Note – The creepy banner with a doll-like Elizabeth staring at the dove in flight? That was a real picture of Becky – as in, I didn't take her head and put it on someone else's body. That is her, sitting in that couch. The pictures are from an Atlanta event about a year or two ago. Hee.
04
.: Headquarters :.
Spinelli was fast asleep when Jason entered the offices again around three in the morning, but the slam of the door had him up and groaning, rubbing at his eyes as he wished his mentor would just evaporate.
"Well?" Jason half-barked in his excitement. "Did you get my message?"
"To find whatever I could about the happily married couple?" His voice was gruff and Spinelli wearily forced himself to sit up. "Yeah, I did."
"Good, good." He'd just gotten back from a fruitless night of drinking with Elizabeth Zacchara, and Jason was too wound up to do anything but jump right back into the case. "And did you find anything about the shooting at the funeral?"
Spinelli shook his head, blinking against the bright light that now filled the office as Jason smacked the coffee maker around, persuading it to make them another pot. "There was nothing. Couldn't get a single good angle, even a good audio feed. Complete dead end."
Jason swore but didn't let that stop him. "Okay, pull up whatever you found on John and Elizabeth. I've got the records and the paperwork here with me, let's see what you've got."
"How'd your night go?" he asked groggily, shaking his computer out of its hibernated state. "Weren't you plying her with booze to get her to talk?"
"Trying to," Jason groused. "I kept pouring my tequila into a potted plant and getting more, to look like I was as drunk as she was. I kept talking, kept asking her questions, but she didn't say much of anything."
"Did she just get boozed up and pass out?"
"She didn't pass out, but she might as well have," he frowned. "I got nothing out of her. Nothing. Except that John was a good husband and he got her that apartment of hers and that Claudia was a shrew who was against the wedding from the start, not that any of that mattered because John couldn't be persuaded against it. After that, I kept asking her questions but she just kept shrugging and deflecting with monosyllabic answers. And the odd grunt."
"So basically, when she drinks, she's you."
Jason glared at him. "Just pull up what you have."
"Like I said, the cemetery shooting thing was a complete bust, but it took up a lot of time, so I didn't get to do a fully exhaustive search on the Zaccharas' blissful union."
"Stop making excuses and just pull it up."
"I found their wedding announcement and I found a ton of pictures." The corner of his tongue poked out of his mouth as he waited for the massive folder to open. "They're outtakes that I found on the hard drive of the Manhattan-based photographer they used. He's the one that was there when Kennedy O'Toole married Melania Kerr at the Plaza."
"Who?"
"Oh, come on, he's the biggest movie star of our – never mind." A little perturbed as his mentor's dogged ignorance of pop culture, Spinelli tried to shake it off. "Anyway, he's the one that John got to take pictures of him and Elizabeth when they got married. He's a big name, one of the very best. John spared no expense for the wedding."
"Really." The corner of Jason's mouth curved up and he tossed a file folder at his young partner. "Because, according to these records, the two of them got married at Crimson Manor. The named witnesses were his sister and his butler. There were no guests."
Spinelli's jaw dropped and he gingerly reached for the file. "How'd you find that out?"
"Bribed a clerk at town hall for the information," Jason admitted. "Old woman, barely needed any incentive to talk. She said she remembered the paperwork being filed and that it all looked like it had been done hastily. It was filed by two men in suits, obviously John's guards, and the names on the certificate were Claudia Magdalena Zacchara and some man called Reivers."
"The butler."
"Yeah. And while she was taking care of it, she remembered hearing one of the guards tell the other that John and Elizabeth had left the manor as soon as the ceremony was over. She had friends in Crimson Pointe and no one in that town knew of the wedding until after it had happened."
"It was just a family affair," Spinelli murmured. "They didn't invite anyone. They just called the priest over, got it done, and grabbed the first two witnesses they could."
"Exactly."
"Even the wedding announcement I found was after the fact," he added, eagerly turning his screen for his mentor to see. "They were already married at this point. You can tell that it was hastily thrown together because the paper needed it to be in that section that morning, as soon as news broke. They don't even have a proper photo – they used a file photo for John and a file photo for Elizabeth."
He turned his computer back around and pulled up another article. "The one they ran two days later was longer and had more stuff about the wedding and the parties involved. This time, they have a real photo of the two of them together. It's one of the ones I found on the Elterman Photography server."
"They took the picture later and then sent it out to all the relevant magazines and newspapers as part of a quick press junket," Jason guessed. "Explains the statements I found from Johnny's spokesman and PR guy."
