Chapter 9

Madhuri looked up at me. A tear broke loose from her left eye and started down her high cheekbone over her dark smooth skin. I stepped across the old concrete floor of the metal shed to her and took her in my arms again. My heart swelled up with emotion. I wanted to comfort and protect her, while feeling the need to punish anyone who had caused her harm.

"Don't you cry, Snuggle Bunny," I told her. "I am here now and your sister loves you ... we will look out for you and protect you ... I will protect you."

"How can that happen..." she asked into the chest of my black leather jacket. Her voice sounding upset but not out and out crying, but more resigned, as she rested her right cheek against me, " ... when I have to go back to school ... or if Saloni isn't around?"

"Tell me what you are afraid of," I told her and held her against me. "Let's work through this together and see what we can come up with, okay?"

"Oh, James..." she sighed in a soft unhappy sounding voice, " ... sometimes..."

"Sometimes—what?"

"Sometimes ... Well ... you know when the two of us were talking alone yesterday—feeding Spot?" Madhuri asked me with her face still against my chest. "And you explained to me about compulsion ... And that compulsion was the reason why I could not stop listening to Jhoni and Aditi talking about, you know ... the f-word stuff?"

And I nodded my head, knowing she could feel the movement of my acknowledgement even though she couldn't see it.

"Well, James ... a few times..." Madhuri said against my chest, " ... since my Father died, I have sort of felt that way about ... well..."

"About what, Madhuri?" I asked as I held her against my chest with my arms around the shoulders of her blue jeans jacket. I felt her long braid of silken black hair hanging down over the backs of my crossed hands.

"Will you tell my Mother about this?"

"Madhuri, I can only promise you this..." I said down into her combed-back black hair on the crown of her head as I tilted my face forward, " ... if I think it is something your mother needs to know about, I will tell you before I do. If you and I can deal with this successfully, she will not need to hear about this ... But someday, you might want to tell her about it yourself. Okay? Your mother loves you, and she worries about you. That is her number one job."

"All right," she said in her young voice. "I trust you."

"So..." I asked her, all at once feeling concerned because we were talking about Madhuri's submissive nature now; feeling proud that she said she trusted me; and I was a little worried that I might fail her trust if I couldn't come up with a solution to protect her from not only her fears, but the type of people who cause her to fear. " ... since your father died, you have been feeling—what?"

"Well, you see, there is a family at temple who has a nephew," my oldest stepdaughter said to me. "He visited over the summer ... And, James, I started having naughty daydreams about him."

"Just naughty daydreams, nothing else happened?" I asked, trying to remain calm and get more information from her.

"Well ... at night once..." she told me in a meek sounding voice that wavered, "I had a dream that..." and she took a deep breath but did not continue.

"You are becoming a young woman, Madhi," I told her in a soft quiet voice, gently resting my chin down on the top of her head, "that is one of the things that happens. You discover the opposite sex. But what kind of daydreams, exactly, were you having about this guy ... that nothing else happened with?"

She didn't say anything. There was movement at the open door to the shed.

"Excuse me, James—are you two having a private conversation?" Raisha's asked while leaning her head and shoulders into the shed on the left side of the doorway. Her black hair fell forward over the shoulders of her buttoned-up black jeans jacket.

"We are discussing some concerns that have come up, my love," I said to my fiancée as her daughter kept facing the back wall. "It might be a little while yet. Is there anything you need me to do?"

"Is there anything I can do, or that I need to know of?" she asked me cautiously.

"I trust him, Mother..." Madhuri spoke up in her soft shy voice from my arms, still not facing Raisha. "He says he will tell you if he feels you need to know ... but right now ... this is, well, private."

"Oh! " my fiancée said sounding surprised. "Well, if it is a private conversation that your stepfather is prepared to deal with, I understand, my darling. I love you Madhi.

"I love you both." Raisha said as she gave me a devastating smile full of white teeth, dimpled cheeks, and flashing dark eyes.

