Chapter 2: The Research

Thornton Halifax looked in the mirror and was pleased. The party was specified as black tie and Thomas had gone so far as to authorize Thornton to rent a tuxedo, and not just something left on the rack after the high school prom. He was wearing a dark charcoal gray Calvin Klein tuxedo with a matching vest and bowtie, a fitted white shirt without ruffles, and black socks and dress loafers. He had to admit he looked good in the outfit. He had played racquetball and handball in college and worked out at a gym in the years since.

His phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket. He didn’t recognize the number, but he answered it anyway. “Hello.”

“Mister Halifax?” said a male voice.

“Yes.”

“Your limousine is waiting downstairs.”

Thornton glanced at his watch. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“Very good, sir.”

Thornton stopped in the bathroom on the way out, and then went down the stairs to the street. According to Google Maps, the drive to the Hampton estate would take between two and two-and-a-half hours. A black Cadillac limousine was parked in front of his Queens apartment building, with a driver standing by the rear passenger door. The driver was wearing a traditional livery driver’s uniform, a gray suit, white shirt, black tie, and a driver’s cap.

The driver looked at him and said, “Mister Halifax?”

“Yes? I am guessing you’re here to take me away from my life of middle-class mediocrity,” laughed Thornton.

The driver smiled. “I don’t think it’s quite that bleak, sir. Might I make a suggestion, though?”

“Sure.”

“Miss Gray asked me to check your cufflinks. She commented that you probably didn’t own a tuxedo or French cuff shirt and that if you had the plain cufflinks provided by a rental company, to offer you something nicer.”

Thornton thought about that for a second. How would Danica Gray know if he owned a tuxedo or a shirt with French cuffs? He held up his arms so that the cufflinks were showing. “I guess she had it right. Not a lot of use for tuxedos as a reporter.”

The driver nodded and smiled. He reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a small box. “Miss Gray suggested I offer you some different cufflinks.” He opened the box and showed them to Thornton. “These were made from British gold coins that date from before the Victorian era.”

Thornton looked in the box and found a pair of large gold coins mounted on toggles. They were much nicer than the shiny gray plastic cufflinks on his shirt sleeves. “That looks like quite the offer. I am guessing these are much more valuable than the ones I am wearing.”

“I have it on good faith they are more valuable than the car I am driving.”

Thornton gave a wry smile at that. “I’d better not lose them then. I’ll swap them out on the drive.”

“Very good, sir.” The driver handed the box over and opened the rear door for the reporter. Two minutes later they were headed towards the Long Island Expressway. It was late, so the traffic was light. The invitation was for drinks at eight and dinner at nine, and the party afterwards would continue until ... whenever.

It took several minutes for Thornton to swap out the cheap cufflinks from the tuxedo rental for the much nicer and heavier gold coins that had been offered. It must be nice to be rich, he thought. He wondered what Danica Gray was up to. Why was she bothering with a relatively unknown reporter, and why was she treating him so nicely? What was her game?

He still hadn’t determined the answers when they pulled into East Hampton and left the Montauk Highway. This was not a location he had ever been to, and he was quickly lost in a maze of multimillion dollar mansions on multiacre lots. They ended up going through the gates of a waterfront mansion. It was well lighted, with a large circular driveway, and the driver stopped in front. The driver got out and came around the limousine to let Thornton out.

“You’ll be here to take me back later?” asked Thornton.

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you.” The reporter turned to the mansion and went up the stairs to the main entrance. A man in a formal butler’s uniform nodded and opened the door. Thornton entered a grand hallway, with marble flooring and dual spiraling mahogany stairs going to a second floor. He could hear voices from a room to the side, but before he could begin a search, Danica Gray came out of the room towards him.

“Mister Halifax, so good to finally meet you,” she said, extending a hand gracefully.

Thornton Halifax was stunned at her approach. Danica Gray was an amazingly beautiful woman. For someone who was nominally 140 to 150 years old, she looked to be in her late twenties. She had the face and figure of a lingerie model, with golden blonde hair that flowed in shimmering waves to the middle of her back, and blue eyes the shade of topaz. Her makeup was flawless, as was the gold jewelry which graced her wrists and dipped from a heavy necklace into the valley between her magnificent breasts. She was wearing a honey-gold wrap dress that hung from her shoulders by gold threads and was open from mid-thigh down. She had matching honey-gold sandals on her feet, and a quick glance showed she wasn’t wearing hose or stockings. In fact, as far as Thornton could tell, the dress was all she had on!

Now he knew what Homer had been talking about when he described Hellen of Troy. The fact that it was actually Marlowe who used the phrase, ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’, was immaterial. It was true no matter who described her.

“Mister Halifax?” she repeated.

Thornton came out of his trance. He took her hand in his and said, “Call me Thornton or Thorny.”

