Whatever It Takes

by Gwynne Forster

  “I’ve furnished it, and I’ve taken out ads in all of the local papers. I’m due for an appearance on the Liseann TV show Thursday. It’s pulling together.”

  “You’ll be fine. I’ll get to work on this contract at once.”

  She hung up, and the phone rang immediately. “This is Douglas Rawlins. Need any help over there this evening?”

  She wasn’t sure whether he was asking for a date or staying on the safe side. “Not that I can think of.” She could be as cagy as the next person. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Dinner someplace. I’ll be working till around seven o’clock. The owners of that mansion on College Avenue near Frost want me to prune their fruit trees. I want to get started after I leave the hotel. And your father engaged me to landscape the property surrounding his house. Did you have anything to do with that?”

  “No indeed. I’m learning about it as we speak.”

  “That makes me feel a lot better about the job. Believe me.”

  They talked for a few minutes about inconsequential matters and agreed that he would be at her home that evening at seven.

  While Lacette’s life seemed increasingly richer and more fulfilling, Kellie continued to flounder. She hadn’t been desperate to work with Lacette, certainly not as an underling, for she considered herself superior to her sister in every way. Still, she had asked, and the rejection hurt as badly as if she’d counted on a position with Lacette’s firm. But not getting the promotion at her job and having to work under Mabel devastated her. She looked for a way to prove herself and her worth, but found none. Desperate, she telephoned Lawrence Bradley.

  “I called to apologize, Lawrence. I was way out of line in asking you to do something unethical. I can’t believe I suggested that you get that brooch for me. As far as I know, Lacette still hasn’t received it, but I’m resigned. It’s hers and she can have it.”

  “What a surprise, Kellie! There’s no need for an apology, because I wasn’t offended. I must say it served to get my head screwed back on properly. About the brooch. I understand you violated the court order and broke into the house trying to find it. The police asked if I wanted to prosecute you, and I said only if you do it again. Nice talking with you.”

  The bastard! She hated him. He hadn’t given her a chance to make her pitch. All right. He wasn’t the only man in Frederick. He might have it on Hal in looks, money, and finesse, but in the bed—where it counted—he was a nincompoop compared to Hal. One day, she’d laugh in his face.

  She didn’t go to her father’s house after work that day, because Hal had begun to flex his muscles with her, and she wanted him to be grateful for what she gave him. That was becoming more difficult, she knew, because she had developed an itch that he was an expert at calming, and no other man had ever done that. If he knew it, he would be unmanageable, and she meant to use him only until she found a man who suited her socially as well as physically.

  “I thought you’d be dropping by today,” the voice on the other end of the wire said when she answered the telephone. “What’s with you? Don’t tell me you sneaked in here again and found what you been looking for.”

  She swallowed the liquid that accumulated in her mouth, sat down in the chair beside the telephone table and crossed her legs. “Where’re you? I told you not to call here so much. Suppose my mother had answered the phone.”

  “I’m at your daddy’s house. I’m finishing up today and tomorrow, so if you still want to look around, you’d better hightail it over here right now. My boss will be here tomorrow checking out the place. You can’t come tomorrow.”

  “I’d planned to—”

  “I don’t care what you planned. Uh . . . look, babe. Remember I promised you something special the other night, but I couldn’t do that in the front seat of the van. Come on over here.” His tone became pleading. “I’ll make it real good for you.”

  “I need to check out the dining room and the kitchen.”

  “Okay. You can do anything you want to. Just come on over here.”

  Thinking that she had him where she wanted him, needy and at her mercy, she said, “Okay, but I’m going to look around first this time.”

  “Sure, babe. I’ll do anything you want.”

  He opened the front door before she touched the bell. “Come on in here,” he said, picked her up and raced up the stairs.

  “You said I could look around first,” she said, punching him in the chest with her fist.

