“You do?"
“Of course."
“Do you think we ought to get married?"
“Maybe someday."
He felt both relief and disappointment.
They ate in silence for a few minutes. He glanced through the breakfast room door and his eyes fell on the door in the kitchen that led to the basement. “Sandy, have you been down in the basement?"
“No, why do you ask?"
“Well, Friday when the technicians came to install your Internet telephone line they asked me for the keys to a room down there. They wanted to run the line through it. I didn't know there was a room in the basement, and certainly didn't know where the keys to it were. They chose another route for their line. I went down to look. The room must take up half the basement and it has heating ducts run to it, so Uncle Pete must have used it for something besides storage. The door has a Yale dead bolt and two padlocks on it."
“There's a ring with a bunch of keys hanging on a nail in the pantry,” she responded.
They carried their dishes to the kitchen sink and together washed, dried and put them away. Sandra went to her library, determined to compose the best book review ever written.
“In 1861,” Sandra wrote, “Mary Ann Evans, one of the first ranked of 19th century English novelists using the pen name George Eliot, wrote the gripping novel which is now considered a classic, Silas Marner."
She was so pleased with the first sentence that she read it over and over again before continuing. “Marner, betrayed by his closest friend..."
* * * *
Tim took the ring of keys to the basement. The key to the Yale lock was quickly located. The padlock keys were on the ring, but he tried several before finding the right ones. He swung open the door, groped in the darkness for a light switch and gaped at the unexpected sight.
On the right side of the room was a double bed. Surrounding the bed area were klieg lights and four video cameras mounted on tripods. The room to the left of the door contained a wraparound counter with door-covered cabinets above and below. He did not recognize the electronic equipment on the counter. In one corner was a big screen TV with a VCR on top. An older model computer with freestanding tower was wedged between the TV and counter. Tim recognized it from his teaching days as an IBM 386 clone. Thick dust covered everything. Tim opened one cabinet door and found it filled with VCR tape cassettes. He removed a half dozen. Each was Labeled “Jan 1, Jan 2, Jan 3,” etc., and were all dated as well.
He snapped on the TV. The screen filled with snow indicating there was no antenna attached. He turned on the VCR. The screen turned solid blue. He inserted the tape labeled “Jan 1".
* * * *
Dirty old men are such fools, Cathy thought as she sat in her personal car parked at the rear of the Shell station. I think Matt actually creamed in his britches when I showed him my boobs. She laughed. Pete Harlow wasn't an old fool, unfortunately, but he taught me well.
She shifted her position a little, keeping her eyes on the two-story motel next door. Vice squads concentrate on Saturday nights, she thought, but salesmen come to town on Sunday nights. They're looking for action and there're always plenty of whores around to supply their needs.
He wrote that check so fast he practically set the paper on fire, she chuckled. Friday morning she had worn a regulation khaki skirt—a very short khaki skirt—instead of her usual form fitting khaki pants. She had sat, knees as wide apart as the skirt would permit, across from him in his office during the morning. His damn eyes practically burned a hole in my panties, she remembered with sadistic glee. When I asked for a $400 loan to buy tires for my car he wrote the check for $500 and insisted it was a gift, not a loan. Damn fool. Wonder what he would give for a taste of my nipples?
She jerked to attention. Two middle-aged men, one gray-haired, the other bald, were climbing the outside steps to the second story of rooms. The bald-headed guy kept his hand on the buttocks of the lone female in the company. If she's not a hooker, I'll turn in my badge, Cathy thought, checking her watch. She noted the room they entered, waited five minutes, and casually walked across the parking lot.
She slipped her service revolver from its holster and quietly inserted the master key in the lock. With practiced speed she turned the key, burst open the door, jumped inside assuming the standard pose with both hands on the revolver pointed at the three nude unfortunates in one of the two double beds.
As she kicked the door closed, the gray-haired salesman urinated on the prostitute's leg.
