It was not unusual for Milt Wilson to come home for lunch. While some people might grab a sub to eat, and Milt liked subs, sometimes he couldn’t stand the thought of eating another one. He was home one day in early March, to find Maxine immersed as always in the plans for her daughter’s wedding.

“How’s your day been going?” he asked.

“They don’t make the lace pattern I really want anymore,” she replied. “I’ve spent all morning online looking for a substitute.”

“You’ll find something, I’m sure.”

It sure will be nice to have that over with, he thought. It used to be when I made a quick trip home for lunch there’d be a nooner involved, but not with her obsessing about the wedding. Maybe after it’s done things can get back to normal, except for paying for the thing. The numbers kept going up and up and the wedding was three months away. Was there no end in sight?

“Oh, I’m sure I will. It’s just going to take keeping after it.”

“Have you heard anything from Petra?”

“No, all I know is that she and Barry are leaving in the morning. I suppose they’ll be having a good time. We know what that’s like, don’t we?”

“We sure do,” he laughed, thinking that those kinds of good times had been pretty sparse recently, but he understood why and figured he could wait it out.

“So has anything been happening with you?”

“Nothing major. You knew the old drive-in next to the River Street store got sold, didn’t you?”

“You mentioned something about it. I sure hope the new owners are going to fix it up. It’s such an eyesore.”

“I haven’t been over there for a few days, but I saw some guys working so I thought I’d stick my nose in and see what’s going on,” he explained. “One of the guys said that he didn’t know for sure, but he thought it might be a drive-up espresso and bagel shop. That took a load off my mind. That’ll be mostly morning business, not lunch and evening business.”

“I suppose it could be something worse,” she smiled.

“Yeah, lots worse. I can live with having to compete with espresso and bagels. What’s for lunch?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it. I suppose I could throw something together. Is there anything you’d like?”

“Something besides a sub, that’s for sure.”

“I could put together some chili dogs fairly quickly. We haven’t had those for a while and I think I’m in the mood for one.”

“That sounds good to me.”

Tammy looked out the window of the taxi at the scene in the Florida resort community. She had been there before on spring break, but that was for fun. This was business. Getting this far had taken more worming of information out of Keller’s roomie than she would have liked, but she was pretty sure it was going to work.

“Boy, look at all the kids,” her friend Shalleen Padilla said from the seat beside her.

“Most of them are out for beer and the guys are looking for whatever girls they can find who will give it away,” Tammy shrugged. “That means that the girls who do are pretty busy.”

“I guess if they like to give it away, more power to them,” Shalleen smiled. “They don’t realize what they could be getting.”

Tammy looked over at her friend, who was by anyone’s judgment an extremely good-looking young woman. In fact, she just about breathed sex appeal normally, and even more so when she was trying. Tammy thought of herself as being better than average looking, but she couldn’t hold a candle to her friend on the best day she ever had. “You’re right on that. Just remember, we’re here for one reason only. If we can manage what I need to get, maybe we can go out drinking and have some fun, too.”

“Not that kind of fun, I think, since it’s mostly just college boys with not much money,” Shalleen replied, and shook her head. “Boy, I still can’t get over how you don’t look like you.”

“I can’t look like me, not for this,” Tammy explained. Although she was wearing a black long-haired wig, she had dyed her short hair black just in case she needed it. In addition, she’d done a few things with her makeup to change her appearance, and was wearing mirror sunglasses and a floppy white hat. “I don’t really know our target or his girlfriend that well, but they would recognize me if they saw me. The best I can do is make myself look like someone who resembles me, and I’m going to try and stay out of their sight as much as I can. That means that you’re going to have to do the work.”

“That ought to be easy, if you can point him out and take care of the girlfriend.”

“I always figured that would be the tough part. At least we know what hotel and room they’re in, but if they’re out drinking or partying somewhere we’re just going to have to find them. It doesn’t have to be done this afternoon. We can take several days if we need to, but I’d like to get it done so we can spend the rest of the time having fun ourselves.”

“That’s going to have to be your end of the problem. I mean, I’ve seen the pictures you have of these two, but sometimes pictures don’t match up to real life.”

“Well, about all we can do is get to our hotel room and get dressed for action, then get to it.”

It took a while to get up to their room, out of their travel clothes and into the characters they’d assumed. Tammy put on a pair of ugly-colored fairly loose shorts that most girls on spring break would consider much too long, and a simple cotton blouse over a heavy sports bra that flattened her moderate chest, although she stayed with the hat and sunglasses.

