DOUBLE TROUBLE

by ardavenport

-=- -=- -=- Part 2

"Well?" She glowered, but he just typed faster, not looking up.

"Sherlock, what are you doing?" John demanded.

"Solving your problem," he answered, tight-lipped, not looking up from the screen, "against my better judgment, but it just might be possible that there's something more to the fatuous story you've given me so far."

"Well, what does that - - ?"

"Shut up." Sherlock kept furiously typing, the artificial glow from the screen on his face.

Laura gasped.

"I'm sorry," John hastily apologized. "But he gets like this sometimes. Would you like a cup of tea?" He gestured toward the kitchen area. She hesitated. "I know he's rude, but he might actually be able to help your friend," he grimaced toward Sherlock, still ignoring them, "if we leave him alone for a bit."

She went, against her better judgment. Did he really solve people's problems? Or did he just get paid to insult people?

John Watson apologized again while he rummaged through some drawers and cupboards under the counter. Laura was sure that he did that a lot for his roommate, apologize. She took a seat beside a counter top that jutted out from the wall opposite the sink and stove and set her purse down. The counters were cluttered with jars and boxes, dirty dishes in the sink, a microscope amidst other junk on the wooden table in the center of the kitchen under a low-hanging, utilitarian florescent light fixture. Men always had a much higher tolerance for squalor than women, and it was always worse if there were two men sharing an apartment. She'd had boyfriends for whom she cleaned up after, not because she liked them so much, but because she just couldn't stand it; she dumped one on the spot when he ignored a palmetto bug, the Florida state cockroach, in his bedroom. As far as man-caves went, this one was on the eccentric side; it looked like an old granny's apartment full of garage sale rejects. British garage-sale rejects; not a single chair or table in the living room matched anything.

And cave it was. The living area had windows on the front and back ends that hardly let in any natural light. Aside from the jumble of tables, chairs, bookcases and junk, the living-room had three, no four, different kinds of ugly old-lady-style wall-paper. The kitchen had different styles of randomly patterned blue tiles on opposite walls and a pretty dingy looking floor.

John asked why Eddie would be hiding in England.

"Because of his father. You see Eddie was born in Britain. He had to sign all kinds of paperwork renouncing his British citizenship when he turned eighteen. His parents met on the punk rock scene in the eighties. They had a big romance and then a flaming breakup after Eddie was born. I don't think Debby has spoken with Eddie's father since, not even when she had to get all Eddie's birth records to send in to Immigration. I don't even think she sent him a card when he died. Said she lost the address." A ridiculous excuse these days when one only had to look on the internet to find someone.

"Oh, well, so this is your first trip here?"

"Yes, Nancy and I have never been. It's a good thing we've been on vacation to Jamaica and Mexico, so we already had our passports. Otherwise it could take weeks to get one, unless you want to pay a lot extra to get it expedited."

"Don't people in the States have passports?" The cups and saucers clinked as John got them out of a cupboard.

Laura shook her head. "No. Lots of people never leave the country so they don't bother, but these days you have to have a passport just to go to Canada."

"Hmm, interesting." He poured tea into the cups and brought them over. "I don't know how you like it, but I'm not sure we can trust the milk. I think it's a bit out-of-date."

She took the cup from him. "Plain is fine." Laura was quite glad that she did not have to demand un-sweet tea all the time here, unlike Florida. It was stronger than she liked, but she was in a foreign country; she could deal.

"Well, you are a very good friend indeed to take off and come all this way on such short notice,"

"Pfft!" Laura blew that off. "We're best friends, but there are limits. Have you seen how much overseas airfares are? At the last minute? Nancy's grandmother is paying for it all. I made sure she made a deposit in my bank account that would cover everything before I left. The old lady can afford it; she sold all her real estate before the market crashed. I went right to her after Nancy told me what she was up to."

"She's paying for both of you?"

"Noooo. Just me. She didn't want Nancy going by herself and she could make sure I could get the time off work. Nancy's been planning this for a while and she's using the money Eddie gave her."

"Does Nancy know that her grandmother is sponsoring you?" John asked.

"No! No way. Nancy'd kill me if she found out I told; she would have been furious. But still not as mad as her grandmother was when she found out Nancy was flying off to find Eddie. She was mad at Nancy, she was mad at Eddie. She still thinks he's dead, even after I showed her the pictures. She thinks it's some kind of fake, but I don't know how they could be. I just have to text her everything that happens while I'm here."

"Nancy's grandmother didn't confront her herself?"

"No. She said Nancy would never, ever listen to her. If she told Nancy not to go, that would just make her more determined. And I think she's right, too."

"So here you are." John sipped his tea. "What did Eddie say when Nancy told him she was coming?"

"Oh, she didn't tell him. She thought someone else might have caught onto his texts. She wants to surprise him. But he found out anyway."

"Really? How?"

"I had to buy some things for the trip and we were out shopping together. And that woman, the woman who gave Nancy the first cell phone, showed up again. Told us if we really cared about Eddie we wouldn't do anything dangerous that would get us all hurt. She shoved a new phone at Nancy while we were sitting at lunch. Nancy tried to chase her, but she got away. And the new texts said the same thing. And that Eddie couldn't send any more texts again for a long time. There weren't any texts on either phone when we left. Like they'd gone dead or something."

"And Nancy didn't follow his advice?"

