A/N: Thank you to Miss Jayne and Sara, whose "did I ever tell you...?" tales in the same week or so snowballed into this... and to all my friends and family over the years who inadvertantly contributed to the tale. The payoff check is in the mail.
December 16, 2011
Can You Top This?
No—But Thank You For Some Fabulous Blackmail Ideas!
Sleepovers are not just for children.
Lily, Ev and Charlie are at the house at least two out of four weekends a month. Mother's right-hand-gal, Suzy, will often stay if she knows we have plans and it would be helpful to have two more eyes on a very sneaky old lady—and she does it off the clock, out of the goodness of her heart. ("For food," she says. "You guys know how to cook!")
But if there's a birthday or holiday or reason to celebrate, we frequently end up with one, two or more members of the NCIS extended family bunking on the floor as well. On rare occasion, we even have their fearless leader in attendance. (For some reason, Tony DiNozzo pushes his frat boy persona more when Gibbs is there. There's some game being played, but damned if I know what it is.)
We normally hold a Christmas dinner for any and all, and this year was no exception. We were also hosting a pre-Christmas party for any and all and then some, a tradition started the year we were married. It involved a lot of work—but it was also a lot of fun. And we had a whole crew in residence, ready to help in the morning; the only ones missing from NCIS were Jimmy Palmer (he had a new wife to be with, after all) and the director, Leon Vance (I'd met him a couple of times and found him to be polite, but reserved; Ducky said Mrs. Vance and the kids would have had a ball joining us, but it was a package deal—if Leon didn't go, nobody went). So, with Lexi tucked (reluctantly) in bed, our living room was scattered with people at ten past nine Friday night—in addition to Ducky, Mother and me, we had Lily, Ev, Charlie (who would be joining Lexi soon, but was busy getting some homework assistance), McGee (who was helping Charlie), Abby (who was kibitzing the homework help), Ziva, DiNozzo, Gibbs and our Mother-wrangler, Suzy. The homework contingent was at the loveseat; the rest of us were huddled around the coffee table, playing a smackdown game of double deck gin rummy (including Mother, darn it; nobody else stands a chance if she's in the game).
Conversations floated around like early morning mist. "Okay. Physics has its basis in mathematics. Remember back in trig—"
No, Tim, I don't. That's why I'm not helping Charlie with her homework and why you and Abby are.
"Gin!" Mother was running true to form, she had won about 75% of the games so far.
"If I knew of a casino where they played gin, we could clean up," Suzy sighed good-naturedly. She tallied our losses, shuffled and re-dealt.
"It could be worse," Ziva said. "Backgammon, for example."
I once heard Ziva say Mother was the immediate reincarnation of an old man from Israel. No particular old man, just one of the many who sit in the corner of a café with his cronies, playing backgammon and moving pips before the dice have fully stopped. I had seen this talent at a folk dance café, men who drove wives there to dance and hung out playing backgammon 'til they went home. What amazed me more than the ability was that not once did a player say, "Hey, jerk, you moved a four, it was a one!" Mother waits until the dice stop (the moving spots make her dizzy), but she has her pips moved within two seconds. She no longer played chess, but Ducky said she wiped up the floor with him until the past fifteen years. And they stopped playing bridge—well, she had to stop—because her temper would get the best of her and opponents stopped being tolerant of her spitting at them. "True. Or canasta. You think she's good at gin rummy?"
"Anybody want more pie?" Gibbs ended up bringing back a whole pie, a stack of paper plates and a handful of forks.
"I don't understand." Ziva gave DiNozzo a puzzled look.
He sighed. "It was a joke."
"I still do not understand."
"Never mind."
"—they never did figure out who did it."
Gibbs looked up sharply. "Abs?"
Abby peered around McGee. "Yeah?"
"Figure out who did what?"
"Oh." She clapped a hand over her mouth and giggled, turning faintly pink. "It was just—well—"
Suzy, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor smack between the homework group and the card players (the woman is far too limber to be the age she claims to be; there are times I want to hate her), grinned. "Just tales of high school pranks. Like when we left a dog collar and the tag Teacher's Pet in the locker of the biggest brown-noser on campus."
Gibbs looked at Abby expectantly. "Oh?" He settled back in his chair.
With a resigned sigh, Abby said, "It's not that big a deal. We had a kind of rivalry with Rosedale High. And right before Homecoming… someone… wrote 'Rosedale High Eats Genetically Altered Worms' on the front lawn. In sodium metal," she added, when we gave her a few, 'And?' looks.
I don't remember much about my chem classes, but, thanks to MacGyver reruns, I do know what happens to sodium metal when it has water—such as from lawn sprinklers—applied to it. I laughed. "That's a good one."
"Burned it all the way to the ground," Abby said cheerfully, taking pity on phys ed major DiNozzo.
"And you were the ringleader?" Gibbs asked mildly.
"No…. just the technical consultant."
"You would have liked the party the physics club threw one year," McGee said. "Big bowl of colored ice cubes… with Mentos frozen inside."
After a minute, Abby grinned. "Bottles of soda instead of a punch bowl?"
"Yep."
"Could we get more details for the non-geeks?" DiNozzo complained.
"The colored ice would mask the fact that there was something hidden inside. You've seen the YouTubes where people dropped Mentos into 2-liter bottles of soda?" Tim said semi-patiently. DiNozzo nodded. "Well, once the ice melts, makes contact with the soda…" He threw his hands out in a "whoosh" gesture.
"Aaaah," Tony said, nodding.
"Who cleaned the floor?" Ziva asked with a laugh.
"That would be… all of us," he said ruefully. "They all melted close to the same time."
I drew a king of clubs, melded with the queen and jack and discarded a three of hearts. "We did a 'fun with food' prank in a little theatre group I belonged to back in college," I said. "We were doing A Bad Year For Tomatoes—"
"A what?" Ducky laughed.
"That was the title. Lightweight comedy. Well, one character kept hitting a bottle of booze—bourbon, I think—and we were supposed to use iced tea for the prop."
Gibbs (the only bourbon drinker I know) grinned. "You replaced it with the real thing?"
"Oh, my god, we didn't dare.She had to drink the whole bottle through the play, she'd've been flat on her ass. No—we replaced it with soda pop." I grinned in response. "Vernor's."
