A Single Blade Of Grass - Section Two
Jun. 19th, 2011 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glasslogic
~~~~~
Bobby had still been in a state of shock when
It was nice to have everyone home.
Jessica was passing through the kitchen the next evening just in time to hear Bobby chuckle to Sam about the time he’d been forced to drink some witch’s brew and hallucinated he was a dragon for three days. He was starting to say something about virgins, but cut himself off abruptly when he caught sight of her.
“You have visions too?” she asked, digging around in the fridge for yogurt. She found some and leaned against the cabinet while she opened it up. “First Sam, then Dean, and now you. I’m starting to feel excluded from the club.”
“You can have my membership!” Dean called through the screen door.
“What are you doing out there? It’s about to snow!”
Sam pushed a chair out for her. “The calk around that window is rotting out. He’s redoing it before the storm hits.”
“Hmmm. Wish I had known, we could have done that this past week.”
“You all did quite enough,” Bobby grumbled.
“You’re welcome.” Jess said tartly, grabbing an apple out of a bowl on the counter and heading back to the study where she was working.
Bobby just shook his head and unfolded his newspaper, but it wasn’t until Dean took a look at the paper later that anyone noticed the article. It was a tiny blurb, only even mentioned because the museum also had a display on loan from a local institution, but it caught Dean’s attention immediately.
“Mason Todd. Why do I know that name?” he wondered aloud, drumming the fingers of one hand on the table in thought.
“I have no idea,” Jess answered absently from where she was stirring something that smelled questionable on the stove. “Someone you dated?”
“Hey, Sam!” Dean yelled down the hall, ignoring her. “Who’s Mason Todd?”
Sam didn’t answer but Bobby did, walking into the room with a frown. “Todd was an occult collector back in the seventies. Donated most of his crap to a museum before he kicked it in ...seventy-six? Eight maybe? Don’t know much more about him, haven’t heard his name come up in years. Why?”
Dean folded the paper back so the article featured prominently on top and slid it across the table. “Someone robbed the museum. I don’t suppose his collection was for tourists?” Dean asked without much hope.
Bobby grabbed the paper and skimmed through the text. “Awww, crap.”
~~~~~
“This is in South Carolina,” Sam insisted in a low whisper later that night. Bobby had spent most of the afternoon on the phone before finally storming off to bed in disgust, leaving the three of them to discuss the matter alone. “How is this our problem?!”
“What do you mean, ‘how is this our problem’?” Dean hissed back. “I’ve never heard you refuse to do a hunt because it was a few states away before!”
“This isn’t a hunt, Dean! It’s a few pieces of jewelry that someone stole from a museum. Probably because ‘museum’ is apparently a generous term for this place and they pretty much only had to throw a brick through a window and smash the case. It was easy, and the stuff is long gone into a pawn shop somewhere.”
“That makes it even worse, Sam! The stuff is cursed. Who knows what could happen with it out in the world? We need to go and find it.”
“Do we even know what kind of curse this is?” Jess demanded. “I’m all about holding Dean’s cape and cheering him on while he assaults the forces of evil, but one of the reasons we’re still here is because certain people,” she eyed Dean pointedly, “ran themselves into the ground and needed some down time. If it’s a curse that makes people bark like dogs, then sure, let’s pack a cooler, pull out the maps and hit the road. But if it’s a curse that turns people into ...I don’t know, werewolves, then maybe we should take a pass and let someone in a little better shape tackle the eight foot tall, slavering monsters.”
“Werewolves aren’t eight feet tall,” Dean snapped. “They grow a little fur, a couple of claws, and eat people’s hearts. And it’s not even like that’s every night!”
“Way to miss the point, Dean.”
“I got your stupid point! But we’ve been here for more than two months now. I like Bobby just as much as the next guy, but c’mon! I’m fine! I sleep, I eat, I roll around in the dirt with hot chicks. The bruises are gone and I haven’t had so much as a sniffle. Let’s get out of here before the snow is waist deep again.”
They both looked at Sam for an opinion.
Sam had his arms crossed tightly. “Do we know what the curse does?”
Dean shrugged. “Nope. Todd insisted they were cursed, but apparently was a little lacking on the specifics. One of the reasons no one was terribly upset about the jewelry ending up in a case for any random person to stare at. Bobby said people pretty much assumed that if it was something awful they would have heard about it, and there was too much real shit going down to be worried about a few baubles in a display case that no one knew anything about. Todd died a few weeks after the donation before anyone could question him, and people just kind of ...let it go.”
