Moments
A/N: brownie points to CoryAvellana for knowing her Firefly/Serenity trivia : )
Anywho, enjoy!
The Christmas Curse
~8~
On the Eighth day of The Curse, my 'friend' sent to us
Eight Dames-a-Weeping…
Peggy's weekend was not the restful respite she hoped it to be.
She had to brave the consumer hordes to do her own Christmas shopping, and when she was just about to draw herself a nice relaxing bath to sooth aching muscles, Angie called.
"I need you."
"You need me?"
"Our dance choreographer was murdered last night. The cops investigating aren't the brightest bulbs of the bunch, and I need you."
She heard her friend's grief and her frustration, and it took all she had not to rush right over. "Oh, Angie, I'm so sorry, but what is that you think I - ?"
"No, you're right. Code-breaking skills is not really needed," she admitted resignedly, but then she hastened to wistfully add, "But do you think your 'handler' could look into it? And you could tag along for my moral support at least, right?"
"Of course, I can ask J- Thompson. He might have to make a few phone calls to get authorization, but whether or not he can, you can most certainly expect me down there within the hour," she promised.
When she called Jack, he was thankfully at home and in a somewhat helpful mood.
"Yeah, Carter, I'll call Wallace and see if he can use any of his family connections to get us a pass on invading their turf. But this is going to cost you. And not just a bottle of Axel's," he cautioned.
Wallace was indeed able to call in a few favors to allow them access to the case, but that did not mean that they were warmly welcomed when they arrived on scene.
In fact, after Officer Riley gave them the rundown (blunt force trauma to the head just as she exited out the side door approximately between the hours of two and four o'clock in the morning), his partner, Officer Esposito grinned maliciously at them and said, "You wanna interview her chorus girls? Be my guest." And then he kindly escorted them backstage to the changing rooms and closed them in with nearly ten overwrought actresses.
After Jack got over his deer-in-the-headlights look, he shot her with a glare that promised a slow and painful death.
Angie introduced them to her colleagues, but for the life of Peggy, she truly did struggle with their names, especially after doing a round of tearful interviews with them.
She was going to suggest that she and Jack split them to save time, but at Jack's face going pale at the idea of being alone with any one of the distraught women, she decided it would be best to do it together.
It was the best idea she had had so far as not one of them turned off the waterworks as they were questioned, and by the end of it all, Jack could only distinguish them by how they cried; and so they were hence forth and forever to be known to either of them as: Sobber, Bawler, Mewler, Sniffles, Bleater, Keener and Laments, but the most tearful of all was Rita the Red-nosed Blubbery Weeper.
Angie was the exception to this. She was cold and hard and fierce, and after she had answered all of their questions, she stared them down, her blue eyes piercing into their very souls, as she practically demanded, "English, Agent, you will be getting her justice, won't you?"
Peggy mutely nodded, but Jack solemnly asserted, "Yes, ma'am."
They also interviewed the diva and the director, the producer and the stage manager and his crew, and the maestro and his orchestra members, and even the janitorial staff. And then they went about constructing a timeline for the victim and everyone there.
Everyone had the means to kill her, as all were strong enough to swing a pipe or a bat against her skull. Not everyone had the opportunity though, as they were able to alibi each other out at various after-show parties, and most did not seemingly have motive.
The most obvious and the favorite suspect of the detectives was the director, who also happened to be the victim's ex-husband. They were seen arguing by Sniffles before she left. When asked what it was about, the director had shrugged and said, "It was about money, like it always is, but nothing that would send me to that extreme."
His words had a ring of truth to them, as she very well knew from what she could glean from Angie's and Anna's gossiping hour, but his body language indicated that he was hiding something. A fact which caused Jack to want to turn up the heat, and it annoyed him greatly that she did not.
"Yes, I know he is hiding something," she argued exasperatedly. "He's hiding at least the fact that that's not the only thing they argued about." Also, a tidbit that she knew thanks to gossiping hour.
"What else then?"
"The producer. He was known to – " she stopped mid-answer as it finally came to her what had been niggling at the back of her mind about the victim's timeline.
"Carter?" Jack called after her as she took off for the orchestra pit.
When he caught up, she asked, "Red-nosed Rita stated that she was the last one here aside from the victim, and she last saw her in the orchestra pit. Why would a dance choreographer be in the orchestra pit?"
Jack didn't have an answer, and Peggy really didn't know either. But she knew what she would have done, and so she headed straight for the unclaimed violin case, felt around until she could detect the catch for the secret compartment, and revealed a stack of incriminating evidence along with a letter.
The letter was addressed to the rich widow that the producer was known to be courting, detailing the extensive sexual harassments that the young female members of the production had been enduring due to him.
"So it was money they were arguing about, the money that they might lose if they confronted him," Jack mused.
