Chapter 9
By one o'clock of the following afternoon, Rita was congratulating herself and she was the happiest woman in Temple City. She had successfully duped Henry Ridgewood out of $10,000, deposited the money to her own account, and left Henry whistling his way back to the office with a set of duplicated sound tapes. And he was amply convinced that she was leaving town, that this bizarre clothing shop would be somebody else's headache not his.
Elated with her strong business acumen Henry would call it extortion Rita spent the rest of the afternoon interviewing teenage girls in the confines of her apartment
Some of these girls were outright disappointments; others motivated Rita to copy down their phone number. They were young, they were cheerful, and they were willing. They ranged in age from 15 to 19, and they came in many sizes and descriptions.
Rita was amazed by the boldness of some of them: They evidenced no reluctance to pulling up their skirts and displaying their legs; even less unwillingness to unfastening their blouses and dropping their bras. It was an education; it was also the kindling of sex.
She managed this in a most ingenious manner: Selecting those who interested her and helping them undress. And her thinking was logical: if certain of these young teenagers could excite her, then they could also excite her male customers.
It became commonplace, therefore, to let her hands touch their bodies when she was helping them into the leather costumes she had provided, and if she felt the beginning of arousal, not in them, but in herself, then she knew this was a girl with possibilities. But if not, then she knew the girl was unsuited.
By early evening, she had interviewed a total of 14 girls. 11 of these girls had undressed at her request, thereupon modeled some of the fetish undergarments she had provided and displayed their worth. Of these 11 girls, having seen and touched their breasts and buttocks, sampled the hot resiliency of their flesh, she chose three teenagers with the requisites needed: Namely, good shapes, wild and lack of inhibitions, and of poor parentage. This last requirement she considered important. If their parents didn't care what their teenage girls did, then it was a good-likelihood that no one else would care. Except of course, Henry Ridgewood who, at precisely 7:22, phoned her and called her a bitch:
"You lied to me," he ranted and raved.
"Lied?"
"Don't play that cute innocent act with me, Rita. I was in City Hall when your building contractor put through his building permit. And you told me you were leaving town...."
"Well, I am, Henry. I just didn't say when."
"You won't get away with it, Rita. This time, you've over-stepped yourself. You open up that shop and I'll close you up tighter than a drum!"
Rita giggled.
"You think it's a laughing matter?"
She giggled some more. She couldn't stop.
"Go ahead and have your little laugh, sweetheart. But the last laugh is going to be on you!"
She finally managed to control her laughter. Very soberly, she said, "Henry, hold the phone a minute. Will you do that?"
She hooked up the tape recorder and plugged it in. "Henry, I want you to listen to something."
'I don't have time for games!"
"This one you do." She set the phone down by the speaker and switched on the playback.
After a pause, Henry's own voice came back to haunt him: lingering four-letter words that he had drawled to Rita, propositions that were laden with sex and left little to the imagination. And the speaker, to any who knew him, was unmistakably that of Henry Ridgewood, the Law Director of Temple City.
"You dirty, rotten, conniving bitch!"
Rita shook with laughter.
"Of all the scheming, double-crossing no good...."
Rita's sides ached with uncontrollable laughter. Tears streamed to her eyes. "Ohhhh, Henry...."
"You'll not get away with this...." And on and on he ranted, his eloquent voice pulsating with anger, spilling forth obscenities that were beneath his dignity and which decried his outrage.
When Rita could finally speak, when her mirth was tamed by the need to assert her dominance, she said, "And just what do you intend doing about it?"
"Do?" He sputtered. Rita envisioned his florid expression, the angry, exasperated compression of mouth.
"You're not gonna do a damn thing, that's what," she said, answering her own question. "You're gonna sit on your skinny ass and play dumb. The store'll open just as planned, and if there's complaints against me, then it's up to you to squelch 'em. Ti you don't...." Anger flowed to her fingers. Her hand closed menacingly around the phone as if it were Henry's throat. "...I'll hand these tapes over to the newspapers, and when they get done with you...." Her brittle laughter broke in. " ... you couldn't win a primary against a third-rate dog catcher!" She slammed the phone down; in the same instant, there was a hesitant rap at the door.
"Who is it?" she shouted angrily.
But there was no response.
She stormed to the door, swept it open. Her dark eyes fell on a slimly-built moppet of no more than 13-years-old, a sad-eyed little girl whose lackluster brown hair hung gloomily at her shoulders, and whose shy elfin smile was bound to evoke pathos in the most calloused of hearts. Puberty displayed its beginnings; little mounds swelled against her light-tan pullover; and her dark-brown cotton skirt paid flattery to her nymphet-like figure.
