Split Black /#Wattys 2021

Chapter Seventeen

"Why am I dropping you off again?" After some instruction from a friendly Radio Shack clerk and a few carefully jotted notes, John had loaded his gear into his trunk along with clothes for two days. He'd made sure to pay cash for everything he needed.

Lizzie slid into the passenger seat balancing two large flat bakery boxes full of cupcakes and pulled the door shut. "Because I've got all this," she said. Gary's was close enough to their own row house that she could have walked it. "When are you going to be back again?"

John barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes. "Jesus, Lizzie. It's only the third time I've told you."

He watched her turn mournful eyes down at the bakery cupcakes in her lap. Somehow, she'd never gotten around to making them from scratch, even though she hadn't been working at all. Lizzie looked away out of the side window.

"The day after tomorrow, probably in the evening." John ratcheted his tone way down; it wasn't a good time for an argument. "If anybody calls, I'm visiting Ma. Unless Ma calls, of course. If that happens—"

"You're at work," finished Lizzie with a glare.

It was John's turn to glance out the window, to cover the scowl he just couldn't hold back. If she could remember everything else, why couldn't she remember when he'd be back, and why get all bent out of shape when he got annoyed about it?

They pulled up in front of Gary's—or rather, Gary's parents' house. Gary the aspiring filmmaker was a full-time student at VCU for the moment. Lizzie opened the door, swung her legs out, and then twisted halfway around and said, "Come in with me."

Not interested, thought John, but he softened it to, "Do I have to?" He'd dropped Lizzie off at RavenCon, too, and wandered around there for an hour or so. The arts and crafts and autographed star memorabilia were okay, but the costumed geeks charging each other with light swords outside the Crowne Plaza were a little much. They'd kept Liz busy talking and signing autographs from the instant she'd stepped out of the car in her green catsuit and red wig. Half of them outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds. And what did geeks have to talk about in all those panel discussions, anyway?

Lizzie swung around to face him with her jaw set and her delicate brows making a stern V over her nose. "Yes, you have to."

John checked his watch and gave up. Cars lined the street as far as he could see. "Christ. Is there any place here to park?"

                                                                                                    ***

An older lady in an apron opened the front door, looking very much like Ann B. Davis from The Brady Bunch. Competing aromas of roasted chicken and tangy spaghetti sauce drifted out to them over a hubbub of talk.

"Lizzie! You're here!" "Ann B. Davis" wiped a damp lock of hair off her sweaty forehead and reached out for the cupcakes. "I'll find Gary and let him know. Thanks for bringing these. They'll be gone in two minutes flat!"

A long, narrow foyer spat them out into a living room crowded with bodies. Computers sucked juice from every outlet and kids hunched cross-legged over laptops in the center of the room. Computer geeks took over every chair; coffee mugs and half-eaten plates of spaghetti or chicken crammed every horizontal surface. A large screen TV flickered on one wall. Two athletic beauties in jewel colors, capes, and cleavage crouched and circled one another. John had to look. There was nothing like a good girl fight.

A glance across the room told John why Lizzie had insisted he come in: Mike Little. Across the room from him, Patty and a dark-haired woman sat on the couch bent over a laptop; Mike stood behind the couch peering over their shoulders. John had chickened out by leaving a note on his desk about this luau instead of calling him.

Mike looked up and saw him. He looked back down at the laptop without so much as a twitch. John turned around to find Lizzie disappearing up the stairs to the right.

If he just turned and left, that would look bad. Walking over there felt like approaching a growling pit bull, but John made himself do it anyway.

"John, how ya doing?" said Patty. She turned to her friend and said, "This is John Robin, he's Lizzie's boyfriend. He's another police detective."

The friend stared up at him with big brown eyes. "Are you both working on this case, about Julie?"

"Nah, I'm just along for the ride," said John. He leaned over Patty's shoulder, watching a long column of message board postings scroll up a light blue screen. "Getting anything?" he murmured to Mike.

Mike waggled a hand in the air and avoided eye contact. "Ehhh. Sort of."

A close-up of a lovely face on the large screen TV distracted them. John looked twice; it was Lizzie. Her long red wig and green contact lenses made her almost unrecognizable. The other girl, a tall brunette in a jeweled beehive hairdo, delivered a snappy kick to Lizzie's jaw with one electric blue high heel. As the sequence ran forward, she grabbed Lizzie by the nape of her neck and shoved her face into a fountain.

Lizzie came up spluttering, and a bear of a young man leaped up off the floor, pointing. "Freeze! Freeze frame right there! Back it up. See? It is a booger! I told you! We've got to edit that out of there!"

John remembered asking Lizzie, "Hey, didn't that model who posed for all the trading cards tell you this might be a bad idea?" But he found himself wanting to say, "Hey, let me see the rest of the fight!"

Over the peals of laughter from the geeks on the floor, and a few groans of "Ewww! Gross!" Patty shouted, "John, have you met Gary yet? Hey, Gary!"

The bear turned around to reveal an apple-cheeked face, glasses, a moustache, tousled brown hair, and a jovial smile. "Hey, what? I'm busy here!"

"Have you met Lizzie's boyfriend?"

Gary lifted one massive sneaker out of a tangle of electrical cords to inch closer to the couch. He threw John a big round wave and called out, "Hey, John! We've talked on the phone, but I've never met you. How're you doing?"

"Great, how're you?"

"Lizzie ready yet? We've got a pick-up to shoot."

"All right, I'm screen capping this for a blackmail photo," someone said. Laughter again rippled through the geeks crowding the monitor.

John raised his voice. "I don't know." He lifted a hand to point. "She's upstairs."

"She's getting dressed, then." Gary waved again. "If you'll excuse me, I've got to help edit a booger out of her nose."

"Here it is," Patty's dark-haired friend piped up. Mike leaned close, and John followed her finger as she pointed.

"This is the Estrogen Brigade." The page unfurled down the screen, featuring a well-known actor who had become a household name last summer in the movie version of a graphic novel. Futuristic and medieval simultaneously, the film had had children playing at swordfighting and martial arts across the nation. The handsome hero was appropriately dark and brooding. Patty's friend pointed to a link. "This is the subsite that spun off this one. 'Imperial Palace Teahouse.' What you're looking for is in here somewhere."

Author's note: The photo is from a sci-fi con. Gold star to anyone who knows who it's of!