"You guys alright?" Murdock asked.
"We're fine," Hannibal answered, "Did you have any trouble getting over here?"
"How'd you know?" Face asked.
"Wild guess," he responded, refusing to let on how anxious he'd been trying to count the minutes until they arrived.
"Found the rest of them coming back in the truck," B.A. explained, "We got them tied up before we moved in."
"Ah, good thinking," Hannibal said as he assisted Face in tying up the other two members of the family, "Good work, men, and now, to find out what's been going on around here."
"Hannibal," Jean said, "I've already taken a look around this place, there's a whole mess of something in the basement, either they're cooking up drugs or they found a whole new way to make moonshine."
"What do you mean?" Hannibal asked her.
"Lot of beakers and tubes and stuff, a whole workbench full of it," she answered.
"Like a mad scientist's laboratory," Murdock said.
"Maybe," Jean said, "Either way, I wouldn't go poking around the stuff, depending on what all they're using down there, it may be more than a matter for the police, maybe a matter for the NEST unit."
"Oh great!" Face sarcastically remarked.
"We'll take a look, we just won't touch anything," Hannibal said, "Incidentally, Jean, how'd you get in here without being noticed?"
"Through the basement door," she answered, "How else?"
"I see," Hannibal replied, "Less likely to encounter anyone down there."
"That's right."
"And if you had, regardless?" he inquired.
Jean reached into her pocket and pulled out a gun and asked him, "What do you think?"
"Well," Hannibal said to the others, "Let's get down to the basement and find out what's been going on around here."
"Hannibal…" Face started to say something but was cut off.
"I know," Hannibal surprised him, "Somebody needs to stay up here and search the rest of the house and make sure nobody else is hiding somewhere."
"We'll do that," Murdock offered.
"Alright, if you find anything let us know," Hannibal told him.
"We will," Jean said.
Once Hannibal, B.A. and Face had disappeared to find the basement, Murdock went over to Jean and asked her, "You alright, hon?"
"I'm fine," she answered, "They didn't have time to do anything with me, but they knocked Hannibal out. Tell me something, Murdock, how many concussions can one man have before they take toll?"
He wasn't sure how to answer that one.
"Drugs, eh?" Hector asked when Hannibal called that night after all the excitement had died down a bit, "I guess I shouldn't be too surprised."
"It makes sense," Hannibal told him, "Druggers have taken over the countryside because there's no law out there to go after them, you were the only person around for miles that could've stood in their way in any way."
"Sure, a scrawny old man, I'd be a lot of trouble for them," Hector replied with a knowing smirk on his face.
"You could be if you wanted to and you know it," Hannibal said, "Funny thing though, with you it seems they were trying to just drive you out, they didn't even try to kill us until we actually got in the house."
"Heh, dealers with a conscience, that's a new one," Hector murmured.
"Well…" Hannibal said, "It probably had something to do with the fact that when we caught the majority of them in the truck, two of them were a couple of teenaged boys."
"Boy they start earlier and earlier, don't they?" Hector asked.
"Turns out they are all related, so that would explain it," Hannibal told him.
"I see," Hector responded, "So I guess this means you all will be coming back in the morning, right?"
"That's the general idea," Hannibal said, "Now that everybody can get a decent night's sleep around here without having to worry about somebody sneaking in to kill them in the middle of the night, we're going to take advantage of it."
He could hear Hector laughing from the other end of the line, "Sounds like a plan to me. So, what's going to happen to the good ol' Bakewells?"
"Well the boys are 16 and 17, the police will probably check first and see if they have any other relatives to relocate them to, and if not…"
"In a couple years they'll be turned out of the foster care system," Hector finished for him.
"Yeah," Hannibal replied, "As for the adult members of the family…I'd say there was enough paraphernalia left for the police to find to put them away for at least 20 years before parole's even a possibility."
He swore he could almost hear Hector shrugging as the older man remarked, "Oh well, such is life."
"That was the second option," Hannibal told him coyly.
Hannibal knew that everybody was looking forward to finally being able to relax tonight, and he knew two people in particular who were probably especially relieved the time had come.