"Here are the photos." Spinelli put the computer on the table so Jason could see and began clicking through the pictures in a slide show. "These are from the actual wedding."
Sure enough, there were several shots of Johnny and Elizabeth standing in front of a priest. Jason recognized him from the file photo that he'd seen earlier that week when he was digging for information. Father Coates or something. He'd baptized Johnny and had been there with him through communion and confession, everything.
John Zacchara was wearing an elegant black tuxedo, no surprise. He was a tall, strapping man with naturally tan skin, warm brown eyes, and a wide, pleasing smile. He looked perfectly at ease in all of the pictures and knew how to work the camera. It was why he was somewhat of a darling of the press; there wasn't a single bad situation that the young mobster hadn't been able to turn around in his favor through the use of his skilled PR team and a dazzling grin.
Jason loathed that.
Elizabeth was next to her husband in every shot, wearing a floor-length dress that nipped in at her gentle curves and clung to her chest, the lace skirts lapping at the floor. Her hair was partially swept up in a design that was meant to look casually fancy, but was too carefully pinned and fussed with to be properly casual.
She looked pale in every picture. Her eyes were wide, giving the illusion of wide-eyed and open youthfulness, but there was more to it than that, he was sure of it. Jason's eyes fixed on her smile, on those plush berry lips that curved upward in every picture. He stared and squinted, but he couldn't find anything there. Her smile was perfect in every last photo.
Spinelli was watching him scrutinize the pictures, knowing that Jason was picking up things he never would have seen. "Well? First impressions?"
"She's pale. White."
"She's very pale naturally," Spinelli shrugged. "I've never even seen her in person and even I can tell you that. She just has that milky kind of skin."
Jason shook his head. "She's not that pale, not even in person. At first I thought it was just the light, but look at John. Look at Claudia. The light's not strong enough to completely wash her out."
"Claudia actually looks happy in these shots."
"Not at all," Jason disagreed. "Look at her smile. Too thin. Look at her eyes. Not crinkling. Her smile's not reaching her eyes."
"Have you ever seen her smile? A real smile?"
"That doesn't matter. When you smile when you're happy, the eyes crinkle just a little bit. Their shape changes, too. She's holding her mouth carefully, making sure to look like she's happy. It's almost working."
"What else? What about Elizabeth's smile?"
"…Nothing," he finally sighed, making Spinelli take notice. "There's nothing wrong her smile."
"…You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Getting that look on your face." He arched a brow at his mentor when Jason snarled. "Frankly, it's disgusting. You should have that looked at."
Jason rolled his eyes. "Look at her hair. That was what caught my attention."
"Never figured you were much on women's fashion."
"Will you just shut up and listen?" Jason pointed out the updo in the pictures. "Look at it. It just looks…wrong. Like they're trying to make it look like everything is causal and spontaneous and all that shit, but her hair's all stiff and put down with a bunch of pins. Doesn't it just look wrong to you? Spinelli?"
When he looked over, it was clear that Spinelli's gaze was a little due south of Elizabeth's curls and resting squarely on her décolletage. "Oh, grow up."
"What? I wasn't doing anything."
Jason rolled his eyes again. He was sure that at some point, they'd just roll on out of his head with the way he kept doing that.
"Look at their hands."
"They're holding hands in almost every shot."
"No. He's holding her hand. She's clutching his hand. Look at her fingers." He pointed it out on the screen. "She's got her hand wrapped tightly around his. Look at her knuckles. She's using her whole hand to grip only three of his fingers in this shot. He's holding hers casually, and she's gripping him like…like…"
"Like she's scared."
Jason nodded jerkily. "Yeah. And in this shot…"
Spinelli leaned closer. "He's not holding her arm to keep her close. He's holding her arm to…keep her standing!"
"Good eye," he encouraged him. He liked to see his young partner building up these skills. They were vital for this business, after all. "Look at how Claudia's watching them in this shot. She doesn't know that she's in frame. She's watching them like she's waiting for something to go wrong and hoping it doesn't."
Spinelli rubbed a hand over his mouth and turned toward him. "You really think their marriage was a sham."
"I think there might be evidence that would indicate that," Jason said honestly. "I also think that there might be a reasonable explanation. Maybe she loved him but was scared because she knew what marrying him meant. It meant that she'd forever be embroiled in the more violent aspect of his life. Maybe she wasn't feeling well. I don't think this is conclusive evidence, but I think it hints at a possibility."
"Are you going to keep working on Elizabeth to get more information?" Spinelli wanted to know. "It's a shame your thing about getting her drunk didn't work."
"I walked right into that one, too," Jason frowned. "She had the bottle in her hand when I showed up. She had no way of knowing I was coming. She was ready to drink. But she didn't give me anything I could use."