"In a little while," she told me with a bit of excitement creeping into her voice as her dark eyes continued to sparkle, "Ted will start our first firing lesson. So, we are going to start shooting. Ted says there should be at least one more collapsible table here in the shed. Can you give it to me, please? And, Saloni would like to shoot your pistol again along with us, if you do not mind."

"Tell her of course she can," I said, letting go Madhuri who shuffled her feet until her back was to the doorway. Thinking she didn't want her mother to see she had been crying, I turned around. From the other side of the double lockers, I picked up another folded TV tray from out of the wooden bin against the west wall. There were two trays remaining in the bin as I stepped to the doorway and handed the TV table to Raisha. She was looking more eager by the moment but still shot a look at her daughter's back.

"I find the prospect of shooting that pistol of Jhoni's very exciting, James," my first-wife-to-be said in a low lusty sounding voice. "I think we should definitely plan on visiting Ted's establishment at least once this coming week. I am almost certain I want to purchase a pistol of my own."

"Then that is what we will do," I told her. "Be careful, I love you. And pay attention to everything Ted says and you can't go wrong."

"Once again, I love you too, my husband-to-be," Raisha told me with a lusty grin for me. "And once again, you know I love you, Madhi. Please, join us once both of you have finished with your private stepfather-stepdaughter conversation." And she turned and walked back to the left out of my line of sight.

I turned and stepped further back into the shed. Madhuri was now standing back to my right, near the southwest corner of the shed. There was shovel, a hoe, a steel rake, and an old mattock hanging down from pegs on an old two-by-four fastened between two of the metal wall-joists behind her. I approached Madhi as she turned to face me and I pulled her back into my arms. I felt and heard her sigh as she snuggled against me and pushed herself against my right thigh.

"Now tell me these naughty daydreams you were having about this guy," I told her feeling a comforting bond envelop us as we held each other. "What brought them about, do you know?"

"Well ... James," Madhuri said in a soft voice from my chest. "I, well, found that I started hoping ... that maybe ... he might want to... do things with me ... Things like Sali and I saw our Father doing to ... some of the visa-girls ... Things like I overheard Jhoni saying that you made her do ... More and more I was wondering if he would teach me my duties concerning ... the Four Hospitalities..."

"So, you only had these daydreams about this one boy," I asked her and I gave her a squeeze, feeling proud of her for being brave and also trusting me enough to share these things with me.

"He was, umm, eighteen, James," Madhuri admitted, giving me a little bit of a scare. "And I never had those thoughts before ... or really felt like that. When we would spy on Father and the visa-girls, and the few times we saw Jhoni doing things with Mother, it was exciting and made me feel ... naughty, and I wondered what it must be like ... But I didn't think about doing those things with any of them."

"Most sexual fantasies are not compulsions," I told her, " ... unless you cannot think of anything else. Now, tell me what happened between you and this person whose ass you sister kick at school? Saloni said it happened twice before you told her about it. Do you think letting it happen twice before you told your sister was because of a compulsion on your part?"

"Oh, James, that is just it," whined the young girl in my arms. "I didn't like her, I wasn't attracted to her! But when we were alone, I was helpless ... I just let her do whatever she wanted to do to me—even if I didn't like some of it, or her. It wasn't at all like what I overheard Jhoni saying about just wanting to please you when she is around you. I wanted to please Hemu when I was around him. But I do not want to please Shruti—not now, not then, not ever! But I couldn't bring myself to stop her, or even say anything. Now ... I am afraid it might happen again with someone else like that..."

I felt certainty boil up inside me, and I asked her, "Do you find that you want to please me, Madhuri?"

"yes..." she told me in a shy quiet voice, "I do; more than anything ... more than anyone..."

"In what way," I asked her, my certainty filling me and driving me on.

"In any way I can, James," my stepdaughter shyly admitted and I could sense her complete vulnerability and willingness to submit. And she pushed her body against mine as we held each other. "Please ... tell me how ... show me..."