“So, this really may not be anything,” Sam concluded.
“It’s still cursed jewelry someone could accidently end up with,” Jess said reluctantly.
Sensing weakness, Dean was quick to speak up again. “Bobby said one of Todd’s pieces was a magical cabinet he swore up and down belonged to Houdini. You know, one of those things people climb into and then disappear, but really it has a hidden compartment and when you open it again they climb out? No one cared much about that either until some douchebag bought it for his amateur magic show and started using it. Realized real fast that when people inside vanished they never showed back up.”
“So some hunter took it from him and destroyed it?” Jess asked.
“Sure,” Dean shrugged. “But not until the bright light found someone who had a need to make a lot of bodies disappear to pay him top dollar for access.”
“I’m not even sure I want to know...” Jessica sighed.
“Let’s just say cement shoes don’t go with every outfit.”
“Sam can’t even walk!” Jessica insisted.
“So what? He can hobble.” Dean shrugged. “And he can definitely ride in the car. Think of it this way, he needs to sit in back so he can prop his foot up, which means you get the front the entire time.”
“Hmmmm.”
“That can’t seriously be part of your consideration!” Sam said incredulously to her.
Jessica gave him a look of total innocence. “Of course not. I was only worried about your comfort. I know how you always whine about not having enough room for your legs, and with your ankle messed up ...but I think Dean’s right. We’ve been cooped up long enough and doing a little snooping around shouldn’t be a problem. It’s not like we’ll be chasing ten foot tall monsters,” she turned a menacing glare on Dean, “right?”
“Exactly,” Dean assured her. They both beamed smiles at Sam, who sighed and slumped further down into the couch cushions, recognizing defeat when he saw it.
Chapter Three
“So what exactly are you guys going to do?” Bobby asked over breakfast.
“Roadtrip,” Jessica answered, sliding a sheaf of paper carefully into a manila envelope for mailing. “I’m riding shotgun, we’re not staying any place that rents by the hour, and we’re going to drug Sam into a coma before we get out of the driveway so we can turn the music up to ten and rock out.”
“Hey!” Sam objected.
“Sorry, I meant to say we’re going to make sure you have enough medication in your system that your ankle doesn’t bother you too much on the ride,” Jess amended helpfully. “We only have your best interests at heart,” she assured him. Sam looked far from convinced.
“You’re just going to head on out to Swainsboro, then... stand on street corners demanding to know if anyone saw who took a brick to the museum window and stole a handful of cursed jewelry?” Bobby raised an eyebrow.
“Nope,” Dean announced firmly, pocketing his cell phone as he entered the room. He stole a piece of toast off Sam’s plate and grabbed a chair. “We don’t have to bother with any of that crap, because I know a guy who knows a guy who knows who took the stuff.”
Three sets of eyes blinked at him.
Sam finally bit. “How do you know a guy who knows a guy who knows anything about some two room tourist trap in Podunk South Carolina?”
“You know there actually is a Podunk in Connecticut?”
“Dean.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “It’s not a big deal, Sam. I just finally remembered why I knew the name Mason Todd. Dad took me on a hunt out there when I was about fifteen. I think you were staying with Jim finishing up... sixth grade?”
“Why weren’t you in school?” Jess asked, always interested in picking up stories about Sam’s childhood. Dean’s too, but that was a more recent obsession.
“It was no secret I had no plans to go to college," Dean shrugged, "and I’d already been a big enough pain in the ass that no one in their right mind was going to try to hold me back at that school over attendance bullshit. I was passing all my classes. Sam was staying with a friend... no real reason not to go.”
“I have no trouble believing you were a pain in someone’s ass,” Jess said dryly. “But what did you do to the administration that they were so ready to get rid of you?”
“Fighting,” Dean said shortly.
Jessica’s eyes narrowed, sensing more to the story. “That’s it?”
“He was defending me, I had some problems with the other kids” Sam said quietly, meeting Dean’s eyes over the table. “They didn’t want to expel him because Dad, well, was Dad. It only took a visit or two to put the fear of John Winchester into them and he also told them it was the last year they would have to worry about a Winchester in their school system. All they had to do was pass Dean and keep their mouths shut and no one would ever mention it again.”
