Trifecta
Disclaimer: I don't own iCarly
A/N:
Chapter 7 (Messy Clues)
Gibby's home was amazingly empty and bland in appearance. It was a small apartment that Gibby purchased under his father's offer to pay rent. The walls were bare, the floor was covered in stains of varying colors, and the furniture reeked of smoke. "No wonder he's never invited anyone over."
Currently Gibby was away at work. He worked for Walmart as a maintenance worker and didn't go to college. The only reason Freddie made it inside was because Gibby's girlfriend was told to wait for him to come home. "Do you want me to tell Gibby you were here?" Freddie raised an eyebrow at the buxom blonde and shook his head.
"No." The girl was wearing a pink, see-through gown and barely had on a bra and thongs. "Why are you wearing that?"
"Oh I could take it off if you'd like!"
"No thanks!" He turned away and cleared his throat. "I was just wondering why you weren't in something a little more…modest." The girl giggled and walked over to the couch with darkened stains.
"Because Gibby likes me to dress like this, silly." He scrunched his nose and resisted the urge to vomit. He thought about Sam to keep himself above the temptation to look at this woman's scanty outfit. "What are you here for?"
"Um, well, Gibby…" He rubbed the back of his head, searching for a response. After several seconds, he snapped his fingers and grinned at the woman. "Gibby asked that I come over and clean up his place a little bit. I wasn't going to so I thought I'd surprise him, but you absolutely cannot tell him I was over here. Alright?"
"Okay." She crossed her legs and set her elbow on the top of the sofa, then pushed her fingers through her hair. Her breasts seemed to bulge with every movement, causing Freddie's body to heat up. "Can I offer you a drink?"
"No. You know what, not a chance." He sucked the air in through his clenched teeth and darted his eyes around the room. "The apartment complex has a pool, right?"
"It does."
"Maybe you can, um, go swimming for a while?"
"Oh but is that okay to leave you here alone?"
He tugged his cap down and pushed his hands into the pockets of his brown jacket. "I promise I'm not going to take anything, I'm only here to inve-clean!" He cleared his throat and looked away, whistling to himself. The girl lifted her head up and giggled at him.
"Okay silly, I'll go swimming. I'm wearing my bathing suit anyway because I wanted to jump in the pool when you showed up."
"Awesome." He hunched over the table next to him and clenched his eyes shut as he ground his teeth together. When he opened his eyes, he was startled by the ashtray beneath him. "When did Gibby start smoking? I thought that was beneath him, bloody liar."
When the girl left the apartment, he stood straight and stared at the door with a dumbfounded look. "Jesus Gibby, you really know how to pick 'em. Sam's nowhere near that stupid. Eh, if it fits with your fantasy of controlling, then fine…it helps with my investigation."
He made his way into the bedroom where a foul stench blew him away. He grabbed his nose as his stomach flipped about violently. "Christ almighty! How the hell does that dame even stand to be in this place!" As his eyes watered, he pulled his shirt collar over his nose and mouth then looked around the room. There were plates of old food scattered about, along with clothes that contributed to the stench.
"Damn Gibby, you either like controlling blonde chicks or you hate them. Which the fuck is it?"
Fighting the odor, he made his way to the end table where Gibby's model head was. It felt like he was taking a bath in filth, a position he never thought he'd find himself in. "Okay, what is it about this head. Something Nevel did, let's find out." He picked up the head carefully and turned it around, looking for anything that would imply foreign trickery.
As his thumbs brushed against the bare spot above the right ear, he noticed a space being pressed inwards. When this space was pressed in, the red pupils would appear like the light of a camera. He was startled to the point he nearly dropped the head on the ground.
"Okay, so what would be the point of this addition? Why would he put this in?" The memory of his sudden illness brought forth the possibility of the head having to do with it. The sensation started in the head and he would have lost consciousness had it not been for Sam's ringtone breaking him. "A sort of hypnosis, maybe? Mind control."
It could also have to do with the trancelike state that Mrs. Papperman had been in when he saw her. Freddie lowered the head and turned his eyes to the side, whispering to himself. "Has Nevel been tampering with mind control?" It certainly could be used to help someone escape from an asylum, or even capture a person.
After returning the head to its proper location, he backed up slowly and looked about the bedroom. "I don't know what I'm looking for, so I'm not sure I want to dig through this mess." He had to consider what his father might do, and with that, he walked over to Gibby's desk and crouched down with a sickened groan.
His eye caught sight of something glinting from the bedroom light, it was a gold circle on the back of an envelope. Freddie recognized this from an invitation Nevel sent out to Carly many years ago.
