Chapter 2

When Grace went down to the swimming pool a few minutes later, Judi was already in the water cavorting with 50 year-old Ricky Karl. She really didn't know how the girl stood him. Although once allegedly a professional basketball player, the man's muscles had long since turned to fat. He was gross, insulting, crude and vulgar, and had an air about him which implied he could buy anyone or anything. As far as Grace was concerned, he was a criminal and should be in jail. It was common knowledge that, among other things, he was one of the area's biggest bookmakers. And it was also common knowledge that he carried a reserve policeman's badge from a nearby city and thus, presumably, was untouchable. He ingratiated himself with the police, giving them gifts of expensive shirts and sweaters taken from one of the warehouses that he rented to a major men's chain store. It was rumoured that he could fix anything, also rumoured that he had staged a burglary of one of his own warehouses in order to collect insurance. He was, in fact, a symbol of everything bad... something diametrically opposed to what Stan was fighting for in Vietnam.

But what Grace hated most about him was his arrogant assumption that all he had to do was crook a finger at a woman, and she would jump into bed with him. Some women, maybe, but not her! She would die first! He had come oozing up to her like some slimy animal in the pool and put his fat arm proprietarily around her shoulders. When she gave him a piece of her mind, he had laughed sardonically and called her, "Miss Frigidaire".

She had struck back the only way she knew, verbally wounding him by saying, "I'm not frigid... it's just that I think you're a fat, dirty old man. You just disgust me and you make my stomach turn."

His face had turned almost black in fury, then abruptly his demeanor changed and he became his oily ingratiating self again. Grace, though, had caught the look on his face. She knew she had made an enemy of him, and at first it had frightened her. Since then he had ignored her, but she could feel his stare burning holes in her back each time she went down to the pool.

Now she saw him look up as she walked down the steps into the water. His hooded eyes moved up and down her figure, locking themselves on the Vee of her swim suit panties. He made a parody of licking his lips, then turned his back to her. A moment later he climbed out of the pool, leaned down to Judi and said something, then picked up his towel and waddled across the green toward his penthouse suite.

When he reached the edge of the grass, he was greeted boisterously by two men who had just walked through the portico. Both looked like criminals to Grace. One of them was obviously an ex-jockey, a little man with a sneaky, mean face. The other male was about medium height, pot-bellied, and smoked a long black cigar. He wore rings on three fingers of each hand. On a leash between them, a powerful looking German Shepherd dog sniffed once at Ricky Karl and then dismissed him as being not important.