Cherry Two

Prologue Two

Prologue part 2

Wallace Ward parked his motor scooter at the curb and looked at the row of pebbledash semis. It turned out Codger's memory only went as far as the street name, not the number, but he'd described the Egham house in sufficient detail for Ward to find it, even though there was no gold American convertible car in evidence on the street as expected. Very few of these budget semis had any form of garage space.

With camera in hand, he opened the swing gate, walked up the short path and pressed the doorbell. The untended front garden looked like it hadn't seen Codger's care in quite a while.

No answer.

Ward tried again. Still nothing. His attention turned to the front bay window, but the flimsy lace curtains revealed no trace of movement from within.

Not home, he mused, a fact blatantly underscored by the absence of her car. But then there remained the slight possibility they were outside in the back yard.

An unlatched side gate led to a narrow concrete pathway between the houses. A few feet along the entry he thought he heard the murmur of voices. Not his imagination. Fresh-smelling grass cuttings were piled beside an old Qualcast push mower at the back corner of the house near a drain as if the gardener had run out of bin bags.

He could hear the voices clearer now. Young voices—the female one giggling away at something Ward couldn't see. Ward cautiously inched to the corner of the house and took a peek into the back yard.

A pair of deckchairs, positioned for best sun exposure, occupied the center section of a weedy lawn. Both occupants had their backs to him and seemed to be engaged in some sort of activity that triggered bouts of giggling from the girl. A blue bathrobe, draped over the end of the girl's chair, obscured most of Ward's view, but he could glimpse a delightful bare hip, leg and foot that seemed to be covered in sun oil. She'd be wearing a swimsuit or something similar.

Ward checked himself and flopped from sight with his back against the pebbly side entry wall. What am I doing—turning into a peeping Tom? He took deep breaths and tried to calm down. He came here to meet the girl, so why not get on with it instead of skulking around like a pervert?

As he turned again to boldly enter the back yard, the next event took Ward fully by surprise.

The girl stood up and started to wrestle a bottle of suntan lotion from the boy, who tried to squirt it at her face. The expected swimsuit didn't exist. Naked and slick, she embodied every fine quality he'd ever seen in the best of Radigan Clark's work and then some—a glamour photographer's ultimate dream model.

As the pair horsed around, oblivious to Ward's presence, it struck home how utterly uninhibited this girl seemed. The garden, lit by high sun, virtually ringed by two-story homes, could be overlooked from any angle. Yet it hardly seemed a concern as she dragged the boy to his feet by the wrists and tried to rive the plastic bottle from his determined grip.

Again Ward flopped back and wiped a hand over his sweating face. This cowardly reticence wasn't like him at all. But in fairness he'd suddenly been confronted by his wildest fantasy girl in the raw, something even Ward's overactive imagination had failed to conjure in detail. Not only that, she didn't seem to care who oversaw her antics and naked charms—an abandoned quality perfectly in line with everything he needed in a female model. After years of searching, here she was, mere feet away, being sprayed by a randy schoolboy in a pair of baggy undershorts. Had the fat cow in the pub said they were cousins? Just what was going on here?