Thrilling Thirteen

by Ponzo, Gary

  The kitchen smells of bagels and coffee. Beth sees her mother at the small table underneath the window, a cup of coffee in front of her, the newspaper folded in her hand. She’s got a thick black marker and is in the act of circling something.

  She looks up at Beth. “Now that’s how you start a day,” she says. “With a smile.”

  Beth feels slightly embarrassed. Was she really smiling?

  “What are you doing?” she asks, as she goes to the plastic dish stand next to the sink and retrieves a cup. It’s got pictures of wild animals on it and the words: Yellowstone National Park.

  “Job hunting,” her mother says.

  Beth pours coffee into her cup, adds cream and sugar, and sits down across from her Mom. “Really?” she asks.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “No, I believe you. It’s just…what about the nursing home?”

  “That job is pathetic,” her Mom says, vehemence in her voice.

  Beth wants to ask, then why have you been doing it for nearly ten years? Instead she says, “Any luck?”

  “A few possibilities. I’ll send some résumés out on Monday.”

  Beth wonders if she’s heard right. Resumés? She’s surprised her Mom even knows what one is, let alone actually has one.

  “Did you have fun last night?” her Mom asks.

  “Yeah,” Beth says, trying to sound as casual as possible.

  “You got in pretty late.”

  The surprises keep coming. It’s the first time in the history of their relationship that her mother has even claimed to know what time she got in, let alone had anything to say about it.

  “Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess,” Beth says, shrugging her shoulders and sipping her coffee. “Samuel’s nice.”

  Anna folds up the paper and sets it aside.

  “Beth, we need to talk.”

  “Mom-”

  “I know I haven’t been much of a mother-”

  Beth sets down her cup so hard a little bit of coffee slurps out onto the table. “Mom, I’m in a really good mood right now and that hasn’t happened in a long time. I’m finally feeling good about things. Don’t ruin it-”

  Anna opens her mouth just as the phone rings.

  Beth watches as her Mom gets up and answers the phone. She turns to Beth. “It’s for you.”

  Beth listens, says no repeatedly, then hangs up and goes back to the kitchen table. The smile is gone from her face.

  “What’s wrong?” her mother asks.

  “It’s Peter,” she says. “He’s missing.”

  Sixty-Nine

  Julie Giacalone had never worked with such intense efficiency. She is a whirlwind around the office; she updates the master list of potential recruits, assigns meetings, runs checks on the DEP pool, organizes paperwork for an upcoming NAVCRUITCOM meeting and spends two hours on a conference call with the national director of Naval recruiting in which she’s subjected to the same speech, the same platitudes she’s been hearing for the last four years. She throws in her usual bullshit. She knows her part of the conversation so well, has it down rote - that she’s like an actor who’s doing a show for the two hundredth time - able to say her lines with emotion and conviction even when her mind is elsewhere. And the audience never knows.

  By lunchtime, she is hungry and ready for a break. She drives out of the office to a sub shop and buys a vegetarian half-sub with a Diet Coke and returns to her office. Paul Rogers is off giving a lecture at a high school - always done carefully as schools had strict policies regarding what recruiters did and said at high schools - and Samuel is off doing follow-up as well as taking meetings with several new recruits.

  Julie bites into the veggie sandwich, the bread being the best part, the actual vegetables taste old and sour. She never understands why she just doesn’t make her own damn sandwiches at home. Why waste five bucks every day going out? Probably just to get out of the office for a change.

  But today, she decides to come back on her lunch hour.

  When she polishes off the sandwich and chases it down with her Coke, she swivels her chair back in front of her computer. Her work computer is newer, more powerful and most importantly, much faster, than her home computer.

  Which is why she’s saved some of her research on Samuel for the office.

  Not that she is going overboard with this thing. It’s just that reading about Samuel’s history at two o’clock in the morning and drinking whiskey only succeeded in raising more questions.

  And why did the name Larry Nevens ring a bell?