"So her solution was to blackmail him," Peggy summed up sadly.
When they went to go bring the producer in, the man panicked and ran. They chased him, and Jack was able to tackle him to the ground, but received a black eye for his efforts.
Later, when she caught him frowning at his bruised complexion in a mirror, she teased, "Don't worry, Jack. It gives you rather a rakish look."
"It's not my looks that I'm worried about. It's my budget," he retorted. "I have a prime steak in the fridge that is going to go to waste in the hopes of keeping the swelling down, and I'm not sure I can afford my dry cleaning bills after having all those women cry on my shoulder. I might even have to get a new suit."
His voice ended on such a plaintive whine that she had to bite on her tongue to keep from making some crack about him being a 'cry baby'. Instead, she drew upon her inner-graciousness and said, "Thanks, Jack, for your help today. It meant a lot to ... Angie."
"I'd say don't mention it, but I kinda hope you do, a lot," he drawled. When she rolled her eyes, he added more seriously, "But to be honest, Peg, it was kinda nice to find out that you felt comfortable enough to ask me, and didn't just go it alone, you know?"
"We're partners, Jack," she said simply, a little amazed that it meant that much to him, that he would even want her to ask for his help for personal favors.
But then he had to go and ruin the moment by asserting, "Yeah, just don't get too comfortable, will ya?"
~9~
On the Ninth day of The Curse, Wally dumped on us
Nine Warehouse-sortings…
"Where are Agent Thompson and M- Agent Carter?" Norris inquired as soon as he walked into the bullpen and saw their seats were vacant.
Ramirez grinned at him, jerking his thumb towards the conference room where – surprise, surprise – the Deputy Agent and his partner could be scene to be arguing over boxes of files.
While he was trying to summon the courage to brave the lions' den, Wallace clapped his big beefy hand on his shoulder in what was probably intended as a commiserating gesture, but was ruined by his gloating, "Yeah, your illustrious mentors are suffering the consequences of putting their noses in local business. Congrats."
His 'illustrious' mentors. Hah.
They were what he found to be the most confounding part of his new job, not the least of which Agent Carter, as she was the one who most blew his preconceived notions out of the water.
To be quite honest (and he generally tried to be), having a woman be a member of the inner-sanctum of the SSR and an 'Agent' no less was unexpected – unexpected, but not unbelievable. He knew many a strong woman, women who were more frightening in their capability (including his mother, most of his sisters, and a few nuns in the Catholic schools he attended) than some of his drill sergeants.
Agent Carter had proven to be just such a woman. Case in point –
"Well, Norris, are you going to stand there all day or are you going to join us?" her clipped British accent made her same most impatient, when she was annoyed, and he probably did deserve it as he had been standing in the doorway lost in his reverie.
"No, no, I'm here and present," he hastily and habitually replied as if he had been tardy to class. "What has the archive room regurgitated for us today?"
"Not the archive room," Thompson grunted. "Wallace."
"Wallace?"
"Yes," Carter cut in before Thompson could make whatever comment his sneering lips were prepared to utter. "Wallace. He did us a favor this weekend, and now we are helping him track down weapons that he has good intel on them having been stashed in one of these warehouses." She nodded her head towards their conference table covered with what must be whatever information Wallace and Fisher had amassed on the suspected locations.
"Why these warehouses? And what weapons specifically?"
"All his informant knows is that they are located in this district, but are owned by different businessmen who all have a battalion of lawyers that will block any kind of warrant we try to obtain to search for it without more evidence that they are there," Thompson griped.
"As for the weapons, they are prototypes of 'temperature manipulation'," Carter explained. "One reduces its targets core temp to absolute zero and the other raises it to point of combustion."
At Thompson's grumble of disgust, Carter shot him a look of such understanding that it made Norris uncomfortable. With the side-benefit of breaking up their partners-only telepathic communication, he inquired curiously, "Is there a way to detect the weapons like with the molecular nitramene?"
Carter's brown eyes lit up with interest at the idea, and she quickly examined the specs that Wallace must have provided with his colossal data collection.
After a minute, she declared, "I think we can. Not with the Vita-ray detector …but I think I can use a simple Geiger-counter. While I pose as an inspector or something, you two can research here what kind of radiation levels I should be reading from – "
"Wait. What do you mean while you go and we stay here?" Thompson objected. "You are in no way in hell going alone."
And that unilateral decree practically started World War Three.
What had startled Norris at first about Carter was not that she was an agent but that she was a field agent. He had known that Carter was there and even partnered with the former acting-chief, (as that was the favorite bit of gossip among the training personnel at the SSR boot camp), but he had simply thought that she was more of an analyst, cryptographer, or even interrogator. Ya know, the office portion of the job.
