Whatever It Takes

by Gwynne Forster

  He followed her into the massage room and pointed to the screen. “Okay. I don’t want to be here all night.”

  She winked at him and started pulling her sweater over her head. “It shouldn’t take that long.”

  “You’re supposed to undress behind the screen.”

  “Oh, pooh. You’re a grown man, and you’ve already seen everything I’ve got. Well . . . not quite everything.” She stepped out of her skirt and faced him wearing her bikini panties and a demi bra.

  He stepped toward her, his Adam’s apple bobbing furiously and his color high from the neckline of his crew-neck T-shirt to the edge of his wavy blond hair. “Did you come here for a massage or a good screwing?”

  She tossed off her bra. “Let’s start with the massage.”

  “No. We’re starting with this. It’s what you came for, what you’ve been asking for for months.” He picked her up, sucked the nipple of her left breast into his mouth and put her on the table. “If you’re planning to back out, do it now.”

  For an answer, she lifted her hips and began to pull down her panties. He finished the job for her, pulled her further up on the table and mounted her. Two hours later, he looked down at her and said, “I hope you’re on the pill, because I didn’t use anything.”

  “Let’s hope the pill does its job. After what you put me through, I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  She couldn’t help laughing. “I was lying before, but now I really do need a massage.”

  “Let’s get dressed and get out of here. When you coming back?”

  All of a sudden, she remembered Hal. “I don’t know.”

  “Is everything okay? I mean, did you get straightened out?”

  “Quite a few times,” she told him, and she was glad that she could say that truthfully. If nothing else, Hal had taught her how to achieve a climax. “Do I need to call a cab, or will you drop me home?”

  “I’ll take you home.”

  As they approached the house in his Jaguar, she saw Hal’s truck parked across the street from the parsonage. “Oh, my God. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

  He circled the block and stopped in front of the church. “I take it you saw your man waiting for you. From now on, babe, it’s massages only. Sex is plentiful, but I’ve only got one head.”

  She slipped out of the car and headed home, walking at her normal gait. When she reached the parsonage, she didn’t look toward the truck that was parked across the street, but turned into the walkway that led to the house. Then she saw him leaning against the door.

  “Where the hell you been, babe, and make it good. I called you almost three hours ago.”

  She staged an act of effrontery. “What do you mean by checking on me? I had dinner with my father.”

  “Yeah? Well what happened to his big Cadillac that he couldn’t drive you home?”

  “Listen, Hal, I just had a row with my dad, and I walked out and left him in the place. I am not up to dealing with a lot of attitude.”

  He lolled against the door as if he owned it. “What was the row about?”

  She looked straight at him. “You. It was about you. Are you satisfied?”

  He straightened up. “All right. Don’t let me catch you with some dude, cause if I do, I’ll break both of you in two.”

  The strength of his fingers beneath her chin frightened her, but she knocked his hand away. “Don’t overplay your hand, Hal,” she said, shaken though she was by his behavior and his attitude.

  He gripped her arm. “Let’s get this straight right here and right now. You go when I say go, and you come when I say come. You’re my woman, and I call all the shots. If you forget that, it will be the biggest mistake of your life. See you tomorrow at the usual time and place.”

  “I c-c-can’t, Hal. My father is picking me up here at six-thirty. I told him I had an appointment, but he wouldn’t hear of it. I have to meet him.”

  “Don’t let me find out that you went with somebody other than your father. If I do, you’ll regret it.”

  “I’d better go inside. If Mama sees you here, she’ll report that to my father. I’m getting tired of all this harassment. See you.”

  He pulled her to him and forced his tongue into her mouth. She hated his openmouthed kisses, and he knew it. He had no appreciation for oral sanitation.

  “What’s wrong with me, you don’t like to kiss me? All you want from me is a working tool.”

  She caressed his chest in an effort to soften him. “If you’d go to the dentist, get your teeth cleaned and fixed up and stop eating raw onions, maybe I’d be kissing you all the time.”