Tammy’s intent was to look like a frumpy and innocuous sidekick next to her glamorous friend, who pulled on a miniskirt that would have been pushing the limits of illegal in most jurisdictions, and a short crop top that bared her waist and emphasized her already largish breasts. She brushed out her hair, sharpened up her makeup, and most importantly, put on an attitude of a girl who knew what she wanted and knew how to get it. Walking into a room and making most male eyes present pop out of their sockets was something she had learned from her mother and her grandmother before her, and she’d learned her lessons well.

“All right,” Shalleen said as she finished up. “That ought to do for this bunch of kids. Let’s go hunting.”

There had been absolutely no hope of getting a room in the hotel where Barry and Petra were staying, and it was far from the most expensive beachside place. With a little manipulation of some of her father’s contacts, Tammy had managed to get a much more expensive reservation for a room in the hotel next door. They took an elevator to the ground floor, walked next door, and started to keep their eyes open.

Needless to say, Shalleen caught the eyes of just about every male they passed, and a number of them tried to get her attention, even some a little rudely. However, she was so aloof and seemingly unapproachable that most of those looking realized that, while it was nice to dream of a woman like her, she was so far out of reach as to be untouchable. Only the drunkest of the gathered college boys didn’t get that message, and she easily brushed them off. Even after she left a room, she left an aura behind her that said that they had been in the presence of unattainable perfection, someone who most men could only dream about.

It took over an hour before the two girls found Barry and Petra, sitting on lounges along the edge of the beach, wearing swimsuits – barely wearing, in her case. Tammy picked them out at a distance with ease. “That’s them,” she whispered to her friend.

“Where?”

“Over in the loungers next to the walkway. She’s got on that trashy red excuse for a bikini.”

“He’s got the purple board shorts, right?”

“Right. Let’s go introduce ourselves.”

The two of them casually walked closer, until Tammy said in an uncharacteristically whiny voice – another talent she’d worked on – “Hey, stop for a minute. I’ve got something in my shoe.” Without waiting for a reply, she stopped, and bent up one leg to reach her shoe, while Shalleen walked onward.

She came to a stop right in front of Barry and Petra, and turned to her friend to say, “Hey, are you coming, or what?”

“I’ll be along in a minute,” she replied, turning so that the two in the lounge chairs couldn’t get a good look at her. “I said I’ve got something in my shoe.”

“Well, hurry up.” She turned to Barry and Petra and said, “Hey, don’t I know you two? Do you go to Western Kentucky?”

“No, I’m afraid we don’t,” Petra replied pleasantly. It appeared to Shalleen that Barry was incapable of speech.

“Oh, well, sorry,” she said, vamping a little for Barry just to get his attention while making it look casual. “You look like someone I know, I guess. Are you down here for the week?”

“Yes,” Petra replied, then added defensively, “It’s sort of a pre-honeymoon.”

“Oh, you’re getting married? That’s nice. I hope you have a wonderful time.” She continued with that kind of discussion for three or four more exchanges, with the intention of having the two fix her firmly in their minds – especially in Barry’s.

Finally, she shook her head and said, “I guess I’d better go see what’s keeping her. I hope I see you around again.”

“Yeah,” Barry replied almost breathlessly. “I hope we’ll see you again.” There was no doubt in Shalleen’s mind that he really hoped he did, fiancée sitting next to him or not – which was exactly the impression she wanted to make.

Shalleen walked back up to where Tammy was waiting, and bent over to whisper while Tammy retied her shoe. “Just like we planned,” she said. “I think I got his attention.”

“Looked like it to me, too, from what I could see,” Tammy agreed. “They look like they’re going to be around there most of the afternoon. Let’s get on swimsuits and hit them again in an hour or so.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Somewhat later they made another similar contact with Barry and Petra. This time Tammy had on a nondescript conservative skirted bikini, while Shalleen had on a one-piece that somehow managed to look absolutely radical on her body even though the swimsuit actually covered more than the one Tammy wore. There was no doubt which one of them was the more spectacular looking, and it wasn’t Tammy. This time Tammy spent her time getting a crushed-ice drink at some distance, while Shalleen drew Barry and Petra’s attention – especially Barry’s.

Later that afternoon they made yet another such contact, again wearing swimsuits, then again at dinner when they were back to the clothing they’d worn earlier. This time, with the light in the dining room on the low side helping Tammy’s disguise, they both actually talked a little bit, although Shalleen took the lead. “Hey, good meeting you guys,” Tammy squeaked at the end. “Maybe we’ll see you at breakfast. We’ll be down about eight if you’d like to join us.”