He'd never budged on his decision to keep Murdock and Jean in separate rooms across the hall from each other; though he knew, despite their attempts to keep it a secret, that after the lights went out and everything got quiet, one always sneaked over to the other's room for a brief visit before disappearing back to their own room for the remainder of the night. Oh well, he couldn't really say he blamed them, Murdock especially; watching the pilot these days it was obvious that he had it bad for that psychotic woman, and he couldn't help wondering how long they would actually make it before taking off in the night and eloping again. Of course he knew better than to think like that, but still he couldn't help it.
Somewhere in the back of his mind was a nagging little voice telling him that there was no way these two were going to make it to an actual ceremony where the rest of them would have the privilege of being present for the event. It wasn't anything that he could explain, certainly not to anyone else should they ever ask, but he had the strangest suspicion that the truth of the matter was Jean wouldn't have the nerve to marry Murdock with the others around, that it just wasn't in her character, not the one she allowed them to see anyway. Or…another possibility was that it was merely that she wouldn't want to take a chance on them being there incase one of them decided to object to it at the last minute. Trying to think as she might, and that was an area he wasn't comfortable with by any means, Hannibal could see that being a definite possibility, though surely by now she'd have to know them better than that. He'd hope, anyway.
"Oh boy, I'll like it when we get back home tomorrow," Murdock said as he stretched his arms a couple times before getting a running start and throwing himself onto the bed beside Jean, who was knocked on her side by the impact on the mattress."
"So will I," Jean told him, "Get back in the air conditioner, get that pool up, then we can go swimming and get out of this damn heat, I…" she turned her head to see him and did a double take, "Murdock, it's 85 degrees in this house, why the hell are you wearing long pajamas?"
"They're Face's," Murdock answered as if that explained it.
Jean reached over and felt the material of the long shirt he was wearing and inquired, "Silk?"
"Supposed to be one of the cooler fabrics, ain't it?" Murdock asked.
Jean shrugged and responded, "Beats the hell out of me."
"Oh well," Murdock dismissed it as he leaned over and snaked his arms around her waist, and dealt with her struggling and resisting and kicking him a few times and just grinned at her vain attempts to get away from him, "At least now we can have some fun together."
Jean reached back and elbowed him in the ribs and that did the trick, he fell back with the wind knocked out of him and she scrambled over to the edge of the bed, turned around and told him, "It's too hot for that, go to sleep."
Murdock had other plans though, he got up on his hands and knees like a dog and wagged his backside up in the air and said to her, "You don't fool me, Jean," he forewent the skunk accent and just went ahead with, "Your lips say no-no-no, but your eyes say…" at that moment Jean likewise got on her hands and knees and raised her back like an agitated cat and glared at him and he added, "Well look at that, your eyes say the same thing," and he fell flat against the mattress.
The next thing Murdock knew was he had an immense weight on his back and Jean pounced on him, and before he could really respond to anything, she had his arm pinched in a hammerlock. He yelped in initial shock and pain but soon gave way to laughing as he tried throwing her off of him and the two of them started rolling around on the bed and lightly punching and kicking each other, each trying to pin the other down. After a few minutes of that, they both wore out and collapsed alongside each other on the bed.
"Oh boy I've missed this," Murdock told her.
Jean smiled at him and leaned over and rested her head against his chest and replied, "Me too."
By 8 o' clock the next morning the exchange had been completed, Hector had gone back to his home and the A-Team was making themselves back at home at their own home. One thing to say about Hector, the man was one hell of a houseguest; it was hard to tell what if anything had even been touched while they were gone. The only problem when they returned was that it was already over 90 degrees outside and the air conditioner wasn't working so the inside wasn't much better off, and the heat quickly took a toll on everybody's nerves.
"Well B.A., find out what the problem is?" Hannibal asked when the Sergeant came back in later in the morning. The heat had even started to take a toll on the generally unflappable Colonel, he'd shed his safari jacket and was slowly but surely starting to sweat through the rest of his clothes.
"Yep," B.A. answered, "Out of Freon."
"Oh swell," Jean groaned, "You know how much one of those tanks cost?"
"The cost won't be a problem," Face started to say.
"Especially not with you handling it," Hannibal pointed out.
"Ha-ha," Face remarked, "Anyway…"
"Hey," Jean looked around the living room and noticed they were short somebody, "Where's Murdock?"