  He stared at her. “Yeah? All right. I’ll call you.” He ran down the steps and across the street to his truck.

  She went inside, trudged up the stairs and flopped down on her bed. Nobody had to tell her that she’d bit off more than she could chew, that Hal Fayson would enslave her and that she would let him, not because she loved him; she didn’t, but because of the way he made her feel in bed. She’d stay away from him for a couple of days, and then she would need him as she needed food and water.

  Most of the time I don’t even like him, and I hate his slovenliness and his uncouth behavior, but I don’t know how to get him out of my system.

  She kicked off her shoes and fell across the bed. If Hal knew she’d been with Max, he’d probably kill her. But if she hadn’t done it that night, she would have done it later, because the man excited her. He’d said that would be their only time, but she’d see about that. She rolled over and stared at the ceiling.

  “I wonder if being a tramp is something a person can inherit. I’m thirty-three years old, and I’ve had at least a dozen men. Am I different, or are other women like this? I’d give anything to know.”

  The front door opened, and she heard her mother’s high heels on the stairs. Quickly, she doused the light on the night table beside her bed. But Cynthia wasn’t misled. She opened Kellie’s bedroom door and peeped into the room. “Hal Fayson’s truck was parked across the street for over two hours tonight, and he didn’t leave till you came home. Nan and I saw him when he drove up, let the motor idle for about fifteen minutes, turned it off, got out and came to the door here. You better watch that fellow. A man who will do that will get violent. Good night.”

  So Cynthia had been across the street at Nan’s house watching her with Hal. She hadn’t even remembered her aunt Nan, and she’d have sworn that her mother was out on the town chasing her youth. She made up her mind to break off relations with Hal as soon as he kept his promise to let her into her father’s house so she could search the dining room and den for the brooch.

  “It’s there,” she said to herself, “and I intend to find it.”

  However, Kellie didn’t reckon on her father’s resolve or with her sister’s special gifts. After leaving her that night, Marshall set for himself two tasks: have Lawrence Bradley mount a real search for that brooch, and move into the house within the next two weeks. Once there, he would make a thorough search himself, provided that the brooch hadn’t already been located. He hoped Douglas Rawlins could finish the landscaping before that, but he’d move in no matter what the place looked like.

  He phoned Kellie the next morning. “I have a group of teenagers in the church, and I want you to come and talk to them as part of their lecture series.”

  He imagined her in a state of shock, for her sputters were clearly audible. “Me? Daddy, you’re joking. This is Kellie. Did you think you dialed Lacette’s number?”

  “I know which number I dialed, and I know which one of my daughters I’m speaking with. I can find a lot of people who’ll tell these kids what to do and how to live, but I don’t know any young people who can tell them what happens when you don’t do what’s right.”

  “Are you asking me to blab out some true confessions to a bunch of teenagers?”

  “No, indeed. I want you to convince them of the importance of obe
ying their parents and trying to keep the commandments and of what happens when they stray from that.”

  “I’m not sure I want to do it. I’d be a hypocrite.”

  “Not if you tell them the truth. Make some notes, decide when you want to do it and let me know. They’ll be excited when I tell them you’re going to talk with them.”

  “I don’t know, Daddy. I’ll see.”

  He hung up. Maybe she’d do it, and maybe she wouldn’t, but he’d given her reason for serious thought about her past, her present behavior and what she could expect in the years to come. He only wanted to enable her to think about her life.

  On a Monday morning in late March, Lacette awakened with a start and sat up in bed. The bank. That old woman had said something about the bank. What bank? The woman had also advised her to pay careful attention to her relationship with Douglas, and she had focused on that. But what bank was she talking about, and why had she mentioned it? She struggled out of the tangled covers, a testament to her sleepless night, and padded to the bathroom. Her first working day in her new office, and she had barely enough energy to put one foot in front of the other one. Bank. What on earth did that mean? Save money? Be careful of investments? Spend carefully?

