That face had loomed up before Mavis like some monstrous focal point of the storm as she drove into the city much later that night. The lightning lit its insidiously understanding expression—that hypocritical expression by which Anne had been tricked — the thunder was its voice shouting victory over Anne’s naivete, the rain the rain of mendacity by which Anne would be drowned. But her hands, clenched tight on the steering-wheel, fought back. She felt the power in them to erase that expression, to silence the thunder, to hold back the rain. She felt the power in them to shatter the face of her persecutor once and for all!
Still sitting in Durango’s office now and waiting, looking for all the world like the suburban housewife she was, Anne Yolan remembered that drive and shuddered. There was no point in thinking about it. What was done was done. She turned away from Jonnie’s still hateful gaze and looked at the third girl in the room.
Karen Jorgenson did not look back at Anne. She was unaware of the glance. She continued to stare down at her strong hands clasped in her lap and to worry over what might happen with the police in the near future.
Would they search her apartment? She prayed that they wouldn’t. If they did, they’d find the ring she’d hidden at the bottom of her lingerie drawer for sure! Oh, why had she put it there? Why hadn’t she been clever enough to think of a better hiding place? If they found it, she was a goner! It would point to her as Dr. Golden’s murderer for sure!
Dr. Golden dead! Even now, with the vision of the dying body still fresh in her eyes, it was hard for Karen to accept the horrible reality. And, oh! the fear which filled her at the though of her part in that reality, at the memory of the unplanned violence. Karen couldn’t help comparing the somehow obscenely dying body with the pulsating warmth of it when it was fully alive.
The first time she’d seen and felt it, Dr. Golden’s body had been naked under a terrycloth towel at the ladies’ massage parlor where Karen worked as a masseuse. The massage parlor catered to well-off women, and it catered on a number of levels. It provided steam and poundings to shave the fat from the obese, supervised exercise classes for women trying to get their figures back post-natally, mud-packs and heat treatments for skin crumbling into forty-ish decay, facials for the jowly and regimens to restore muscle tone, plus very special private massages for the select and the knowing.
Among this last group, the name of “Miss Jorgenson” was a sort of password. To ask for her was to announce that one was interested in a particularly intimate sort of treatment. Dr. Mavis Golden had asked for Miss Jorgenson on her one and only visit. She had heard the name and learned what it stood for from one of her patients. The patient had since been discharged, and Mavis Golden had waited a while before visiting the massage parlor one afternoon on the spur of the moment.
Removing the towel, Karen had looked at this new customer’s torso admiringly. Slender and well-kept, in good condition, velvety to the touch and pleasing to the eye—-it was a welcome change from some of the rich women who came for Karen’s special service. Dr. Mavis Golden was lying flat on her stomach, and Karen began kneading the flesh at her neck and shoulders with strong and expert fingers.
She worked her way down the spine slowly. When she reached the base of it, she skipped down to the ankles and started up the backs of the legs. Dr. Golden’s legs were long and slender and lightly muscled. They were attractive legs, and the muscles flexed and unflexed easily in response to Karen’s touch. Finally Karen reached the well-defined crease separating the legs from the buttocks. Her fingers probed the crease gently, but deeply, and Dr. Golden gave a little sigh of contentment.
Then Karen began to the high, well-molded, solid-fleshed derriere and the fashionably narrow hips. As she rotated the flesh and delved into the cleft, Dr. Golden purred low in her throat. When she ran her hands down the sides of Dr. Golden’s body and manipulated the hips, the purr turned into an excited little thinkling laugh.
“You can turn over now,” Karen had told her softly, and Dr. Golden had complied quickly.
Dr. Golden’s breasts, small, but firm and pointing toward the ceiling so rigidly, yet shimmering with a golden sheen and the quiver of tapered scarlet tips, had impressed Karen. They were so different from Karen’s own breasts, which were quite large and milk-white and had large, dark-brown roseates the size of half-dollars. These breasts bobbled loosely under the white attendant’s gown which was the only garment she wore as she now bent to resume her ministrations to Dr. Golden.
Karen worked her way down from the shoulders to the breasts quickly, and soon they were nestling in the palms of her capable hands. Her fingers tiptoed around their circumference, pausing to tease a little pulse throbbing at the side of one of them. The middle finger of one hand investigated the deep valley separating them, and the length of it moved in an insinuating rhythmic motion that had Dr. Golden squeezing her arms against her sides to push them together in order to obtain the maximum sensation afforded by the caress. Then Karen laid her hands lightly over the breasts and palmed the tips gently until she felt them grow moist and burning.
Her hands moved downward, over the tiny waist to the flat belly. She massaged the belly for a long time, moving farther downward slowly to the trembling mound beneath it. And then her fingers were nearing their target, the tips becoming slippery with the dew of passion they found there. They caught the tiny polyp of flesh awaiting them and stroking it.
Dr. Golden moaned aloud. Her body grew suddenly rigid and arched up from the table like a bowstring. Her hand grabbed Karen’s wrist and directed Karen’s hand as the fulcrum of her body pressed down to meet it. And then she gave a long, low cry of triumph aloud as he body was shaken by spasm after spasm of joyous release.
Karen was with her, but as the tremors subsided, the masseuse became aware that the ring Dr. Golden was wearing was cutting into the back of her hand. It must have been turned around in Dr. Golden’s eagerness as she grabbed at Karen’s wrist before. Karen reached down with her other hand to twist it back.
The sight of the ring made her catch her breath. It was a large ruby, deep-red and flawless. Karen had some knowledge of jewelry, and she judged that it must worth at least ten thousand dollars. Possibly more, considering the gold setting and the eight tiny emeralds surroundings it. Karen had never seen anything like it before. It was perhaps at that very moment, with her very first look at it, that Karen decided she must have that ring. And the decision grew to an obsession with her.
She found out Dr. Golden’s name and address by checking the records kept by the massage parlor. She waited almost four months—the obsession growing stronger all the time—before she did anything with this knowledge. Then she dressed in a tailored suit, changed her hair-style, put on glasses and heavy make-up, and went to consult the psychologist. As she had hoped, Dr. Golden didn’t recognize her.
Karen had made up her mind to steal the ring. Becoming a patient of Dr. Golden’s seemed the simplest way to case the analyst’s apartment in order to plan the theft. She told the doctor she was a Lesbian — which was true enough – and Dr. Golden never had the vaguest notion of Karen’s real reason for coming to her for treatment.
After a few visits, Karen had admired the ring, commented on its value, and asked Dr. Golden if the idea of its being stolen didn't make her nervous.
“Not at all,” Dr. Golden had told her innocently. “At night, when I take it off, I simply lock it up here with the fees I’ve taken in during the day.” She’d taken a strongbox out of her desk and shown it to Karen. “I keep the key well hidden,” she’d added with a laugh.