As if now just realizing he was absent, the others started looking around as well. And then they heard one very familiar howl, but since they were all on the ground, nobody knew what to make of it. Face ran over to the front window and stood on a stepstool to see past their own front yard and exclaimed with disgust, "Ohhh no!" Turning to the others as he stepped down he told them, "Murdock's running naked through the sprinklers next door."
"What?" the others asked.
"I don't believe it!" B.A. said.
Hannibal was the first one on his feet and took off running. Jean tried to follow him but B.A. grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back. She resisted and told him, "I want to see!"
"No you don't!" B.A. told her as he pulled her back against him and clamped his large arms over hers so she couldn't get away, "Trust me."
Hannibal came back from the downstairs bathroom with a large bath towel and sprinted out the front door and found himself chasing after the pilot who was as yet unaware of his impending ambush and continued to run around through the lawn sprinklers waving his arms frantically and yelling to himself, "I'm free, I'm free!"
Hannibal tackled the Captain to the ground in one move and managed to get him wrapped in the towel as Murdock screamed and struggled underneath him.
"It's alright, Murdock, I got ya," Hannibal told him as he got off of Murdock and pulled the younger man to his feet.
"Not fair!" Murdock whined as he was pulled away from the cold, refreshing water and forcefully marched up the hot sandstone sidewalk to their own house.
"It's a good thing the neighbors weren't home," Jean observed from the front doorway.
"It's a good thing this is a relatively secluded area," Face added, "We could've all been arrested for that one."
Jean turned to him and pointed out, "Face, if it didn't happen when you were standing naked in Hannibal's bathroom window…"
"Come on, Murdock," Hannibal said as he walked the pilot up the steps to get him in the house.
"What's wrong with him?" Jean asked.
"I'm not sure," he told her, "But I think I'm going to stick him in a cold bath and see what happens."
Jean paused for a couple beats and then turned and followed after him, exclaiming almost gleefully, "I'll help!"
"Oh no you won't," he told her.
Jean turned to Face and remarked, "Well how about that? Looks like I'm not the only one who reacts badly to the heat…odd though, Murdock never seems to be affected by it."
Face thought about it for a minute and just said with a shrug, "I guess everybody has their limit."
Jean did a slow double take and asked him, "You were saying about the Freon?"
"I'll get it," Face said, then turned and called into the house, "Come on B.A., I'm going to need your help with this one."
Jean waited until after Face and B.A. had gone to see how Hannibal was coming along with Murdock. She got up to the second floor just in time to see Hannibal coming out of the bathroom with his clothes wringing wet as well as his hair and every inch of his skin.
"What happened?" she asked, "Don't tell me you got in the tub with him."
"No," Hannibal answered, "But a close second…as soon as Murdock got in the water he tried swimming in the bathtub."
Jean shook her head dismissively and said, "We gotta get that pool up as soon as we get back to my place, Hannibal."
"I know," he replied.
"Well," she asked, "Is he alright now?"
"Yeah, he's calmed down now," he said.
"Fine," Jean started toward the bathroom door.
"Get away from there!" Hannibal told her.
Jean shot around like somebody had fired a gun at her and asked, "What's the matter?"
"He's not dressed," he said.
"That's how you took him in there, I kind of figured," Jean told him. She reached for the doorknob but at his disapproving look she stepped away from the door, back towards him and said, "Oh come on, Hannibal, you think it's anything I haven't seen before?"
"Yes," Hannibal answered without missing a beat.
Jean paused a couple seconds before slowly nodding her head and replied, admitting temporary defeat, "Yeah, you're right."
Hannibal gave her a light shove down the hall, so Jean went and made herself at home in Murdock's room while she waited.
A few minutes later, the door opened and Hannibal walked Murdock in who was wearing one of the bath towels draped over his shoulders, and a pair of red and white striped swimming trunks that had been hiked up and looked like he'd been yanked into them hastily.
"I figured I'd find you in here," Hannibal told her.
"I can see that," she responded.
"Alright Murdock," Hannibal said as he gave the pilot a little push over towards the bed, "You just lay down and take it easy for a while, and you," he pointed to Jean, "No strenuous activity for him."
"Why not?" Jean played innocent.
"I just got him cooled down, I don't need you heating him right back up," Hannibal pointed out.
Jean chuckled in response and waited for Hannibal to leave. As soon as the door closed, she scrambled onto the bed and was practically on Murdock.
"What happened to you?" she asked.
