Chapter 1
It was nearly four p.m. on a rainy October afternoon, and the two women were in the kitchen, as they usually were at that time of day, preparing supper. Helen Potter, the mother, had just finished placing a pot roast in the oven - 'Best goddamn roast in Seattle!" her butcher husband, Ted, always boasted - while her eldest daughter, Mikki, sat at the table shelling peas.
"Shouldn't Jacqui be home from school by now, Mama?"
Helen Potter looked at the willowy blonde loveliness of her daughter with fond indulgence. She knew that Mikki knew her little sister wouldn't be home for at least another half-hour, and that Mikki, bless her heart, was only trying to pretend that things were like they used to be - before Mikki got married, and Jacqui was still in grammar school.
"She'll be home soon, dear," Helen sighed. "She probably just stopped off for a Coke or something with some of her friends."
"You mean with Jeff Trimble, don't you, Mama?"
"Oh, Jeff's a nice enough boy, Mikki. You can't blame him for something his brother did."
Helen Potter immediately began to peel some potatoes at the sink, the hairs prickling on the nape of her neck as she felt Mikki's searing green eyes on her from behind.
"You don't think going to prison for selling drugs to high school kids is wrong, Mama?"
"Now, Mikki, dear, I didn't say that. I said it's not fair to blame Jeff for something his brother Barry did."
"The whole family is bad, Mama. Did you know that their father was sent up for perjury in a gambling case?"
"Good Lord, child! That was years ago ... before you were even born!"
There was really no point in arguing with her eldest daughter, and Helen knew it. Mikki, for all her many talents and achievements, could be downright meddlesome at times - a trait Helen supposed she had learned from her husband, Ward Chalmers, in their four years of marriage. Not that Helen didn't like her son-in-law, quite the contrary, but he could be as hardheaded and self-righteous as he was handsome, and as direct with a cutting remark as he had been with a football when he had quarterbacked for Queen Anne High School, back when he and Mikki first started going together. Besides, deep down she agreed with her older daughter. She felt - knew, really - that Jeff Trimble was rapidly developing into just another rotten branch on the Trimble family tree, and it frightened her to see her younger daughter getting involved with him. But what could she do? Jacqui wasn't at all like Mikki had been at that age. Glee club, cheerleading, choir ... even church! - it was all part of Mikki's bag - but not Jacqui's, as she would say. And Ted, her poor tired husband Ted, had just about washed his hands of his daughter the second time Jacqui had been suspended from school in the same quarter, for smoking.
"I-I'm sorry, Mama. I didn't mean to upset you," Mikki said softly.
"I know, dear. Get me another potato, will you? I don't think these will be enough."
Helen watched the still trim figure of her daughter disappear through the door leading to the basement. Mikki really is a thoughtful girl, she mused. And, it's been an absolute joy having her and the twins here this past month ... since Ward went to Morocco on that road-building project.
"Is one enough?" Mikki called cheerily from the basement.
"That should be plenty, Mikki. You know how your father's appetite has fallen off lately."
Poor Ted. Can't say as I blame him though, what with the economic situation the way it is ... nobody's buying much except hamburger and chicken ... and he does want so to retire.
"This is the biggest one I could find, Mama," Mikki chirped, returning.
"That'll be fine, dear. Why don't you go up and check on Tammy and Debby? They should be through with their nap by now."
Mikki paused at the bottom of the stairs. "Mama?"
"Yes, Mikki?"
"What's been bothering daddy lately?"
"Business I guess, dear. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, I don't know ... He just seems so ... so distant, " she chose her words carefully. "Like he's carrying the weight of the whole world on his shoulders."
"Stop it, Jeff!" the girl in the car protested firmly.
"Aw c'mon, Jacqui... You never let a little finger-bangin' bother you before!"
The lovely blonde teenager continued to stare sternly through the rain-streaked windshield at the slate gray waters of Puget Sound until, reluctantly, the boy removed his hand from underneath the hem of her short, short skirt.
