Chapter 8
Phyllis was still lying flat on her belly on the floor, fighting the uncontrollable shudders that wracked her whole body when, finally, she heard sounds of somebody ringing the doorbell of the apartment. Her first impulse was to scramble to the telephone in the living room and call the police.
Carefully, on her hands and knees to avoid being seen again by the sniper, she moved clear of the window, not rising until she reached the hall, then racing for the phone. As she picked up the instrument, she heard the sounds of banging as well as ringing and saw, to her horror, that the bolted door had somehow been partly opened and was only held by the chain.
She remained paralyzed with terror until she heard Lem Weldon's deep voice cry, "Phyllis-are you all right? It's me-Lem!"
"Oh, thank God!" she gasped. It took her moments of awkward fumbling with shaking hands to clear the chain and then she was safe in the attorney's arms, crying like a baby.
"For God's sake!" he exclaimed, patting her back gently. "What's the matter?"
Still unable to talk, she led him to the bedroom and showed him the unexpectedly large hole in the wall, finally managed to gasp, "I was opening the window to air the room."
Lem Weldon moved swiftly, staying close against the wall until he reached the cord that controlled the draw curtains, then pulling them shut. Only then did he move freely to examine the nature of the damage. As he picked up bits of plaster and crumbled them between his thumb and forefinger, he whistled faintly, softly between his teeth.
"What was it?" she gasped. "Somebody tried to kill me, didn't they?"
"It looks like it," he said. "Damn! I didn't expect this so soon."
She was still speechless at this remark when the doorbell chimed again and Lem Weldon moved to answer it. Moments later, he was back with Tim Buckley in tow. The two of them examined the fragmented hole in the wall further, looking very serious, while Phyllis sat on the bed.
"What do you think, Tim?" the attorney asked. "Explosives?"
Tim nodded, said, "Glycerin from the looks of it-it would take a ballistics expert to be sure, of course."
They went on talking in low pitch and Phyllis felt an utterly unreasonable sense of pride that a man like Lem Weldon should ask her Tim for a judgment opinion. Then her little glow of pride became something else and she had to run to the bathroom and throw up.
When she emerged, shaken and weak, the attorney sat her down on the sofa and Tim brought her an Alka-Seltzer which she somehow managed to swallow and hold in her stomach. The attorney then produced a featherweight portable typewriter, which he set up on the coffee table and in which he inserted three sheets of heavy bond with carbon paper between the layers. The resulting package was so thick he got it onto the roller with difficulty.
To Phyllis's questioning gaze, Tim replied, "We're going to draw you up a new will right now."
"What good will that do?" she protested. "I mean, if I should..." She halted as the thought of her imminent violent death rose much too vividly before her. Then she said, "But it's insane. I mean, if the gang isn't going to kill me, you can't suspect any of Pres's relatives."
"Somebody fired that bullet at you," Lem said in his beautifully controlled deep accents.
"If that thing had hit your head, it would have been a guillotine-only a good deal messier."
"Okay, okay," she said. "Let's get it over with."
"Whom do you wish to name as beneficiaries?" the attorney asked after typing the preliminary formal paragraphs.
Phyllis could only sit there, completely at a loss. Whom could she name? The fact that both she and her late husband were virtual, if belated, orphans was borne in upon her as never before. She thought of her friends in Kitteridge-she was no longer close to anyone in New York. There was Hilma, of course. There was Beth Davis ... and Freddy. She tried to apportionate what she knew of what she had among these three and some others of whom she was fond-but the impact of recent events made it impossible for her to concentrate.
She looked up at the two men in despair-and found her answer right in front of her.
She said, "I'd like to divide my entire estate between the two of you. Is that possible?"
The men looked at each other. Phyllis said, "Look, I simply can't think about it now. And, if anything does happen to me, I know you'll handle things wisely. I have no family bequests to make. So why not? I want you to be my co-legatees and co-administrators. After all, I'm apparently trusting you with my life-why not with my estate if anything does happen to me?"