The men began to beg for a break, as she knew they would. The first few times she worked the scam she had pretended to be insulted by bribery attempts, but she quickly learned that was not necessary. She made all three lie on their stomachs, removed watches and rings from the men, emptied their wallets, watched them get dressed and let them flee. She knew they would not file complaints.
She locked the door behind them and sat on the bed beside the frightened young whore. “You, my pretty young lady, are going to the lockup,” she said.
“Please,” the prostitute pleaded. “Give me a break. This is my first time. I swear to God I'll never do it again."
“That's what they all say,” Cathy responded, snapping the handcuffs on the frightened woman's wrists.
“I ... I don't have any money, but I'll do anything."
“You've got to be punished."
“You let the guys go,” the whore protested.
“I punished them. I fined them all the money they had on them, and they are going to have a hell of a time explaining to their wives how they lost their wedding bands."
“You can have my rings."
“Sweet Cheeks, those things are glass.” Cathy placed a hand on the girl's rounded left buttock, squeezed it, ran her hand to the girl's anus and brutally forced two fingers inside. “There might be another way."
“Anything,” the girl agreed through teeth clenched to combat the pain.
Cathy gagged the frightened girl, using the prostitute's soiled panties partly forced into the throat. She stood up and removed the heavy leather official Sheriff's Department belt. “On your knees, bitch. Ass in the air and your gaudy face on the bed."
Thirty minutes later Cathy slipped the desk clerk a bag containing watches, rings and $200 in small bills. As she walked across the parking lot to her waiting car, she enjoyed the memory of the battered girl's body. “She won't be turning any tricks for at least a month,” she chuckled.
* * * *
Matt Dilson rarely took a full day off, but on this Sunday, the dispatcher did not call him away from the tyranny of leisure time. He filled the morning hours reading the Charlotte Observer and mowing the grass, although it really did not need cutting. He tried to pass the afternoon watching a NFL game on TV, but the Charlotte Panther's were not playing until Monday night. He was forced to choose between the Washington Redskins and the Atlanta Falcons or Green Bay Vs the Jets.
Two beers into the Redskins game he went to the small bedroom bathroom.
“Let me do that for you,” he heard his wife, who had slipped unheard through the open bathroom door, say.
She held his penis and aimed the urine stream towards the center of the bowl. As he reached to push the toilet handle, she went to her knees, taking the organ into her mouth. He turned towards her, placing his left hand on her head and thrusting his right hand inside her housedress to squeeze her flabby right breast.
Nothing happened.
God, how I wish that were Cathy's mouth on my dick, he thought.
The quick erection caught his wife by surprise; the head of his erect penis shot into her throat. She gagged and spit out the erection. They moved to the bedroom. In his mind's eye, it was Cathy he stripped, not his wife. It was Cathy's lips he kissed, Cathy's nipples he sucked, Cathy's huge, firm breasts he fondled, Cathy's juicy young vagina he enjoyed—not his wife's.
Guiltily, he put on his boxer shorts and returned to the TV game.
Loretta Dilson drifted into
peaceful sleep thinking, He hasn't screwed me like that since we were newlyweds.
Chapter Eleven
“It looks good to me, Sandy,” Tim said over breakfast as he handed the manuscript back to her. He thought her book review looked like something out of a college textbook. She was too obviously pleased with it for him to say anything that would dampen her spirits.
“I have a bit of a mystery on my hands,” he continued.
“You watch too much TV."
“I did watch TV last night while you were writing, but it wasn't the TV in the den."
Tim quickly filled her in on the basement room and its contents. “I watched two of the films and fast-forwarded through four more. There must be a hundred more I didn't look at."
“And?"
