"Hey, Trip, got out of The Cube yet?" John asked as soon as Trip answered his phone.
"Yes, and the recycling system isn't as clean as you were claiming, or maybe someone abused the recycling system after you took off." Trip said as he tried to brush himself off with his free hand. "Bobbi's trying to figure out a way to get us to London to try to find Isabelle. She seems pretty sure that was where her ex-husband was and the two of them were definitely together when she heard from Isabelle after she got that messed up news about Agent Hand. How's she doing, by the way? It would really help if we had some good news about her to offer after that disaster of a funeral."
"She's sleeping, and Coulson's girls are taking care of her. It seems like she's doing okay." John told him. "Trip, we've been talking about the Peggy situation. Do you have any new ideas about where she could have gotten off to?"
"If I had any I would have already been on the phone to Maria Hill. Definitely glad I'm not at the Triskellion right now."
"Yeah, I wouldn't want to be there at the moment with Peggy on the loose and Nick getting all the blame. Hill might have to book a trip to Tahiti after this. I probably ought to ask Phil for hotel recommendations. He seemed to enjoy the place and maybe if we pass around the hat we can book her somewhere nice."
"Agent Hill deserves it if she makes it through this mess. Honestly, I have no idea of places unless…. They're double checking the nursing home, right, because honestly I've always had a funny feeling about that place."
"Romanov's going to check there. We were thinking Peggy could have got the idea to sneak back in thinking it would be the last place people would look for her."
"It's where she's supposed to be, so it's definitely the last place people would look if they knew Peggy." Trip said with a shake of his head. "That's a good idea, having Romanov looking for them, though. At least she might have an even chance of surviving the search. Peggy does like her."
"I'm not sure if that's going to be enough if she gets in the way of Peggy's fun and I'm sure she's having a ton of fun with this chaos." John said with a laugh. "Speaking of Romanov, though, do you have any info on her grandmother?"
"Dottie?" Trip shivered, a feeling of impending doom suddenly washing over him at that name. "Why are you asking about Dottie?"
"She's the person who's known Peggy the longest, besides Rogers." John said. "If anyone might have an idea where Peggy could be…."
"Dottie would know." Trip said with a groan.
"Do you know anything about her? I know Shield hasn't heard a lot about her lately, which I assume just means she's hiding the bodies better, either that or we're getting worse at finding bodies."
"She's definitely still active, I'm not sure I want to know what she's active with, but she's definitely still active." Trip forced himself to think about Dottie Underwood, as much as he didn't want to. "Honestly, Peggy doesn't talk about Dottie a lot. Half the time she says she has no clue who she is, which I'm kind of suspicious about. When she does drop hints, though, it's been enough for me to know she's still around and active."
"So you would have no clue where to find her? Because we're all a little concerned that she might show up and since Peggy's the only one who knows how to manage her…."
"I'm pretty sure she doesn't manage her so much as somehow diverts her onto the things Peggy wants her to do." Trip said. "No clue how she does that. I'm not sure I want to know how she does that. I saw Dottie once from a distance right before I went to the Academy and a distance encounter was more than enough. If Dottie gets involved in this…. Is Romanov going to try looking for her?"
"She doesn't have a clue where she could be either. They decided to keep her focused on looking for Peggy, with her being the only one with a clue on how to deal with Dottie if she shows up. Do you know if Peggy's ever visited her or anything? Shield is supposed to have Peggy under some sort of surveillance not that she hasn't happily lost that most of the time when she decides they're in her way."
"I'm sure she has met up with her, but I wouldn't have a clue as to where." Dottie Underwood on the loose possibly. "I hope Washington is insured."
"I hope they dropped that Peggy clause from the insurance policies too." John said. "But you do think that Peggy's met Underwood? Do you think that she might have met her recently? Maybe if we went back through the surveillance it might give us some ideas about where she could be."
"I'm actually not sure if Shield trying to find Dottie is a good idea, at least not without Peggy there to deal with her." Trip said.
"Yeah, I wouldn't send anyone but Romanov to look for her if we had some clue where to look." John told him. "Do you think Peggy could have met her recently? I'm sure Peggy wouldn't have let the surveillance keep up with her if she was meeting Dottie, but maybe it could help us narrow down things."
"Honestly, I have no clue." Trip said. "If Dottie gets involved in this mess though….. If this was a disaster before, if Dottie gets added in…."
"Yeah, I know. It's like tossing a tanker truck of gasoline into a forest fire. Just keep thinking about things. Maybe something will come to you about where Peggy or Dottie could be. And find Vic's Izzy fast."
"We're working on that." Trip told him before ending the call. And hopefully, wherever Izzy was, it was safely far away from Dottie Underwood.
"Andrew is insisting on keeping looking for my mother and Peggy." Melinda said as she rejoined Phil.
"Nick did kind of look a bit out of it in the video of Peggy kidnapping that poor lady. He could probably use a doctor taking a look at him." John said as he also rejoined them. "Nick did just get broken out of a mental hospital. Andrew probably knows how to fix things from that, right?"
"Probably but I don't want him getting drug into the middle of this disaster." Melinda grumbled. "With people underestimating Peggy and thinking that Nick's to blame for this entire mess, if Andrew gets involved and the authorities stumble on them…."
"If the authorities stumble on them, I hope they have wills." John said with a laugh. "Or at least good insurance. Melinda, don't worry. Your mom and Peggy both like Andrew. They're not going to hurt him."
"They're not going to deliberately hurt him. I'm sure they didn't intend to deliberately hurt that poor woman they kidnapped either but that doesn't mean she didn't suffer a possibly major head injury due to them." Melinda said.
"Honestly, Andrew might be a bit safer out looking for Peggy." Phil offered. "Since they know where his hotel is, if he went back there he would be easy to find. Being out and about looking for them might at least delay them locating him if they decided they needed Andrew for something." Would they need Andrew's help, especially with the Nick situation? But he probably shouldn't speculate about that at the moment while Melinda was so alarmed.
"That's what Andrew suggested. It didn't make me feel better." Melinda said. "Did Trip have any suggestions about where Peggy or worse, Dottie, could be?"
"No clue about either of them." John told her. "He does think that Peggy knows where Dottie is, but he has no clue where that could be. He's going to keep thinking about it. And he managed to get out of The Cube with Agent Morse and they're working on trying to find Vic's Izzy."
"So does anyone else have any other ideas for what we can do to help from here?" Phil asked.
"Besides taking care of Vic and trying to think of where Peggy could have gotten off to? I don't see of anything else we could do." John replied. "Maria could maybe have someone go over the surveillance reports on Peggy to see if there might be some hint in there about where Dottie could be, but with as many times as she looses them, you know what it might offer is limited to say the least."
That's what Phil thought too, as much as he wanted to think there was something else they could do to help. "Let's make the rounds and check the other agents again. And keep thinking about where they could be!"