Lem Weldon said, "It seems to me we'd be grossly overpaid if our efforts to protect you should fail. But the choice is yours."
Phyllis said, "If whoever is after me finds out you'll inherit the Interocean whatever it is, it may, to use a corny phrase, give them pause. And that's the whole idea, isn't it?"
"Gotcha!" said Tim. "It's a little alarming to discover a perfectly good brain behind all that loveliness."
"Don't be so male chauvinist pig," said Lem Weldon, blinking at Phyllis. He got busy oh the typewriter, pulled the paper clear and separated the copies from the carbon, then offered the first sheet for Phyllis to read.
"Will that do?" he asked.
It did and she signed all three copies. Lem Weldon folded them and put them each in a separate envelope. Then he pointed to a familiar blue traveling bag and overnight case standing just inside the front door, said, "There are your things, Phyllis. I only hope I packed the right ones. Your maid helped me."
"Hilma? Oh, good!" Phyllis felt unreasonable relief that Beth Davis, friend that she was, had not been poking around in her intimate possessions. She said, "I'll unpack right away."
"Oh, no, you won't," said Tim.
"Why not?" Phyllis looked up at him in surprise, unable to understand him.
"Because we've got to get you the hell out of here, and right now. Or do you prefer to remain in this shooting gallery?"
"Frankly," said Lem Weldon, "I'm more concerned about further damage to the plaster."
"Oh, Lem!" said Tim. "Have you any ideas?"
"My immediate thought is the Walden Pines," said the attorney. "It's isolated, I know the management and can trust them, and it's practically across the Hawthorne Highway from the State Police substation."
"This is your bailiwick," said Tim. "It sounds okay. Incidentally, I suppose the constabulary wants to talk to her."
"That's part of the idea, since they're in charge of the investigation-for which I am thankful. They're a lot harder to reach than any of the municipal police forces. I'll inform them of our move when they wish to question Phyllis again. I'll make reservations now."
He reached for the phone but Tim said, "Let me call the garage first and have my rental car brought around. Since Phyl is all packed and it will take me about two minutes to stow my gear, we can get cracking."
"Hey!" said Phyllis, "Isn't the Walden Pines frightfully expensive?"
"You can afford it," said Lem Weldon quickly, causing Phyllis to blush. She was not yet accustomed to being an heiress to millions of dollars.
First Tim got on the phone, then Lem Weldon while Tim packed. The attorney was still on the phone when the garage man rang the door chimes to report Tim's car was waiting at the curb downstairs. He was still talking into it when they departed.
Amid the bright exploding-paint shop colors of Massachusetts in mid-October, it was difficult for Phyllis to feel herself in deadly danger. Indian summer had settled in with its usual debilitating effect. Instead of feeling bone-frightened and tired, she felt a delicious languor, a sort of sensual warmth that caused her to place a hand over Tim's crotch, which promptly came alive in most satisfying vigor beneath the fabric and zipper that covered it.
Tim said, "Cut it out, Phy-do you want me to crash us?"
"Keep your eyes on the road," she told him and there were no more complaints as they wheeled through light early-afternoon traffic in Tim's rented Pontiac. She teased his phallus until it threatened to burst through the front of his slacks, then unzipped him and rubbed the underside adroitly until the spurt of his semen drenched her little lace handkerchief.
He said, when she had restored him to order, "Where did you learn to do that, Phyl?"
"Pres taught me," she said. "He liked to have me do it to him in the course of a long drive."
Tim muttered something under his breath. It sounded like, "Well, that's the first good thing I've heard about the S.O.B." Before she could query him on it, he said, "Well, this is a pretty short drive, but thanks all the same, darling. I only hope we won't both be sorry later."
"We won't be," she replied with the superb confidence of a woman freshly involved in a most satisfying love affair. "There's plenty more where that came from."