  She logs back onto the Naval personnel website and opens Samuel’s file. She scans through every page searching for any other contact with a Larry Nevens. She then searches the Navy’s active personnel database - if this Nevens was one of Samuel’s BUD/S instructors - surely he’ll be listed here.

  The computer processes her request. She sits back and takes a sip of her diet Coke. She looks out the window. It’s a gray day - no snow but the roads are white with dried salt, the cars grungy and all one uniform color - gray.

  The computer beeps and she looks back at the screen.

  No Record Found.

  Julie frowns. How could that be? Samuel just went through the training six months ago. Surely Nevens couldn’t have left the Navy already.

  She absentmindedly drums her fingers on the keyboard’s base. Where to look?

  Maybe he retired. She has no idea how old Nevens is, maybe he’s a crusty old SEAL who did his last BUD/S training before saying adios to the Navy. Probably golfing in Scottsdale now.

  There was a way to check that. Tapping back into the Navy personnel data base, she goes to a search engine and asks the database to screen all personnel for those who have retired from the Navy in the last six months. She hits the enter key and waits. A bar begins slowly making its way across her screen, signifying the search is in progress. The door opens to the outer office and Julie leans forward in her chair, catches a flash of white. Her heart momentarily leaps into her throat. Her hands fly to the keyboard - if it’s Samuel she has to cancel the search-

  “Hey.”

  She looks up.

  Paul Rogers looks at her.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  She breathes an inward sigh of relief. “I-”

  “Oh, you ate there again,” he says, gesturing at the paper cup of diet Coke emblazoned with the sub shop’s logo. “That explains it.”

  She laughs, hollow and forced, but Paul goes back to his desk and leaves her alone. It takes a minute for her to calm down and as she does, she gets mad at herself. What is she so worried about? First of all, she’s just searching personnel records. No big deal. And second of all, even if Samuel were here - so what? What’s he going to do? And why is she suddenly so scared of him?

  The computer beeps and a huge list of recent Naval retirees fills her screen. She scrolls forward to the list of names beginning with N and gets to where Nevens should be.

  He’s not there.

  Shit.

  So Larry Nevens didn’t retire from the Navy. Goddamnit, she realizes she’s wasting her time. There’s only one way to do this. She’ll have to search the database for all personnel who have ever served in the Navy. She’s sure there will be more than one Larry Nevens, but doubts that there were more than one Larry Nevens who served in the role of BUD/S instructors. Those guys are few and far between.

  She goes back to the database, types in Larry Nevens and asks the computer to search for all personnel past and present. The bar appears again, this time, moving much more slowly.

  Julie gets up from her desk, goes out to the front part of the office and crosses the area to the kitchen. She dumps the last of her soda down the drain and tosses the paper cup in the wastebasket. She’s reaching for a glass from the upper cabinet when suddenly, someone grabs her from behind.

  She takes a deep, sharp breath.

  The arms apply pressure.

  She’s ready to scream when she feels soft l
ips on her neck. She turns and Samuel’s face is there before her.

  “Stop it,” she says, leaning to the right where she can see the office. No sign of Paul Rogers.

  “Paul left,” Samuel says. “He’ll be out all afternoon, he said. Which means that it’s just me and you.”

  His mouth is on hers and she feels her legs weaken. It feels so good. Her nipples harden. She feels herself become excited.

  “Lock the door,” she says, her voice thick and breathy. Samuel breaks away from her, walks to the door and locks it. Julie’s eyes devour his body. His tight ass in his uniform, his narrow, tapered waist and broad shoulders. He’s so goddamned good-looking.

  He returns to her, his hands on her body, his mouth kissing her and steers her toward the small kitchen table out of sight from the front windows and the rest of the office. He slowly undresses her, kissing her nipples, stroking her body, and undoes the button on her pants.

  “Samuel,” she says. But she’s not kidding anyone.