“They are all different, but there are similarities in the six I watched. For one thing, they are of professional quality—not herky-jerky like home videos usually are. Uncle Pete seems to be in them all, but sometimes you can't make out his face. There is also a short, really stacked gal in the tapes I saw. She looks familiar, but I just can't place her. She has short-cropped blond hair. My guess is that she is the Janine we have heard about. Each tape starts with her getting naked one way or the other. Sometimes Pete strips her, sometimes she does a striptease act and sometimes one or two other women strip her. There's always at least one other woman in the film, sometimes two. When there are two other women, they usually strip each other and make love. Each tape includes a section where Jan tortures the other woman, or women, and the tapes all wind up with the other women having oral sex with Jan, screwing Uncle Pete, or both."
“Uncle Pete was a baaad boy.” Sandra's eyes were twinkling.
“I'm afraid it was more than that,” Tim replied. “We already know he was a Jekyll and Hyde."
Sandra nodded and changed her expression to the more serious one he obviously wanted. She was familiar with the expression, knew what it meant, and thought it came from a classical novel. She made a mental note to move it up on her reading list.
“The computer down there is one I am familiar with,” he continued. “It has a telephone line hooked up, but I think the line is probably dead. I booted the computer up. It still works. It's loaded with dirty pictures, probably taken from those tapes."
“I hear you,” Sandra said, “but I don't see where you are going with this."
“The other women on the tapes, not Janine, are not especially pretty and only a couple of them are young."
“So?"
“I think they are our neighbors."
“Bullshit."
“I recognized two of them—Dot from the diner and Dr. Honneycutt."
“Dr. Honneycutt?"
Tim nodded and paused to give Sandra time to absorb the information.
“Tim,” she said. “Why would these neighbors, Dr. Honneycutt especially, subject themselves to anything like that?"
“That, and how Uncle Pete used the tapes, is the mystery."
Sandra cleared the table and brought back two fresh cups of coffee. “Didn't you tell me that Silas Coan said Uncle Pete sometimes accepted sex in payment of loans."
“Yes, but I thought he was probably passing on a rumor."
“Maybe not."
“I have found some curious promissory notes, including one for Dr. Honneycutt."
“Did any of these women other than Jan appear in more than one tape?"
“Not in the few I looked at, but as I said, there are dozens more down there."
“I'll bet they did. My guess is they agreed to sex to pay off big loans, then he used the tapes to blackmail them into making more tapes."
“Sounds reasonable, but what do we do about it?"
“Why do anything? If you want to do the right thing, close out the loans and let the ladies off the hook. I know what I'm going to do."
“What?” He smiled weakly.
“I'm going to write a novel about it."
“Sheeet,” he replied. They both laughed. “Sherlock, there's one mystery you haven't cleared up."
“And that is, my dear Mr. Watson?” Sandra thought these terms also might have originated from a classical novel. Her reading list was getting longer.
“What did he do with these tapes?"
“Elementary,” she replied. “He was building a private porno collection."
“Maybe.” Tim didn't sound convinced.
* * * *
Diane Sizemore had not yet opened the Courier office when Sandra arrived. Sandra crossed the street and climbed the stairs to the lawyer's office.
“Sandy,” Silas Coan greeted her with open arms. “Come on in.” He hugged her, too tightly she thought. “I was just introducing my son Teddy to Victoria. Teddy, this is Tim Dollar's wife, Sandy."
The red-faced man with only a fringe of black hair over his ears stretched his hand towards Sandra. “Dad still thinks I'm ten years old. Please call me Ted."
“Tim told me you were going to take over you dad's practice,” Sandra said as she shook his hand. “Is this just a visit, or your first day on the job?"
“First day on the job,” Silas interrupted. “He moved in with us over the weekend."
“Most of my things are stored in Winston until I can find a place to live here in Dot,” Theodore explained.
“Is there a Mrs. Ted and any little Teddies?” Sandra asked to be polite.
“There are no children and at the moment there is no wife, but..."
Silas interrupted. “There probably never will be another wife. He writes three alimony checks each month as it is."
Victoria, feeling left out of the conversation, commented, “There are many empty houses, but I don't know of a decent one for sale in Dot. You'll probably have to build something. You'd better be nice to Tim and Sandy. They own most of the property around here."