He turned off Hawthorne Highway a couple of miles further on, passing through a pair of square fieldstone pillars onto a hard topped curving driveway lined with low hedge and high oaks, clad in their autumn mantles of pale red and yellow. The inn, when they reached it, was also of gray fieldstone, concentrically angled to embrace three sides of the driveway's loop. Its overhanging, low-pitched roof was of pastel slate shingles ranging from dark gray to purple, its windows wide and inviting.
Although the decor was simple, it was the simplicity of ultimate opulence and excellent taste. There was little suggestion of Thoreau austerity in the Walden Pines' scheme of discreetly shaded comfort. They were given adjoining rooms on the second story, rear, overlooking a terraced lawn and trimly landscaped shrubbery that led down to an artificially enlarged pond whose other banks were lined with the evergreens from which the resort took the Pines in its name.
Phyllis sat on the foot of her bed, smoking a cigarette, while Tim investigated every nook and cranny of both his room and hers. When he finished his check, he studied the view from the wide window with narrowed eyes before giving his attention to her.
"Well...?" she asked.
"About as good as could be expected," he replied, "as long as we keep the curtains drawn at night and don't open the windows."
"What do we do for fresh air?" she asked.
He said, "We don't," and moved to the thermostat, then turned on an all but silent air conditioner. He went into his room through the open door between the chambers, returned in his shirtsleeves, unstrapping his shoulder holster and putting it down on a long narrow maple table against the wall near the bed.
"Now," he said, "what did you have in mind, darling?"
He had read her correctly. She was urgently in need of him, her whole body demanding sexual release to ease the hideous strain brought by her attempted assassination.
She said, "Let's see if there is any left."
"Well," he replied, "there's only one really satisfactory way to find out."
He picked her up off the foot of the bed, held her close, low around the waist, so that their loins made close contact, looked at her, said, "Damn, but you're an attractive wench!"
" Wench!" she riposted. "Why not broad?"
There was no more talking for quite a while as his lips sealed hers and his tongue met hers more than halfway. Phyllis was already more than half aroused, and the contact was very like the pushing of a button that instantly turned her on. She gasped and shuddered, this time not with fear but in an uncontrollable access of sheer sensual excitement at the prospect of pleasure immediately ahead of her.
She pulled him down on the bed with her, worked him on top of her, fumbled for his fly zipper, opened it, pulled out his already erect phallus which showed no ill effects from the manual treatment she had so recently given it in the car.
Seizing it firmly, she bridged upward, her legs wide apart, and worked it past the flimsy barrier of her panties, then wriggled and wormed it into her until it was lodged in her tunnel as far as it would go-somewhat less deeply than in their earlier encounters, thanks to the fact they were still fully clad.
With her ignition already turned on, she was off to a racing start, thrusting and rolling and wriggling with all but frantic violence in her urgent desire to feel his sperm spurt within her once more. Thanks to the vehemence, both of her onslaughts and of his responses, he came quickly while she went rigid, holding him clasped close against her until his stream was spent.
"Hey!" he said when they disengaged, for there was no question of their continuing to another spending. "Couldn't you wait to take our clothes off?"
"Not a chance, darling," she replied, rolling upright and pulling her dress off over her head. "That one I needed right then."
He regarded her curiously, standing at the foot of the bed as he began to remove his own clothing, said, "You haven't been in prison or anything for the last five years or so?"
"No," she replied, uncoupling her bra and shaking her full breasts free, "but I might as well have been." Then, while they finished undressing, she found herself telling about her increasingly abortive affair with Freddy Gardiner and its inhibiting effect upon her psyche.
"It doesn't seem to have done any lasting damage," he said, standing first on one leg, then on the other, while he removed his socks. "How any man worth his salt could give you that sort of treatment beats me, hon."
"Well..." She hesitated, then decided she might as well tell the rest of it. "I guess
Freddy isn't worth his salt as a man. I only learned the other day from Beth Davis that it seems I stole him from Gerry Mann-you know, the poor guy who got killed in my driveway."
"O-ho!" Tim scratched his bare stomach and frowned down at her, then said, "Jesus, I wonder."
