Despite the fact that Judy was only eighteen, Lowell had suggested that she should take part in at least one orgy "before kicking off." And the pretty blonde had decided that if "accidents" were going to become common occurrences at Garlock Heights, maybe she'd better have her orgy. She already knew what an exhilarating thing sex could be with Lowell. And his brother, Cal, was so sweet and unassuming that it ought to be a warm, happy experience with him. There was only one problem. Judy didn't know which of the men was trying to kill her. Whoever he was, he had already made two attempts.
CHAPTER ONE
Judy McAllister lay motionless and listened in the darkness to Sarah's labored breathing. Mostly, one breath was like another-a long, shuddering gasp with Sarah's voice audible, then a wheeze and a gurgling sigh. At the end of the sigh there was always a pause-a period when Sarah's body seemed to consider whether another breath was worth the trouble. At each such pause Judy held her own breath and wondered if this time the decision would be in the negative.
At this moment, as happened at intervals, the pause dragged on until Judy flung off her covers and started upright. But a choking sound and another of the agonizing inhalations stopped her. She dropped back and covered herself.
It was awful, lying here in the old house listening to those hopeless gasps. It was awful knowing she was listening to a woman die-especially one who had been powerful and determined and indestructible. It was worst of all at this hour halfway between midnight and dawn. Judy's foster mother, Penelope, had called it the low hour.
When John McAllister had been later than usual coming off his trucking run, Penelope had been likely to say, "Worst time of all, Judy. The low hour. When people die, it is. You just watch."
Grumbling and hateful, John and Penelope McAllister had been the only "folks" she'd had in the eighteen years of her life. They'd done right by her; if you didn't believe it, you could ask them.
None of that mattered right now-not when she was lying in the tiny room next to Sarah Garlock's waiting for Sarah to die. It didn't matter any more than the fact she'd been called away from the Miss Body contest in Ardmere County to come here, or that they'd unknowingly blasted her first real love affair at the same time-that they'd snatched her away from that wonderful, polished Steve Tessler on the very eve of what would have been her first experience with sex. She'd planned that, too. She'd weighed all the pros and cons and deliberately made up her mind she was going to give in to his urging.
Garlock Heights! They might better have called it Ghoul Hill! she thought now. What a place for tragedy! A wonder it's not crawling with ghosts!
In a way it was, she admitted to herself. With Oliver Garlock dead in that awful car accident and his wife, Sarah, waiting to die from it and with the ghastly maze of first and second marriages and offspring from everything but the Oliver-and-Sarah union-there were ghosts of the memory all over the place. The saving grace was that none of them rustled around in the night.
The only night noises were the natural creaking's of an ancient, over-complicated house and the tortured breathing. And it still seemed a cruel injustice to Judy that she, a total outsider, should have to keep the death watch when Sarah's own grown children made other rooms in the sprawling mansion ring with the lustful gaiety of their sinful sport.
Not that Judy objected to sinful sport-sometimes her breasts ached and her pussy tingled with her visions of the things she imagined were going on. She didn't mind any more than Sarah minded. It was amazing a mother could so readily bridge the gap between the Victorian era she'd matured and borne her children into and the "new ethic" those children had embraced. But Sarah had told Judy confidentially and calmly-in one of her better moments-of the fact both her children took part regularly in "swap" arrangements. Her only apparent emotion had been a certain quiet wistfulness at the thought that she'd been born one generation too early.
Somewhere in her river of inner protests and recollections, Judy drifted into the sleep she'd been awaiting for so long. And when the early sun tilted its rays into her room and turned her tumbling, widespread hair into a silver-gold halo around the peach-tinted glow of her face, she opened her wide, tawny eyes and held herself still to hear Sarah's breathing. Her charge would see another day.
Downstairs, the dining room failed to share the early morning brightness of Judy's cubicle. Both dining and living rooms were on the west side of the house, in the first place, and the heavy, interlaced foliage of the majestic oaks cut off their light in the second. Instead, they lay under a pall of gloom that matched the tension among the inhabitants-a tension that grew thicker every day Sarah refused to die.
It would have been tense under the best conditions, what with death hanging over their shoulders. But there were undercurrents of antagonism Judy still wasn't sure she'd sorted out properly. Mike Garlock was easy to pinpoint. Oliver's only known offspring-and that by Oliver's first marriage- twenty-five-year-old Mike had little use for either of Sarah's two children? They had even less affection for him; Judy had recognized from the beginning they hated his guts. What was worse, there was an ugly suspicion barely beneath the surface that Mike had engineered the accident. After all, he was the only one who was destitute enough to make inheritance all that urgent.
Judy didn't like him anyway; he was too damn sure of himself and too contemptuous of everybody else. (And he hadn't even made one pass at her in the ten days she'd been here!)
Lowell Blake was something else again. Five years older than Mike and the product of Sarah's first marriage, he wasn't afraid to show how good life could be. He'd proved his outlook by marrying nineteen-year-old model Gwen Linder, for one thing. Judy didn't like the redheaded Gwen any better than she did Mike, but she had to admit Lowell had probably bought himself a lively bed partner. Lowell was sweet and thoughtful, too. He'd gone out of his way to ease Judy's discomfort at coming into the morbid old house. He'd kept her busy dodging his overly intimate approaches, as well, and he was so smooth with them she knew she was going to respond sooner or later. But he showed the strain; he was clearly close to his mother and was suffering real agonies over her condition. The possibility that the accident might have been "caused" must prey terribly on him, Judy suspected.
Lowell's sister, Edith, was another case. Judy liked Edith's husband, Cal Porter, a lot better than she did Edith. She supposed that was because Cal was earthy and had made his money on his own, while Edith was haughty and formal and cold. The only mark in Edith Porter's favor, so far as Judy was concerned, was that the tall, black-haired beauty did act as if she loved her husband. And that was just the opposite of her reaction to her stepbrother, Mike. Sparks flew when those two came together, which happened at least two or three times a day, as the whole group ate their meals at the same table.
Mike was the first to finish eating and leave the breakfast table. Gwen Blake excused herself a few minutes later, then Cal Porter. Lowell and his sister, Edith, exchanged amused glances.
"Think your husband's got a thing for redheads, Mrs. Porter?"
Edith sniffed. "He'd better get it while he can. Nice of you to marry such a plum for him to pick, but we're not going to see much of her after we go home." She softened her expression and added in a low tone, "Not even much of you, darling-all the way back in Denver."
The Garlock housekeeper-maid, Colleen Devlin, bustled in to clear the table. When her shapely bottom had vanished through the swinging service door, Lowell broke into a leering grin and included Judy in the sphere of his reminiscing. "Now there's a piece I get excited about!"
"Still?" Edith chilled. "At her age?"
"What, thirty-seven? You keep your figure that well for the next ten years, sis, you'll be doing all right!"
"If I lived on coffee the way she does..." Edith sniffed. "Thirty cups a day, if she drinks a drop!"
Lowell chuckled and winked at Judy. "Well, if that's what it takes...." He shrugged. "She drank just as much of that varnish-cutter when she was breaking me in. And me a fifteen-year-old snot. Kee-riste, she had the movement of a Swiss watch!"
Colleen reappeared for another armload of dishes. An inquisitive cockatiel perched in her hair, his beady black eyes peering through a mask of brilliant yellow and his crest erect. He cocked his head and stared at Judy.
"Hi, baby!" the bird muttered suggestively. "Put up or shut up! You got the time? Lookee the boobs!"
Colleen twitched her head. "Shut up, dummy! Want to go into the pot?" She grinned at Judy. "He don't mean nothin'. Just words to him."
When the housekeeper-maid had left again, Lowell sighed. "Talk about 'Lookee the boobs!' And that goddamn bird was saying the same thing fifteen years ago! Jesus, I wish she weren't so untouchable right now!"
"She's in mourning, you damn fool! Even if she is the maid, she's likely the only one in the world who cares that Oliver's dead! And you should think of Mother!"
"I think about her." His tone was flat and the eager vibracy of life was gone, replaced by gray.
Judy ached at the thread of pain in his voice and the dead look in his kind eyes.
He continued after a pause. "I think about her lying up there, knowing she isn't going to live and fighting every goddamn inch of the way! And I keep wondering what's so goddamn important she's got to stay for."
Judy understood. He wasn't being callous. He honestly suffered as his mother suffered. He yearned for her release as she yearned for it. And it puzzled him as it puzzled Judy what was so vital that Sarah had to wait it out. The more you love somebody, the more it must hurt to see her stay alive when she's like Sarah, she thought. And she thought, wistfully, I hope somebody loves me that much someday!
But Edith was talking again and her voice had venom in it.
"Just keep thinking about her, then," she said. "And stop thinking about that cheap Irish slut! You know how I felt about it when you started with her-and me twelve and burning up! You just stay out of the housekeeper's way, you son of a bitch! You're getting all you can handle and twice what a man needs!"
Judy gasped and colored at the bald reference to the incestuous swapping she already knew was taking place. With a strangled mutter, she excused herself and rose to leave the table. She had to pass Lowell on the way out, but something on Gwen's abandoned chair caught the edge of her wrap-around skirt and jerked it open. The pale, youthfully swelling flesh above her stocking gleamed in the light from the chandelier and the edge of taut, white panties showed. She heard an ominous popping sound-the first threads that held the waist button on-and stopped abruptly. Lowell's even teeth flashed in a grin of sympathetic delight and he touched the soft flesh with his fingertips.
Judy gasped. She flinched violently and felt the button fly from her skirt. With a wild grab she salvaged the situation, but not before the garment had slipped entirely away from the delicious roundness of her buttocks and momentarily exposed the full taper of her long, graceful thighs.
"Oh! Oh, please...." She twisted from Lowell's quick caress and fled from the room, Edith's pleased chuckle ringing in her ears.
Oh, God! What a clumsy way to show what I've got! she thought as she gained the safety of the hall. Nothing but a stupid kid trick! Her eyes smarted with tears of embarrassment. She'd grab the first chance to entice Lowell-to show him she wasn't all that scared of playing his kind of game-but not like some gawky adolescent!
She hurried back to her room to repair the damage before going through that open door to Sarah. The woman's breathing told her sleep hadn't deserted the patient yet, and while she sewed on another button, her shapely legs crossed and, one foot swinging gently, she again felt the overall air of tension of the house.
If it hadn't been for missing out on the contest and leaving Steve, this could have been something of an adventure. No matter what sacrifices she'd made, it was worth them to get away from John and Penelope. She'd never understand what had made them take her in the first place, she thought. There had been something about Penelope's inability to have children, she'd heard. But if that were true, the woman had picked a curious way of showing any desire. Maybe they'd taken Judy before living with John McAllister had deadened Penelope's natural warmth, though.
"That has to be it," Judy commented quietly to the needle. "He'd kill everything in anybody!"
Penny-pitching bastard, that's what he is. And sour, besides. Wonder if I'll ever know how much they got for bringing me up-or who paid it. That was the whole secret, of course. They'd taken her in because somebody had wanted them to. Somebody had gone to Oliver Garlock for help. And Oliver had turned to his sister, Penelope, knowing her need even though she'd given up her place in the Garlock dynasty for that good-for-nothing nobody, McAllister. And Oliver had made whatever financial commitments had been necessary, never telling who he was acting for and never caring to know anything about the child he'd placed, except to know she had a home with God-fearing, conscientious people. Evidently that was all he'd been asked to assure whoever he'd acted for.
McAllister, being the type he was, had visualized Oliver's commitment as an obligation against the Garlock estate. And he'd seen it as a two-way street. So when the urgent plea had come for a companion to watch Sarah Garlock die, John had rejected whatever reservations Judy had without letting her express them.
He'd growled, "You'll go, by God. You'll go and you'll like it. Clear?"
She hadn't dared open her mouth.
But she had her own share of the tension in the house. Nobody else knew-except one, of course-but a nagging edge of fear kept her looking over her shoulders in the long, dark hallways and made her hurry when she had to go through any of the less-used rooms. Garlock Heights was a fitting place for the burden of mystery she had to bear.
She listened to Sarah's breathing again. Satisfied the woman still slept, she took a soiled, much-handled letter from one of the dresser drawers where she kept it hidden under her neatly folded panties. She took it to the window and reread it as she had many times each day since she'd found it waiting for her in the mail on her arrival.
Judith McAllister: (That had been part of the agreement; no adoption, but she was to use the McAllister name while she lived with John and Penelope.) Judith McAllister: Who I am don't matter. Watch out for yourself. There's dark deeds and hateful wrongs at Garlock House. Your in danger for your life. Walk carefully. But stick if you can. There's a grand prize if you play your cards right. Just be sure things aren't all what they look like. Don't trust nobody without you know what your doing. Signed, Somebody who you mean a lot to.
She'd crumpled it and thrown it in her waste basket. Anonymous letters were part of a world John McAllister had forcefully taught her didn't exist. Besides, even she could recognize illiterate spelling when she saw it. But Sarah had rambled weakly and petulantly about "youngsters" who wouldn't let well enough alone, about the young ones' vindictive insistence and the accident hadn't been accidental after all, and about the interesting way Oliver had set up his will. And Judy's contempt for the note had dissolved.
She'd retrieved it at her first opportunity. She'd learned something about modernization, as well. In the fiction she'd read, the postmark had always been the first important clue in case of anonymous mail. The envelope she examined had been cancelled merely with a stamp that announced, U.S. Postal Serive, and gave a barely legible date. The date was two days prior to Judy's arrival, but no one had been able to tell her whether the letter had come the day of her arrival or the day before.
The message, itself, was typewritten. She saw nothing distinctive about the type or the way it had been done. Anybody could have made the typographical errors it contained. And the paper was just plain paper as far as she was concerned.
She'd kept it to herself; if "things weren't what they looked like" and if she wasn't to trust anybody until she knew what she was doing, she'd decided the warning would remain a secret between her and the anonymous writer.
She shivered now and hid the crumpled piece of paper. It was so simple and transparent it was sinister-sinister in the same artless style as the house and the restless people in the house. If she were honest with herself, she knew little more about either house or people after ten days than she did about the shadowy writer. And she understood little even of what she did know.
The breathing next door faltered and yielded to a weak fit of coughing. After a moment the coughing stopped and Sarah cleared her throat, hacking with all the vigor her weakened system was capable of.
"Judy...Judith?"
"Right here, Sarah." Judy was beside the helpless woman in seconds. She smiled and squeezed the thin hand. "Feel better this morning?"
Sarah grunted, coughed, cleared her throat and made a faint gesture of shaking her head. "You know better."
Judy bent closer to hear.
Sarah continued, her voice gaining strength. "You know better, girl. Feel worse every morning, not better."
"I . . .I'm sorry."
"Yes, yes, dear. I know. Well, we say things by habit. How long was it Oliver kept saying 'I love you' at bedtime when it had all changed to hate?"
"Oh, no! Not really, Sarah! Not hate!"
"Hate, my dear. Hateful, irascible man. He hated me because of the children, you know."
You've said it before! thought Judy desperately. Oh, God, you've said it so often before! But aloud she murmured soothingly, "Not really, Sarah. Not really."
"The children," Sarah repeated herself, ignoring Judy's protest. "Because they were older than Mike, don't you see, and wouldn't take the boy's pushing. And because I didn't give him any more .. . because after all I couldn't have any more. He even hated me for being older than he was! Imagine!" Sarah sagged, her ringers fluttering weakly, and turned her head to survey Judy. A sly smile lit her drawn face. "Forgot to get dressed. Legs like those, you oughtn't to wear a skirt, anyway."
Judy felt herself flush and her hands went automatically to cover the brief, flimsy panties. "Oh, my! I was putting a button on and-"
The door to the hall opened and Lowell stepped briskly into his mother's room. His eyes widened abruptly and he whistled when he saw Judy.
"Whew! Legs and more legs!"
"Oh, please!" Judy wailed and backed toward her own room.
Sarah interfered. "My goodness, child! Don't be provincial! You really ought to let yourself go, you know. In my day it was different. But you young people...You can make your choices! You don't have to deny natural feelings!" She sighed. She continued to grow stronger, as if she were drawing on reserves nobody should expect her to have. "You're so very lucky!" She turned to her son. "Boy...see if you can talk some sense into her! I'm sure a dying woman can't. I'll be all right by myself. Don't mind me."
"Oh, no!" Judy whispered. Maybe she wasn't ready for all that freedom of choice, after all, she thought. If she were, she wouldn't have all these funny, squiggly feelings of fear and embarrassment.
Maybe, she thought, the real problem was her status here. She and that dear Colleen Devlin were the outsiders-the only two not related in any way to everybody else in the house. Garlock Heights consisted of two parts, now falling apart.
There were Oliver Garlock, "grand lord and master," now dead in that brutal accident, and his son Mike. There were Sarah, Oliver's second wife (and soon to be dead from the same accident), and Sarah's two children by her previous marriage. Those two were Lowell Blake and Edith Blake Porter. Then, of course, there were Lowell's ex-model wife, redheaded Gwen Blake, and Edith's self-made husband, Cal Porter.
Judy and Colleen were the domestics-Colleen Devlin because she'd been there as housekeeper-maid since right after Oliver's first wife had died, Judy because she was the foster-daughter of Oliver's sister.
And how much freedom did a domestic really have to refuse her employer's advances Judy wondered. What help could she look for when Lowell followed his mother's suggestion?
CHAPTER TWO
Lowell followed Judy into her room. Her gaze remained fixed on his face in the wide-eyed stare of a terrified fawn.
She whispered again. "Please, Lowell...please don't!"
He leered at her and gave his mother an obvious, comic wink. But the moment he was through the door he pulled it shut and placed his fingertip to his lips with a frowning shake of his head.
"Shh!" He jerked his head toward Sarah's room. "Shh. Come here." He whispered, too, and crossed the tiny cell to the window.
Mystified, Judy obeyed. She stood beside him, self-consciousness forgotten, and tried to see what he was looking at in the grounds below. His arm slipped around her waist in a gentle, brotherly gesture and he spoke barely above the whisper he'd been using.
"Never mind Mother-she means well. Always has. Look, it's no good for a pretty, young thing to be cooped up at a death bed all day every day. Get your clothes on. We'll go for a walk in the woods down there. Edith's going to sit with Mother this morning."
"But I ... But she ... "
He chuckled softly. "Figure she's going to be waiting for a juicy story? Look! We'll make one up! All the gory details! Okay?"
"Just...just a walk?"
"Why not?" He laughed again and his voice was still low, as if to avoid it carrying into the next room. "What the hell? Figure I'm an ogre or something? Hell, I'm not going to rape you! Come on, puss-get something on! You need fresh air!"
Judy had a sense of let-down mixed with the immense relief his assurance gave her. She snatched up her skirt, turned her back to him and wrapped it around her. That was a stupid, useless kind of modesty, she thought-a silly thing carried over from childhood. But it was as natural and inevitable as if it had been a kind of race memory.
The oak woods extended across the flat of the knoll and over its brow. The old trees grew well apart, their branches intermingling to form a dense canopy that deprived the ground beneath them of sun. And their fallen leaves settled into a thick carpet, rotting underneath and returning year by year to the soil that nourished the aging monarchs. Judy's nose wrinkled at the sweet scent of humus and drying acorns as her feet sank deliciously in the springy overburden. She clung to Lowell's hand like a child, filling her lungs with the fresh, summer air and listening to the rustle underfoot and the busy clucking of birds.
She realized she hadn't been outside the old house since her arrival; this walk was like a splendid adventure. She'd been right about Lowell, she decided. He was a sweet, thoughtful man. Anybody who understood as quickly as he did would be the ideal type to make love to for the first time. He was the kind who'd make it something a woman would never forget. Anybody, she thought, just anybody, can hold out until they get married and have their wedding night to remember. And anybody can make the first time something with a guy in the back seat of a car. It ought to be special-special person and special place...
They stopped at the top of the slope. Behind, the thick foliage hid the house and outbuildings; Judy could see nothing but the shaded avenues of the woods when she looked back. Ahead, they overlooked a space where no trees grew-a broad, steep clearing rank with grass. Sunshine angled under the lowest branches of the oaks and washed Judy with warmth. She sank to the ground, undisturbed leaf mold yielding under her weight and cushioning her.
"Oh my!" she exclaimed softly. "It's so beautiful!"
"Thought you'd like it." Lowell dropped beside her. "Great view this time of day."
"So peaceful! So quiet!"
A narrow valley floored with orchards lay between them and another wooded hill. On the far slope, shadows made the trees look dark and mysterious and gave the scene an atmosphere of timeless permanence.
"Oh, Lowell! It's so beautiful it makes me shiver! Oh, thank you for showing me!" She twisted impulsively to fling her arms around his neck and kiss the side of his face.
He chuckled and fell backward under her weight, clutching her to him companionably. "Hey! Hey, there! Don't get carried away!"
She nuzzled the hollow between his jaw and throat. "How can I help it?" she asked. "Oh, how could anybody help it? You're just so sweet and thoughtful!"
"I remember reading about a ship and a crusty old sea captain, once," he remarked, his lips brushing the hair behind her ear. "They took on a special cargo. Everything in it was so fragile they were afraid they'd smash it getting it in the hold. Crew almost mutinied before they made home port."
"Why?"
"Captain. Old bastard was mean any time. He'd cut a man to pieces just the way he cussed him out. But he played with that ship like a feather that voyage. Slipped around the edges of storms they'd usually plow through. Took twice as long to make the run. Ran out of damn near everything on board. But the cargo was safe." He held her face away and peered into her eyes with a quiet, thoughtful expression. "A man thinks about the cargo," he added tenderly. "Sometimes it's fragile."
"Oh, Lowell!" A flood of tenderness swept her. She closed her eyes and felt for his mouth with her lips. "Oh, Lowell!" she whispered against the soft moistness.
His lips were firm and finely molded. His breath caressed her cheek in hot, light puffs. His arms held her with a steady, gentle pressure so her breasts flattened on his chest without feeling crushed. She felt her hair slip and saw it tumble past her face to create a private world for their kiss. She worked her lips on his. His man-scent overwhelmed her and ignited a flaming desire to taste the subtle flavor his mouth promised. Timidly, her body tense with her daring, she slipped the tip of her tongue between her parted lips and ran it along the smooth, firm flesh that touched hers. She felt his arms tighten perceptibly and his tongue met hers, its surface startling her with its soft roughness and its flat-tasting wetness.
It was an intimacy she'd never experienced so intensely. She gulped as a fierce tingle coursed over her. Her toes dug at the thick carpet of leaves and her thighs hardened and pressed together.
"Oh!" she gasped through their kiss. "Mrara! Mmm, Lowell!"
"Gently, girl," he mumbled under the pressure of her gulping attack.
Judy raised her head and swallowed. "Oh, my!" She shook the hair back over her shoulder. "Oh, my! Lowell!" She stared into the deep blue of his eyes and touched his lips with a fingertip, intensely aware of the way her breasts brushed him as her chest heaved.
"Like climbing a hill, isn't it?" He grinned sympathetically. "Like stopping to rest after you make that first steep climb at the bottom of a hill."
"Yes. Oh, yes!" She understood his symbolism. Making love was a long hill you climbed, a breathless climb with every turn along the way another surprise. And she'd made the first, steep ascent.
When Lowell stirred she yielded without protest, letting him roll her onto her back and gazing up at him-and past him into the dark caverns among the overhead branches. The second kiss was a long, quiet exploring. She met it with parted lips, her eyes open so she could see the way his lashes flicked and how the blue of his eyes darkened. A strand of fine, black hair broke away from the casual waves above his forehead and lay against his brow. She touched it, lifted it, then tenderly laid it in place. But excitement welled as she felt the insistence of his tongue and submitted to its gentle probing into her mouth.
She clung fiercely. Her own tongue shaped itself to the bulk of the thick organ in her mouth and she gulped convulsively when he rimmed the arch of her palate. A hard, sympathetic tightening seized her pussy and made her draw up her knees, as if the penetration in her mouth were the shadow of a more intimate, deeper penetration into her tensing belly.
Lowell caressed her, his fingers gently kneading the soft flesh at her waist and along her side, and she twisted her hips and shivered at the sudden ache in her nipples. She wanted him to feel her. She wanted his fingers to find the places she guarded and fondle them with careful discovery. She wanted him to boost her up the long hill she was climbing. She was giddy with the sweetness and beauty of their action. A woman could remember a setting like this forever, she reflected happily. She could remember the soothing warmth of the sun's rays and the soft springiness of the leaf mold and the affectionate chuckling of birds. And she could thrill again and again to the memory of stolen adventure.
She arched her back. The leaf mattress sank to form a cup beneath the pressure of her buttocks and another, broader one under her squirming shoulders. Lowell's fingertips touched a tender juncture between muscles at the side of her quivering back and tendrils of pleasure writhed through her.
Lowell drew away to study her. His eyes twinkled and a smile touched the corner of his mouth. She watched him. Her lips felt wet and swollen and she knew her eyes smoldered with the excitement that filled her.
"Oh, my gosh!" she exclaimed. "Oh, my gosh, I'm burning up!"
"There's not much breeze. The sun...."
"That's it. The sun," she mumbled. "It's going to make me all sweaty."
He laughed, a tender note in his voice. "Climbing's a sweaty business, puss. That's part of it."
"If you say so." She rocked her head lightly from side to side. It didn't matter to her what he said. At that moment he couldn't say anything wrong. "Kiss me again, Lowell. Oh, kiss me! Please!"
He lowered his mouth to hers very slowly. But when their flesh met it was in a savage, hungry embrace that took away her breath and sent fierce, jagged lances of pleasure racing through her. She felt herself writhing as if she'd been in pain, and her skirt parted and slid off her legs. The sun kissed the bare flesh between the tops of her stockings and the edge of her panties.
Oh dear! she thought fleetingly. Oh, dear! I'm almost naked! And it's just what I wanted! I'm going to be awful! I know I am! I'm going to do something wicked and awful and just perfectly delicious!
She gulped at his tongue. She tried sucking on it, thrilling to the way it seemed to swell at the back of her mouth. And she pressed on it gently with her teeth and squeezed it between her lips.
God! How can he get it so deep? It's going clear into my throat!
His hand pressed at the underside of her breast.
Over the pulsing sea of pleasure she floated in a sudden, hard-edged rock of sheer delight rose. Great, throbbing waves of heat surged through her and a ball of insane, fiery desire gathered behind her pussy.
"Mmmhh!..." Her fingers fumbled on Lowell's back and her arms tightened. "Mmmm!"
With a gentle squeeze, he cupped his hand over the sensitive mound. His fingers massaged through the thickness of her blouse and bra and she felt powerful stabs of prickly sensation in her nipple. A deeper kind of pleasure seemed to well from the inner tissues of her breast as if grapes of flesh were slipping over each other.
