In her suite at the Port Charles Hotel, Katherine Bell stretched out in the claw foot bathtub. Beneath a mound of bubbles, Katherine had a sudden and disconcerting thought. What if Stefan had told Ned what she had done a year earlier? That could explain the slightly chilly reception she had received earlier from Ned. But would Stefan do that? Unfortunately, Katherine couldn't be sure.
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PCPD Officer Fred Johnson's eyes started to cross as he went through the online portal to Pennsylvania DMV records. He looked up to the ceiling for just a minute when his fellow officer Brian Beck came into the room.
"How's it going?" Brian Beck asked.
"I've gotten through perhaps a quarter of the potential tags. So far none should be on a black jeep. This is worse than trying to find a needle in a haystack."
"You don't have much of the plate either, right?" Brian asked.
"Just the first two letters AC and then the last digit is 9. We went back through the footage and that is the best we can get at the angle the camera hit the plate."
"Is there any possibility the car is still there?" Brian asked.
"I'm not completely inept!" Officer Johnson said indignantly. Ok, so cruising through the parking lot and making sure the car wasn't still there had actually been Detective Garcia's idea but it wasn't.
"I really wasn't implying that. Sometimes we all overlook the obvious. Can you find when it pulled out on the footage and maybe get a better shot of the plate there?"
"No, the camera pans so it must have left the lot when the camera was shooting the other side of the lot sometime around eight o'clock on Saturday morning."
"That's rough man, I'm sorry. Hey, it could be worse, you could be on patrol with Ted Wilson we're supposed to have a high of 45 and he's running the AC," Brian said.
As he went back to scrolling, Officer Johnson wasn't really sure of that.
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Jasper Jacks closed the file and reopened his email. His mind was still replaying the earlier conversation with Brenda. Ultimately, she had acquiesced but, for a moment, he had wondered if she was about to challenge him. He wouldn't say that was a complete turn off from the right woman. He just wasn't sure if Brenda was the right woman. Ironically Brenda's older sister, Julia, could have been the right woman and Jax hadn't give up hope that her best friend, Lois would end being the right woman.
In the meantime, he supposed he could do worse than Brenda Barrett, at least until she felt she had a right to have her own opinions and make her own choices. He wasn't sure that would be something he would be able to accept from someone like Brenda. Brenda was mostly a means to an end. She was eye candy with an added bonus that their relationship could serve as an antagonistic distraction for ELQ Pro Counsel, Ned Ashton. That could serve useful further down the road on his way to taking over ELQ. After all, he hadn't bought into ELQ because it was a solid corporation that should yield an excellent return on his investment. Truth be told it was, but that hadn't been the motivation for him. The motivation had been to beat Edward Quartermaine at his own game.
Almost twenty years earlier, in 1978, when Jax had been nearly eleven, ELQ Enterprises had taken the company public with a small IPO intended to fund their expansion into Pharmaceuticals. Their original IPO had only offered a total of forty shares, just under twenty percent of the company. Such a small public offering had virtually ensured that the company, and even the executive board, would remain in the hands of the Quartermaine Family. Twenty years later shareholders were rewarded handsomely with dividends but the company remained absolutely invulnerable to a hostile takeover.
The latter was what had led Jax to purchase his own ELQ stock in early 1996. More recently he had acquired five shares from Skye Chandler. She had apparently received the stock as part of her divorce settlement from Dr. Jeremy Jonathan Kinder; been unaware of the true worth of her asset; and been desperate to liquidate the same asset to pay a blackmailer. He was a man who thrived on challenge and overtaking ELQ fit the bill perfectly. There was nothing that would give him more pleasure than besting Edward Quartermaine at his own game. Edward thought that ELQ was impenetrable but Jax was sure he had overlooked to potential vulnerability of a downstream merger. That was what made it the perfect loophole to exploit.
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By the time Katherine Bell sat down to do her make up she had mostly convinced herself that even if Ned somehow had learned that their sex had been less than consensual on his part, she would be ok. Was Ned Ashton really going to come forward and admit that he had been raped? He would never do that because he would basically become the laughingstock of corporate America. Where was the upside in that?