“Kids can be mean.” Jess nodded. “What was he defending you from?”
“He told one of his little friends her dad’s plane was going to crash,” Dean said dryly. “In front of some other kids. And when it did crash... let’s just say that kids aren’t really ready to be any more understanding about that sort of thing than adults are. Dad was gone on a hunt; Sam came home with two black eyes and a sprained wrist. He’d scared the crap out of his homeroom teacher who had also overheard his little indiscretion, so she wasn’t doing squat. Someone had to.” He shrugged. “I let the worst offenders know it had better not happen again, then made Sam stay home just in case until Dad came back.”
“It’s not like I meant to say anything,” Sam muttered irritably. “I was just talking to her and it was there. I kind of blurted it out.”
“That’s horrible,” Jess said, resting her hand on his arm.
“Dad took care of it,” Dean continued. “He pulled Sam out and sent him to Pastor Jim’s, and he set the yokels in charge straight with me. I pretty much only showed up for tests after that. We were on the other side of the country by the time the next school year started.”
“Did that happen a lot?” Jess asked Sam, having had more than enough exposure to his visions to know that he had no control over the where and when they would strike.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t remember it ever happening in school other than that. And that was a weird thing. What I see...” he paused, giving Bobby an awkward sidelong look, but Bobby continued cutting his eggs with deliberate attention, so Sam went on, “is usually related to me more directly, even when it’s not obvious at first, my visions always end up having something to do with me. This didn’t. I had a few in that general time period that never really seemed to connect up. Just,” Sam shrugged, “one of those things.”
“Growing pains,” Dean said seriously. Sam kicked him under the table with a glare.
“As exciting as this little insight into ‘what-the-hell-was-your-father-thinking’ has been, how does this lead to a mysterious contact in Swainsboro?” Bobby asked.
“My Dad did the best he could,” Dean grumbled.
Bobby snorted. “Your Daddy put his psychic son into public school with no idea of when his visions would strike or what other things might be going on with him. John was a fine man and one of the best damn hunters who ever claimed the title, but there was a reason I ran him off with a shotgun more than once.”
“I think we’re straying again,” Jess cut in before Dean could snap back. “Dean, contact?”
“Right,” Dean refocused. “So on this trip we met up with another hunter dad knew in the area, Eli Carter, and he liked to tell stories. He had lost a leg in a car accident so he didn’t actually go out after things anymore, and I kept getting left at his place because Dad needed to do some scouting before he brought me out because hollowwatchers go kind of into a frenzy over kids and he wasn’t ready to trap it yet-”
Dean missed Jess’s wide-eyed stare at his totally casual mention of being used as bait for a monster, but Sam didn’t and he gave her a rueful eye roll.
“-so I pretty much got chapter and verse on all the local stories and stuff. Which is how I recognized that name. I called Carter and he was more than happy to summarize everything for me again. Todd had a real reputation as a weirdo, even for people in our line of work, but he sounded mostly harmless. And just like Bobby said, he donated a bunch of crap to the museum before he died that irritated people, but not enough to do anything about it. Eli says he knows the guy who’s in charge of the collection there and he thinks the guy knows who did it, but Eli is involved in trying to help round up some witches at the moment and doesn’t really put much of a priority on Mason Todd’s missing jewelry.”
Bobby raised an eyebrow. “If the locals aren’t interested, you guys still set on driving all the way out there?”
“I’m not going to be any help,” Sam interjected. “So if you guys are just going to go question some people maybe I should stay here and keep working on my stuff. I could do some research, be useful that way.”
Dean gave him a level look, then turned casually to Jess. “Ever been to Atlantic City?”
“Nope.” She grinned and sealed the envelope. “You want to take me?”
“Some of the world’s finest pool hustling is right outside the city limits. You wear something skin tight, low cut, and lean at just the right angle over the tables and we might not have to worry about money for the rest of the year.”
“Sounds interesting. Like this?”
Jess, recently out of bed and still wearing her usual sleep clothes of a tank top and Sam’s boxers, leaned on the kitchen table in a pose that gave Sam an excellent view of her bare chest down the front of her shirt.
Dean put a hand on her waist where her top had slid up a bit. “Maybe arch a little more. You need to make sure you get everyone’s attention so they are more interested in what you are doing with your, ah, attributes, and less interested in what I’m doing on the table.” Bobby’s gaze was boring into the side of Sam’s head but Sam refused to meet his eyes.