At last he raised his head. He gasped for air and laughed gustily. "Steeper hill than most!" he exclaimed.
She nodded quickly. "I'm going up it awfully fast!" she panted. "Oh, I want so much to know what's on top!"
"Yes. Yes, I think you honestly want to know."
"I do! Oh, please! I really do!"
He pushed himself to a sitting position beside her and continued to massage the sensitive flesh of her breast with one hand while he began to unbutton her blouse. His fingers moved deliberately. He showed no haste. It was a simple, quiet act. She dug her fingers into the leaves and fought to keep her breathing even. She was conscious of the rapid, strong beat of her heart. She thought it must be audible. Surely, Lowell could hear it and sense how terribly excited she was at the loosening of each button. She held her breath while he unbuttoned the last one, then released the trapped air in a long, shuddering sigh when the starched material slipped open to settle at her sides.
He smiled and she tried to smile back at him. Her lips felt stiff, only the corners twitching in response to her effort. I'm acting like a scared kid! she thought. Panic struck her at the idea he might change his mind-might suddenly decide she was too much of a child for the thing they were doing. What would a woman do? If she'd let him go this far and wanted him to stay excited, how would she do it? I've got to make him want me...
She sensed she'd already let him know how she felt. For what that was worth, he was taking it into account. Only her physical attractiveness remained for bait. That was the thing to capitalize on. Cringing inwardly at her own boldness, she forced her arms away from her sides and extended them slowly beyond her head. She stretched. Oh, dear God, she thought. Make it look sexy, not cheap! Ooh! The way my boobies stick up! He's got to like that! Her blouse tugged; she felt the motion of her arms pulling the material upward beneath her back. The rays of the sun were warm on the bare flesh of her belly and between her breasts, where the cups of her bra left an open gap. And the upper swell of her thighs felt hot now from exposure to the sun; she was sure a patch of her panties must be visible.
Lowell's smile broadened. He squeezed one of her boobies again, then gently worked his hands under her. She twisted to make it easier for him while he unfastened her bra. And she drew a deep breath and held it while he eased blouse, then bra, off her arms.
Her breasts tingled fiercely. She saw the flesh tighten and goosebumps appear. Rounded cones, their tips settling to push the bases wider, the smooth, pale mounds quivered in their exposure. She flinched with embarrassment at the way her nipples seemed to be cowering at the tops of the mounds, as if afraid to rise.
Kid's tits! she thought. Not a woman's! Just kid-tits!
But Lowell's eyes were bright as he stared at the twin display. "Christ!" He sounded as if he were talking to himself. "A guy forgets what jugs look like before they've been mauled! Beautiful! Just beautiful!" He bent closer.
A wild inner churning shook Judy as his face approached one trembling breast. My God! He's going to kiss it! I don't know if I can stand it!
He brushed one shrinking nipple with his lips. The gentle tingle flared. A thrill of pleasure surged over her. She gasped with delight and jerked one knee up.
"Ooh! Oh, Lowell! That felt so ... so ... "
He touched the swell of her breast with a lingering kiss, then moved and kissed another spot and another. Pleasure spread through her in widening ripples, pulsing with each kiss.
"Mmmm! So good! Oh, yes! It's so good!" She whispered.
He touched the nipple again. This time it was a long, moist kiss. His lips parted to nuzzle the quivering little lump of pink flesh. They pinched it and tugged lightly. Hot needles of excitement jabbed at her and she watched her nipple swell. It lengthened and the rounded top flattened, the edges sharply defined. She shook with embarrassed pride at the new, bold appearance she presented. Lowell's lips quickened their caresses, tightening on the firm sides of the nipple and rolling it between them. She felt the warm wetness of his tongue playing over the cap of the tingling button and let her hips twist slowly in response to the delight that rippled over her.
"Oh! Oh, my goodness! I like that!"
His lips parted further to engulf the aureole and he started to suck at the tip of her breast. The small of her back snapped upward with a sudden, involuntary jerk.
"Oh, oh! Oh, my gosh!" She gasped sharply and caught her lower lip between her teeth. "Mmmm!"
The knee she'd drawn up swayed from side to side; the prickling sense of heat in her pussy was growing too intense to ignore. Lowell laid his hand on her stocking and stroked lightly, caressing her with long, slow movements from her knee to the top of her stocking. At the end of each caress, his fingers brushed the bare flesh near the top of her thigh.
"Please!" she whispered huskily. "Oh, yes! Please don't stop!"
His sucking grew stronger and a greater section of the inflamed breast disappeared into his mouth. His tongue worried her nipple; he thrust it back and forth and ran it repeatedly around the hard, sensitized edge. His hand settled on the bare flesh of her upper thigh.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear God! Lowell, Lowell!"
Her excitement boiled and she twisted fiercely, the leaves rustling under her. Her hands clenched and unclenched; she couldn't keep her arms beyond her head any longer. Terrified of interfering with the exquisite sensations Lowell was producing in her, she thrust her hands under her buttocks, lacing her fingers and pressing down on them to hold them still. As his light rubbing gave way to probing squeezes along the inner side of her thigh, she swung her knee outward. Her thighs separated and the morning air cooled the sticky layer of perspiration between them. His thumb reached the edge of her panties, pressing into the hollow between thigh and pussy, and a flash of concentrated heat stabbed the heart of her cunt.
"Ahhh...mmmm!"
She dragged her other heel toward her bottom, tenting the knee and letting it fall outward to the side. Overcome by eagerness, she tugged her heels tightly against her buttocks and let her knees sag outward until the tension across her pussy and in the joints of her hips hurt.
"Oh, Lowell! Oh, God, I didn't know I could get so awful! I'm sorry, Lowell!"
He raised his head to gaze fondly into her eyes. "That's what it's all about, puss," he told her. He chuckled and unfastened the great, coiled button at the waistband of her skirt.
The garment slid over the nylon of her panties to fall away from her hips. He shifted position to grasp the upper edge of the tight, sheer briefs.
"Oh, my!" She gasped, then held her breath again.
He was going to take off her panties. He was going to look at that ash-blonde hair that grew so luxuriantly over her mound and on the folds of her pussy. And he was going to see the moist, pink, puffy flesh that parted that pelt in the center of her crotch. She extended her legs, knees clamped demurely together and toes pointed. And she moved her hands, clenching them into fists under the small of her back.
Lowell worked the panties carefully over the swell of her hips. He worked his hands under her to ease the clinging material around the bulge of her taut buttocks and paused, a tight roll of the nylon drawing a line across her abdomen at the top of her pubic hair. She shut her eyes for an instant, a faint sense of shame edging into the haze of pleasure that surrounded her. I'm so brazen! she thought suddenly. Right out here in the open this way! And in broad daylight! But it's too late to stop. I don't want to stop! Not now!
Lowell touched his lips with the tip of his tongue and slid her panties down, one side after the other, over the tops of her tighs and away from her pussy. Shame and confusion wrenched violently at her when she felt the crotch of the garment stick momentarily to her flesh and then felt the awful wetness of the garment on the inner sides of her thighs.
Oh, God! She turned her head, conscious of the fiery heat in her cheeks and knowing she was blushing furiously. Oh, God! They're all wet and sticky! I must be all wet! The excitement. . . He'll be so disgusted!
But he gave no sign of disgust. He pulled her panties gently over the bare part of her thighs, and the sound of nylon sliding over nylon whispered to her while he was drawing them over over stockings. She breathed a silent prayer of thanks she'd worn self-supporting hose and didn't have to suffer the embarrassment of his seeing her in a garter belt.
He laid the panties with her blouse and bra and she waited for him to remove her shoes and stockings. But he made no move to do so. Instead, he ran his hand slowly and lovingly the length of her body, the rough-tipped male fingers caressing her perspiring flesh with an intimacy she'd only dreamed of before.
She trembled under his caresses. His hands seemed so knowing, so terribly experienced. His fingers lingered in hollows that flinched with intense sensitivity. They paused at points where the light touch jolted her with unexpected pleasure. Their progress could be measured by the wave of muscle tension that preceded them in the layer of flesh just under her skin. She twisted without meaning to and her breath came in ragged gasps.
She was as frightened as she was excited, too. She didn't know what would come next. The entire range of stimulus he could use on her from this point on was virgin territory to her-was virginal as she, herself. She'd petted before. She'd kissed and let more than one of the boys fondle her boobies and even submitted briefly once or twice when one of them had felt her up, down around her pussy. But she'd never before lain naked in front of anybody whose intention was to fuck her.
He'll get between my legs, she thought. Pretty soon he'll get between my legs and there'll be a warm, delicious pecker sticking into me! But what was he going to do first? What things would he touch-maybe rub-that she hadn't even thought of? What was he going to do to her before he did stick his pecker in? For that matter, was he even going to get undressed, himself? She didn't have any idea; she had no experience to base a guess on. And apprehension tightened her throat and made her dig her fingernails into her palms.
Lowell used both hands. He bent often to kiss her on the mouth, but his fingers didn't stop their exploring and probing for an instant. And he kissed other places. His lips settled again and again, hot and wet and firm on parts of her flesh that startled her. She knew the delicious thrill of mouth on breast, now; she loved it and made purring sounds when he repeated it. But a kiss on the navel, with the tip of his tongue darting into the sensitive depression shocked her and made her belly jerk inward and her breath hiss between her teeth. And a lingering, gentle kiss on her hip sent fingers of delight slithering across her abdomen to settle in her pussy. When he buried his face in the fluffy mass of her pubic hair her hips jerked to drive her buttocks into the leaf mold and she twisted, one knee sliding over the other and her thighs tightening convulsively.
He started caressing her thighs again. His fingers kneaded the soft, damp flesh and thrills of pleasure warmed her. She forgot apprehension. Renewed desire swept over her and the urge to raise her knees and fling her thighs apart for him grew to irresistible strength.
"Aghhh...Lowell ... oh, Lowell!"
She thrust her thighs apart, one foot turning outward and her knee rising and falling unnoticed. Lowell's lingers brushed the hairy cover of one tingling pussylip and she jerked her hips abruptly upward.
"Oh, dear-God, Lowell!"
Her pubic hair stood stiff, peaked in separate strands by the drying, sticky coating of her juices. Individual hairs pulled as Lowell rubbed across them. The pulpy flesh writhed reflexively and powerful surges of pleasure rocked her. Virgin folds heated and swelled. And as the inner membranes puffed they forced her pussylips apart. The salmon-pink slit opened like a fleshy Detailed blossom unfolding. Lobed inner lips appeared, beaded with shimmering globules of her fluids and criss-crossed with a network of fine, delicate webbed veins. The soft tissues darkened quickly with the flush of her excitement and the quivering, thick rim of her cuntmouth lay exposed.
Lowell's eyes gleamed hungrily while he fingered the slippery flesh. The surfaces whitened where his fingertips dragged, then darkened as the blood rushed back into them. Judy's hips jerked and twisted, and her boobs surged as she writhed.
He caressed the inner lips and the darker floor of her slit. And he traced circles around the throbbing edges of her cuntmouth.
She rolled her head from side to side, groaning with delight.
Lowell worked his fingers upward along her slit and ran them over the slopes of her clitoris hood.
"Lowell!" She slammed her ass into the leaves and flung herself sideward. "Omigod! What did you do!"
"Good God, Judy! You've never done that?"
"Oh, Christ, no! What was it?"
"Jesus!" He exclaimed in a whisper. "Jesus Christ! Honey, that's your clitoris!"
"I..." Embarrassment overwhelmed her, even in the midst of her excitement. "Just when I take a bath or shower. Once in awhile, by accident. I mean ... Oh, but not like that!"
"Of course not," he murmured.
His finger dipped into the copious fountain of sweet-smelling liquid that welled from her cuntmouth. He laid a thick droplet of the slippery juice on the side of the hood and spread it quickly.
"Eeeiii! Yaghhh! My God, don't!" She flung herself from side to side and her knees jerked together. "Oooohhh ... Oh, Lord!"
But Lowell refused to allow her churning thighs to dislodge his hand. His finger pressed on the hood and massaged the supersensitive lump within it. Judy lashed about, beating at the leaves with her fists, then grabbing his wrist with both hands and struggling to push his hand away from the tortured little organ.
"Oh, Christ, Lowell! I can't stand that!"
He withdrew his hand and allowed her to settle her inflamed nerves. She writhed, her movements slowly quieting while she moaned with mixed fright and delight.
"Dear God, Lowell! Oh, dear God!"
"It didn't hurt, did it?" he asked with a smile.
"No! Oh, no! I ... I guess not! It felt good! But too much! Too much, Lowell!" She stared at him, wide-eyed. "Lowell...."
"Yeah?"
For the space of a heatbeat, she thought he looked at her as a cat might at a mouse. But the impression vanished and she saw him simply as a thoughtful, excited man humoring the woman he was making love to.
"It- That feels- Oh, Lowell, darling! Do it some more! But just a little at a time! Please?" She felt herself choking up and tried to overcome the sudden lapse into childish panic. "I just know I won't be able to control myself. I mean, it feels so awful good!"
He chuckled easily and shifted positions again to kneel at her waist. His hands settled on her belly and he began to knead the flesh. This was no longer a light, exploratory caress. It was a demanding, gut-searching massage that awakened deep pleasure centers Judy knew nothing about. It aroused a savage hunger in her cuntmouth and swept her away from the self-conscious plateau of enjoyment she'd found herself on. The world of oaks and birds and leaves and warm sun on shrinking, naked flesh vanished for her, to be replaced by a narrow, intense world of sensation and desire and excitement. Unnerving, distracting ideas disappeared from her mind, drowned by primitive impulse and fierce eagerness.
Her knees parted widely again and one of Lowell's hands settled on her pussy. She felt a delicious penetration as one of his fingers drove into her cuntmouth. Her hips twisted and rose. His thumb thrust aside the hood over her clitoris and pressed at the naked, sensitive tip of the organ. She cried out wildly, her body arching. Weight supported by heels and shoulders, she flung her hips into the air and rocked from side to side while his thumb rubbed the delicate organ in tight circles.
"Omigod!" she shrieked. "No-no-no! Eeeaghhh!" But she thrust against the persistent massage.
The intensity of sensation rocketed and she fell back to the leafy mattress, curling up and clutching at Lowell's hand.
"Ohhh!" She groaned. "Lowell, Lowell! Oh, Jesus!"
He released her and stood. She slowly straightened, twisting with remembered delight and panting heavily. While he watched her lessening contortions, he stripped quickly. Judy stared, realization dawning on her she was about to look at a naked man for the first time in her life. There was nothing startling or new about him when his shirt came off; she'd seen hairy chests and smoothly bulging shoulders before. But when he removed his trousers and shorts she felt her breath catch in her throat.
Oh, God! It isn't a penis! she thought, aghast. It isn't even a pecker! Cock! That's what it is! A monstrous, beautiful, brutal, gorgeous cock! And then, terrified: No! It'll never go in! I'm not big enough! It won't go in!
Naked, Lowell dropped between the thighs she'd carelessly allowed to part again. His knees wedged them further apart and his hands delved into her pussy, mauling her pussy lips and fingering the rim of her cuntmouth and twisting her quivering clitoris. She struggled, arching and jerking, but her strength seemed puny pitted against his eager insistence.
"No! no, no! Please!" She pushed at his hands without perceptible success.
His eyes seemed to her to glow and he swallowed as if his mouth were dry. His manipulation of the flesh in her pussy inflamed her and drove off her caution. Her excitement mounted and her flailing lost its defensive character and took on the quality of impatient desire.
"Oh, dear!" she whispered, turning her head to the side. "Oh, darling! Now! Now! Let me have it in me! Put it in!"
Lowell caught at her legs and raised them, pushing them over her torso and tilting her pussy up toward his cock. Resting her calves on his shoulders, he grabbed the immense shaft of his dick in his hand and laid the meaty bulb of his cockhead against her twitching cuntmouth.
"Push! Put it in! Put it in!"
Like a great bulb of fire, the spongy cockhead wedged open her taut cuntmouth and sank into it.
She felt the rubbery rim stretch to accept the sloped bulge and cried out with joy at the incredible sense of penetration. Before her rim had stopped stretching-before she had accepted the thickest part of his cockhead-she was aware of a sudden, blunt inner tension. Lowell's pressure hurt her and she knew her hymen had stopped the inward plunge of the great cock.
Sudden perspiration bathed her and she tensed her legs, raising her hips and momentarily relieving the force of the entering cock. Wild desire jerked at her and she let her hips drop sharply, driving her cunt onto the rigid, massive prick. A white-hot flash of pain seared her gut and was gone. The brutal, bulging cockhead plowed the length of her passage, Lowell's thick shaft thrusting with fluid speed.
Fragments of thought tumbled over each other. He's in me! All the way! Oh, God, so weird ... so good! Pushing things out of the way! Not a virgin now! Oh, good! So awfully good!
"Now, baby!" His voice sounded harsh and strained. "Now we fuck, baby! Now we fuck!"
"Yes! Oh, yes, darling! Fuck me!"
He clutched at her thighs, next to her knees, and forced her legs back over her. The tension held her ass in the air and he adjusted his force to position her pussy at the height of his cock. His hips jerked backward and forward while his cock plunged like an oversized piston in her. The levering cockhead churned her guts, generating a fantastic sense of pleasure in her belly, while the massive cylinder of his shaft bored back and forth in the slippery grip of her cunt.
She gasped and cried out at the force of the blows on her pussy; his cock-hard pelvic shield crashed unmercifully on the soft, swollen mounds of her pussy. He blasted the frontal ridges of his thighs on her upturned ass and battered her helpless body. Her excitement and the novelty of the marvelous fullness masked the discomfort his violence caused. She used his grip as leverage to respond to his plunging, snapping her hips toward him each time he stroked into her.
"Lowell, darling! Oh, Lowell-Something's going to happen...Lowell, what's happening to me?"
"You're getting fucked, baby!" He practically yelled it at her. "Cock in cunt, that's what!"
"That's...not-" She gasped, unable to complete the message.
A fantastic, demanding knot of tension had gathered in her belly. Pleasure shook her entire body and she heard a roaring in her ears.
"Oh-Ahhh...Darling!" The knot dissolved, flooding her with pleasure immeasurably more intense than any she'd ever before experienced. "Omigod!" She screamed. "Omigod!" Her body stiffened as spasms convulsed her belly and the walls of her vagina clamped around the buried cock. "Omigod, Lowell!"
"Jesus, you're a mink," he panted fiercely. His fingers bit cruelly into her thighs and he rammed his cock viciously to its full depth, its broad base crushing her pussy and quivering there. "Unh!...unnnhhh!" he grunted loudly.
She felt a sharp jerking at the base of his cock and a sudden pool of warmth forming in the core of her belly. A hard tremor shook her and she clawed at the leaves, tilting her head back and moaning happily.
"Fucking little mink!" Lowell ground at her, brutally thrusting her knees onto her boobies and letting his weight ride on her trembling ass. He twisted her on her shoulders, groaning and puffing as he wallowed in the hot softness of her cunt.
But the savage tension of his orgasm subsided even before her own awesome contractions stopped, and he eased his grip and pushed his knees back so she collapsed under him on the ground. She let herself sag under his limp body. Slowly, hesitantly, her arms crept around his panting form and she thrilled to the quick-forming pools of sweat that collected between them.
"Oh, thank you!" she whispered to him. "Thank you, darling! I wanted you so badly!"
He growled softly at her, then laughed. "You really were, weren't you! You really were a goddamn virgin!"
"I ... Yes ... but.. . "
"Hell, I don't mind! I just didn't believe it, that's all!"
"Lowell!"
"Aw, shit! Don't get all uptight."
"But...."
"Come on, now! Hell, it's just the first time I ever busted a cherry, that's all! Christ, you're hot as a Chinese cannon, aren't you!"
She shivered. He wasn't being the kind, tender creature she'd felt so warm toward. But she resisted the temptation toward self-pity. She'd heard stories about men-about how they changed when they'd gotten what they wanted. Lowell wasn't being mean, at least. And that's more than you can say for John McAllister, I bet, she told herself.
CHAPTER THREE
"Tell you what." Lowell's voice held a note of gentle consideration again. "Tell you what's cozy and friendly about this stage of the game."
"What?" she asked drowsily.
"Your legs. Get them up around me. Ankles crossed."
She did, surprised at the thrill that produced. "Oooh! I like it!"
He chuckled. "A guy likes it even more. It's one step better than hugging him."
"Well...." she giggled. "It's sort of in a different category."
"Depends on how free you are with hugging. Like a guy well enough to hug him, you probably like him well enough to screw."
She hesitated. "Maybe," she said finally. Maybe when Fue been shacking up as long as you, she thought.
"No maybe, puss. You're no 'Little Miss Prim.' You couldn't live that way. After a few days, when you get used to the idea you don't have to protect a cherry any more, why don't you spend an hour or two with all of us? We have a pretty good time once in a while." He uttered a dirty-sounding chuckle.
"I ... I'd be such an outsider...."
"Just one of the family, chickadee. Everybody ought to go through one good orgy before he kicks off."
"Kicks off!"
"Sure! How many people you think ever experience an orgy? I'll bet ninety percent of our beautiful, Victorian bourgeoisie die without!"
"Oh. As long as you don't mean me when you say 'kick off.' " She shivered happily and squeezed him, realizing it was a far more satisfying thing to do when one used arms and legs instead of arms only. "If you think it would be all right..."
"You know it, baby! Let me know when you're ready." He jabbed at her with his hips, his softened cock failing to transmit the thrust. "Not that you'll have to. I'll keep after you."
She thought about that promise that afternoon when he relieved her at Sarah's bedside so she could go downstairs for coffee and a brief rest. She'd come to look forward to those breaks. Colleen was a different kind of person from the others in the gloomy old house. Despite the woman's obvious grief over Oliver's death, she had a kind of vibrant life about her that Judy didn't feel in the others. Maybe it's just she comes closer to talking like John and Penelope, Judy thought. Something I like because it's familiar.
She could smell the aroma of the coffee the moment she reached the head of the stairs. Lowell had told her Colleen was brewing a fresh pot. And she'd expected it; that had become an unspoken link in the sympathetic bond that had developed between the two non-family members of the household. Judy had only gradually come to appreciate the gesture, but the more the others had talked about the strength of some of the brew Colleen downed, the more she realized the significance of Colleen's ritual of starting fresh for their mid-afternoon breaks.
"Aha! There you are!" Colleen flashed a warm grin at Judy. "Good thing you wasn't late. I told Lowell he better send you right along. Went ahead and poured so's it'd be ready to drink. Come on, girl-set."
With an amused glance around the kitchen, Judy sank into one of the straight chairs by Colleen's work table. The buxom Irishwoman dropped into another with a sigh, startling her cockatiel so he leaped from her shoulder into the air with a squawk of irritation.
Maybe "buxom" isn't the word, thought Judy conscientiously. Like Joey says, "Lookee the boobs!" But she sure hasn't put on any fat! No wonder Lowell watches her the way he does!
Colleen picked up her mug and raised it with a flourish. "Here's mud in your eye, girl."
Judy grinned and imitated Colleen. She paused to watch Joey while he ran down the maid's arm to perch on the rim of her mug.
"Just a goddamn minute!" he shrilled. "Coffee for Joey!"
"Okay, you spoiled shit!" exclaimed Colleen, laughing. "Go ahead and get your share!"
Joey bobbed his head, fluffed his wings once, and dipped his hooked bill into the black liquid. His lower mandible full, he raised his head and let the coffee run down his throat, his thick tongue working. He shook his head vigorously, scattering excess drops, and dipped his bill again.
"Goddamn!" he muttered into the liquid.
"Dishwater! Garbage! Medicine!" He tilted his head back and swallowed the second mouthful. With another shake of his head, he backed off the mug onto Colleen's hand. He half turned and cocked a rapidly winking eye at her. He reeled momentarily in an incredible imitation of a drunk.
Judy gasped with laughter. But Colleen's expression stopped her.
"Joey! Joey, what the hell? Joey!" Colleen dropped the full mug and caught the ruffled gray bird as he toppled drunkenly sideways. "Joey! Joey!"
Joey lay in Colleen's hand, one foot kicking feebly and his wing stirring. He peered into the face that hovered over him and made a throaty, sad chortling sound. The entire little body shuddered violently and grew still.
Colleen shook her head in disbelief. "Joey! Oh, Joey...No! Joey, you can't!" She pressed him to her cheek, her tears wetting the soft, gray feathers.
Judy gazed helplessly at the other's grief. She raised her mug to her lips absently.
"No!" Colleen shrieked and knocked the mug from Judy's hand. "Whatcha think killed Joey?" Then she turned her head away. Great, choking sobs shook the slender body and Judy impulsively put her arm around the pretty shoulders.
"Oh, Colleen! I'm so sorry! Oh, honey!"
Colleen mumble through her sobs. "Eighteen years ... a little more! Oliver...when my baby- Oh, God, he was such a sweet little fellow! Everywhere I went! Had to have his sip first...."
"Honey, it couldn't have been the coffee! Everybody knows!"
She must have had at least one mugful before I got here, thought Judy. She couldn't resist a fresh pot even that few minutes.
"Pretty baby," crooned Colleen to the still form. "Pret-ty ba-by! You're just teasing!" But the grief in her voice left no doubt she knew the truth.
"Where...where will you bury him?" asked Judy softly.
The other turned fiercely on her. "Bury him! A bird? God's only creatures made to fly. They don't belong in the ground when they're dead." She shook her head. "Come on, dearie-can't do it by myself. Couldn't stand to."
She led Judy outside to a compact little oven. "Oliver," she remarked tersely. "No pollution for him. And that was long before they started talking about it. Incinerator. Electric. Doesn't even leave any gas...except water and carbon dioxide." She placed Joey's lifeless body in a container she took from a cupboard next to the oven. Setting the container inside the incinerator, she hesitated, then sealed the door and closed a heavy switch. She cried quietly and watched the air shimmer with heat waves above the vent.
"G'night, Joey," she whispered. "Save me a dream."
Judy choked back tears of her own. She put her arm around Colleen again, holding the shaking body close. At last a small green light glowed below the switch. Colleen opened the switch and unlocked the oven door. Judy heard the hum of a blower and saw a tiny swirl of ashes sucked off the floor of the oven. There was a barely-visible puff at the mouth of the vent and the hum died away. Colleen shut the door again and turned toward the house.
"They wasn't try in' for Joey," she said dully. "Like you said, I like my coffee too much for that."