  “That was before I saw you.” He set her on her feet, yanked her sweater over her head and began his assault on her senses. Within minutes, her moans banished the silence that had been their environment and, once more, she was his willing victim. He stripped off her clothing, laid her down and pulled her hips to the edge of the foot of the bed, where he steeled himself on his knees, braced her open thighs against his shoulders, parted her folds and devoured her with his tongue and lips. She tried not to think of old man Moody and how he did the same thing to her when she was fourteen but never brought her to climax. But as Hal invaded her thoughts and her senses as he did her body, she thought of every man she’d ever twisted beneath and cursed them all for not having given her the feeling of completion that Hal gave her. For if any of them had, he would not at that moment be drawing her into his prison the way a spider traps a fly.

  He pressed his tongue into her, and she thought she would die from the pleasure of it.

  “Finish it,” she screamed. “I’m dying. Oh, Lord, if I could just burst wide open.”

  He ignored her pleas as she bucked and writhed, only increased the rhythm and force of his twirling and sucking. When at last she could explode with relief, he climbed atop her body, filled her and spent himself. Then he looked down at her.

  “You gonna be giving me a lot of trouble after this? Are you?” he asked her.

  She wanted to ask him how he got the temerity, but not a sound came from her open mouth. “I want to go downstairs and look around,” she said after a few minutes.

  “Sure. Help yourself. You got twenty minutes, then we’re leaving.”

  “Suppose I decide to stay.”

  “When I say we’re leaving,” he sneered, “we’re leaving. And I don’t just mean now.”

  She dressed and walked down the stairs, mentally measuring every movement of her feet until she reached the bottom. It hurt. She couldn’t remember when anything had hurt so badly. And the worst of it was that if he hadn’t phoned her, she would have gone there anyway—though she’d sworn she wouldn’t—as much to feel him pounding into her as to look for the brooch. The pain of it streaked through every muscle, sinew, joint, and bone of her body. However, undaunted, she wiped her tear-stained face with the bottom of her sweater, opened the bottom drawer of the hutch and began searching. That brooch was somewhere in the house, and she meant to find it no matter what it cost her. In less than fifteen minutes, she heard his brogan-shod feet lumbering down the stairs. She didn’t bother to remind him that he promised her twenty minutes, but merely closed the door of the cabinet she’d been searching and walked to where he stood in the foyer. Waiting.

  “Now you’re showing some sense,” he said, opened the door and walked out, leaving her to close it. She also noticed that he didn’t open the passenger door of the van for her as he usually did, but left her to the task. She got in and slammed the door with all the strength she could muster.

  He glanced at her as he pulled away from the curb. “Seems like you got some money you don’t need. Break my door, and you’ll pay for it . . . after I whack your ass till you can’t sit on it, that is.”

  After I get that brooch, he won’t know what country I’m in. He’s not going to bully me and talk to me as if I’m as low class as he is.

  “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

  “I have no intention of getting into an argument with you. You want a fight, and I don’t fight with people.”

  “Listen to Miss High and Mighty. Just make sure you don’t bre
ak my door.” He drove up to the church and was about to park, but drove off when he saw two women standing there talking. “I’ll have to let you out a block away.” He stopped, and she opened the door and got out without speaking. “So long, lover,” he called to her as he drove off.

  She didn’t know how she managed to walk those two blocks. Luckily, her mother wasn’t at home. She climbed the stairs, showered and went to bed wishing that she had never seen him.

  The following Saturday morning, Nan drove to the farmers’ market on North Market street to buy her weekly produce and to select fresh fruit for the preserves she made. “What you doing here?” she asked a man who was a member of her church. “I thought you were working on Marshall’s house.”

  “I finished that. You know there ain’t much work installing windows these days. Nobody’s building, so I work at whatever I can get. Have to make a living, you know.” She picked up a peach and smelled it.

  “Them peaches is a waste of money. Not a bit of taste, but some fine raspberries just come in here from Chile. Say, what’s you niece’s reason for wanting to get into her daddy’s house, and how come she can’t just ask Reverend Graham for the key?”