"Maybe she's just a quiet drunk."
"Or maybe…" He stared at the picture, one of John and Elizabeth kissing, their hands tightly entwined. "…She's smarter than I thought."
~*~*~*~*~*~
.: Elizabeth's Quarters :.
She woke up late, which was very unlike her. John was the one that liked to sleep in when he could; she was the one that wanted to be up early to get started with her day. By the time he managed to stagger out of their bedroom, she'd already done her yoga, eaten a light pre-breakfast of fruit, walked their dog, fed her birds, and read half of the morning paper.
But today was different. Today, she would do whatever the hell she wanted, even if that was nothing. She didn't know how she'd cope with actually doing nothing, which was very much against her nature, but she'd deal with it as it came.
Elizabeth had wanted nothing more last night than to nurse her bottle of tequila until the wee hours of the morning, but Jason Morgan had spoiled that. He had shown up unannounced, one of her pet peeves, as she never saw anyone until they had properly called ahead to let her know they were coming.
But he'd shown up anyway and despite her wishes, she'd let him in and shared her tequila with him. She knew why he was there: to scope her out. But she wouldn't give it to him. She pretended to get drunk with him but had actually been pacing herself. She did get drunk, sure, but he appeared to get drunk faster and she maintained enough of her composure to keep her mouth shut when he started asking all of those questions about her and Johnny.
Oh, God, those questions. Such alarmingly personal questions that she had to struggle to keep herself from balking, and remain grateful that he would think the color in her cheeks was from the tequila and not his impertinence.
He'd wanted to know when and how she and Johnny had met, which was harmless enough. Then he wanted to know about their first kiss, about what his father thought about her, what his sister thought of her, what her parents thought of him, and particularly what her uncle Richard, the police commissioner, thought of him. She'd slurred her way through that, saying something about putting aside differences for the sake of a young couple's happiness but never fully letting go of that disappointment.
Then he wanted to know about how she liked living at Crimson Manor, how it was different from her home in Port Charles. He wanted to know about how she got along with Johnny's friends, how attracted she was to her dashing young husband, what the wedding was like, where they went on their honeymoon, even the first time they had sex.
As the questions became racier and racier, Elizabeth pretended to be more drunk than she actually was and just offered short, relatively meaningless answers. Some time in the early morning, he'd grown weary of it and left, and she was able to crawl into bed and try to forget everything that had just happened.
The biggest shame was that a perfectly good bottle of tequila had gone to waste.
Ah, well, there was always tonight. Or…right now.
Elizabeth looked longingly at the wet bar before shaking herself out of it. She needed to wash up and just clear her head for a bit before indulging again. And this time, if Jason Morgan showed up, he could just sit outside for all she cared. It was a good thing that no one knew that he was here, otherwise she'd be able to hear the gossip mill churning with reports of her entertaining a handsome man all alone so soon after her husband's passing.
"Oh, Johnny."
The words were out of her mouth before she even realized it, and Elizabeth fought the confounding urge to cry. It always sneaked up on her when she least wanted it to, and she hated how powerless she was against it.
A quick, cold shower went a long way in helping her shake it off. She needed that jolt and was glad for it as she toweled off, forgoing the hair dryer and just letting her hair dry naturally in loose curls.
After that, it was time to read the paper, her normal routine. But there was nothing normal about the day, her first completely on her own in the past two years, so Elizabeth soon tired of the newspaper and left it alone.
Bare feet, sticking slightly to the polished hardwood, carried her listlessly across the room over to where the pianoforte stood. Johnny had loved his grand piano, the gleaming black monstrosity that sat in the middle of his private parlor. He could play on that thing for hours.
Right before they wed, when she was lying curled up on his couch in the fetal position, he had played one of Mozart's symphonies continuously for about two and a half hours, knowing that the music would soothe her and it had. When Claudia had turned up with the news, bringing Father Coates along with her, Elizabeth had been in much better shape than before and was able to stand and move around and get ready for the ceremony.
She sat down on the bench, shifting a little on the cushion. Johnny always made fun of little pianofortes. They were for girls, he said, with their ornate design and fussy little benches with the pillows, the light frames with no bracing. But Elizabeth had seen one in an old picture of his grandparents and admired it, so he bought her one the next day. He was always doing things like that. Elizabeth only let him because she saw how doting gestures like that annoyed Claudia.
Her fingers settled on the keys. She didn't really play much, but her grandmother had insisted that she take lessons when she was a little girl. It was what all proper Webber women did, after all. Johnny had attempted to teach her to play on his black behemoth, but Elizabeth had never been very interested in that. She liked hearing him play more than she ever desired to do so herself.