"Strange." He picked up the envelope and turned up the flap. There was a paper that had been loosely folded and stuffed back into the envelope. He removed the page and read the words aloud. "Gibby, in a few weeks mother plans to stuff me in an asylum, I know we have never seen eye to eye but as you're well aware, a mutual friend has need of us. I'm going to need your strength when mother puts me in this place, but I'd first like to make some modifications to that model head of yours, I believe it will prove a great deal of aid when I am put in that desolate prison. Please bring it to my house, we will go over my escape from inevitable captivity. This should also prove useful for the plans of our…mutual friend. Meet me at our friend's chosen warehouse on Smith and Grayson. We'll go over our plans there."
Freddie's blood ran cold and he quickly snapped a photo of the letter before stuffing it back into the envelope and placing it where it was before. "So they are working together, at least to bust Nevel out of that place." He rubbed his chin and turned his eyes to a strange brown, sticky stain beside him. "Who is this 'mutual friend' and what do they have to do with anything?"
He wasn't going to find anything out here that he didn't already know, but whatever Nevel planned to do with the head was unknown to Freddie. He couldn't be sure it had anything to do with mind manipulation, at least not on assumption alone.
"So Nevel is the brains of the operation and Gibby is the muscle. That's not surprising."
He pushed himself up and looked down on the desk where another letter remain seated. It had some yellow and red stains on it and was seated in a strange liquid that bled through the papers, almost erasing entirely the words in the letter.
From what he could make of it, the letter was from Nevel as well, thanking Gibby for his help getting out of the asylum. Freddie's eyebrows shot up and he moved his gloved hand up over his mouth. "Their mutual friend fell on hard times and they need to plan another escape? What does that mean?"
Freddie heard the apartment's front door open and quickly pressed his back against the wall beside the bedroom door. "Shit." He poked his head around the corner, gazing out into the living room. His heart stalled when he saw Gibby following the girl inside.
"I hope you don't mind that I went for a swim," The girl said as she twirled her finger in her long blonde hair. "I was getting hot while waiting for you."
"Well did you cool down?" Gibby placed his hands on her hips and pulled her against his body, chuckling softly while looking into her eyes. "Or are you still hot and waiting?"
"I'm glad you got off work early."
"Kiss me." He smirked and the girl obliged by moving her arms around his neck and lifting herself up to kiss him. Freddie turned away and lifted his eyes skyward, shaking his head.
"I need a way out," he whispered. He looked around the room and grinned when he saw an open window. "Well I'll be damned, it's my lucky day."
"I hope you like it rough," Gibby's voice startled Freddie and he quickly looked over his shoulder in time to see the man smack his girlfriend's butt. The girl giggled playfully as he pointed to his crotch. "Let's start off with this."
"Okay." The girl slid down to her knees and reached for Gibby's belt, laughing joyously in the process.
"And that's my cue." Freddie bolted for the window and hesitated when he saw a large amount of dried soda splashed on the windowsill and dripping out the back. "Oh goddamn it, I need a bath after this."
He heard a growl from the living room and instantly forgot about the stain. "At least I've got gloves on." He grabbed the windowsill and pushed himself out, but struck the wall with his foot. "Shit!"
"The hell was that?" Gibby called out. Freddie crouched below the window and crawled into a nearby bush where he covered his mouth. The vile stench returned to him and his eyes rolled into the back of his head as he groaned into his glove.
Gibby extended out of the window, holding the sides with his hands and looking around. His face was twisted into a sneer and his eyes were narrow. "There's no one out there," the girl called from inside, "Come on baby. Let's finish."
The man chuckled and looked over his shoulder with a dangerous smirk. "Ah words were never so sweet." Freddie winced as the window slammed shut.
He waited for several minutes then rose up out of the bushes, dusting his pants and jacket off. "Maybe I should listen to Sam, Spencer, and that girl from the witness protection who tell me to let the cops handle this…" His eyes moved to the window and his stomach churned at the crashes and laughter heard from inside. "At least now I know he helped Nevel, but who's the 'mutual friend'? Also, a warehouse on Smith street? Maybe I should check it out…"
He tugged on his jacket and started walking towards the wire fence, but stopped when he heard a huffing sound. His eyes trailed to the right, where he saw a doghouse. "Oh right, this complex allows pets…" Inside the doghouse was a large Doberman, sleeping on its side.
On the top of the doghouse was a sign that read Jaws. "Oh…shit…" Freddie put his hand on top of his hat and bolted out of the yard as fast as he could.
One lucky son of a gun, even luckier that dog was asleep. So amid Gibby's filthy home and his ever so ditzy girlfriend were some curious letters proving correspondence and the existence of a "mutual friend".