Half the group laughed, the other half looked blank. "Vernor's ginger ale is not like Canada Dry," I explained. "Canada Dry, Schwepp's—they're all just carbonated water that had ginger flavoring walk past. Vernor's used to be aged for years in oak barrels—literally, years. Strangers to the taste would get sneezing fits from the bubbles, watery eyes, choking—"
"And you drank this? On purpose?" Ziva marveled.
"Oh, it's good stuff, great stuff! You can still get it—it's good, not as strong as it used to be… But Teri had been a real pill the whole time, so we…knocked her down a peg."
"How did she get through her scenes?" Charlie marveled.
"Gotta give her credit. Her eyes watered like she was walking through the manure aisle at Home Depot, but she didn't blow one line. Not easy, with that stuff."
"They probably had to change the formula because of the Chemical Warfare Act," Abby laughed.
"Someone pranked the All Hallow's Eve party at St. Basil's," Mother sighed. She was following the conversation. Yea, Mom! She took the 6 of spades Gibbs had discarded and looked smug.
"Mother, we go to St. Anne's," Ducky said quietly.
She gave him an irritated look. "I know that! When you were—six. No, seven!"
Ducky was puzzled for a moment, then looked thunderstruck. "Good heavens! The apples!" He leaned over slightly. "How in the world did she remember that?"
"We all brought treats for the party. I made gingerbread." (The woman's gingerbread is the stuff dreams are made on.) "We never discovered who the guilty party was," she said darkly. "But someone brought caramel coated apples."
Only Ducky didn't look confused. He was grinning. "Why would that be bad, Victoria?" Suzy asked. "The caramel apples?" she prompted, when Mother looked lost.
"Oh! Because someone used onions instead of apples."
There was a chorus of, "Euuuuu!" "Gross!" "Blech!" and "Disgusting."
"Beats the beer keg," Gibbs said with a small laugh.
"You substitute Coors for the Heinekin?" Ev teased.
He thought for a moment then decided to go for it. "Nah. Back in basic, there was this—" a quick glance and the realization Charlie was still in the room. "—jerk. He and some of his buddies didn't get the Semper Fi/we are a unit/we are one y'know… Real grade-A, brass-plated, award-winning a-holes. Anyway, you hit 21, the unit throws a keg party. Sooooo…. We had one keg for our 'special guests' and one for everyone else. About halfway through, they were feelin' real good, we added a 'special ingredient' to the rest of the keg."
"Cayenne pepper?" Abby guessed.
"Nope." Gibbs smirked. "Ipecac."
Even Charlie knew the name. "What a waste of good beer," DiNozzo said.
"Oh, yeah," Gibbs agreed. "More ways than one. They kept drinking, throwing up, getting dehydrated from throwing up, drinking more beer… Oh—gin."
Mother looked miffed. I tallied scores and looked at her hand; she was one card away from going out.
"Revenge. A dish best served cold," Lily intoned.
"With beer," I added. I shuffled and dealt. Ten cards, all crap.
"Ah, revenge," Evelyn sighed. "Creativity at its best."
"You got creative revenge on someone?" Gibbs waggled his beer bottle at her.
"Wellllll… I didn't do it," she said, with a glance toward Charlie. "But… I had a high school teacher who had, uh, issues with administration. So. Among other things, he ran the debate team, the speech class, the academic decathlon team… They had a weekend thing in New York, speech and debate, and the ac-dec class went along as a lesson in being on the other side of the microphone, tips on how they probably look up there. When they came back on Monday, every… single… student… was late 20 minutes on Monday. They all had a photocopied note from Mr. Dowthright. Each note said the closing dinner left a number of people with digestive problems that might carry over to the morning and to please excuse any tardiness associated with this problem." She grinned smugly.
"I am lost," Ziva admitted.
"Okay. The front office gets kids that trickle in through the morning. Back then, if you were under 15 minutes tardy, you didn't have to bring a note. You'd just get marked tardy, but you still had to get a tardy slip to go to class. Over 15 minutes, it had to be processed with a signed note, and they had to actually fill out a form for each kid. So instead of the five or ten in a given ten minute span, they had over a hundred show up 20 minutes late. It took them all of first period and half of second to get caught up."
"The parents condoned this?" Ducky was mildly scandalized.
"Most of them. They were on his side; the new administration was—" Ev rolled her eyes. "Well, you can use your imagination. The first year, a third of the teaching staff transferred, retired or flat out quit. Mr. Dowthright didn't want to go down without a fight. So the parents either supported him in this—or didn't actively oppose him. That was my senior year," she sighed. "I hear the principal quit two years later, went into a cushy job on the Beltway."
"Sometimes karma isn't quite what we want," Lily said.
"Speaking of kar-ma…" Ev hinted. Lily looked at her blankly. "Hsst." Ev poked Lily in the arm. "Tell 'em about the bug."
She still looked mystified. "Bug?"
"The VW?"
Lily's face cleared. "Oh!" She hitched her chair around so that she could face both groups. "Okay, this is one of those, 'If I go down, I'm taking lots of company with me' stories," she said with a grin.
"Sounds good already," I said.
"Well, we were never sure who did this—but I know that was the year the Marx brothers graduated. They had spent four years pulling pranks and pushing rules. Supposedly at the faculty meeting toward the end of the year, the principal said, 'This is the year Rich and Neal Marx graduate from Musgrave High. If there is any instructor who is thinking of holding them back a year… I want to see you in my office. Immediately!'" We laughed at her impression. "So. I was in high school—I was a freshman—we had two art teachers. One did the Commercial Art, Photography, Yearbook, Print Shop, all that stuff. The other teacher did the Stagecraft, Set Construction—and all the beginning art classes. And he hated the beginning art classes."
I thought back to my one year of teaching and couldn't help but sympathize a little.
"Those classes were so regimented. And it was a requirement: one semester of art, one of music, two more of your own choosing. Unless you already had an art background and passed the juried screening for the upper levels, you were stuck with Mr. Symons for at least half a year. Well, Mr. Symons was… unique. Pushed the dress code right to the line, wore a lot of stuff that would pass for garb. Still had fairly long, hippie-type hair, wore smoked glasses—would have had a pipe if it were a college campus. Wore a shark's tooth hanging from one ear." She fllicked a finger against her right earlobe. "Drove… a VW bug he hand-painted with Starry, Starry Night." Her eyes twinkled.