"Then to please me..." I said as I leaned back in our embrace. And I raised my right hand and eased her chin up so I could look down into her dark-brown open eyes, " ... I am telling you that starting right now—you are mine, and no one else's. Do you hear me?" And I watched her deep dark eyes go big and round for a moment in surprise. Then she rapidly nodded her head against my fingertips under her chin, moving her braid over the back my left hand which I still held against her jeans jacket.

"You will displease me greatly," I said into her wide eyes, "if you do anything to please someone else in that way. I forbid it; do you understand me? You must tell me immediately if something of that nature arises in your feelings for someone else, or if someone else approaches you that way. By telling me without fear, you will please me. Understood?"

"Oh, yes, James, " she sighed and relaxed in my arms as she looked into my eyes.

"So, until I tell you otherwise, I am your master that way. And, Madhuri Zalpuri, I may not ever have you please me in the ways a woman pleases a man. It is my choice ... Can you live with that? Do you accept my dominance in this way?"

"Oh, yes, James," Madhuri told me, sounding eager and relieved as she turned her face and hugged me harder, pushing the side of her head against my leather jacket. "Thank you. I knew you understood."

A wave of contentment and peace swept up over the two of us as we just held onto each other for a while. I was wondering if I should start feeling self-satisfied at how I had dealt with Madhuri's fears and her response to my declaration. I decided I had better wait to see just how things went. But, this being a stepfather wasn't such a bad thing at all, I told myself. I might get the hang of it yet.

And then my oldest stepdaughter sighed and asked in a sweet coy young voice, "But ... if you do not choose to show me, who will teach me my duties according to the Chaar Aathithya, especially the Vikhyaat Aathithya?"

And I had a vision of some high school kid's car parked at a drive-in movie theater with all the windows steamed up.

"You realize, don't you," I asked her, "that I am not going to allow you to go on car dates until you are twenty-one?"

And Madhuri started to giggle in my arms as I felt the last bits of the tension around us that I hadn't even been aware of as it melted away inside the old metal shed.

BLAM! We both flinched at the loud report. That could only be Jhoni's .45, I told myself.

KRACK! The nine millimeter fired.

I fished my foam ear plugs out of the left front pocket of my black leather jacket. Then I held the first one up so Madhuri saw what I was doing as I rolled it down between the fingers and thumb of my left hand. She pushed her young body against my chest and my right thigh. I hoped she wasn't offended because my lower extremity was not responding to her.

"Shall we?" I asked her with a nod toward the door. And I started to fit the plug into my left ear.

"Of course, Master," Madhuri giggled as she dropped her arms and stepped back. She started digging into the breast pocket of her jeans jacket over the orange-sized bumps of her young chest.

"You may say that to me only in private," I told her, as I watched her take her yellow ear protectors out of her pocket. "And as your culture seems to dictate, the term sardaar is appropriate. Do you understand, Madhuri?"

"Oh, yes, my sardaar!" Madhuri told me in her breathy liquid young voice. She stepped against me again and, putting her arms up around my neck, she pulled me down and kissed my cheek. "Whatever you say, my sardaar."

Then she let go of me and giggling, she skipped out of the door of the shed.

xxx

I came out of the shed into the afternoon daylight that filtered through the canopy of the woods on this side of the clearing. I walked toward the firing line where Madhuri already stood a few steps back as she watched Ted stationed just behind my girlfriend at her improvised firing bench. Raisha was right next to Ted.

After the first round of single shots from Jhoni and Saloni, I saw Ted was reminding both Jhoni and Raisha on how to hold, aim, and fire the .45 as well as how to maintain breath control. Then he said something to Jhoni, who was holding the pistol pointed down at the ground.

As I approached, he once again went over how to aim the pistol and discussed the concept of the target picture with both of them. Ted must have had other amber protective glasses in the big pockets of his army jacket because all three of the ladies at the firing line were wearing a pair. I walked up and stood beside my oldest stepdaughter to her right.

Ted, Jhoni, and Raisha were using the left target and had the second TV tray set up there as their firing bench. Saloni was using the target she'd been shooting at before. Ted continued to act as range master, going over again with his two new students the sequence of commands they would hear on the firing line when directed by a range master or range officer and how they were expected to respond to each one. He gave Jhoni more feedback on her performance during her first shot.

