Jelly Bean Theif

*Author's Note: Any and all persons engaging in any sexual activity are at least 18 years of age.

Chapter 1

Construction of the St. Elizabeth Parish Trauma Center began in the spring of 2012 and revived the stagnant economy of DeGarde, Bender, Baylor Lake, Kimble, and Flowers Louisiana. Restaurants now served hungry construction workers and crews that delivered materials to the construction site. Bars served drinks to thirsty men that had labored in the unbearable humidity of Louisiana's spring and summer. Apartments that had stood vacant for months were suddenly in high demand.

Ryan Scott Thibodeaux had seen the handwriting on the wall when First Union Bank had made the decision to bankroll the construction of the Trauma Center. The lowly bank teller went to his mother, Sylvia Ethel Morgenstien Rowenski Thibodeaux Richards Robertson Duplantis Smith and asked her to bankroll his venture. She did, at fifteen percent interest, and Ryan immediately began buying up rental properties in the greater DeGarde area.

The money was slow to trickle in; the ground for the Trauma Center had not been broken yet. Sylvia was an impatient woman, even with her only child, and Ryan had to continue to work at the First Union Bank just to pay his mother the interest of her loan. Slowly, steadily, though, the investment began to pay off and Ryan was finally able to pay his mother and quit his job.

"It's about time," Sylvia grumbled as Ryan handed her the final check. "Now, what about the money for your college, huh?"

"Oh, you mean, the college my FATHER paid for?" Ryan smiled.

She did not like Ryan's response. Nor did she like that Ryan had written 'Paid in Full' in the memo line of the check.

"Well, the next time you get some hair-brained 'get-rich-quick' scheme, why don't you just see what your father can do for you, huh?" Sylvia sneered.

"I would, but he's kind of tapped out right now, you know, with his wife Jasmine and their three kids?" Ryan smiled.

"Just do not see what a fifty one year old man sees in a twenty four year old girl; she's just a child, for God's sake," Sylvia complained.

"Oh, I'm sure he sees a lot of himself in her," Ryan glibly commented.

Sylvia pursed her lips tightly; she could now add Ryan to the long list of men that she no longer controlled. She had done a great job on him for the first eighteen years of his life. By the time her son graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas High School, he had been a spineless blob of pimples, bad hair, and sweaty blubber. He had been nearly a mirror image of his father; how on earth Scott David Thibodeaux had even managed to impregnate her was still a mystery to Sylvia. Three years later when the twenty three year old woman divorced the twenty seven year old Scott, she had managed to siphon off all of his money and most of his soul.

Her hold on the son's soul was lost the minute he plopped down on the Greyhound bus seat, headed for Ruston, Louisiana, Louisiana Tech, and freedom from his mother's tyranny.

Ryan lumbered into his Louisiana Tech dorm room and smiled shyly at Trent Browning, his roommate.

"Aw, no, no, man, we ain't having this shit," Trent smiled and got off his bed. "Come on dude!"

Trent forced the heavily perspiring eighteen year old to walk with him through a maze of streets until they stood in front of an old fashioned barber shop on the corner of Mississippi and Bonner.

"Man, just buzz him, huh?" Trent smiled.

"What?" Ryan complained. "I don't want..."

"Don't worry, dude, it'll grow on you," Trent laughed and rubbed his own closely cropped hair. "See?"

"Next thing we got to do, dude, is get you eating better, huh?" Trent smiled as he led Ryan back to their dormitory. "What? I bet you can do what? A large Supreme? All by yourself?"

"It's um, it's genetics, man," Ryan defended.

"The first two hundred pounds, maybe," Trent disagreed. "The last two hundred? That's all on you, dude."

"I don't weigh..." Ryan yelled.

"Not yet," Trent said. "Keep this shit up? You'll get there."

Trent Browning was the best friend Ryan could have ever had; he bullied the spineless boy into an exercise regiment, healthier choices in eating, and better grooming habits. He also got Ryan laid.

"Hey, Ryan Scott Thibodeaux!" Trent yelled, barging into their dorm room, two giggling red heads in tow.

"What?" a startled Ryan yelled, Algebra textbook sliding and slamming onto the floor.

"I ran into Trixie One and Trixie Two in the cafeteria..." Trent smiled.

"Shut up!" one red head yelled, giggling. "I told you! I'm Marsha O'Neil!"

"Yeah!" the other red head giggled, slapping Trent's arm. "And my name's Paula Frentz!"

"And I told Trixie Two here," Trent said, pointing to Marsha. "That you've always wanted to eat you some red headed pussy."