"You must have had at least one cup before I got down there!" Judy protested. "It couldn't have been the coffee!"
"Not today. Lowell brought me his mother's bedpan. Asked me to get it done so's you could bring it back up when you came. So I sterilized it while the coffee was perking. Just barely had time to get them two mugs poured by the time you got down there."
"Bedpan? In the middle of the afternoon?"
"It was kind of messy. He knows. I'll do it any time it needs it."
"But I could have brought it down!"
Colleen shrugged. "Lowell did. You know how he is with his mother."
Judy did. Half the time, if she had to leave Sarah in order to go to the bathroom, she'd find Lowell in the older woman's room when she got back. That must have been how he'd noticed the bedpan needed attention this afternoon.
When they reached the kitchen Edith was plugging in the percolator.
Colleen stared at the haughty woman. "That was a fresh pot!" she exclaimed. "What..."
Edith shook her head. "I came after ice for Mother. Two broken mugs and a half gallon of coffee all over the floor. I could see something must be wrong with the stuff. God, it stunk! You ought to wash the pot between brews, Colleen...or rinse the disinfectant off your hands before you handle the basket."
"Hmph!" Colleen stared hard at Edith but said nothing more.
Edith returned the stare coldly, her dark brown eyes looking almost black as she briefly included Judy in her expression of disapproval. Without a word, she swept regally from the room with a tray of ice cubes in her hand.
"Stuck-up bitch!" Colleen's muttered imprecation dripped with venom. "First time since they've been here she's even known what that damn pot was for! Wanted to be sure nobody analyzed what was in it, that's all!"
The maid's bitter accusation reinforced Judy's own suspicion. Interfering with Colleen's coffee rituals was a breach in the strict protocol of Garlock Heights. It was hard to believe Edith would so blatantly cross the barrier without a compelling reason. The real tragedy-and it was a frightening thought-was there was no hope now of finding out what Colleen-and perhaps Judy, herself-had so nearly drunk. She recalled Edith's fury at Lowell's continuing weakness for Colleen. Maybe fifteen years of being jealous would be enough for murder, she thought. Especially if you couldn't ever put on a show about how he belonged to you.
Edith had thrown dish towels on the floor to soak up the spilled coffee. Judy helped Colleen gather them and put them in the washing machine, then watched the other mop the floor. She heard the washer go into its first spin cycle prior to rinse.
"Colleen! Good God, Coleen!"
The brooding woman started. "Judy! What's wrong?"
"The towels! They were full of coffee!"
"Sure. That's why we ... " She stopped and gasped. "My God, girl! We're insane!"
Judy shook her head sadly. "We're upset," she said. "And it's too late to blame ourselves now."
"Don't matter none." Colleen shook her head grimly. "She'll try again. Never was the type to give up easy." She rinsed the mop and hung it in its rack. "Lookee, girl. Get that bedpan out of the utility room and get back upstairs. No need to have'em down on you."
Judy went into the utility room, removed the bedpan from the sterilizer and returned. "Maybe we could have a cup of coffee before bedtime tonight," she said softly.
Colleen nodded. "Won't be the same without Joey."
Judy could not reply. She hurried upstairs. Just inside Sarah's room she felt a rush of nausea. Lowell sprang to her side.
"Judy! What is it? Who's-"
"Lowell! Oh, Lowell!" She shuddered violently. Her knees gave way under her and only Lowell's quick grab kept her on her feet. "It's Joey, Lowell! The coffee was poisoned! It killed Joey!"
Lowell gasped. His arms tightened around her abruptly.
"Judy! No! Not Joey!"
"Y-y-yes!" She began to sob. "The ... the poor little guy ... "
He led her to the chair and helped her into it, taking the bedpan from her and slipping it onto the lower shelf of Sarah's bedside stand.
He turned toward Judy with a stricken expression and whispered. "Not Joey!" And then softly to himself so she could barely hear: "Joey! Poor little bastard!" He shook his head. "I don't know. How the hell's Colleen going to make out without him? Little son of a bitch sat right there and cussed me out the first piece of ass I ever got! Embarrassed me so I almost forgot what I was there for!"
Judy frowned and fidgeted. It seemed somehow heartless to remember Joey that way. What was worse, perhaps, was Lowell's failure to realize the implications of the bird's death. It could have been me! she thought, shuddering again. Or Colleen! Maybe both of us!
"How come it got him and neither one of you? How come it got him instead of Colleen, for God's sake? She must have had a cup of that stuff before you got downstairs!"
"The bedpan, Lowell. That's all that saved her." She told him how.
He stared open-mouthed. "I'll be a son of a bitch!" he exclaimed. "Look. Why don't I go down? Maybe I can cheer her up a little. She's going to need it."
Like I needed something this morning, she thought.
Sarah sighed when Lowell had left the room. "She's going to miss that little bird more than anybody will know," she said.
Judy winced. The tragedy would have to happen when Sarah was in one of her better states. It would have been merciful to keep the news from her; death wasn't the most suitable topic for her to hear about. But she rambled, and she turned the subject away from Joey soon, herself.
"I didn't really think you'd been taken in by that 'secret heir' notion," she said in a grumbling tone.
"Huh? What secret air?"
"No, no, child!" She frowned impatiently. "Wait! You don't know?"
"Know what, Sarah?"
She stared into space for a time. Judy decided the patient's mind had begun to wander again, but the dying woman's words dispelled the idea when they came.
"You ought to know, child. Anybody who has to be at Garlock Heights now ought to know. The children think there's an heir to Oliver's estate...." She paused, then smiled faintly and added, "And mine. Anyhow, an heir to the estate nobody knows about. It's the way he worded the will, you see. And the way the estate is."
"I don't see..." Judy felt distinctly uncomfortable; Sarah was talking about things that couldn't possibly concern her youthful companion.
But Sarah dismissed the unborn objection impatiently. "Just listen, child! Don't interrupt!"
"Yes, ma'am," Judy replied meekly.
"Most of the estate already existed before our marriage. And Oliver's attorneys and accountants maintained very careful separation between that portion and what we accumulated afterward." She smiled again, a wintry grimace. "I'd divorce the children's father. Jerome was a delightful man, of course, but he was just too stolid when it came to experimenting. And he got more and more conservative as time went on. Still, Oliver did worry about what would happen to the estate if I should divorce him! Or if he should die first." She paused and her features softened in a wistful, distant expression of revery.
Judy clasped her hand gently.
"Even this year," said Sarah regretfully, "He worried. His attorneys suggested rewriting the will and he wouldn't hear of it. You see, all the estate pre-dating our marriage was left to those persons of direct, bloodline descent from Oliver, himself. First generation to share eighty percent of the estate equally, second generation and on, equally the balance."
Judy nodded. "If Mike had kids they'd split that other twenty percent. Or if you and Oliver had ever had a child it would have shared with Mike. Out of his eighty percent."
"Yes. Except for one curious provision. Well, really two. Stepchildren, if any at the time of his death, were to be treated as if they were direct grandchildren. But in the event there was only one living child-his own, that is-half of the eighty percent was to be transferred to the twenty percent part and distributed equally among grandchildren and stepchildren."
"So Mike would never get more than forty percent?"
"That's right, dear. It was Oliver's way of telling me he didn't think I wanted children by him. If I should bear him one, that child would inherit forty percent of his estate."
"But your children would come out with sixty percent either way!"
"Unless Mike or the child I never had presented Oliver with grandchildren. But Lowell and Edith don't understand the twisted motives that drove Oliver. They think he made those provisions because there was another child he never publicly acknowledged."
Judy felt her eyes widen. "What an awful thing to think!"
Sarah chuckled dryly. She didn't sound at all like a woman who would soon be dead. "I tell them that," she said. "There's no need for them to know any differently unless such a person is proven to exist." She leaned slightly toward Judy and lowered her voice. "I'm sure there was another child. I think that child lives right in this house!"
She stilled Judy's incredulous exclamation. "Colleen, child! Colleen! A memento of Oliver's 'wild oats' days, don't you see? Norma-that was Oliver's first wife, who died when Mike was born-probably wouldn't put up with Oliver's bringing the girl into the house. But the moment she was dead, in came Colleen. Of course, Oliver always insisted he'd hired her through an agency. But what agency would send a slip of twelve to keep house for a man and an infant? Hmph!"
"Wh-what does Colleen say?"
Sarah sniffed. "What would she say? Oh, they worked out their story all right! Maintain she'd just immigrated. Imagine! Anyhow, like father, like daughter, as they say. Had her own illegitimate baby only three years before I married Oliver. He wouldn't even let her see it when it was born. Already had arrangements made for somebody to take it." She chuckled unpleasantly. "Gave the cockatiel to her instead."
Judy felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. The time span sounded exactly right. Oliver had arranged for John and Penelope to take care of her-had done it "for a friend" as Penelope put it. Had she been Colleen's baby? Could she be anything else? Coincidence just wouldn't stretch that far.
"Sarah! Ami..."
"Child, would you ask Oliver to come in for a minute, please? There's a dear girl." Sarah mumbled and her eyes had a dull, vacant look.
Judy sighed and patted the now-limp hand. "Of course, Mrs. Garlock. Of course, I will."
She hesitated, then rose, staring down at the confused woman with compassion. In that brief period of lucid memory, Sarah had revealed a secret only one other person could have told. And Colleen would hardly have been likely to admit her own origin. But the story fit. No wonder Colleen loved Oliver when everybody else considered him an irascible, eccentric tyrant! Even that might not be quite true, though, Judy reflected. Sarah's tone had suggested she had an honest, unselfish affection for the man who had treated her so shabbily.
If Sarah's story was true, Colleen was the secret heir. No wonder Edith wanted her dead! Judy winced at the bald assumption. It might not have been Edith at all. She was certain it couldn't have been Lowell; he wouldn't do such a thing. But there might be a motive for Mike that Sarah hadn't touched on.
She glanced away from Sarah and started, her hand going to her throat. Lowell stood in the doorway, studying her thoughtfully. She had been so totally unaware of his presence she wondered how long he'd been there.
"How is she?" he asked softly.
"Asking for Oliver."
"Hmm. Well, then I'm Oliver for now."
"She's terribly tired, Lowell."
"I'll get her to rest."
"Thanks. Want me to leave for a bit?"
"Good idea. Half hour, say."
Judy hunted for Colleen. She finally found her in her room, which was a modest apartment on the opposite side of Sarah's from Judy's.
"Was Lowell any help?" she asked gently.
Colleen shrugged. "If it's any help when a man wants you to climb into bed with him." She grinned briefly. "Guess it don't do a woman's morale no harm, at that. Only thing he had to offer about Joey was gettin' one to replace him."
"Why not?"
Colleen looked disgusted. "Joey was a Garlock. That's a proud name! He wasn't just a bird! He was my baby's soul, he was."
God! It's hit her mind! thought Judy. Oliver gave her Joey to sop up the mother love she'd been saving for her baby. So he became the baby's soul! And because everything in Garlock Heights was a Garlock, so was Joey.
Colleen obviously wanted no company to share her mourning. Judy left. She'd bring the woman a cup of coffee before returning to Sarah's room. She'd use the service stairs; they'd be a short-cut. She turned into the dark stairwell, running lightly downward with her hand sliding along the rail. One of the treads turned under a quickly planted foot and she pitched forward with a shriek.
CHAPTER FOUR
Judy opened her eyes and groaned. She ached all over. One leg throbbed fiercely and her head pounded until she thought she would vomit. She stirred, but a firm hand restrained her.
"Lie still. Just take it easy."
"What? Who...."
"Nasty spill, Judy. Take it easy for a bit."
She shifted her glance toward the voice and saw Cal Porter and his twin. Only Cal doesn't have a twin, does he? she wondered. God, it hurts to focus!
"Is ... is it you, Cal?"
"Yeah. Christ, what a tumble! Let me check you for breaks."
"Cal..."
"Huh?"
"Is there ... I mean, are you...Well, is there one of you or two?"
"Oh, shit!" He groaned. "See two of me?"
"Yes."
"Okay. Concussion. Let's see if anything else is wrong."
She didn't watch; it hurt too much to move her head. Even moving her eyes made the pain stab through her skull. But she felt the pressure of his fingers as he walked them along the bones of her hand and arm.
"That one's okay," he muttered, more to himself than to her. But while he explored the other arm he remarked for her benefit, "One good thing-there's no blood. Didn't even cut your head."
"That's good." Her words sounded thick to her.
He completed the examination as proficiently as if he'd been a doctor. Judy flinched at the casual intimacy at times, but she still ached too much to protest and his hands moved so quickly and professionally they left no suspicion of secondary purposes.
"Cal. . . You aren't a doctor?" She wasn't quite sure, now.
He laughed good-naturedly. "Let you in on a secret, Judy. Worked my way through college in a massage parlor. And I'm a volunteer trainer in junior hockey in Seattle. Get a chance to look for breaks once in a while."
"Oh."
"Looks like you're all in one piece. How's the vision?"
"Still two of you."
He sighed lugubriously. "Damn shame nobody ever said they wished there were." He scooped her into his arms and stood. "Be a good idea not to walk right away. Get you into bed and let you rest."
"Don't go up these stairs, Cal! One of them is loose!"
"Loose! You sure?"
"Check it. But not while your arms are full."
"Son of a- Excuse me. Look here. You missed this thing by inches. Hit that, you'd be dead for sure."
She struggled to focus her eyes. Despite her double vision, she recognized the ominous outlines of Colleen's cleaning cart, its implements projecting with murderously bristling disarray. It stood against the lowest step, blocking two-thirds of the narrow width of the staircase.
"Oh, dear!" She whispered, nauseous again. "I ... I fell past that?"
"Barely. Jesus, Judy! I was wondering what you'd done to your blouse! Look!"
"What is it? I'm sorry, Cal, I just can't focus that good."
"Big chunk of material hanging on the end of this squeegee handle." He chuckled grimly. "An inch closer, you'd have left a knocker hanging there."
"Brrr! Cal, get me out of here!"
"Yeah. Guess so."
Cal took her to her own room, calling to Colleen as he passed the Irishwoman's apartment. Colleen joined them at once. She exclaimed bitterly at Judy's narrow escape. But she refrained from commenting on Edith's probable involvement until Cal had left. Even then, she limited herself to an emotional cursing and dark muttering that Judy was in deadly peril.
Judy protested. "I don't use those stairs-you do! And what about the coffee?" There could be no real answer to the question.
Cal returned with ice he'd crushed and placed a pack on Judy's head. During the next few hours everybody in the house except Sarah came in to speak to Judy.
Gwen chewed gum with her mouth open, a perfect caricature of the old-fashioned telephone operator. And she perched on the edge of the chair with her knees crossed and a generous expanse of thigh exposed. Judy wondered if Lowell ever minded his wife's crudeness.
"Too bad, honey," Gwen commented. "At least it's better to bash your head than your ass. Around here, especially. Hope you're okay by tomorrow night."
"Why tomorrow night?"
"Big time in the Blake apartment. Hoping you'll help us make it lively." She winked and attacked her gum furiously. "If ya know what I mean."
"Oh."
Edith was darkly critical of Colleen. "Lazy damn woman!" she remarked. "Leave that stupid cart where it belonged, people wouldn't be in danger of killing themselves. But no, she's got to put it where she can reach it the minute she gets to the bottom of the stairs." She sniffed. "And then not to have that loose step fixed. I swear!"
Mike Garlock said very little. He studied her silently, for the most part, and she wondered at the faintly puzzled expression that flickered across his features from time to time. Only afterward did she recall Colleen's observation about Garlock being a proud name. She wondered just how proud it was. Proud enough so he'd want Colleen dead before somebody found out she was Oliver's bastard? she asked herself. Proud enough so he'd put that cart where Colleen would never leave it and loosen a tread on the stairs?
And Lowell was simply sweet and concerned. "What in God's name made you use those stairs, anyway?" he asked. "Too dark! Hell, I've even tried to get Colleen to stay off them! Figured we ought to board the damn things up."
"They aren't that dark," Judy replied. "Not really."
"Hmph. Hey, rest real good, baby. Think you'll be able to get up enough nerve to play games with the Porters and us tomorrow night?"
She felt her belly tighten. "Games?"
He grinned lecherously. "Sure! You can be it, if you want to."
"Sex."
"Christ, yes, puss! Any other kind of games worth a damn?"
"Oh, Lowell, I don't know! I-"
"Sleep on it, puss."
But they were trying to keep her awake. That was because of the concussion, she supposed-something about twelve hours after the injury so they'd know if she went unconscious.
Cal came in with a sober expression. "You're just lucky as hell!" he exclaimed quietly.
"Why?"
"Hate to say it, but somebody pried nails out of that step. Careless son of a- Oops! Excuse me. No effort at all to avoid leaving the marks."
"Murder! Somebody did try to kill Colleen, then!"
"Huh? Colleen?"
She told him about the coffee.
"Yeah, seems I did hear Joey was dead. Hmm. Can't prove there was anything there that would have killed Colleen, though. Might not even have made her sick."
"What!"
"Well, those little birds, you know. Metabolic rate out of this world. Stuff goes through them so fast you wouldn't believe it. And it doesn't take one hell of a dose to knock them off. Shit, four or five grains of tobacco would do that. I'm not saying that could have been tobacco, but that's an idea how little it takes to stop their clock."
Judy found his doubts little comfort, but she did try to respond lightly. "The loose step wouldn't have hurt Joey much."
Cal refused to take the remark as a joke. "No. That dose was enough to kill a human." And he changed the subject, staring at her with a distinctly non-professional manner. "Hey! True you might come along to the blast in Lowell and Gwen's apartment tomorrow night? That would be the greatest!"
"Oh, Cal!" She felt herself blushing and gave silent thanks for the late-afternoon gloom. "I ... I don't know!"
"Honey...." His tone was low and friendly. "You know how out of place I am in this atmosphere. But I want you to know nothing could be nicer than for you to show up there. I mean...." He paused as if fumbling for words. "Well, I probably shouldn't say anything until you make up your mind." He grinned self-consciously. "Always was awkward making passes."
"Thanks, Cal." She felt a motherly sympathy for the earnest, clumsy industrialist. "I'll think, if my head stops aching."
Twenty-four hours later she'd decided to dare the experiment. "One orgy," Lowell had said. "At least one orgy before kicking off." If "accidents" were going to become common occurrences at Garlock Heights, maybe she'd better have her orgy. It wouldn't be bad with those two men, either. She already knew what an exhilarating thing sex could be with Lowell. And Cal was so sweet and unassuming it ought to be a warm, happy experience with him.
Colleen agreed to listen for Sarah. "Party, huh? Lowell and Edith and the other two? Well, long's they got their minds on nooky they're prob'ly okay." She grinned briefly. "Ain't no class distinction in Lowell when it comes to a piece of tail. And I guess that's mostly what's wrong with Edith-she's all pussy and anything that shuts her off is bad. Of course, she's pretty stuck up, too, but maybe she wouldn't be with a lot of sex going on."
"Oh, Colleen! Who said anything about it being that kind of party?"
Colleen laughed. "Ain't no other kind around them four, honey." She sobered, studying Judy closely. Her voice sounded full of concern when she continued. "Look, honey. Have your fun. Don't be scared of gettin' all the peter you want. But do it kind of choosy, if you see what I mean. You got a nice enough body you don't have to be a tramp."
Judy panicked when she tried to decide what to wear. Colleen refused to advise her.
"I ain't never done an orgy," she remarked. "Just went at it one guy at a time. Better ask Gwen. Now, there's a tramp! But she'll know what's right to wear, I bet."
Gwen went through Judy's wardrobe quickly. "Nothin' here, sweetie," she judged. "C'mon! Maybe we can fix something of mine."
Judy doubted it, but she went with the sinuous redhead. Gwen took out a simple, clean-lined frock cut square across the top with plain shoulder straps. It zipped up the back from a point just below the beginning of the modest flare. She held it in front of Judy and had her look at the effect in the mirror. Stark white, the Indianhead material complimented Judy's healthy coloring, and she was pleasantly surprised to find the length was suitable. But she examined the bodice with misgivings.
"I don't know...." She shook her head. "It's ... I mean...."
Gwen chuckled raucously. "So ya got big tits for your age. No sweat, sweetie. Ya don't want to wear anything under it anyways. Hell, they're soft enough to fill in the cracks. It'll do."
Judy hesitated a long time in her own room before getting up the courage to wear the dress without underwear. But she finally did pull it on. And she found her concern about the bust had been unjustified. It was a snug fit, but even before she got the shoulder straps fastened, the dress stayed securely in place.
The Blake apartment was a study of luxury. It was also clearly not designed for much privacy. The living room occupied the central space and the three bedrooms opened off it behind broad arches screened with openwork that provided no concealment whatever. It was obvious the idea had been intimate sharing. Lowell confessed he'd had the place remodeled. Oliver had scowled, he told her, but Sarah had been enchanted by the suggestive arrangement.
A broad table in the middle of the living room supported a huge crystal punchbowl and trays piled high with goodies. An enormous chandelier above the table-Judy didn't try to count the globes set among the dangling crystals-cast a brilliant glare over the entire room.
The punch was good. It had a dry flavor with a subtle touch that reminded Judy of tropical fruit, and when she had finished her second glass of it she was convinced the others were sparkling conversationalists. She realized, though, that they'd been at the - punch for some time before she'd gotten there. Gwen had forgotten what little polish she'd acquired since her marriage to Lowell and Edith, surprisingly, had shed her shell of hauteur. Cal was blinking owlishly, peering from one to the other as if he were groggy. Lowell, on the other hand, seemed unusually shrewd and purposeful; he let the others do most of the talking, but at intervals interjected some comment that intensified the others' reactions. Cal moved away from the others and led Judy toward the couch at the rear of the room. "Watch this," he advised. "Lowell's slick as hell. He's going to get those broads going!"
"Oh, dear! Not fighting!"
"Naw!" He chuckled, then hiccupped. "Naw! Watch!"
Judy couldn't share Cal's unconcern. Both women looked angry to her and even as Cal urged her to watch they sidled toward each other. They had the appearance of two wrestlers appraising each other before moving in for a throw. She couldn't hear what they were saying, either; they'd lowered their voices until she only caught an occasional word. Neither appeared to pay any attention to Lowell's infrequent remarks, but they did look more intense after each one.
Edith moved first. With a quick, fluid sweep of her arm, she struck at the front of Gwen's dress. The zipper ran from neckline to hem, and before Judy could gasp, the garment parted to reveal the redhead's torso.
"My gosh!" exclaimed Judy breathlessly. "Edith's pretty fast on the draw," Cal remarked. "Some woman!"
"She's got the same kind of dress! On purpose?"
"Yeah. We ... "
Whatever he meant to say got lost. Gwen's stroke lacked the swift grace of Edith's and she had to jerk at Edith's zipper pull at the waist, but in a moment Edith's dress gaped as widely as the redhead's. With shrugs that looked contemptuous to Judy, both women shrugged out of the garments and let them crumple to the floor. The bodies she stared at contrasted markedly. Gwen had the figure of a model. She was spare and finely controlled. Her boobs resembled orange halves tipped with pale pink cherries. Her skin was a translucent white, splotched with freckles that had run together-and her pubic hair was a sandy red, affording no concealment for her diminutive pussy. She had no fullness to her curves, but her flesh did manage to pad her sufficiently to prevent any sign of angularity. She held herself with a grace that looked indolent and showed no sign of embarrassment or discomfort.
Edith was taller and her hair was up, its glossy black a crown of cables. She had vivid coloring, her eyes a deep brown, her lips tinted scarlet, and her complexion a glowing tan. She held herself erect, smoothly sculpted shoulders back and great, globular breasts proud and quivering. Her nipples were a rich, dark pink and the aureoles verged on being brown. A slender, long waist accentuated full, feminine hips and her buttocks looked like firm sections of cantaloupe.
Edith extended her arm to touch Gwen's hair. Gwen flinched and reached up to lay her hand on top of Edith's coiffure. Judy held her breath, expecting to see one of them swing at the other. Instead, each burrowed her hand into the other's hair and grasped a handful, neither resisting.
"Good heavens! What are they going to do?" Judy asked Cal in a whisper.
He was leaning forward tensely, his face perspiring and his eyes wide. "Shh! You'll see!"
Edith ran her free hand over Gwen in a slow, insolent caress. Gwen trembled and fingered Edith's breasts, twisting each nipple cautiously. As if by prior agreement, they pulled each other closer and began feeling each other with quick, probing fingers. While they made occasional grabs at swinging boobs, they concentrated mostly on grabbing at each other's pussies, and both began to squirm and pant. In moments, their bodies were straining against each other, still twisting more like wrestlers than sex partners. And Edith sank to the floor, throwing Gwen off balance and pouncing on the girl when she fell.
They intertwined their legs and Edith was all over the girl, her hands clutching and caressing while she caught one jiggling tit in her mouth and began sucking savagely.
"God!" Judy shuddered. "Women! Do they like that?"
"I don't know. I doubt it. But they do it sometimes to give Lowell a kick. He gets worked up as hell over it."
"Ugh!"
"Yeah. Lousy way to waste a woman's energy for my money. How about you and me playing our own game, baby?"
"Well..." Judy smiled wryly to herself. She didn't have much to gain by rejecting the suggestion. After all, she'd come of her own free will. And she'd known it would get down to this. "Okay. What kind of game?"
"Feel gutsy?"
"If I don't get hurt."
"Okay! Come on!" He dragged her off the couch and onto her feet.
She followed passively, letting him lead her by the hand like a child. In front of the other couch, he stopped her beside an empty, low coffee table. She hesitated, then seated herself doubtfully on the end. Cal tipped her backward and had her extend her arms beyond her head. He produced soft cord from somewhere and secured each of her wrists to one of the corners of the table.
She submitted quietly to his positioning her, but objected to his tying her. He merely chuckled at her first startled question, and by the time she realized what he really meant to do, the knots were tight on one lashing. With that hand helpless, it was too late to struggle. He held her other arm in place with one hand while passing the line around the legs of the coffee table, then easily tied the other wrist.
"Cal! You didn't say anything about tying me up! Cal! What are you going to do?"
"Baby, I'm going to fuck you! Only I want to get you plenty excited first."
"Please, Cal! Not this way! It's just like rape!"
"Naw, honey. Not rape! You're going to have fun!"
"No! I'm scared. Please don't!" His hand closed over one breast. She gasped and her shoulders twisted abruptly. "Oh! Cal! Please, Cal!"
Without a bra to shape it, her breast molded readily to his squeezing. She felt the coarse material scrape her nipple and excitement stabbed inward.
"Jeez, what a nice tit!" exclaimed Cal. He worked her breasts back and forth, his fingers kneading it. "Soft! Nice, Judy!"
