(The Mystery in the Meat)
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Entering Brennan's office, Angela strode over towards where her friend was sitting, stopped, placed her hands on her hips and glared. "Bren, you promised to let me give you a bachelorette party and you've been making excuses why you can't attend every time I set up a date for one. I wanted to do one the week before you were married, but you had that case you were working on and you wouldn't give me even two hours of your time and now you're married and you still haven't had your party. What's going on? If you don't want one, just say so. I mean I thought you wanted to experience all of the social dynamics of getting married, that's what you told me, but if you've changed your mind then you should say so."
Aware that Angela was angry with her, Brennan cocked her head to the side and studied her friend. "I did say I wanted to experience everything including a party, but I had other obligations that came first. It was not my intention to make you angry, Angela. You are my friend and I appreciate that you want to give me a party, but I have had very little free time since Booth asked me to marry him . . . Now that I am married, I do have free time available now and I would be happy if you threw me a party. Just remember no strippers."
"Really? Well, if you're available we can do it this weekend, Saturday night I think." She had been prepared to argue with Brennan about the party, so Angela was surprised that Brennan had given in so easily this time. She had been starting to wonder if Brennan was angry with her about something, but apparently not.
Surprised that Angela wanted to have a party so soon, Brennan leaned back against her chair and paused before answering. "I don't see why we can't do it Saturday. Who do you plan to invite to the party?"
"Just people you know, Bren. Your friends." Angela had already set the date for the party before she had entered the office and she had been prepared to kidnap Brennan to get her to the party. Now that Brennan was cooperating, she felt a little more relaxed and relieved. It wasn't easy being friends with Brennan, but she had always thought it was worth it. "I'll let you know when and where on Friday morning. I just need to check back with everyone and make sure that they can make it . . . by the way, even if they can't make it, we're having that party even if it's just you and me. You deserve a party and you're going to have one."
A feeling of warmth flooded Brennan and she knew it was because she had never had a friend like Angela before. Brennan had never really had any friends until she had met Booth and Angela and she knew that they loved her as she did them. After she had been abandoned by her parents she had been in foster care and she'd had no friends that she could count on. Even as an adult, she had realized that people didn't seem to want to be her friend and she had accepted it. She didn't understand what it was that she did that was off putting, but whatever it was didn't seem to affect Booth or Angela. Standing, she moved around her desk and pulled Angela into a hug. "Thank you, Angela."
She heard the sadness in Brennan's voice and she wondered what had caused it. Brennan was an enigma to her sometimes, but Angela tried to understand her friend as much as possible. "Hey, you're welcome, Brennan. That's what best friends do. We push our friends into having a good time even though they don't want one. We stick together through the good and the bad. I promised you a party and you're going to get one."
Able to control her emotions enough to prevent from crying, Brennan released her friend and gave her a weak smile. "I appreciate your persistence, Angela. I am ready for your party and I will expect raucous laughter and much drinking."
"That's the plan, Bren. That's the plan."
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They had been told they were going to a 'country and western' bar that Angela had been to a few years earlier and they'd all dressed appropriately. Of course, Angela didn't take into account the fact that businesses sometimes failed and the bar she remembered was now a biker bar.
There were a few votes to leave amongst the party goers, but Brennan didn't see why it was necessary. They were there to have a party and it didn't really matter to her what kind of a bar it was. She knew that the patrons would be worth observing no matter who they were.
Their clothes made them stick out like a sore thumb, but Angela thought that made them more interesting. She'd had a biker boyfriend for a few weeks when she was younger and she knew that bikers could be a lot of fun. At least Steve had been. She had dumped him when he'd got a bit too clingy, but all in all he'd been a lot of fun.
Most of the bar patrons had tried to intimidate the ladies dressed so oddly amongst them, but Brennan had not allowed that to happen. She had been invited to do shots with two bikers and Daisy had joined in. The bikers were amazed and stopped drinking before the ladies did. Their impressive display drew the attention of the other bar patrons.
Cam sipped whisky at the bar talking to a man who loved motorcycles and when he graduated from Med-School, he planned to become a General Practitioner and set up a practice in the Navaho Nation. His mother had been Navajo and had died in childbirth. He had been raised by his father's mother and now he wanted to return home and do something good for his mother's people. Cam had been impressed and spent several minutes talking to Burt and had given him her business card. She wanted to keep in contact with him and perhaps provide him with contacts down the road.
Wary of her surroundings, Caroline Julian sat at a table, sipped from a glass of beer and wondered how many of the bikers in the bar were ex-cons. She had put more than one biker away during her career and it was possible some of them might be in the bar with her. She wasn't really afraid, just cautious and alert. She found the situation to be rather strange since she'd only been to a few bachelorette parties and none of them had turned out like this one.
Daisy loved big burly men and she was drawn to a few bikers in the bar. It was like a smorgasbord of men and she wasn't sure if she should just pick one to dance with or just dance with anyone that asked. She loved to dance and there was a possibility that she could end up dancing all night, if she played her cards right.
Because Brennan showed a certain fearlessness that impressed a few of the bikers they challenged her to a few games, knife point between the fingers, coin tosses in a shot glass, etc. Brennan had a good time and loved the experience. She thought she might be able to write a paper on biker culture when she was through, but after quite a few shots and beers had passed her lips, thoughts of sociology papers fled her mind and so did caution.