Dean’s hand slid to her hip as he encouraged Jess to shift her weight, then stepped back to study her posture thoughtfully.
“Maybe I should wiggle a little too?” she suggested.
Sam gritted his teeth.
“All right, that’s more than enough of that.” Bobby announced firmly. “Get dressed, get out, and go fleece people somewhere I don’t have to eat. And don’t think you aren’t going, too,” he added when Sam showed no sign of moving. “If for no other reason than to bail them out when they get picked up by the cops.”
~~~~~
Sam avoided any possibility of being unwittingly drugged by the simple expedience of swallowing some Tylenol before they left, and asking Jess and Dean to leave well enough alone. It wasn’t that he was certain they were serious about slipping him something; it was just that he was positive they wouldn’t do anything once he directly asked them not too. It spared him the inconvenience of having to refuse to eat or drink anything they handed him during the long drive to South Carolina. Besides, his ankle didn’t hurt that bad.
Well, it actually did hurt that bad, but after a few hours of squirming and shifting in the backseat he managed to find a surprisingly comfortable position that let him keep his foot propped up on the bench and his head comfortably settled on a pillow. After that, his semi-consciousness was entirely voluntary and Sam was deeply sorry when it was time to pile out into a motel room. The place only had a double room free and it took only a glance to know there was no way they were all sharing one bed. Dean took the bed closest to the door by himself, claiming that he had done all the driving and deserved the most sprawling room, conveniently ignoring that Sam actually couldn’t drive and he had forbidden Jessica, too.
Between the incredibly thin layer of padding between the springs and his skin, the persistent drip of the sink faucet, and the party spilling out onto the balcony of the floor above, Sam didn’t think the place had anything to recommend it over the Impala, and the Impala was free. For her part, Jess gave the mattress a good ten minutes of consideration after they turned the lights out, then shamelessly stole the comforter from the bed she was sharing with Sam, leaving him with just the sheet, and moved onto the narrow strip of floor between the beds.
“If we strip the mattress, we can both sleep down there,” he offered into the darkness a few minutes later, covered in goosebumps from cold and not even a little close to sleep.
“You need to rest your foot. I’m sure the mattress is better for that. Besides, there isn’t enough room down here,” she replied sleepily. Sam gave a few minutes of thoughtful consideration to the idea that she might be actually evil and he just hadn’t noticed in the years they lived together at Stanford. Then it occurred to him that there was another friendly source of warmth in the room, and another mattress to try. He carefully shifted to the other bed, trying not to step too hard on anything warm and wiggly on the floor. Jessica grumbled but didn’t carry through on her threat to bite him and he declared the operation a success.
Mostly.
When he lay down he found the new mattress to be, if anything, even more stiff and spring-filled than the last, but at least it was warm. And even warmer when Dean rolled over and mumbled something mostly incoherent about ingratitude and harpies before sliding an arm around Sam’s waist and burying his face in his shoulder. Sam wasn’t much sleepier, but he was much happier, and eventually drifted off.
~~~~~
Their hotel room on the outskirts of Swainsboro, after another uneventful day of travel, was much more to everyone’s taste. It was still cheap, and the clerk had handed over a roll of toilet paper with the attitude that they should be grateful for that much, but it had a king size bed and looked to have been cleaned fairly recently.
Jessica flopped down on the mattress, gave Dean a thumbs up, then rolled back to her feet just in time to grab a bag from Sam’s hand where he stood in the doorway.
“I hate this,” Sam grumbled, lowering himself into an upholstered chair.
“The chair?” Dean asked, flipping intently through their dad’s journal.
Jessica rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Dean. He’s taken a sudden dislike to ...what is that color, exactly, Sam? Purple?”
Sam looked down at the armrest. “Maybe.”
“All right, guys,” Dean fished in a pocket for his keys, “you get settled in. I’m going to visit an old family friend.”
“Wait one second, why can’t we all go?” Jess demanded.
“Because I’m going to meet up with Eli, and then we’re going to go talk to his buddy who might know who’s behind this. It’s the kind of conversation that goes better with fewer people, so you stay here with gimpy and make sure he doesn’t... I don’t know, drown in the bathroom or swallow his tongue-”
“I stepped in a hole, Dean! It was covered in grass!” Sam snapped, indignant.
