Lizzie Sparrow was writing an e-mail.
It was something she did frequently now -- for she hadn't had much time for it back in England, but now found the internet to be quite an entertaining diversion -- and many a time she had gotten on Instant Messenger with her friends from work, or with Jack when he was in his Office, occupying himself with some sort of criminal activity that she had never asked him about.
She had thought about asking him, though. She remembered having asked him before they were married, and never getting an answer; and the more she thought about that, the more she desperately wanted to know what on earth her husband could be doing.
And just as she hit the send button on her e-mail to her friend Britni, curiosity overwhelmed her. She had never really learned the meaning of the word "privacy", what with her father being a politician, and so what she did was (by technicality only) not her fault. After all, she hadn't had a lesson in not typing a person's name into a search engine to find out what they've been up to.
Askjeeves.com returned all sorts of results on her husband, she discovered. Articles of arrests in Germany and Holland for grand theft auto; vandalism and assaulting an officer in France; and something in Canada that had to do with a moose and a pair of tartan boxers... The latter being something she just didn't want to know about.
She searched and she searched, carefully sifting through each website, slowly reading off her husband's list of crimes against the crown, against the establishment, and so on. Shoplifting, impersonating a police officer, impersonating a Catholic bishop in a confessional, arson... Then she found something. The summary of the webpage read like this:
HOW TO GET TO CAPTAIN SPARROW'S SITE
Everyone knows and loves CAPTAIN SPARROW, if not
for his courage, then for his website...
Of course, Lizzie was intrigued. She remembered, when first she had met Jack, that a man had called him "Captain", and she had no idea what it meant.
She was going to find out.
"Where were you on the night of January third, 1984?"
Friday looked up from her laptop and to the table in the center of the room, where the Detective was leaning into the face of yet another "character who might know something" -- more commonly known as a Desert Springs Hospital nurse. Unlike all the others that Brewster had drilled that day, she didn't seem frightened or surprised by this man's strange behavior. Friday didn't understand it.
"Detective," she said, breaking the death-stare between interrogator and nurse, "I hardly think that question is relevant,"
He tried to death-stare her for a moment, which was ridiculous as she had met all his kittens, but ended up breaking into a smile. "I know it isn't," he whispered confidentially. "I've just always wanted to ask it."
He turned back to the rather bemused nurse and continued: "Answer me, woman, or I'll have the police brought in!"
"That's where I was," the woman replied with a laugh. "How funny! You see, that was my thirteenth birthday, and I went to go see The Police."
Brewster raised an eyebrow, and Friday could tell he was not at all sure of what to say.
"Really?"
"Yeah,"
The smile replaced the grimace. "Good lord, how smashing! I adore The Police!"
The Secretary rolled her eyes, positive that she was going to have to intervene before the Detective got to talking about how poetic Sting was, and the shrine in his walk-in closet for everything that ever had to do with that particular member of the band. "Detective, we're here about Miss Swann, remember?" For all we know, she could have been dismembered and thrown into a ditch with all this time you're wasting...
Brewster's face fell slightly, his eyebrows lowering. "Oh," he said, sounding quite as though he were going to cry. "Oh. Right. Miss Swann." He turned to the nurse. "Did you see her?"
"Well, I didn't see her leave," the nurse replied. "But I did see her... I was attending to the man who had kidnapped her, and when I went in to change his bandage, she was in there with him..."
"Ah," said Brewster. "Provoking the blackguard, was she? Good Always Wins and whatnot?"
The nurse made a funny sort of face at the man in brown tweed, and said, "Uh... not exactly."
There was a little diner not too far from Desert Springs Hospital, and rather catch a taxi back to their hotel, where the two PI's found that they would be living on vending-machine M&M's and Coca-Cola, they decided to stop off there instead. Then, perhaps, they could discuss the information they had just received.
The Detective was much too shocked to discuss.
"They were kissing?!" Brewster Ackerly-Tate looked helplessly at his assistant, who sat across the table from him, praying that she would have something to say in order to calm him down. She usually had one of her sarcastic retorts stored away -- where was one when he needed it?
"I must admit it's rather strange," Friday replied, staring blankly at her fingernails. "But this whole kidnap thing could have been some mangled love-affair all along. Perhaps she planned it with him, perhaps she didn't. Either way, the last time they were seen together, it was in a romantic situation, so there's a very good chance she's still alive."
"I know, but..." Brewster shuddered at the thought of a nineteen year old girl with an old man like that Sparrow creature. "That would be like you kissing me!"
"There's not that big of an age difference with us," she said. "Twenty-six and thirty-eight is nothing when you put it against the twenty-one years between Miss Swann and Mr. Sparrow."
"Twenty-one years?!"
"Yes, Detective."
He shuddered. He knew people were strange, but this was just a teeny bit too much. What if the poor girl had been seduced? -- Oh, he didn't even want to think about that... Bad thoughts! BAD THOUGHTS! Go away bad thoughts, back to hell...
"...Detective?"
He looked up from the table, still trying to dismiss the bad thoughts whilst he replied to his secretary.
"Er... yes?"
"Things are what you make of them, you know," Friday said, brushing a strand of hair from her face. "So, instead of thinking how disturbing the victim's situation is, you could think that it might be easier to find them now."
Brewster raised an eyebrow, feeling all sorts of skeptical emotions welling up inside of him. "How will it be easier?" he asked. "Shall we ask people if they've seen any little girls snogging old men as of late?"
"No," she muttered. "I was thinking more along the lines of the fact that they'll be living together."