Twelve years later:
What Jerome found was a church program. Once he zoomed into the photograph, he could read: Pentecostal Nazarene Church of Cloverleaf.
Jerome looked at a map. Cloverleaf was a small town just east of Houston, Texas. Jerome lived in Little Rock. It was time to make a 440-mile trip.
He parked himself in a rental a half block away from the church on a Sunday morning and using binoculars watched as the congregation's members drove one after the other into the parking lot.
When he spotted Delicia's SUV, his cock got hard and grunted, "Gotcha!"
Out of the vehicle she came, dressed in a grey and black striped dress. It fit her tight. The hem was three inches above her knee and the top generously showed cleavage and a gold cross pendant.
Her dark stockings had a sexy thick seam up the back and she wore black spike heels. She had not lied about how she dressed to church. Jerome was a little surprised.
Her two daughters and her son came out next and they walked together into the church. Jerome waited, and after all the people were inside and the parking lot was empty, he got out and walked to her SUV.
Using a jimmy, he opened the front passenger door and carefully went through the glove box. He found her insurance papers and the address to her home: 15844 Lighthouse Point Road.
He looked in the console compartment and found a telephone bill and a paycheck stud. He was giddy with excitement. He knew where she lived, where she worked, he had a way to call her house phone.
Now if only he could find Humberto. He walked through the parking lot and spotted a Dodge Ram king cab truck. It was dusty and scratched up, clearly a construction worker's truck. He walked between the vehicles and spotted the lettering on its side: Menchaca Concrete Forming.
Jerome took down the phone number, confident that he had an ally.
Four hours later, Jerome called Humberto.
"Mr. Menchaca?"
Yes.
"You don't know me, but we have a mutual interest in Delicia Sanchez."
There was silence. Then a cautious Humberto said, 'I don't know what you are talking about, but I have no interest in Mrs. Sanchez.'
"Oh, I think you do. You spent two years fucking her like a whore."
'Mr. Sanchez, I assure you, I don't know what you have heard but this is a lie!'
"Ha, ha haaaa! This is not her husband. Mr. Menchaca, we need to speak. I have a lot of information about what Delicia has been up to lately, information of a sexual nature. Very explicit sexual details about things she has been doing behind her husband's back. Mr. Menchaca, I need to ask you. How would you like to fuck her again? And I don't mean to be asking if you want to fuck her again.
"I mean how? You see, I want to turn her into a prostitute. And with what I have and what I know about her, I can do it. But it would be easier with your help. Will you help me?"
There was a pause, then Humberto cleared his throat, "Where do you want to meet?"
* * * * * * * * * *
The following morning, after his talk with Humberto, Jerome walked in to the grocery where Delicia worked. Dressed in a suit and tie, he called on the store manager and introduced himself as a vice unit detective in the city's police department.
He produced a badge and an police department picture ID. He had paid a forger to manufacture authentic looking documents and he easily set aside any thoughts the store manager had about his credentials.
"What can I do for you, Detective Samuels," store manager Tracy Hamm asked, reading off the business card he handed her.
"I have some questions about one of your employees. You have a female subject working here by the name of Delicia Sanchez?"
"Yes, we do. She works in the bakery. Is she in some kind of trouble?" Hamm said.
"We've received a several complaints," Jerome said. "If it were just one complaint, we might not have taken it seriously because it just seemed, well, out of the ordinary for this kind of thing."
"What, what kind of thing?" Hamm asked.
"Some men, three men, have come to us claiming she solicited them from right here in the store. She works a day shift, doesn't she? She gets off work at 3 p.m., would that be correct?" Jerome said.
"Uh, yes. She gets off at 3 p.m. everyday," Hamm said. "Soliciting? What kind of soliciting?"
Jerome reached into a briefcase, opened it and pulled out a yellow envelope. He handed the envelope to Hamm.
She removed the contents and found in her hand a fake rap sheet printout with official law enforcement markings. It described several prostitution convictions dating 10 to 12 years back, before Delicia worked at the grocery.
The rap sheet was paper-clipped to a series of color photographs of a naked Delicia performing sex acts on herself.
"Oh dear! Oh my goodness," Hamm exclaimed.
"I'm sorry, Ms. Hamm. I don't know what your relationship is with her, but as you can see she has a history of prostitution. The complaints involve men that approached the bakery between the hours of 2 to 3 p.m."