"I'm still a little sore from last night, Jeff," she breathed softly.
The frustrated teenage boy gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands and stared wistfully at her unflinching, beautiful profile. She was too much! A little blonder than her sister, Mikki, and a little more tan, but with the same sea-green eyes and faint smattering of freckles across the bridge of her pertly upturned nose.
"You still planning to hold out till you turn sixteen?" he sighed brokenly.
"Yes!"
"Chrissake, that's another six months from now!"
"And diamonds are my birthstone, stupid!" she retorted, turning her face to him, and beaming.
"Oh God, here we go again!" he said, rolling his eyes skyward and pounding the wheel with the heels of his hands. "We can't get married, Jacqui. I'm only a year older than you are!"
"So?"
"So what are we supposed to live on?"
"Your dad's got money. Ask him for a job." Jeff stared at her, incredulously. "Bullshit. Your folks wouldn't give you permission anyway ... Y-You're just a kid!"
Jacqui flashed him an indulgent smile, then faced forward again and calmly began to unbutton the front of her sweater. "We could go to Mexico, Jeff ... And, we could live with your dad when we got back ... rent free."
"You think you've got it all figured out, don't you, you dingy broad?" he gulped.
"Have you seen the way your old man looks at my titties, Jeff?" she smiled impishly, wetting her lips, looking down at the half uncovered mounds of her breasts and then up again at her boy friend out of the corner of her eyes. "Or, the lump in his pants whenever I wore my bikini over to swim in your pool this summer?"
Nervously, Jeff fished around in his shirt pocket, producing a tightly rolled, greasy-looking cigarette.
"I've got to have my joint on that one," he exclaimed. "Now, you've got the hots for my old man!"
Jacqui's slender fingers unfastened the last button of her sweater then, parting the thin material to expose her ripe, braless young breasts.
"Don't be silly, Jeff! I admit I get a kick out of teasing him, but that's all."
Jeff lit the marijuana cigarette he held in his sweating fingers, cupping the match protectively as he looked sideways at her. He drew long and deep, letting the acrid, sweetish smoke permeate every part of his lungs, and then holding it there deep.
"You want a hit?" he stammered breathlessly in his effort to keep the harsh smoke down.
Jacqui took the preciously proffered cigarette from his pinching fingers. Emulating her boy friend's example, she drew deeply, resting her head against the integral headrest of his custom, Porsche-engined Volkswagen.
"Why the hell do you want to get married so bad for, anyway?" he offered finally.
"I love you, dummy!"
"Then why won't you let me fuck you?"
She took another long pull at the weed in her hand, and returned the reefer to Jeff.
"I'll let you fuck me if you say you'll marry me."
"You want to know what I think? ... I think you just want to get out of that goddamn house, and your whiny mama."
"That's part of it. Miss Goody-Goody Mikki is another. Man! Her and her dippy husband Ward. I swear to God they're right out of an Archie comic book. You know what they've got in their little gingerbread house? A trophy case! I don't know why the stupid son-of-a-bitch just doesn't go in the Army, so he could wear his 'achievements' on his sleeve!"
"Mikki still staying with you guys?"
"With my folks!" she corrected. "And it looks like she's going to be there for another ten or eleven months, too!"
"Goddamn! Why so long?" he turned his head to her again, staring fondly at her lushly exposed, pink-nippled breasts.
She often sat like that whenever they were alone, but it was something he could never quite get used to. He figured he'd taken out damn near every good looking fox in school, but this little lady was the foxiest! He leaned down and gave each puffy strawberry nipple in turn a long wet sucking kiss.
"Ol' dipshit Ward thinks he's on some kind of mercy mission, bringing the marvels of modern technology to the backward peoples of darkest Africa."
"Huh?"
"He's running a fuckin' skipshovel in Morocco!"
"They got good hashish in Morocco, maybe you could get him to bring you back some."
"Are you shitting me? He thinks using the president's name in vain should be a capital offense!"