"So do I-about a lot of things. And there was something else Beth Davis-she's my best friend in Kitteridge and knows everything about everybody there-something else she hinted at I didn't pay much attention to at the time. It had something to do with Gerry and Pres, years ago, before Pres married me. Though how a man like Pres could go homosexual. . . "
She let it hang. He said, "Maybe..." It was his turn to leave an expressed thought incomplete. Then he looked down at her, sitting on the bed with her knees drawn close, added, "Fuck your late husband, fuck Freddy, fuck every man, present company excepted, who's ever had anything to do with you. Better yet, let 'em fuck each other."
Phyllis laughed at his vehemence, then reached for his hanging cock, gripped it, and said, "Poor little thing. Its growth is all stunted. Come here to mama."
She drew him close by his phallus and slipped it into her eager mouth once again. He stood close beside the bed while she employed lips and tongue artfully to bring him back to a full head of steam, letting his hands rest lightly on her shoulders as they moved back and forth, back and forth while she gave him a full rim job.
Finally, however, his grip tightened, and he pushed her soft lips clear of his cock. It was now standing beautifully out and upright and she lay back on the big, comfortable bed once more and let him mount her. As he slid into her saddle, she reached for his phallus with the flat of her close-pressed fingertips, pushing down on it as it came close to its goal, then releasing it so that it seemed to leap past the rim of her cervix into her already well flushed vaginal passage, there to embed itself until their pubic hairs met and mingled.
It was a trick Pres had taught her, claiming he had learned it from a Chinese whore in New York when he taught it to her. She felt a pang of faithlessness as she used the technique on Tim, her new man, then thought defiantly, Why not?-then forgot about it altogether as the mere fact of their union brought her to rich, creaming delight.
Although the memories of her first months with Pres remained vivid, Phyllis felt that she had never felt so alive, so joyous in her abandon of all restraint, so completely fulfilled as she felt just then. It was as if the rest of the world had been wiped out, as if the entire universe consisted only of herself, of the magnificent male body merged with her, and of the bed on which they were so ecstatically mingling.
She came again and again, for this time he was slow to reach orgasm as a result of his earlier ejaculations, and she blessed every moment of the prolongation of this, their most perfect and complete union yet. Every muscle, every cell, every nerve end in her pulsing, throbbing, thrusting body sang its own paean of delight. She felt herself happily drowning in her own effusions and, when at last he came deep in the very heart of her, she felt the world darken happily in a semblance of the sweetest possible deaths.
Her last thought as unconsciousness enwrapped her like a soft eiderdown quilt was that this was the big one, bigger than any she had enjoyed with Pres, so much bigger than what she had attained with her handful of other past lovers, including Freddy, as to make a hollow mockery of such pitiful scraps of passion, real or simulated, as they had struggled with relative feebleness to reach.
When she came out of it, Tim had rolled them onto their sides and was holding her gently close, his half-waned phallus still within the liquescence of her vagina, sweetly maintaining their contact and letting nature take its course, easing her down gently from the cresting climax that had brought her to a swoon.
She hugged him convulsively as the source of this newfound joy, and the movement caused him to slip out of her hole where, for the moment, he was no longer needed. She felt wonderful, freer than air, released of all tension and entirely one, even though temporarily separated from the strong, fully male being whose masterful ministrations had lifted her to this unbelievable rapture.
For the first time in her life, she felt full a woman, a woman loving and loved. She pulled his head between the twin fullnesses of her breasts, held it there while she caressed it, then released it to kiss him slowly, lingeringly, on his sweat-salty lips.
"That was beautiful," she half whispered. "Just beautiful."
"Let's say it was adequate," he replied, grave-faced, and for a moment she died until he gave her sopping wet pubic hair a playful tweak and she saw that his eyes were laughing at her lovingly.
"Adequate!" she exclaimed. "Tim Buckley, you know perfectly well it was-"
At that moment the telephone shrilled its summons and he reached across the soft naked curves of her body to pick it up from the bedside table and answer it.