Chapter 4
Fate had decided to take a hand in changing Theodora Ames' self-centered life. Her mother, Madge, had quarreled bitterly with her Swiss gigolo, Hans Birnweiss, and in his Alpine temper he had picked up a flowerpot and struck her heavily over the left temple, killing her at once. Meanwhile in Paris, in a studio on the Left Bank, Theodora's father Donald had been in bed with a gorgeous young Montmartre dancer, tasting the pleasures of extra marital bliss and waiting for his wife to meet him in Paris, when a drunken bartender, mistaking Theodora's father's room for his, had become enraged because his key wouldn't fit, and come to blows with the gray-haired man. The excitement had been too much for Donald Ames and he had succumbed to a major coronary. Thus within the space of about two hours and across the continent, Theodora had suddenly been orphaned to find herself a wealthy heiress.
Actually there had been two phone calls. One from the police surgeon at the examining room where Donald Ames had been taken, and another from the excited hotel manager where Madge Ames had been staying. He had assured the heiress that her mother had died mercifully quick and that the rogue who had caused her death had been at once clamped into irons.
On the one hand it might have appeared on the surface that Theodora's bereavement was to make her even more self-willed, more certain of her elegant and untrammeled destiny, since now there were no parents to concern herself about and she had all their money and would never have to lift a finger to earn her own livelihood for the rest of her days if she wished such a parasitical existence. But fate had still one more trump card up her sleeve.
The news of these two deaths of prominent Chicagoans and closely related as they were appeared in the papers the very next morning. Jack Lurton, who was in a pleasant mood after a magnificent night with luscious Amy (whom he had liberally tipped and whose phone number he had obtained for future reference), read the front-page items with a sense of shock. He tried at once to phone Theodora, but the line was busy-which figured. He finally settled on having a nearby florist take over a huge bouquet with a card thoughtfully inscribed.
But there were two people in the little hamlet of Cornier, in southwestern Minnesota, who were to read that same news in the St. Paul papers a few days later who were to be the catalytic agents whose effect would really be to change Theodora Ames's life completely.
They lived in a small well insulated cottage near a tiny lake, and one of them was a woman of forty-three, with dark-brown hair coiled in a coronet braid on the top of her head. She was tall, about five feet eight and a half, and remarkably attractive for her age, with a kind of compact and sinuous body that seemed ageless. Her face was hard, her cheekbones high-set, her eyes dark brown and brooding, and her mouth was thin and sadistic. Her aquiline nose had thin wings, another sign of the latent sadist. Her name was Ruby Branton, and she was employed as a kind of caretaker for the nearby hunting lodge and luxurious estate of a Milwaukee millionaire who spent about four months of the year at the resort and invited his friends and acquaintances to orgies. Ruby Branton herself had occasionally taken part in these sex shindigs for a fee, because she was a switch-hitter who enjoyed girl-fucking as much as she did being rogered by a virile stud. As she looked up from her morning cup of coffee across the table at her coppery-haired daughter Laurel, twenty-two, but already far older than that in worldly wisdom and sensual lore, she laughed bitterly: "If this isn't something, Laurel honey! Just read what's on the front page. Lucky I decided to keep up old man Meldish's subscription, or I might never have seen these juicy little items. They concern you and me, baby, in a big, big way."
"Whatever are you talking about, Mom?"
Laurel insolently replied. She had inherited her mother's height, for she was about five feet eight, had also a certain hardness of features. Her body was even more beautiful however. Her high-perched, closely spaced, big pear-shaped titties, accentuated by the breath-takingly slim waist which flared into svelte hips, long thighs and sinuous calves, made her infinitely desirable. So did her creamy skin, whereas her mother's was suntanned and bronzed till Ruby Bran-ton almost looked like a descendant of one of those numerous Minnesota Indian tribes which at one time had terrorized the northwestern frontier.
"Just use your eyes and brains and read, bitch," was her mother's unflattering order.