It seemed he was alternating between Jhoni and then Saloni firing and then giving them both pointers after each one fired a single shot down range at their targets. Ted called out the range commands for Jhoni, who reacted correctly, if slowly to each one, until...

BLAM!

I saw Jhoni's second shot kick up sand and gravel high on the berm behind the target posts. I could hear in her voice that Jhoni was upset because she missed not only the target, but she also missed the cardboard backing as well with both of her first two shots.

Ted reminded her to gently squeeze her finger, and not to jerk on the trigger and to keep her eyes open. Ted asked Saloni if Jhoni could fire again and show them what she had learned from her mistakes. Saloni nodded her head and agreed from her firing station.

Again Ted called out the range commands for Jhoni who was in her two-handed firing position in her pink jeans jacket and blue jeans. The surrounding woods were still, even though I had my yellow foam ear plugs back in place.

BLAM!

Jhoni hit the paper of the target, but it was outside the target rings at about one o'clock and only maybe an inch from the edge of the paper target. You would have thought she had hit a bullseye the way she squealed and then giggled like a woman possessed.

I saw Saloni put the pistol in her right hand on safe and she took two steps further away from her bench to her right and away from the celebrating woman. Saloni had the nine millimeter pointing at the ground as she watched her mother's best friend sort of going crazy with glee to her left.

My girlfriend continued giggling and then started laughing. I was afraid Jhoni would start jumping up and down with a loaded .45 in her hands and her finger on the trigger because of the way she was bobbing her shoulders around so excitedly about just hitting the cardboard behind the target. Ted obviously felt the same way as I did because he got Jhoni's attention and asked her to now demonstrate the proper steps to bench her weapon.

Jhoni got hold of her emotions and pressed the safety in, removed the magazine and put it on the TV tray bench that marked her firing station. And then, pointing the pistol down range, she pulled back the slide and ejected the round in the chamber. While not appearing to be, Ted was ready and snagged the flashing brass cartridge out of the bright air with his right hand almost like some bald, trim Zen master.

With the VIS .45 on the tray beside the magazine, Ted reminded Jhoni she must always visually inspect the firing chamber and then back that action up with her finger inspection to make sure a shell wasn't overlooked and was actually completely seated in the firing chamber. He stressed to her that if she followed the same steps every time, it would become second nature.

He told both women that becoming proficient with a pistol was all about body muscle memory training. He told them they did not have to proceed quickly, but they had to be aware of learning and then following the proper forms. He told them it was easy to learn how to shoot a pistol slowly and correctly the first time than it was to correct bad shooting habits your muscles had already learned. And with practice, he told them, they could master the forms and learn to place their rounds where they wanted them to go with greater accuracy and consistency.

Then Ted handed the ejected cartridge to Raisha and told her to place it back in the magazine. Once she did, he acted as ranger master for Saloni so she could fire another round.

KRACK! Another round placed in the second ring at six o'clock close to the edge of the bullseye.

He informed Saloni that he couldn't see anything that he could improve on as far as her training from Helmut went. He wanted her to continue firing the nine millimeter pistol, but along with his range commands for her mother. I noticed that not only had none of Saloni's single shots gone outside of the black rings, there was one more hole in the bullseye on her sunlit target.

Then Ted asked Raisha to step up to her bench, it was her turn to show him if she had been paying attention to what he'd been showing Jhoni.

And Raisha proceeded to show us that she had paid attention to everything Ted had shown or told Jhoni while her youngest daughter fired along with her. Of the four rounds left in magazine when she picked up the pistol, three of those rounds my fiancée fired were in the black rings, one breaking the edge of the bullseye, and the fourth was less than a half-inch outside the outer black ring at three o'clock.

Now, Jhoni was pouting and wondered out loud why she wasn't able to shot as well as Raisha. Saloni told Jhoni she should try firing the nine millimeter and quickly extracted and then reloaded the magazine for her.