“I’d like that,” Barry replied, although she could tell he was more interested in Shalleen. Just about busting his shorts interested, in fact, which was what they had intended.

After they got away from the two, Shalleen whispered to Tammy, “I think we got the message across.”

“I think so too. Now, if we can just get them to go to breakfast with us.”

“I think he’ll manage that, even if he has to leave her in their room.”

“It would be nice if it worked out that way, but we probably won’t get that lucky. Everything has gone pretty well this far, so you have to expect that something will go wrong.”

“Yes, but he’s so ready to rumble it isn’t funny,” Shalleen laughed, louder now since they were out of Barry and Petra’s hearing. “I’ll bet she has a long night with a lot of hard.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest, and it looks to me like that’s what she wants anyway.”

The next morning they did indeed catch Barry and Petra at breakfast. They didn’t eat with their targets since there was too much risk that the two would see through Tammy’s disguise, but they had to take some risk for a minute or two.

Once again, they stopped by Barry and Petra’s table for a few minutes’ worth of light conversation. The four were getting friendlier now. The key moment came when Shalleen gasped, “Look, isn’t that Britney Spears?”

“Where?” Barry asked.

“Over by the door,” Shalleen said, sounding as awed as she made most men feel.

Needless to say both Barry and Petra looked away from the table – just long enough for Tammy to drop a small amount of powder into Petra’s orange juice. It wasn’t anything outrageous, just a carefully selected dose of an over-the-counter sleep aid, but there was plenty there and Tammy figured it would do the job. The move came off to perfection, mostly because she’d practiced it repeatedly – being a stage magician was a hobby, and she could be a card sharp if she wanted to be.

“I don’t think it is,” Barry said after a moment. “It sure looks like her, though.”

“Too bad,” Shalleen smiled. “It would have been fun to meet her. Hey, we’ll see you guys around. Have a relaxing morning.”

“Yeah, you too,” Petra replied. “See you around.”

As soon as they were out of the restaurant, Tammy turned to Shalleen and smiled, “All right, here we go. Like Sherlock Holmes used to say, ‘the game’s afoot.’”

They hustled up to their room, where Tammy changed into a much more noticeable outfit than she had been wearing up until now, which included a heavily padded bra. She changed into a blonde wig, lost the hat and sunglasses, and changed her makeup around all in the matter of a couple of minutes. She did not look anything like she’d looked up until now, and that was what she was working on. If she’d been able to bring someone else with her, she’d have passed this part of the job on to them just for safety’s sake, although there was no reason she couldn’t get away with it.

As they left their room, Tammy paused for a moment to type a few keys on her laptop, which was open on the desk across the room from Shalleen’s bed. The two of them hustled back down to the other hotel. Shalleen settled into a comfortable chair in the lounge, reading a magazine, While Tammy went into the restaurant, and got a seat at the table near where Barry and Petra were still eating and talking lightly. She just ordered coffee when the waitress came by, and watched her targets out of the corner of her eye.

In only a few minutes, Petra started yawning, and looked a little bleary. Before long she was nodding her head. “God, Barry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said. “I can hardly keep my eyes open. Would you mind if I went back up to the room and laid down for a while?”

“Maybe we overdid it a little last night,” he shook his head. “It might not be a bad idea if you think you need to.”

“Yeah, maybe I better.”

“Do you want me to go with you? I could if you need me to, or maybe I could go look for some souvenirs for my little sister.”

“No, you don’t need to come with me,” Petra protested as she got up from the table. “I’ll be all right. You go have fun.”

Neither of them noticed Tammy, now looking like someone else, pull out her cell phone and hit an autodial number to let Shalleen know that the coast was clear. “All right, Shalleen,” she thought. “It’s up to you now.”

In a minute or so Shalleen walked back into the restaurant and sat down at the table with Barry as Tammy looked on from a short distance away. “Hey, guy,” she said in her sexiest voice. “What happened to your girl?”

“She got tired and wanted to take a nap.”

“Well, that’s kind of nice, isn’t it? I can see you’ve been eyeing me. Would you like to go up to my room in the hotel next door and do something about it? My friend has gone shopping, so we have the time and the place.”

“Y . . . Yeah, for sure,” Barry stammered. Sure he’d been eyeing Shalleen since she first walked into his vision the day before, but he never expected this would happen! She was a walking wet dream, the kind of woman he could never have dreamed of, and now she wanted to get it on! There was no way he could turn it down, even if she might be the capstone to his victory list. “Let’s go do it.”

Within only three or four minutes of Petra leaving, Shalleen and Barry were on their way, while Tammy sat back, drank her coffee, and imagined what was going on.