  Her antenna shot up, and she rested the basket of fruit she had selected on the ground. “Which one of my nieces you talking about?” she asked, though she had no doubt that he referred to Kellie.

  “She introduced herself as Kellie Graham, and what’s more, she wanted to get in the house so badly that she gave me a good look at her merchandise. What’s in there that’s so valuable?”

  “Beats me, unless she’s after her grandmother’s good china, but that belongs to her father. I tell you, young people these days make me glad I don’t have any children.”

  He spat tobacco juice, careful to point it away from Nan and the produce. “That one was going to try to seduce me and to pay up if I let her in that house.”

  Nan stared at him. “You go ’way from here, Jocko.”

  He held up his right hand. “As the Lord is my witness.” She walked on, barely noticing her surroundings or the fruit she came to purchase. “Well, if that don’t beat all!”

  The question stayed with her, and then she saw Kellie get out of Hal Fayson’s pickup truck one night, a truck easily recognizable because he’d painted a wildcat with its mouth open and a red tongue hanging out of it on the side of the truck. She went home and telephoned Kellie.

  “It ain’t my business maybe, Kellie, but I want to know what you doing in a pickup truck with Hal Fayson. I know men is scarce in Frederick, but they ain’t that scarce. I’m surprised at you.”

  “Oh, goodness, Auntie, you made an awful mistake. It wasn’t me, and I can’t believe Lace would hang around that fellow.”

  “So you do know him!”

  “Only what you just said about him.”

  “That was you I saw, Kellie. Some people might mix up the two of you, but not me. I may be five feet tall, but I ain’t no fool. What there is of me is very intelligent. You better watch yourself. If that man makes you pregnant, would you marry him? Would you?” Disgusted with Kellie for lying and then suggesting that it could have been Lacette, Nan hung up and called her brother.

  “Marshall, would you believe I saw Kellie getting out of Hal Fayson’s pickup truck right in front of Mount Airy-Hill. I tell you, I couldn’t believe my eyes. What she doing in that ruffian’s truck?”

  “He’s doing the repairs on the house Mama Carrie gave . . . Wait a minute. I can’t believe she’d stoop to that.”

  “To what?”

  “She’s using him to get into the house, so she can look for the brooch Mama Carrie left Lacette. I can’t believe she’d go this far, and after I already punished her for breaking into the house to look for it.”

  “She what?” Nan sat down in the chair at her kitchen table and leaned back. “You believe it. She tried seducing Jocko when he was hanging your windows, but he told me he wouldn’t hold still for it. That girl had better pray. I declare. If that ain’t something!”

  That evening, Friday, Marshall telephoned Lacette a few minutes after six. After speaking with her for a short time, he said, “I’d like you to meet me at the parsonage tomorrow morning at nine. I want all of us to have a discussion, and it’s very important. Can you make it? I’ll tell you what it’s about when we’re all together.” She agreed, as he’d known she would. He didn’t like what was happening to Kellie, and he had to do what he could to avert her headlong plunge into disaster.

  He parked in front of the parsonage at ten minutes before nine and waited for her. She arrived promptly, got out of her car and rushed to greet him.

  “My, but I’ve never seen you looking so radiant. Things are looking good, I gather.”

  “Yes. Tomorrow’s the big day. Oh, Daddy, I hope I get just one inquiry, if not a customer.”

  He patted her shoulder and started toward the house. “You’ll do just fine.”

  She rang the bell and, they waited for what seemed like ages, but according to his watch, only ten minutes had elapsed. “If they don’t answer soon, I’ll telephone,” he said. Then he put his finger on the bell, pushed and held it. Finally, the door opened, and Cynthia stared at them.

  “Hi. You come visiting awfully early,” she said. “This is my morning to sleep late.” Cynthia didn’t embrace Lacette, and it appeared to him that Lacette didn’t expect it.

  “Where’s Kellie?” he asked her.

  “In her room asleep, I guess.”