"I'm guessing the vehicle in question plays a prominent role in the tale?" Ducky asked. He was sitting next to me on the couch and I could see the barely repressed grin out of the corner of my eye.
"Oh, yeah. So. As I said, Mr. Symons hated teaching the Art 1 classes, and the feeling was mutual. He had spent his own high school years dreaming of being the biggest, hippest set designer on Broadway. Broadway didn't want him—at all. The closest he could get was Musgrave High."
Ev clearly knew the story and was grinning like a jack-o-lantern. Lily is far more detail-oriented than the rest of us.
"We still don't—well, I still don't know who did it. Not for sure. But all spring all the drama and stagecraft and music students were on campus on the weekends. We were doing Guys and Dolls as our spring musical. We worked every weekend—I earned enough points just in that one semester to make it into the Thespian Society. I worked props, costumes, makeup—big cast, lots of costumes. Not enough time during the class during the week. So. That one Saturday we broke at five, went out to the parking lot—and Mr. Symons' car was gone."
"Someone boosted his car?" Suzy asked in a polite "so what?" tone.
"Oh, no. Much better than that." Lily tried again to bite back a grin. "Think Hansel and Gretel. There was a trail of crumbs—jelly beans, actually, so the birds wouldn't steal the trail. The ants, on the other hand… Well. So. He followed it back across campus—and we followed him following the trail—all the way to his classroom. The art rooms all had sliding patio doors to move banners, panels, equipment… Someone picked the lock, cleared a path to the layout table, got his bug up on the table… hotwired the car, left it running, locked the patio door, went out through the main door—and used a slip wire to pull the deadbolt." She threw out her hands. "Ta-daa!"
Ducky laughed. "A classic locked room mystery."
"How did they figure out the doors?" Gibbs asked.
"The slip wire broke. The picked lock was kind of obvious, too."
"Okay—but how the heck could they get the car up on top of the table?" DiNozzo groused.
"A VW bug? Lead pipe cinch," Charlie said offhandedly.
"Rolled it up on planks," Abby suggested.
"Or just picked it up," Charlie added, concentrating on the physics equation Tim had been breaking down. She finally looked up, sensing our stares. "Yes?"
"Something you want to share with the class?" Ev asked.
"Sure." Charlie pushed aside her physics textbook. "Do you recall the last year I went to summer camp?" We all nodded; she had decided to do double-back summer school the last couple of years. "There was one counselor who…" She pursed her lips and cocked her head at Gibbs. "…was a grade-A, brass-plated, award-winning a-hole."
"Charlie!" Ev and Lily chorused. Gibbs winced.
"She was," Charlie said mildly. "Her name was Madeline. She was known as 'Mad' for several reasons. She, too, drove a Volkswagon 'bug'—alas, not so artistically decorated. Merely red—slightly rusted, slightly faded, with old, unreadable bumper stickers. This was her first—and, as I hear it, last—summer. She was particularly unpopular with one counselor."
"What did she do, short-sheet her bunk?" DiNozzo laughed.
"No, slept with her fiancé," Charlie said without batting an eye. Ev and Lily exchanged stunned looks. This was apparently news to them. "So. At some point during the night… the other counselors moved her vehicle." She gave us a sly smile. "Much like Mommy's classmates, they picked it up, marched it off the parking area… and parallel parked it, placing it neatly between two trees. With, perhaps, half a foot clearance on each end."
"Nice." Gibbs nodded. "How long did it take her to get it out of there?"
Charlie grinned. "All… damned… day." Nobody reprimanded her for her language. We were all too busy laughing.
Gibbs nodded. "I can one-up that."
I drew and discarded; my hand was still garbage. "Serve it up, sunshine."
He smirked. "I won't say where or when, but… once upon a time, I was stationed at a base. One night I was pulling MP duty. There was one Master Sergeant who was… less than popular."
"Grade-A, brass-plated—" Charlie chirped.
"Yep, yep," he said quickly. "So we got a call about a stolen vehicle belonging to our favorite Master Sergeant. Searched everywhere that night. Found it in the morning in the light of day…" He tipped his head back. "'bout twenty-five feet up. Someone put some four-by-fours between a couple of Quonset huts, wayyyy in the back of the base, where nobody went past sixteen-hundred, put Sergeant Coyne's Jeep wayyyy up in the sky. They'd painted it pink, too. Looked real pretty up there."
Through our laughter, Ziva gasped, "How in the world did they get it up there?"
"That… we never learned. Took 'em the better part of the week to get it down. Only took them a few hours to put it up. Talent." He took a hit off his beer. "Boy, was he pissed. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy."
"That's the difference between a little prank and revenge," Abby said sagely. "People are willing to go all out for proper revenge." She had a sneaky smile on her puss.
"I have a feeling you have a tale of justified revenge in your carpetbag?" Ducky teased.
"One… or two," she nodded. "This one was during my grad student days. I lived off-campus, apartment complex rented mostly to students. Well, they'd rent to non-students, but nobody else would live there. It was mostly grad students, so it was fairly quiet. Robert von Saulo was such a—!" She broke off, but I had feeling the word rhymed with a particular type of paving stone. Two words, even. "Oh, he thought he was the greatest thing since time began, hottest thing with the women, too gorgeous to be a mere mortal, and the most brilliant mind to walk our hallowed halls. God forbid anyone disturb him. He would work on his doctoral every weekend and every night and you'd better not knock or call—but he would knock on your door with the least provocation. So… we decided he needed an assistant." She smiled happily. "Took out an ad in the student paper, handed out business cards: 'research assistant needed, top pay, must apply in person, evenings and weekends only' and listed his apartment at the complex. He had at least ten 'applicants' an hour. Every one of them had to pass through the front door; someone would hang out in the lobby, we let them go in one at a time, and when they left, we told them what the deal was and gave them a pass for a free drink at The Library, the bar down the road. The owners had their own beef with Bobby, they were glad to front our payoff. Nobody spilled the beans. Bobby had made himself very, very unpopular over the years…"
"Definitely a difference between revenge and mere pranks," Ducky said laughing.
