Disclaimer: I don't own… well, anything.
A/N: I've been reading Sherlock Holmes recently, which may explain certain aspects of this story in general, though I don't know how much that's showing through in my writing. In any case, if my style appears to change slightly at more mystery-oriented parts, I do apologize.
Jeff stared at his brother, not quite sure what to say after the story Matt had told him. Someone had listened to their conversation with Mr. McMahon? That didn't quite seem possible, since they would've been noticed by someone. The only other option though was that the person who suggested the plot had purposefully given the information to the site. He explained his train of thought to Matt and asked, "But why would he do that? It doesn't make sense!"
Matt shrugged. The only reason he could think of was that, whoever this person was, they really wanted to destroy Jeff's career and making the information public was the perfect way to do this. He didn't tell his brother this though; Jeff was looking pretty frazzled right now and he didn't want to upset him anymore than he already was. "I don't know," he lied. "The real question is what are we going to do now?"
It was Jeff's turn to shrug. "There's not really much we can do about it now," he pointed out. "I mean, we could tell Vince if you really wanted to, but considering how the details are going to spread like wildfire after Monday anyway I don't really think it matters if we tell him or not."
Matt nodded; it was true that in about two days everyone backstage would know and then it wouldn't really matter anymore. "I just wish there was someway to know who sent them that information!" He muttered. "All the webmaster would tell me was that it was someone in the business who's been sending them information for awhile, though honestly I don't even think they know who it is exactly."
Jeff sighed. Although he hadn't said anything about it, like his brother he had hoped that the webmaster of the wrestling news site might have been able to give them some sort of clue or hint about who could've sent the email; it would've made the job they were starting on Monday a lot easier. As it was they couldn't do anything but ask questions around the locker room in hopes that, somehow, they could find out who was guilty.
The rest of the weekend passed slowly. Both brothers were impatient to get to the arena on Monday and actually start trying to figure things out. They had gone home early Sunday morning and were taking one of the latest flights out to the next Raw show so they could spend as much time at home as possible. The two of them had ended up hanging out at Jeff's house for the day, trying to distract themselves in a million different ways but nothing was working.
Eventually both brothers ended up settling down with books, a tribute to how desperate they were to find something to do that would actually distract them, since both Matt and Jeff could easily name two dozen things they would rather have been doing. However, none of those activities had succeeded in actually distracting them and so they were stuck with what was possibly their last choice of ways to spend an afternoon.
They had been reading for about half an hour in relative silence, both of them surprisingly intent on their reading, when Matt happened to glance up and look at his brother, only to let out a short bark of laughter. Jeff jumped when he heard the noise and glared at Matt, who only held up his book in answer.
Jeff stared at the book for a moment, looked down at the one he was holding in his own hands, chuckling quietly to himself. Apparently even while reading they couldn't escape Jeff's current predicament for they had both found and started to read Jeff's old Sherlock Holmes books.
XXXXX
"So how exactly is this going to work?" Matt asked as they walked into the arena a couple hours before Monday's show was supposed to start.
"We should probably split up and talk to different people before the show starts," Jeff said. "Explain the situation to them and ask them if they would have any idea who suggested the storyline. Even just suspicions or theories would be fine at this point. Then we'll meet up in catering about forty five minutes before we need to go out so we can sift through the info a little bit."
Matt frowned. "That's not a lot of time to go through the information, get ready for the show, and make it over in time to go out," he pointed out.
Jeff sighed. "No, it doesn't, but the worst case scenario is that we just don't get through all of the information in time," he said. "So, do you have any suggestions for how we decide who's going to talk to whom?"
"One takes the divas the other takes all the guys?" Matt suggested. "You know how some of the girls can talk; it'll probably take as long to talk to them as it will to talk to the guys, not to mention we'll probably get more information from them."
Jeff laughed, but his brother was right. The guys may find it amusing that their coworkers were interrogating them, but once they were told the whole story most of them would help in anyway that they could; this business may have been a hard one, but whoever was behind this had gone too far and no one would let him get away with that. The divas, on the other hand, would worry and mother over Jeff, not to mention talk about anything they thought was relevant. It would be rather hard to deal with them- and sort through the large amount of "information" they gave.
"Who's going to have the pleasant task of talking to the divas then?"
"I'll talk to them," Matt offered. "Only because if you try to they'll just mother over you and we won't get any information out of them!"
Jeff laughed again, but chose not to reply to his brother's comment. Instead, he pointed out the fact that they were "wasting valuable interrogation time" while they were just standing there talking and that they should probably start talking to their coworkers to get as much information as possible before they needed to go out to the ring later that night. So the two of them split up, with Jeff heading towards the locker room to talk to some of the other guys, while Matt heading towards catering to see if any of the divas were hanging out there, since he couldn't just walk into their locker room.
Luckily for Matt both Mickie and Maria were in catering when he walked in, though in all honesty Matt wasn't sure whether to be thankful or not. It was going to be hard enough trying to get information out of the divas as it was; he really didn't want to have to try to deal with two of them at once. Still, if it helped Jeff figure everything out then he would go through with this.
He forced a smile and walked over to the two girls. "Hey," he said casually. "Mind if I interrupt for a moment?"
"Not at all!" Maria said. "We were just talking about you and Jeff, actually. I can't believe they forced that storyline on him- and without you two knowing about it ahead of time!"
