Chapter 1
Officially the season was only eight days past the winter solstice, but already Buffalo, New York had twice made national news with its Arctic white-outs, twelve foot drifts swept high by fifty mile per hour winds and chill factors dipping to a brisk sixty degrees below zero. The city's citizens, outraged by a second assaulting year of frigid days and sub-zero nights, clenched their fists angrily at the pregnant skies and then fell into a helpless, post-Christmas catatonic state of immobility.
The city streets resembled a dump yard with ditched cars angled over sidewalks, their wind-blown shiny hoods sticking up out of their white burial mounds like so many graveyard markers. One couldn't venture past the porch steps without losing a muffler, a hat, or a mitten.
Only a few of the more adventurous breed braved the knee-high snow and functioned as normally as possible, reminding themselves of the torpid summer of months past. Amongst this daring lot was Mona Bradley, wiping vapor from the windshield to clear a spot of precious visibility for her husband Orin who clutched the steering wheel, squinting to see through the blanket of falling snow to the parking lot entrance to Joseph's Department Store.
"Honey, I'd give my new pink chiffon dress to be back in Jamaica lying on the beach and soaking up that delicious sun." Mona, a buxom blonde with honey curls as bouncy as Farrah Fawcett's, shivered in her patchwork rabbit fur jacket and ran a warm gloved hand over her husband's hard thigh. She loved Orin to the bottom of her soul and appreciated the honesty of their relationship. Never had he cheated on her, and Mona wouldn't think of looking desirously at another man... though a little flirting now and then never hurt anybody. On this solid ground they'd lived in marital bliss for four years, taking a yearly vacation, usually in winter because Mona hated snow and loved bikinis... especially the tiny string kind. Four days ago they'd returned from a ten day holiday in Jamaica.
Tanned as wheat and proud of it, Mona Bradley licked the softness of her glossy pink lips and glanced up into her husband's smoothly shaven face, admiring his unharried expression and snickering at his sunburned, peeling nose. She'd told him to use sunblock, but Orin did things in his own natural, slow-motion exactness. Like driving across town in this Arctic blast without sliding into a ditch... and for the skimpy purpose of indulging his wife's vanities.
And he was good to his 'bunny' and pleased her in every way possible... or tried to. Sure, some nights his performance in bed would make Don Juan wince, but sex was merely the frosting of love and, armed with that moot truism, he did his best... but by God, sometimes the woman was insatiable!
"Not much time before the store closes, Bunny," Orin turned off the ignition and frowned at the infinitely stormy skies. "Are you sure they sell sunlamps!"' His rubber-soled hunting boots crunched on the newly fallen snow like jaws working on a mouthful of peanuts.
"Of course they do! Oh, they have to! I'll just die if my tan fades before the New Year's Eve party." Mona's blonde curls bounced girlishly as she slammed her car door shut. "This is a thousand dollar tan, hon. Think of it as an investment."
Under the brim of his knit cap, Orin's expression faded grimly. To refuse Mona anything made him feel impotent and it took so little to put a smile on that pouty, full-lipped mouth of hers... but this spending had to cease. The filling station was still in the red from last year's crippling snow storms, compounded by the gas shortage the year before. He still owed the State Bank of Buffalo for the thousand dollar tan that Mona sported like a new mink coat.
Mona slipped her arm through his. "Don't worry about the money, darling. I'll just open a charge account."
Orin gulped, turned ashen and it wasn't from the reflection of the snow now ankle deep and fresh and fluffy. "Orin, honey...? Are you feeling okay?"
Mona's black mascara caked eye lashes fluttered over her high, tanned cheekbones. Like April sunshine glaring on winter's snow, Orin melted every time he gazed into his wife's beautiful face. Her satin smooth tan, the color of a newborn fawn, accentuating her limpid turquoise eyes that cast him a helpless, baby-innocent look that sparked straight toward his manhood and made it stand up at attention! His hand ran over the fuzzy fur of her rabbit jacket, marveling at the perfect covering for his wife's soft, lush full-bosomed beauty.