  “I’ll know sooner or later,” she said as she got into her car and headed to her office to begin her first day as owner and manager of L. Graham Marketing Consultants, Inc.

  “What does the word ‘bank’ connote to you?” she asked Lourdes, her receptionist and secretary.

  “Money, and a lot of it.”

  Somehow, Lacette didn’t think the old woman was telling her that banks held a lot of money. She forced herself to put the issue aside and concentrate on drawing in some business. But it wouldn’t leave her mind and, at every lull in the day, she searched for what relevance the remark could have for her.

  “I’ll get it. It’s important, and I’ll figure it out,” she told herself and settled into her work.

  Chapter Ten

  As she prepared to leave for work on the second day of her life as a self-employed woman with her own business, Lacette skipped down the stairs, and stopped midway. What her office needed was something, an object or two that made it very personal. She went into her bedroom and collected three of her hand-carved birds and the Native American doll that she bought at the Cabin Fever Festival a month earlier, put them in a tote bag and hurried off to work.

  While Lourdes marveled at the beauty of the birds and exclaimed her surprise at Lacette’s skill, Lacette stood beside Lourdes’s desk staring at the Native American doll that she held in her hand. As she held it, it seemed more and more life-like, and although she would forever swear that it wasn’t true, she could see in it the face of the old woman who had sat rocking at the Cabin Fever Festival. And it was more than a premonition; she knew that much. She walked back to her office still holding the doll and sat down just as the telephone rang.

  Lourdes’s voice came to her over the intercom. “Phone for you, Lacette.”

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, Lace, I’m applying for a job at County Bank. I don’t have a thing to wear to the interview Friday, because you know my skirts are so short. Can I borrow one of your lady-like business suits? I swear I’ll give it back to you Saturday.”

  Lacette tried to focus on what Kellie said, but she couldn’t think beyond the word, bank.

  “Lace, I need the suit, and I promise I’ll give it back to you the same way I got it. Please.”

  “Uh. All right. I have a navy blue suit, and I’ll drop it off at the parsonage tomorrow evening.”

  “Thanks. Uh . . . what time?”

  “I don’t know. It’ll be after six. Or we could meet for dinner, and I’ll bring it along.”

  “I don’t . . . think I can make dinner. Uh . . . why don’t I drop by your office and pick it up?”

  Precisely what she didn’t want. Kellie wouldn’t resist making a pass at any of her male clients and posing as Lacette. “All right. Come between five and five-thirty.”

  She knew from Kellie’s reluctant agreement that her sister would have preferred a different arrangement, but years of dealing with Kellie had taught her the efficacy of self-protection. She hung up, reached for the phone to call the manager of the Warren Pitch Company, her former employer, in an attempt to get the company as a client, and her hand stilled, suspended over the phone as recognition dawned on her.

  The old woman. She’d said, “There’s something for you.” The bank. Kellie. She got up and walked from one end of her small office to the other, retracing her steps again and again. “Good Lord.” She slumped into her desk chair, her heart thumping so loud and so fast that she grabbed her chest as if that would slow down her heartbeat. Perspiration poured from her forehead and sweat dampened the back of her neck as awareness dawned on her. Why hadn’t she realized it, and why hadn’t Lawrence thought of it? That brooch could be in a safe deposit box in a bank.

  She telephoned Lawrence Bradley. “Everything’s fine,” she said after their greetings, impatient with the small talk. “Lawrence, my gramma’s brooch may be in a safe deposit box in a bank somewhere.”

  She listened to silence and imagined that he berated himself for not having thought of it. “What makes you think that?”

  “My father said Kellie has searched the house for it. If she’d found it, we’d all know it.”

  “She what? She knows I have a court order restraining her from going into that house before your father took possession of it.”