But after seeing her in action, he had quickly gotten over it. And he had thought Agent Thompson had faith in her skills as well, which is why he was just as surprised as she was that the man was objecting so vociferously.
"My saying that I don't want you to go alone does not mean that I think you are incapable of doing the job, Carter," Thompson growled frustratedly. "I am saying that you damn well need back up, and I resent you assuming that I am just going to stay here while you waltz around nine warehouses playing nosy, nit-picky inspector."
"Well, what do you bloody propose, Jack?" she fired back just as frustratedly. "We need someone familiar with these files to sort through the inventory, and as a woman I will be more likely to be underestimated and taken at face value than you. Trust me as I have done this stunt before. Plus, Johnson is not going to release another agent to go with me as we are short on man-power due to the holidays."
Thompson waved off the last of her obstacles, stating dismissively, "The chief will have to get over it as it is standard operating procedures, and if that is not good enough a reason for him, I will remind him that if something happens to you, he will be the one required to explain the deviation to Col. Phillips."
More earnestly, the deputy added, "You may have done your little 'stunt' well before, but, Marge, you don't need to do it alone this time. Take one of the better junior agents with you. They'll work just as well as Stark's butler."
Much to the deputy's relief and his (as he couldn't handle anymore drama this morning without at least another cup of coffee), Carter acquiesced, stating, "Fine. I'll take Palmer with me."
~:~
She and Palmer went without much issue from the chief and were gone for most of the day. They returned in the afternoon without any incident that required a less than comfortable chat with the Colonel and had ruled out five of the warehouses, leaving four to go.
"Four of the warehouses have that kind of radiation?" he asked flabbergasted. "What's in those crates?"
"Well, that's the question that I hope you two have been asking yourselves while I have been gone," Carter remarked pointedly. "If there's a warehouse that shouldn't have these readings, that's the one and we need to find it."
"We have been," Thompson defended wearily. "But either their stock boys are extremely lazy in their record keeping or several someones are being intentionally vague on potentially interesting items."
Half-expecting Carter to snap right back at her partner, as was their want especially when they got tired, Norris was taken aback to see an almost soft smile play at the corner of her red lips, as she nudged Jack encouragingly, "Oh, chin up. At least it is not the records of that IRS Warehouse in South Dakota that we have to slog through."
Thompson shot her a confused expression as he tried to recall what she was referencing. Finally, he asked thoughtfully, "The one in Univille?"
He pronounced it as 'YOU-niville', which caused Norris to reflexively correct him with a distracted, "UN-iville."
Both Thompson and Carter did a double-take to look at him in surprise as if they had forgotten that he was even there.
They did that a lot, getting lost in their own little world. The most confounding thing about his mentors was not that one of them was a woman, but their weird partnership dynamic.
The bickered like an old married couple one minute, and the next they had these compassionate, companionable moments the next. He had no idea how they could, as some of the stuff that they said to each other was more than borderline insulting.
His brother-in-law when he told him about it insisted that the arguing was 'foreplay', but he had never seen anything inappropriate or unprofessional like that between the two.
He just simply didn't get it.
When he didn't explain how he knew that bit of geographical trivia (because it was more than his life was worth), they moved on.
"Maybe we are going about it the wrong way," Thompson mused. "Maybe we can rule out a few of these by ease of access."
"You mean the more heavily guarded the warehouse is, the less likely they could sneak in and stash their prize?" Carter replied contemplatively.
"Yeah."
"It's possible, I suppose, but security is only as good as the people being the eyes and ears."
That intrigued Thompson, and his blue eyes narrowed in speculation, as he asked almost eagerly, "You think there might be an inside man?"
The two shared yet another look and then dove for respective personnel files.
He didn't get it, but whatever they have going clearly works for them because within less than ten minutes they found their inside man.
"Gotcha!" Thompson exclaimed, and then after Carter gave her nod of agreement, he ordered, "Norris, go and tell Wallace the news. He'll want to prep for his raid as soon as possible."
"'His raid'? What? You're not going to go claim the glory for yourself?" Carter queried. There was something in her tone of voice that prompted Norris to hesitate to do as instructed.
Thompson shrugged, "I have learned that with great glory comes great mountains of paperwork, and since you won't let me pawn it off on the probie, then no, I will pass." His cavalier attitude of pointed indifference changed however as he smirked knowingly at her, "And haven't you noticed, Carter, that I am behind on my beauty sleep?"
Norris knew that he needed to get going, but he instead waited to see how Carter would answer. If she replied in the affirmative, she would be indicating that she does pay particular attention to Jack and his looks. But if she did so in the negative, she would then present her partner with the opportunity to tease that she must then still find him as highly attractive.
But Agent Carter is too good to fall into that kind of verbal trap, and so she merely shook her head and half-chuckled, half-admonished, "Incorrigible."
