they couldn’t make me come. So lots of times it would go bad.”
“Were you married when you had the kid?”
“We’re coming to that. Then there was a guy who was madly in love with me. A lot of girls are never sure about that, but I was lucky enough to be able to tell. He was totally into me. That I couldn’t resist. I married him when he asked at the beginning of our senior year. I had the baby just after we graduated.”
“It didn’t last?”
“Drunk driver killed him.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Even though he was crazy for me physically and every other way, I still felt incomplete. It was like the sexual part wasn’t quite right. He’d look at me, get hard, fuck me, we’d come.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. At its best, I guess. But I still felt something missing. Even when it was at its best.”
“So there you were with a kid to raise?”
“Yeah, I got through college early. I was twenty when the baby was born, twenty-five when Robert died-was killed. That coxswain? She called me up one day. Said she wanted to see me. Said her husband was cheating on her.”
“Oh, she got married?”
“Yes. But her husband was cheating on her, she thought. She remembered our talks about my psychic abilities and asked me to see if I could learn anything. She invited me to supper. And sure enough, through supper he was thinking about fucking another woman. Vividly. So after supper, he made some excuse and left.”
“You told her?”
“Sure I did. I could even describe the woman. She said, ‘Let’s go’. We went to her best friend’s place, and there they were, hard at it.”
“Wow, what happened?”
“She divorced him. But that’s when I figured I had a talent that could help me make a living. So I moved out here and set up shop.”
“The kid?”
“Mona? She’s grown up and finished college now. Working as an accountant.”
“You could see that much detail in the guy’s…whatever…?”
“I call it a mental image. Yes. I can see as much detail as there is. For instance, if you could have seen what Jeff was imagining when we had supper the other night, you’d have known that he’d never seen me naked.”
“Why’s that?”
“He was envisioning me with thick, dark pubic hair.”
“You think he likes that?”
“Yes. If he didn’t, he’d have imagined me like you are.”
“So, you think I should grow it out?”
“Worth a try.”
“I never enjoyed getting my hair pulled out by the roots anyway. I think I will do just that. I’m going to let
it grow.”
“Good for you, girl. Are you ready for bed yet?”
“I’m almost always ready for bed when you’re this close.”
The two went hand in hand to the bedroom.
Chapter Five
The next Monday Angela finished her last invoice, printed it, printed the envelope, stuffed it and sealed it. Finished! Before noon.
She packed up her laptop, locked up the office and went across the street to the coffee shop where she ordered a roasted turkey sandwich on a bagel and a cup of latte. She was surprised to see the place nearly empty when it was often so full. She sat at a table in a corner, pulled her laptop out of her bag and opened it because she knew there was free wireless.
“Your sandwich is ready,” called the nose-studded barista.
Angela fetched her sandwich and drink and returned to her computer. She ate quickly and started sipping the latte as she checked her e-mail. Gudrun’s report from Copenhagen. Nothing. She had stuck to Jeff like glue. All he did was go to meetings. Marcella had gone with her and gotten into his hotel room while Jeff was at a meeting. She’d checked his computer. Nothing. Gudrun reported that the only woman involved in any of the meetings was Danish, and, though Gudrun had to check several sources to be sure, she verified that “she” was a cross-dressing Dane waiting for a sexual re-assignment operation. Not Jeff’s type. And they weren’t together outside the meeting room anyway. The surveillance cameras showed only one incident in the hotel room besides sleeping, dressing, bathing, shaving and going to the bathroom. Jeff lay on the bed and masturbated one time.
Angela envisioned him lying naked on the bed, his muscular body tight with tension as he began to stroke his enlarged, stiff cock. Faster and faster until… She felt herself getting wet at the images.
I bet he was watching porn on the television.
The report continued that the only visual stimulation was a photograph of Ronda. Fully clothed.
Marcella took up the story when Jeff returned to O’Hare Thursday evening as he had promised. He got his car from long-term parking, and went home. He left the house about 9:00 the next morning and went to his office. He and one other corporate officer-male-were on a conference call to Tokyo.
No women. No men. Nothing. He slept on a couch at the office. Maria took over from Marcella at the office they had rented across the street from Jeff’s. They kept up the surveillance mainly through microphones that Stephanie, dressed as a cleaning woman, put in the office as she emptied the trash cans. They had visual contact via a telescopic lens on a video camera. Nothing.
Those girls are good!
Maria had managed to get into his office dressed in a uniform from the cleaning contractor, pushing a vacuum cleaner and to check all of his files and bills. Nothing on the credit card. Nothing on the cell phone. Nothing on the computer.
“Hi, how are you doing?” a familiar voice rang out across the coffee shop.
“Mrs. Windborne? I’m fine, how are you?” She was with Angela’s former client, Michelle Anderson.
Angela flashed onto the vivid images of Mrs. Windborne’s husband fucking Michelle Anderson and wondered what the heck these two were doing together.
“This is Michelle… Oh, I forgot, you two know each other, don’t you?”
Angela’s mind was still half on the reports about Jeff. She found it difficult to shift her attention to what was happening right in front of her. Her mind was flooded with the contradictory images-Michelle with Raymond Windborne…the photographs Angela had presented to Mrs. Windborne? No…something else… But what?