“Whatever. I’ll be back later. Want me to bring dinner?”
“I guess,” Jess sighed.
When the door closed behind him, Jessica looked around the motel room until her gaze landed back on Sam. “This place sucks. We can’t even walk anywhere.”
Sam shrugged. “Welcome to my childhood. And you can go if you want; I can watch TV or something.”
“I promised Dean I wouldn’t let you paper cut yourself to death,” she said firmly, sitting on the edge of the bed next to his chair. “What did you do for all that time?”
“Mostly schoolwork, or annoyed Dean,” Sam said dryly.
“Well,” she mused thoughtfully, “Dean’s off having a personal adventure, and we don’t have schoolwork anymore. Think we can find something else interesting to do with the time?” Jess kicked one long leg up across Sam’s lap and gave him an encouraging grin.
“Yeah,” Sam answered with his own smile. “I don’t think we’re going to have any problem at all.”
~~~~~
“When you said ‘dinner’, I didn’t think you meant ‘cold pizza’,” Jess grumbled, a few hours later.
Dean rolled his eyes and reached for another slice. “And when I said ‘keep an eye on Sam’, I didn’t mean, ‘and suck hickies all over his neck’. I guess we just have communication problems.”
Jessica’s eyes narrowed. “It’s one hicky, Dean. And it’s barely a red spot. Besides which, I don’t think anyone has nominated you the sex police.”
Sam, eating his own pizza, wisely stayed out of the conversation.
“I left you the other side,” she added thoughtfully after a minute. Dean grinned at her.
“Sorry the food’s cold. There’s not a pizza joint for twenty miles. We are in the middle of freaking nowhere.”
“There’s a burger place we passed on the way in,” Sam said, wiping his fingers on a napkin. “You just desperately had to have pizza tonight? And how did the meeting go?”
“I like pizza and we’ll find out tomorrow.” Dean shrugged. “Anything good on the tube?”
Chapter Four
“So this is Brett Miller’s house.” Jessica didn’t sound impressed.
Looking at the heaps of junk in the front yard, the sagging roof line, and the cars up on blocks in waist high grass, Sam had to agree with her sentiment. Heavy looking drapes in the front windows obscured any view of the street, and the neighboring houses were either obviously abandoned or had views obstructed by bushes.
“Supposedly,” Dean squinted at the front glass, looking for a security sticker. “Just think, Sam. If you guys had stayed in Stanford and gotten your nine-to-five, in a few short years this could have been your dream home!”
Jess slid an arm through one of Sam’s. “We were aiming a little higher, Dean.”
Dean motioned towards the house. “You think this guy was aiming for this?”
“Do we know anything else about what happened? How does Eli know it even was this Miller person?” Sam asked.
“Not Eli, Eli’s buddy. Miller needed money, he was on shift when it happened, and best of all -- the dumbass told his girlfriend he did it. On the phone, in the break room, at work. Which is where Eli’s trusty informant overheard the whole thing.”
Sam frowned. “Why didn’t the informant just turn Miller in?”
Dean shrugged. “He didn’t care? It’s not the kind of place that inspires a lot of loyalty. Crappy hours, crappy pay, lousy bosses. Works out for us, if the stuff is cursed the cops don’t need to have it any more than the museum does.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Jess agreed. “What’s our plan? Knock on the door and ask him politely to turn it over?”
“Knock on the door and ask not so politely. Eli had an inventory of the missing stuff, hopefully this jackass is still sitting on it and we won’t have to chase it all over the countryside.” Dean opened the trunk and pulled out the pizza box from the night before. “Let’s go.”
Jess raised an eyebrow at Sam, who shrugged. They followed Dean up the broken concrete flagstones.
Dean waved them back against the house so they couldn’t be seen through the peephole, then pressed the doorbell and held the box out in front on himself. After a moment, the door cracked open and one dark eye peered warily out from behind the security chain.
“Pizza,” Dean said brightly.
“I didn’t order one,” the man said, confused.
Dean’s face fell. “Are you sure? This was the address on the ticket, someone named Miller called it in?”
“I’m Brett Miller, but I think I’d remember if I ordered a damn pizza! I didn’t think you people even delivered out here.”
Dean shifted in mock impatience. “Well, look, man. I’ve got a busy schedule and nothing to do with this pie. Since I’m here, you want it anyways? Half price?”
Miller eyed the box. “How much is half?”