"Did you do either at school?" I asked sweetly.
"Of course! One—or two," he said, quoting Abby. He tipped his head. "The first one that comes to mind…" (First one?) "Back in fourth form, a school chum had the absurd idea of loosing piglets on the campus and I… assisted."
Gibbs snorted. "Why, Duck?"
Ducky spread his hands. "It seemed a good idea at the time. They were small, very agile. They ran all over hill and dale, driving the staff crazy. They couldn't keep up with them. We marked one with a number one, the second with the number two, the third—" He paused for a moment. "—with the number four." He waited while we looked at one another uncertainly. "It took them a week to find one, almost two more weeks to track down the second; after being loose for almost a month, the piglet numbered four got into the Headmaster's office and destroyed everything—but it was weeks before they gave up looking for the nonexistent piglet numbered three." We burst into snorts, snickers and giggles.
"Oh, nice!" McGee cried, laughing and even applauding.
"Sometimes subtlety is its best reward," Ducky said (just a teensy bit smugly). "We also spoofed someone for months. Let it be known that we were planning something so tremendous, so monstrous, he would be pranked as never before—all of this was rumor, mind you. Things he overheard, nothing said directly to him. As time went on, the threat loomed larger. He would have hidden in his flat all of April first, but he couldn't. He went around the whole day, waiting for something to happen…" he said dramatically. He paused for a long moment. "And… nothing happened. That was the prank. The ultimate in paranoia. The ultimate in subtlety."
"Oh, we were not subtle," McGee said, still laughing. "School choir. Christmas show, ninety-three, I think. I don't remember whose idea it was… but we were all in on it. We… added something to the show."
"Something… dirty?" DiNozzo asked hopefully.
"Not exactly…" McGee hedged. "We all learned an extra song, and when the last of the planned show was over, we started singing…" He looked around, smiled a bit, then, to the tune of "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen" sang: "The restroom door said 'gentlemen' so I just walked inside, I took two steps and realized I'd been taken for a ride, I heard high voices, turned and found the place was occupied by two nuns, three old ladies and a nurse—what could be worse—than two nuns, three old ladies and a nurse!"
He's got a decent voice—and it's a funny song. "Oh, my god, your choir director must have wanted to kill you!" Suzy said, finally catching her breath.
"He was so shocked, we got to the end of the song before he could get the stage director to drop the curtain. I'm just glad my dad missed the show," he said with a shake of his head.
DiNozzo winced. "Yeah, that would have been ugly. I went to a restaurant once, someone pulled off something like that. Put a triangle cutout of black tape over the legs so it looked like a skirt, put white tape on the skirt so it looked like pants. Whole bunch of pissed off people that night."
"Why'd'ja do it, DiNozzo?" Gibbs asked laconically.
"Boss! Never!"
Ev pointed to DiNozzo, Tim, and Ducky. "That's prank." She pointed to Gibbs. "The waste of good beer—that was revenge." She smiled sweetly. "Then there's the 'I will make you so miserable' kind of revenge…"
"Isn't that why they invented divorce?" came Gibbs' affable drawl.
"One reason, anyway. You guys remember… Fabio?" she breathed dramatically. About half of us nodded.
"You got revenge on Fabio?" I teased.
"No—but a friend of ours was married to this total louse. Liar, cheat—big-time cheat—con-man—"
(Yeah, I dated some of those.)
"She wanted a divorce. He was dragging his heels about signing. They were both still living in the house; she wanted to sell and split the money, he wanted her to buy him out and she couldn't afford to."
"Sounds like your average divorce to me," Gibbs said with a wry look.
"Well, Mr. Wonderful had gorgeous hair that made Fabio look like squat. Gotta be honest, it was. And the women just fell all over themselves over it. He was three-quarter… Cherokee? Not sure. Coal black, straighter than the Bible Belt, longer than mine, beautiful hair. And he knew it. Had this special shampoo, cost a bloody fortune, but it made his hair look like threads of silk…"
"You're wasting your talents. You should write purple prose romances," I suggested.
"Ha, ha. Julie doctored his shampoo rather like you doctored the beer keg." She nodded to Gibbs.
"She put Ipecac in his shampoo?" Charlie asked, puzzled.
Ev belatedly realized Charlie was still sitting there at the back of the group. She pointed and glowered. "If you repeat anything you've heard tonight—"
"I know, I know, you'll sell my body for my mineral rights—about twelve bucks on the open market right now, if I estimate correctly."
"You need a new line," Lily murmured.
"I can tell. No, not Ipecac." Ev looked around the group and smiled slowly. "Nair."
"Oh, that is evil," Ziva said. She waggled her eyebrows and grinned. "I like it."
"Mind you, this was right after her "Psycho" trick," Lily added.
"Psycho?" I asked.
"Yeah. He went off boozing and carousing one weekend, came home stinking drunk, got in the shower—and started screaming like he was being murdered. Which he thought he was. Julie went down to the magic shop, got some blood capsules, put them in the showerhead. Water melted the gel caps, 'blood' comes pouring out—and he was so drunk, he thought it was coming from him. Darn near broke his head on the tub rim getting out of there. After the Nair trick—he signed the divorce papers. And they split the house."
"And this was a friend of yours?" DiNozzo asked warily.
"Sure!" Ev and Lily said in unison. "You danced with her at our wedding," Lily added.
He looked stunned. "I did?"
"Mm-hmm." Another Greek chorus.
Gibbs cocked his head. "'bout five-two, strawberry blonde, really—uh—well built?"
"Stacked!" Charlie chirped from behind her worksheet and textbook. From the look on his face, I'm sure Gibbs was mentally muttering, Is she really just thirteen? We sometimes ask ourselves the same question.
"Yep, that's the one," Lily said. Charlie was engrossed in her homework and missed the exasperated look that was sent her way.
"Someone, quick—another story, before my mind goes down a really bad path," DiNozzo begged.
Tim snorted. "And that's saying a lot."
"Well… if you work it right, you can get revenge on two people at once," Gibbs said, polishing off the last of his pie (his third slice).
"Gin!" Mother announced, spreading her cards on the table.