Rita thought she was a Girl Scout, that this was a piteous petition to buy some cookies. Or maybe magazine subscriptions. Such was not the case:
"Am I too late?"
"Too late?"
"About the job. It said in the paper...."
Rita concealed her amusement. Naturally, the girl was too young; and yet Rita couldn't bring herself to putting it on such brassy terms. The little moppet seemed dedicated to making Rita's refusal an uneasy one: her small dark eyes glistened with anticipation; and suddenly Rita was inviting her into the apartment, asking her if she'd like a glass of milk, at the same time wondering how she would deliver disappointment to so eager a child.
The girl's name was Betty Juneau, and while Rita was in the kitchen pouring the milk, searching out some cookies, she was haunted by the familiarity of the name Juneau. It rang a bell, a name she should know, but her mind refused to empty its significance; and eventually she shrugged it off and returned to the living room.
The little girl had seated herself on the divan. Her legs were pressed primly together and her skirt ended in an uneven line just above her knees. Rita pressed a tray of cookies and a glass of milk to her lap, then she pulled a hassock in front of the girl and sat down.
"Betty," she began, "when you get a little older...." Her voice trailed off. In a chaotic burst of inspiration, Rita suddenly thought of all the men in this world who drew vicarious thrills by consorting with young nymphets such as this one, who pulled them onto their laps, cuddled them in movie theatres, and who gawked at them beneath stairways of department stores. And even Henry Ridgewood. Wasn't he the same way? Hadn't he made passing implications of just such an urge?
"Betty," she began anew, "do your parents know about your coming here?"
The girl said, "No."
"Then they probably wouldn't approve."
"I dunno." She set down the glass of milk and moved to Rita's desk. "Is that a tape recorder?"
Rita told her it was. She looked at the girl, the small curve of her rump. "Honey, I can't give you a job if your parents don't know about it. I'd get in trouble."
The young girl shot Rita a wry smile that was older than her years. "No you won't." She leaned over for a closer examination of the tape recorder. "My uncle has a set that looks like this one."
Rita was puzzled. She was still trying to fathom the girl's earlier statement, and she said, "Betty, what did you mean before?"
"About my parents?"
"Uh, huh."
"Well...." She turned to face Rita. "...they won't say nothing on account of I know things about 'em that they don't know I know."
Rita's eyes sparkled. "What kind of things?"
"Well, like for instance, my mother has a boyfriend and they go to bed together." She was again playing with the dials on the tape recorder.
"How do you know this?" Rita asked, trying to remain blase.
"I heard 'em."
"You heard them?"
"And saw 'em," she added nonchalantly. "Once when I came home from school early, and another time when they didn't know I was in the house."
"And they were...."
"In bed together. I sneaked upstairs and saw 'em."
"Maybe they were just resting," Rita hinted, baiting the girl for further information.
"Are you kiddin?" A wise smile flooded her face, an expression that told Rita she was more mature than she's been credited for. "They had all their clothes off, and he was on top of her and they were doin' it." And then, more profoundly interested in the gadgets on the tape recorder, she said, "I betcha this one cost a lot."
Rita gave her an uninterested reply, being more concerned with the young girl's blatant confession. She coaxed her into telling more:
"What about your father? Does he know about your mother's boyfriend?"
"I don't think so," she said. "Anyway, he's more interested in me."
"In you?"
"Yeah," she said bitterly. "He's all the time coming in the bathroom when I'm there, and touching me and stuff like that."
"Your own father?" Rita asked incredulously.
"He's just my stepfather," she explained. "My real father is dead."
"And he...."
"Every chance he gets," she said. "I hate him, too."
"Well why haven't you told your mother?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "She's not interested. All she wants to do is go to bed with her boyfriend. Even if I told her, she probably wouldn't believe me." She bent down and peered at the time dial on the tape recorder. "Is this what tells you how many minutes are left on the tape?"
Rita told her it was. And then as she further explained the workings of the recording machine, her mind drifted to what this cute little nymphet could do for her teenage fashion shop. There were probably many men in this town wealthy ones, too who would pay fabulous prices to cuddle a precociously sexy child such as Betty. Some who would pay fantastic admission prices to see her appear in a style show, to exhibit her young and worldly charms, clad in some skimpy exotic bit of leather goods. And now Rita imagined the girl's slim legs, clad in coffee-tan hose, set off to further beauty by a pair of rare spike-heeled shoes, with her bare thighs laced down by the straps of a black leather girdle. And then, perhaps, a ribbon in her hair to maintain her childish innocence. And the men...