“Five bucks, just hurry up. It’s getting cold.”
Miller nodded and undid the security chain. Dean threw his weight against the door and staggered Miller back. By the time Sam and Jess were in the doorway, Dean already had Brett’s hands tied and had slapped a stretch of tape over his mouth.
“Phew. That was fun.” Dean looked around the room. “Let’s drag him to a chair and get this over with.”
Fifteen minutes later Brett was still tied to a chair, but the tape was gone and he looked more sullen than terrified. He’d admitted he had taken the stuff, but then told three different stories on what he had done with it afterwards. In disgust, they had finally just decided to toss the entire place.
“And I thought Bobby’s house was filthy,” Jess coughed, waving dust away from her face after having moved a pile of newspapers off a chair to clear Sam a seat.
“Did you touch any of the stuff you stole? Without gloves?” Sam demanded, leaning against the counter across from their prisoner.
“You think I wanted my prints on stolen goods?” Brett scoffed.
“That’s not an answer,” Sam growled.
Dean shrugged. “If he did, he’ll pay for it.”
“How? We still don’t know what the curse does!” Sam snapped.
“Eli said no one’s sure. But if it’s a curse, it’s not going to be anything good. Just desserts and all.”
“Curse?” Miller asked, eyes wide. “What curse? What the hell are you people talking about?”
“Shut-up!” The order came from three different corners of the room.
“So... we want to divide and conquer?" Jessica asked. "Gimpy stays here with our host?”
Sam and Dean traded looks, Sam with a frown, Dean with a raised eyebrow. “I guess,” Sam finally said reluctantly.
Jess, correctly interpreting the reason for his unhappiness, glared at him. “It’s tossing a house, not trench warfare. I think I can look for stolen goods without someone holding my hands. It will take the rest of the night doing it room by room together, and you aren’t exactly fast on your feet.”
Sam’s expression tightened, but he didn’t say anything else. Dean pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket and tossed them to Jess. “Start at the top, I’ll take the bottom.”
~~~~~
Jessica spent the first half hour of her search muttering unflattering things about Sam’s faith in her competency and who-had-saved-who from murderous ghosts, and the next half hour sneezing too hard to worry about anything but her own sinuses. Judging from the rooms and their contents, Miller must have inherited the house from relatives and never bothered packing their things out. After an initial attempt to keep things the way she found them, which was mostly all over the floor, Jess had given up and started just dumping drawers out. From the state of things, there was every chance Miller wouldn’t even notice anyways.
When she found jewelry, or anything even close to it, she brought it downstairs and added it to the collection on the table. Between the two of them, she and Dean were amassing a sizeable little horde.
“If you had all of this crap lying around, why did you steal the stuff from the museum? It’s only even valuable because it’s a ‘typical example of work from the period’, whatever the hell that means, and the period was the nineteen thirties, so ...not exactly bringing in the big bucks.” Dean reached out and picked a hideous brooch out of the pile that looked like a penguin in a peach tree, but for some unknown reason the peaches were made of diamond. “This is probably worth more than anything you snatched, and it was stuck to the counter with a bar of half-melted soap!”
Brett struggled against the rope binding him to the chair, a look of fury on his face. “That belonged to my Aunt Gretchen! You put that down right now and stop touching her stuff!”
Dean rolled his eyes, Sam rubbed his. “It doesn’t matter why. Look, Mr. Miller, this would all be over with if you would just tell us where you put the stuff.”
“I sold it,” Brett snapped.
“No, he didn’t,” Jess said, walking down the stairs into the kitchen. She was carrying a moth-eaten hat and inside sparkled the cheap stones of a heap of missing jewelry. “I found this in a suitcase under a bed in one of the upstairs bedrooms.
“Have I ever told you that you’re my favorite?” Dean asked with a grin.
“You’re favorite toe-nail polisher?” she asked dryly.
“My favorite everything,” Dean assured her, ignoring Sam’s rolled eyes. Tied to the chair, Brett Miller said nothing, just glared balefully at the linoleum floor. Sam pulled on his own pair of gloves and Dean pulled an inventory of the missing items from his back pocket. They both watched as Jess spilled the glittering collection onto the tabletop.
It only took about ten minutes to pick through and sort everything out. When they were done, Dean swore and scowled at Miller. “We’re missing about a third. Where the hell is it?”
