Vacation

by S. J. Lewis

  She went out into the living room. The clock on the wall read 3:10. It was far too early to just stay up, but she didn’t think she could go back to sleep. Feeling just a little foolish, she went over to check the deadbolt on her door. It was secure, and she gave a tiny sigh of relief before heading into the kitchen. Herbal tea would help her settle down, and there was one type she particularly liked which would also help her get back to sleep.

  Claudia set the tea down on the small kitchen table and sat down, propping her elbows up on the solid wood surface to either side of the steaming mug. She combed her fingers through her hair and sighed. Things were getting so complicated now. So very, very complicated. At the same time, some things had become very, very clear. She had always taken pride in her cool-headedness, her self-control. They had been valuable traits when she had been on the police force, and equally valuable when she was starting and then running her own investigative agency. The only time she had abandoned them had been that one time, at the bungalow with Sam. The experience had been thrilling, exhausting…and revealing. At the time, she had thought it was her body betraying her. She knew better now. There had been no betrayal. Underneath the calm and polished surface she had so carefully maintained for so many years was…well, the only thing she could compare it to was a vast pool of lava, pushing, straining for release against all the weight of the solid rock overhead. It was as much a part of her as her eyes, or her hair, and it always had been.

  She picked the mug up in both hands, enjoying the warmth and the weight of it, and took a sip. At least the realization made some things clearer to her. She had loved police work. The plodding details, the investigative work, had appealed to one part of her, the thrill of danger had appealed to the other. It also helped to explain why so many of her sexual fantasies revolved around that danger: Being captured by one or more of the criminals she was hunting down, being handcuffed or bound, rendered helpless, powerless, and not responsible for the outcome. Dianne was the only person she’d ever shared any of those fantasies with, and even so there were a great many Dianne still did not know about. She shivered, took another sip of tea, felt the still-hot fluid slide down her throat.

  Sam had tapped right into that pool of molten lava. He’d probably known it was there from the beginning. Thinking about the things she’d done, the things that had been done to her in the bungalow and in the barn, could still make her face redden, could still bring that tingling to her skin and deep in her belly. What would she do when he showed up? She wasn’t sure. She didn’t even know why he would be showing up. She thought she had sized him up pretty accurately: Love ‘em and leave ‘em. Why did he seem so interested in seeing her again after two years? Was he having some sort of dry spell? Did he think he could just pick up where he had left off?

  Another sip of tea. The only way to find out for sure would be to ask him when she saw him, but she feared that she wouldn’t be thinking too clearly at that point. She supposed that she could just try to avoid him completely, but he’d find a way around that, she was certain. The idea didn’t appeal to her anyway. It would look as if she were afraid, trying to hide. He’d probably laugh at her if she tried it, and the thought of him laughing at her was somehow worse than anything else she could think of.

  Well, all that was somewhere in the future, at least, if not very far in the future. She still had that damnable Bowman problem to deal with, and it, at least, was here-and-now.

  Claudia drank the last of the tea and put the empty mug into the sink, running water to rinse it out. She stretched and yawned, scratched at a spot on her scalp. She’d calmed down enough to go back to sleep, but there was one thing she had to do before sleeping.

  She checked the door locks one last time before turning off the lights and going back into her bedroom. She went to the closet and took down a small box from the top shelf and opened it. The vibrator was a faithful reproduction of a swollen cock in a kind of plastic that felt almost as real as it looked. It was seven inches long, with an additional round handle, which held the batteries and brought the total length up to just under a foot. She had bought it over the Internet six months ago, having it sent to a post office box rented for just that purpose. She turned the handle and immediately felt the low, buzzing throb. The batteries were still good, then. She switched it off and laid it on her bed, then went to a lower drawer of her dresser. It held sweaters, but at the bottom, under all the cotton, wool and occasional cashmere, were her old police issue handcuffs in their leather case. She took them out, slipped the gleaming, heavy cuffs out of their case. The key had its own little pocket inside. She was about to climb into bed when a thought struck her. She laid the handcuffs and the case alongside the vibrator and went to a top drawer of the dresser. Rummaging through it, she found what she was looking for, a long scarf, black, soft and opaque. Smiling faintly to herself, she laid the scarf by the other items and, for a moment, just stood looking down at them.

  She turned away from the bed and faced the full-length mirror on her closet door. She smoothed back her hair as she looked at her image. Grinning at herself, she drew her T-shirt off over her head and dropped it to the floor. There had been a time, when she was younger, that she had wished earnestly for bigger, fuller breasts. Now she was glad that the wish had not been granted. Hers might be on the small side, Claudia-in-a-tight-sweater might not make men turn their heads and walk into things, but her breasts were still much as they had been when she was eighteen. There was no sign of sag or wrinkle, no trace of drooping due to that damned gravity. She turned her profile to the mirror, ran her hands down along her body. She still looked very good, she told herself. She ought to, after all the time she spent at the gym, all the care she took with her diet.

  She slipped her panties off and turned to face the mirror again, hands on hips. She had to smile at herself. This was just a little bit ridiculous, but she was getting off on it. Okay, okay, she was still hot. She laughed to herself.