She chuckled a lot less when she scolded him for 'dawdling'.
~10~
On the Tenth day of The Curse, Murphy's Law gifted us
Ten Cons-a-Running…
Dear Gam-Gam,
I must confess that after the day that I have had today, I am almost a believer in Carter's "Curse".
As you know from my last missive, we were recently able to arrest a large cell of a much larger smuggling operation that deals in dangerous technology.
But what seems can go wrong will go wrong, as the saying goes.
First, the moronic magistrate set bail. Then, a greedy bail-bondsman decided to take the risk of posting it, and lost. All ten of them.
This veritable genius is out of commission due to a most inconvenient case of influenza. His senior bounty hunter is on his honeymoon somewhere in the Florida Keys, and his junior hunter was put in the hospital by one of the ten that he was trying to bring in for another missed court date.
And the only reason we know that all ten are intent on skipping town was because the belligerent bail-jumper has a big mouth and blabbed their intentions to scatter 'to the four corners of the world' before he brained Junior, and Junior mentioned it to their office secretary (after he came to in the hospital), who happens to be the cousin of our fair chief switchboard operator, who of course passed it on to Carter.
And that was just how my morning started.
I won't bore you with all the nitty-gritty details of our man-hunt, but needless to say, we were yet again unable to focus on our cold cases or even our now ever increasingly lukewarm ones. And certain individuals in the office decided to make bank off our recent string of ill-luck by starting a bet as to which team can bring the most in. Loser (assumed to be us) buys a round at the pub for every one of the fugitives that the winner catches.
Now, I know you frown upon gambling, Gam-Gam, but I didn't see it as such since I thought it was a for sure thing. I also know that pride comes before the fall, and let me tell you we certainly paid the price.
Our investigative leads indicated that at least one of our rabbiters was likely holing up in his grandmother's cabin which was halfway to Canada, and that he would likely offer that as a temporary sanctuary to some of his associates before they made a dash for our northern border.
We obtained the warrant, made the long tedious if perilous (due to icy roads) drive as far as we could go, and then had to trek the rest of the way in by foot. Surprisingly, the probie was able to move stealthily through the woods and did not give away our position and had even spotted a few of the booby traps that the lowlifes had set. He later chalked that up to his 'years as a scout…boy-scout that is'.
However, his storming the castle tactics need some work, because after we followed S.O.P. – reconned, ascertained that there were three of them and they were mostly three sheets to the wind, and tossed our smoke grenades in – we charged in, intending to cut-off all their exits and subdue them, but failing miserably when he let two of them get past him, spraining his ankle in the process.
Carter ordered me to restrain our jail-bird in the hand and assess Norris for any other injuries, while she went after the other two.
Even if they hadn't been inebriated fools, they would have been no match for my Marge.
She came back with them bound, bruised, and marching reluctantly at gun point with only her hair slightly mussed.
Because we were out in the boonies, we could not radio for assistance, so we had to march all three of them back to our thankfully large vehicle.
However, the three idiots tried to run several more times, necessitating that we chase them down muddy debris-ridden hills and through icy streams and thorny briar patches. These inconvenient and short-lived detours always ended in ever increasing consequences. First, they were handcuffed to each other at the wrists forming a chain-gang, then at the ankles, forming an awkward five-legged Siamese Triplet, which was only made even more awkward when Carter shot one of them in the rear after yet another foolish attempt.
The best part of all this and why I am not fully convinced that we are 'cursed' is what happened when we arrived at the office.
While we were off having our woodland adventure, the rest of the SSR was tracking down the other seven.
Interpol had notified Johnson that they had caught one in London and one in France, and the Coast Guard had caught another while doing an inspection. Fisher and Wallace had focused their search at the docks and had caught two boarding their respective boats; one was bound for Mexico, the other Argentina. Ramirez had caught one at a train station, and Daniel had collected his at a bus station, tipped off by his bum network.
As you have no doubt done the math by now, you will have noted that this means we not only caught all ten, but that Carter and I (and the probie too, I guess) bagged the most.
We made quite the entrance – Norris limping, myself quite disheveled but triumphant, and our three cons battered, bruised, and butt-shot and eyeing Peggy Carter with terror, as if she was a demon mistress from hell.
Although I could see why she would give them that impression – tired, muddy, and peevish, brooking no-nonsense from them, and with twigs and leaves in her wild hair – to me, she was an angel - an avenging wrathful angel of justice for sure, but certainly not a demon. No demon could have such a demure yet radiant smile as she had when Ramirez and Sousa dedicated the first round to her.
So in conclusion, Gam-Gam, you can tell Nana Maria that I don't think we are 'cursed'. Yes, it was a trying day, but we still got our men (again).
Your loving grandson,
Jack Thompson