"Well, they got kids. Ol' Ward must be doing something right."
Jacqui could feel goose pimples rising on the softly exposed flesh of her milk-white breasts as Jeff continued to lovingly kiss and suck her naked nipples.
"I'm still not convinced it wasn't another case of immaculate conception ... Either that or she picked it up off a toilet seat."
"Oh, come on, Jacqui! Mikki's a fine looking piece of ass."
Jacqui took the marijuana cigarette from her boy friend again, and held down another long cloud of smoke. She stared out over the rain-pitted waters of the sound, enjoying the peaceful tranquility of their Magnolia Bluff parking spot. Idly, her fingers entwined themselves in the hair on the nape of Jeff's neck. His hair was a little too conservative for her, but she "oh, welled" that even a hip guy like his dad could be a little weird when it came to rocking the establishment boat. After all, if it weren't for sin, his dad would be as poor as hers. It was crazy, but that's where it was at in this fucked-up world. Just like during prohibition, the bootleggers were to be found among the most ardent anti-liquor forces themselves.
"You'd better take me home, Jeff," she breathed reluctantly. "If I'm not home before daddy, I'll turn into a pumpkin."
"I've already given you an extra week, Potter. I've got bills to pay too!"
Ted Potter could feel beads of perspiration standing out on his forehead as he cradled the telephone receiver close to his face so that Bill Simpson, his sole employee, couldn't overhear the conversation he was having with an angry Jason Trimble.
"Listen, Trimble," he breathed softly, "I've got two thousand of it. If you could just give me another week to raise the other five hundred, I'd-"
"You'd what, Potter? Be grateful? If you can't afford to lose, you can't afford to gamble. You gambled. You lost. I want my fucking money!"
"Listen, you bastard! I haven't got it, can't you understand that?" The middle-aged butcher's voice was rising dangerously.
"You'd better get it then! And you'd better understand that!"
Ted Potter rested the receiver against his chest then, as Bill Simpson passed closely carrying a tray of freshly ground beef. He felt the now familiar knot of fear in the pit of his stomach as he realized that Jason Trimble meant business - and Jason Trimble was nobody to fool with. Time and again, Ted Potter wished he could go back somehow to that night two weeks before ... the night he had lost twenty-five hundred dollars in a poker game with Trimble and a few of his cronies. He realized now, that he had been set up for the loss - suckered - but what could he do? He was just one man against one of the biggest con-men in the city, and he couldn't even go to the police, since gambling was illegal even when you lost. One thing was certain though: if he ever got his hands on that little Chinese bartender down at the Four Seasons that had told him about the game in the first place, he'd wring his goddamn neck!
"I-I've got to have more time, Trimble ... please. "
There was a short pause on the end of the line.
"Okay, Potter, I'll tell you what ... What day is this?"
"Tuesday."
"Okay, you've got until Thursday to come up with the other thousand."
"Thousand! It's only five-hundred, Trimble. If you think-"
"I'm not running a charity ward, Potter. I let you have a week on good faith and you blew it. Now, if you come up with the money like the good fellow I trust you to be ... and that's two days grace I'm giving you, Potter ... If you come through, maybe we can keep your deadbeat ass off one of your own meathooks."
Ted felt his hand begin to shake on the receiver. He switched hands then, wiping the sweat off on his bloody apron. He wished he had a drink ... a good straight shot of whiskey or gin.
"Thursday?"
"Thursday noon. My man and me will be over to pick it up at your house ... Make sure you go home for lunch!"
Ted felt his knees weakening then. Trimble's man had to be that fucking gorilla, Benko, who had stood behind him during the poker game, all night, without flinching.
"Why my place? Couldn't you meet me downtown somewhere?"
"Your place! I don't conduct business in public, and the cops have been watching mine lately, so I don't think you'll want to come here."
"O-Okay, Thursday noon at my place ... I-I'll get the money somehow."
"You bet your fat ass you will!"