Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.
Sour Grapes
"Check out that auction. Take Amanda with you. She's had experience with charities."
"Experience?" she asked, incredulous. "Rolling nickels and quarters? Running a baked goods concession? Billy, we are talking high society here."
High society, Billy. Congressmen. Marine generals. Nobel physicists. The sort of thing you always used to send me for.
She would have loved to wipe that smug look off his face.
"What has he got to lose?" her boss asked.
"Time," she said. "Sleep. His flawless reputation."
Lee merely looked at her with raised eyebrows, as if she was being incredibly obvious about her real reason for not wanting Amanda to go, and for one brief second she hated him for it.
"Take Amanda," said Billy, disregarding her. "She might spot something that you'd miss."
Lee held open the door for her and she stalked out, ignoring his smile and refusing to acknowledge the knowing look he probably shared with Billy as soon as she left.
Why did it bother her so much, anyway?
She had meant what she said about his "flawless" reputation. She was fully aware that Lee himself no longer considered his reputation flawless, but the Soviets didn't know that. If they could maintain his devil-may-care, playboy persona, it would be a valuable asset to the agency. If, however, word got around that Scarecrow had apparently taken vows of celibacy, he would be useless in the future for peacock dances or any of the covers that required any degree of believable sleaziness.
She knew that there were others — Fred Fielder or Marty Chapman or Ephraim Beaman — who would jump at the chance to take over Lee's job as their resident charmer, but that presented some difficulties. For one thing, in order to be the agency's resident charmer, the man in question had to be … well, charming.
Fred was not; he was offensive. Marty was not; he told stupid jokes about agents and lightbulbs and laughed at his own humor. Beaman was not; he was awkward and self-important.
They couldn't afford to lose Scarecrow. They needed someone who could charm his way into and out of potentially awkward situations — someone with a broken moral compass who didn't care what means he used, as long as things turned out well for the agency and the country. As sad as it was, they needed someone who didn't have anyone waiting at home for him.
If Amanda went with him, he would turn all wholesome and winsome, and that would interfere with his reputation. But no one listened to her, so Lee and Amanda went to the charity auction instead of Lee and Francine.
Lee came back from their investigation with a slashed sport jacket and a story of a maniac in a red balaclava lurking in the wine cellar at Congressman McNair's home. Amanda looked fresh and clean.
It was useless to be irked at Amanda for it, but Francine still was.
They met Lee and Amanda in the hall and went up to Billy's office to discuss what they had discovered. It wasn't much, but one of Lee's random assortment of weird informants could probably supply the missing links.
Apparently there was a top-tier escoffier society involved.
The best wines! The finest cuisine! Important people! High society!
And Francine couldn't go.
Amanda went, a wedding ring the size of a gum ball weighing down her hand. Lee went, in a three-piece suit and a ring of his own.
Francine was stuck making phone calls, as usual.
Lee came back, alone, in jeans and sneakers and no wedding ring, this time with some ridiculous story about both of them being doused in a full cask of wine. It was a wonder that Lee let Amanda into his car like that, but she had always been the exception to every known rule he had ever had, including the one about never letting his guard down.
They had a breakthrough for him, though. She had found out that the sommelier at the Escoffier had been implicated in a major international drug smuggling bust. Lee headed out to find out more, just as the phone rang.
It was Amanda, off doing her own thing as usual. She was at the late Congressman's house with his daughter, trying to figure out why the police thought he had been involved in drug smuggling.
Clearly Lee's and Amanda's investigations were running along the same lines.
It was a few hours later that they got the call to meet Lee and Amanda at the Escoffier. Jean-Pierre, the sommelier, was dead: shot by his own partner. They thought they had a lead, but they couldn't leave the Escoffier until they were questioned by the police.
They met in the dining room, where Lee and Amanda explained the whole thing. They were all clustered around a case of rare '45 Chateau Monet, which was unfortunately not the case of rare '45 Chateau Monet that they were looking for.
"If that's just a normal case of wine, then we're still missing a full case of wine that's laced with heroin," said Billy, still pacing.
Lee and Amanda both shook their heads and spoke at the same time.
"No."
"No, sir."
"Not anymore," Lee went on. "It's at the auction."
"Yes, sir," Amanda agreed.
"How do you know that?" Billy demanded, and Lee sighed and gestured to Amanda.
"Ask her," he said, simply.
She didn't mean to be, but Francine was suddenly afraid of the explanation.
"It's very simple, sir. You see, Congressman McNeil loved W.C. Fields. So he donated the wine to the auction under the name of Mr. Twillie. That's a W.C. Fields' character in 'My Little Chickadee'."
Lee shook his head sharply, as if to dislodge a piece of Amanda's verbal shrapnel that had embedded itself in his brain.
Amanda kept going. "See, I know because I was at Congressman McNeil's house when the receipt for the wine came and it was addressed to Mr. Twillie."
"That makes sense," said Billy. It most certainly did not. "What's the plan?"
They were all insane.
The plan, such as it was, was a daring one.
They spread throughout the auction audience, agents and police. Amanda, resplendent in a gorgeous blue dress, was the one bidding on the wine.
Lee stood on the balcony where he could command a full view of the audience.
Amanda simply had to bid until there was only one other person bidding. That would be the person they were looking for.
The plan worked beautifully. It was a woman who ended up making the final bid, and as she headed for the back of the room they moved in, unobtrusively.
But one thing was wrong. They had forgotten to tell Amanda to stay out of it once the bidding was over. They had forgotten that "then we move in" would have meant, in Amanda's mind, that she would move in, too.
She moved with them.
"I'm afraid you'll have to come with us," Billy murmured.
The woman turned, calm, and stepped toward Amanda. Then she pivoted, pulling a handgun out and pulling Amanda forward in one quick motion.
"Don't anyone move," she snapped, and they stopped advancing. "Or she's dead."
"Please, stay calm," Billy said.
They backed up, Amanda and the woman, and Billy and Francine advanced.
"Everyone stay calm," Billy instructed again. She split off from Billy as the woman glanced behind her, taking the opportunity to slip behind the racks of clothing and pull out her own gun.
"Don't move," Billy instructed. "Do exactly as she says."
There was a crash, and a gasp, and a loud thud. She slipped from behind the clothing racks and saw Lee struggling with the woman, knocking off her hat and veil to reveal —
"That's Cecilia Kemper!" she exclaimed, glancing at Amanda, who looked remarkably calm for what had just happened.
They led Cecelia off in handcuffs, and Francine only had time to hear Amanda say to Lee, covering a phone receiver with her hand, "I should have known it was Cecelia."
How could she have?
She hated those lightning intuitive leaps.