Enthusiastically dancing with a biker named Moose, her dance was cut short when Moose's girlfriend had intervened. Brennan didn't really care, but she had taken exception to being called a skank, whatever that meant. "Your boyfriend is far too unattractive for a woman as exquisite as myself."
Shocked, Moose's girlfriend had turned red in the face. "What?"
"But you on the other hand are a suitable match." The biker girlfriend knew when she was being insulted and threw a punch. That started a melee that ended with a full-blown bar fight and the Sheriff's office coming out and stopping it. Brennan had punched and kicked a few bikers, Daisy had jumped on the backs of the men she had been dancing with earlier and pummeled their ears, Angela tried to make herself as small as possible and tried to keep clear of fists. Cam threw a few punches that connected and used her knowledge of science to throw a few fighters out of her way. Not amused, Caroline used her purse to knock out more than one aggressive male and took care not to get hurt. She hadn't been involved in a bar fight since she was a young woman in Chalmette, Louisiana but she knew how to protect herself.
Once the fight was stopped, Sheriff Anderson interviewed Brennan and found out that her husband was FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth, a friend of his from their Army days. Setting the bachelorette party girls to the side while they waited for Booth to arrive, the Sheriff and his deputies closed down the bar and sent the bikers home. Before the excitement was completely over, two arrests were made when Moose tried to steal a motorcycle from a deputy and Brennan tried to steal it from Moose. She had decided to go home and she didn't understand why she and her friends were being held.
Booth showed up thirty minutes after the call had been made to him, the emergency lights on in the SUV explaining how he had got there so fast. As he left the truck, he noticed Brennan and her gang sitting on the ground outside the bar with Sheriff Anderson talking to two of his deputies. "Hey Jim, thanks for calling me."
Moving away from the ladies, Anderson met Booth halfway and shook his hand. Pointing with his chin, the Sheriff sighed. "I take it the lady in the middle is your wife and the rest of the women are friends of yours."
The weary tone of voice told Booth that the women in question had been giving the Sheriff a hard time. "The lady in the middle is my wife, Dr. Temperance Brennan the well-known novelist. The older lady is a federal prosecutor. The lady on the far right used to be a deputy corner in New York City and is now the corner at the Medico-legal lab. The woman on the far left is Angela Montenegro. She's the one that helped you identify the child whose body was found buried the woods not to far from here last year . . . he was the mayor's grandson I believe and the short one works for my wife. I'm sure you realize what a mess you have on your hands . . . right?"
"They need to be in jail for causing a riot and your wife tried to steal my motorcycle." Anderson was irritated. He'd had to leave his wife at a restaurant to take care of this and he knew she was going to make him pay for that when he got home.
"You could but think about the publicity and the phone calls you're going to get from the Attorney General of the United States and the Director of the FBI not to mention the Director of the Jeffersonian. You've used the Medico-Legal lab twice this year alone and the FBI assisted you in a kidnapping four months ago. You might want to consider all of that before you charge anyone." Booth hoped that his friend would see reason. If he didn't then the chips would fall where the may and he would be able to say he'd warned Jim when the shit hit the fan.
Annoyed, Sheriff Anderson took off his hat, resettled it on his head and folded his arms across his chest. "I'll let them all go under your supervision, but I'm going to have the bar owner send your wife a bill for damages. She can afford it and she's lucky I don't charge her for attempted auto theft, brawling, public intoxication and assault and battery. I've got one biker in jail and I expect he's going to see the same charges." Anderson glared at Brennan then back at Booth. "The only reason I won't charge her is because she thought my motorcycle belonged to Moose Sokolek . . . and you saved my life in Somalia. Get them out of here and tell them they're not welcome back."
Grateful that Sheriff Anderson felt some obligations towards him, Booth shook his friend's hand and swaggered over to where the ladies were now standing. "Okay listen up!" He noticed them all flinch and he knew that they were all starting to suffer headaches from too much drinking. Good. "The Sheriff has been kind enough to not arrest you and he's releasing you all into my custody. Now here's the plan. All of you get into my SUV. I'll take everyone home and you will not say anything on the drive back. I don't want to hear a word. I want peace and quiet."
Amused, Cam laughed. "Believe me, none of us feel like the life of the party right now."
Feeling good, Brennan staggered over to where Booth was standing and kissed him. "We didn't have any strippers because I knew that your alpha-male sensibilities would be offended . . . I appreciate you coming to get us, but we really didn't need rescuing. We won! We won and everyone knows it."
His arms around Brennan's shoulders, Booth helped her to the truck with the other bachelorette partiers following him. He thought he'd have to carry Daisy to the car, but Cam and Angela managed to keep the diminutive woman on her feet. Once everyone was in the car, he made sure everyone was buckled up. "Okay ladies. No talking." Starting his truck up, Booth slipped in a DVD he kept in the truck that he used to annoy certain people and waited for the groans when AC/DC started to play "Jailbreak" from their 'Dirty Deeds Done Cheap' album.
The shriek from Daisy was somehow satisfying as well as the protests from the rest of the squints. Glancing at Brennan, Booth wasn't surprised to see Brennan nodding her head to the music. She might be a big fan of folk music, but when she was inebriated she liked rock and Booth knew it.
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