Gibbs shook his head. "Glad you don't play poker." He did a quick tally and shuffled the cards. "So… Old man McGinty had a chunk of land that had been in his family for generations. Times got tough. He had to take out a loan, and, like a lotta people, found out it was written in the bank's favor. Ended up losing his farm, the land, everything. President of the bank wasn't too popular with anybody, but especially McGinty. Got the farm, the land—and Mrs. McGinty. She moved out lock, stock and lipstick before the foreclosure—and into Mr. Woodmark's three-story mansion." He quickly dealt the new hand.
We waited patiently. Finally Ducky said, "Is that all?"
"Huh?" Gibbs looked up from his cards. "Oh. Sorry. No—McGinty got to sell off his livestock, but he had one old cow nobody wanted. Nasty thing—helluva temper, put a hole in the wall once, busted McGinty's arm another time."
"Steak tartare," DiNozzo suggested.
"Nah, he didn't have the heart. Besides… the cow really hated Mrs. McGinty. So before he split town, he left his soon to be ex-wife a going away present. Elsie." He smiled. "Took her over to the house while Woodmark was away for the day and missus had driven into town to spend money. Took Elsie in the house… and walked her up to the master bedroom suite on the third floor." He smirked and went back to his cards.
Ducky shook his head and chuckled slightly, but I was the only one who burst out laughing. "Okay, I'm sure Elsie trashed the place," McGee said reluctantly. "But…" He looked at Gibbs with a 'surely there's something more' look.
My best friend had married right out of high school and gone to live on a dairy farm. One of the oddball facts I know about cows, courtesy Laurie Taylor, is: "Cows can walk upstairs—but they can't walk downstairs. Their legs don't work right in that direction," I got out between giggles.
The others made various 'ah-ha' noises. "Elise trashed the place," Gibbs agreed with McGee. "They had to get a painter's scaffold erected and knock out a wall to get her out of there. Local vet adopted her, she was nice and quiet after that."
"Do you blame her?" Ev snickered. "She got it all out of her system."
"Yep. And when Woodmark called the sheriff, he said he couldn't arrest McGinty since nobody could prove he took Elsie upstairs." He nodded at our skeptical looks. "Yeah, I know—but the sheriff had to refinance his house and Woodmark worked him over, too."
"My dad got revenge on a guy who screwed him, too," DiNozzo mused. "I didn't know the details for a long time—I don't think I know all of them even now. But he cost Dad, jeez, five mil, easy." (Five mil? Wow. Say it fast, it sounds like real money.) "This guy, he had an '86 Countach—"
"Pardon?" I said.
"Lamborghini Countach," he clarified.
"A very, very, very, very—" Abby thought for a moment. "—very expensive car."
"Ah."
"Guy was out of the country for a week. Dad got someone into his house, re-geared the Lamborghini so it was American pattern instead of European—guy came home, thought he was in first gear, it was reverse… floored it, right into the side of the house."
I thought about the logistics of finding a mechanic that devious, who could work that quickly and quietly and neatly (was nobody at this guy's house for a week?), breaking in, not having it noticed, the guy not feeling the difference when he shifted—but it was a good story, so I didn't say anything.
"I—well, we—reengineered someone's workstation back at Johns Hopkins. Dismantled, really." McGee looked abashed—but a tiny bit proud. "Took apart everything—tower, monitor, keyboard, lamp, mouse—down to the last, smallest screw. We were nice enough to lay it out in order so he could reassemble it. Eventually."
DiNozzo looked suspicious. "You haven't done that to me."
"Not yet."
"Still pissed about shrinkwrapping your cubicle?"
"Yes." The rueful look on McGee's mug showed he wasn't that pissed. "Must've cost you a fortune."
DiNozzo grinned. "Worth every penny."
"Ah, but did he leave a body?" Ducky asked. He drew a card; from the tiny quirk of his eyebrow, it wasn't a good one.
"You had a body in your office?" Suzy asked. "Other than the morgue, I mean?"
"Not precisely—" he started to say.
"Gin!" Mother chirped. Ducky took a moment to tally the cards, shuffle and deal; it was Mother's turn, but she couldn't even shuffle a regular deck, let alone double-deck gin.
"Ah, yes. We didn't shrinkwrap the workstation… We did wrap it in crime scene tape, and tape the outline of a body on the floor. The gentleman so blessed had been out of town for two weeks. This was when I was working at the Los Angeles Coroner's Office…"
"He freak out?" Tony perked up. Apparently his cards weren't so hot.
"Quite. Mind you, this was a bit of revenge—he had duct taped an air horn beneath a chair so that when one sat on the chair—"
"One set off the horn," I finished. From his look, I was pretty sure who 'one' was.
"It seems he used his vacation to fabricate an elaborate alibi… and dispose of a romantic rival. The body had come into our morgue as a John Doe. Oh, my. He came in, took one look at his desk and fell apart. Confessed the whole of it before we had a chance to ask a question."
"Wow, that's better than the body on the lawn!"
"What body on what lawn, Charlie?" I asked sweetly.
There was a moment of silence. A long moment, broken only by the gentle slap of cards. "Um… mine."
I looked at Suzy in surprise. "Your lawn? Your body?"
"No, not my body—you see—well—" she actually looked embarrassed. "I had a problem with people ignoring my sign." I know the sign she means. It's smack dab on her front door: NO SOLICITING ~ NO TRESPASSING ~ NO PROSELYTIZING ~ NO HANDBILLS ~ NO CANVASSING ~ NO KIDDING! You'd have to be blind to miss it. "Specifically, the very determined evangelical groups."
"What, they don't know what 'proselytizing' means?" I shook my head.
"Apparently not. So my grandson used some yellow tape to make a body outline, scattered some Chick tracts nearby—they leave them at the university laundry room all the time—and, well… I don't know if it's coincidence or what… but they haven't bothered me in almost two years since…"
"I had a customer who said her brother was sharing a house with half dozen or so friends and answered the door to a Jehovah's Witness once. They have stock arguments—if you say you're Jewish, they'll say this, if you say you're Protestant, they'll say that, whatever you are, they have an argument. So her brother gets asked, 'What religion does your family follow?' and rattles off, 'Well, my parents are Lutheran, one sister is agnostic, one is Seventh Day Adventist, we have an aunt who became a Shaker, of my roommates we have one lapsed Catholic, one Pagan, a Druid Priest, a really, really reform Jew, two atheists, two Buddhists—one Zen, one Nichiren Shoshu—one gal is Baha'i—and I'm into the Greek gods. Why do you ask?' The poor guy just stood there for a moment, said, 'Have a nice day,' and left." Ev grinned and popped a handful of cashews in her mouth.
