A/N Happy early birthday to me! Alas, my goal of having this story finished by my birthday has not come to pass. On the bright side, my dad and I are going to check out a new Vietnamese restaurant in honor of the day!
Thank you to my beta, IcyWaters, who is so good at eliminating my silly mistakes. Wish she could have checked my math tests in high school!
Disclaimer Slander! I never said I owned any of it! Get back, you! waves toasting fork at DC Comics hitmen
Chapter 33
Trust not the horse, O Trojans. Be it what it may, I fear the Grecians even when they offer gifts.
-The Aeneid
The phone began to ring just as Alfred walked through the door of Wayne Manor. Hastily tugging off his gloves, he picked up the receiver and was momentarily nonplused when a computer generated voice asked him to enter the security code. Ah, Miss Somerville. He punched the numbers and said, "Wayne Manor, Alfred Pennyworth speaking."
"Alfred," Lucius Fox's voice was filled with relief. "You're back. This is the third time I've called."
"I only just returned."
"Get Wayne down here ASAP. An emergency board meeting has been called to discuss the results of the investigation into Simon Golding."
Alfred had no idea what Lucius was referring to, but he didn't waste time with questions. Hanging up the phone, he hurried upstairs and into the darkness of the master bedroom. He couldn't deny a sense of relief when he saw Bruce safely huddled beneath the covers. Not that there was much the butler could do if something did happen to Batman during one of his nighttime ramblings, but Alfred could never sleep soundly until he was personally sure the master of the house was safely home.
Pushing aside his reflections, Alfred drew back the curtains to let what light there was into the room. "Master Wayne, Lucius Fox just called."
There was a faint groan from the bed.
"There's been an emergency board meeting called. Something about a Simon Golding."
Bruce sat up, rubbing a hand over his sleep bleared eyes. "What time is it?"
"Seven-thirty, sir."
Bruce muttered in what sounded like Chinese, pushed himself out of bed, and stumbled into the bathroom. Alfred pulled out a shirt and suit, then called the garage to have one of the cars sent around. Twenty minutes later, a still yawning Bruce was speeding away toward downtown, and Alfred at last approached the kitchen, wondering how much damage had been done in his absence.
To his surprise, the counters were clean, the drain rack was full of clean dishes, and there was coffee percolating in the machine. Miss Somerville was sitting at the breakfast bar, with a mug of coffee and a disarranged chess board.
"Good morning, Miss Somerville."
"Good morning, Mr. Pennyworth. Have you just arrived from somewhere?" she asked, curiously examining the suit he wore which, in some indefinable way, said "business," the same way the one he usually wore shouted, "butler."
"I spent yesterday in Washington."
"My fault?" she asked with a faint smile.
"It's always a pleasure to catch up with old friends." He tied an apron over his suit and washed his hands. "I meant to return last night, but we were grounded by snow."
"Beastly stuff." She returned her attention to the chess board.
Alfred cracked half a dozen eggs into his pan and before they had finished scrambling, Dick wandered into the kitchen. "Alfred, you're back!"
"So I am. Orange juice or milk?"
"Juice, please." Alfred poured and Dick took the brimming glass to the breakfast bar and climbed up beside Somerville. "Are you the white or the black?" he asked.
"Both," she responded absently. "And neither." She shifted the position of a black knight.
"You can't move him like that!" Dick protested. "It's against the rules."
"People don't always play by the rules, Richard."
"I do. Otherwise it's cheating."
She looked at him, eyebrows raised. "And you never cheat?"
"No!" he exclaimed indignantly.
"What about lies? Do you ever tell lies?"
"Only if it's important," he said, suddenly looking anxious.
"What's important enough to lie about?"
Whatever answer the boy was about to make was cut off when Alfred set a bowl of steaming eggs on the counter. "No more chess before breakfast," he said firmly and took the board away.
- - - - - -
Bruce sat in his "thinking room," frowning down at the ream of printouts in front of him. The morning's meeting had been short. Fox had simply wanted to apprise the board members of the situation – namely, that proof of money laundering within the company had been discovered, and that the evidence was beginning to point to several important people, including a few of those who sat around the conference table. Disbelief had been followed by outraged assertions of innocence.
Fox had assured them that he believed that much of the information uncovered was fraudulent – particularly since his own name was among those accused – and had asked anyone who might be able to shed any light on the matter to come forward. Bruce's name had not been on the list, probably because he had been missing for the last seven years. Or maybe the framer thought Bruce Wayne was just too dumb to be involved in such a complex operation. It makes it more believable if the whole thing is going on beneath the oblivious owner's nose.
The auditor from the IRS had given them forty-eight hours to come up with an explanation before he started pressing charges. And if that happened… Stockholder panic. Even with my majority shareholding, the entire company could collapse in a matter of weeks.
A knock on the door broke his dismal chain of thought. "Yes?" Somerville opened the door. "Miss Somerville, this really isn't a good time…"
"I'm very sorry to interrupt you," she said, not sounding sorry at all, "but I'd like to know how much longer you plan to keep me locked up. I have things to do."
"I'm certain you'll understand my position, Miss Somerville, when I tell you that I have no reason to trust your discretion."
"Did Mr. Pennyworth not receive adequate answers in Washington?"
"We've ascertained that you do, in fact, work for the DEA."
"But working for the government doesn't make me trustworthy. I entered your house under false pretenses, poked my nose into your dark secrets, and now I've got to…" She wiggled her index and middle fingers, miming quotation marks. "…earn your trust. Is that it?"
"In a nutshell."