  She can see the huge bulge in his pants and she wants to devour it. But he pushes her hand away and pulls her pants down, and then her panties. He lifts her onto the table, spreads her legs, and pushes his face into her damp mound.

  He lifts her legs onto his shoulders and reaches up, pinching her nipples as he licks and probes and sucks her to shuddering, exploding orgasm. When she’s done, he stands and she lays back on the table. He slides inside her and he rocks with a smooth precision that builds until the entire table is bucking and heaving and the plates in the dish rack are rattling. She isn’t sure how long it lasts but eventually she feels feel him come and at long last he stops.

  Julie is shaken to her core.

  What was she thinking? She suddenly feels like the stupidest woman on the face of the Earth. So what if he isn’t in love with her. If he wants to use her, then she’ll use him.

  “Help me up,” she says.

  Samuel lifts her off the table, kisses her breasts as he does so, and then they both dress themselves.

  “Why don’t you come by tonight for dinner?” Julie asks. “Around seven.”

  Samuel nods and Julie feels a slight thrill. She’s back in control again. And loving it.

  “Do you want me to bring anything?” Samuel asks.

  She reaches down and rubs him.

  “Just this.”

  Seventy

  The water is ice cold and Julie drains half the glass in one gulp. My God, she thinks, that was fantastic. So incredibly exciting. She’s fooled around in the office before, but never anything like that. Samuel Ackerman knows just how to drive her absolutely wild.

  Despite herself, she’s already entertaining images of tonight - of what she and Samuel will do together. Things will be a little bit different tonight. She’s got a few things in mind for what Samuel can do. A few duties he can perform.

  Julie sets the glass down on her desk and plops into her chair.

  She swivels toward her computer, her fingers find the command and W key which automatically closes the open window but the sight of red, capital letters on her screen freezes them just a millimeter away from the key making contact and banishing the words back into cyberspace.

  Julie focuses, her brain refusing to recognize what she’s seeing.

  She rocks back in her chair, the ramifications swirling in her mind. Refusing to accept the conclusions that are ricocheting between logic and implausibility.

  Her mind goes back to the screen.

  And lingers there, confused and silent with shock.

  DECEASED. UNSOLVED HOMICIDE.

  Seventy-One

  Julie Giacalone is listening to a dial tone.

  The words are still echoing in her mind; UNSOLVED HOMICIDE.

  Was Samuel involved?

  She laughed at herself.

  It was nuts. Samuel, involved in a murder? Hardly possible.

  Still, what was she doing poking around his records if she didn’t suspect…something?

  But what?

  He was bright, handsome, and a skilled lover. Why would he kill a BUD/S instructor?

  She shook her head.

  She had the phone number in front of her of one Captain Purgitt in Pensacola, Florida. Samuel’s CO during his brief stint as an ordnance practitioner.

  What could she gain by calling him? What if this…Purgitt…was a friend of Samuel’s? Would he call Samuel and ask why his new CO was calling him, looking for…for what? Information?

  She would have to head that one off at the pass ahead of time. But how?

  The answer came just as quickly as the question. She would simply pretend to be calling to ascertain the dates of Samuel’s arrival and departure, just for her files, a routine paperwork task that had to be done. She would play for sympathy - all Navy officers hated the loads of paperwork required by the bureaucracy.

  She punched in the numbers.

  And received the second shock of the day.

  Seventy-Two

  On her knees, with Samuel Ackerman plumbing her very depths, Julie Giacalone is thinking about Pensacola, Florida.

  She is remembering the shock of seeing the words UNSOLVED HOMICIDE next to the name of Larry Nevens, followed so closely by Captain Purgitt’s description of the freak accident that occurred just before his decision to send Samuel back to Michigan.

  Apparently a support chain holding a dummy warhead had dropped on a Chief Petty Officer (Third Grade) Wilkins, killing him instantly. Investigators had scoured the scene but could find no evidence of foul play, other than some severely worn links in the chain. One investigator had insisted the links had been ruined purposely, but the allegations had gotten nowhere. It had all been written off.