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In the Quartermaine suite of the Port Charles Hotel, Carly Ashton slid her feet into a pair of silver pumps and then stood and smoothed the orchid purple cocktail dress over her abdomen and the very first hint of a baby bump. The combination of a retroverted uterus, a posterior placenta, and her first pregnancy had allowed her to get into the third trimester before there was any external visible hint that she might be pregnant. That would have been extremely convenient if the entire town hadn't been gossiping about her pregnancy long before then. She was sure that the gossip had only intensified when she had married Ned but being Ned Ashton's wife had it's perks. One of them was that the gossip no longer got back to her. Most people were smart enough to not offend the granddaughter, even if by marriage, of the man who signed their paychecks.
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Tracy Quartermaine-Grabler tried to channel patience as she waited for her six-year-old daughter to pack her ballet slippers into her bag and put on her coat. Shannon was always the last child to leave the dance studio. She was the one who always wanted to work on her positions or splits a little longer or have just one more try on a dance passage. It could never be argued she wasn't dedicated.
"Here, put on your coat and I'll zip your bag, we need to go," Tracy offered as she picked up the pink duffle bag.
"You said that last week!" Shannon seemed to protest but she did start to slide her arms into her coat.
Tracy smiled. She probably said it every week, although she supposed last week, when Shannon's usual Thursday class had been rescheduled for Friday, due to the instructor's mother's surgery, she had needed to get home so they could get ready for Ned and Carly's party. "Last week we needed to get ready for your brother's party."
"Ned and Carly are going to another party tonight. They get to go to a lot of parties," Shannon said as she zipped her coat.
Tracy supposed one could consider the Deception Shareholder's Reception a party. She suspected her son considered it more of an obligation, especially since it would require him to interact with Katherine Bell. She wondered if Carly had seen the event as just another party and wanted to go or if Ned had requested that she attend as his personal Katherine Bell barrier device. She had a feeling it was more the latter and she supposed that she owed her newest daughter in a law a debt of gratitude if that was the case.
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Dr. Jake Marshak spotted his colleague Dr. Evelyn Lambert on 5 North and sat down beside her. "I need to change over," he said as he glanced at his watch. If he was lucky, he would have time to get home, shower and go with Danielle to her work cocktail party. He wanted to support her, especially since she had basically given up everything to move to Port Charles for him.
Eve raised an eyebrow. "You're changing over before six? Is this a first?"
"I started way before six this morning. Danielle wanted me to go to the Deception Shareholder's Cocktail Party tonight. It starts at seven and I doubt that scrubs go over well at the Port Charles Hotel."
Eve laughed. "No, probably not. Scott invited me but, someone has to stick around and save lives you know."
"This is a big deal for Danielle. It's her first big project since she took the job as Amy Morgan's assistant," Jake said.
"That's cool, I'm just giving you a hard time. Come on, change over so you won't keep your fiancée waiting."
"Thanks. Believe it or not the only thing you need to follow up on is cardiac enzymes on two patients. I put those cards on the top of the stack. Dr. Burgess always consults Cardiology if the enzymes are positive so I guess you can check an EKG and hope that someone nice is on call for Cardiology. Dr. Quartermaine lets you fax her the EKG at home if you have questions," Jake said as he extended a stack of cards.
Eve took the cards, glanced at them quickly and then shoved them in the pocket of her white coat. "Maybe I'll just hope the enzymes will be negative because Dr. Devlin is on call."
"Yeah, that sounds like a better option. The last time Dr. Devlin was on call he kept insisting I was supposed to be calling the fellow but there wasn't a fellow on call. Dr. Quartermaine had come in to put a line in one of her patients so I went down and found her in the CCU and she let me transfer the patient to her service in the CCU and started an Amiodarone Drip."
"Yeah, Monica is helpful like that and Karen told me that she said to call her personally if there were issues with a few of their patients so maybe if Dr. Devlin is being his usual less than helpful self, I'll just call her. Anyway, have fun!"
"Yeah, thanks," Jake said. Yet, as he headed back towards the elevator, he noted that Eve had said Monica, not Dr. Quartermaine, he wondered if she got to call her by her first name because she was dating her brother. Of course, that really wasn't any of his business.