Laurel shrugged handsome shoulders, lit a cigarette, took a sip of her half-empty coffee cup, made a face because it was bitter, and then studied the newspaper which her mother had shoved before her. "So?" she looked up with a contemptuous sneer, "two people got killed, so what?"
"You don't remember very well, do you, Laurel baby? This is one time you really should. Thank God I remember. It so happens, Laurel, that Donald Ames was your father."
"My what?" The cigarette dropped from Laurel's gaping mouth and she had to retrieve it quickly before it burned a hole in the tablecloth.
"That's what I said. There's nothing wrong with your hearing. Yes, baby, about twenty-three years ago, when I was just a kid of nineteen and didn't know much better, I ran into Donald Winston. He had inherited some money from his folks, and he was just getting into business and I could see he had a future. I met him in Cleveland, because I was working in the cigar shop there. We had a night together, he was a generous tipper, and I happened to need the money bad for my rent. No, now don't get me wrong."
"Well, maybe not. What do you call those little parties with Mr. Meldish and his gang?"
"Would you like your ass warmed, Laurel baby? I'm in a mood to do it. No, I'm really not," Ruby Branton suddenly grinned. "Right now, you and I are sitting on the top of the world. Don't you understand, baby, even though you're illegitimate, you were born a long time before his sole survivor like it says here on the paper. Theodora Ames. They've got her picture in there, and she's a dish. Snooty as hell, I can tell just by looking at the picture. And she's twenty, and you're twenty-two. Now, under the law, I'll say we've got a pretty good claim, wouldn't you, baby? And they're worth a couple of million or I miss my guess."
Laurel's bored and contemptuous look gave way to one of incredulity. "You aren't kidding now, Mom?"
"Hell no! What you and I are going to do, baby, is send old man Meldish a wire, have Sonny Jorgens run over from Wanroth and look after the place till the old geezer can get back here, and then you and I are going to dress in our best and get ourselves to Chicago and see a lawyer but fast. We're going to file a claim on that will, baby doll. Not that I don't like the great wide open spaces and the lakes and the pure air and no pollution and all that sort of crap, but I could stand having some money just once in my life."
"So could I!" Laurel Branton rose, yawning, and her tight green cotton dress hugged her big jutting titties. She glanced down at them, grinned at her mother and then cupped them.
"Cut that out, you little she-cat in heat!" her mother snapped. "You're not too big that I still can't take a strap to your ass, Laurel, don't you ever forget it! Remember the last time I did it, when you tried to horn in on that party? I know you're not cherry, but you don't have to go peddling yourself to those drunken bastards old man Meldish brings around. And especially now. I've got plans for you. You're going to be an heiress, you're going to be dolled up and you're going to find yourself a nice rich husband, that's what. And me, I wouldn't mind having an apartment on that there Lake Shore Drive. I've seen pictures about it, and I'd sure love it. Come on, Laurel, shake your ass, let's clean up the breakfast dishes, then I'll give Sonny a ring, and we'll get ourselves to the Windy City."
"What'll we use for money?"
"I've saved enough. Even if I had to borrow it, I'd get it somehow, even if I had to peddle myself to do it. Think I would miss the chance to pick up a million bucks or so? Not very unlikely. Now shake it. Laurel, or I really will take the strap to that sexy ass of yours."
"Don't get huffy, Mom, I'm just as eager as you are to get my hands on some loot." Laurel rolled her eyes expressively. Then her hands hugged her hips, caressed them, moved upwards along her slim waist to her big bubbies again. "I could really stand me having a man. Someone like Sonny."
"Now you mind that kind of talk, you little bitch! Just because I let you screw Sonny one time to sort of pay him back for the favors he'd done us last summer, doesn't mean you're going round and being a whore. Men today don't expect to have cherry when they pop a wife into bed, but they don't want a whore either. You're going to keep those catting ideas to yourself till you hook yourself a nice guy, baby. And I'm going to be along to see you do it. Now let's get cleaned up and to hell out of here!"