“Thorny. How intriguing.” She shook his hand but didn’t let it go. “Come with me. We’ve started the cocktails early.” She tucked an arm through his and pulled him into the room off the entry hall. There were about a dozen people already in the large room, all holding drinks in their hands, and a bartender behind a marble and mahogany wet bar along one wall. She took him to the bar and ordered, “Two gin and tonics, please. Tanqueray.” She turned to Thornton and said, “That’s your favorite, right?” She didn’t wait for the response before turning back to the bartender. “Yes, Tanqueray, and a slice of lime.”

“How did you know that?”

“Thorny ... details, details, details! Oh, excuse me, Some more people just arrived. Excuse me for a few. Make yourself at home.” She kissed him on the cheek and left him at the bar with a pair of drinks on the way.

Thornton looked around the room. He was the youngest person there other than Danica Gray, who was potentially halfway through her second century but looked to be, at most, twenty-nine. Most of the men were in their forties or fifties; most of the women with them were ten to twenty years younger. For some reason he immediately thought of trophy wives. The men were all wearing suits that had not come off the rack, and the least expensive watch he saw was a Rolex. The women all had a perfect, plastic look. They had expensive fake tans and expensive fake tits, makeup and haircuts that took professionals hours to craft, and ten-thousand-dollar dresses with thousand-dollar shoes.

The bartender set a pair of drinks on the bar. Thornton looked at him and said, “Daddy always said to be a two-fisted drinker. Thanks.” He picked up one and sipped. “Perfect!” The bartender nodded and Thornton wandered away, sipping one of the drinks while carrying the other.

What was he doing there? That was the thought that kept going through his mind. He listened in on some of the conversations, returning the occasional grunt or murmur. The men were an odd mix to him, midlevel or higher executives at several defense contractors, a couple of Congressmen on key committees, three bankers of some sort, from banks he had barely heard of. He wasn’t sure how, but the Gray Family Trust was obviously involved in some sort of deal with the acquisition of a defense contractor. Short of pulling out his phone and putting it in Record mode, he could only listen in.

Even that possibility ended when Danica returned with another two couples in tow. She turned them loose and went to Thornton. She took the spare drink from his hand and said, “Thank you, darling! Where have you been all my life?” Then she took a healthy sip from the glass. “Well, don’t hold back on my account. Drink up! We’ll make sure to pour you into the correct limousine at the end of the night. Or in the morning. Your choice!”

Thornton drank some more of his gin and tonic. “So, just how did you learn about my drinking preferences?”

Danica drank some more. “Thorny, before you ever got near me, I had you investigated. You don’t think I let people near me I don’t know as much as possible about, do you? I know you prefer gin and vodka over whiskey and rum, your favorite meals involve lamb, and not beef, and that you’ve been assigned to find out all about the Gray Family Trust. You won’t, of course, but your effort is so cute. Come, let’s refresh these and let me show you around.” She led him back to the bar and procured another pair of drinks. “Come along.” She stopped and took a small tray of appetizers from a young server. “Here, have some caviar. It’s not Beluga, but the Caspian is so polluted these days.” She handed him a cracker mounded with the delicacy and led the way out.

His mind awhirl, Thornton let the beautiful blonde lead him from the room and back to the grand foyer. Across from the ‘small parlor’ with the bar was the ‘small formal room’, which was larger than his apartment. From there they moved to the back of the house, to find the dining rooms (“We’ll only be using the small dining room tonight.”) and a larger parlor and a ballroom. “No reason to go into the kitchens.”

After a few minutes, Thornton was totally lost. “I should have brought some breadcrumbs to leave a trail.”

Danica laughed. She led him into a large room that seemed a combination den and library. “We don’t use breadcrumbs. We give visitors balls of colored string. Come in here, Thorny, and let me close the door.” Once the door closed, she turned to him and smiled, “You are just too delicious!” She put her arms around his neck and drew his lips down to hers.

Thornton didn’t understand what was happening, but he was powerless to resist her. His tongue snaked out to duel hers and his hands wrapped around her body. Her body felt more than warm under the paper-thin fabric of her dress; it felt as hot as the blood that was pounding through his veins. She pulled her face away and whispered, “I need you! Now!” Then she stepped back and undid the tie at her right hip. The wrap dress fell off her impossibly perfect body, leaving her wearing nothing but her heels.

“Oh my God!” he murmured.

Danica smiled slyly, and then moved back to him. She unbuttoned his vest and shirt, and then made quick work of his trousers. At that point, with Thornton undressed from the waist down, she pushed him back onto the couch and crawled onto him. Seconds later his erect cock was inside her bare pussy. “Oh, this is wonderful, Thorny, so good! I knew you were well hung, but I had no idea just how nice it was! I even had my stylist give me a new wax just for you! You like that, right? Do you like my tits? They’re Double-Ds. You like that, right?”

Thornton barely had enough concentration to understand what Danica Gray was telling him. How could she know he had a larger than average cock? Or that he preferred women who waxed over those that shaved? And that he liked buxom women? It didn’t make sense. He didn’t care, though. All he could think about was how good her pussy felt wrapped around his cock, and how her stiff nipples felt dragging through the hair on his chest, driving him nuts. He only lasted a few minutes before his balls churned and blasted thick ropes of cum up into her grasping cunt.