"Mrs. Sanchez is alleged to have offered this men oral sex in the parking lot, for specific sums of cash, immediately upon her completing her shift.
"We can't ignore this activity and I wanted to inform you, out of courtesy, that we will be conducting a sting operation. It is difficult to get convictions in these cases without police witness testimony of illegal activities."
Hamm, blushing, said she appreciated being informed. But she assured the detective that a sting would not be necessary as she would be firing Mrs. Sanchez immediately.
"If you want to catch her soliciting sex, you'll have to catch her somewhere else. I'm sorry, but I have an obligation to act on this information," Hamm said.
Jerome smiled and told her that wouldn't be a problem. It would save him some paperwork. He stood up, shook her hand and left, exiting the door with a cryptic remark:
"When I catch her, it will be in a more appropriate location, perhaps some cheap motel on the edge of town."
Two hours late, Delicia sat on her front porch in tears. She had been fired and she didn't know why. All she knew was her boss seemed very angry.
Her husband sat beside her, trying to console her about her unexpected misfortune. They talked about money problems and she promised to get another job soon. He told her not to worry her pretty head about it, he was confident this would all turn out for the better.. She composed herself with his help and said goodbye feeling a little better.
But when he got home from his night shift early, sneaking into the bedroom, and he found her online sucking a dildo while some other man watched and called her a whore, while she confessed to him that she was, her husband launched into an emotional storm.
He yelled at her. Slapped her around. He had never slapped her. He told her he had received three emails at work, all of them from different men, all of them bragging they had fucked his wife, all of the videos were of Delicia performing sex acts.
Jerome had doctored the videos, making them look as if Delicia was being filmed in different motel rooms. He had dubbed over the voices so that the men supposedly in the room with her sounded like different men.
One sounded like there were two men in the room.
A fourth email came from Humberto, along with old photographs. There was a photograph of Delicia from 11 years earlier, sitting on a mattress in some strange room, in a mini skirt with no top, her legs open and leaking semen from her pussy.
Delicia tried to defend herself. But all she knew was that somehow one of her online sex partners had discovered her identity and doctored videos.
She confessed her online sex encounters, but that just made it worse. And as far as the online sex bridging any kind of connection to what her husband had been exposed to, she had no explanation.
Every theory and excuse that came out of her mouth sounded like a lie and she knew it. She was hysterical trying to convince her husband she was telling the truth.
But it was no use. He was convinced she was prostituting herself behind his back and had been doing it for years.
He threw her out of the house with nothing but a bathrobe and her in bare feet. She didn't even have her purse or cell phone.
She begged him to let her back in. It was no use. She staggered down the street, dumbfounded, in anguish and heartbroken. How had she been found out? Who had done this to her.
Her world had spun out of control. She had lost her job and was losing her husband and home in the same day. She felt herself in some frightening vortex, being sucked down a drain.
The only piece of information she had was from her husband. Somehow, Humberto was involved. She screamed into the sky and marched toward Humberto's house. He lived four miles away and she couldn't even drive.
Her husband had kept her keys.
It took her 90 minutes, walking through the dark night, enduring a series of men slowing down and trying to pick her up, for her to get there. She arrived on Humberto's lawn, a sweating, raging bitch by the time she got to the door, pounding her fist into it.
Gladys answered, looked at Delicia and lowered her jaw in a haughty expression. Then she yelled over her shoulder, "Humberto, your whore has returned!"
Delicia's makeup had run everywhere. She looked frightful. Humberto came to the door, opened it and invited Delicia in as if assessing how to dodge a charging, rabid bitch.
Delicia did charge, running straight into him and pounding her fists toward his face, trying to scratch his face.
"What did you do to meeee! Whyyyy?! Why did you do this? Have you no decency!?"
She sobbed and convulsed on her own rasping breaths and Humberto grabbed her wrists and held onto her tight.
"Get her out of here! Get that whore out of my house!" Gladys yelled at her husband. "You and your stupid whores! Leave me in peace the both of you!"
For ten years, Gladys and Delicia had kept their distance. When the affair ended, Galdys' interest in Delicia stopped. No longer was she the doting surrogate aunt to Delicia's son.
There had been a constant chill between them. Delicia never forgave Gladys for conspiring with Humberto to seduce her. Gladys never forgave Delicia for ending it.