Murdock looked up at her and gave a weak smile and replied, "What can I say? The heat fried my brain like an egg on the dashboard of a closed up car."
"But that didn't happen when we stayed at Hector's house," Jean pointed out.
"Well of course not, because I had to be ready for anything, ready at a moment's notice for Hannibal's command," he explained, "But since we got back…" he gestured helplessly, "I thought we'd be coming back to a nice cool house…I just couldn't take the heat another minute." He gave a little smile and added, "I guess we're more alike than we thought."
Jean stroked over his forehead and said, "Well we're back now, so you can take it easy and rest like Hannibal said."
Murdock closed his eyes and gave a big sheepish smile as he replied, "I will if you stay with me."
Jean laid her head on his chest and told him, "Of course I will."
"Good," he grinned as he let his head hit back against the pillow.
Later in the afternoon, after Face and B.A. had returned with a few cylinders of Freon put in the air conditioner now and keep extra on hand for next time, they all went to Jean's house and helped her get the swimming pool set up. It took about an hour and the entire time Face had to moan and groan about getting his clothes dirty from bringing in the sand to make sure the ground was level enough, but then came the hard part, waiting.
"I figure it'll take until tomorrow morning for the whole thing to get filled up," Face told Jean.
"Of course that won't stop Murdock," she replied, "As soon as there're a few inches in there he's going to be jumping in."
Face nodded in agreement.
Jean looked past him and out to the street and froze, and then she hit Face on the shoulder and told him, "There they go!"
Face turned around, "Ow, there who go?"
"That van, it's the same one that came here when those crooks said they were measuring for the swimming pool," Jean told him.
Face ran out to the front yard and the curb and saw a white van with some design on the side slowing down and pulling off to the side a couple blocks down the street. And a light bulb went off over his head.
"Alright, Jean," he turned to her, "I'm going to go get the guys and we're going to clean their clocks and get your money back, you stay here, if they catch wind of you they'll take off before we can ambush them."
"What do I look like, an idiot?" she asked, and added warningly, "Don't answer that."
Face went and got the others and Hannibal quickly hatched out a plan. They jumped in their van and sped down to where the white van was parked and B.A. swerved in front of it so the driver couldn't pull out. Hannibal quickly got introduced to the two men who had just been getting ready to load up and move out, and after getting a look at their truck, he got on the van's mobile phone and called the pool company and confirmed that there were no trucks in that immediate vicinity. After subjecting the two conmen to a brief beatdown, they searched the contents of the truck and found a bank pouch and when it was unzipped they found several thousand dollars in it.
"Well looky here," Murdock said as he waved the money around.
"Ah, let's see," Face took it from him and counted through it, "Jean put what, about $5,000 down for her pool?" he collected that much from the bag and pocketed it, "And now I suppose it's just a matter of finding out who else was swindled and making sure they get theirs back as well."
"That's simple enough," Hannibal said, "We just call the company again and get a list of all their customers who were ripped off, then we drop the money off with them and it becomes their headache to sort through."
"Just that simple, eh?" Face mocked.
"In the meantime, give Murdock the $5,000 and let him take it back to Jean," Hannibal said.
"But what're we gonna do with them, Hannibal?" B.A. wanted to know as he gestured to the two crooks.
Hannibal just shrugged and said, "We can either drop them off at the police station, or, get the names of everybody they cheated, rally them all together, hang these two up like a piñata and let the con victims settle it between themselves."
Face flashed a toothy grin at the conmen and told them, "Between the two I think you'd rather face the cops."
"First one in the pool!" Murdock yelled as he jumped off the pool ladder and made a big splash into the freezing cold water.
It was 3 in the morning and the hose had been running all afternoon and all night, and the water was only a foot from being the ideal height, by morning it would be complete. But Murdock had been on pins and needles all night just dying to get into the pool and test the waters.
Immediately after he surfaced, he heard the second large splash as Jean jumped in after him. The water hit him like sheets of ice and he let out a high pitched yelp. He turned and saw Jean rise to the top. She rubbed the water from her eyes and said, "It'll be better once the sun's been out a few hours."