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Steffi Brewster Alden shut her eyes as the makeup artist worked their magic. The past twenty-four hours had been a whirlwind. When she had taken advantage of her husband's business trip to go on a modeling call, she hadn't thought she had a prayer of getting the job, especially since it was a spokesmodel position. But then Katherine Bell had called her cell phone while she had been on the train back to the city.
She had returned to the apartment she and Cooper owned on Manhattan's Upper East Side and packed for an early morning return trip to Port Charles. Then she had assuaged a little guilt by personally putting Courtney to bed and reminding Zoey that it was Tyler's turn to provide snack for preschool on Friday and to make sure she checked with the bakery in the morning about the cookie delivery. When Cooper had called that evening, she had told him about how much Courtney had enjoyed leaves in Central Park. It was true, she had, even if it had been Zoey not her mother romping in them with her.
Zoey, the ever-eavesdropping nanny, had overheard and warned Steffi that eventually her lies would catch up with her. Zoey was probably correct but on principle but Zoey really had no clue what was at stake. Steffi hadn't been about to explain any of that so she had just told Zoey that she wasn't her friend, she was her employee and she could keep her opinions to herself or be prepared to find a new job.
Now Steffi was about an hour away from being announced as the newest Deception Cosmetics Spokesmodel and she couldn't be happier. Or at least that was what she kept telling herself.
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Danielle Ashley surveyed Evening Song, the upscale piano lounge of the Port Charles Hotel where the Shareholder's Reception was being held. She had never been inside before she had been tasked with planning the reception. When not closed for private events, entrance to the lounge was restricted to hotel guests and those able to pay the two-hundred-dollar cover fee for live music.
"This really looks great, Danielle! Have you ever considered becoming an event planner?" Amy Morgan asked as she came into the room.
Danielle laughed nervously. "I worked for a catering company during most of college. I went to a ton of upscale parties so I guess I just went with what I've seen," she said.
"Well, I think you did great! Last year Katherine hired this super expensive wedding planner from Manhattan. Of course, this year she forgot to hire anyone and dumped the whole thing in my lap last month when it was far to late to contract anyone. You completely saved me by pulling all of this together. I know maybe you're still hoping to resurrect your acting career but if you and Jake decide to stay in Port Charles after his residency you should really consider that or I could talk to Ned about other opportunities for you at ELQ," Amy said.
"You don't have to do that. Seriously, I'm just happy you hired me as your assistant when I had so little experience."
"I'm happy I hired you as my assistant! Seriously, I don't want you to leave so I can find more projects like this for you. Don't worry if Katherine tries to poach you, I will completely plead your case to Uncle Edward and we will either find you another position at ELQ or a way to continue working with me."
Danielle still remembered Katherine's derisive attitude when they had met a month ago. "I highly doubt that Katherine Bell would choose me to do anything," she said.
"Katherine goes through roughly one secretary a month and usually her first approach is to steal someone else's. She just stole Lacey from Jeremy last month so it's probably about time but I promise I'll fight for you."
"Uh, thanks," Danielle said.
"Well, I mean if you want to go work with Katherine, then ok. Technically, I partly let her take Sherri because she thought that being secretary to the CEO would look better. She wasn't one of my smartest secretaries and I think she lived to regret that but she got a job at Baldwin, Jordan, and Baldwin a few months ago so I guess it worked out in the end for her."
"Katherine is my half-sister," Danielle said. After the words were out, she regretted them. She had no idea why she had told Amy that.
"Oh, wow, I guess that is how you're related to Scott Baldwin. Somehow I thought you were related on his mother's side."
"No, Katherine, Dominique, and I are all half-sisters. So, I'm really only related to Scott by marriage."
"I'm sorry. Obviously, I didn't know your sister Dominique, but from everything I have heard she was amazing."
"That is what everyone tells me. I never knew her either. I only learned that I was really Avery Stanton's daughter after Dominique died. Getting to know Serena has been such a blessing and from Scott's stories I have a sense of who she was."
"I'm sorry, now I understand why you encouraged me not to take my sister for granted. I assure you I don't. I love Chloe, it's just a little complicated."
"I think I understand," Danielle said. It was kind of like she loved Jake but everything with Rex made it so complicated.