“I’m so happy to see you,” Mrs. Windborne enthused. “Are you doing anything important? Do you mind if we join you?” Michelle Anderson was sitting in the chair Mrs. Windborne had pulled out for her and Mrs. Windborne took the other chair at the table.
Angela snapped the screen of her computer shut and said, “No, no, of course not. Please do.”
“We have news for you!” Mrs. Windborne was gushing.
“What news?”
“Well, you know my husband Raymond? He was cheating with Michelle here. So I talked to Michelle about it and we decided that next time we would both be there. So a couple of days after you showed me those awful photographs, when Raymond called Michelle, she called me. When he showed up Michelle was in the living room, naked. He comes in and gets undressed and she leads him into the bedroom. He has a hard-on and is ready to go, but then he sees me.”
Michelle picked up the story. “And I get on the bed with Joan here, and I say, ‘come on, fuck me’ and he can’t do anything. Joan starts sucking him off while he’s standing there and he can’t get it up again. So Joan and I start making out, just to fuck with his head.”
“And I thought we had given him every man’s fantasy!”
“Yeah, for his wife to be with his girlfriend.”
Both women laughed and Michelle resumed the story.
“So he leaves. But we found that we liked what we were doing, so we just kept on doing it.”
“And?” asked Angela.
“And so I filed for divorce and moved out and now Michelle and I are living together.”
“And we changed to the Unitarian Church where they have a support group that we like.”
Angela finished her latte to disguise whatever expression was on her face, put down her cup and said, “Wow, that is some news.”
“And to think,” Mrs. Windborne said, “we have you to thank for it all.”
“Glad to be of service.”
The two women went to the counter, got a bag of coffee beans, and left hand in hand.
Angela opened her computer again. Well that’s a new one on me! What’s going on with Jeff now?
She read the report for Friday. He shaved and showered in the executive washroom, changed clothes, sent out the dirty clothes to be cleaned. Had breakfast sent in. Ate at his desk. Another conference call. New York. Conference with corporate brass. All afternoon. Two women. Both senior executives. Nobody showed any sexual interest in anyone else.
He went home late Friday night.
The manager of the cleaning crew tried to fuck one of his cleaning women Friday night. She wasn’t having any of it. Sexual harassment. I ought to find out who the contractor is and report this son of a bitch. If the woman doesn’t come forward, nothing I can do. Shit! If the son of a bitch is doing it, it’s because it’s worked in the past.
Saturday morning Jeff left the house and drove to the loop, parked in the company’s parking garage, got coffee and bagels at a coffee shop, ate in his office. A conference call at ten. He worked on the computer…
Maybe something going on there. Maybe he’s instant messaging someone. Maybe he’s doing something with the computer.
The next message on her computer was from Joyce Sato. He was using a wireless connection in his office. Joyce Sato picked up the signal, decrypted it, all transmissions were business with Singapore or Tokyo.
Shit! What’s the asshole up to? She caught herself referring to him by Ronda’s pet name.
Maria followed him from the parking garage home late Saturday night and left off surveillance. Marcella Ingles picked him up on Sunday morning when he picked up the newspaper from the front step of the house. Then again, when he drove to a seedy bar in Garry.
Ah-ha! Gotcha, asshole.
Stephanie relieved Marcella and used a portable microphone attached to her blouse to record his conversation in the bar. He was meeting with an industrial spy who was passing corporate secrets from another firm to him.
He’s cheating all right, but not on his wife.
Maria picked up the tail and followed him to another bar in another part of Garry. There he met an FBI agent. While he was inside, Maria attached a tracer to his car.
Corporate spies and FBI? What is going on?
He drove home and arrived at 11:00 in the evening.
From the rented office across the street from Jeff’s, Gudrun could trace his car downtown without having to r
isk following him from home. He went into the parking garage, got coffee…
Angela’s cell phone vibrated. She snapped her computer shut, put it in her bag, and walked outside where she listened to the message and hit the call back button to see what Ronda wanted.
“What’s up, girlfriend?”
“Oh, hi. That was me just now.”
“Yeah, got it.”
“Asshole’s away tonight. Another trip.”
“My gals are covering it. You want the news?”
“Sure. What’s he really doing?”
“It looks like he’s really going to meetings and doing corporate stuff.”
“No girls?”
“Closest thing is a Danish cross-dresser.”
“Can you come over?”
“I’m on my way on foot. Be there in a few.”
“I’ll leave the front door open. I may start without you.”
Angela walked the mile or so to Ronda’s house, let herself in, and went up the stairs to the bedroom where Ronda was playing with herself on the bed.
“You’re much better at this than I am…”
“And I’d love to, but we need to talk.”
“News?” She sat up with interest.
“No news. That’s the news. Nothing. And this is costing you an arm and a leg with air travel and wages and…I don’t see anything at all. We’ve scanned his home and office computers. We checked his laptop when he left it in his room in Copenhagen. No e-mails to women. We checked his files at the office, and the cell phone records are squeaky clean. There just isn’t anything. Your guy is just that. Your guy. I’ve seen enough of this stuff to know that if something were going on, we’d have wind of it by now with all this surveillance and snooping.”
Ronda lay back down and resumed playing with herself. “Do I have to do this myself?”
Angela unbuttoned her blouse. “Save some of that for me. You’re getting fuzzy down there.”
Psychic Detective Page 6