  He looked at Lacette. “Would you please awaken Kellie and ask her to come down.” To Cynthia, he said. “I want to talk with the three of you this morning, and that’s why I brought Lacette with me.”

  Her shrug suggested that whatever he had to say would hold little interest for her. “In that case, I guess I’ll make a pot of coffee. Kellie can’t function until she gets her morning coffee.”

  He figured that was as good an excuse as any to avoid being alone with him while Lacette went for her sister. He followed her into the kitchen. “I hear you’re substitute teaching and that you’ll be teaching full time next year. That’s a good move.”

  “I had to do something since I’m no longer a wife.”

  “I didn’t realize until now that leaving a career in order to take care of one’s children was quid pro quo, and especially not since you didn’t return to work even after they were in their thirties.”

  She didn’t reply, and he didn’t expect her to. Deciding not to crowd her, he walked back into the dining room and leaned against the antique cupboard that was probably priceless but which he had always detested. He straightened up to his full six foot-four-inch height when her heard his daughters coming down the stairs.

  “Hi, Daddy,” Kellie said, embraced him and hurried to the kitchen where he heard her ask her mother if she knew what he wanted to talk with them about.

  “Haven’t a clue,” Cynthia replied. She brought coffee, brioche, butter, and raspberry jam and placed the tray on the table. “Help yourselves. We might as well sit and talk right here.”

  He said the grace and poured himself a cup of coffee. If there was one thing he did not miss, it was the weak coffee that Cynthia made. Taking a sheet of paper from his inside coat pocket, he handed it to Kellie. “I want you to read every word on that piece of paper. Aloud.”

  She looked at the paper, saw that it was a copy of her grandmother’s will and put it on the table.

  “Are you refusing to do as I asked?” he said. When she didn’t answer, he took the paper from her, read it aloud, folded it and put it back in his pocket. “Now, I’ll tell you why I wanted this meeting. A few weeks ago, Kellie broke a back-porch window in my house, entered through the kitchen window, and left the upstairs in complete shambles after she searched for Lacette’s brooch.” He ignored the gasps coming from Cynthia and Lacette. “I punished her by forcing her to put the place in perfect order while I watched, and to pay for the replacement of the window. I told her that if she went in there agai
n looking for that brooch, I would see that she spent some time behind bars.”

  “Please sit down,” he said to Cynthia. “She didn’t believe me. She hasn’t broken in again, because it hasn’t been necessary. Instead, she has developed a liaison with Hal Fayson, who has been renovating the house, and he allows her to enter.”

  “Hal Fayson?” Cynthia shrieked. “My God!”

  Ignoring her outburst, Marshall continued speaking. “With his reputation, I don’t have to tell you how she paid him to risk his job by letting her in that house when his boss told him that no one is to enter it except me.”

  He looked at Kellie. “As of today, your lover is looking for a job.”

  She shrank visibly, but he went on, mercilessly punishing her for the anger and humiliation that he felt because of her behavior. “When her lover wasn’t working at the house, she tried whoever was there, including Jocko, though she knew he was a member of my church. Before Jocko, she tried to use Lawrence Bradley. He didn’t say so, but what he did say and the way in which he said it, left no doubt in my mind.”

  He looked directly at Kellie. “I am ashamed that you are my daughter.”

  He’d always known that Kellie’s temper and her passion for revenge would one day be directed at him, and when he saw her literally swelling with anger he steeled himself against whatever hurt she might inflict on him.

  Kellie jumped up from her chair and pounded the table with her fist. “You’re ashamed of me now for wanting sex and for using it to get what I want. Well, why didn’t you pay attention when it started? Huh? No, you buried your head in your Bible and your theology books and paid no attention to what was going on right in front of your eyes. It was your home and your family, so naturally it was all perfect. You didn’t notice that when I was fourteen, every time old man Moody came to our house, I’d change into a tight sweater or T-shirt and tease him right in front of you. Where do you think he went after he left your office? Down in the basement with me to yank my sweater or T-shirt off and—”