"Oh, Cal, please don't! Please, Cal! Let me go!"
"Aw, shit, baby! That wouldn't be any fun! Look at the chance I've got now!" He grabbed her other breasts and began to fondle it affectionately.
Judy twisted and jerked. His hands were exciting; there was a kind of frightening excitement just in being so God-awful helpless, for that matter. But it was too scary! She had no idea what he might make up his mind to do or what degrading things he might force her to do. She had to make him untie her.
The vigorous attention to her boobies was too much for her. She couldn't plead with him while he was making her feel that good. She could only grit her teeth and wiggle under the stimulus his hands provided.
He released one breast and unfastened both shoulder straps. As if he were intimately familiar with the construction of the dress, he slipped his hand under her and unzipped the garment to the waist. She cringed when he turned down the bodice to expose her from the navel up.
"Oh, dear!" she moaned. "Jesus, Cal! How humiliating!"
Lowell had somehow made her feel mature. She'd felt small and precious and protected, but she'd had no sense of being a child. Right now, she felt as if she'd become a toy to be manipulated as Cal's whims suggested. It was the same sense of utter dependence she'd resented so bitterly when John McAllister had been laying down the rules at home. Her anger grew as rapidly as her excitement; she wondered if they fed each other.
"Damn you, Cal Porter! I'm not going to let you do this!" She flung herself to one side, twisting so she could get off the table and turn around.
But Cal laughed delightedly. "Goddamn! Hey, you're going to be terrific!" He swung about to pin her hips, then ran one hand down her leg and captured the ankle.
With swift, practiced movements, he finished spreadeagling her. One sweep of a hand sufficed to thrust the hem of her dress far enough up her thighs to free them and he used one leg of the couch and the foot of an overstuffed chair to secure her ankles. With her legs extended, she discovered their downward angle made the small of her back arch and threw her pubic mound into obscene prominence.
"Oh, Jesus!" she gasped. "You dirty-minded old bastard!"
She trembled after the outburst. You didn't talk to grownups that way-especially not rich, stout ones who ran their own companies and had executives to take over so they could take long vacations. He'll hit me! I know he will! Damn coward! When I'm tied down like a pioneer in an Indian camp!
But Cal laughed again, his voice rich with happy excitement. "Yeah, baby! That's me-dirty-minded old bastard! And look what I got me!"
"Nothing! That's what you've got! Unless you get a kick out of climbing onto window dummies!"
"Not you, baby. You're warm, soft flesh."
"And I'm going to sleep. Just see how much fun that is."
He chuckled. "Hell, you're too mad to go to sleep. And you won't stay mad very long. Get a hand on your cunt and a mouth on a tit, you'll warm up quick."
"I will not! You'll see!"
But she had to admit to herself there was a distinct quality of excitement in having to look past upthrust, tight boobies with nipples that shook with her breathing and know he was looking down at them with a hungry leer. Her thighs were spread at a ghastly angle and he'd flipped the skirt awfully high. She squirmed, vainly attempting to work the skirt back into place.
Cal bent over her and fondled the dainty, sensitive boobies. He brushed work-hardened fingertips over the tops of her nipples and she saw the immodest little buttons swell and stiffen even as the first renewed surge of pleasure washed through her.
"Oh!" she gasped bitterly. "Oh, damn you!"
He bent lower. His hands cupped around one boob and he put his mouth to the nipple. He touched the trembling tissue with the tip of his tongue and Judy jerked convulsively.
"This the chocolate one?" he asked lightly.
"You son of a bitch!" she hissed, taking perverse delight in knowing she was going to get away with language she'd hardly dared think before.
He took the nipple into his mouth and sucked at it. Tremors raced over her and she held her breath at the fiery, prickly sensations that spread through her breast. In spite of herself, she blew the air out audibly when Cal released the glowing tit and grinned at her.
"Like that, don't you, baby!"
"Fuck you!" she exclaimed breathlessly.
"Yup! You're going to!"
"Oooh!"
He settled over the breast, pulling a great mouthful between his lips and sucking until she thought she could feel a bruise forming. His fingers wandered over her body, caressing the bare flesh above her waist and probing under the crumpled dress. She found it increasingly difficult to sustain her anger. Cal wasn't hurting her; everything he'd done so far had felt marvelous! It was hard to remember when he was giving her so much pleasure that he was humiliating her by keeping her tied to the table.
But when he reached over the dress and felt her thigh she remembered! She tried to jerk her knees together. The only result was a sudden twinge of pain in her groin, where the tendons contracted unsuccessfully and protested. And Cal's coarse hand slid slowly up the inner surface of the thigh toward her unprotected pussy.
"Don't-don't-don't! Stop it, you shit!"
"Aha! Getting close to the short hairs, aren't we!" His fingers lingered on the softer flesh at the top of her thighs, where she could feel her longer hairs touching his hand.
She twisted, jerking at her wrist bindings in an effort to pull herself away from his caress. Even as she did, he ran his fingertips lightly over one pussylip and she sagged against the table with a faint groan of pleasure.
"Unnnhhh! Mmmmm...Please, Cal, please!"
She knew abruptly she wasn't asking him to untie her-she was pleading for even more intimate caresses. She had a gnawing hunger for his cock and tried to remember precisely the weird, wonderful sensation Lowell's had given her.
Cal laid the flat of his hand on the steamy flesh of her pussy, holding it there while she ground herself against his palm. "Hey, you guys! You about finished showing off for Lowell? We've got a live one here!"
"Cal!" she shrieked. "Good God! You really are a prick!"
"A guy's got to be neighborly," he remarked amiably.
His hand squeezed her pussy gently and she permitted herself a vigorous thrust of pleasure.
CHAPTER FIVE
Judy recovered from that spasm of delight to find herself staring up at three people she could only think of as strangers. True, Lowell and she had a measure of intimacy established; they'd screwed in the woods-he'd helped her get over being a virgin-but she didn't feel she really knew or understood him. As for Gwen and Edith, they were hardly even nodding acquaintances. Edith surely wouldn't nod to her if they met on the street, and Gwen came from a world even more alien to Judy's than the Porters and Lowell.
Strangers, then, they hovered over her and stared at her nakedness. They weren't simply looking at a naked body; they were looking at a girl who was spreadeagled and being felt up-and who was writhing to the pleasure of it!
Omigod! How lewd can I get! How far will I go to prove to myself I can do what I want to! And then, shriveling inside, she thought, How can I ever look any of them in the face in the morning?
But the broad, rough-skinned hand was still on her pussy and the fingers refused to be ignored. They poked and rubbed and probed and she couldn't keep her hips from undulating or shut out the sparks of delightful sensation that leaped inward. She couldn't prevent her breath from coming in trembling gasps or stop her boobies from wobbling. Not even the horrible awareness that Edith had most likely tried twice to kill Colleen was enough to overcome the delicious waves of excitement that washed over her.
"Oh, my! What pretty little tits!" exclaimed Gwen. "Oooh!"
"Quite firm, too," observed Edith. "Surprising thrust for a position like that."
Gwen scoffed at Cal. "Pretty crude, aren't you? How come you only got her half undressed?"
Cal replied with a good humored laugh. "What's the goddamn hurry? I got what I want."
"Shame to leave a nice figure like that only half uncovered." Edith surveyed Judy critically. "Can't tell if she's really got a good build or not."
Cal sighed. "Always bitching! Well, I'm not letting go. If you want her naked, be my guest."
Gwen giggled. "Your husband's so delicate," she remarked to Edith. "How do you stand it?" She knelt and reached under Judy, working the zipper the rest of the way to its stops.
They'd have to untie her to get it off, Judy thought. They couldn't leave her spreadeagled this way and get it off.
But Lowell lifted her hips while Gwen slid the skirt upward under the taut buttocks. Judy winced and shut her eyes, mortified, as she felt the dress being pulled away from her pussy and exposing her gently rounded belly. Without fuss, they worked the wadded garment over her breasts and shoulders and head. Gwen left it stretched between Judy's elbows and stood for another long look.
"Hmm! Gee, she does have a figure! And her hair's natural! Ooh, look how thick that fur is!"
Judy felt herself flush furiously. She could stand any amount of handling better than the comments, she thought.
Edith dropped to the floor beside the table and felt Judy's breast. "God, these are firm!" she exclaimed. "Did you feel these breasts, Cal?"
"Of course! Had a good mouthful of the chocolate one."
"Oh, Christ, Cal! Won't you ever get over that small town drivel about chocolate and vanilla faucets?" demanded his wife in exasperation.
"I doubt it."
Judy admired Cal's imperturbable manner. She admired the skill of his fingers a great deal more. He was massaging the inner walls of her slit and she could feel the skin tightening over the mounds of her pussy as she swelled. Threads of excitement quivered throughout her body and she lost track of which muscles were jerking. Her hips twisted continuously, though, and she tugged fiercely at the bonds that held her wrists and ankles.
Edith's fingers felt entirely different on Judy's breast from either Lowell's or Cal's. They were smaller, for one thing, and smoother. But they seemed to her to have a more delicate touch, as well, and they pinpointed centers of sensitivity the men's hands had merely brushed by accident. To Judy's amazement and consternation a whole new body of pleasure waves started swelling over her. When Gwen joined Edith and began fondling the other breasts, Judy felt herself slipping away from reality into a hazy world of sensation and response. Whatever self-control she'd retained seemed to desert her in a rush. She writhed violently and had trouble simply trying to sort out the sources of the clashing jolts of excitement.
But she did watch Lowell, who continued for a time to stand over her and study the orgiastic scene. She was struck by the expression of blazing intensity in his eyes. It was almost a gloating look, she thought in distraction. It was almost an unholy glee at the way she and her three tormentors had merged into a single writhing being in their mutual enjoyment. She blamed her impression on the distortion caused by her own wild emotional state and quivered with anticipation when the quiet figure finally stirred.
Before adding his caresses to those she was already enjoying, he brought several cushions. With one hand under her to raise her from the table, he slid one cushion after another beneath her. Their softness padded the support and removed the irritation of hitting the hard surface, but they stretched and arched her, too, so that her nerves seemed to he closer to her skin.
He bent over her then to drag his fingers lightly along her taut muscles. To her, they felt like fingers of fire, arousing throbbing wells of delicious reaction and intensifying her awareness of all the other sensations that assailed her. Dimly, she realized Cal was stepping over one of her thighs and settling between them. She felt the pressure of his arms wedged against the tender inner muscles and his fingers spreading her already gaping pussylips. And she felt a warm, intimate pressure descend into the yawning depression around her cuntmouth. She knew instantly it wasn't the smooth-domed cockhead she was waiting for so eagerly. It was too broad and flexible and gentle for that. But at a light, deft stroke along the floor of her slit she awoke to the fact she was feeling Cal's mouth and part of his face.
"Oh! Ahhh!" Moans of delight burst from her gasping throat. "Cal ... Oh, Cal!"
He licked slowly and deliberately and every stroke of his tongue aroused her to a new level of ecstasy. She threw herself from side to side on the cushions, her buttocks hardening and her belly jerking frantically.
"Oh, please!" she wailed. "Oh, please! I'm so excited!"
Lowell crouched by her hips and nibbled at the straining flesh. She gasped and cried out, astounded at the intense pleasure the unexpected nips induced in her. He nibbled along her side and upward onto her now protruding belly and searing tides of heat surged over her. The two women had individual approaches to nipple stimulation. Gwen rubbed her teeth on the one she held in her mouth, rolling and twisting it while her tongue lay wet and warm on its tip. The squeaking of enamel against rubbery flesh made Judy's shoulders jerk erratically. Edith had sucked nipple and aureole past her teeth, sheathing her teeth with her lips, and she scrubbed the tender lump with the broad surface of her tongue while she gulped at the tingling flesh.
"Oh, dear God!" Judy rolled her head wildly as she sensed the approach of an orgasm. "Please, please! Somebody fuck me! Please!"
Lowell stopped tonguing her navel and raised his head. "Come on, Cal. She's pretty new to this. You can finish eating her some other time." He uttered a low, wicked chuckle. "Man, she's got something inside that tight little twat of hers just eating itself up waiting for a nice, juicy cock!"
"Oh, yes! God, yes!" Judy panted. "Please! I've just got to have it!"
Cal straightened and ran his hand over her belly. "Okay, baby. Got that little cunt all warmed up. Might as well give it something to chew on."
She quivered with impatience while he jerked off his clothes. She had only momentary glimpse of a gnarled, stubby hard-on before he dropped to his knees between her thighs again. He used his thumbs to stretch her pussylips apart while he positioned his cockhead. But at the first thrust, the meaty head plunged through her cuntmouth and bored the length of her vagina.
"Ahhh! Ohhh, yes! Oh, Cal! Mr. Porter! Fuck me good!"
He extended his legs, letting each of them rest on one of hers, his insteps hooked over her ankles and his knees lying outside hers. Supporting his upper torso on his forearms, he let the weight of his ass drive his cock. With bold, powerful strokes, he pistoned the heavy cock in her, grinding her clitoris under his pelvic arch at each surge.
She groaned. His belly was a hard, wire-bristled slab of rock riding over the sensitive, drum-taut mound her arched position presented. His thighs ground on hers and the steel wool coarseness of his pubic hair rubbed her pussy raw. The in-and-out sawing of the gnarled, warped shaft inflamed her cuntmouth and brought tears of passion to her eyes. His cockhead was a huge bulb in the middle of her gut, levering among her organs and making them churn. She hovered at the edge of orgasm, delayed only by her inability to clutch at the hairy beast on top of her.
But as Cal's thrust grew increasingly urgent and his panting changed to guttural grunts and his sweat poured over her, the need to clasp him in her arms diminished and her excitement became a savage, buffeting lust.
"Oh, Cal! Fuck! Fuck hard! Harder, Cal!" And then she cried, in an undulating scream, "Now! Blast me!"
Cal roared like a rutting stag. He slammed against her pussy and hung on it, quivering, while fierce jerks of his cock pumped his cum into the greedy cunt.
Judy's muscles softened and she sagged against the cushions. She closed her eyes and rested her lips against one arm, her breath puffing on the warm skin. Cal collapsed, then wearily propped himself up to relieve the pressure on the slender body beneath him.
"You've got an educated twat, kid!" he exclaimed. "Gnaws at a guy's cock like it had teeth!"
She mumbled, "I didn't know." He was likely just saying that, she supposed-probably some kind of line he fed every woman he fucked. She wasn't equipped any differently, so far as she knew.
"Lot of broads never do learn how to do that," he said in a confiding tone. "Be surprised." I couldn't care less!, she thought. Not right now! All I want to know is when you are going to untie me. Her joints were in agony. She knew she wasn't being injured, but the agony only partly offset the total numbness of her hands and feet.
Cal made no move to withdraw his softening cock from her; in one way she was glad, because the continued sense of fullness was a pleasant element of the long slide from the heights of stimulation she'd scaled. If only he could untie her without moving!
She felt something at her wrists and heard Edith murmur, "Better get the poor child loose. Her fingernails are blue."
Gwen replied petulantly, "What makes her a 'poor child,' for God's sake? She's only a year younger than me!"
"Of course, dear," remarked Edith sweetly. "But you've probably got at least five years' experience on her."
"Well, don't go betting any of my money," Lowell said. "She was a virgin yesterday morning."
"What!" Cal yelped. "You busted a cherry yesterday without even giving me a coin flip?"
Lowell laughed derisively. "You're a big boy now, Cal. I figure a guy does his own prospecting for cherries. Besides, what's so great about punching a virgin? Unless a guy's so uptight he needs the ego boost of saying he's the first one in?"
With her wrists untied, Judy began to suffer the pain of restored circulation. Somebody was chafing her hands, but she hadn't the energy to turn her head and open her eyes. And somebody else was unfastening the knots at her ankles. She realized too late the agony of recovering from being tied was worse than that of being helpless. But she knew secretly she'd experienced excitement at a rare level. She'd go through it again someday. And she wouldn't fight it. Not with the right man.
When Cal finally did pull his dripping cock out of her and let her up, she wriggled back into her dress at once. Lowell laughed at her.
"I don't care!" she flared. It did seem ridiculous, and she was embarrassed to seem so prudish. But it was a compulsion; if they couldn't see the naked flesh, maybe they wouldn't remember how she'd looked on that table every time they looked at her.
She sank exhausted into one of the deep arm chairs and watched the other four. She easily understood the savage excitement of the two women and Lowell; they'd had the stimulus of watching Cal while he'd fucked a newcomer to the group, and they hadn't had any relief. What startled her was the way Cal's limp cock filled and hardened the moment he got his hands on Gwen. And she was distinctly uncomfortable as she watched the tenderness and growing intimacy between Lowell and his sister.
Warned by Cal's quick recovery, she took the first chance she had to sneak out. She'd no more than gotten inside her own room than she heard a light tapping on the door. She opened it a crack and peeked out, half afraid it might be one of the two women coming to take her back to the party, but it was Colleen.
"Oh!" exclaimed Judy happily. "Come in!"
Colleen entered quietly and crossed to the door connecting Judy's room to Sarah's. She closed it silently, then came back and sat on the edge of the bed.
"You okay, girl?" she asked. Judy nodded. "A little sore here and there, but not hurt,"
"Worth the trouble?"
Judy hesitated. "I'm not sure. With the right men it would be. Maybe the right women would help, too. Mr. Porter doesn't really turn me on that much."
"You left early."
"Yes. They're still at it."
Colleen clucked. "Go take a shower. Helps get the stiffness out. Washes off the sweat and whatever, too."
When Judy came out of the shower, primly clad in her pajamas, Colleen insisted on giving her a massage. The strong, work-hardened fingers soothed and relaxed her; she caught herself wishing home had been like these moments with Colleen. The housekeeper said little, but she was gentle and motherly in what she did say.
"You don't mind, do you?" she asked once. "I know I ain't like your own mother, but you're just the age my baby would be now. If only Oliver hadn't been such an important man, " she sighed. "There's a few families in the world just can't spoil their name without it takes something away from all the folk. Oliver just couldn't have let it be said him and an Irish servant girl had a baby out of wedlock."
Judy listened drowsily. It wasn't strange, probably, that Colleen should have that one kink in her memory. It would be far easier to accept the idea that she'd succumbed to her employer's advances than to admit that she, herself, had been his child and conceived by somebody else. And apart from that self-deception, the woman seemed shrewd and alert. It would have been impossible to replace her-to find any one person who would cherish all the tasks it took to keep Garlock Heights alive.
Judy tiptoed into Sarah's room after Colleen had left; she felt guilty about having left Sarah and had to be sure she was in no need. She was startled to find Sarah wide awake and serenely composed.
"Hello, child. You've learned about that swapping game, haven't you."
"Why, Sarah! Yes. I ... "
"Never mind. It's good to know what it's like.
Maybe you'll want to do some more and maybe you won't. But you know." She changed the subject without a pause or transition. "Terrible accident you had, Judy. Lucky you're alive."
"Yes."
"That was deliberate. Those stairs were sound." Judy gasped. How does she know? she wondered.
"Funny thing..." Sarah skidded onto a tangent again. "Funny thing about premonition. There really is a sixth sense, you know. Now take Lowell. You weren't any more than out the door yesterday than Lowell started muttering to himself. 'Damn kid's going to go right straight to Colleeen,' he said. Yes, he did! 'Go right straight to Colleen and then down the back steps for a shortcut to get her some coffee. Just sure as hell!' he said. And that's exactly what happened, isn't it! But we don't trust premonitions. We don't do anything about them. Think how he'd have felt if you'd been killed!"
Judy shuddered. A lot of good that would have done! She tensed. "You heard him say that?"
"Of course."
"But . .. but you...." To all appearances, she recalled, Sarah had lapsed into one of those near-coma states that told so surely of her coming death.
Sarah laughed. It was a low sound Judy had to strain to hear, but it had all the dirty, triumphant, scheming overtones a laugh could hold. "It wouldn't have done for Lowell to hear what we were talking about yesterday, child. Now, would it?"
"Sarah! You were! You were faking!"
"A convenient thing, my dear. I consider it a rare privilege. It won't last forever, I suppose."
"Why .. . why you scoundrel!" Judy gasped with suppressed laughter.
"He interrupted us too soon, child. I wanted to ramble just a little more. The fact is, you're the child Colleen had to give up eighteen years ago. Where else would Oliver send his granddaughter but to his sister?"
"I thought so!" whispered Judy. She listened to bath water running in the apartment next door and felt a sense of closeness to the marvelously preserved woman in there who was her mother. The comfortable feeling she'd had with Colleen during the massage-the warmth they'd shared-all of that was right. "I knew it was too much of a coincidence, Sarah! I knew it! She's a little confused, though. She keeps saying Oliver was the father."
Sarah smiled tolerantly. "She'll get that straightened out, dear. It's a harmless little obsession ... a notion she got in her head when Oliver .. . when he had the accident." She shook her head. "So tragic. I really think Oliver was beginning to turn human, too. He'd even let Mike come to be with us for a couple of weeks." She stared into space, musing silently.
Judy watched patiently. She wondered about Sarah. The woman seemed too vital to be dying. If it had been cancer or some other terminal disease it would have been understandable for her strength to rally this way at times. But it hardly seemed reasonable when she was dying of the injuries she'd received in the crash. Colleen's bath water stopped running and Judy visualized her mother-still a desirable piece of tail, as Edith and Lowell had both remarked-lowering herself into the steaming water to soak. She could even hear splashing and a moment of vigorous thumping. Colleen was a vital, lusty woman. It was a shame she couldn't have had a more rewarding life, but maybe that could be rectified to some small extent now.
Tomorrow, she thought. No, tonight! As soon as she finishes her bath! I'll go to her and tell her! We'll have a cup of coffee together and get to know each other the way a girl and her mother ought to. And we won't have to be apart! And it won't matter who came along nineteen years ago and made promises he didn't keep She waited. She'd hear the water draining and know Colleen was out of the tub-or ready to get out. She thought she heard Colleen's door open and close quietly, but Colleen wouldn't leave a tubful of water and...Judy stiffened. Penelope would have! Penelope drew only hot water into the tub. She let it sit until it had cooled to the right temperature! Some silly thing about hot water losing some of its hardness in the heating process. Maybe Colleen was like that.
She rose and whispered to Sarah. "I want to see if Colleen's in her bath or not. I'm going to stick my head through the door and call to her. Okay?"
Sarah nodded emphatically. "Of course! And ask her what on earth she's doing taking a bath at this time of night. It's past midnight!"
Judy opened the interconnecting door. She heard nothing. That must have been Colleen going down for coffee, she thought. She turned to Sarah. "I think she must have gone downstairs for something. If it's all right, I'll wait in there for her."
"Certainly, dear. I'm all right. You go on in." The apartment was neat and cheery. Judy could see into her newly identified mother's bedroom, where the covers had been thrown back from the crumpled bed.
"No!" Judy protested aloud to herself. "She wouldn't get out of bed to take a bath! Why would anybody? Not unless she were sleeping with somebody." She realized she was listening to water dripping into the filled tub-a drop at a time, at long intervals-so she was instinctively counting while she waited from one to the next. The sound annoyed her, as dripping faucets always did, and she finally rushed toward the bath to tighten the faucet.
Colleen was in the tub. Water lapped gently over her face, blurring the strong lines of her jaw and the crinkles around her eyes.
Judy held her breath. She fought to suppress the horrified scream that swell in her throat. She had to yield sooner or later. And with the release of tension the scream brought, it also brought unconsciousness.
The sun was shining through her window when she awoke. She lay for a time with gritted teeth and clenched fists while she tried to convince herself she'd had a nightmare. But it was no use. And while she was trying she became aware of the fact she was listening to Sarah's waking breathing. She stumbled out of bed and pulled her robe around her, then went in to Sarah.
"Child, child!" Sarah's voice was soft and compassionate. "Are you all right?"
"As much as I could be," Judy replied. She wailed suddenly. "She didn't even know! She never did now about me!"
Sarah reached up to lay her fingers on Judy's arm. She squeezed while Judy's trembling subsided. At last she said, "She knew. She knew, child."
"No, she didn't! How could she?"
"I don't know. But she did. She knew when we got the first letter from John McAllister."
"What! What letter?"
"When you turned eighteen. He wrote to Oliver .. . said they'd kept their end of the bargain. The money was all used up, he said, and if Oliver didn't want to take care of you, you were on your own. And Oliver talked to Colleen." She paused for a moment, then added, "We were on our way to the McAllisters when the accident happened. We were going to get you. And Colleen knew."
Judy listened in stunned silence. As she slowly recovered a measure of reason, she shuddered. "Sarah! I heard the killer go out of Colleen's room! I heard her door close just before I went in to wait!"
"Well...You didn't, child."
"But-"
"I know. You told me you had. You went in to wait for her. But they had to come through this room when you screamed. Her other door was bolted on the inside."
Judy clearly heard the note of puzzlement in Sarah's voice. She couldn't believe what Sarah was saying. "It couldn't have been! They'd have had to come through here!"
"I know. And we knew they didn't. Child..."
"Yes?" Judy knew what Sarah was trying to tell her.
"Child, nobody killed Colleen. She did it, herself."
"No! No, Sarah! She couldn't have!"
"She couldn't go on living without her father. He was all she'd ever had in the world. Don't feel bad, dear. Having you was like getting to know a total stranger."
"But Joey! The coffee!"
"She wouldn't leave him alone, would she? Just that one cup, Judy. She could have used anything from my stand. And then herself."
Judy shook her head and stumbled from the room. She stopped at the sound of Sarah's voice; "Don't go, child. Stay while you let yourself adjust. Come, I'll just go on about myself and maybe about Oliver. I'll just remember aloud while you get used to it."
Judy returned obediently and sank onto the bedside chair, hands folded listlessly in her lap.
Sarah rambled. Judy listened half-heartedly when the woman mentioned the relationship between Oliver and Mike.
"Unhappy day, that was. Too much alike, perhaps, and born into worlds that didn't meet. Mike was as powerfully determined as Oliver-never compromised in his life. And he and Oliver held to different sets of principles," she sighed. "I always thought I could have seen the overlap if I'd known what the disagreement was. But neither one would say a word about it. Not one word! And Mike left hating Oliver, and Oliver watched him go, hating him just as heartily."
"And Oliver didn't change the will?"
"Oh, no, dear! What was right was right, you know. Property rights had nothing to do with a man's beliefs, you see. They were a matter of blood lines ... and alliances. No, nothing could have induced Oliver to change that document." She sighed again. "Only three things were ever important to that man, Judy. One was his principles. The second was his blood. And the third was the Garlock name. 'That's part of the legacy,' he said more than once. 'A man's got no more right to trifle with that than with the principle in his estate.' And that was probably the one thing he and Mike never did disagree on."