"Do what?" Ryan gasped, stunned.

"Later," Trent said, grabbing Paula and backing out of the room.

"I um, look, um, we don't, I mean, you don't have to..." Ryan stammered as Marsha stood, still giggling.

"Really? That guy, um, Trent? He said you was this really sweet guy and just needed someone show you how to eat a girl out," Marsha said, unzipping her skintight jeans.

By the time Trent returned to the room, Marsha had taught Ryan well and had taken three loads of Ryan's sperm in her well-tongued pussy. Marsha had no qualms about getting out of bed nude and wiggling her bone-thin legs and flat backside back into her jeans right in front of Trent.

"Dude, I'm in love," Ryan weakly mumbled from his bed.

"What? With that?" Trent laughed. "Girl that'll fuck you ten seconds after you say 'hi' to her? Fuck, man better not be! I'll have to kick your ass."

After their first semester, Trent Allen Browning was on Academic Probation; his GPA was 1.5. He did not even complete the second semester; withdrawing after mid-term exams was completed.

"Told my old man," Trent had smiled and shrugged. "Fuck; hate school, man."

"So what are you going to do?" a tearful Ryan asked.

"What I wanted to do in the first place," Trent smiled. "Work on the oil-field in Alaska. Fuck, man, twenty five, thirty an hour? Tell me where you going to get that kind of money, huh?"

A year after starting at Louisiana Tech, Ryan looked up as a nervous Herman Rittmuller shuffled into the room.

"First semester here?" Ryan asked, pointing to the bed up against the wall. "This is my third."

He helped the fat, pimple faced kid get his things put away, slapped the kid on the shoulder and left the room.

Ryan walked out of the dormitory and immediately spotted them; two young girls, looking around in wide-eyed awe, and giggling excitedly to each other.

Trixie! How you doing?" he asked, walking up to them.

"Huh? No, no, I'm Bitina!" one girl protested.

"Yeah, I'm Holly!" the other chimed in.

"Hey, Herman Rittmuller!" Ryan yelled, leading the two giggling girls behind him. "This is Trixie One and Trixie Two and I told them you are ..."

Chapter 2

Alida Betsingal sullenly dropped her husband's books into the cardboard box. The four foot, three inch tall girl was not happy and each movement let her husband, Dr. Carl Betsingal know just how unhappy she was.

Normally, her caramel colored skin shone with happiness and health but was mottled with anger at present. With frustration, she swept her long black hair out of her eyes and grabbed some more of his books off of the shelf and dropped them into the box.

"Don't load them up too much; they'll be too heavy to lift," Carl cautioned her.

"Fuck you! All right? Fuck you! Pack them yourself I'm not doing it right, all right?" Alida screamed and stomped away.

Carl sighed; his wife had not been happy from the moment he told her that he had accepted a residency at St. Elizabeth Trauma Center; which meant that they would be moving back to their hometown of Bender, Louisiana. She had been delighted when they had moved to New Orleans and shed no tears in leaving the trailer she and her father and brother shared. In the four years they'd lived in New Orleans, she thrived in being the wife of a medical student, thrived in steeping herself in the culture that is New Orleans.

Whenever they did travel back to Bender, to visit Carl's parents, A; Alida would sit and sulk, not endearing herself any to John and Corrine Betsingal. They had not wanted their only child to marry the half African-American girl anyway.

"Damn, boy, fuck the little black midget if you have to, but why marry her, huh?" John had asked his son.

"She's only half..." Carl protested.

"Oh, I'm sure you think you love her," Corrine sniffed. "But really? Honey, you can do so much better, don't you think?"

No, Carl didn't want to do better than Alida Irvine; he had been smitten with the tiny girl the first time he laid eyes on her. The thirteen year old girl had walked into the hallway of St. Thomas Aquinas, clutching the hand of her big sister, Pamela Ham Broussard and the seventeen year old Carl was love struck.

"And when I was here," Pam rattled on, not noticing that Alida wasn't listening.

Alida smiled shyly at the pudgy blonde boy with the coke bottle glasses and giggled as he turned a hundred shades of red.

"Come on; let's see if Brother Dominick's in; you're going to love him," Pam went on, dragging Alida to the office.

Pam, one third owner of Shapes Fitness and Wellness Center in Bender, paid the tuition for her half-sister to go to St. Thomas. Pam also brought all of Alida's uniforms to Miss Bobbi so that Miss Bobbi could alter the girl's uniforms it was also Pam that bought the material and Miss Bobbi that sewed Alida's prom gowns for each prom that she and Carl attended.

