Chill Factor

“I’ll get it.” Wes snatched the phone from his hand. “You start on those forms.”

Scott carried his plate to the sink and offered to help his mom load the dishwasher. She shook her head. “Better do as Wes said. The sooner you finish, the sooner you can join your friends.”

Wes hung up. “That was William Ritt.”

The hair on the back of Scott’s neck stood on end.

“He said I should get over to the drugstore right away.”

“What for?” Scott asked.

Dora glanced out the window. “Is he open today?”

“Oh, he’s open and doing business. You won’t believe who just arrived for a meeting with Dutch.” He held Scott and Dora in suspense for several seconds before saying in a stage whisper, “The FBI.”

“What do they want with Dutch?” Dora asked.

Scott could guess, but he waited for his dad to tell them.

“I’d bet good money it’s about Millicent.” Wes retrieved his coat and pulled it on. “Since I’m chairman of the city council, Ritt thought I should know about this development.” He opened the back door, saying as he went out, “Maybe they’ve got a lead.”

Scott watched him go, staring at the closed door long after he’d left.

CHAPTER

15

ORDINARILY, LINDA WEXLER REPORTED TO work at Ritt’s Drug Store at six sharp to start brewing coffee and making preparations to open at seven for the diehards who were there every morning hungry for grits and fried ham.

This morning, she wasn’t going to make it. She phoned just before daybreak to tell William that her property looked like Siberia. “And it’s still coming down something fierce. Until the sanding truck makes it out to these back roads, I’m stranded.”

William reported this to Marilee, who tried to dissuade him from leaving the house and opening the drugstore. “Who’s going to venture out this morning? At least wait a few hours, until the roads have been sanded.”

But he was stubbornly committed to opening on time. “I’ve already shoveled the driveway. Besides, my customers count on me.”

The attached carport had sheltered their cars. She watched through the kitchen window as William got into his, cranked the motor, and gave her a thumbs-up through the windshield when it kicked on. He backed out carefully and drove away.

Although Marilee had tried to talk him out of going, she welcomed being alone in the house. To have an entire day to herself made her feel incredibly lighthearted and free. She returned to her bedroom, removed her robe, and climbed back into her warm bed to indulge in the erotic memories she and her lover had created last night.

He never got to stay all night, of course, but he never left immediately after making love either. For a brief but enchanted while, they would lie together and engage in licentious dalliance. Their heads close, whispering, using the language of poetry or the gutter, they plotted fantasies that would scandalize even the most adventurous lovers. More often than not, they wound up acting out their verbal foreplay.

She denied him nothing. He’d been given unrestricted access to her body. Before him, her sexuality had been an uncharted wasteland. Their first time together, without shame or reservation, she had invited him not only to explore but to exploit it.

The buildup to that first time had been gradual. They’d been acquainted for years, but their perceptions of each other suddenly changed. Simultaneously, it seemed, they began to view one another in a different light. Each was unsure if this new awareness was reciprocated, so they gravitated toward one another cautiously, until the sexual interest was tacitly acknowledged.

Once it was, they began inventing reasons to cross paths. Their conversations were spiced with suggestiveness, although to anyone else they sounded innocent and proper. Should their eyes happen to meet, even in a crowded, public place, they telegraphed an unspoken desire which, each confessed later, had made them flushed and weak.

Then one evening they got what they had independently wished for—time alone. William had gone up the mountain to work on the old homestead, so there was no reason for Marilee to rush home after school. She’d stayed in her classroom, electing to grade papers at her desk rather than tote them home only to carry them back the following day.

He’d noticed her car in the faculty parking lot and went into the building on the pretext of looking for someone else.

He appeared at the open door of her classroom, startling her because she’d thought she was alone in the building. They ran their altogether polite and proper drill. He asked if she’d seen the individual he was supposedly looking for, and she said no she hadn’t, but each knew that the exercise was all pretense.

He lingered. She picked up her stapler and studied it as though it were a new and incomprehensible invention, then set it back down in the same spot. He took off his jacket and folded it over his arm. She fingered her pearl earring. They exchanged chitchat.

Soon they ran out of things to say that didn’t sound banal. Still, he didn’t leave. He stayed, gazing at her with longing, waiting for a signal from her to act on the physical yearning each felt in the other’s presence.

In effect, he abdicated the initiative to her. He wasn’t free to take a lover. Marilee knew this, accepted it, disregarded it. For once in her life, she was going to be selfish and seize what she wanted without taking into consideration anyone else’s opinion. To hell with the consequences.