She stared at him for a long moment, and he got the feeling that she was trying to decide something. At last she gave a small nod and said, "I told you that my only concerns were the arrests of Henry Judas and Carlos Morales. You should be interested in them too – Morales is linked to the Joker, who has been asking questions about your ward, and Judas is also very interested in the boy. I think I can tell you why."
"I'm listening," he said grimly.
"If you would let me have my laptop, I'd rather show you than tell you. It will be so much more effective."
Impatiently, Bruce strode over to the piano and opened the secret panel. Somerville sighed. "I might have known you'd have it stored in that nasty hole." She pulled back the shelf and preceded him into the elevator.
Down in the caverns, Bruce switched on the lights and led the way to the computers. He hadn't had time to do more with Somerville's laptop than plug it into a program that would reveal her passwords. The social worker sat in the chair and activated her screen. "What program do you use?" she asked curiously, when she saw that everything was open.
"It's not on the market."
"I should have guessed." She opened a file and a glowing line of symbols appeared on the screen. "This is a very simple decoding program. It works with basic substitution codes. Each one of these represents a letter in the alphabet." She tapped a key and a second line appeared.
NORTH TWENTY FIVE FORTY TWO FIFTEEN WEST EIGHTY ZERO FIVE TWENTY FOUR LEFT PILLAR TWO NORTH SIX FEET
"Coordinates?" Bruce asked.
"A hiding place. Each one of these symbols," she tapped the screen over the first line, "represents one of these." She reached into her pocket and pulled out the same tiny notebook Bruce had seen when he searched her purse. She flipped open to the pages full of hand drawn symbols. "Look familiar?"
Bruce shook his head.
Somerville looked rueful. "I didn't inherit much artistic talent. These are the birds on Richard's blanket."
It was so obvious. Bruce couldn't count the number of times that he had looked at that blanket, but it had never occurred to him that the robins dancing around the edge were anything more than whimsical embroidery. "How did you know?"
"Something the fortune teller repeated that Richard's mother used to say. About the blanket holding blessings for the future."
"And you think something is hidden there?"
"Something was hidden there. This spot very conveniently happens to be near Miami, and my Boss personally oversaw the excavation."
"What did they find?"
"A rustproof metal box."
"What was inside?"
"I don't know; they haven't opened it. It doesn't exactly belong to us, but I wanted it out of there in case I wasn't the only one who'd been clever enough to decode the blanket."
"I want that box."
She smiled. "Give me the phone and I'll have it shipped out."
He shook his head. "I'll send a plane."
"And save them the shipping expense? How thoughtful. Their budget's a little smaller than yours."
Bruce grabbed the phone and switched it to one of the normal Manor lines. "Do it," he ordered.
She punched in her number. Bruce hit the speakerphone and listened to the ringing on the other end of the line. After three rings a male voice, made tinny by the phone's small speaker, questioned, "Hello?"
"Deek, it's Cecy."
"You haven't been answering your phone."
"The police have it."
"The police? What…no, I don't even want to know."
Somerville rolled her eyes. "Listen, Wayne's sending a plane for the Grayson box. We need to know what's inside."
"You told Wayne about the box?"
"He has resources that we need. Morales is here. I'm certain of it." She plunged into an explanation about Andrew Williams that proved she had not only read the file Bruce had given her but had also done some rather shrewd guessing.
When she had finished, the man on the other end said, "Get him, Cecilia."
"I will," she promised, looking down to where her right hand lay curled on the desktop. "Whatever it takes."
"Good." Deek sounded satisfied. "By the way, Terry's been calling here again."
"Screw Terry," she said abruptly. "I'd better go, this has been a long call. Bye, Deek." She hung up before he had a chance to reply. She looked up at Bruce. "Satisfied?"
"Who's Terry?" he demanded.
"A pest. Haven't you ever gotten tangled up with a woman who won't leave you alone?"
First a mother and now a boyfriend? Frankly, Bruce couldn't imagine anyone actually pursuing Somerville. He supposed stranger things had happened, but he couldn't think of any.
"Can I go now?" she demanded. "I need to check in at the office, or Judas is going to be extremely suspicious."
She had a point. If Judas was after Dick's…whatever was in the box…then the last thing they needed was for him to suspect that Somerville was working against him. On the other hand, Bruce reminded himself, he didn't have the box yet.
Somerville looked imploringly toward the roof of the cavern. "What more do you want, Wayne? An oath signed in blood? The foreskins of a hundred Philistines?"
"What?"
"Twelve years of Sunday School." She sighed. "Look, I'll wear a wire. Will that make you happy?"
- - - - - -
Cecilia knocked lightly on the door of Judas's office. When she received no answer, she pushed open the door and poked her head through. "Henry?" The office was empty. She had called ahead and scheduled an appointment. It would be perfectly normal were she to wait in the office. She slipped inside the room and shut the door behind her. Crossing over to the computer that was wedged in a corner of the crowded room, she wiggled the mouse to deactivate the screen saver and pulled up a list of recently opened files. Next to the computer, the fax machine emitted a series of beeps and then began to chug out a sheet of paper.
Publicity flier…Cortez file…Myrnoff file…Donation order form… Nothing on the list looked promising. With a final whuff, the fax machine spat out its message, print side up. Cecilia automatically glanced down and scanned the page. It was a police report, describing a robbery that had taken place two years earlier in town about one hundred miles from Gotham. A gas station had been hit – the cash register cleaned out and the clerk shot and killed. At the time, the police had made no arrests, but thanks to newly uncovered evidence they finally had a suspect – Bruce Wayne.
To Be Continued…
A/N A cookie to anyone who can place the Philistine reference :)
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