The automatic department store doors swooped open and blasted them with warm air. Pulling off her leather gloves, Mona unzipped her fur jacket, letting the juicy melons of her ripe breasts jut out from beneath the red turtle neck sweater beneath.
"Honey, I know our checking account is down to a goose egg, so I'll just run up to the credit department and fill out an application for a charge card."
Obediently, Orin plucked his beanie from his brown matted-down curls, thrust his chilly hands into his overcoat pockets and sauntered idly about the first floor while his wife's voluptuously cupped buttocks, hugged snugly in black wool pants, disappeared up the escalator, heading for the fourth floor. Orin hated shopping and something about the nakedly sheer negligees clinging to white marble manikin legs, piles of lacy, ribboned bikini panties folded up on tables and the flimsy French brassieres that could cover only the nipples of a woman's milky breasts gave him the jitters. In the midst of a provocative day-dream of Mona prancing about in a flouncy bottomed peignoir, the color of nude flesh, a voice broke through.
"Ain't exactly shopping weather, is it?" the uniformed guard grinned, one foot braced upon the sand-filled tray by the door. "Just about everybody's gone home for the day. By God, I think you might be one of the few customers left in the store."
"Oh" Orin's kind blue eyes blinked. Hell of a fix that would be... snowbound in a department store.
"Don't know if any of us'll get outta here if she don't stop." The armed guard flicked a cigarette out of his pack, offering one to Orin who refused, and lit it, stared out the glass doors at the solid white sheet which seemingly had no beginning and no end.
Orin, not one for idle conversation, contemplated the snow, accumulating thick as the devil's transgressions outside in the parking lot where a dozen or so cars, caked with snow, sat deserted as toys in a wet sandbox. Nervously he pawed his knit cap, casting furtive glances over the jewelry counter toward the empty escalator. Orin had a lot to be jittery about. If the business office telephoned his bank for credit verification, Mona would find out he'd borrowed the money for the vacation and she'd feel guilty for insisting on Jamaica when Florida would have been cheaper.
Except for a few stragglers picking over albums in the record department and a couple browsing over the furniture sale, Mona noticed the lack of shoppers and fearful of the store closing, she bolted toward the credit department.
"Yes, may I help you?" a rather dry voice greeted. At one glimpse of the out-of-season tanned face and sleek, generous figure, the somber black eyes that belonged to it lit up a long face topped with a receding hairline. Something about this brown-suited man reminded Mona of Uriah Heep, that horrid Dickens' character.
"I've come to fill out a credit application." She flashed him a melting grin.
His long cigarette-stained fingernails groveled around on his messy desk and handed her a form. "Fill this out, please."
The credit manager's hawkish woman-hungry eyes bored into Mona's firm red mountains peeking out from the deep valley of her opened jacket, his thin nose twitching like a hungry rabbit, and his beady eyes all but burned holes in her jersey, trying to make out the dim penciled outline of her puffy nipples jutting out from beneath the fine lace brassiere that supported their creamy burden.
Mona's lush buttocks flattened as she sat down on the chair and filled out the application. With the tip of her pink tongue peeking out between even teeth, she signed it in her generous scroll, exaggerating the M in Mona, and handed it to the credit manager.
"I'll have to call the bank first and verify your credit rating." While Nick Harrington picked up the telephone, Mona toyed with her diamond wedding ring. Her heart fluttered when he rested the silent receiver back on the cradle.
"Sorry... no answer at the bank. Why don't you come back on Monday and we'll..."
Mona bit her lip and wailed. "I can't come back later. It'll be too late by then! Ohhhh!" she whimpered. "A check..." Her turquoise eyes pleaded. Let me write you a check."
Nick Harrington rested back in his chair, twirling his thumbs, shaking his head sternly. "Store policy... no checks without bank authorization."
Spidery eyelashes fluttered over Mona's high cheekbones, spotted needlessly with rouge. Casting him a flirtatious grin, she leaned far over the desk, the weight of her bosom resting two inches from the credit manager's sweating palm. "I'll do anything... Mr...." She strained to read his store employee badge. "...Mr. Harrington... Nick... You see, I just got back from Jamaica and I have to get a sun lamp to keep up..." she said in a throaty voice.