And it had been Miss Bobbi that had made Alida's wedding dress when she and Carl married.

From the moment she said 'I do,' Alida had thrilled at the idea of moving to New Orleans with her husband. Finally, finally, she would be out of the one-horse town, out from under the stigma of having a prostitute mother and a meth head father, out from under the shame of having a midget for a mother and an African-American for a father. She loved her sister, Pam, but was content to limit their conversations to the sporadic phone calls and the occasional card in the mail.

In New Orleans, most people just assumed that she was Latin, attributing both her coloring and her height to that trait. She spoke Spanish well enough to fool even the Latin community of New Orleans.

And now, four years later, her husband was making them move right back to the one place she hoped she would never have to see again.

"Come on," Carl demanded from the doorway of their small bedroom. "No time for you just sitting around; they'll be here to morrow to get all this stuff."

"Go away, ass hole," she spat at him.

Carl just sighed heavily, grabbed another box and hurried back to the cramped living room.

"Well, if you're not going to pack, could you please make something? I'm starving to death here," he asked.

"Eat shit, fucker," she yelled.

"Okay, that's me taken care of," Carl yelled back. "What you eating?"

"Not funny," Alida yelled.

Carl worked frantically through the night and managed, without his wife's help, to pack the entire apartment in time for the eight o'clock scheduled pick up.

"What'm I supposed to wear?" Alida asked, not finding any clothes in the chest of drawers.

"If you had wanted any clothes for today, you should have left them out," Carl snapped at her, exhausted from so much strenuous work and not enough sleep.

"You even packed the cereal?" Alida asked, seeing that the pantry was bare.

"Yes Alida, we're moving Alida, people pack everything Alida, I told you that Alida," Carl sapped. "If you hadn't been so busy sitting on your ass and pouting you could have left that out. But no! Sitting and sulking like a little bitch was much more important."

"Fuck you, stupid mother fucker," Alida screamed.

Any further argument was stymied by a firm knock on the apartment door.

"Doctor Betsingal?" a hulking man asked. "We're from A One Movers."

"Wow, you actually said it right," Carl smiled tiredly. "Betsingal."

"Yeah, my momma grew up next door to a Ben Betsingal," the man smiled.

"No kidding? In Jackson, right?" Carl asked. "That's my uncle. Well, really, my dad's uncle but you know..."

Small world ain't it?" the man smiled, looking at the mountain of boxes. "All of this going?"

"Yep, all of it," Carl said.

"And we're going to..." the man said, looking at his clipboard.

"Bender, got it in the G.P.S. already," another hulking man said. "Apartment Two C."

"Let me guess, "The first man laughed. "It's on the second floor."

"I really wouldn't know," Carl said. "I rented it off the web site.

"Naw, man, my back's been acting up," the man smiled, already grabbing a large box. "Whenever it starts acting up, I know we're going to be going up and down a lot of steps, man."

Apartment Two C was not on the second floor of the apartment complex; it was a two bedroom apartment in the rear of the building. Apartments two A and Two B faced Highway 52, as did Apartments Two D and Two E, the unit's one bedroom apartments.

"You even packed the toothpaste?" Alida screamed from the bathroom.

The two hulking men laughed and Carl smiled.

Chapter 3

Ryan got out of the pool and smiled as Heather St. Martin made a production out of applying more sun block to her pale skin. The fluorescent green bikini covered nothing and he did enjoy the show.

The rental agent lived with her seven year old daughter in Apartment four F, the two bedroom apartment in the rear of the complex.

"We got someone moving in Two C?" Ryan asked.

Heather smiled, flinging her long red hair out of her eyes. She sat up, making sure to thrust her silicone enhanced breasts even further.

"Yes, some Doctor, oh, what was his name? Funny name starts with a B, Ben Winger or something like that. Him and his wife; she's got a funny name too. I'd have to look at again," Heather said, making a show of licking the sweat from her upper lip.

He did not tell her, but he already knew it was Dr. Carl Betsingal and his wife, Alida moving into the unit.

He wondered briefly if Carl was still an arrogant prick and if Alida was still as cute as she'd been in St. Thomas Aquinas.

Heather looked over her shoulder at Apartment Two C; the two maids were hard at work, cleaning the unit.

"Um, your boss know you spend most of your time out here by the pool?" Ryan asked.

"Forwarded the phone to my cell," Heather giggled. "Too pretty to be cramped up in the office."