“Things have a way of working out,” Sandra smiled. “Tim has decided to set Bobby's brother Carl up in the contracting business. That's one of the reasons I'm here. We need to know about necessary licenses and we need some sort of legal agreement drawn up."
“We can handle that,” Silas assured her.
“Was there something else?” Theodore asked.
“Yes. Your dad knows Tim and I own rental houses in Charlotte. We are going to fix them up—make them look nice. We intend to drop the rental rate, but require the tenant to take certain responsibilities towards upkeep."
“Bad idea,” Theodore observed. “Your tenants may sign the agreement, but they won't take care of the property. You are still going to have the cost of repair and the added cost of eviction."
“If we wanted advice, we would have asked for it. We've made our decision. It's your job to draw up the rental contract."
Sandra's testy statement clearly shocked both of the attorneys. Silas was the first to recover and smiled broadly, “Of course, Sandy. Come on in the office and give us the details."
An hour later Sandra descended the steep staircase. Bastard kept putting his hand on my thigh under the table. Even squeezed my ass when I stood up to leave. Why didn't I say something? Why didn't I kick the old goat in the nuts? Crap, even his dad tried to feel me up when I first came in the door.
* * * *
Diane Sizemore removed her glasses and handed the manuscript back to Sandra. “Honey, I'm afraid our readers wouldn't be interested in a book written 100 years ago. I do appreciate you letting me look at your report though."
“That's almost exactly what Tim said.” Sandra wanted to flee. She felt rejection, disappointment, anger, and even a bit of nonsensical shame.
“We're always looking for things to print that will interest our readers,” Diane smiled, trying to smooth obviously ruffled feathers. “If you have any more ideas, please let me know."
Anger moved up in the order of emotions that Sandra was experiencing. “Damn it,” she said, fighting back tears. “This is a good idea. Do you think your readers are illiterate dummies? They may not have your college degree, and they
may be mostly farmers or low wage blue collar workers, but they can read or they wouldn't be buying your damn gossip sheet."
Diane's eyes widened.
“I just have a high school education. I didn't think I would like reading a classic novel—too high falutin’ I thought. However, Uncle Pete didn't have anything but classics in his library, so I pulled the skinniest one off the shelf and peeked inside. Two pages were enough to hook me on classics. I could hardly stand to put it down. Silas Marner is a story that is far better than anything on TV these days, but folks have the wrong idea about classics. They need to be motivated to read just one. That's exactly what my report will do."
Sandra was infuriated by the time she finished her speech. Diane had actually begun to grin at her.
“No it won't, but I'll sure as hell print a report that will. Go home, Sandy. Look at your manuscript again. It reads like an encyclopedia entry. Start over. Pretend you are talking to someone in Dot about the book. Write down what you would say to that person. Get it back to me by noon tomorrow and it will be in the Thursday edition."
“Really?"
“Really."
“I was a bitch, wasn't I."
“Yep, but you made your point."
“Yeah, I did, didn't I?
Both ladies smiled just as the telephone rang.
“It's Tim for you,” Diane said, handing the receiver to Sandra.
“Sandy, I'm sorry to bother you. How'd it go with the Courier?"
“Okay, I'll tell you about it when I get home. Why did you call?"
“A Deputy Cathy Long called you a few minutes ago. She said we met her the other day, but I don't remember it. Anyway, she said there were a couple of questions the sheriff wants to ask you and some pictures he wants you to identify."
“Damn Tim. He told me that was all behind me now."
“I know. The deputy said it didn't involve you directly, but the sheriff wants it cleared up this morning."
“This morning? It's close to eleven now."
“I know, but if you leave now you can be there by noon. That's what I told the deputy. Want me to go with you?"
“No. I'll see you sometime. I got the thing with the lawyer done. Silas’ son Ted started work today. I'll tell you about it."
Sintown Chronicles I: Behind Closed Doors Page 14