  The leather handcuff case, with its key, she placed carefully on the nightstand before she climbed into the bed. She placed the pillows to support her as she sat in bed leaning back against the headboard.

  Next came the blindfold. She tied it snugly in place, checked to be sure that she really could not see anything. Leaning forward, she groped for the handcuffs and the vibrator, pulling them closer. Picking up the handcuffs, she locked them around one wrist, then the other. She tugged at them experimentally, enjoying the feel of the metal, the weight of it. She stretched the connecting links taut before running them slowly over her nipples. The sensation made her shiver deliciously.

  She felt blindly for the vibrator, found it, but did not turn it on, not yet. Cradling it lovingly in both hands, she brought it up to her face, touched the blunt tip to her lips, gently. She licked at it slowly, running her tongue all over the thick, wide head, then under it, before slowly, slowly pushing it deeper and deeper into her mouth. The feel of it made her salivate freely. As she began the old, familiar, in-and-out rhythm, she could feel little trickles of drool running down her chin.

  She withdrew the vibrator from her mouth at last and turned it on. She inched her way down until she was almost supine and touched the now-humming tip first to one nipple, then to the other, flinching each time at the erotic intensity of the contact. She slid it down across her belly, holding it for a moment just over that exquisitely sensitive spot before thrusting it home. As the humming toy went deeper and deeper inside of her, she arched her back, clenching her mouth shut tightly so that no sound louder than a moan would escape.

  ***

  The clock radio blared into life too soon, and she spent some time half-asleep flailing at the air where that annoying appliance usually stood. Unable to shut it up, she opened an eye to look for it. There it was, just out of reach from the bed, exactly where she had put it. She yawned, swung her legs out from the bed and sat up. As she reached up to run her fingers through her hair, she realized that the handcuffs were still locked around her left wr
ist when they smacked her lightly in her face. Startled at first, she held her arm up to stare at them for a moment. She must have been just enough awake some time last night to free one wrist from the cuffs, but not awake enough to realize that they were still attached to the other. Then she began to laugh. She laughed so hard that she wound up doubled over, tears streaming from her eyes. At last she took a deep breath and flopped onto her back on the bed, her feet still touching the floor. The clock radio continued to relate the latest news to her, interspersed with commercials.

  She held her arm up and looked at the dangling cuffs again and chuckled. Sitting up, she searched for the key, found it lying on the floor next to the bed, and used it to free her wrist. She felt unaccountably cheerful. In spite of her interrupted sleep of last night, she also felt better rested than she would have expected. As she leaned back on her arms on the bed, her right hand fell upon the vibrator. This set her off on another peal of laughter, although she couldn’t quite say just why it was so damned funny.

  She rose, stretched, caught sight of herself in the mirror and grinned happily at her reflection. Things might seem complicated. Bowman might be a pain in the ass to crack, and Sam might be lurking behind the shrubbery somewhere, but this morning she felt certain that she could handle it all. She couldn’t say just how she would handle it, or why she felt that way, but it was too good a feeling to analyze.

  ***

  She pulled into her parking space at the office next to Marabel’s lime-green Impala, just as she always did. As she walked towards her office, she was humming the same little tune she had in her shower earlier.

  “Good morning!” she greeted Marabel cheerfully as she entered. Marabel looked up from her work and smiled back.

  “Morning, Miss Cole,” she nodded. “I’m glad to see you feeling better.”

  “MUCH better, thanks!” Claudia put her purse on her desk as she passed it on her way to the coffee. “You were right yesterday. I needed the break.”

  She poured her coffee and savored the smell of it for a moment before taking the first tiny sip. “Anything interesting in the mail?” she asked, turning back towards Marabel.

  “Not so far,” Marabel replied. “A lot of junk mail, though.”

  Claudia went over to the table where the building plans were still laid out and started looking through them. There were two sets of each, as Jerry had said, and she began sorting them into two piles, draping one set over the back of a chair. She returned one duplicate set to the cardboard tube Jerry had brought them in, then rolled the chair up to the table so she could sit down and look the plans over more carefully.

  The oldest set of plans was dated ten years ago. She put those on the bottom of the pile and looked for the next oldest set. Before too long she had the plans in chronological order and had finished her coffee. She got up and went back to the coffee machine.

  When Jerry arrived, she was still looking over the drawings and her cup was half-empty.

  “Morning, chief,” Jerry said as he came over. “Do those help any?”

  Claudia answered, somewhat preoccupied, “I don’t know yet. I’m not sure what I’m looking for yet.”

  “Uh-huh,” he nodded. “But you gotta have some kind of idea, don’t you?”

  “Well,” Claudia leaned back in the chair and picked up her coffee mug, “I’m thinking that there may be some other way into the building, or some place to hide inside it.”

  Jerry nodded. “And it might show up on the plans. Want me to help?”

  “Well, there isn’t a whole lot else to do right now,” Claudia said. “Why don’t you look at the second set while I look at this one. I put them back in the container.”

  “Okay,” Jerry agreed.

