Free Hard Cash by Max Allan Collins Page B

state boards (the fix had to be in for Claire to pass, the stupid bitch) Claire’s rich old man had given her the beauty shop in West Liberty (which was a small town midway between Iowa City and Port City) as a graduation present And Claire had invited Julie along.
    And Julie had gone, figuring it would do till something better came her way.
    Like a George Rigley.
    She’d known it would only be a matter of time before a George Rigley entered her life. A wealthy, my-wife-doesn’t-understand-me type who wanted some nice, young, sympathetic snatch. And she was eager to fill that role . . . until the time came when she could take over the wife’s role, and step into the plush, easy life hard cash could bring.
    But it had taken her longer than she’d thought: her small-town location limited her prospects, and the two men who preceded Rigley as her benefactors (an attorney from Iowa City and a doctor in West Liberty) had not proven the long-term meal ticket she’d hoped.
    Then, finally, three years ago last summer, she met him. She’d been on the prowl, sitting at the bar in that new place in Iowa City, the Pier, wearing as little as possible—baby-blue flimsy halter and short shorts. George Rigley, sitting a stool or two away, asked her if he could buy her a drink; she’d said he could, and it went on from there. He was at first as smooth and superficial as he no doubt was when he was sitting behind his desk at his bank. But later, after they’d taken a table off in a properly dark and secluded corner, he’d blurted out, “Listen, I’m nervous as hell. I mean, I’m new at this, and you’ll have to forgive me if it shows.”
    She’d given him a coy smile and said, “New at what? Forgive you if what shows?”
    “What I’m saying is it’s been a long time since I’ve tried to make conversation with a pretty girl.”
    “Don’t you mean it’s been a long time since you tried to make a pretty girl, period?”
    And he’d grinned. An honest and shy sort of grin that had been her first peek behind his executive mask. Her first peek at the insecure child lurking behind his plastic, practiced pose. And a child needs a mother. And a mother can manipulate a child into doing most anything, if a mother is ballsy enough. . . .
    So she had listened patiently to the story of Rigley and his wife, and of his recently dissolved affair with a friend’s wife (though she guessed there’d been several of those over the years) and of the unhappiness he was experiencing as he sank deeper into middle age, most of it because of a marriage that had been a good one once but now was stagnant, without even the usual children to hold it together. It wasn’t a new story, or even a very interesting one, but she wasn’t looking for a new and interesting story—just one with money in it.
    And money had come her way during her three years plus as George’s secret little girl friend. He provided the cottage (which was, of course, more a house than cottage), and though on paper she paid him rent it was more the other way around. She continued to work with Claire at the beauty shop in nearby West Liberty but only to keep appearances up, only until she could step completely into the wife’s role and trade in the cottage, nice as it was, for a hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar home the likes of the one the present Mrs. Rigley was using to do her drinking in.
    Julie would have it all, if George held up through the strain of the days ahead.
    Well , she thought, rinsing her hair tinder the cold rush of water from the tub’s faucet, I’ll just have to see to it he does.
    Because she was not about to spend her life a damn kitchen slave like her mother, or as a lousy shitty working girl slaving her ass off over fat old ladies and their thin gray hair, no goddamn way in hell. She’d have a life worth the living or not at all. A life with money in it. A life that would be one long, luxurious bath.
    She stepped out of the tub, then stroked her body