AN: I am co-writing this with my buddy JustWhelmed. Because she's epic. I'm taking care of this chapter though, so don't blame her.
Disclaimer: We don't own anything you recognize.
Once upon a time in a far away kingdom… Well, that is not entirely true. It was not particularly far away, only in Boston. And it did not take place too long ago. That is not really what is important. Time and place are not what matter in a fairytale. What matters is that you have a damsel in distress, a white knight, an evil villain, and magic. Fairies are nice too, but not absolutely necessary.
And so our story begins.
Nate and Sophie always paused in the doorway of the bar to watch perspective clients. Andrew Culpepper looked like most of them; young, pale, shifting nervously on his stool, eyes flickering around the room like a nervous colt. Abnormally though, he seemed to be accompanied by three little old ladies. The women seemed perfectly at ease; white, old lady hair piled on top of their heads, bedazzled track suits, one in blue, one in pink, and one in green.
The two thieves exchanged a look. "Ready?" Nate asked.
"Always."
Sophie plastered her best, most comforting smile on her face and slid onto the stool next to Andrew. "Mr. Culpepper?" She put out her hand for a nice shake. "I'm Sophie Devereaux. I think you've already spoken with Nate."
"Nice to meet you in person, Mr. Ford."
The elderly woman in the pink leant over the bar awkwardly. "I'm Stacy. This is my sister Macy." The one in blue nodded. "And my other sister Lacy." The one in green gave them a cheery wave. "We were Andrew's nannies when he was small. We took care of him and his sister." She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and dabbed at her suddenly tear-filled eyes. (Out of the corner of their vision, Nate and Sophie saw the other two women doing the same thing)
"It's all right, Aunt Stacy," Andrew said, putting his hand on her shoulder.
"I'm sorry." Stacy smiled weakly. "The poor girl."
Nate cleared his throat, trying to steer this highly unorthodox interview into something more manageable. "Your sister? In our initial interview you said that she was in some kind of trouble.
All three elderly women promptly burst into tears.
While Nate and Sophie were trying to deal with the flood of emotions, Hardison, Parker, and Eliot came down the stairs and slid into the booth on the other end of the bar.
"Are there three old ladies with the client?" Hardison asked.
Eliot just grimaced. "I don't like old ladies."
"I do." Parker disagreed. "They smell like cats."
Nate decided that the best plan was to throw Sophie to the wolves. "Here, Andrew, let's you and I talk over there, while the ladies, uhm, sort it out."
He gave his compatriot a sympathetic glance in reply to the death glare she shot his way, all the while rubbing the shoulders of the distraught woman in blue.
Andrew and Nate settled into the booth right in front of the other three thieves. "I am so sorry," the young man said sincerely. "I did not mean to bring them. I think they hacked my email or something." He huffed out a short, tense laugh. "When my sister and I were kids, we thought they were magic."
He stared down at his empty glass like he wished it was full again.
Nate knew the signs of stress and gave the other man an encouraging pat on the shoulder. "Tell me about your sister."
"Dawn. She's my half-sister, but I barely remember a time before she came into my life, she or Mom, her mom, but, yeah." He took a deep breath. "I'm only five years older than her."
"'Dawn?' Dawn Culpepper?" Nate frowned. "Why is that name familiar?"
"'Bout five years ago, she wrote an international best-selling teen book—a retelling of the Little Mermaid."
"Right." Nate had never read it, but he remembered when it came out.
"I guess I should start at the beginning. My dad, Richard Culpepper, we've got a lot of family money, Culpepper engines." Nate nodded, familiar with the company. "But Rosamund, my step-mom, she was independently wealthy as well. A bakery. Perrault's Cakes. Do you know it?"
Nate nodded again.
In the next booth, Eliot nodded as well. "They're like Little Debbie's, but they sell mostly to restaurants and are much higher quality."
"Right…." Hardison snickered and then winced when the hitter kicked him under the table.
Fortunately, Andrew did not hear them and continued his story. "The bakery, it passes from mother to oldest daughter, but Rosamund was taken by cancer when Dawn was only 17."
"It would have been put in some sort of trust then," Nate pointed out.
"Exactly. It was under the care of Dawn's maternal aunt, Madeline Draco, until Dawn turned 21."
"What happened?"
Andrew looked back down at his glass, his voice husky with emotion when he spoke again. "Here."
He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it across the table to Nate.
Nate had to play trombone a little with it, getting older was a bitch. "Dear Dad and Andrew….so sorry…can't handle all this responsibility…needed Mom…sorry… This is a suicide note. Your sister killed herself."
"No!"
The note of the fury in his voice and the sound of his hand hitting the table had Eliot almost out of his seat, but Nate waved him back down.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Ford, but my sister, Dawn, did NOT kill herself." Andrew rubbed his hands over his eyes. "Her aunt, that evil, evil witch, she wanted my sister's money. I know she did. Her husband owns Draco Security and he was getting close to bankruptcy at the time and with Dawn's death-" He choked on his words for a moment, struggling to keep from crying. "She got everything."
"Do you have any proof or anything to base your suspicions on?" Nate asked. He felt sorry for the kid, he knew what it was like to lose someone, but sometimes grief made villains of innocent people.
"Mr. Ford, please, I knew my sister." Andrew looked up and Nate realized that his eyes were the exact same color Sam's were when he was alive. "This is killing my father. Every day, he wonders if he could have saved her. He's all I have left. And my sister was a good person; kind, intelligent, funny as hell. She deserved better than this. Her memory deserves justice."
Nate did not usually take cases like this, where there was nothing to go on, but something about the young man made him want to believe that he was right, that a young woman had not just thrown her life away, that there was something he could do for a grieving parent.
"We'll do what we can." He promised.
"Thank you." Andrew stood and walked over to collect his aunts.
Nate waited for Sophie and the others to join him.
"I hate you," Sophie declared, giving him her best pout. "I'm glad you took the case." She gestured toward the closing door. "They caught me up on everything."
The other three slid into the side opposite Nate and Sophie.
"Oh, and the blue one-"
"Macy"
"Whatever." Sophie could not help but give Eliot a smile that made him highly apprehensive. "She told me to tell you-"
"Me?"
"You're the only 'long haired, good looking young man' in the bar."
"Shit." It was vaguely disturbing to be singled out by an emotional old woman in a bright blue, bedazzled track suit.
"She told me to tell you 'not all princes wear shining armor and not all princesses want a white horse.'"
"Shut up Hardison."
AN2: Rosamund was the name of the original Sleeping Beauty and Perrault the original author.