When Ted called Jhoni to her firing position with the nine, I could see the tension in Jhoni's slightly hunched forward shoulders as she brought the pistol up and acquired her target. When she fired she hit the outside ring at eight o'clock and I saw her turn the pistol slightly in her right hand and look at it. But other than that she didn't start another happy conniption fit as she had before on hitting the face of the target.

With Ted directing her as range master, her next three rounds all hit the target in the outside tan rings. Her next shot punched a hole in the black third ring at eleven o'clock. I also had noticed the tension had left her shoulders and she wasn't hunching forward now. Her next two shots also broke the edges of the outside black ring at five, then seven o'clock. Her last shot hit the second ring dead center at four o'clock.

With the slide locked back and her magazine empty, Jhoni made her pistol safe, ejected the clip, and benched the VIS and clip correctly.

Ted asked Jhoni what was different now that she was hitting the target. She thought about it for a few heartbeats and then she announced that this pistol didn't have the recoil that the .45 did and so now she wasn't flinching when she squeezed the trigger. She turned around and faced me.

"James, I think, mmm, I want to buy myself a nine millimeter," she told me with a determined but excited look on her face. The amber glasses kept her swept-over blonde hair from falling over her right eyebrow. "That forty-five is too much for me to, well, handle. And, it is really loud."

"Would you trade me your forty-five for my nine millimeter?" I asked her. "Does that sound like a workable solution?"

Jhoni bounded past Ted, looking all breathtakingly sexy in her bouncing pink tee shirt and pink jeans jacket. She jumped up on me with her thighs spread, almost bruising my lips with her lusty kissing as I wrapped my arms around her and braced my legs apart to keep us both from falling. I could hear the girls giggling and Ted saying he should have brought up the idea if he knew it would get that kind of reception from Jhoni.

Jhoni the Vixen whispered into my left ear and squeezed my waist with her thighs, "If my panties weren't already so messy from your juices, they would be now! You do not know how hot firing a pistol makes me, my sardaar!"

Ted asked Madhuri if she wanted to try firing the nine millimeter. She said she would at one of his ranges when we visited his store later in the week. After my girlfriend finished kissing me, Ted asked if I was going to fire either or both of the pistols. I could tell he was getting a little antsy, and I figured he really wanted to read the newspaper article we'd found inside the case that held the Polish pistol and discuss that mystery. I told him that I too would wait until later in the week.

Once Jhoni got down off of me, Ted had Raisha pick up the .45 and Jhoni retrieve the nine millimeter from the TV trays. And he asked me if we still had the gun cleaning kit in the shed. I folded up both trays and sent Madhuri back to the shed with them, asking her to return with the red case we'd left in the open locker in the shed.

Saloni showed Raisha and Jhoni how to police up their expended shell casings from around on the gravel, explaining that with nine millimeter and .45 caliber shells, the empties could be reloaded if we had the proper equipment. Or, she told them, we could turn the empty brass in to Ted as she was sure that he must have reloading equipment. My two ladies used one hand to hold their locked opened pistols and one hand to pickup brass and put each casing into a pants pocket in Raisha's case, and the breast pocket of her pink jacket in Jhoni's case. They both had the outline of a magazine clip in the back right pockets of their jeans. But, I wasn't staring at butts.

After they got started doing that, Ted and I took down both of the cardboard sheets with the targets pinned to them. We followed the girls back to the metal shooting bench. It was our common practice when shooting here to use the cardboard to place all of the pistol or rifle parts on while cleaning our weapons. At the bench Saloni used her paper target and folded in into a large envelope while Madhuri explained the cleaning kit to her mother and Jhoni. Then Saloni had her Momma and Jhoni dump their collected brass into her finished envelope before she did the same with the brass she'd been collecting in the breast pocket of her red jeans jacket.