Funny, thought Judy. Colleen said that, too. The Garlock name was a sacred thing.
CHAPTER SIX
Judy wandered about Colleen's apartment briefly after Sarah agreed she'd had time to absorb the truth. She mentally catalogued the pitifully few things of a personal nature her mother had accumulated in the twenty-five years she'd lived at Garlock Heights. There was a worn Bible with the page where most family Bibles had space for the family tree cut neatly out. There was a tiny newspaper photograph of Oliver Garlock mounted in a dimestore, glass-faced frame. There was a fine brush and comb and mirror set, the handles showing the continued use they'd had, and a small, battered replica of a sea captain's chest, locked. There was also a lovely assortment of dainty, sexy underthings and some gorgeous informal gowns Judy was confident nobody but Oliver had ever seen Colleen wear.
They'd have to wait for the sheriff before touching anything, she knew. Even if it were really suicide, the sheriff or coroner or somebody had to make some kind of investigation. They wouldn't like it if anybody handled Colleen's things.
When she returned to Sarah's room, Sarah wouldn't let her stay. "You get dressed and get out for a while, child. Just roam around the house. I'll bet there are dozens of rooms you've never seen." She let one eyelid droop and the corner of her mouth twitched. "I'll just take a little nap. A person wants to keep up her strength."
Judy deliberately used the service stairway. She walked, though, and she tested every tread before trusting her weight to it. Not one was loose. But when she'd reached the ground floor she crept back up on hands and knees peering at the ends of each step. The fifth from the bottom had new screws holding it in place. She went down. Avoiding rooms where she thought she might encounter the others, she finally decided to explore the library. Oliver had used it for his study and office, she'd been told, and she'd had no occasion to visit it. But there ought to be books there, and she thought she could get a better feel for the man whose will had led to Colleen's death.
She entered by the side door and found herself between two floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Peering over the tops of the books, she could see similar cases beyond each, and she realized the term "library" had meant more to Oliver Garlock than it did to some. A sound stopped her. After listening intently for a time, she discovered she was hearing low, cautious voices. Somebody working out another murder, she thought with a touch of bitter sarcasm. She edged carefully nearer the sounds.
Peering around the end of the shelves, she saw Edith and Lowell. The two stood before a severe, black leather couch, which stood just beyond a massive executive desk. They stood so close together only the murmur of their voices reached her; the words ran through each other, half whisper, half mumble.
Then Edith's voice rose. "I don't care, Lowell! I just don't care! It's driving me out of my mind!"
"Easy! For Christ's sake take it easy!"
"Easy, hell! Goddamn it, big brother! Just once, I want it like old times!"
"Yeah, sure, Sis. We'll get a chance."
Edith blazed at him. "You son of a bitch! Something on your mind or something? We've got a chance! Right now!"
"Oh, Sis! After all..."
"After all, shit! Have we or haven't we?"
"Well, I guess...."
"Damn right, you guess! Right Goddamn now!"
Judy crouched tensely, puzzled by the exchange. Edith's hair had lost the perfection of its grooming; several strands had escaped. And the woman was flushed by her emotions. Her dark eyes appeared to snap as she glared at her brother. Lowell had acted calmly and soothingly, but his aspect changed abruptly. He looked suddenly menacing and deadly.
"All right! All right, you impatient slut! Right Goddamn now!" He seized his sister's wrist and twisted it viciously.
Edith gasped and bent, turning away to relieve the pressure. With a quick jerk, Lowell shoved her hand up between her shoulder blades. She bent deeply from the hips.
"Right Goddamn now!" he snarled at her.
Reaching down, he ran his hand up his sister's thigh, under her skirt. He grinned evilly. "You're ready, aren't you. Might have known." He gave her wrist an extra twist.
She jerked and sagged. "Jesus, Lowell! Not so hard!"
"Shut up, stupid! Take what you get!" He grabbed her hair, yanking out her coiffure and wrenching her head up. He dragged at the fistful of hair until she stood erect, then pulled her into a vicious, backward arch.
Edith wore a loose knit suit with a matching belt that tied, and her brother released her hair to jerk the knot out of the belt. With brutal disregard for her comfort, he twisted both her arms behind her and lashed her wrists together.
"Now, you cheap whore!" He grated the ugly words at her. "Now let's see if you've got as much guts as mouth!"
Judy jammed the back of her fist against her lips to stifle her cry of horror as Lowell again caught at Edith's hair and bent her backward. The massive breasts strained against the restraint of the knit jacket, her thick nipples pushing the material outward into their own form. Her feet were planted wide and her knees bent, her belly rounded and taut in the awkward stance. With one hand, Lowell removed his belt, doubled it, and struck his sister across the belly.
The blow lacked the vicious force Judy expected from the expression on Lowell's face, but it snapped loudly, nonetheless, and Edith jerked violently.
"Ow! You lousy bastard! That hurt!" The straining woman twisted to the side and writhed. Lowell jabbed the small of her back, restoring her to her original arched position, and unzipped her skirt without letting go of the belt. He thrust the soft material off her tight, round hips to expose her lower belly and the luxuriant, matted black pussy hair. Whimpering, Edith wriggled while her skirt plunged to the floor. Her brother gave her hair another jerk and she bent backward to a deeper arc.
Tendons stood out, quivering, along the front of her thighs. Her knees trembled and the hairless inner edges of her pussy lips gleamed, darkly wet.
Lowell struck her again, slamming the belt on the inner side of her thigh. Her knees sprang obscenely apart as she yelled.
"Stop that, you ugly prick!"
He hit her other thigh viciously, an angry red welt showing at once. And while she still writhed, he struck a savage blow across the drumhead of her belly.
"Ow! Christ, Lowell! No, no, no!"
Judy gulped, nauseated and terrified. She'd go for Cal; he'd put an end to the brutal beating! But she clung to the bookcase a moment longer, watching the facial contortions of the two.
Lowell panted heavily, his eyes fixed and his teeth clenched. Edith's eyes bulged and her mouth worked. Her face was brightly flushed from her exertion. She gasped desperately for air and tugged at the binding on her wrists.
But a low moan burst from her, shaking with an unmistakable note of pleasure. "Ahhh! Mmmm!"
Omigod! Judy shuddered. She likes it! She wants him to hurt her! That's what she meant!
Lowell unbuttoned the front of his sister's jacket. The garment sprang apart to fall away from her tits and belly. It hung drape-like from her shoulders and her boobs trembled, great, gleaming globes, their nipples dark and stiff. He struck her at the lower edge of her rib cage, the belt making a loud pop as it hit. Her hips snapped forward and her boobs leaped.
"Aaiiyee! Pleease!"
Lowell unbuttoned the front of his sister's jacket. The garment sprang apart to fall away from her tits and belly. It hung drape-like from her shoulders and her boobs trembled, great, gleaming globes, their nipples dark and stiff. He struck her at the lower edge of her rib cage, the belt making a loud pop as it hit. Her hips snapped forward and her boobs leaped. "Aaiiyee! Pleease!"
Lowell laid the belt on the desk behind him and gouged at her breasts, squeezing cruelly while the soft, ripe flesh bulged between his fingers. He seized a nipple and twisted it while Edith squirmed and moaned.
" 'Now!' you said. 'Right Goddamn now!' Well, how's it feel, you fucking tramp?"
"Ohhh...Oh, Lowell, please! Don't be a...self-righteous...bastard!"
He hit her in the face with his open hand. "Self-righteous! You stupid pig! You'd fuck an elephant if you could get to it!"
He ran his hand over the protruding belly, slapping it loudly and leaving the imprint of his hand, the red splotch spreading like a cancerous flower around her navel. The muscles beneath her skin churned and she twisted her shoulders while her hips jerked back and forth.
"Brutal shit!" she stormed at him. "Lie awake nights thinking how to hurt a woman?"
"Every night," he growled contemptuously. "What the fuck makes you think you're worth the effort?"
"Lowell, don't!"
"Shit! When I get hold of you, the ideas just come boiling out! You're that kind of loathesome cunt!"
"Please! Please, Lowell!"
He grabbed her swelling, wet pussy and squeezed it carelessly. Edith ground her hips in circles while her brother dug a finger and then another into her cuntmouth. One by one, his fingers all vanished into the maw of the wet cunt.
"Ahhhh! Oh, Jesus! Hard, Lowell!"
The muscles in his arm bulged and he lifted her, using the front of her cuntmouth as a handle. She jerked her knees together and yelled, pulling them up then letting her legs go limp and fall away from each other. With vicious, deliberate jerks, he snapped her up and down. Her legs flopped loosely and her tits bounced. She twisted her head from side to side as moans of agony bubbled from her lips. Judy felt sick and weak, her nature revolting at the spectacle, but her pussy hot and sticky, throbbing with a horrible excitement she couldn't suppress.
Lowell grinned wolfishly and let Edith down. He ripped his hand out of her twat and released his hold on her hair, spinning her around and jerking her viciously to him. Her breasts slammed into his chest and flattened, their sides bulging out from between the two panting bodies. He grabbed her buttocks and pulled at them, his fingertips buried in their softness.
Edith shuddered. A hard snap of her hips drove her belly against the bulge of Lowell's covered hard-on. She cried, choking sobs muffled against her brother's shoulder.
He turned her again, her side to him. Bending her at the hips, he held her torso under one arm and dug at her exposed twat from the rear. Again, he wedged his entire hand into the reddened, gaping cuntmouth and jerked her off her feet. Her body flailed as he shook it like a rag doll. She kicked and screamed and Lowell shook her more fiercely.
"You'll tear me wide open! Oh, you vicious son of a bitch! Eeeiiyy!"
"And feed you to the dogs, you miserable cunt! Dog food! That's all you're good for! Too bad old Major died. He'd fuck the daylights out of you right about now."
"Brrr! I'd a lot rather have him on me than you, you bastard!"
He gave her another violent shake. "You did that plenty of times. Want me to get that Goddamn Bowser in here?"
"Sure!" Her voice sounded suddenly eager, despite its undercurrent of agony. "Sure! Get him!"
"Fuck you, Sis. What you get this time, you get from me. You worthless bag!"
"Ohhh!" She groaned and twisted, her feet jerking.
Lowell jerked his hand free without lowering his sister. She shrieked as she dropped. Before she had regained her equilibrium, he drove a finger brutally into her ass. He buried it to the knuckle, the rest of his fist jammed into her asscheeks.
"Eeeyaghhh! No!"
With a sudden, violent twist, he flung his arm back. Edith's tortured anus clung to his finger; it elongated along it, a shiny, purple-red sheath of membrane. Her ass shook with a terrible shudder as the ripping finger jerked free.
"Ahhhh! Ohhhh! God, Lowell!"
Swinging his arm up, he brought his hand back down against her ass with an explosive slap. She shrank frantically and surged sideward.
"No, Lowell! Not that! Don't beat me!"
He slammed his palm onto her ass again and again while she writhed and pleaded. At one point, her jerked his hand back and shook it, his face contorted with pain. And he snatched up the belt and lashed it against the purpling asscheeks as if in revenge for his own discomfort.
Edith danced in a frenzy of excitement and pain. She jumped from one foot to the other, her ass bouncing wildly and her boobs flailing heavily beneath her. Lowell threw the belt aside and fumbled at the fastenings of his trousers, thrusting them off and stripping away his shorts. His cock swayed, it's massive, bulbous head bumping the tense flesh of his sister's thigh, the veined shaft rigid and swollen.
He swung Edith around, kneeing her ahead of him to the end of the desk and thrusting her over it until the top bit into the fronts of her thighs. He kicked her feet apart and she fell, lying flat with her boobs squashed under her and her cheek pressed to the polished surface. He held his cock in one hand and ground the blunt nose of the cockhead up and down in her gaping slit. The thick goo of her excitement coated the great bulb heavily, clinging to it in sticky strands. She groaned again, her voice ringing with pleasure when he pressed the brutal dome against the rim of her cuntmouth.
He smashed his hips forward, driving the immense cock to its full length in her with one abrupt, crushing blow that drove her thighs forcibly against the edge of the desk. Her feet snapped off the floor with the violence of his stroke and her knees beat against the desk.
"Aghhh! Love of Christ, Lowell!"
Without replying, he started fucking. Every stroke was a deliberately brutal hammer blow, the bony base of his cock blasting onto the swollen, pulpy bulges of her pussy with wet, loud smacks. Her body jerked forward on the desk, surging over the flattened boobs, then jerked back, rocking on them again. Her hair was all loose, spread across the gleaming surface in a tumbled, writhing mass.
"Ooh, ahhh! Fuck hard, brother! Fuck deep!"
As if his dearest wish were to thwart hers, Lowell flung his hips backward and jerked his cock out of her.
"Nooo! You rotten shit, get it in! Get it in!"
"Up your ass, baby!"
"Nooo! Nooo!"
Lowell poked the tip of his cockhead into her asscrack. Strands of her streaming cunt juice gleamed and smeared on her rounded, quivering flesh. It oozed, squeezed as if out of a cream puff, when she tightened her asscheeks and clamped them together. Her brother laughed and grabbed great handfuls of the flinching mounds of flesh, rolling them away from each other and laying her asshole open under his probing cockhead.
"NO! Lowell, please! Nooo!"
"Up your ass, Sis!" he panted and blasted against her.
The monstrous bulb wedged her ass open and plunged in, the great shaft driving from sight with it.
"Eeeyaagghh!"
Lowell's hips lashed against her. His pace reached a furious level and his balls slapped her dripping pussy. Her asscheeks bounced. Her fingers splayed at her back and her eyes bulged and her mouth gaped in a silent shriek.
"Now, by God! Now I'm getting some good out of you! That's what you really are, Sis! A fucking asshole!"
"Aaaaghh! Ooooh, Lowell! Blast me! Fuck me!"
Lowell's face had flushed to a color as deep as Edith's. He panted wildly and held his tongue between his teeth. With a convulsive thrust, he ground the base of his cock against his sister's writhing ass and held it there, his own asscheeks jerking as he spewed his cum into her gut. Edith groaned delightedly and squirmed, the play of her muscles unmistakable evidence of the ferocity of her orgasm. They strained together at the edge of the desk and Lowell worked his hands under her tortured boobs, pulling her upper torso up and letting their combined weights mash her thighs onto the brutal wood.
But their frenzy spent itself. Both bodies shook in the grip of a final tremor and began to lose their rigidity. Lowell eased his sister back down on the desk and slowly extracted his cock from her. He fell back, his shoulders drooping, and mopped his forehead with his arm.
"Jesus, Christ!" he exclaimed hoarsely.
"Mmmm!" Edith sagged limply.
Lowell untied his sister's arms and helped her off the desk. He collapsed onto the couch, Edith lying across him and clutching weakly at his arms. She stared into his face, a tremulous smile twisting her mouth.
"God, darling! What a fuck!" she exclaimed.
Lowell groaned, then laughed. "Hard work!"
"You're a brute, brother-mine." She snuggled contentedly against him. "I'm sore all over!"
"Brute! What a glutton! Doesn't Cal do anything for you?"
She chuckled ruefully. "I think the poor dear's scared of me. I've done everything I could to get him to hit me! Everything! And all he does is be a saint!"
"Better level with him, Sis."
"I can't! He's too sweet! Damn it, I love the big oaf, Lowell! But I do wish he'd beat the shit out of me just once!"
"He could do it. Christ, what a monster!"
She sighed. "Don't I know it! Just beautiful!" She added, shrugging, "Oh, well, I'll have you for a little while longer. Something to remember afterward."
"Yeah. A while."
"Lowell? You ever do it that way with Colleen?"
Lowell appeared to tense. "Huh? Colleen? She didn't go for the brute stuff, Sis. Got her tied up a few times, all right. She fucked like an insane woman! But she fought like hell, and when it was all over she threatened to cut me off for good."
"She didn't mean it."
"Like hell! Had to work like a son of a bitch to change her mind!"
"Too bad she's dead now." Edith didn't sound sorry.
Lowell grunted moodily. "Maybe just as well." Seeing his sister's startled expression, he added quickly, "Never saw anybody torn up the way she was about Oliver kicking off."
CHAPTER SEVEN
Judy drew back between the bookshelves and huddled, fascinated and repelled by the scene she'd witnessed and the revelations about her mother. She felt too unnerved to risk moving; she'd stumble against the books and give herself away for sure. But Edith and Lowell were already stirring. They were soon dressed and out of the room.
Judy waited, wandering around the library and looking at book titles while she waited. The worst thing she could do, she decided, was to come out of the room soon enough to let them suspect she'd heard or seen them. It hadn't made an unpleasant office for Oliver; the north wall had high, pleasant windows and there were only the two doors, the one from the service hall she'd come though and a larger one opening onto the main hallway. The books occupied perhaps half the floor space with a couch, two simple armchairs and the desk and swivel chair providing an uncluttered air in the other half. In the end opposite the main door she found built-in cupboards that were partially filled with miscellaneous types of office supplies.
When she judged she'd allowed enough time, she started toward the side door. But as she reached for the handle a scraping noise arrested her attention. She hesitated, listening. The sound came again and she retraced her steps to investigate. Before she reached the point where she'd crouched while spying on Lowell and Edith, there were quick footsteps and Mike passed the aisle. He walked purposefully toward the main door, disappearing from her view as rapidly as he'd entered it, and by the time she could get to the end of the shelves he was going into the main hall and pulling the door shut behind him.
She stared, shaken. Under his arm, he'd carried the dilapidated strong box she'd last seen in Colleen's bedroom. That fact numbed her to the realization that slowly swelled until it drove out every other thought-that he'd been hidden somewhere in the library the whole time she'd been there, herself.
How? she asked herself. How could I possibly miss seeing him?
After all, Mike was no small man. He was bigger even than Cal, and Cal was a real brute! With his size and his splendid physique and obvious, cat-like quickness and grace, Mike could have played some professional sport-pro football, for example-she'd thought before. But he couldn't have hidden that bulk in the library the whole time she was prowling around it. She stood motionless and stared at the cupbroad-lined wall at the end of the room. That's how! She gasped and shivered. That's how! And that's how come he's got Colleen's strongbox! Good God! That's how come Colleen's door could be bolted from the inside and I could hear a door open and close! She was murdered! A secret passage from here to her room.
She opened the first cupboard and gazed helplessly into it. There was nothing to suggest it could possibly conceal an entrance. And if it had, a person Mike's size could certainly not squeeze between its shelves. Of course, there are the two at the end without shelves, she thought. That's where a door would be. And then, in a rush of horror, she realized, It's Mike! Mike knows the passage and he's the one who's stolen the strongbox! So it's Mike who killed her, not Edith! Oh, God, suppose he catches me here when he finishes with the box and wants to put it back!
She stumbled in her haste to get out of the trap she'd put herself into. She was so frightened she scrambled halfway to the proper aisle on all fours before she could regain her feet. But she reached the side door and slipped to the relative safety of the service hall without Mike's having returned.
She crept up the back stairs-the "murder stairs" she'd come to think of them-and into her own cubicle. A quick peek assured her Sarah was asleep, so she closed the interconnecting door and pulled her only chair to her window. Sitting there quietly staring down into the woods where she'd walked with Lowell, she tried to sort out the confusing elements of the situation that had turned into such a ghastly nightmare for her.
Colleen's suspicions had seemed thoroughly sound. Edith had hated Judy's Irish mother from the beginning. An erotically oriented girl of twelve when her mother had married Oliver and brought her and Lowell into this house-obsessed with the idea of sexual relations with him, by her own admission-Edith had fiercely resented the way the twenty-two-year-old housekeeper had undertaken Lowell's sexual education. She'd probably never outgrown a sense of being inferior in experience and second in her brother's sensual regard. With the added incentive of Oliver's curious will and the fact that Colleen was Oliver's illegitimate daughter, Edith had clear motive for wanting Colleen dead.
Mike's possible implication hadn't even entered Judy's mind. He was so disagreeable it was easy to picture him as a potential murderer, but there hadn't seemed any strong motive. He stood to gain nothing through Oliver's will by her death; her share would go to Lowell and Edith. And nobody had suggested he'd had any other reason to want her dead. Except-and here Judy hesitated-except the emphasis both Colleen and Sarah had placed on the Garlock name. The name was a legendary one in the history of the nation, Judy had to admit. It had almost the same connotation to the average child in terms of integrity and self-sacrifice as Washington's. But that hadn't struck Judy as grounds for murder. With the evidence she'd seen today, she had to reassess the possibilities. To a person who bore the name, maybe its preservation would be that important. Maybe it would be worth a killing to conceal the fact a Garlock had fathered an illegitimate child.
Or maybe, she thought at last, there's something buried in the argument that made Mike leave Garlock Heights. One thing sure-I'm going to find that secret passage!
Edith wanted to sit with her mother that night after dinner. She'd be with her an hour or two, she told Judy. No need for anybody else to stay around.
Judy took advantage of the situation to search for an entrance to the secret passage. She was squeamish about searching Colleen's room with Edith and Sarah right next door-and she'd have to enter through Sarah's room if she did-so she went to the library. She remembered to take a flashlight, just in case she did find the door she was looking for.
In the library, she went immediately to the two cupboards without shelves. Even the fluorescent lighting in the room wasn't good enough to illuminate the rear corners of those two closets, and she had to rely on her flashlight from the beginning. She didn't expect to find a control easily, and she was right. She tugged and twisted every hood and peg that projected into either enclosure without results. When even poking at minor irregularities in the surfaces failed to produce any kind of movement, she wondered if she'd jumped to a rash conclusion. She shone the beam of her light on the rear walls and examined them minutely for the kind of cracks she thought would show the edges of a door. But the only crack she could find was the one where the quarter-round molding met the rear panel.
In the corner cupboard, her search was somewhat hampered by a stack of long storage tubes that leaned in a corner. The other cupboard, however, was empty, its hanger rod showing it had been designed for storage of coats or other types of clothing. She'd returned to it, severely discouraged, when she heard the main door open. There was a muffled exclamation and the room was plunged into darkness. Whoever had come in, however, didn't leave. Instead, Judy saw brief flashes of light, as if a flashlight were being turned on for very short intervals. For a time the intruder seemed to stay near the desk; she heard drawers being opened and their contents being jumbled. She considered slipping along the bookcase that shielded her to where she could see who was there. But the drawers snapped closed and footsteps warned her the unknown searcher was coming toward the cupboards.
In panic, she backed into the coat closet, pulling its door shut behind her. One foot caught on the other and she felt herself losing her balance. With a wild, silent prayer, she snatched at the hanger rod and hung on. For a moment she twisted, not daring to drop the flashlight so she could steady herself with her other hand. And she heard a low grating sound at her back.
She gasped and switched on the beam of her flashlight for an instant to see the passage she'd been looking for. She stumbled into it at once; there was no other hope for avoiding discovery if the intruder should open that cupboard. Inside, slightly above head level, she saw a long lever projecting from the wall and surmised it must activate the door. She wrenched at it and the rear panel of the closet slid smoothly into place.
In contrast to the fine workmanship that had made it so difficult to find the door, little case had been taken on the construction of the passage, itself. It consisted merely of the space between two walls (where one would otherwise have sufficed) and she could reach from one end to the other with her outstretched arms. A crude ladder had been installed by nailing crosspieces between two of the studs in the wall. Awkwardly, the flashlight hindering her and making her feel insecure, she began to climb.
Eight crosspieces up, rough planking had been laid across the shaft, their ends resting on what looked like scrap two-by-fours. The two-by-fours were nailed to studding, half the nails having bent and been pounded against the wood before they could have penetrated to the studs. Judy put her flashlight on the unfinished "floor" and edged her way through the opening, letting herself back sit on the edge of the platform. She shook her head at the fact the planking hadn't even be secured by nailing. Terrified she'd displace the boards and plummet to the floor below, she twisted gingerly until she could rise to her feet.
As she bent to retrieve the flashlight her face thrust directly into a thick, stiff mass of cobweb. She held her breath to suppress a scream of distaste and panic. But when she had the light in her hand and had scraped away the clinging web, she couldn't locate the spider that had spun it.
She heard the noise of an opening door faintly from below; the intruder had opened the closet. Mike! she thought. God! It's Mike and he's going to come up here!
She found a control lever like the one at the bottom immediately. Jerking down accomplished nothing, but by pushing upward she made a panel slide open and could step into Colleen's closet. She pushed her way through the lovely garments she'd admired earlier and reached up hopefully to twist at the clothes rod. To her immense relief, the back of the closet closed smoothly, leaving no trace of an opening.
Still using her flashlight-guarding the beam to prevent its creating a flicker at the bottom of the door to Sarah's room-she looked for the strongbox. It wouldn't be fair to convict Mike while there was the faintest possibility there were two boxes that looked alike. She wasn't surprised to find the box truly missing; she'd have been surprised if it had been there.
With nothing else to do and conscious of the danger of being heard by Edith or Sarah, Judy crouched beside her dead mother's bed to wait until she could be sure Mike wasn't going to come up through the passage. When a half hour had gone without his appearing, she steeled herself to the return trip to the library. She found it dark and empty; whoever had been there was gone.
The sheriff and the coroner arrived together the next day, cursing the difficult road that isolated Garlock Heights and grumbling over the necessity for the trip.
"Don't know why suicides always have to make it tough," the coroner remarked. "Either make such a bloody mess of things it makes a man sick, or pick some God-awful inaccessible place for it."
His examination had established drowning as the cause of death, then. He confirmed that and added there had been no evidence of other injury. "Nobody beat her up first," was the way he put it.
Still, the law demanded certain formalities, and the two men went through them in a perfunctory manner. In view of their obvious lack of interest in the case and their settled conviction that Colleen had taken her own life, Judy couldn't bring herself to approach either of them with her version of the coffee poisoning or to show them the secret passage and accuse Mike. They were both too matter-of-fact and bored with the case to encourage speculation or confidences.
When they'd left, Sarah suggested Judy consider moving into Colleen's apartment. "Far more homey and comfortable, dear. Your room and the one I'm in were intended as sick rooms." She smiled briefly. "That was in the days when the doctor had to come seventy miles by buggy and things like measles and scarlet fever and God knows what else were awful things to have going through a household. Think about it, child. In a way it would be a gesture Colleen would appreciate."
Judy finally did consent to the move, despite the presence of the passage. She'd simply have to find a way to prevent its use. She wasn't seriously troubled, though; there wasn't any reason to think anybody was concerned about her.
