It had been in that same drawer, beneath her pink chemise, that the detectives had found the necklace and bracelet. She could remember how one of the detectives had held them up in turn, watching them glitter in the wash of light from the wall fixture, and then look knowingly at his partner. Then they had turned to look at her – big men, impeccably dressed men, men who had seen it all and knew it all, men who were neither kind nor unkind but merely police officers doing a job.
She had tried to explain. Mark Haley had given them to her, she had said.
"We know that, Miss," the older of the two detectives had said. He had been heavy-set, with a flat, almost expressionless face and thick dark hair graying at the temples. "What we want to know is why."
"You said you hardly knew him," the other detective had said. He had been taller, with sandy hair and old-young eyes that had seemed never to blink, "Why would a man you hardly knew give you diamonds?" It had been the last time he had spoken to Sharon directly during the entire time he was in the apartment.
"They aren't diamonds," Sharon had said. "They're zircons."
"They're diamonds," the heavy-set detective said. "About ten grand worth."
"They can't be. Mark said…"
"They're the genuine article. Why'd he give them to you?"
"I don't know. He liked me, I suppose. He wanted to…"
"Make out with you?"
"I don't know why else. But he told me they were only zircons. Otherwise, I'd never have accepted them."
"Sure. When'd he give them to you?"
The other detective had moved away a few feet, and now he stood with folded arms, running his eyes slowly up and down Sharon's body as coolly and dispassionately as if he had been appraising an animal in an auction ring. She was wearing a thin, diaphanous robe – not much more than a pale green mist, really – and for the first time in her life she knew what it was to be embarrassed by a man's gaze.
"I said, when did he give them to you?" the heavy-set detective said.
"Last night."
"Did you know the jewelry store in the Arcade was robbed yesterday?"
"No."
"Did you know these pieces were from that robbery?"
"What!"
"Very good, Miss Palmer. You register surprise very well."
"But I…"
"You drove Haley to the Arcade. You waited for him at the curb. You drove him away after he pulled the robbery." He paused. "Haley didn't give those pieces to you. You earned them."
"What do you mean?"
"We're tired, Miss Palmer. Both of us. We've been hitting this case ever since yesterday afternoon. We're not going to play games with you."
"I don't know what you're…"
"How much more of the stuff have you got around here?"
"None."
"We'll see. Jake, start tossing the place, okay?" He turned back to Sharon. "Did you know driving that car for Haley makes you just as guilty as he is?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake! I merely gave him a ride downtown. He said he wanted to pick up a…"
"Get dressed."
"Where are we going?"
"Downtown – but not to the Arcade."
"This is all a terrible mistake. I didn't have anything to…"
"Get dressed, please."
From that moment on, Sharon's life had been one long nightmare. There had been a confrontation at the precinct house with Mark Haley, who had sworn she'd been his accomplice in the robbery. There'd been a night in the county jail, and a hearing the next morning, and a magistrate who had set her bail so high it had been impossible for her to meet it.
When she had come to trial, it had been alone. Mark Haley had made bail – and disappeared. Only a gifted lawyer, an unambitious district attorney and a skeptical judge had made the difference between the five-to-ten-year sentence she might have received and the one-to-three she had actually been given. The jury – nine of them women, and all nine hating Sharon on sight – had voted for the maximum term. But the judge, although forced to impose sentence, had in this state the power to reduce it. He had exercised that power, giving Sharon the shortest possible time he could under the state statutes.
It had been several days after her arrest before she had learned why Mark Haley had involved her in the robbery. He'd done it for insurance, her lawyer had told her. It was a common practice. A male criminal knew that if he were caught and tried, his chances were better if he had a female accomplice who could be tried along with him. Judges and juries tended to be less severe when a woman was involved, her lawyer had said, unless a majority of the jury and the judge happened themselves to be women. Therefore, Mark Haley had planted part of the jewelry with Sharon, knowing that possession of it would be strong evidence of her guilt. Once sure that he had been neither identified nor suspected, however, he would have returned and recovered the jewelry – one way or another.
Now, as Sharon looked down into the drawer of lingerie, she could remember those first terrifying minutes with the two detectives as if it were yesterday. She closed the drawer slowly, thinking – then suddenly turned and walked out to the front room to pour another martini.
Vickie was right, she knew. She was only punishing herself this way. She was going to do all she could to right the terrible wrong that had been done her; that was certain. But in between times, she was going to live. She had a whole year's sexing to catch up with – and the one person in all the world most capable of helping her do it was at this very moment making her body even more delectable in the bathroom.
She drank the martini from brim to bottom without stopping. Then she went back to the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the big circular bed, waiting for Vickie.
The bathroom door opened in a few moments, and Vickie ran over to her, huge amber eyes bright with excitement.
"Just wait till you taste me!" she said as she stepped between Sharon's knees and thrust her tilted breasts close to Sharon's face.
Sharon leaned forward, grasped the smooth firm globes of Vickie's ass in either hand, and sucked a rosy nipple into her mouth.
"Peaches," she said.
"Not just peaches," Vickie said with childlike pleasure. "Peaches and cream. It tastes different than just peaches alone, Sharon."
"So it does," Sharon said, moving her mouth over to Vickie's other nipple, now already visibly swelling. "It's delicious, Vickie."
"And I taste that way all over," Vickie said. "Every inch. Even my toes." She shivered. "Oh, I just can't wait for you to lick it all off me, Sharon."
"That makes two of us," Sharon said as she lay back and pulled Vickie down on the bed with her.
CHAPTER THREE
The next morning, wearing a yellow shirtwaist dress and with twenty dollars borrowed from Vickie in her handbag, Sharon took a cab to the Ainsley Arms. Elaine Woodward, Mark Haley's former girl friend, lived there now, Vickie had said, and Sharon was very anxious to talk to her. At the time he had robbed the jewelry store, Mark had shared an apartment with Elaine in the same building with Sharon and Vickie, but Elaine had moved out shortly after Sharon's and Mark's arrest. Whether Elaine would be able or willing to help her, Sharon didn't know. But her quest had to begin somewhere, and she had decided it would be with Elaine.
Sharon pushed the buzzer beside the door of 4B, waited half a minute, and was just about to buzz again when the door was suddenly jerked all the way open.
What she saw was so startling that she took an involuntary step backward. The beautiful redhead who stood there was completely naked, her pussy covered with, a thick mound of white foam, from which tiny bubbles escaped to waft upward past the gentle swell of the pink-white belly.
"Sharon! My God! I thought you were Walt!"
"Hello, Elaine," Sharon said as she closed the door behind her. She gestured toward the foam. "What in the world is that?"