"Would you like to see how the machine works?" Rita asked the young girl.
Betty was all glee. Her uncle used to let her manipulate his tape recorder, and it was always fun.
Rita sensed opportunity knocking at her door, and she was not one to let it pass her by. She removed the tape from the machine that bore Henry Ridge-wood's voice and hid it in the closet. She then put on a fresh tape, switched on the recorder, and she said, "As soon as it rewinds, I'll show you how it works."
"Will it take long?"
"Just a few minutes," she lied, and then guiding the 13-year-old to the divan, she turned up the volume pick-up on the microphone, and baited Betty into repeating her confession about her parents.
The youngster obviously had no idea that everything she was saying was being recorded. In a completely unaffected manner, she spilled the whole works about her rather perverted family. She described her mother's lover, at Rita's coaxing, used the four-letter word that befitted their sex act, and scarcely pausing for breath, she then rushed to describe her stepfather's incessant fondling of her body.
"He doesn't do it in front of your mother, does he?"
"Hell, no! He ain't that dumb." She surprised Rita by asking for a cigarette, and then she continued: "Lots of times he comes into the bedroom to kiss me 'goodnight'. Mom'll be downstairs. And then when he's kissing me, he starts fooling around."
Rita thought of the tape recorder. She wanted Betty to be more graphic. "What do you mean: fooling around?"
"Oh, you know. Tickling me, or wrestling. Jus' any excuse to be touching me in certain places."
Rita prodded her more, and Betty described these 'certain places'.
"He's real sneaky-like. He jus' doesn't come out and do it. He-likes to pretend like it's all an accident, like when I'm taking a bath."
"What does he do?"
"He peeps in the keyhole. I can hear him breathin'. Then when he gets all hot and worked up, he jus' comes in and says: 'Oh, I'm sorry, honey. I didn't know you was in here.' And then he looks at my breasts and wants to know if he can finish washing me.
"Do you let him?"
"If I don't, he gets mad."
"You should tell your mother."
"I told him I was gonna, once. But d'ya know what he said? He said if I ever mentioned a single word of what went on between us, he'd beat me and send me away to a bad girl's school. I think he would, too."
Rita encouraged her to continue until the whole thing was down on tape. Betty further described a picnic that her stepfather had taken her to, explaining how they had separated from the rest of the group and how her stepfather had taken her into the bushes and made her remove her playsuit. He had committed the most vulgar perversions imaginable, despoiling her young virginal body with slobbering kisses, forcing her to do the same to him.
And now the hour-long tape had run to its finish, and Betty was anxiously pleading to know if the machine would now work. Rita lied and said that there was something wrong with this particular tape; and then removing it, hiding it in the closet, she deposited a fresh tape on the recorder and instructed Betty how to use it.
The girl was a natural, Rita thought from the kitchen: curvy rump, the titillating beginnings of breasts; and now she saw her in the role of girl-woman, appealing to those who liked 'em young, who were affluent and could pay the charge. There must be a hundred men like this in town, she thought. A hundred men maybe more who would like to own an hour of this little nymphet's time, and without retribution. And it was possible, Rita reasoned. It was possible because she was going to make it possible.
Rita hurried back to the living room. She had a highball in her hand. "Betty, will you take your clothes off, please."
"Huh?"
"Your clothes ... will you take them off, please."
"But...."
"You wanna be a model, don't you?"
"Well, sure. But...."
"Well then, how else are you going to be a model? I have some things for you to put on...."
The girl's face brightened. "Ohhhh!"
"You can go in there," Rita said, pointing to the bedroom, "but if you're going to be shy, then I may not be able to use you."
"Oh, I'm not shy. You just surprised me, that's all."
Rita rubbed her hands together. She guided Betty to the bedroom. The girl instantly began to undress, drawing her sweater over her head, unzipping her skirt.
"When you were a little girl, Betty ... real, real little ... did you ever dress up in some of your mother's clothing?"
The 13-year-old, clad in only panties and bra now, stood before Rita and smiled. "Oh, sure. Lots of times."
"Well, that's kinda what we're going to do now. You're going to wear things that the big girls wear. All right?"
"Oh, sure. Sounds cool."
Rita handed her a black rubber corset. It belonged to Rita, but it was outlandishly small; she'd only worn it once.
The teenager lent the garment a curious glance. "It's creepy looking," she said.