But her confidence was badly shaken the first day after she'd completed the simple move. Sarah had strangely come to require far less companionship. She repeatedly shooed Judy out, maintaining a young girl ought to be moving about more and taking an interest in what was going on around her. And Judy had gravitated toward the library, where she spent increasing amounts of her time. In contrast to her first day in that room, when she'd begun to think it might be a main traffic pattern, she found she was seldom disturbed. Hardly anyone was interested in going into the room.
So the day after her move, Judy opened the back of her closet and lifted the planking of the makeshift platform into the room, where she stacked it under her bed. She smiled at herself for the precaution; she wasn't likely to be troubled by visitors. And then, closing the secret door, she left the apartment and went to the library. She was engrossed in one of the journals Oliver had kept when somebody came in.
"Well! Didn't expect to see anybody in here!" It was Mike. He sounded mildly surprised, but no more.
Judy glanced up absently. "Hmm. I come in here when I have the chance. It's quiet."
"Deserted," remarked Mike, correcting her. He wandered to the desk and dropped into the swivel chair. Opening the top center drawer, he began putting its contents in order.
Judy returned to her reading. Oliver's bold scrawl was describing the skeletal essentials of a transaction involving mining interests in Central America. Dry and terse, his prose sketched an absorbing picture of the translation of one kind of financial empire into another. Without dramatics or emphasis, his crisp account managed to convey a sense of his dedication and drive that hadn't come through to her in the stories the others had told her.
"Lot more comfortable in Colleen's apartment?" remarked Mike as if to avoid seeming to ignore her.
"Mmm-hmm." She continued to read.
"Never did get her stuff moved out. Bother you?"
"I want it there."
At that moment, she read a short sentence in the journal that noted the fact one of Oliver's associates had somehow gotten away with a substantial sum of money Oliver should have had. For the first time, she detected a note of heat in Oliver's style.
Mike's next comment was unfortunately timed. "You'd think a woman would have more after twenty-five years."
Without looking up, Judy snapped at him. "Might have, if people left it where it belonged!"
"Huh?"
"That box-you could put it back." She gasped, sick with horror at what she'd said. She raised her head to stare into Mike's startled eyes.
For a time they studied each other, he with an expression of speculative concern and she with growing terror. At length Mike rose, still having said nothing, and crossed to the main door. He shot the bolt, then strode rapidly to the side door, where he repeated the ominous procedure. Judy dropped the journal and sprang to her feet, certain he intended to silence her then and there. She raced to the windows, only to discover the bars that covered them were permanently fixed, rather than being removable gratings as she'd expected. She whirled, pressing backward against the metal as Mike approached her.
He studied her again, his face looking cold and merciless. "Sit down." It was a simple, uncompromising order.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Please...I'm tired of sitting down." Her voice squeaked and the momentary grin of derision that twitched the comers of Mike's mouth infuriated her. He thinks I'm acting like a kid! she thought. Just because it scares me to know he's going to kill me!
But he shrugged. "Stand on your head if you want to. I don't give a damn. But we're going to have a little talk. Just the two of us".
"No interruptions."
She flared at him. "Like when you killed Colleen!"
"You simpleton." His tone reeked of contempt, as if it were inconceivable to him she could so recklessly destroy her only hope of staying alive. "What about that box you're talking about?"
"The one you took out of Colleen's apartment before the sheriff and coroner came."
"Oh? What did it look like?"
"You know very well!" She described the box.
"Suppose there were such a box-and I doubt that-what makes you think I took it?"
"I saw you."
"Oh, come now! Peeking out of your door, I suppose."
She hesitated. She could stop talking at all. Or she could tell him she knew about the passage and had seen him with the box while he was on his way from Colleen's apartment. She compromised, sensing a possibility of lulling his feeling of danger.
"I saw you with it in the library...right here. I wondered then what you were doing with it."
He snorted. "Likely story. What was in this box to make it so damn important I'd want it?"
"I...How should I know?"
"Fact is, you don't know very damn much of anything, do you!" He ran his gaze downward to her feet, then slowly back up to her eyes. "Funny how much you remind me of Colleen."
Now! she thought, her chest constricting with her panic. Now he's going to kill me! But they'll find plenty of signs of a struggle this time!
He didn't attack her at once. "A kid of ten can't do a hell of a lot about it," he mused aloud. "But he sure knows a figure when he sees one! Colleen's just about drove me up the wall! And yours is just exactly like hers was then."
She shuddered. Talk about cat-and-mouse!
He went on, ignoring her reaction. "Had new people in the house about that time. Fifteen-year-old-kid looks different to a twenty-two-year-old woman than a ten-year-old. She found all the time she needed to give the new kid guided tours. Guided and illustrated." He sighed. "From what I hear, it turns out there's time for you to take up where she left off."
Judy flinched. Her affairs obviously weren't as private as she'd believed. Mike knew about the swapping. Maybe he even knew about that morning in the woods. The strange thing about it was what it did to her to know he did. As big and powerful-looking as he was, he'd arouse a primitive desire in any woman. He did in her, although her aversion to his moody personality had concealed the fact from her until this moment. That they shared such intimate knowledge forced her to admit secretly how she twisted up inside when she looked at him.
"You're no gentleman," she said in a low tone.
"Oh?"
"If you were, you wouldn't ever mention anything you've heard of that kind."
He shrugged. "I don't claim I curl my finger when I'm drinking a cup of coffee. I spend my time where it doesn't matter. It does matter when a guy sees a girl built like you and begin eating himself out for wanting to get her into bed."
She gasped.
He continued, his words beginning to crowd each other. "Look. You think I killed Colleen? Well, I didn't. I don't care whether you believe me or not. You'll have a hell of a time proving I did. The box? Make a big deal about some box you imagined and I'll say right out I don't know what you're talking about." He thrust his face toward her and bared his teeth in a horrible grin. "Besides, Lowell and Cal both saw me come in here. What would they think if I left a dead body in here?"
"They...they did?" she asked, hope welling powerfully.
"They did. So even if I do decide I've got to kill you, I'm not going to do it in here today."
Judy sank back against the window, her knees weak and her belly churning.
"Let's talk about me and gentlemen." Mike rested his hands on his knees. "Like how a man goes about fixing up a lay."
"Honestly!"
"Okay. You're shocked. But getting laid isn't any big tragedy to you, is it."
"I ... I...." She felt herself flushing.
"I mean, that's not going to cost you one hell of a lot of sleep."
"Please, Mike!"
"Depends on who it is."
"Mike, please!"
"Tell me, honey. What makes Cal so damn much more acceptable than me? Or even His Highness, Lowell?"
"Mike! They're not so ... I mean. Mike?"
"You mean they're not all that Goddamn attractive?"
"They...They're nice to me."
"Sugar for the butterfly?" He pushed himself away from the desk and stood directly in front of her.
She had to tilt her head back to look into his face. His jaw was lumpy and had nicks where his razor had bitten too deep. His lips were a little crooked and his nose looked as if it had been neglected after a bad break. His whole face was box-like, but the warm, hazel hue of his eyes gave it a startling quality of vitality at this range she hadn't noticed before. He thrust his fingers through the thick mat of blond waves above the broad forehead.
"They smiled at you? That what you mean? Give you a lot of happy-talk?"
"Well...Not exactly that, but. . . "
"They don't grab you and beat the hell out of you?"
"Oh, Mike!"
"Handle you gently, so you don't feel like a common whore?"
"Mike! Mike, please!"
He dropped the sarcastic tone. "Judy, I'm telling you. You're attractive as hell! What's more, the only time I was ever really in love was with Colleen, and there's something about you that could make you her at that age. You so scared of me you wouldn't consider shacking up with me once?"
She stared into his eyes, fascinated. Could he really have killed Colleen and now want to make love to Colleen's daughter? But of course, he didn't know she was Colleen's daughter. The fact she reminded him of a younger Colleen couldn't be anything but happy coincidence in his mind. She wondered fleetingly if he had a cock to match his physique. If he thought he had a need for her, it was a totally different kind from that Cal and Lowell had experienced. Theirs had been a need for novelty; his had to be built on long hunger. He needs me! she thought with a youthful thrill. He really does! And that's lots more important than letting some old goat get his kicks by spreadeagling me on a coffee table! It's noble to give somebody something he really needs!
"Mike .. . Mike, I'm not scared of you." She lied that much. "I ... I wouldn't mind. I think I'd like to."
She realized abruptly his hand was at the small of her back. His face hovered over hers, his lips tantalizingly close and his breath smelling woodsy. She touched his chest with her fingertips and rose on the balls of her feet, her mouth gulping greedily at his. She rested against the heat of his palm and shivered with delight at the authoritative way his other hand closed on her breast. He kneaded the soft mound tenderly, then urgently, and his tongue drove deep into her mouth. A hot sea of lust inundated her.
He couldn't be a killer, she thought incoherently-irrationally. Nobody who could make her feel this way could be a killer.
She gasped for breath when their faces parted. "Mike! Oh, my gosh, Mike!" A younger man was different!
"Some guys lay their sisters," he muttered.
So he knew about Lowell and Edith. Well, they'd developed their "thing" right here at Garlock Heights; he was bound to know.
"Nothing wrong with that, I guess. Depends on how you're looking at it." He pulled her to him, crushing her belly against the thick, unyielding bulge of his hard-on.
He was simply trying to cover up the intensity of his reaction by reaching for irrelevant ideas, she decided. He was such a boy, actually. Even if he did happen to be seven years older than she, he'd clearly had even less experience. He needed a woman like her to guide him over that first awkward hump.
It was difficult to follow such an elevated train of thought, though. He'd let go of one boob and was mauling the other; his fingers seemed instinctively to find the most exciting places to probe. And his other hand had slipped down onto her ass and was squeezing and goosing and making her grind her pussy on the ridge of his thigh. All in all, his inexperienced fumbling was arousing her faster than either Lowell or Cal had.
She squirmed against his cock. Releasing her hold on his shirt, she sneaked her hand down to his waist. And by twisting hungrily she managed to work her fingers in to the tab of his zipper. It took but a moment to unzip his fly, and she felt like an experienced woman of the world when she plunged her hand inside his trousers and found the opening in his shorts and got hold of his cock.
A hard thrill of apprehension raced over her when her fingers failed to go around the shaft of his cock far enough to meet the tip of her thumb. God! she thought. A monster! Never mind, I'm so gooey already if you want to go in!
He reached down with one hand and pulled up the side of her skirt. No finesse at all, she noted. But a girl couldn't hold that against a man as hard up as Mike. He tucked the crumpled material into her waistband, seized her ass with that hand and reached down with the other to pull up the other side of her skirt.
She squirmed at the sensation of cool air on her bare upper thighs. Mike's hands caressed the naked flesh with slow, gentle strokes. A fierce tingle in her pussy drove her to jam it harder onto his leg. He fingered her skin right at the edge of her panties, then dragged his fingertips upward over the nylon to the elastic at the top. Acting as if he owned her, he thrust both hands inside the flimsy panties and caressed her buttocks.
Her breath came in shuddering gasps and she couldn't help scrubbing her tits on his chest. He was so big and strong it was a thrill simply to be pushing against him that way. She tugged his cock into the open, wiggling aside to let it out, and Mike thrust down with his hands, forcing her panties off her hips and halfway down her thighs. She whimpered unintentionally and rubbed his cockhead in the rich brush of her pubic hair. Mike grunted. He made an extra effort and worked her panties below her knees. Quickly, fearing he might back away from her, she lifted one foot at a time to pull free of the clinging garment.
By standing on tiptoe and bending his rigid dick all the way down, she could get his cockhead under the curvature of her mound where it would push on her clitoris. She held it there and ground herself against the wet, smooth knob.
What am I doing? she wondered fleetingly. Good God, what am I doing? He'll think I'm a wild woman!
But "savage" seemed more appropriate. She felt primitive and savage. She felt voracious for him. Her cunt clamored for the sweet burden of the glorious cock she hung onto so tightly. Her knees pushed apart repeatedly while her asscheeks tightened to thrust her pussy onto the swollen, pulsing cockhead so tantalizingly there, yet so impossibly angled.
Mike continued to fondle her buttocks and her thighs. His fingers dipped inward again and again between her thighs to tease the rear edge of her cunt. And he bent to nibble at the hollow of her neck while she blew her breath out with a delighted hiss.
"Mike! Oh, Mike! Please get him in me! Oh, please, Mike!" Her whisper was demanding and urgent.
He crushed her to him for a moment. The pressure was fierce and hot and wonderful. Then his hands cupped under her asscheeks and he lifted her. The moment her feet left the floor she flung her legs around his hips. She pulled her knees up until they rode on his hip bones while he raised her so she was above the level of his cockhead, even when she allowed the majestic shaft to stand free.
He maneuvered her briefly, letting her gulping cuntmouth settle onto the blunt nose of his cock. Her thighs tightened and she pressed her heels against the backs of his thighs.
"Oh, yes, Mike! Oh, dear! Put me on it!" She clutched at his shoulders and leaned back to the full length of her arms. A sudden, hard jerk of her legs snapped her cunt over his cockhead.
Mike gasped and grinned at her. "Jesus, woman! Neat!"
"Oooh! You've got such a nice warm peter!" She held herself motionless and let the warmth and the sense of bulging distension seep through her. It was amazing, she thought, what a different kind of sensation sex produced. Mostly a person felt things right at the skin. Even pressure got sensed mostly at the surface. But a cockhead lodged in the throat of a cunt sent thrills through internal parts of one's body. Thrills seemed to well up where a person had no idea there was any feeling. They were jolting her now in the lower parts of her belly, just inside and above her hips-sharply focused, tingly, delicious waves of pleasure.
But she couldn't contain her desire. Despite her effort to hold still, a wave of hungry impatience triggered her thighs and she jerked them, slamming her onto his rigid cock and driving her cunt down the long, thick shaft. Mike's cockhead burrowed the length of her passage, its rounded nose parting the soft, thick, spongy walls and pushing past the clinging folds. Each fold registered a pleasurable sensation of pressure and sent a continuous stream of jangling contact signals, their messages flowing together into a vibrant continuum of delight that filled her belly and spread in ripples through the rest of her body. She experienced a brief spasm, her arms and legs clamping her fiercely to Mike while she trembled violently in a gust of savage fulfillment.
Mike groaned softly. One hand clutched her ass, jamming her pussy tightly against the hard root of his cock while the other slid up her back and crushed her upper torso to him, flattening her boobs on his shirt front.
"Omigod, Mike!" exclaimed Judy in a shaky voice. "Omigod, that peter fills me so full! Oooh!"
"You've got a mighty warm pussy holding it, sugar!"
She gulped as her hips began to jerk. For a moment that was the only movement either of them made. Her cuntmouth slipped back and forth a fraction on the base of his cock, levering it so his cockhead swept back and forth in a wide arc in her belly, to thrust against internal organs and pump weird, marvelous sensations through her.
But Mike seized her hips and buttocks in his huge hands and began to swing her ass out from him and jerk it back. He stroked her the length of his cock over and over, until her cunt was fiery with the friction. She used her legs, timing their tugs to match the inward swings of her ass and slamming her pussy onto the unyielding surface at the base of his cock with audible blows.
"Oh, Mike!" She groaned deep in her throat. "Mike, it's going to make me come!"
"Better hurry up!" He panted fiercely. "I've got a load that won't quit! And it's...about to...blast!"
"Oh, blast then! Blast, Mike! Now!"
His hips leaped, smashing his groin into the softness of her pussy. He struck the steamy wetness several powerful blows, then went rigid, body arched to counterbalance her weight and cock straining, fully buried in her. His buttocks jerked spasmodically while she clung to him and ground her clitoris in tiny, slow circles in the stiff bristles of his pubic hair. Her belly churned with joyful thrills and the walls of her vagina milked the bulging cylinder that lay within their embrace. Her cuntmouth gulped powerfully. Mike's cum jetted into her to create a growing, warm pool at the core of her belly. Her arms hugged and her legs squeezed savagely. A wild tremor seized her and made her ears ring.
"Oh, Jesus, honey!" She ground her face on his shoulder. "Oh, Jesus! I'm coming so...hard!"
His only reply was a deep, contented groan.
"Mike, Mike...You've got so much in me!"
He stopped jerking and relaxed the ferocious squeeze on her ass. "My God, Judy! You fuck like there wasn't anything else in the world!" He nuzzled her neck.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear, Mike! There isn't! Not like this!" And she shuddered happily. "Oh, I'm so glad we did, Mike! I'm so awful glad!"
"Me, too, honey. I knew you'd be good, but I sure didn't know how good."
"Brrr! Some people say men are all alike. They're out of their minds!"
He chuckled and squeezed her, then ran his hand affectionately over her back. It seemed strange to her to have the intimacy of his softening cock in her belly and his coarse pubic hair tangling with the finer, softer hair on her pussy and then feel the caress of his hand through her clothes.
"Know what?" he asked. "You've got a touch of blarney, you have. Know what would make me feel real good now?"
"What, Mike? What would?"
"If you'd take off your clothes and let me see just how great you do look."
"Mike!" She tingled all over. "Mike, it really would?"
"It sure would. Sounds stupid to ask something like that after what you just gave me, but..."
"Oh, Mike!" she murmured. "Okay, Mike. Does it work both ways?"
"Huh! You for real? Hell, I guess so."
But they waited. Neither was in a hurry to lose the delicious sense of fusion, and they clung together for some time before laughingly agreeing they'd have to break apart sooner or later. After he'd lifted her off his thick cock and set her on her feet, she undressed. She made no effort to appear sensuous in her movements-simply removed her clothing deliberately and efficiently. Mike stripped at the same time, and they stood gazing respectfully at each other. After a long, quiet period of appraisal they moved quietly into each other's arms and fell back onto the couch. Their second fucking was one of mutual consent and they savored the experience fully, unhurriedly. And they lay coupled while the afternoon wore away, finally dressing and leaving the library barely in time to shower in their respective rooms and get to the dinner table.
CHAPTER NINE
For several days Judy found a relative quiet in affairs at Garlock Heights. Sarah continued not to die and somehow there seemed to be less open expectation she'd fail to live from evening until morning. To Judy, in fact, the older woman's imminent death became an issue of considerable doubt. Still, the puzzling lapses into what Sarah's doctor called "comatose withdrawal" continued to occur and he declined to revise his opinion that she had only a short time to live.
Oliver's will had specified a sixty-day period that was to elapse between his death and the execution of the provisions for distribution of his estate. Mike, Lowell and Edith remained at the house, then, for two reasons. They were guests of the estate pending that final distribution and they waited for Sarah to die.
On Sarah's private insistence, Judy sorted Colleen's wardrobe into two parts. The clothing Colleen had worn around the house in her role as housekeeper, she put to one side for disposal. The rest-the expensive, beautiful garments that puzzled Judy so-she tried on one by one, wearing each into Sarah's room for her opinion. And she had to agree with Sarah they might have been sewed for her, so perfectly did they fit.
"You wear them, dear. They're yours," Sarah told her. "That's what Colleen would have wanted."
Judy consented reluctantly. They'd been bought for Colleen to wear, she felt, whoever had selected them-whoever had paid for them, for that matter-and she felt it was some kind of sacrilege to assume a role by wearing them. But when she slipped into one of the quiet, elegant creations in her own apartment and studied herself in the mirror, her throat did ache at the astonishing transformation. Except for the silver-blonde shimmer of her hair, where Colleen's had been as black as Edith's, she could have passed for a younger version of her dead mother. And she admitted to herself she made a lovely and a desirable vision.
It was during that period of indecision (which she did her best to hide from Sarah) that Sarah, herself, underwent a curious change in condition. She began leaving her bed to spend longer and longer intervals with Judy in the little apartment. The procedure was always the same. Sarah's door and the interconnecting door to the tiny room Judy had originally occupied had to be securely locked, as well as the hall door to Judy's present apartment. Then and only then, Sarah would have Judy help her out of bed and into the apartment. Still with Judy's help, she began to walk back and forth in the apartment, rebuilding control in the limbs that had been so useless from the time of the accident.
Judy was convinced Sarah's moving about was a sure sign the indomitable woman was going to recover. She said so more than once. But Sarah merely laughed dryly and countered that she'd decided to spend the last of her energy in activity, rather than hoarding it to delay the inevitable end.
Judy spent increasing amounts of time in the library, as well. Her absorption in Oliver's journals had become an obsession. He'd evidently had a phobia about recording events. The journal she'd been reading on the day Mike had first made love to her had been one of a set devoted to the growth of Oliver's financial structure. But there were other sets, some devoted to more personal histories and others less. The difficulty was in assembling individual sets and arranging them in order; Oliver had apparently meant to discourage any such ordering during his lifetime and had not only avoided titles or any other identifying headings, but had failed to date his entries. She discovered only slowly that he'd had his own device for dating. At irregular intervals-and always in the body of the notes he'd made-he'd referred to some current event. Those events she found were traceable to the pages of his complete file of The Christian Science Monitor. By finding that newspaper's description of the event Oliver had mentioned she found she could date every entry.
In that set of journals she gradually assembled concerning his private life, she gradually became convinced she actually had a subset that belonged by itself. In it, Oliver had sketched the chronicle of a long-enduring relationship nobody had suggested to Judy. Although he'd avoided even his carefully designed date code of current events in that record, it was clear a major portion of his emotional satisfaction had come from his relationship with a mistress. It was equally clear the relationship had covered a far longer period of his life than anybody believed. The unfortunate incident of his mistress' pregnancy was bluntly described, and Judy discovered he'd met that emergency in exactly the same way he'd handled Colleen's own pregnancy, providing for somebody his journal didn't identify to take and raise the child. And in painful keeping with his practice of isolating the contents of one set of journals from those of another, he never did refer to Colleen by name as that illegitimate child, nor mention in his documentation of his private life with his mistress the fact he'd brought Collen to live at Garlock Heights. In the end, Judy found that set of journals a romance as poignant as any romantic novel she'd read and she wondered often who and where that mistress was. She had a frustrating sense, too, of Oliver's having omitted the last chapter of his account, since he didn't recount any kind of dissolution of the relationship.
She mentioned her absorption in Oliver's journals to Sarah without touching on that particular account. Sarah seized on that as another occasion to reminisce, and she sent Judy to the master apartment, where she and Oliver had lived out their married life, for the albums she'd kept. She showed them to Judy, many of the photographs or other souvenirs reminding her of moments she delighted in reliving. And it was from the early albums that Judy learned her mother had at one time been as blonde as she, herself.
"Of course!" Sarah laughed. "Didn't I ever tell you that? Gorgeous blonde hair! Then, one day, Oliver decided it wasn't appropriate for a housekeeper to be blonde. And Colleen turned into a brunette. Just like that. My dear, Oliver was God."
Judy shuddered at the absolute power her grandfather had exercised over Garlock Heights. She was glad, for the first time, that she hadn't been allowed to stay with her mother to grow up in the shadow of such an absolute tyrant. But she resolved her reluctance to wear her mother's clothes. Whoever Colleen's secret lover had been, she'd dressed for him the way Oliver's mistress-and Colleen's mother-must have dressed for Oliver.
The evening of the day she decided she'd start wearing the beautiful clothes, she carried out her intention by dressing in one of the special dresses for dinner. She selected a simply cut, chic dress of powder blue. The neckline was especially appealing to her, although she realized it imparted a highly suggestive air to her appearance.
She went downstairs early to help Edith with the preparation and serving of the meal. Edith was engrossed in cutting up the greens for the salad when Judy entered the kitchen.
"Sorry I'm late," Judy told her. "What can I do first?"
"The table." Edith didn't look up. "Honestly, I don't see how that woman did it! She didn't spend half the time we do, and she always did twice as much! I think she must have been a witch."
"Edith! That's an awful thing to say about a dead woman!"
Ignoring Judy's exclamation, Edith went on, almost mumbling to herself. "Say what they want, there are such things, you know. And Garlock Heights is just the sort of place you'd find one. It always was so...well, so much a part of some other world."
"You don't really believe that, do you?"
Edith muttered darkly. "They're finding out that's not at all as impossible as they thought. Sure, there's witches! And that woman was just the type."
Judy bit her lip and dug her nails into her palms. Edith didn't realize the mother-daughter relationship, of course. But if she'd just look up, she'd see by Judy's expression what she was doing. Instead, she wielded the wicked-looking, wedge-shaped knife as if she were using it on Colleen.
Edith continued. "Mark my word, drowning isn't the way to kill a witch. I can see it now-her not even fighting, just looking up through the water with a kind of surprised, half-am used expression. Wondering why and knowing it didn't matter because she'd...." She scraped the shredded greens into a pile as she rambled, then straightened and glanced at Judy. Her voice failed in mid-sentence. Her dark eyes flared open and her jaw dropped. The flush drained from her face to leave it a pasty, dead-looking gray. For a moment, she stared without so much as drawing a breath. Then she advanced woodenly toward Judy, the knife before her and her mouth working silently.
"No!" Judy cried out. "No! You did it! She was right! You can even stand here and tell me how my mother looked while you were drowning her! You did it! You killed her!"
Edith's face worked terribly. Her eyes bulged and her mouth twisted into an ugly caricature of the firm mouth that had caressed Judy's breast. She began to pant.
"You can't be! You just can't! You are! God have mercy, you are!" She dropped the salad knife as she passed the sideboard and her fingers closed over the handle of the silver carving knife. She continued to advance, her eyes glazed.
Judy retreated. "No, Edith! No! Don't!" She screamed.
Edith's stunned expression cleared. Judy shrieked as Sarah's daughter approached. And a look of fury darkened Edith's eyes.
"Shut up, stupid! Goddamn it, shut up!"
Judy screamed again.
"Shut up, I say!" Edith lunged.
Judy whirled and ran. She heard the other follow her into the hallway and knew Edith's longer stride would enable the enraged woman to overtake her. She reached the doorway to the living room and darted through it into Lowell's arms.
"Omigod, Lowell!" She gasped. "Lowell! Save me, Lowell! She's trying to kill me!"
"What!" Lowell held her tightly. "Christ, you gave me a start!"
Edith's voice was cool and emotionless. "She's hysterical. Do what you can to calm her."
"What's the problem?" asked Lowell.
"I said something about witches and turned around with a knife in my hand. I guess she thought I was going to cut her up for dinner."
Lowell chuckled softly. "A silver knife, I trust."
Edith stiffened. "You said she gave you a start. Tell me, brother dear, what did you think when she burst through that door?"
Lowell hesitated momentarily. "I was daydreaming," he said finally, a defensive note in his voice.
"So you were daydreaming! What did you think?"