"Not exactly a prank—but still funny," Abby said.
"Beats Saul," Lily said.
"True," Ev agreed. "Also not a prank, though."
"Saul?" Ducky asked, drawing a card and immediately discarding it. Eight of diamonds; I snatched it and tossed back a deuce of clubs.
"Back in college. Friend of ours who was really, really broke. We're talking so broke he couldn't pay attention. Lived on beans and rice and potatoes with the occasional, rare chicken. He made friends with an egg farmer who would once in a while have an old hen who was retired and too old and tough to be good to sell, so he'd let Saul have her for a buck or so. Saul couldn't care less, he could marinate and stew and end up with something edible. It was clean, it was fresh, it was safe, it was food. And it was cheap. But it was a whole chicken, freshly killed, so he'd have to pluck it and sharpen up a knife and whack it into pieces. One day he hears a knock at the door, opens it up, and there's some 'let me introduce you to Jesus' pair at the door. There he is, holding onto a bloody butcher knife, wearing his favorite robe—"
"The black one with the red and orange flames around the hem," Ev interjected.
"Forgot to mention Saul's about six-six, maybe a hundred and fifty, long black hair, long, thin face—looks kind of like a cross between Gandalf and Professor Snape."
"How fast did they tear out of there?" DiNozzo grinned.
"Fast." Ev gave an identical grin in return. "Personally, I like Joey's way of handling rabbits."
Ziva looked baffled. "Rabbits?"
"Sorry. It's a nickname for Bible thumpers. Thumper was the rabbit in Bambi…"
"Ah. I understand."
"Joey?" I asked. I swapped out a three of hearts for a four of diamonds. I was nowhere near winning this hand.
"You know him from Empire of Blood Roses. Baron Brunvald?"
"Oh, yeah." Nice guy, close to my age, big, tough fighter jock in the medieval recreation group. "How does he get rid of them?"
Ev laughed. "Before they get a chance to start on their spiel, he starts with his. 'Let me tell you about my gods!' They walk away with more information on Norse and Viking mythology than they ever got in school, I'm sure. He even has his own Chick tract type stuff to hand out. Much better written, of course."
"He's the one who used chemical warfare in the fountain as a protest, too." Charlie was gathering her homework together. "I don't recall what he was protesting…"
"What sort of chemical warfare?" Abby asked.
Charlie grinned. "Bubble bath. He was a chemistry major, created a spectacular foaming surfactant. Very thick foam, long lasting… The fountain provided perfect agitation. It stayed aerated for a good hour outside the water, and with the fountain constantly replenishing the supply… Do you remember the laundry room scene in Freaky Friday? The original?" she added. Some of us nodded. "A hundred times worse. Thick bubbles all over the quad… The more they tried to clean it, the worse it became."
"Just like marbles," Mother said.
Non sequitur of the moment. "What marbles, Grandma?" Charlie asked.
Mother looked up from her cards. "My Aunt Melanie was a dreadful snoop. She would come to tea or for the weekend and poke her nose into everything. Gloria and Eugenia decided to teach her a lesson. They borrowed our brother's marbles, carefully put them behind the mirror in the upstairs powder room… when Aunt Melanie opened the mirror, marbles went everywhere…"
"I remember hearing about that," Ducky laughed. "The marbles hit the sink so fast and furious, they broke off the corner, my grandfather had to replace the sink, the housekeeper came running, slipped on the marbles and broke her arm."
"Gloria and Eugenia were quite in disgrace," Mother said darkly. "They had to eat their meals in the playroom for a month." She smiled. "James and I would sneak them cake and ice cream and biscuits every night. We despised Aunt Melanie. That was before I hated Gloria, of course. Gin." She set down her cards and fumbled for her cane. "And good night."
After the dispensing of hugs and kisses, Charlie headed upstairs to the spare bed in Lexi's room, Mother to her room across the hall and we started sorting cards back into two decks. "Hey," Ev said abruptly. "Tell 'em about the fearless vampire killers."
I looked at her blankly. "The movie?"
I got an answering stare. "There was a movie?"
"Yeah. Roman Polanski. The Fearless Vampire Killers, or, Pardon Me, But Your Fangs Are in My Neck. I think that's the title."
"Actually, it's 'teeth,'" DiNozzo corrected.
"Thanks. Saw it as a double feature, with Son of Dracula."
"Lon Chaney, Junior?"
"Harry Nilsson and Ringo Starr, actually." I keep hoping they'll put it out on DVD.
"High school? Halloween?" Ev prompted over Abby's, "You mean Ringo Starr, the Beatles Ringo Starr?"
"Oh…" I laughed weakly. "That one."
"Ringo Starr?" Abby repeated.
"It's a funny movie, I have a bootleg copy, I'll loan it to you," DiNozzo rattled off. He settled into his chair, propped his feet up and looked at me expectantly. "Well? High school? Halloween? This sounds good."
What the hell. I finished sorting my handful of cards and put the decks back into their cases. "Okay. This is back when I was, hello, in high school. I hung out a lot with the theatre geeks, some of them were in the little theatre groups around the area. So there was this one group they were in Chevy Chase, a lot of my friends were working with them, doing Dracula for Halloween. So, some of us drove over—this was the week before Halloween—and caught the Friday night show. It was great. Seriously, great. So we were walking back to the car, we were going past this old shopping center—it had the front display window on each side, then a sort of corridor where you walk to the front door, about twenty feet back. I was wearing these sandals with heels, the heels made a clicking on the pavement and it echoed like crazy. It was really foggy, too. Very atmospheric, very spooky."
I broke off. "It's really lame—"
"No, come on, tell us the rest," Abby begged.
"Well, it struck us all at the same time, we started goofing around, Carlos pretending to be a vampire—he had brought a cape he made—stalking me as the victim, just stupid kids goofing around."
"Oh, no, you don't," Ev laughed. She had heard the whole story years ago. "Come one. Spill it."