Shalleen was the most drop-dead gorgeous and sexy woman by a long ways who Tammy knew, but she had reason to be. Although she may have looked like a college student, she was older than that. She in fact took college courses from time to time, but she actually was a call girl, except that she wouldn’t use that term; she preferred “courtesan,” and she was very, very good at it. She was also very, very expensive, and the thousand bucks she’d earn in the next hour or two were well below her normal rates. However, she had agreed that she shouldn’t charge the Meyerson agency’s customer her full rate. A week in Florida away from the winter cold at someone else’s expense wasn’t breaking her heart, either.

In fact, this was a professional courtesy as much as anything. She was very discreet, and worked with only a small handful of carefully vetted customers, usually on recommendation from other established customers. When a new customer came along, it was her practice to have their bona fides checked by the Meyerson agency, which was how Tammy happened to know her in the first place. Tammy also knew that Shalleen was just following along in the tradition established by her mother and her grandmother before her, both of whom had gotten rather rich before retiring, but they’d taught Shalleen just about everything the young woman knew about the business.

Tammy was actually in considerable awe of Shalleen herself. It was not something she would care to do; she’d had a moderate amount of adventure with boyfriends, but there was no way she would want to be that professional about it. Shalleen’s example was part of the reason that Tammy’s father considered her to be something of a cowboy in their investigations. Even with thorough checking out of customers there was always a risk when Shalleen walked into a strange room, and Barry had not been anywhere near as well vetted as her usual clientele.

Within a few minutes Barry and Shalleen were up in her room, and she was giving him the experience of a lifetime. She knew tricks that he hadn’t dreamed of, and she just about turned him every which way but loose. All the while, the camera on the laptop monitor was recording it on a rather large hard drive, while a second micro-camera concealed in the curtains was also noting the activity for posterity, just as a backup.

Shalleen knew everything Tammy knew about why this was happening, and actually thought it was a little amusing. “Since he’s getting screwed in this,” she had laughed, “I’ll make sure he really gets screwed.”

Tammy just sat drinking coffee with the occasional refill, for an hour, then an hour and a half, and then two hours, thinking all the while that the two of them must really be going to town up there. She was actually starting to worry a little as time went on, but mostly worried that her friend would kill her young target from sheer exhaustion, or maybe a heart attack. It was with some relief that her cell phone finally rang. “He’s gone,” Shalleen reported. “That was pretty easy. He’s not anywhere near as good as he thinks he is, but I think I still gave him something to remember.”

“Good enough,” Tammy smiled. “I’ll be right up.” This whole job had gone easier than she’d expected, and pretty well had proved that the young Mr. Keller was as much of a horndog as his reputation had it to be. She didn’t know who her father’s client actually was, but she hoped that he would be satisfied with the evidence that she’d gotten for him. Somehow, she suspected that there would be some interesting times in Keller’s future.

A few minutes later she was back up in their room, which smelled of lots of heavy-duty sex. While Shalleen was taking a shower, Tammy unblanked the laptop screen and checked the huge video file; it was good, and both parties were clearly identifiable. She retrieved the backup camera and loaded the chip into the laptop. The file there was good too, just not quite as clear considering the distance. It would have been adequate if it had been needed.

With that done, she brought up the FTP software and transferred both files to her father’s server, and sent him an e-mail that only read, “Bingo! Got him!” Even with the good connection in the hotel it took a few minutes, which Tammy used to pack up her things. Shalleen came out of the bathroom about that time, and got dressed in somewhat more normal clothes, then started packing up her own luggage. “The tape looked real good,” Tammy reported to her.

“That was actually kind of fun,” Shalleen grinned. “He seems to think of himself as God’s gift to women, and I think I showed him that he isn’t. He was just about crawling when he left. I told him to take a shower, then go take a nap with his girlfriend. He’s going to need it.”

“I wouldn’t expect any less of you,” Tammy said as she finished packing. Now that the deed was done, it was important to clear the area. She’d already made arrangements to swap hotel rooms with some friends she’d attended high school with, so in a little while she and Shalleen would be in a room a couple of miles up the beach where Barry would be unlikely to find them. With this out of the way, she and Shalleen could spend the rest of the week doing normal spring break things like lying out in the sun, playing in the surf, drinking beer, and attending shows and parties. It seemed unlikely that Shalleen would be up for any amateur bed action, but if the right guy came along Tammy might just be interested.

“I sure hope he had a good time,” Tammy laughed. “I think he’s going to have second thoughts about it after a while, but I think he’s going to get his in the end.”

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