He held Judy at arm's length. A crease appeared between his eyes. "For just an instant I thought...Well, it could have been fifteen years ago, Sis. Colleen. Look at her close and it's not, of course, but. . . "
Edith nodded slowly. "That woman was a witch. I used to tell you that."
Lowell laughed softly. "Every time I turned around. Okay, everything's under control now."
Edith turned away. "Just see she's calmed down when she comes to the table. You know what hysteria does to me."
"Sure. Sure, Sis. An hour, maybe?"
"It's an hour until dinner time, isn't it? Of course, it'll be an hour."
"Then she'll be calm. No hysteria."
Edith swished out of sight and Lowell took Judy by the hand. She followed him docilely as he led her to the stairway and started upstairs.
"She ... she tried to kill me, Lowell!" she said in a low tone.
"Oh, it wasn't all that bad."
"It was! She did! That knife!"
He chuckled sympathetically. "She just forgot she had it in her hand."
She started to protest. "She didn't either! She..."
They reached the door to her apartment and Lowell led her inside. She quieted, glancing at the closed door to Sarah's room. If Sarah should happen to be dozing, Judy didn't want to awaken her.
Lowell gently pushed her into one of the simple armchairs and stood in front of her. "You've got to know Edith to understand her," he said patiently. "In the first place, she's got this thing about witchcraft. She's one of those peple who really believe there are such creatures. And something about you this afternoon...." He paused and stared at her, obviously puzzled. "Damned if I can make the connection," he muttered. "There's something about you this afternoon makes me see Colleen the way I first knew her. Every time I look at you! It's uncanny!"
"Lowell, I..."
He stopped her. "No, it's just some trick of the light or something. Anyhow, Edith's got something that bugs her a hell of a lot worse than witches. She can't stand hysteria. Get hysterical on her and she'll hang one on the side of your face so fast it'll make your head spin! The moment you got hysterical, she simply had to stop you! Hell, she forgot all about having a knife in her hand."
"When she dropped the one she had and grabbed the carving knife?"
He grunted. "Okay. She was playing it safe. If you did turn out to be a witch, she had the silver 'nail' for your heart. But you'd have had to attack her before she'd have used the knife."
"I don't believe it. No matter what you say, she was trying to kill me. She already killed Colleen! Why not me?"
Lowell sighed and shook his head. "God, Judy! You are hysterical! Nobody killed Colleen. She committed suicide!"
"Edith even described holding her under the water while she drowned!"
"She what?"
Judy repeated herself.
Lowell scowled. "Figure of speech. Imagination. She was telling how it would be if you tried to drown a witch. That's all, Judy!" He whirled and paced to the end of the room and back, staring at the floor as he did. He stooped before her and glanced up. He started and shook his head, then rubbed his eyes. "Goddamn it, Judy! Every time! Just now! You're Colleen sitting there!"
"I'm Colleen's daughter." 'You're not!"
"I am. I'm the child she had three years before you came here to live."
"Judy, what makes you think...."
"I don't think, I know." She gazed soberly into his eyes. "And Sarah knows and Colleen knew." She leaned forward and whispered urgently. "Edith knows, too! Don't you see? She hated Colleen and killed her! And she sees my mother in me, and she's going to kill me!"
"You go down to the table thinking that way and we've got real trouble, Judy." He grinned tightly. "Only one way I know to take a woman's mind off something she can't shake off. And we've got time."
She knew exactly what he meant. A hard, eager thrill washed over her. Just as Lowell had been the first, that day in the woods, he'd be the first to fuck her in her apartment. She'd have preferred it to be Mike, but there was a sort of neat justice about its being Lowell.
He glanced quickly around. "Look, we don't want to risk waking Mother. Shall we sneak down to the library?"
"Ooh, let's! I know a secret way!"
"So do I. Colleen showed it to me when I was fifteen." He started toward the bedroom.
Judy giggled. "You're going to have to work for it. I took up the platform."
"That what? Oh, yeah! What the hell did you do with it?"
She showed him the boards under her bed and he took them to the closet. In a moment, he had them re-laid and stepped onto them.
'I'll go first. Just in case you slip."
At the bottom of the ladder, he raised the lever that opened the panel into the library cupboard. Together, they crowded into the tiny closet while he closed the panel, then he pushed the door of the cupboard open and stepped noiselessly out.
He whispered to her. "Stay here while I see if anybody's out there."
She peeked, watching him move along the bookcase with a quick, silent stride. His confident carriage suggested he had little concern over anybody's being in the library. He didn't even stop to peer around the end of the shelves before stepping into the open. But he came to a sudden, startled stop the moment he had cleared the protection of the "stacks" and jerked abruptly back behind them. Slowly and cautiously, he backed toward Judy. Before she could question him, he put his finger to his lips and shook his head. He held her hand and waited without a word. Soon, they heard the main door close and Lowell released a great sigh.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Almost blew it!"
"You didn't think anybody would be here, did you."
"No." He grinned ruefully. "That Goddamn Mike! Son of a bitch looked right at me! Damn good thing he's so wrapped up in his own thoughts! Didn't even see me ... just picked up whatever it was he wanted out of the desk and started out."
"He didn't even see you?" she asked in disbelief.
He laughed. "Look right at me! Not a flicker of awareness. Can you imagine that?" He squeezed her hand. "Be with you in a second. We don't want any visitors." And he left her, going to lock the doors.
CHAPTER TEN
Judy didn't wait for Lowell. The moment he had the main door locked, she started to undress. He chuckled at that and she explained defensively they had quite a bit less than an hour. If they were to make love, she wanted all she could get out of it. And in the seconds it took him to get to the side door, lock it and get back, she was naked.
She felt a brief twinge of guilt; she and Mike had first made love here. This was where she'd watched Lowell and Edith in their bizarre private session, too. But those things were sentimental and this exercise was not. She knew how badly shaken she was. She knew as well as Lowell it would take drastic measures to shake her out of the deadly concern with Edith's behavior. And she'd just discovered it was possible to rechannel the terrible tension her fear of death had brought to sexual desire. She churned with fiery anticipation.
Lowell stared at her naked form, his gaze openly hungry. "What a Goddamn figure!" he exclaimed. "Maybe you are Colleen's daughter! You're sure built like she was!"
"Don't waste time telling me!" she said in a choked voice. "Show me!"
His eyebrows jerked upward, "Hey! You're hot as hell today!"
"Damn it, stop talking and do something about it!" All right, I was hysterical! she thought. Maybe I'm still hysterical! But I don't want to stand here naked and talk!
Lowell smiled broadly, a relaxed, satisfied smile without a trace of warmth. "What?"
"Goddamn it, you heard me!" Her voice rose. "Do something! Don't just stand there gawking and making small talk!"
"That's what I thought you said." He seized her wrist and gave it a vicious twist.
"Nooo!" As she turned and sagged forward, agony shooting from fingertips to shoulder, she had visions of the way he'd twisted Edith's arm. "No! Not that, Lowell!"
He snarled. "You Goddamn ignorant bitch! 'Do something!' you say! Shit, I'll do something!" He twisted again and she squirmed while he drove her hand upward between her shoulder blades.
"Oh, Lowell! Jesus, Lowell, please don't do that! I couldn't stand it!"
"Shut your big mouth, you illegitimate slut! Take what you get and be damn glad!"
He shoved her before him, twisting her arm and pushing up against it as they went. And he stopped her at the end of the aisle between two of the bookcases. When he released her arm, the limb fell to her side, paralyzed momentarily by the brutal treatment. He grabbed it again and jerked it over her head, pulling a piece of cord off one of the shelves.
"Comes in handy," he remarked with a leer.
She wrenched at her hand. Without a change of expression, he struck her in the face with a stinging backhand that knocked her a step back between the shelves. She cowered, whimpering but determined not to struggle. What he'd done to Edith had hurt his sister momentarily and Judy hated pain. But he'd done Edith no permanent harm, and if Judy submitted gracefully he'd be unlikely to do any to her.
He tied her quickly, one hand to an upright in each of the two sets of shelves, then, pulling her backward toward the open end of the aisle by her hips, each ankle to one of the end posts. It was an awkward, humiliating position, she conceded. She had to bend sharply at the hips to keep any of her weight on her feet, and her arms were outspread before her at an angle that gave her enough trouble without worrying about gracefulness.
He ran his hand over the inner sides of her thighs and under her belly. "So you're Colleen's little bastard." He laid his hand on her ass and gave her a sudden shove.
Off balance to start with, she pitched forward to sag from her wrists. With an angry sob, she struggled to regain her footing.
"You sadistic son of a bitch!" She grated it at him between set teeth. "I'm not like Edith! I don't like to be hurt!"
"Bullshit! You don't know what you like, you worthless baby! You like what I tell you you like!"
"No, I don't! I hate you!"
"You love me. Women all do. If I say you like shit, you'll eat shit! You're Colleen's bastard, that's what you are. She was a worthless whore, just like you. But I wanted her. When I left here I wanted her to go with me. Know why she wouldn't? You, you half-assed cunt!"
"Lowell! That's not true!"
"The hell it's not!"
"Why me? She didn't even know me!"
"She knew she'd never see you if she left. She knew that much."
"Oh, no!"
"Just for you, shithead! Just for you! She'd have gone, otherwise."
His belt slashed across her protruding ass. She flung herself away from the unexpected agony, sagging again into a deep, inverted arch. Moving between her and the shelves on her left, he squatted and slashed his belt upward across her belly.
"Noooo! Eeee!" She forced herself into the standing position. "Lowell, for God's sake don't! I can't stand that!"
He yanked at one of her dangling tits and she shrieked. Dimly, she realized nothing he'd done had really hurt yet, but her helplessness and his seeming bitterness magnified even the smallest actual pain and made it seem like agony. His bitterness was undoubtedly an act; with Edith he'd pretended to hate her. Mental anguish was probably as much a part of the rite as physical. But she couldn't hold the realization firmly enough to steel herself.
He paddled her with his hands.
"Nice, fat little ass-cheeks," he commented. "Like Colleen. Don't stick out too much when you stand up, but they sure are round and plump when you bend over." And at intervals while he spoke, his hand slammed against one or the other of the jiggling, inflamed buns.
She wept. As if she were a child once more, submitting to one of the beatings John McAllister had said were good for her character, she writhed and sobbed quietly, only crying out when a blow found some spot not already half numbed.
She hated pain, as she'd told him. She hated it with a passion that was almost psychopathic. She wanted him dead-wanted it to be over so she could show the bruises to Mike and Cal while she pleaded for vengeance.
Sting as Lowell's blows did, she could tell they wouldn't leave a mark. If she had to prove her accusations, she'd never make anybody believe he'd laid a hand on her.
He crouched at her side again. With his fist doubled, he struck her in the belly, hunting each time for a fresh spot. Her muscles ached from the pounding, but she knew again her skin wouldn't be discolored. Her hatred and fury swelled until it seemed to consume her. And in the midst of her raging she discovered she was at the very edge of orgasm.
"Gets to you, doesn't it, stupid! Pretty good, after all?"
"Unnnhh! S-s-stop! Please!"
"Fuck you, baby! You wiggle too good."
He used his belt again. He lashed her thighs, letting the belt curl around one, then the other, the end snapping when it reached the quivering flesh. Her boobs leaped with her contortions. Her hair hung before her face in a thick, dancing cloud. As she looked back under herself, she could see wet, shiny, swollen flesh protruding where her cunt hair had parted.
She felt she must be afire with the pain that washed back and forth over her. She was certain her orgasm was going to burst upon her. But she knew she could stand anything Lowell did to her if it didn't get any worse. She saw his belt skid across the floor and mumbled a tearful thanks that wasn't intended for his ears. And she hung shaking and gasping while his hands squeezed and rubbed and probed.
To her utter amazement, the pain subsided almost as soon as he stopped inflicting it. But her flesh seemed super-sensitized. His slightest touch shot jagged daggers of excitement into her and made her muscles leap and jerk. She found herself writhing more from his feeling-up than she had during the punishment. And in her haze of excitement she stopped hearing his sneering, cruel remarks.
But once in a while a word or phrase would catch her attention. She was afraid to protest; he might start hurting her again. She reminded herself he was trying to make her miserable and discounted what he said.
His attentions converged on the zones she'd thought of as the sexual areas. He bent over her butt and reached around with both hands to squeeze her tits. He kneaded and pulled at them, first playing with the youthfully conical boobs themselves, then narrowing his caresses to the nipples. While the persistent fondling continued to excite her-and while it felt good to her after the pain-it was a quiet kind of excitement that let her catch her breath. Even the position was tolerable when a pair of hands could flood a woman's body with so much pleasure.
His hands left her tits and rubbed backward along her belly until his fingers were buried in her pubic hair. Her thighs grew tense with her anticipation of his next probing; he'd grab her pussy and slip his fingers into the gooey slit and dig at her cunt.
He did not. He backed away from her and started to massage her ass. God! Even that feels good! She panted. So good! Her feet shuffled on the floor and bent first one knee, then the other as she twisted her hips in rapidly increasing response to the stimulus on her buttocks.
And from the rear-rather than under her belly and the long, thick pubic hair-Lowell reached in to dabble in the thickening wetness 'of her gaping pussy. He spread her pussylips and rubbed them vigorously with the knuckles of one fist. He squeezed and prodded them. He caught puffy little mounds and pinched them between his fingertips. And he thrust his fist against her pulsing cunt, grinding his knuckles on the thick, rubbery rim while the softer, pliable tissues of her pussy twisted under his fist.
Flat-palmed, he spread her streaming juice over all of the sensitized surfaces surrounding her cunt. He scrubbed at her clitoris until she bucked and screamed. And he rimmed the puckering muscle of her anus until it opened to gulp at the tip of his finger. And when she was in a frenzy of excitement, unable to tell what he was doing, he loosened the knots that held her and changed her position.
He lashed her wrists together in front of her, then forced her to extend her arms above her head. He secured her bound wrists to the top shelf of one of the cases, letting her sag against the end of the shelves staring at the desk.
He started with her breasts again, mauling and kneading and chewing. He continued to chew while his hands plunged to her pussy and grubbed at the quivering membranes. And he began thrusting fingers into her cuntmouth. With horror, she felt the insertion of one finger beside another until the constriction of her pelvic circle refused to yield. He heaved her off her feet, an indescribable sheet of sensation flashing over her. Again and again, he flung her upward by her cuntmouth and let her fall against the resistance of his deep-thrust hand.
She screamed, her throat raw and her eyes smarting from the intensity of her lust. The pleasure was too powerful to be pleasurable any longer-it was simply a sensation distinct from and superior to any specific physical sensation. It was good in that she desired it and dreaded to have it stop. It was bad in that it was too intense to understand or enjoy. Both ways, it was like a powerful drug, so that she felt addicted to it and stopped caring what getting it might do to her.
"Oh...my...God!" she yelled in guttural tones. "Fuck...me...you...mean...bastard!"
He snatched at her ass and jerked her hips away from the bookcase until her back was bent and her belly protruded and her feet left the floor. He kept pulling while her hips rose in an arc to the level of his prick. And he kicked her legs apart and edged between them, his cock jutting out through the open fly of his trousers.
The heavy cockhead burrowed into the hot, slippery membranes of her pussy to the rim of her cunt. His hips jerked fiercely and the wicked bulb burst through the momentary resistance of her cuntmouth and plowed upward along her vagina. Holding her by her asscheeks, he bounced her again to stroke her on his cock. And she let her moans bubble from her lips, frothy saliva bubbling with them and trickling over her chin and onto her breasts.
"Good God, Lowell! Here it is! Here I come!"
He backed off in mid-stroke. "Not yet, slut. Not yet."
"Lowell, please! For Christ's sake, I'll go crazy hanging here and not coming!"
He bent to seize her ankles. With brutal disregard for the fact that she was being suspended by her wrists, he lifted her feet above his shoulders and laid the hollows of her ankles on either side of his neck.
"Now, you dumb twat," he growled into her face. "Now, you can come all you want to. Explode if that's the way you feel."
He thumbed her asshole, the blunt digit slipping on the juice he'd spread and jabbing at her anus until she opened and engulfed it. He twisted his thumb and crooked it, and her body flopped from side to side from the insane bolts of delight that tore through her. He jerked out his thumb and let his cockhead push at the loosening sphincter.
"Lowell! Lowell, no! I'm not used to it like Edith! Don't do that! No, Lowell!"
He came up out of his crouch, the rigid cock bearing Judy's weight while her asshole slowly stretched to settle over the brutal knob of his cockhead. She shrieked at the fiery burning sensation that enveloped her, then started pumping her legs to bounce herself up and down on the implanted shaft. The pain vanished and left only a strange, pressure-based goodness. The gathering knot in her belly released itself and she stiffened in orgasm. While her cunt contracted spasmodically, her anus bit at the entrapped cock.
Lowell groaned happily and thrust with his hips, his jism squirting into her to fill her gut with its thick, hot mass. He crushed her back against the bookcase and shoved hungrily at her. And a gleeful grin split the sardonic features as he chewed at the tip of his tongue. "That...do it...baby?" He panted through his own tremors. "That...yank ... the chain?"
"Ooooh, yes! Brrrr!" She shuddered as her final spasms subsided. "Lowell, you're terribly cruel when you make love like this. Is it hard to act that mean?"
He laughed heartily. "Act, Judy? You're the dumbest little cunt I ever fucked! That's no act!"
"It's got to be. You're too kind and sweet to be that mean."
"Oh, sure! I'm all that stuff. You don't understand."
"Understand?"
He thrust her legs apart so they fell away from his shoulders. Her body fell sickeningly until she caught herself, her feet on the floor. His half-softened cock ripped from her cunt with a jerk she thought would disembowel her. She gasped and caught her lower lip between her teeth.
Lowell yanked the lashings off her wrists with a contemptuous sneer and stared at her while she tried to rub circulation back into her hands.
"You're too Goddamn weak to need tying," he said. "Not your mother! That she-cat had some spunk and the strength to go with it!"
She was tired of hearing Lowell talk about Colleen. "For Christ's sake, show a little sensitivity! She was my mother!"
"Of course she was! You think I didn't know that? Jesus, you're dense! I knew that before you ever got here! Before you ever thought of coming here! Damn right she was your mother! So what?"
"So you don't have to make her sound so awful!"
"She was a Goddamn tramp!" He yelled.
She blazed at him. "She was not!" Colleen had talked softly to her about that the last night she lived, Judy remembered. She'd been concerned. "Don't let yourself turn into a tramp," she'd said. And Judy hadn't caught the tiny note of pleading...not then.
"Edith and Gwen...." Lowell sneered at Judy. "They don't make any bones about the way they like their sex. They go out and get it-open and honest. If you ask, they tell you. You saw how they satisfy themselves. Not Colleen. It had to be a big, dark secret with her."
Judy was furious. "If she let you fuck her, I shouldn't wonder she'd want to keep it secret!"
"Any male in the house." Lowell muttered. "From guard dog to handyman to Oliver. Started fucking Oliver when she wasn't even thirteen yet. Never did stop!"
"Lowell!"
"What the hell you think that secret ladder was for? Ask my mother how many times that old son of a bitch spent all night in the library because of some Goddamn 'business deal' he had cooking! Just ask her!"
"Lowell Blake!"
"Yeah, Blake!" His voice was bitter. "He wasn't even decent enough to adopt his second wife's kids. Why not?"
"I .. . Lowell, why?"
"Suspicious. Thought maybe she was marrying him so her kids would get into that Goddamn fortune he'd put together. And he had a daughter he wanted to get her cut-a lion-sized cut." He glared at Judy. "How about that? His own daughter right here in the house fucking up a storm with him! And he's so sick she's got to have a 'blood share' of his estate!"
"He must have thought an awful lot of her."
"Fat lot! To keep her on as a housekeeper all those years? To keep the secret plowed under so deep there's still not one official document admitting who she is?" He shook his head. "A lousy, selfish, inhuman son of a bitch, that's all he was. All I wonder is how he had it figured out for her to get the money without it coming out she was his bastard daughter!"
He stopped, his chest heaving from the exertion of his outpouring. And he studied Judy, his hate for Colleen appearing now to settle on Colleen's illegitimate child.
"But it wouldn't matter to you, Judy. Wouldn't matter a bit. Colleen's dead, like she ought to be. Edith and I are going to split the loot she'd have got. And I'm going to kill you."
For a moment his calm promise failed to register with Judy. But when it did she shrank back to stare at him aghast.
"Lowell! Please! Stop trying to scare me!"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lowell's eyes narrowed and his lips peeled back from his teeth in what Judy thought of fleetingly as a death-mask grin. There was nothing but cold malice in his expression.
His voice was soft and even. "I don't ever try to scare anybody, puss. I'm going to kill you."
"Lowell! Why? Why?"
"They always do it that way in fiction, don't they. The bad guy's always got some kind of hang-up so he tells the victim the whole damn plot before he starts to kill her. Well, this isn't a story. And I don't feel you have to know why you're dying."
"Lowell! That's not fair! Lowell, no!"
"Nothing's fair when you're dying. It isn't fair to have to die! Ever!"
"Oh, please, please! Ohhh, no!"
Her eyes twitched. Her gaze darted about for some kind of hope. Lowell shook his head.
"Forget it, baby. You're as good as dead right now."
"No! Oh, no!" She whispered it, over and over, as if whispering it would cancel out the reality of his intent.
M "Might as well get back up to your apartment.
She dodged around the end of the bookcase and sprinted toward the side door. Lowell cursed and sprang after her. She didn't even reach the end of the aisle before his hand closed in her hair. He stopped and jerked her off her feet. Holding her up by her hair he struck her in the face.
"Don't do that, you stupid shit! It's useless!" He jammed his hand over her mouth as she opened it to scream. "You've been screaming for a half hour. Nobody heard you. This is the library, remember?"
She stared into his eyes and knew the truth. She was looking into death. Lowell's eyes were simply windows onto the empty, cold void of death, itself. Neither mercy, nor anger, nor emotion, itself, lay beyond them-merely the formless lack of life. She knew she would not die calmly or bravely; she would panic and fight the end of breathing and feeling and knowing. But for a moment she had the grace of awareness and brief self-control. She had to take whatever desperate advantage she could of that self-control to wrest some small advantage from the situation-some small chance to continue living. She nodded to show she understood the futility of screaming and Lowell grimly removed his palm from her lips.
"Now. We're going back to your apartment. I'm coming back here after you're dead to get rid of your clothes, so you can leave them here. Just get over to that cupboard. You can walk-you know you're not going to get away by running."
She walked silently to the closet, Lowell close behind. It was still open and he shoved her inside.
"Turn around."
She obeyed.
"I'm going to gag you. I don't want to disturb Mother."
She tensed.
"If you fight me over the gag, I'll use it to strangle you. I'll have a little problem getting rid of your body, but I can manage that-and you won't be worrying about it by then."
She trembled while he gagged her. The knot at the back of her head was tight; she sensed his strain while he secured it.
"I'm going to open the panel now. You're going to climb the ladder ahead of me and wait on the platform. You know it takes two hands to keep your balance on the ladder. And I'm going to be too close behind you for you to get the panel open at the top and get away from me. Get your ass in gear."
She started to climb. The makeshift rungs hurt her feet and ruined any hope she could outrace him to the top. There was the platform, of course. He was at least four rungs behind-well, maybe only three-and the planks were loose. If she swung herself onto the platform smoothly and quickly, she might be able to get the first plank loose and batter him off the ladder with it. She tried desperately to remember exactly how the plank lay, to rehearse her defense. And her head passed the level of the platform.
Every muscle quivered with readiness. When her knees were at the level of the platform she leaped, thrusting with her arms at the same time. She landed awkwardly, spun and seized the plank Lowell was groping for. A sob of relief caught in her throat when it came away in her hands. She swung it up, then lashed out with it.
"Yow! You Goddamn little hell-cat! Let go of that thing!"
She swung again, hampered by the poor light and cramped space. The board was snatched from her hands and she heard it clattering as it fell. A moment later, Lowell rocked her head with a vicious backhand blow.
"Stupid bitch! I ought to knock you off the platform!"
Instead, he thrust at the panel lever and shoved her through her closet into her bedroom. Even as she stumbled into the light, he seized her by the hair and swung her toward the bed. Flinging her onto it, face down, he knelt astride her back and bound her hands behind her. Quickly, then, he lashed her ankles together and carried her to the bathroom.
"Sarah's going to think it's a hell of a time for you to be taking a bath, but there's no way she can check up on you." He muttered under his breath. "That's one advantage of having an invalid next door."
He turned on both faucets and started filling the tub. Without glancing at Judy, he dropped onto the closed toilet cover and rested his head in his hands.
"Be glad when all this shit is over. Getting so a guy can't even pick his own time."
Judy struggled with her bonds. She knew she had no more chances. If he got her into the tub before she could get away, she was as good as dead. She could feel no slack in the lashings. They didn't cut into her flesh; she was going to show no evidence of having been tied-unless her last struggles tore the flesh. But neither was there enough slack to offer any hope. She wasn't going to escape the fate Lowell had planned for her. She was going to die, as Colleen had died.
It wasn't fair, she told herself. Things that weren't fair just didn't happen! But they did, of course. It hadn't been fair for Colleen to die, either. But at least Lowell had tripled his share of Oliver's estate by killing Colleen. Even if somebody should come forward with proof that Judy was Colleen's child-and therefore, Oliver's grandchild-Lowell wouldn't lose that much.
It seemed a fruitless exercise in logic. She wondered that he hadn't decided to do away with Edith. If the money meant that much to him his sister ought to offer a tempting target. And she shivered. He still had time, maybe he meant to.
She jerked convulsively when he touched her.
He chuckled. "Don't get jumpy. Just getting another little feel while I've got the chance. Takes a long time to fill that tub. Oversized son of a bitch."
He caressed her naked flesh and she was conscious of an extra sense of loss. She hadn't had long to enjoy the wonderful things about sex. Some of the things she'd experienced, she'd never have wanted to repeat...like this afternoon with Lowell. Some, she'd thought were the beginning of a new kind of life. There was Mike, for example.
Mike was something terribly special. She knew that now, when it was too late. Perhaps she was lucky to know it at all; she'd disliked him so much at first. He was far more special than their blood relationship. If he and Colleen were half-brother and sister that made him some kind of uncle. But they would have meant far more than that to each other. They'd have meant as much as Lowell did to Edith, at least. And like Lowell and Edith, of course, it would have been a relationship they enjoyed when the opportunities arose and held in the privacy of their own emotions the rest of the time.
She wouldn't have lived with Mike, she realized. It was the first time she'd seen that part of it clearly. She wouldn't have wanted to live with him. She would have wanted to know a lot of men. She would most likely have settled down with one of them. But she'd have wanted to know Mike was there, somewhere, and that they'd be together once in a while.