Murdock tried to laugh but he could already feel the gooseflesh popping out all over him. He knew that they wouldn't be able to stay in long, and he'd personally give it about 10 minutes before his feet started going numb, but for the moment it was a very nice sensation after the heat all day. They'd fallen asleep earlier in the night and probably gotten about four hours' sleep; it would have to be enough to run on for a while because in two hours they were going to be meeting with Hannibal where they were shooting the scenes for the latest Aquamaniac film.
"Brrrrrrrr," Murdock chattered after a few minutes when the cold really hit him, "It is a tad bit chilly, ain't it?"
"That's the understatement of the year," Jean told him, "But it is nice, just the two of us out here."
"Hmmm," Murdock hummed, "Middle of the night, all alone, just you and me and the frigid water."
"Reminds me of when we first got married," she said.
"Huh?" Murdock did a double take.
"Remember?" Jean asked, "Remember a few days after when that big heat wave hit and, you drug me out of bed in the middle of the night so we could sneak off and break into the city pool for a midnight swim without Face tagging along?"
Murdock laughed as he recalled, "Oh yeah, that was nice too."
"Until the trip home when we encountered Crane," Jean added.
"Mmm, oh well, every silver lining has a cloud to it," he told her.
Before six in the morning, Hannibal had already gotten to the studio, and into his Aquamaniac costume and had made his way out to the lake and was waiting for the crew to show up to start filming. And he'd gotten to the lake in time to see Murdock standing on the shore, and Jean out swimming in the middle of it.
"Jean!" he called from the open trapdoor in his costume, "Get out of the lake! We're gonna be filming here!"
Jean seemed to ignore him and swam back and forth a few more times before coming in to port. She walked out of the water and up onto the sand and grass and replied, "What's the problem? You have to get into the water first before it stops moving!"
"I know," he replied, "That in itself is going to take two minutes, and I have to stay under the water for another two before I can surface."
"Hey Hannibal, isn't something missing?" Murdock asked as he looked around, "Isn't there supposed to be a pretty girl in an itty bitty teeny weeny bikini you kill?"
"She'll be here, she can't ever get here on time, everybody knows the workday starts at 5 o' clock."
"And what, she shows up at 5:01 each day?" Jean asked as she lifted one leg at a time to shake off the water dripping down from her blue one piece swimsuit.
"More like 6:30," Hannibal replied.
Jean looked him up and down in his rubber monster getup and said, "Frankly, Hannibal, I just don't get it."
"Get what?" he asked.
"I've seen you surface from the water for your kill shots…and quite frankly you look more like a drunken wino at the Mardi Gras than an actual threat to anybody's life or limb, least of all perky bubbly airhead blondes."
Hannibal waved her off with a giant monster claw. Just then they heard somebody yelling at them and they turned around to see it was the director, a very nervous looking man who looked ready to eat his copy of the script he was carrying.
"John, you can take that getup off and go home for the day," he said, "We have to cancel the shots today."
"What's the matter?" Hannibal asked.
"That stunt woman we hired for this scene, Carolyn something or other," he explained, "Apparently last night she was swimming at the Y and tore a rotator cuff, we just got word of it. Why does everything happen to me? Now we've got to find someone else to fill the part and until then…"
Hannibal gestured to Jean and said, "What about her? This is…" he remembered what Jean had told him before about her at-work alias, "This is Jean Mattox, one of the best stuntwomen in Hollywood presently, she's done 20 movies. She's fallen out of speeding jeeps, she's raced cars, she's been tied to helicopter skids."
The director gave Jean a slight glance up and down and asked her, "Can you swim?"
"Sure," she said.
He gave her another look up and down and asked, "You been swimming long?"
"Only since I was about 2 weeks old," she replied half cynically.
"Eh, we'll give it a try," the director said, "Fortunately we hadn't gotten any shots of Carolyn yet so we won't have to bother trying to make her look the same."
"It's so stimulating being your hat," Jean coyly responded to the man.
"Alright, John," the director said as he closed the trap door in the Aquamaniac's throat before Hannibal could get a word in edgewise, "Let's go through this once and see if it might actually work."
Murdock covered his ears when he heard Hannibal get off a muffled mouthful from within the rubber suit. Jean was told to jump in the lake and swim out about 20 feet and Hannibal would come in after her, at which point was her cue to try swimming back to the shore, except that the Aquamaniac was going to catch her and there would be a brief struggle before she sank under the surface of the water and drowned.