  “Well, she ignored it, and after you gave the keys to Daddy, she broke in through a back window and—”

  “Don’t tell me . . . never mind. That woman is capable of just about anything. I gather you don’t know which bank. Are you pretty sure it’s in a bank?”

  “I have no proof that you’d accept, but I’m fairly certain.”

  “Are you saying you have a sixth sense or something like that?”

  “You could say that. How do we identify that bank?

  “It’s my job, and I’ll get right on it. If Carrie Hooper had a safe deposit box, I’ll know it pretty soon.”

  She could barely contain her excitement and her anxiety—not because she coveted the brooch, she didn’t. But because the mystery of its whereabouts had given it larger-than-life significance, at least to Kellie. As she always did when confronting change in her life, change that held uncertainty, Lacette telephoned her father and told him where she thought they would find the brooch.

  “Why didn’t we think of that, Daddy?”

  “Is this the result of one of your premonitions?”

  “Partly.” She told him how it came about. “It bothers me that I took so long to figure it out, but I guess what matters is that I eventually got it. Lawrence Bradley is trying to find the bank.”

  “Does Kellie know this?”

  “No, Daddy, and I’m not planning to tell her.”

  “We have to tell her, because she’s hell-bent on self-destruction because of it. Let me know when Bradley gets it, and I’ll tell her. I want us all to be together when he gives you that brooch.”

  She promised that she would, and telephoned Douglas to tell him what had occupied her thoughts for most of the day.

  “You mean that old woman at the festival? I thought it unusual that you should go directly to the Native American crafts when you didn’t know where they were, not that it matters. I hope your hunch is correct. What about lunch?”

  “Not today. I promised myself that the next time we lunched over here, I’d bring the food from home. Something special.”

  “Any other reason why we can’t lunch together?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “Great. Then I’ll be over at twelve-thirty with lunch and you’ll owe me two lunches. I love home baked ham.”

  Her eyes rounded as she stared at the phone. She had never baked a ham in her life. “You’ll take what I give you.”

  His laughter was fresh air purifying her atmospher
e. “And I’ll take what you give me with the greatest pleasure. See you at half-past noon.”

  “Douglas, I’m beginning to see that you can turn the simplest most innocent statement into a risqué double entendre.”

  The laughter seemed to flow out of him, and she wished she could see the devilry that she knew his eyes reflected. “That’s the way it shapes up in your thoughts, babe. My mind’s as clean as crystal and as pure as falling rain.”

  She tried to punish him by not laughing, but failed in the attempt and whooped. “Very funny,” she said when she could get her breath. “See you later.”

  For some time after she hung up, she pondered her ignorance of Douglas, for although she had met his parents and his son, she didn’t know enough about him as a man and as an individual to warrant her deep and growing attachment to him. If she examined her feelings carefully, she would have to conclude that she cared for him. And where did that leave her? Her left shoulder flexed lightly. What would be would be, she thought and prepared for her appointment, a first time author who wanted a media blitz sufficient to get her book on The New York Times list of best-sellers. Fat chance of that happening. She’d read the story of an old hippie still trying to find himself at the age of seventy-six and hadn’t been able to muster much sympathy for the hippie. She had none for the writer.

  She finally got her desk cleared around a quarter past twelve and went to her bathroom to refresh her makeup and comb her hair, looked in the mirror and thought, I look fine. Men don’t have to look perfect, and if they are too lazy to shave, they can grow a beard and be in fashion. She flicked off the light and went back to her desk, declaring herself independent of lipstick and eye shadow.

  Minutes later, Douglas arrived with their lunch, put his packages on her desk, and walked around to where she sat. Without saying one word, he rolled her chair from the desk and lifted her from her seated position. Her heart skipped a beat, and she had that feeling of being suspended in space. Then the warmth, the feeling of security like solid ground beneath her feet enveloped her as his arms enfolded her and his tongue flicked across her lips. She opened to him, and her senses reeled as he possessed her.