  ***

  By lunchtime, Claudia had found one or two possibilities, but nothing promising. Jerry had found one of the possibilities independently, but he didn’t think much of it either. They were places that one person might hide, if they knew about them and didn’t mind being very cramped for a long time, small parts of the building which had been closed off during a renovation. Unless a contractor had installed a secret door somewhere, access to either one was impossible anyway. There had been no sign anywhere of any forgotten entrance to the building.

  “Now what, ?” Jerry asked.

  “Well, if we can’t find out how, let’s see if we can find out who or why,” Claudia sighed.” I still think this is an inside job somehow.”

  “The whole thing is kinda strange,” Jerry nodded in agreement.

  “I was thinking that too. It doesn’t feel like a professional job, either. Even the average burglar wouldn’t keep hitting the same place over and over again. What do you think, Jer?”

  He shrugged. “Too many possibilities for motive: Debts, drugs, plain old greed. If it is an inside job, like you think, any plan you come up with you have to get permission from the owners. If one of them is the perp, he knows how to block you there.”

  “Yeah. It makes things a little difficult.”

  “What about the insurance carrier?”

  Claudia made a rude noise. “The guy I have to deal with is a total bureaucrat. He seems more interested in making sure all the forms are filled out properly than in actually getting any results.”

  “Well,” Jerry went on, “you could maybe push him a little? Tell him you have to get more cooperation or you’re dropping the case?”

  “Believe me, I thought about it,” Claudia answered. “But doing that would kill any possibility of ever doing business with that company again.” She left unspoken another reason: She hated to give up just because things were hard.

  “Uh-huh.” Jerry scratched at his ear. “What’s this bureaucrat’s name?”

  “Shepperton. Philip K. Shepperton. Why?”

  “I dunno.” Jerry shook his head. “I just thought of something, though.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, the possibility that this Shepperton is in on it somehow. I mean, that carrier has had to shell out some substantial bucks, they have an interest in catching whoever’s doing the stealing. But this guy isn’t being real helpful, right? He could be in on it.”

  “Could be,” Claudia shook her head, “but I think he’s just an officious jerk who doesn’t even know he’s way out of his depth.” She stopped to think for a moment. Jerry might be wrong, but he usually wasn’t. “Tell you what, Jer,” she said. “Check up on this guy anyway, would you? Right now I’m fresh out of ideas, and this one has possibilities at least.”

  “Gotcha,” Jerry nodded happily. “Anything in particular you want me to look for?”

  Claudia shrugged. “See if he has any outside connections to the Bowman owners. Other than that, follow your nose.”

  Jerry grinned. “Okay, Chief,” he said. “I’ll get right on it.”

  ***

  At noon, Claudia left to pick up lunch for herself and Marabel. There were four fast food joints nearby, and a number of small take-out places. By now, she knew the good ones. To her, the very best were the ones that would take an order over the phone and have it ready to go by the time she got there. No waiting. She liked it that way. Today, lunch was Italian, antipasto for both her and Marabel.

  When she returned to the office, Marabel greeted her with an odd little smile. “There was a delivery for you while you were out,” she said.

  “Oh? Where is it?” Claudia asked as she handed over the bag to her.

  “On your desk.”

  Claudia went over to look. Right in the middle of her desk was a tall, slender cut-glass vase with a single red rose in it. There didn’t seem to be any card with it.

  “Ah…” Claudia asked over her shoulder. “Who delivered this?”

  “The florist.”

  Claudia debated asking Marabel what the deliveryman looked like, and dismissed the idea. She was fairly certain who had sent it anyway.

  “You have an admirer, Miss Cole?”

  “So it would seem.” Claudia replied, turning bac
k to Marabel with a small smile.

  “That’s good.” Marabel nodded and let the matter drop. Claudia heaved an inward sigh of relief. Marabel, bless her, never pried into anything she regarded as personal.

  She asked no more questions, just handed over the aluminum container holding Claudia’s lunch to her.

  As she ate, Claudia kept looking at the rose, now sitting on a corner of her desk. Yes, she was almost certain who had sent it, but it just wasn’t something she would have pictured him doing. But then…she had only known him for those few days. It was possible, very possible, that there were sides to him she knew nothing about. It was very intriguing.

  Intriguing or not, there was business to attend to. Jerry hadn’t called in after lunch, but Claudia hadn’t expected him to come up with anything that quickly. She didn’t feel like just waiting around until he did call in, and there really wasn’t anything for her to do here in the office, aside from look at that rose.

  “I’m going to go out for a bit,” she told Marabel.

  “Where to?” Marabel asked.

  Claudia shrugged. “I’m going out to the industrial park, look around a bit. Maybe I can find something we might have missed before.”

  “Do you want me to call you if Jerry phones in with anything?”

  “Yes, please do.”

  “Well,” Marabel nodded towards the cell phone sitting on Claudia’s desk, “you’d better not forget to bring that with you then.”

  “What? Oh…right!” Claudia picked it up and stuffed it into her purse. “I don’t know why, I’m still not used to these things,” she laughed.