"You won't think so when you get it on. When you see what it does for your figure...."
"My mother has got one something like this," Betty said, holding the garment against her body. "She says it keeps the bumps inside where they belong."
Rita smiled gaily. "This one works just the opposite," Rita joked. "It put the bumps on the outside where they belong." She took a long swallow of her highball. "But you're going to have to take those other things off, first."
The girl's hesitancy had completely vanished. She was obviously anxious to prove to Rita that she was not shy, that she could be a good model. She unclasped her brassiere, exhibiting sensuous pink-tipped risings that surprised Rita by their unannounced maturity. Her nipples were no larger than dimes: pinkened rosebuds the color of a boy's tongue. And now, as she bent her small body forward to remove and climb out of her thin nylon panties, Rita stole an extra-long gaze at her bobbing small breasts not a child's; not a woman's. Just nice!
And then Rita was face-to-face with the nude child a thrilling five seconds in which she glimpsed the young girl's provocative naked body and was swept with desire.
The youngsters skin was as flawless and clean as fresh snow, so fair and virginal that Rita was awed, spellbound by her loveliness. Her eyes swept the teenager's body, a titillating, brief appraisal that saw a rib cage overshadowed by the promise of her breasts; that saw a flat and tiny stomach yield to the exciting flare of her maidenly hips boyish, but not quite. Rita had never guessed that she would be this lovely, and as her eyes paused briefly on the nubile thighs, she very nearly succumbed to the hot thrills that had invaded her loins.
"How do you get this crazy thing on?"
Rita showed her. And there were brief encounters: fingertips that brushed the satiny warmth of the girl's flesh, seconds when the girl's copious rump failed to yield to the tiny rubber garment and Rita had to squeeze inward on her dimpled buttocks; seconds when it was hell, when Rita had to summon the entirety of her will-power to keep from drawing this angelic nymphet to the pillowy softness of her bed.
Her feelings frightened her. She had never thought of herself as a lesbian, but why did she want to seduce every young teenager she came into contact with? Was it just the thrill of evil? Was it those damn pills?
"It sure is tight," Betty said, interrupting Rita's thoughts. "How do I look?"
Rita formed an objective gaze. She was pleased. The garment rendered sin; it also rendered flattery to the youngster's petite figure, a sexiness beyond her years. And though the garment had no laces, its rubber construction subjected the wearer to the wild, dazzling imprisonment for which it was made. Her waist was now unbelievably tiny; her juvenile breasts burst with pompous authority.
"You look lovely," Rita said wistfully. She then gave the teenager black hose, some high-heeled shoes. "Put these on, and then brush out your hair." She motioned to the dresser. "You'll find all the make-up you need over there."
"This is fun!"
"And it's only the beginning," Rita said, imitating a circus barker. "Only the beeeginning!"
She started for the kitchen to freshen up her highball, was suddenly halted by a rap at the door. She closed the bedroom door to bide the teenager, then she tip-toed to the front door. It was Old Ironsides, as she sometimes liked to call him: Henry Ridgewood; and his face was beet-red, both from the exertion of climbing the stairs and the penetrating anger he bore.
"I oughta wring your lousy neck!"
She was amused. She smiled. "Henry, you sound almost like a man, and if there's anything we need more than that right now...." She opened the door a bit wider and gestured him inside. "...I don't know what it is."
"Rita, how could you?"
His question, she decided, sounded like a line from an overworked soap opera. "How could I what."
"Let's not play games."
"But I like to play games," she said in a sultry voice. She led him to the divan. "Now you sit right down here like a good little boy and lower your blood pressure ... that's it," she said sweetly, "and I'll mix us a drink, and...."
"Rita, you promised me you were leaving town. You said you weren't going to open up that damn fool shop here, and I believed you."
"And, Henry, that was what I intended. Really. But then I realized how much I'd miss you ... Henry, you know you don't want me to leave," she simpered.
"Bull!"
"Do you want your bourbon on-the-rocks, or otherwise?"
"I just want you to leave town!"
And in a colder tone, she said: "You know that's not possible, don't you? So why ask?"
"Rita, a bargain is a bargain."
"You'll get your money back. I won't cheat you."
"But I'm not worried about the money. I'm worried about you ... the trouble that that store will cause."
"There'll be no trouble," she said, going to the kitchen for drinks. "And in a minute, I'll let you meet one of my models."
"I'm not interested in your models."
"You will be with this one. She's only 13 years old."
To which Henry Ridgewood paled, and said:
"God help me!"