Hi again! Thanks for the reviews . . . they're all good so far . . . Yay! Here's the next part, it's noticeably shorter than the other one. I wanted to post it as soon as possible, but I haven't been home and I figured I'd left you hanging long enough. So here 's the next chapter, and I think I'm going to change the name from "Jack be Nimble" because I wanted that to be the first chapter's name, and the second to be "Jack be Quick" or something ridiculously snazzy like that. Hmmph. But oh well, I guess I have to take some grief sometimes. Here I go, and BTW: I don't own them. Just Jack. (That was a quote from Will and Grace, when Jack always says "Just Jack!" and does the hand thing. I love that show!!)
**
I knocked on the door of a nice house in a nice neighborhood tentatively. I had no idea whose house this was, but I hoped (in a similar fashion to what I'd hoped with Jack Crawford) that she wouldn't arrest me or try and arrest my parents, who were on their way to Florence—damn them.
I shifted on my feet anxiously, waiting for the door to open. I couldn't hear any footsteps coming, and I peered through the window to see if there was anyone home. I was pretty sure the owner was there, because there was an older Mustang parked out front, but that didn't change the fact that no one was answering.
I took that time to think about what to tell this woman—Jack had told me that I had the choice of telling her who I was, and I didn't want more than one person knowing that, so I voted against saying anything unless it was necessary. I chose to go by Marster instead of Mardsen because my family is recorded in Vancouver and Victoria with photographs (which was stupid, I've decided in retrospect), and if this chica decided to run a background check on the last name Mardsen, she could easily recognize my parents. I made up Marster on the phone with Jack Crawford and decided it was a safe fallback—there was no information to be found on me with that last name, so there was no information on my parents, either.
*Sigh* But on second thought, if Jack was recruiting her to help me, then she'd have to find out about my family eventually. So why lie to her? Other than the fact that she may have been different from Jack Crawford in the sense that she really would arrest my parents.
O the problems borne of having a cannibal as a father.
This was so very peachy that I thought my head would explode.
I snapped right out of my decision-making when the door opened and I was face-to-face with a strikingly beautiful African-American woman in jeans and a T-shirt.
"Can I help you?" she asked frankly.
"Uh—yeah, Jack Crawford said you could give me a place to stay . . ."
I was sure I was going about this the wrong way.
She frowned. "I haven't heard from Jack Crawford in years."
"Yeah. I just talked to him earlier—he's supposed to call you in a while." I continued to let my mind race nervously.
"Who are you?" she asked, wary at the mention of Jack Crawford.
"Uh . . ." Jacqueline Marster. Jacqueline Marster. Jacqueline Marster. I can't do this. "Jack—I don't need my last name quite yet."
"Ardelia Mapp," she told me. "I guess you can come in. We'll discuss this inside."
Her house was neat, very well-kept and tidy—obviously she was single. But I was curious as to a ring she wore on a chain around her neck—simple gold with emeralds encrusted in it. Classy, but understated. Was it from a boyfriend or someone like that? I stored it away for future reference.
She sat me down at the table and went to fix us some tea. "So how old are you?" she asked.
"Sixteen, just shy of seventeen."
"And where are you from?"
"Victoria, British Columbia. I lived in Florence before that," I replied.
"Fancy. What's the accent?"
"English with a twang."
"England too?"
"Only on vacation. Dad liked Florence better than anywhere else. What about yourself?"
Ardelia Mapp looked at me. "Why do you ask?"
"Just curious. Jack Crawford has a lot of faith in you."
"More like he's probably out of options. What did you need with Crawford, anyway?"
"I'm in a bit of a snitch with the Mafia in Italy, and he's lending a hand."
"What a group to fall in with," she sighed. "They should just leave people the hell alone."
"Care to elaborate?"
"I've been working this case since it first came up, and they're about to pull me off for personal reasons. But I think that these people are looking for someone who doesn't want to be found. If I could make the Mafia realize that, life would be so much easier."
"So who are they looking for?"
"My ex-partner. It's all so complicated. I'd explain it to you, but it was before your time."
"You make yourself sound old."
"I feel old."
"Who was your partner?" I asked, taking a sip of tea.
"Clarice Starling," she replied quietly. But I could tell from the look in her eyes that she was only quiet because she didn't want to scream for hours on end. At my mother's name, I choked on my tea.
"Oh. What happened to Clarice? In your opinion, anyway," I added, recovering quickly.
"It's not my place to say. She made a decision and I guess she's living with it."
"What decision was that?"
"To run off with a mass murderer."
"Hannibal the Cannibal," I murmured, smiling inwardly at the nickname Dad hated so much. But it was awfully catchy, so I could see why he couldn't get rid of it. "I read about that in class. Hannibal Lecter is a textbook case at school."
"He was never textbook. The textbook says that murderers don't run off with FBI agents."
"Maybe he's only part textbook. And you're on his case, right?"
"Like corduroy on a hemorrhoid."
"Why? Do you think that stopping this Mafia business will lead you to Hannibal Lecter, and through him to Clarice Starling?" I asked.
She looked at me suspiciously. Great, Jack. Pull a Dad and try to get in her head. Brilliant plan.
"Sorry," I apologized. "I was out of line."
Ardelia shook her head. "That was pretty sharp of you. I don't know if Starling knew what she was doing seventeen years ago—was she drugged, or just plain irrational? She deserves a chance in the real world, if that was the case."
"What if she's happy with what she chose?" I asked. "That doesn't make her any less rational than she's ever been, it just means she knew what she wanted and she got it. Think of it like that."
"I don't see how she could have wanted that."
"Well that's why you didn't run off with him."
She narrowed her eyes. "You're pretty smart for a kid."
"Being sixteen doesn't make me any more intellectually inferior to you than anyone else."
Oooh, big words. I love it.
"Did you ever try to find her?" I asked.
"Starling? I've never stopped." Mapp fiddled with the ring around her neck. "I've had too many false leads and dead ends—I'm always more than a few steps behind her. I started losing sleep with this Mafia business—this ring used to be snug on me. It's too big for even my thumb now."
"You said yourself she doesn't want to be found," I remarked. "Maybe you should leave her alone until she chooses to be found."
"She said the same thing about Lecter," she muttered. "Thought that the world should leave him alone and he should do the same for her. But she still heard from him sometimes—once after she graduated, then one more time after she got in trouble for the Evelda Drumgo shooting. She didn't get anything after that, because the Bureau confiscated everything he sent her before she checked her mail."
Leave it to Dad to beat a dead horse. Well, maybe the horse wasn't totally dead. Do I count as proof to that idea?
. . . Sigh.
That, by the way, was when the phone rang. Ardelia's quiet bitterness disappeared when she answered it. "Mapp," she said briskly.
I leaned back in my chair and looked around the small kitchen as I waited for the conversation to finish, but realized that Ardelia Mapp was looking at me with some kind of suspicion suddenly.
I felt my cheeks color a bit, and looked away.
"It's Crawford," she told me. "Seems like you're in a mess, hmm?"
I nodded. "Seems like it." Then I continued to wait for Jack Crawford to hurry up and let her hang up. I had something to say.