"Noooooooo. That just made her more crazy to get here. She thinks he's in some kind of danger and she absolutely won't even consider the idea that she's the one who might be putting him in danger. I mean I don't know what she's going to do if she finds him. Or what might happen. Someone at the hotel told me about Sherlock Holmes, so I thought I might try. See if he could get her to stop."

"That's commendable of you." He nodded. "And you think you're being followed?" John asked, elbow on the counter. "Why?"

"Well, nobody followed me here. At least I didn't see anyone. But I saw some guy in the same hat and coat at the airport and hanging around the hotel, but I couldn't see his face. And I didn't want to go near him." She described him. Average height (a little taller than John), a bit beefy in the body (much broader in the shoulder than John), wearing jeans and tan jacket with the collar turned up, generically brown hair under a plain, dark blue baseball cap. Nancy did not see him.

She leaned over to peer past John to Sherlock where he still sat scrunched up in his chair, eyes staring at the laptop between his knees.

"Do you really think he can stop Nancy from blowing Eddie's cover? I mean just being rude to her won't work. She's as hard-headed as her grandmother."

"Oh, well," John peered over his shoulder, "Sherlock's in a class all by himself in that department. But I think he can come up with something better. In the meantime, can I get you something to eat? Biscuits or something?" He got up.

Feeling more recovered from her morning sausage encounter – she would never again even touch anything sausage-like in this country, and possibly not in the U.S. either – she said yes. He went to the fridge and opened it.

He hastily closed it, his back to the stainless-steel door. "Um, maybe we could just pop down and get a sandwich downstairs," he told her a little nervously. "They're not too bad."

Laura's nose caught a whiff of something unpleasant - - rotten casserole? rampant blue-cheese? leftover seafood from the Black Lagoon? - - but it didn't linger long enough for her to identify. Man-cave, she reminded herself. She agreed on sandwiches. He went to retrieve her coat and held it up for her to put on. He put on a dark gray jacket with black leather shoulders. Looking toward the living room, she paused at the kitchen doorway out to the hall.

"What about him?"

"Oh, he won't even know we're gone, trust me."

They went down the old narrow staircase, through the dark foyer, outside to the sidewalk and into the sandwich shop on the left. It was small and cramped like every other eating place she'd seen in London and the lunch crowd was starting, so they first had to wait to give their orders – she asked for a chicken wrap and a bottled water; he asked for two sandwiches; one for him, one for Sherlock to eat later. He reached for his pocket, but she got to her purse first and paid for it.

"Thank-you," he said, not too proud to let a woman pay for his lunch as he took the receipt with their number on it. Nancy's grandmother was paying for it as far as Laura was concerned.

"You know," she commented as they took a position by the wall with the herd of other lunch-goers waiting for their orders, "that Sherlock has got to be the worst roommate in the world."

"Oh, I wouldn't go that far," John answered lightly; then paused, "but I'd certainly hate to meet the competition for that post."

She laughed. "It's a shame; all the good looking ones have always got some kind of problem."

"Oh, . . . ah, really?"

"Oh, yeah, I love those tall lanky runner's bodies, but half of them turn out to be nerds or engineers. And Sherlock has got to be the biggest uber-nerd I've ever seen, except your place isn't full of old computer parts." Or a huge flat-screen TV – forty-six inches or bigger. She'd seen a very modest flat-screen on a bookcase in their place; it looked like it had dust on it.

"Oh, really." John stood up on his toes, trying to peer over the other people to see if their order was ready. It wasn't. They weren't even close to calling their number. Laura saw something that was called an 'English breakfast' go by. Ugh. Sausages. Along with gobs of other breakfast-like food.

She excused herself to go to the ladies room, going where he pointed in the back of the cafe. The rest room turned out to be a small unisex closet with the word 'TOILET' on the door. No mistaking what it was for there. But it was clean and had fresh rolls of paper.

When she got back John was still waiting, but the people behind the counter were only two numbers away from theirs. Finally they collected their sandwiches and left, going back outside, then inside.

"Oh, Hello, dear." A small older woman with unnaturally red hair and wearing a bright red dress was now vacuuming in the hallway.

"I think those decontamination people got all that last night, Mrs. Hudson," John stopped to tell her, shouting a little over the vacuum.

"Oh, it never hurts just to make sure, dear."

Laura looked down at the faded gold carpet. Maybe there were some little pale specks in it? She stepped very carefully behind John, who introduced her. "This is Laura Martinez. She's visiting from America. From Florida."

"That's lovely. Not used to dressing for the weather around here, I see." Mrs. Hudson's looked friendly enough, but her smile made Laura want to pull her coat closed and tug down the hem of her skirt.

"Mrs. Hudson's husband was actually . . . aaah . . . aaah." He seemed to choke on whatever he was going to say. Mrs. Hudson went on with her vacuuming. "We'd better get back upstairs and see if Sherlock has turned up anything." He ushered her upstairs ahead of him.

If Sherlock had found anything, it wasn't obvious. He was in exactly the same chair, same position, face glued to the computer screen. John got plates and cups and they ate their sandwiches. It was acceptable food. At least not any worse than a Subway. Sherlock's sandwich was left in the paper bag on the counter. John took the plates to the half-full sink and hesitated, obviously debating whether it was time to wash them or just put them in with the others.

The electronic tones of I'm-coming-out,-so-you-better-get-this-party-started interrupted his moment of indecision and Laura dove for her purse and the cell phone inside. It was a text from Nancy.

"Oh, no." She looked up from the small glowing screen. "She found Eddie. She's going to meet him."

-=- -=- -=- END Part 2