She found a familiar melody and caught hold of it, letting it pull her along through her memories of her husband. One of Mozart's lighter concertos, easy enough to play, difficult to forget. The notes were made slow and lonely by her untrained and lagging fingers, but Elizabeth didn't pick up the pace. The plinking sounds filled the apartment, and she was grateful for the noise.
As rich as they were, the notes still didn't drown out the sound of a knock at the door. Elizabeth looked over and sighed, not caring enough to get up and find out who it was. She was once again breaking her rule about uninvited guests but, again, couldn't seem to muster up the will to care.
"Come in."
The door creaked open and she saw Jason standing there. Immediately, her heart sank a little. Odious man. Dealing with him was exhausting and she was sure he knew that, the bastard. What was more, she was sure he counted on that.
"Elizabeth." He put his hat down on a table near the door, and that annoyed her. "How are you feeling?"
"Much better after I washed up and had something to eat," she replied calmly, remembering that she was supposed to be mildly hung over. "You?"
"Just fine, thanks," he replied easily, and it rankled with her. He had no business sounding so…like he wasn't at all disturbed or uneasy or out of sorts. None at all. "Thanks for inviting me to join you last night."
Elizabeth's eyes narrowed a little. She couldn't have imagined it – the way he growled the last part of the sentence, making it sound more lascivious than it needed to. She chose to ignore it. "Not at all."
If he was looking for some kind of qualifier – I don't have many male friends; I've been feeling so alone; I was glad you dropped by – he didn't get it. He wouldn't get it. Not from her.
Jason waited a beat, then seemed to lose hope and move on. "I came by because I needed to talk to you about something."
She didn't offer him a place to sit. He looked as if he was expecting that she would and when nothing came of it, he moved through the room and closer to her. His tall, broad frame seemed to swallow up the room, spacious as it was, but Elizabeth held her ground. She would not give this shrewd man an inch.
"Oh?"
"It's about the investigation."
Elizabeth arched a brow at him. "Do you know who killed my husband?"
Jason shook his head. "No-"
"Then I hardly think we need to speak," she interrupted, turning her attention back to the pianoforte. "You are simply to come to me when you have the answers I need."
The corners of his mouth curved upward and she was nervous for a moment that he had seen her little game. And indeed he had. "Oh, I don't think so."
Her eyes narrowed. "Jason, I must insist that you-"
"And I have to insist that you do a few things," he countered, standing so close to her now that her breath hitched with anger and anxiety. "I don't know what kinds of people you're used to dealing with, Ms. Zacchara…"
Her palm itched to slap him for that.
"But I'm not a sycophant that's going to appear when you snap your fingers and bow out when you're done." His electric eyes glittered dangerously and the air around them seemed to roll and crackle with energy. Elizabeth stayed firm, knowing he was just trying to intimidate her.
"I believe I hired you to do a job, Mister Morgan." She rose from her seat on the bench and walked toward the door, giving him no choice but to follow. "As you have not completed it, I must ask you to leave and return once you have."
"Let me tell you how this is going to work. He stood in the threshold of the door that she held wide open, making it very clear that he was not just going to make this easy and leave. "I'm here to find out who killed your husband. Whether you're paying me or Claudia is doesn't really matter. I'm just here to get answers."
A mocking smile touched her lips. "At least we can agree on that."
He ignored her. "And I can't do my job unless I'm told everything. And I do mean everything."
She shivered just a little when he leaned in on the last word.
"I need to know everything about your marriage to him, about your family, about your future plans, all of it," he half-snapped at her. "And if you make that difficult for me, I'll have to find out on my own, which I can assure you will be a far more painful process for you and all those concerned. Because I always find what I'm looking for, one way or another."
Elizabeth tried to look bored and must have succeeded, because Jason's eyes flashed with impatience. "Do you understand, Elizabeth? I can't find out who killed your husband and keep them from killing you unless you tell me everything. Every last thing that might be of use to me. Do you understand? You have to turn your life over to me, that's the only way this is going to work."
"I don't know why you're so worried, showing up here and making threats," Elizabeth said calmly, gripping the door. "After all, you said you always get what you need. Why should either of us be concerned?"
Her eyes narrowed and her register dropped, and Jason could just stared as she became dangerous in her own right. "Because I need to make sure that you understand, Jason: I don't turn my life over to anyone. Not anymore."
And with that, Elizabeth jerked her hand forward, causing the door to fly at him. Jason only barely managed to jump back in time to avoid getting hurt as it slammed shut in his face.