"Actually, that's what I wanted to talk to you about." Matt cut in before Maria could continue talking. "See, well, it's a bit more complicated than them just forcing the storyline on us."
Mickie frowned. "What do you mean?" she asked.
Matt had to admit that the one advantage of talking to the two of them together was that he would only have to tell the story once, not twice. "Well, it turns out that someone snuck the storyline in with the others so Vince assumed that it meant to be there and decided to start it," he explained. "But then he realized that not only was it not supposed to be there but the writers weren't even the ones who put it there."
"Wait, if the writers didn't put it in with the other ideas how did it get there?"
Matt sighed. "Apparently one of our coworkers came up with the idea." He heard Maria gasp and, after smothering a small chuckle, continued his explanation. "So we have a bit of a problem now. Since none of the writers came up with the idea, Vince doesn't think it would be a good idea for them to continue it, but the storyline has to continue through to Wrestlemania. So we're looking for information from our coworkers to see if we can't figure out who it is before Wrestlemania, so we don't need to find someone else to lay the blame on. We also need the info because Vince is giving us some time each week to talk about what our findings- or possibly lack thereof- and we'll need something to talk about during that time."
"Oh my god!" Maria gasped. "That's horrible!"
"I hope you find out who did this," Mickie said. "I can't believe one of our own coworkers would do something like this! Do you have any suspects or theories right now?"
"We have a few suspects," Matt said, but didn't elaborate on it anymore; he didn't want to tell Maria that she was on their list, even if they didn't think she did it intentionally. "I was wondering though, if you knew anything about this, or had suspicions or theories about anyone."
Matt jotted down names and notes on a sheet of paper as the two girls rambled on about the many people they thought could be behind it, theories as to why they would do it, and anything else they thought was relevant. He sighed, shifted his weight slightly, and reminded himself that it was for Jeff. Still, it was going to be a long night.
Unlike his brother Jeff didn't have to listen to endless chatter about what was most likely completely unimportant information. He may have had to explain his story more often than Matt did but he got more accurate information and managed to talk to more people than him as well. Still, by the time he finished talking to his fifth or so person he too was getting fairly annoyed with the whole business. He kept reminding himself that it had to be done, that everyone needed to be talked to at some point, but all he wanted to do was just stop for the night and relax for a bit before he needed to go out for his small part in the show, and then later for his match against Orton.
He sighed as he heard the locker room door open again. That meant that there was someone else he needed to talk to and one more time he needed to tell his story that night. He turned around and was pleasantly surprised to see Hunter walking in. "Hey, Hunter," he said. "I need to talk to you for a moment."
"This about the storyline?" Hunter asked as he set his bag down.
Jeff nodded. "Yeah. Did Shawn tell you about it?"
"Nope," Hunter said. "I tried to get him to, but he told me that I'd have to ask you about it if I wanted to know, since he wasn't sure if you wanted a lot of people to know the details. I'm guessing it's not anything good, though?"
Jeff sighed. Why couldn't Shawn have just saved him a bit of trouble and told Hunter anyway? Both him and Matt trusted Hunter; they wouldn't have had a problem with him knowing the details. "No, the whole thing is just a mess," he muttered. He gave Hunter the condensed summary that he had all but memorized by this point.
Hunter's eyes had narrowed as Jeff told his story and by the time he was done it was obvious that Hunter was furious. "Whoever's behind this went too far," he growled. "What can I do to help? Need anyone taken care of?"
Jeff laughed, which startled the other wrestler slightly. "Calm down, Hunter," he said. "All I need right now is information. Matt and I are going to be working on this, though if you want to help sort through information you're welcome to help." He couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw a small grimace on his face at the thought of going through information for who knows how long.
"Eh, I'm busy right now, but maybe later," Hunter said casually. Jeff smothered a laugh; yes, Hunter definitely did not want to go through information. He did give Jeff a fairly good list of people, theories, and suggestions for how to continue their investigation, which Jeff thanked him for before hurrying off to catch up with his brother.
Matt was in catering when he arrived, though he was still in conversation with a few of the divas, but when he saw Jeff walk in he quickly finished talking to them and joined his brother. "I don't care if you won't get to talk to as many of them. You are dealing with the divas next time we do this!" He hissed, glaring at the fairly happy look his brother had on his face.
"Fine by me," Jeff said. "If it means I won't have to repeat the same story over and over again. That's really the only thing that annoyed me- constantly having to retell the same story!"
Matt chuckled, all traces of his previous annoyance gone. "So, what did you find out?" he asked.
The two of them spent the next half hour or so sorting through the information they had gotten, discussing which bits were most likely to be true and what leads would be best for them to follow. It was a long, tedious task, but they had managed to get enough solid information to get them through the night.
"The one thing that bothers me about all of this is that neither Hunter or Maria really seem like they could've done this, even unintentionally," Jeff remarked as they started walking back to the locker room to get ready for their little bit in the show. "I mean, I guess it's possible, but I dunno. It's the same with Shawn- he wouldn't even tell Hunter the details out of respect for me; I doubt he would've talked to people about my injury where others could overhear."
"I'll concede on Hunter and Shawn, but I'm still not sure about Maria," Matt said. "I mean, she'll talk to anyone which means that she could've unknowingly talked to someone who then passed the information along." He shook his head. "We'll figure this out later. Right now we just need to get ready to go out there and hope that once we're out there we'll be able to bluff our way through the night."