  Suddenly, Samuel withdrew and lifted her back on top of him, and she straddled him. She looked down at his thick, hairy chest. The perfect line of abs, his strong face. He was such a goddamn perfect physical specimen.

  Julie Giacalone had another secret pleasure. It also took place in her bedroom, late at night, between her silk sheets.

  It was called reading.

  Potboilers, mostly. Especially the old ones. Hammett. Chandler. She loved them. And now, was her love of books coloring her thoughts on Samuel? Was it not enough to have these illicit trysts? Did she then have to concoct some kind of wild-ass theory that he was a slick killer?

  She may have come to some conclusion. May have weighed the facts and decided that she wasn’t imagining things. That something in Samuel had triggered her suspicions and now the information she’d gathered had confirmed them.

  But before that thought could sink in, the first waves of a mind-blowing orgasm ravaged her and minutes later, her ecstatic moans erased any previous thoughts, including the knowledge that Samuel looked at making love to her as simply doing his duty.

  Seventy-Three

  By three o’clock in the afternoon, the small gathering of family and closest friends is assembled in the living room of the Forbes home. Peter’s mother and father, tall, good-looking people with the calm assuredness of successful, strong-willed people dominate the area, alternatively making lists and phone calls of anyone who might know of Peter’s whereabouts.

  Beth sits on a kitchen chair that’s been pulled into the living room, watching the scene before her in disbelief. It’s been six hours since she received the phone call from Mrs. Forbes, asking if she knew where Peter was. Three hours later, Beth called back to see if he’d shown up. She pictured Peter with that loveable hangdog expression he used sometimes, even more handsome when he’s sheepish.

  But Mr. Forbes had given her the bad news. Peter was not answering his cell phone, and it appeared as if he’d simply vanished.

  Ordinarily, it may not have been such a big deal. But Peter had been scheduled to meet with a Marquette alumni, something he’d been looking forward to. His parents insisted that Peter would not have missed the meeting unless something had happened.

  Now, Beth waits in the living room, feeling more than a little awkward. She is
n’t sure how many of the people there knew about the problems she and Peter had.

  Beth figures Peter didn’t tell anyone. He is never the kind of guy to confide in his buddies. Even though he likes them and enjoyed their company, she knew that in some ways he didn’t respect them, didn’t truly consider them equals. Suddenly, with an audible gasp, she realizes she’s thinking of him in the past tense.

  Beth immediately gets to her feet. She has to do something, anything to help. She can’t just sit and wait.

  The Forbes home is big, especially compared to Beth’s. Mr. Forbes is a well-known attorney, and Mrs. Forbes is an interior decorator. The house reflects his professional stature and her impeccable, contemporary taste.

  Beth walks through the living room and down a short hallway to the kitchen. Mrs. Forbes is sitting at the kitchen table with a cell phone in her hand. As Beth enters the room, she hears Peter’s mother offering her thanks in spite of what sounds like no news.

  The older woman thumbs the disconnect button and looks at Beth.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Beth,” she says.

  “I just know he’s going to walk through that front door any minute with a dopey grin on his face,” Beth says, smiling, forcing an easy tone in her voice that she hopes sounds natural.

  Mrs. Forbes nods, but Beth can see there’s no confidence in the gesture.

  “Can I get you anything to drink?” she asks Beth.

  “No, thanks. Don’t worry about me - you’ve got enough on your mind.”

  “Sit down, Beth, I’d like to talk to you.”

  Beth pulls out the chair across from Peter’s Mom. She knows where this is going.

  “How were things between you and Peter?”

  Beth hesitates. A part of her feels like it’s nobody’s business but hers and Peter’s. But she sees the concern in Mrs. Forbes’ eyes. Now’s not the time to keep secrets, even though she’s more than sure wherever Peter is, it has nothing to do with her.