“I told you,” Miller sneered, “I sold it.”
“Can we throw this guy in the pool?” Jessica demanded. All four of them looked out the back door to the green, algae coated cesspit stewing on the other side of the glass.
Dean slammed his hand on the table to get Brett’s attention and smiled thinly. “I don’t think his crimes deserve that kind of punishment. Yet. Ask me after we’ve had to toss this place for another couple of hours, I might change my mind.”
Miller spat at him.
Sam was slouched back in his own chair, arms crossed and expression suspicious. “How did you scatter this stuff all over and never touch it? You don’t always wear gloves,” he looked pointedly at Miller’s bare hands tied in his lap.
“I’m not telling you jack.”
“Even if it’s cursed and telling us could save your life?” Jessica asked.
Miller snorted. “I don’t believe in Santa Clause either, lady. I’m not five. You want the damn stuff, you find it yourself. I never touched it. Prints, remember?”
Jessica’s eyes widened as a sudden possibility occured to her. “Does someone else live here?” The house was a disaster, with the cluttered debris of several peoples’ lives scattered all over the place. They had been assuming, based on Miller being unmarried and with no other obvious tenants, that he lived alone. But it wouldn’t be impossible for some of the crap thrown around to be of more recent vintage and belong to another resident.
Brett turned his head and said nothing, lips set in a hard line. He was definitely paler than he had been.
“Shit.”
Chapter Five
Three hours and twenty minutes later, almost all of the jewelry was piled on the kitchen table. Brett hadn’t said a word in hours. Dean and Jessica had continued the grimy chore of searching for the missing pieces while Sam continued to linger in the kitchen keeping an eye on Miller. They were all pleased when the remaining jewelry actually started showing up --between couch cushions, beneath a dresser, tossed in a desk drawer-- scattered around like someone had been wearing them and carelessly set them down when done.
Jessica was working in the front hall, riffling drawers in a bureau by the door. She finished the last one, having found nothing but old bills, loose change, and an umbrella. Standing up, Jess considered the messy pile of papers on the bureau’s surface.
She carefully picked them up one by one, then paused in surprise when removing an advertisement for an auto loan revealed a silver pendant covered with round stones in a deep wine color attached to a pooled silver chain. Jessica’s crow of triumph could easily be heard in the kitchen.
“Find it?” Sam called.
“Yes! This is the last piece, right?”
“Yep,” Dean confirmed, walking towards her down the hallway. She reached to carefully pick up the pendant. Just as her gloved fingers touched the metal a key rattled in the front lock, startling her badly so that she jarred the papers on the bureau and the entire stack slid into the floor, taking the pendant with it and landing on her feet. For an instant she thought she felt a brush of something more substantial than paper on her exposed ankle just above the edge of her sneaker and leaped back.
“What happened?” Dean asked sharply, turning the corner just in time to see her standing there staring at the floor now littered with papers.
Jessica looked up, at a loss. “I-,” she started, off balance and attention pulled in too many directions, but then the door handle twisted and opened. Dean grabbed Jess’s arm and hauled her back into the living room where they couldn’t be seen immediately. In the kitchen, muffled shouting could be heard where Sam had probably pressed a hand over Miller’s mouth.
“Brett?” a woman’s voice called. Dean was tensed to spring, a few feet back in the dark living room, waiting until the woman walked by the door. But when she passed in front of them and the moment arrived, he sucked in a sharp gasp of air and stayed motionless. The petite brunette had either not noticed the mess in the doorway, or not realized it was a new mess, and paused in the hall, flipping through mail.
“Brett?” she called again, without looking up. The muffled noises coming from the kitchen seemed to finally register because she looked up, puzzled, and started walking that way again.
“Honey?”
Jessica shot Dean a furious look, then her eyes widened in alarm. Even in the dim light she could see he had turned white as a ghost and had wrapped his arms around himself, shaking.
“Dean?!” she hissed. He shook his head. Jessica swore under her breath. Sam could probably take the woman without a problem, but he couldn’t chase her if she ran, and she could grab a knife... Jess made a decision and stepped into the hallway with deliberate noise. The woman spun at the sound and stared, shocked. Before she could say anything, Jess flashed the friendliest smile she had and spoke up.
“Hi. You don’t know me, and we’ll be leaving in just a moment, but your boyfriend stole a bunch of jewelry from a museum, and we’re here to get it back."