With the pushpins collected and everything moving along, I retrieved four cloth cleaning rags out of the locker in the shed for the ladies to use and I put away the pushpins. I went back to the bench and watched as Ted began talking both Jhoni and Raisha through field stripping the pistols on a spread out rag atop each of the cardboard backers. With the Zalpuri girls helping him, not only were each of the parts identified for the ladies while they worked, but the function of the parts were also explained. Then he described to Jhoni and Raisha how they should correctly maintain the pistols while the ladies cleaned the parts with hints from Madhuri and Saloni tossed in.

When they were done cleaning and oiling to Ted's satisfaction, he taught them how to put the VIS pistols back together. Then the pistols were returned to the cases, our cases now. The amber glasses were collected in a pile on the metal top of the firing bench.

Ted brought out the cardboard holding the newspaper clipping from one of the inside pockets of his army jacket. Jhoni explained to the curious girls about finding the news clipping at the bottom of the case that held the pistol and two old boxes of shells.

At first Saloni was peeved that no one had informed her of this part of Jhoni discovery of the pistol up in the elevator motor room.

Getting the rubber bands off the two pieces of cardboard, Ted removed the clipping and started to read the news story out loud for the benefit of the girls. Now they were both eager to find out more about this emerging mystery.

We all stood around the firing bench while Ted finished reading the newspaper story. When he was done I had Jhoni retell what turned out to be her non-pot version of finding the case holding the Polish pistol so Raisha could hear all of it instead of the bits she learned about in the van at the Mall.

"So..." Ted began, "for some reason someone hides this perfectly wonderful and rare pistol up in the elevator motor room. I guess, sometime after this story was published in the newspaper. When you find it thirty-some years later, you also find this first clue," Ted said to Jhoni as he leaned against the edge of the metal bench and studied the clipping along with Madhuri beside him on his left. He rubbed his right hand over the top of his bald head running it from his forehead back to the nap of his neck. "Inside the case this person not only placed this clipping, but they also wrote this in the margins on it.

"And it reads: Ha! Ha! The key to this heist is in the rounds fired, not the tales reported here from the mouths of liars! There were seven rounds, or one full magazine if this forty-five was the gun used in the robbery, reported as being fired during the heist by the newspaper. And in the two old boxes of shell that were in the original case, one box had seven rounds missing and the second was full."

"Somebody didn't police their brass," Saloni commented from Ted's right. She was resting her elbows up on the bench top and holding her chin up with the palms of her hands, her long fingers going up into her combed-back hair at her temples.

"So, we have the newspaper account of the robbery," Ted said from the firing side of the bench near the east end, "thoughtfully provided by someone who writes as if they were, at least, at the scene—if not the perpetrator who fired the shots ... since, once again, we assume the forty-five was the pistol that was fired during the robbery.

"And because I am a nosy kinda guy, even before I knew about this clipping and the first clue and all..." he said as he reached inside of his army jacket again. He pulled out a metal eyeglasses case and, opening it up, he took out a folded piece of old white note paper. He unfolded it and put it down next to the newspaper clipping. " ... we have this second piece of written information ... Which looks to me to be in the same handwriting as is found on the clipping. And—also written in pencil.

"Girls," he said and looked back and forth between Madhi and Sali on either side of him, "I found this note inside the old ammunition box that had the seven rounds missing. It was down under the accordion cardboard that separates the shells"

"Ha! Ha!" Saloni blurted out, reciting the first clue, "The key to this heist is in the rounds fired, not the tales reported here from the mouths of liars! That was telling us to look under the missing the seven rounds for the next clue! The key to this heist is in the rounds fired!

"Boy oh boy—this is as much fun as firing the pistol! And Ted," Saloni chuckled, "you found the second clue without even knowing about the first one!" She gave him a big smile and her dark eyes were full of admiration.

"I told you that happened only because I am nosey..." Ted chuckled in return and sort of moved his shoulders back a bit, straightening them out, " ... it was just pure luck on my part."

"What does it say?" Madhuri asked looking from her mother standing beside me at the east end of the bench, almost as if she were asking permission to get involved in the discussion. Raisha smiled at her and nodded. Then Madhuri looked up at Ted. "What does the second clue say, Ted? This is neat, I like puzzles."