It was too late to think about that; she was only torturing herself. She was wasting time she might use to come up with an idea for saving her life. But she knew that was no longer possible. There were no chances left. She couldn't even try to persuade Lowell; the gag was as effective against that as against her arousing Sarah. She could lash out at the wall or the tub with her feet, but she'd heard a noise like that the night Colleen had been murdered and had done nothing about it. Besides, with Lowell as close as he was, she probably wouldn't even hit the tub once.
The horrible reality swept over her. She had no chance! She'd known this moment would come. She'd known she would reach a point where all the strength of reason, habit, and civilized behavior would crumble to leave nothing but the primitive will to survive. And it came to her now.
It didn't matter if she could only kick the tub once! It didn't matter if she'd be wiser to wait until he turned off the faucets! It didn't matter that kicking was absolutely hopeless! She was going to die and humans-plain, ordinary, young humans who hadn't really done any living yet-just weren't built to accept this kind of death calmly!
She drew her knees toward her slowly, trying to make it look as if she merely felt uncomfortable.
She saw she'd attracted Lowell's attention, even with that simple movement. She saw him stir, sensed he was thinking ahead of her. With frantic strength she lashed out and smashed her heels against the side of the tub.
He kicked her legs clear of the tub immediately, but her body snapped to a frenzied beat, spring-like. She struck the floor with her feet-with her knees-with her head and her hips. And Lowell clutched at her and yanked her into the air and shook her, one hand full of her hair, the other thrust between her thighs, his wrist crushing the soft tissues of her pussy.
"You idiot," he muttered. "You Goddamn rabbit! Isn't there any dignity in the whole human race any more? Why let yourself look like a rat in a trap, for Christ's sake?"
She had no way to reply, no way to make him understand how little the cultural veneer mattered to the victim of an unjust killing. But she could show him his disgust didn't have any effect on her. She continued to snap her body in his grip. She fought to get her feet into a position where she could kick him or her head where she could butt him. She ignored the agony of being suspended by her hair and her pussy and fought him with every shred of energy she could muster.
"Lowell?"
Judy wondered if she might already be going out of her mind with panic. That might make her hear voices...like Sarah's.
"Lowell Blake!" It was Sarah!
Lowell's fingers loosened and Judy crashed to the floor. She twisted to see Sarah standing outside the bathroom, her eyes taking in the whole ugly scene and her fingers working angrily.
"Lowell..." Her voice was soft and sorrowful now. "I did wonder, I think. But it just couldn't be you, Son. Not you. If it were you, I'd wasted so much of life."
Judy could see Lowell's face. It worked powerfully, its expression running from his original horrified disbelief to a sort of wild panic and now to resignation.
"How does a person waste life?" he asked his mother. "You bore me and you raised me. You let me survive until I was old enough and knew enough to survive without you. That's what a parent does."
"A parent builds, Son. She doesn't simply make it possible for her child to survive. She helps him build a universe of values."
"No! Every human determines his own values! A parent can't go beyond showing how she thinks they ought to be determined! A parent can't play God!"
"Nobody can play God. Killing is playing God."
"Killing is part of survival. And survival is life."
"If that's what you believe, I'm glad I came in."
Lowell shook his head and looked momentarily confused. "Yeah! How did you do that? You can't even get on the bedpan by yourself!"
"No matter, Son. I came in. I was in time. I wouldn't have wanted you to kill Judy."
He clenched his teeth. "You're too late." His inner struggle was clearly visible in his features. "You've got to go, too. Because you came in."
"Son!"
"You're going to die anyway in a matter of a few more days. It ... it can't be any other way. It'll be just like it would if we waited. Come on. I'll get back to Judy."
He stepped over Judy, ignoring her attempt to smash her bound feet into his groin. He took Sarah's arm and turned her toward her room. "I'm sorry, Mother."
Judy flung herself across the floor to reach the wall. She couldn't let Lowell kill his mother! She knew if she couldn't attract help he'd kill Sarah, then herself, and then Edith. Having killed within his own family once, the only real obstacle to Edith's murder would be gone. She pounded her feet against the wall, sick at heart when she found how little noise she was making. Lowell glanced over his shoulder with a silent sneer and shepherded his mother toward her own room.
No, Lowell! For God's sake, anything but that! Judy cried out in her mind against the enormity of the crime Lowell was about to commit.
As if he'd heard a noise Judy did not, Lowell whirled suddenly. He stared toward Judy's closet, out of her line of sight, and his eyes narrowed in fury.
"What the hell!" he demanded.
"Sarah!" Cal's voice sounded startled.
Mike was there, too. His tone was grim and threatening. "Okay, you bastard! Where's Judy?"
Lowell hesitated. Judy suspected he was groping vainly for some way to salvage the situation. He couldn't do it by force, she knew-not with each of the other men outclassing him physically as they did. He nodded his head toward Judy.
"In there."
Mike came through the bathroom door so fast he stumbled to his knees trying to avoid stepping on her. His eyes blazed with rage and his fingers trembled while he jerked at the knots Lowell had tied.
"Did he hurt you, honey? You okay?"
She wailed. "I ... I'm okay, Mike! Oh, God, how did you know?"
"You're sure you're okay? That son of a bitch really didn't hurt you?"
"Oh, Mike! Oh, honey, I'm okay!"
He scooped her into his arms and carried her to her bed. Lowering her gently, he snarled at Cal.
"Better get that murdering bastard out of here. In about five seconds I'm going to find out what he'd held together with."
Cal grunted. "You willing to leave him alone with me? Man, you got holes in your head! I flat don't trust myself!"
Mike straightened. He reached for a robe and handed it to Judy while he glared at Lowell. "Look, you slimy prick! Sit down in that chair! If you twitch an eyebrow, I'm personally going to feed you your own balls!"
Lowell dropped into the chair. As his weight left his feet he appeared to collapse, as if all the internal structure had disintegrated.
Judy repeated her original question. "How did you get here, Mike? What made you both come? And why the secret ladder?"
He sighed and started to grin. "There's something about a woman makes her always ready with a question, isn't there?"
Judy pleaded. "Come on, Mike!" And then, before he could reply, she begged, "Cal! Do something about Sarah! She can't just stand around like that!"
"Then I'll sit down on your bed, dear." Sarah made her way slowly toward Judy.
Cal helped her gently. Judy pulled her robe around herself and scrambled off the bed. With one hand, she turned down the covers.
"Get her into there," she ordered. "She's had a shock."
While Cal got Sarah settled, Judy helping with an occasional deft touch, Mike tried to answer the questions she'd asked.
"It got to be suppertime and you two didn't show. Edith said Lowell was trying to calm you down-that you'd gotten hysterical or something. And it hit me I'd seen Lowell come around the end of the stacks." He shook his head. "No way he could have gotten there but down that ladder. I'd been looking for something in the cupboards just a couple of minutes earlier. Only when I went back to the library the doors were locked. It takes a few minutes to get in when they're locked from the inside. And I wanted Cal along just in case I embarrassed anybody."
He grinned and Judy smiled gently at him. It was a ticklish business hunting for any couple in this house when amusement was so widely distributed.
"Well, we found some clothes. And some pieces of rope. And a belt. But no Lowell or Judy. That meant you'd come back up here-and the only way was the ladder again." He scowled. "Didn't seem natural to either one of us you'd leave a pretty dress like that blue thing down there, even for a few minutes. And when I opened the panel we heard water running."
He glared at Lowell. "Funny thing, man. The pipes run right along that wall, just outside the secret shaft. And there was a board at the bottom. So we shag-assed up here."
Judy nodded slowly. It all seemed so much like lurk And yet every step had been almost inevitable. Edith had been angry, enough she'd resent Lowell's being late to the table because he was shacking up with Judy. The clothes and the rope had been the result of Lowell's haste. The bath water and the board at the bottom of the shaft...
"All because of one lucky coincidence!" she exclaimed softly.
"Huh? What coincidence?" asked Mike. "You being in the library."
He shook his head. "That was no coincidence. That was me putting things off. Tonight's the end of the sixty days." He glanced at Sarah. "Bentley's supposed to be out here with the papers of transfer about eight. Only I wasn't ready for him."
"You? What did you have to do?"
"Father had left sealed instructions for me. They changed a lot when Colleen...when Colleen died. That meant I had to find a particular group of journals, and you know what that's like, the way Father camouflaged everything. I was trying to root them out this afternoon."
"I ... Mike, I think I've read every one of those journals of his. I've got them all sorted out. Maybe I can help you."
He sighed. "I don't know. I found everything but what I was looking for. I'm beginning to think he stuck those somewhere else. He might even have gotten rid of them. I would have in his shoes. No need for them with Colleen alive."
"They're not all where he had them piled. It was easier to sort them if they were on the shelves, Mike."
"Hey! Maybe we'll be ready for Bentley after all!"
Edith came through Sarah's room. "Mother!
Where's Mother! Mother, what's wrong?"
Sarah shook her head. "Later, dear."
Edith glared around the room. "Everybody here forget there was a tableful of food downstairs? Get the hell down there and eat!" She turned on Judy. "If you've had enough fun and games, that is. Maybe you ought to put on some clothes. That robe doesn't leave much to the imagination."
Judy resisted the temptation to lash out at her. "I guess we ought to get Sarah back in her room before we do anything else," she suggested.
They did so, Sarah insisting Edith curb her curiosity for the moment.
But Edith announced she'd stay with her mother while the others ate. "I ate mine. Damned if I was going to eat it cold!"
The three men went downstairs. Judy dressed, selecting a jade-green duplicate of the powder-blue dress she'd worn earlier. And she joined the others in the dining room. The atmosphere was badly strained during the meal, Lowell showing little interest in the foor and his morose silence effectively dampening everyone else's inclination to talk. And after dinner, Cal announced quietly that he and Lowell would play a few hands of gin in the living room.
Judy went to the library with Mike.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Neither Judy nor Mike said anything at first when they reached the library. Judy had been shocked into vivid recall of her near death by the sight of the shattered main door and she assumed Mike was preoccupied with whatever he was trying to prepare for Bentley. But when they reached the desk, he put his hand on her arm and grinned at her.
"Don't know what went on in here this afternoon, honey. I hope you can forget about it and just remember the other day."
She tingled happily. With a grateful smile, she nodded. "That's the way it's going to be Mike. I'll never forget that."
He kissed her and for a moment they clung together. Then he drew back and sighed.
"Got to find those journals. That guy's going to be here too soon as it is."
"What were they about, Mike?"
"That's the trouble! You know how Father wrote them. He didn't use names. The only way to pin down real people is by knowing how to get at the references he had in mind."
"Yes."
"Well, here's the problem. You know that box you were talking about? The one from Colleen's apartment?"
She started. "Of course! The one you said didn't exist!"
He chuckled and shook his head. "The one I said I'd deny existed if you made a big deal of it. Well, anyway, the instructions I got when Father died said there was a second heir in the direct line ... a blood son or daughter. It said the identity would be established by the contents of a portion of a journal. Colleen had that portion-would always have it in safekeeping-and would explain it so legal verification could be accomplished. Only Colleen isn't here to explain it."
"But that piece of the journal is in the box she had?"
"That and some documents we'll need. It's pretty clear from reading that one book-he hadn't written more than about twenty pages in it-that it tells what we want to know. But damned if I can even understand what it's saying without knowing something about what he wrote on that subject before!"
"And you don't even know the subject? How could that be?"
"Because the entries are so damn ordinary and seem to ramble so much! Hell, as near as I can tell, it's just about things around here! Ordinary, everyday life! Trouble is, I found that set of journals and there's nothing missing! This piece doesn't fit! It's got me snowed, baby."
"Life around here? I don't understand. How do you know that?"
"Well, for one thing he mentions looking at something he's seen over and over before, only seeing it in a new perspective. He'll do that about 'The Porcupine Ravine,' for example. Now the porcupine ravine isn't a place with a real name. It's not on any map or anything like that. It's just a little gully about six or seven feet deep down there in the woods where we found one of the dogs messing around with a porcupine one day. Okay? He just remarks on how he's seeing things a little differently from there .. . result of things that are happening, I suppose."
"And everything in that twenty pages is like that?"
"Well, it rambles, as I said. Lots of little notes about Colleen, for one thing. I mean, he doesn't ever write Colleen, but they're such normal things there's no way to miss who he's talking about."
"If you know Colleen and her habits," added Judy.
"Well, yes. That, of course." He opened the desk. "Here's the damn journal. You can see why it's so meaningless."
She took it from him and opened to the first page. The style had become so familiar to her it was like listening to an old acquaintance talking. As Mike had said, they were everyday events and thoughts noted in everyday language. Oliver had meant them for his own record; for the most part he hadn't intended that anybody else ever benefit by them-or understand them. But read in quantities, the way she'd been reading them, even a total stranger could detect a characteristic flavor in Oliver's terse prose that was distinctive from journal to journal. Given a single paragraph out of his "empire building" journal, as she'd come to call it, and a similar paragraph out of his "Sarah" set and she could instantly have put each paragraph with the proper set. Even if he'd described the same event in two different journals as she'd noticed he sometimes had, he'd clearly been seeing the event in terms of his "Sarah" life while he'd been writing that record and in terms of his "empire" life during the other writing.
A strange, delicious sense of fulfillment crept over her as she neared the bottom of the first page. She felt almost as if a door she'd had shut in her face had somehow been opened again.
"Mike!" She tried to keep the excitement out of her voice. "This woman is Colleen?"
"Sure is."
She looked up at him. "Sarah thinks Colleen was Oliver's daughter. A 'wild oats' days memento, she called her."
An expression of pain and bitterness flashed into Mike's face. "Wonder who else thought that?"
"Lowell, for one. At least, I think he did."
"That's why she's dead." But after a brief pause, he added, "Maybe."
"What was she, then?"
"A girl he hired and was loyal to."
She became extremely cautious. "Did he ... I mean, was there ever a romantic interest outside your mother and Sarah?"
He studied her quietly. "Of course. No other way there could be a second person in his blood line. There had to be another woman one time or another."
"Mike, there's a series I call 'The Mistress Series'. I don't suppose you've read it."
"Hell, no! Who wants to read a bunch of dry diaries his old man kept?"
"Diaries aren't dry. Not if you read from one end to the other. Even the dull, ordinary things start to mean something when they run together in a life."
"So? Anyhow, I haven't read any of the damn things except snatches here and there trying to find something that would fit this one."
"Mike...." She made her voice very soft and very gentle. "Mike, this is the final volume of his 'Mistress' series." She smiled. "It's nice he had time to say something about Colleen in it."
Mike's eyes widened. "Something about Colleen? Honey, brace yourself! She is it! That journal is the Colleen part of his life for the period since he got into this volume."
"Mike! Really, Mike?"
"Damn right!"
"Quick, Mike! That shelf over there! See that row of journals?"
"Yeah."
"Pick one! See if he's talking about Colleen in it!"
He flipped to three different pages in one of the volumes, then nodded. "Sure! Couldn't you tell?"
"I didn't ask myself. To me, Colleen was his daughter."
"Holy Christ!" He stared at her. "Okay! Now I know where we stand! Here!" He snatched the final volume from her. "This exchange of letters ... three entries from the end of what he wrote! Look at it!"
She looked. In his own terse way, Oliver had noted receipt of John McAllister's letter about the approach of her own eighteenth birthday. Sarah had mentioned that letter. Oliver touched on the nature of his reply and on his decision to reunite Colleen with the child she'd never seen. And he mentioned telling Colleen of his decision.
That much, Mike had understood clearly; he'd known Judy was Colleen's daughter the moment he'd read those pages.
"But I didn't know she was his mistress," he told Judy quietly. "I didn't know that, Judy Garlock."
She shivered violently. Only now did the full implication of Oliver's journal become evident to her. God! If Lowell had known that, I'd be dead, not Colleen! she thought. And a surge of anger toward her mother's killer washed over her.
"Those other documents make sense now," Mike remarked. "Bentley won't have any problem tonight."
"He might," she replied. "When he gets to Lowell's share."
Mike shook his head. "It's still Lowell's share. And he might need it to pay for his defense."
"Will it be enough, do you suppose?"
"I don't know if it'll be enough to get him off, but it'll pay his legal fees, no matter if the case goes all the way to the Supreme Court!"
Judy gasped. She'd heard somewhere what it cost to get a case that far. And Mike was talking about a ten percent share of the estate.
Mike made it sound even more awesome. "And if the Supreme Court decision came out in his favor he's still have enough to spend the rest of his life living better than he is now."
"Omigod, Mike! Not really!"
"Pretty sizable inheritance, honey."
"Oh, dear!" The thought frightened her. She had no idea what would be involved in being that rich. But she decided it was going to be fun finding out.
"Oliver's accident, Mike...Was that murder, too?"
He shrugged. "That's guesswork. It could have been sabotage. We never will know. Only one person will, if it was. Lowell stood a better chance of getting away with a few fatal accidents when nobody knew where you and Colleen fitted into the puzzle than he would have afterward, though. You'll have to pick your own theory."
She'd try not to, she decided.
"One question before we have to listen to Bentley...You're my sister, Judy. We didn't know that the other day. Would it have made a difference?"
She looked into his eyes. "Yes." When his expression clouded, she added, "Mike, it was something precious. Knowing about us would have made it even more precious. That won't be our last time, will it?"
He sighed happily. "Not if I have anything to say about it!"
They left the library reluctantly. The distribution of the estate seemed a dry and boring affair to Judy. Signing a few dotted lines and accepting a few receipts wasn't at all like suddenly becoming the owner of a vast sum of money. She felt no richer after Bentley had left than she had before his arrival. The only moment of real excitement was when Bentley announced dryly and undramatically he'd examined the documents and was satisfied Judy McAllister was, in fact, Judy Garlock, born to one Colleen Devlin and entitled to the use of the Garlock name by virtue of a document ordered and signed by Oliver Garlock, himself.
At that point in the proceedings, Lowell registered utter defeat. Edith's habitual hauteur melted into a warm, glad smile and Cal and Gwen showed nothing but awe. They'd carried Sarah downstairs for the" brief meeting and she greeted the announcement with a curiously triumphant expression.
And when Judy was helping her stepmother-the new relationships still made her dizzy-to get comfortable for the night, Sarah let her know what the expression had meant.
"I'm glad for you, my dear. I really am. I feel better, too. I've known almost from the beginning of my marriage to Oliver he had a mistress. She was always a shadowy, frightening figure to me ... always unreachable and awesome, like a goddess might be. I loved Colleen. I'd have been glad to share Oliver with her if I'd known. And I'm glad he showed such fine taste."
Sarah died during the night. The sheriff hadn't yet arrived to take Lowell into custody and there seemed to be a tacit truce when everybody stopped in her room to wish her a good night. She smiled sweetly and spoke to them as if they were very young children. To Judy, there was no pretense in her manner; she actually saw them as small children. She praised them and wished them pleasant dreams.
"Right to sleep, now," she said upon dismissing them. "Tomorrow's another delicious day, and you know how you hate to miss even the first hour! Good night."
The lapse frightened Judy. She realized the others-who should have known Sarah better than she did-believed the bedridden woman was teasing them gently and trying to avoid any reference to Lowell's betrayal of her. But she'd sensed too much depth and sincerity in Sarah's admonition to accept their judgment. She lay for a long time listening to Sarah's labored breathing-one breath much like another with an occasional long pause when Sarah's body might have been considering whether another breath was worth the trouble.
And she heard Sarah call to her. There was only the one call. She sprang from bed and hurried to her older friend immediately.
"I'm here, Sarah," she said softly.
"Yes, dear. You've always been. I wanted to say something extra to you, Judy. Do live life all the way. It's so very precious." She smiled in the dim light and stopped breathing.
After Sarah's funeral there seemed little to hold any of them at Garlock Heights. Lowell did not return, in fact, even when he was released on an appropriate bond. Gwen was gone, too. She'd left to go home and wait for Lowell, but she'd suggested she couldn't quite make her choice between his money and the considerable attractiveness of a male model she'd met shortly before Oliver's death.
Cal and Edith and Mike and Judy accepted their narrowed circle of companionship as if they'd been suspended in a timeless bubble. None of them expected the quiet, pressure-free interlude to last; neither did anyone make any effort to bring it to an end. But in each mind the consciousness lurked that the end would come.
Judy realized she might as well have been awakening from a dream when, eight days after the funeral, she received a letter from John McAllister.
"They did fix a piece of money on Penelope when they finally got around to tidying up," one part of the letter said. "Suppose with the old man dead you got nobody taking care of you. Penelope thinks she could swing it out of her inheritance to support you here while you go to junior college. A year or two ought to be enough for you to land a job and start supporting yourself." There was other news and there were complaints. John mentioned casually an accounting he'd drawn up showing precisely how far Oliver had under-estimated the cost of rearing a girl for eighteen years. "Of course," he said. "A man can't hardly hold that against the girl. She didn't have any say in making the estimate."
Judy laughed and cried at the same time. And she showed the letter to Mike.
"Penelope got disinherited because of the man she married," she remarked pensively. "At least Oliver was a little bit more human than his father and hers."
"He mellowed as he aged, too," observed Mike. "Threw me out of the house five years ago and told me never to come back without an invitation. That was because I said he was a Goddamn sadist for never letting Colleen get to know that baby she had."
"Mike, do you suppose we ought to think about whether he mellowed enough when it came to making up for what his father did to Penelope?"
Mike chuckled. "That damn money burning a hole in your pocket already?"
"You're teasing."
"Yeah. I think we ought to move real careful-like, but we sure ought to do something along that line." He reached for her and she slid toward him on the couch. "How come, little sister, you're such nice people when everybody on your family tree was a son of a bitch?"
She wrinkled her nose at him. "Must be me Irish mither," she said.
"Come here, you Goddamn sexy mick! And stop putting on all that phony brogue."
"It just sticks to my mouth sometimes," she murmured. "Nobody I know gets it off there any better than you."
He placed his mouth over hers and drew her close. He was obviously conscious of the way she'd exposed one thigh by crossing her knees, she thought. His hand had gone to the narrow strip of bare flesh above her stocking as if guided by radar. She shivered and clung to him. Once in a while the chilling question was coming to her mind far too often: How was she going to survive when she couldn't slide across a couch to her brother that easily-or when she couldn't get up and go around the table to him when the ache became intolerable? He'd be going back into those mountain forests soon, in spite of his fortune. And she wasn't going to go with him. He wouldn't expect it, nor did she have the right to suggest such a thing. His going would create a void around her no matter where she went.
But at moments like this, she could let that question grow small and harmless while her pulse raced and her pussy tingled and the familiar buzz of excitement swelled in the back of her head. She gulped at his rough, flat-tasting tongue and pushed one breast against him. When his caresses reached her panties and his thumb slipped inside the flimsy garment to probe the moist heat of her slit, she unzipped his trouser fly and lovingly cupped her palm over his sticky, twitching cockhead. Her fingertips played lightly on the neck of his cock and she experienced the too often unspoken rush of devotion to that silent messenger at his groin.
When he released her mouth and tilted his head back to laugh out of sheer contentment, she bent, her head moving downward over his broad chest and lean belly while her fingers pried the great hard-on into the open. For the first time in their love affair, she tenderly pressed her lips to the blunt nose of his cockhead and timidly extended her tongue to taste the metallic, barely salty coating that made the enormous bulb gleam so. Mike's hand drove convulsively into the perspiration-damp recess between her thighs.
"Lord Almighty, honey! What a fantastic feeling!" her brother exclaimed. "You've got lips like warm velvet!"
She let the full-flesh, relaxed lips part and slip outward to encircle the broad dome of his cockhead while her tongue gently stripped the smooth, spongy bulb of its coating. She was startled and intensely happy at his reaction. His thighs tensed noticeably and his hips rose, while he clawed at her clothes in his effort to get hold of naked flesh. He up-ended her while she worked her lips further onto the huge cockhead and clung fiercely with her hands to the majestic shaft. He pushed her knees apart and buried his face in the hot folds of her pussy, probing deeply with his tongue while she squirmed.
The library door opened and Cal and Edith came in. Judy could hear their low exclamations of pleasure as they took in the scene.
Cal growled excitedly. "Hey! Can anybody get into the game, or is it private?"
And her brother raised his wet face long enough to reply. "Find something to hang onto. You're welcome to join! Never did have much use for a dog in the manger."
Edith giggled. She didn't sound at all like the haughty, distant woman Judy had thought her to be.
"I don't know about mangers, but I've seen the day when I'd go a long way for a muzzle on my pussy, with the tongue buried all the way from there to my tonsils!"
Cal laughed tenderly. "You gotta understand." He didn't sound as if he worried. "This broad's got a thing about dogs. Let one look at her with halfway sad eyes and she's ready to crawl under him!"
As if this comment were light conversation, Edith added airily, "Nothing like it for a long, single-track fuck."
Judy cringed. She was glad when they dropped the subject and crowded onto the same part of the couch she and Mike were using. The trouble was, she could see entirely too vividly the scenes their joshing suggested. And in her mental images she didn't see Edith at all, but herself.
She gulped, driving her mouth over the bulge of Mike's cockhead and letting the fat knob settle in her mouth. It filled the cavity; if she pushed on it just a little the tip blocked the arch to her throat. Her tongue seemed to have no room at all, but somehow she managed to apply its wet caresses to the bulky intruder. She could make interesting things happen by sucking, too, and she had to do something to counterbalance the fiery impulses she was getting from her clitoris as Mike nibbled at it.
Sensations were rapidly growing confused. Cal and Edith were doing their thing while she and Mike continued their own. But the four bodies rested against each other and rubbed together when anybody moved. And hands strayed continually, so a person never quite knew who was caressing whom. It was a kind of intimacy Judy relished. With swapping, even when Mike wasn't at the center of it, she'd always have this sense tender sharing and likely adventure. Then, too, she could always pretend one of the unidentified hands belonged to her brother-reaching ghost-wise across whatever miles happened to separate them.
There just might be a friendly, warm-tongued dog somewhere in the fringes, as well. That kind companion could be depended on when a lonely hungry night came along. The fact was, life offered a "grand prize if you play your cards right," as anonymous note had once advised her.
Colleen had composed that letter, she knew without question. And she'd composed better than she'd intended. She'd left Judy something to guide her course by in a far broader way than the hopeful mother had anticipated.
"Walk carefully...stick if you can...play your cards right...know what your doing ... be shur things aren't all what they look like...."
That was the life Colleen had seen her daughter entering. And it was clearly what Judy needed for the life ahead. She swallowed hard and sucked another bit of juice from Mike's ready slit. She was ready if life was.