I accepted the screwdriver Gibbs held out. "Okay. So we played around with it, I was the victim, Stan was my boyfriend." I made quote marks in the air. "We would have a fight, he'd go storming off, Carlos would accost me, Stan would save me, the end. We wanted to freak the mundanes." Only the convention-goers of the crowd got the reference. "We worked out a signal. If I saw people getting too close, I'd do this—" I put my arms up in a cross. "And Carlos would bail. We practiced a few times, just screwing around, then headed home."
"What did people say?" Ziva asked.
"We actually didn't see anyone. Well, we saw them, but they just looked at us like, 'Screwy kids,' and went back to what they were doing."
"What possessed you…" Ducky started to say, chuckling.
"It seemed a good idea at the time," I quoted back sweetly. "Come on, you do stupid things when you're a teenager."
Abby snorted. "Amen to that."
"So we got back home, I was driving—I was the only one with a car—and we were going to let Stan out first. He said wouldn't it be fun to try this in a more populated area? So we pulled into a neighborhood about a mile from his parents' place. We saw some good parties going on, figured that was a good area. Dropped off Carlos, then Stan took the wheel. We drove back, he screeched to a halt, pulled off to the side and I got out, slamming the door.
"'You are such an inconsiderate jerk!' I yelled. 'That's it! We are through! I don't even want to be in the car with you! I'm walking home!' And I went stomping off.
"Stan yelled a couple of things after me, and drove off. I went clomping down the street, muttering stuff… and then Carlos started stalking me, following me. I knew he was back there, but we passed a car and I swear I couldn't see him in the side mirror."
"Ooooooh." Abby shivered and huddled into her chair. "Spooky."
"Method actor. So he starts doing his speech. 'You cannot resist me… you are under my power…' schlock stuff. I stop, turn around…" I let myself get a vague, hypnotized look. "'Yes… of course, master…'" I said in a faint, wussy 30s heroine voice. I ignored the snickers. "So Carlos is doing his gesturing, I'm walking slowly toward him… and behind him I can see people spilling out of this one house, heading for us. I'm thinking, 'Oh, crap, we are so outnumbered. They're gonna kill him.' So I go to move my arms up—" I gestured. "And got a muscle cramp. Couldn't move."
Abby clamped her hand over her mouth and Ziva winced. "Did they hurt him?" Ziva asked.
"No. I finally managed—" I crossed my wrists. "—and Carlos figured, 'Good enough.' He turned around, and by then there were about fifteen people behind him. I scream-m-m-m-m-m-ed—" I did I quiet scream with the word. "And when they were focused on me, he threw the hood over his head, ducked down and scuttled away. Oh, I was all over the place. Screaming, sobbing, hysterical—they wanted to call the cops, and I'm thinking, 'Oh, good, when my parents bail me out—IF my parents bail me out…' and Stan drove up right then. Thank god. We had a tearful reunion, he convinced them not to go hunting this crazy guy, and he'd call the cops from home. They're all saying, 'Wow, if it weren't Halloween this week…' We could not get out of there fast enough."
DiNozzo was looking at me like I was nuts. (We had been.) "You bailed on your vampire?"
"No, no. We drove around the blocks slowly; I'm leaning out the window calling, 'Car-r-r-r-r-r-r-l-o-o-o-o-o-s-s-s-s-s' in a whisper. Finally we hear a hiss, 'Open the back door!' and he comes falling into the car in a huddle on the floor, whispers, 'Get me the fuck outta here!' and we take off."
"So they chased him?" Suzy had her elbows on the table, chin on her fists.
"No, no, thank heavens. No, he said he took off down the way and slipped into someone's back yard… and saw evidence they had a dog. A big dog. He sent out, 'Nice doggie, doggie sleeping' vibes and scaled the wall—no mean feat in that cape—into the next neighbor's driveway. Just as he was heading to the street, a car comes by. He drops to the ground, cape over his head, pretending to be a pile of leaves. It's a cop car. They flash a searchlight right over his head and miss him. He said he was ready to spend the whole night as a pile of leaves when we drove past a few minutes later. We found out later the cops were looking for a dog that had gotten out and was knocking over trash cans."
"That's not the end of it," Ev said, while the others laughed and applauded.
I rolled my eyes. "As I said, Stan lived sort of nearby. So a few days later, he asked around. 'I heard some girl got attacked the other day?' 'Oh, yeah, man… I was at this party, this chick was walking by, and this THING, it, like, ATTACKED HER, it, like, TORE OUT HER THROAT…' By the end of the week, it wasn't near midnight, it was just past sunset, I was lying dead in a pool of blood with my throat torn open… and Carlos turned into a bat and flapped off into the evening sky." I flapped my hands and took a bow. "The story that there was a vampire loose in the area persisted for several years."
"Thus are urban legends born," McGee said solemnly—but with a twinkle in his eye.
"We decided to stop while we were ahead." I started collecting debris from our snacking. I started wracking my brain for more stories in case this went on until midnight.
"Let me help." Ziva gathered a handful of glasses, and helped me take the whole mess to the kitchen. As we walked back to the living room, she looked at me and cocked her head. "Where did you get that t-shirt?" she asked.
"This old thing?" It was an oldie but a goodie: Beat Me, Whip Me, Hurt Me, Make Me Write Bad Fanzines! "It's a play on the old one, 'Beat me, whip me, hurt me, make me write bad checks.' Fanzines are amateur press publications—now they're on the internet. Back in the good ol' days, we'd publish them by hand, sometimes a hand crank mimeo machine—you know about those?" I looked around the group; Gibbs smirked, and received a couple of funny looks from his team. "In addition to the more mainstream stories, some writers would specialize in h/c stories—hurt/comfort, where a character gets smacked around. Or slash—"
"I've heard about that," DiNozzo said hastily.
"We all have," Gibbs said.
We had discussed s-f conventions a few times. But I didn't remember discussing that. "Well, in addition to b-and-d, bondage and discipline, someone came up with the alternative for b-and-d in a story." I started handing out quilts and blankets for the living room crashers.
Ducky looked interested. "Alternative?"
"Bondage and disappointment. You tie them up and leave them alone."
The others laughed—but I thought we'd have to call 911 for Suzy. She finally stopped gasping and choking on her Sunrise and I caught the look in her eyes. My own eyes narrowed. "You've been holding out. I can tell."