"Gee I never would've thought of that," she said condescendingly, "You've only made these movies 12 times already."
They went through it once, and apparently the director liked what he saw because he told Jean that she had the job. But, since she was built differently than the previous stuntwoman, she'd have to meet with wardrobe to get fitted with a two-piece swimsuit for the actual shoot.
Murdock went over to Hannibal and opened the trap door so he could see the Colonel's face and asked him, "Hannibal, have you ever seen Jean in a two-piece suit?"
"No," Hannibal choked over a mouthful of water from a leak in the suit, "Have you?"
"No," Murdock shook his head.
"Uh-oh," they said simultaneously.
"This ought to be interesting," Hannibal said.
When the leak was discovered in Hannibal's costume, filming was once again halted as the leak was patched. Murdock had called Face to come and pick him up so Jean could keep her car at the set until shooting was over for the day. Hannibal had been drying off in his trailer and reading the morning paper when he heard a ruckus coming from outside; for sure he could hear Jean yelling something but there were other voices mixed in with hers.
"Hannibal, help!" Jean yelled as she came running in, dressed in the shorts and muscle shirt she'd worn earlier that day when they first arrived.
"Jean, why haven't you gotten changed yet?" Hannibal asked her.
Jean jumped on his footrest and told him, "Hannibal, they're nuts! They want me to take my clothes off."
Hannibal gave her a blank stare for a few seconds before responding, "I believe that is the idea of changing into a bathing suit."
"No!" Jean told him as she stepped down, "Not to change, to film."
"What!?" Hannibal asked.
The door swung open and the director stepped into the trailer as well, looking more than a little agitated.
"Forget it, Berkeley, I don't do horror movies," Jean told him, "And I refuse to be filmed lying topless on the shoreline out there."
"What's she talking about?" Hannibal asked the director before he had a chance to respond to her, "That wasn't in the script!"
"Well we had a rewrite," he answered, "Look John, you know the business as well as I do, you're a man, I'm a man, we know how it works, sex sells."
"Oh ho-ho," Jean scoffed, "Maybe, but not mine, pal."
Hannibal found himself sandwiched between the two of them, and he honestly didn't know if he'd put himself there or if Jean had run for cover behind him and he just happened to come face to face with the director.
"If that's all you're looking for," Jean told him, "You can find some dumb bimbo for the part, I'm sure there're plenty of them who'd be willing to do the breast stroke while being chased by the monster from the Black Lagoon."
"Plenty of them who'd be grateful for the part," the director remarked.
"No doubt after they put a couple miles on your couch," Jean sneered, "No thank you, I don't need work that badly."
"Something else to consider," Hannibal added, "If you do it without her, you're also going to do it without me."
"John, are you out of your mind?"
"No," Hannibal answered, "But I refuse to cheapen my art, the perfection of my performance, so you can make this film appealing to a few more dirty men than it already did."
"Why'd you back out of the film?" Jean asked Hannibal as they headed over to her car, "Was it really because of me?"
"Well it was a very good reason," Hannibal told her as he swung his legs over the door and sat down.
"But was it the reason?" Jean asked him.
After a brief pause, Hannibal explained, "It was one reason. Another is that Amy called earlier, she thinks she may have a new client for us."
"Oh boy," Jean said, "So now what?"
"Well, first we need to do a little background check on this would-be client, and then when we decide if they're legitimate, then we have to make sure they're not being tailed by Decker, and then they're going to go on a wild goose chase looking for a drunken bum, an English fisherman, and a very irritable Chinese launderer."
Jean let out a small chuckle and said, "Well, I appreciate you standing up for me."
Hannibal smiled and replied in a semi-convincing Irish accent, "Me dear departed mother always said," and proceeded in his normal voice, "Always be willing to stand up for a lady's virtues, even if it's more than she ever did for it. Sorry you're out of a job now, kid."
"Who's out of a job?" Jean asked as she put the car in gear and backed up, "I've got to get home and get to work, my typewriter's been singing a sad note lately and is about to die of loneliness."
"Oh, you get the screenwriting job?" Hannibal asked.
"Nope," she replied as she put the car in drive and they sped forward to leave the studio, "I think I hit on something new altogether."
"There's a dangerous sentiment," Hannibal observed.
"Nowhere near as dangerous as 'a piece of cake'," Jean responded with a knowing smirk.