Nick pooched out his livery lips and shook his head in a show of authority. Below the desk his penis jerked and he pressed it down with the heel of his palm. His monotone voice failed to show his excitement. "Do you have a part time job?"
Mona sat voluptuously straight. "I... I sell Avon products... how silly of me to forget. I guess I depend too much on my husband." Mona blushed at her lie... but she had delivered products once last summer for her neighbor away on vacation.
With an impatient grin, Nick Harrington marked a box on Mona's application. "Name of employer?" His black, shallow eyes reminded Mona of her pet canary.
"Avon..."
"Your supervisor, I mean."
"Supervisor...? Well, uh... Gosh, I... Sara Woodward." The name came to her from the lotion bottles on the sale table downstairs next to the escalator. "Telephone 762-1937."
Mona Bradley was hardly the criminal type, and certainly had no intentions of incriminating herself, but she had to have that sun lamp before her bronze tan turned to a dull splotchy peel! Orin's old girl friend Karen Tucker would be swishing around at the New Year's Eve party in her long chiffon dress and beehive hair-do and it would make her mouth water with jealousy to see Mona sauntering in brown as a coconut fresh from Jamaica!
Her spirits fell with the snow outside the windowless office and she gulped with difficulty as the cunning credit manager dialed the number. His conversation with Jackson Plumbing Company was curt. Eyebrows raised, he set the receiver back on the cradle. After thirteen years of working in the credit department, he could pick a lie from the truth like fuzz from a black sweater, and this woman who was bursting out of hers was one conniving lady!
"Mrs. Bradley, there is no Sara Woodward at that number." His voice, dry as day old toast, was buttered with accusations. "You don't work for Avon, do you?"
The wrinkles on his forehead where hair once grew, smoothed, while his penis grew satin tight in the cotton cage of his boxer shorts. The wily woman-monger enunciated his threat casually. "You are guilty of fraud. Do you have any idea what this could do to your husband's credit rating?" He nonchalantly plucked the application from the desk, gave it a cursory inspection, and tossed it down. "He could lose his filling station..."
Her response was hysterical... somewhere in between laughter and crying... and it bubbled from her chest in a nervous titter. "Oh, oh, oh my God!" Two wheat-tanned hands flew to her mouth. "Please believe me... I didn't mean to get Orin in trouble... I oh God, I'll do anything if you won't report me. You can hold anything I have as collateral... anything!"
Ten nervous fingers fumbled through her wallet looking for the credit cards before she remembered Orin had them. Desperately, she started twisting off her diamond wedding ring that hadn't slipped off her finger since Orin had put it there four years past.
Fear blazed in her brain as she helplessly watched the smirking credit manager lift the receiver and dial zero.
"Police, please." His eyes were leveled on hers.
"Lord, what are you doing?"
Nick cast her a sinister grin. "Calling the police department. Fraud is against the law, you know. You signed this application and blatantly lied." Licking his beefy lips, he let the receiver dangle from his hand and drew in a deep breath. "Of course there are other ways of settling the matter." From the tips of her honey curls to the diamond chips of her spiking nipples, Nick Harrington's lust gleaming orbs examined the merchandise of Mona Bradley's lushly enticing body.
"I'll do anything... just don't involve poor Orin in this mess!" she whimpered, her button chin quivering.
"Anything, lady?" Nick's bushy eyebrows raised suggestively, wrinkling his naked forehead. "Well... ah, in that case!"
Wolf whistles and sexual taunts were second nature to Mona, who stood up, exaggerating her posture, making the mounds of her breasts grow to Mount McKinley heights, pursed her lips, dumped her wallet back into her purse and snapped it shut with finality.
"Really, Mr. Harrington... I'll report you to your supervisor." Her nose wrinkled up in disgust. "What do you take me for? I'm a happily married woman."
Nick Harrington took her affront personally. Bolting to his feet, he pounded his fist on the desk and turned livid. "I'll have you arrested if you step foot out of this office!"