Suzy smiled into her drink. She was still fighting the giggles. "Well… Charlie may be precocious—skip that, she is. But there are some things I just didn't want to discuss in front of those still too young to vote."
"Oh, this sounds good," DiNozzo said, scooching his chair forward.
"Okay. Back in the good ol' days—college, nursing school—I was quite a bit taller. I was the center on the girls' basketball team, even! So, we were living in a dorm… I had a dorm neighbor a few doors down who was of French Canadian extraction. Annoying little… puppy. I was junior; she was a freshman. She was an inch or so taller than I, so we're looking at about 5'11, almost six feet."
Gibbs was impressed. "Wow."
"You lose a lot, standing on your feet as a nurse for fifty-plus years," she shot back.
"Or an M.E.," Ducky grumbled. He, too, used to be close on 5'10" or 5'11". No more.
"Well," she continued, "One afternoon, my roommate was out and I was studying. Let's call her… Dominique. Yes. Dominique the puppy trotted in and wanted to play her favorite game, one she played with her boyfriend at home, and I was the only one big enough to be her new playmate. Mind you, this was right after the Korean Conflict—I had been a candy striper and nurse's aide in high school, so I did a two-year hitch and got a lot of hands-on training for nursing school."
"That would do it," Gibbs said quietly, staring down at his bottle.
"Also I'm of Germanic extraction, blonde—well, back then—to her brunette. Crucial. She handed me a very realistic plastic Colt 45 and a length of rope." I blinked. This was Suzy—Grandma Suzy—telling this? Yoiks! "The game was that she was the brave French Resistance and I was an evil Nazi interrogator. She wanted me to tie her up, beat her lightly, and role play interrogation."
"Oh my god!" Ev gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth in shock. "You're—no, you're not joking."
Suzy shook her head, grinning. "I was getting irritated—I truly had to study and she simply would not leave me alone. Like a bored puppy. So… I… played. I tied her—quite well—to the unpadded oak desk chair; put her hands behind the ladder back, tied them—" She held out her hands, wrists crossed. "Then ran the rope down, through the braces, around a chair leg and tied to her ankle. This is important—she couldn't stand up or move. And, boy, oh, boy! She was thrilled, she knew I was the right one! Her boyfriend was never clever enough to think of this rope method! I smiled, patted her on the cheek… and took off to the library with my books to finish studying. Two and a half hours later, my roommate walked in to find her tied up, facing the door, and crying because she really had to pee-e-e-e-e-e! And so disappointed I hadn't played her game!" We were all howling with laughter (it's amazing Charlie and Lexi hadn't pounded back downstairs). "So… I have played B & D!" She saluted us with her drink, curtseying graciously to our enthusiastic applause.
"Oh, what your roommate must have been thinking," Ziva said, shaking her head.
"Poor Lara. She just stood there, baffled at the sight. What in the hell was this person—who lived three doors down, mind you—doing tied up, weeping, babbling incoherently... in her—well, our—room? She was kind enough to untie the wretch and get out of the way while she bolted for the lav." We were rolling with laughter again; I swear I saw Gibbs wiping his eyes.
"Well… she wanted torture..." There was a spark of way too much interest in Abby's eyes.
"She also tried out for the girls college soccer team—and used a professional soccer block on the coach. Remember, she was close on six feet, around two hundred pounds of damn-solid muscle. He was around 6"1" of lean Spanish grandee-ness—Señor Miguel Gil, he also taught Spanish—and he might have weighed one-sixty dripping wet. Bash! He went down and she left—I swear to everything holy—footprints across his stomach and chest while stealing the ball. She was heartbroken they didn't choose her for the team. Poor Señor Gil stayed in bed something like three days. After college, she joined the local police force, one of the first women on the actual force, not just a secretary. Had repeated complaints of brutality."
Gibbs' team was, by now, a mass of hysterics, supporting each other and in tears with laughter. Ducky and I were holding each other up and Ev and Lily had slid to the floor, unable to sit up straight. Even Gibbs was flat-out grinning. "I can imagine," he said.
"Oh, not because she was brutal, per se," Suzy said. "But this was New York in the fifties. She would tackle fleeing five-foot tall Puerto Rican gangstas. On pavement. And land on top of them. Hard." She cocked her head. "Heard she joined the Marines after that."
"The Marines?" Gibbs asked skeptically.
"Would you try to keep her out?" Suzy shot back.
He didn't miss a beat. "Nope. A dozen like her, point 'em at the Taliban and say, 'Sic 'em!'—done deal." He grabbed one of the pillows stacked by the fireplace. "We're gonna have some interesting dreams tonight, I think…"
As Ducky and I got ready for bed, I noticed the look he was giving me. "Vampire victim?" he finally said.
"Piglets?" I retorted.
"It's a good thing Alexandra was in bed," he said.
"And too young to follow most of what was going on."
"And Charlotte is not given to sharing things she shouldn't."
"True." I suddenly stopped short. "I just realized…"
"What?"
"Abby, Tim, Suzy—even Mother and Gibbs. Everyone told tales—everyone except Ziva."
Ducky shrugged. "Her stories are probably classified," he said flippantly. "She'd have to kill us if she told us."
"Either that…" I frowned as I climbed into bed. I turned and gave Ducky a look. "Or she was taking notes."
Gibbs was right. Very interesting dreams that night.
More A/N: It's been well established that the Ducky & Cassandra Mallard universe is a bit AU. I might occasionally reference an episode, but I'm not following the series with every 'i' dotted and every 't' crossed. Mrs. Mallard ain't gonna die in my universe for a long, long time.
Partly because I haven't had access to current episodes for almost 3 years and partly because some characters appear very, very little in my universe (i.e. Leon Vance), certain storylines and character events won't appear. The trip to Mexico and the Reynosa cartel? Nope. Jackie Vance's death? Hasn't happened. (I'm marginally up to date; I've just only seen 2 recent episodes: #200, and Ducky's really bad date.)
Now the question: in real life, who is associated with what tale? Me? A friend in real life in the past? A current friend in real life? A friend from online? A relative? Someone else? Or just a totally made up story/stolen from another source?
If you feel so inclined, put your guesses in the review section. I'd love to see what people pin on me.