None of the tenants of the complex knew that Ryan Thibodeaux was the landlord. None of the tenants of any of his rental properties knew that he was the landlord. Right before Sylvia divorced Ray Smith, his step-father had helped him set up a Limited Liability Corporation.

Sylvia was livid when she filed for divorce from Ray, only to find out that the millionaire actually owned nothing. Everything was in his LLC and the LLC had been set up years earlier. His annual salary was one dollar so for the two years that Sylvia had allowed Ray Smith access to her pussy she was awarded half of his annual salary.

"Here you go; don't spend it all in one place," Ray laughed, sliding the check over to her.

Kenneth Prejean, Sylvia's attorney, actually threw up.

Ryan began to gather his things from the chaise lounge next to Heather.

"Where you going?" Heather pouted, spreading her thighs wider for his benefit.

"Work," Ryan smiled, putting on his sunglasses. "Unlike you, my boss doesn't let me just sit out at the pool, looking good."

Heather watched the tall, muscular young man walk down the path toward his apartment.

"Must be a fruit loop," she finally shrugged.

Heather had flirted with him when he moved into the complex, even stopped by to see how he was getting along. Once, slightly tipsy from half a bottle of tequila and buzzing quite nicely from a killer joint, she'd told him that her daughter was with her grandmother and she was afraid to be in that big old apartment, all by herself. But Ryan had merely smiled and suggested she might want to get a dog.

Ryan just was not interested in picking up whatever diseases such a promiscuous woman would be packing. Her ridiculously large breasts were also quite a turn-off as well.

Ryan let himself into Apartment Two B and shivered in the cold air-conditioning. A hot shower quickly remedied that and he padded, nude to his computer desk and sat down.

He had not lied to Heather; he was working. First he shot an e-mail to Anita Sanchez, the secretary of his LLC office to have a little talk with Heather St. Martin about just sitting out at the pool, instead of monitoring the rental office. Then he logged on to the local real estate listings. Mrs. Carmen Davis had a cute little duplex listed but the asking price was one hundred nineteen. Not even a year earlier, the same duplex owner would have considered sixty thousand a real windfall.

Ryan picked up his cell phone and called Davis Realty.

"He said one oh five is an insult," Carmen said when she answered the phone.

"It's not an insult; it's a legitimate offer," Ryan spluttered.

The other listings were for single family dwellings, all in the two hundred to three hundred range, so Ryan exited that site and logged onto the local dating site.

There were no new listings and out of the twenty nine females listed in the greater DeGarde area, twelve were over forty years of age. Another six were African-American. Ryan had nothing against dating an African-American but all six clearly stated they were only interested in dating African-American males. Of the remaining eleven, three of the profiles had extremely unattractive photographs with their ads. One admitted that she was still married, although separated at present. Ryan did not need a jealous husband coming to 'chat' with him.

He had dated four of the remaining seven women. The other three had responded politely but firmly to his contact; they were not interested in him, based on what his profile said.

Outside, Heather sullenly gathered her things, glaring at the two maids as they finished cleaning Apartment Two C. She wondered which one of them had called Anita and tattled on her.

Heather unlocked the door of the small office and pulled on her jeans and tee shirt with 'TAB Properties across her ample chest.

Ryan named the LLC after his best friend, Trent Allen Browning. Trent had sent Ryan one postcard, then was knifed to death when a fellow oilfield worker took offence to Trent picking up his 'Trixie.'

Ryan watched the arrival of the A One moving van, saw the two large African-American males lumber out and hoped that Heather was now in her office.

He continued to watch, but there was no sign of Alida or her husband, Carl.

Just outside of Baton Rouge, Alida was complaining bitterly.

"Burger King?" she shrilled.

"You rather Wendy's?" Carl asked "Oh, there's a Taco Bell; how about Taco Bell?"

"And there's a Cracker Barrel right there; what's wrong with that?" Alida yelled.

"You going to eat Cracker Barrel in the car?" Carl asked.

"No. I'm going to get out, sit my ass down and actually enjoy my food," Alida grumbled. "Bad enough you made me eat that Popeye's crap for breakfast."

"What? I like Popeye's," Carl said.

"Makes one of us," Alida said.

Heather showed the two hired movers the apartment, and two hours later showed it to Carl and Alida Betsingal. She won no points with Carl for butchering his last name and won no points with Alida for flirting with Carl.

"Pool looks nice," Carl commented to Alida when the door of the apartment closed behind the two movers.

"Uh huh," was Alida's response.

He grunted and groaned, trying to wrestle a bookcase over to a wall.