Fic: Thirteen at Dinner (5/15)
Masterpost
Chapter III: Isabelle Beaudreau
Chapter IV: Colum O’Donnell
Dean’s phone rang. He glanced at it - Josh Mathieson.
He answered.
“Hello?” he said, just as the motel room door opened and Sam came in with breakfast.
“Dean.” Mathieson sounded stressed. That was weird. He knew where his daughter was now, and even if she was pissed at him, that had to be better than wondering if she’d been mugged and left for dead. “How are you getting on with the case?”
“We’re working on it,” Dean said. He took the coffee Sam handed him, patting his arm in thanks.
“You find anything useful in William Winn’s diary?”
Dean choked on his sip of espresso.
“You know about that?” He ignored Sam’s concerned expression. “How?”
“Dean.” Mathieson sounded a little condescending. Dean felt a pulse of anger. “I’m one of Connor and Connor’s biggest clients. Amanda told me you were there yesterday.”
“Amanda?” Dean opened the paper bag and pulled out a jam doughnut. “Who’s Amanda?”
“Amanda Velour.” It was a little hard to hear Mathieson over the music that had suddenly started playing in the background. He seemed to guess that, because he said, “Sorry, I’m in the elevator. Amanda, you spoke to her yesterday at Connor and Connor.”
“Oh, yeah. You know her?”
“She was a friend of my wife’s. We stayed in touch after Peggy died, and she’s the one who handles the account whenever I want to buy anything. She mentioned your visit to me because she knew I was interested in the diary… If you must know, I asked her to make sure you and your brother could break in last night. I thought you might try.”
“They do that?”
“When they’re hoping that you’ll bid ten million for a painting worth maybe half that, yeah, they do anything you want. Especially smaller auction houses. Sotheby’s is a different story. You didn’t think the alarms staying quiet was all Sam’s doing, did you? Your brother might be good, but he’s not that good.”
“Yeah.” Dean glanced at Sam, who had some sort of green smoothie and was hunched over his laptop again. “I guess not.”
“Anyway,” Mathieson said briskly, “that wasn’t why I called.”
“What is it, then? I can’t help with your daughter.”
Sam looked up sharply. Dean held up a hand to keep him from coming closer.
“No.” The stress was back in Mathieson’s voice. “This isn’t about Avery. That’s between her and me now. I wanted to tell you there was another incident last night.”
“What happened?”
“A mirror fell off a wall onto a small girl. She broke her arm - clean fracture, and some cuts. Nothing too deep. She’ll be fine. When her parents went to help her, they found the biggest piece of glass fogged over with Frances written on it.”
“Crap,” Dean hissed. “Can you give me their names?”
“I’m getting my secretary to send you a copy of the tenant information sheet. It has all the details.”
“I didn’t do it,” Frances insisted.
“I know,” Sam began, but Dean interrupted him.
“You know?” he snapped. “What are you, crazy, Sam? She said she wasn’t hurting people!”
“I didn’t do it!”
“Dean, we should at least listen to her!”
“You’re not thinking clearly, Sam. This is an actual person!”
Dean held up the sheaf of papers that he’d been clutching with a death-grip ever since Mathieson’s secretary had delivered them half an hour ago. Sam had tried to read them, but he’d barely had time to take in Mathieson’s company logo in the corner before Dean had snatched them away, insisting that Sam was too biased in Frances Ashby’s favour to do it right.
“This is a kid that got hurt, and I’m not going to see it happen to more of them because you can’t get your head on straight.”
Sam was hurt at the implication, but more than that he was pissed. He and Dean might not see eye-to-eye about Frances, but Dean should know better than to think Sam would let that get in the way of doing his job.
“Why would I harm the child and then leave my name if I intended to lie to you?” Frances asked, before Sam could say anything.
“I don’t know. Maybe because you’re insane? That can happen when you linger for hundreds of years instead of passing on like you’re supposed to. You said your grave’s under the rec centre?”
“You can burn my bones if you want. It won’t help.”
“We won’t know until we try. I’m going to give Mathieson a call, see if he can arrange to have the building emptied out. And maybe figure out a way we can get through the concrete without blowing up the place.”
“What about Isabelle Beaudreau?” Sam demanded. “You’re just going to give that up?”
“You’re the philosophy geek, Sam. What’s that thing about the teapot orbiting the sun? All we have against Isabelle is accusations of witchcraft made by a crazy person -”
“Nobody ever had more than that against me!” Frances protested.
“No.” Dean turned on her. “Maybe back then nobody did. Maybe you didn’t kill your husband. Thing is, I don’t care. I’m not here to avenge everyone who got victimised by superstitious idiots three hundred years ago. I’m here to prevent people from dying now. I don’t care about Walter Winn, or Isabelle Beaudreau, or anyone else, unless you’re telling me they’re the ones who hurt that little girl.”
“Dean,” Sam began.
Dean silenced him with a glare.
“I’m going to talk to Mathieson. I’ll meet you at the rec centre in two hours.”
“I’ll come with you,” Sam said. “Just let me get my -”
“No. He’s having a hard enough time with his daughter. He doesn’t need you looking down your nose at him because you think doesn’t care enough about his tenants. The guy’s doing the best he can! Two hours. Rec centre.”
“He reminds me of Kat,” Frances said when the door had slammed behind Dean.
“Who?”
“Kat O’Donnell. She was there that night.”
“Oh, yeah. Your friend.”
“My best and closest friend. She knew what I suffered with Ralph, but there was nothing she could do to help me. She was… like your brother. Protective.”
Sam scoffed. “I don’t think Dean’s feeling very protective right now.”
“Kat didn’t feel very protective, either… at the end.”
Frances fell silent after that, neither of them speaking until Sam’s phone startled him out of his thoughts.
He grabbed for it, hoping it was Dean, feeling a flash of disappointment when Avery’s name flashed on the screen.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Sam. Is Dean with you?”
“No, he’s gone to see -”
“My dad?” Avery huffed. “I suppose it’s just as well. I don’t want to see Dean right now.”
“Avery,” Sam said, feeling like he should defend his brother, “I understand why you’re upset, but Dean was only doing what he thought was best.”
“Save it. Can you meet me at the rec centre, now?”
Sam looked out the window. Dean had taken the Impala, and he didn’t want to hotwire a car, since they were probably going to be staying here a few days. But he could probably get a bus out to the rec centre. He had to go there to meet Dean anyway.
“Sure. I’ll see you soon.”
Avery was waiting outside for him when he got there.
“There’s a kid you should meet,” she said as soon as she saw Sam. “He’s… Oh, I’ll be honest. He’s got a bit of a drug problem, so he tends to ramble a lot. Nobody takes him very seriously. But he says he saw a ghost, and that’s something I’ve never heard him say before. Usually it’s all, you know, pink elephants or dancing hippos.”
“Sure, I’ll talk to him.”
Avery led him inside, down a corridor to a plain metal door.
“Just… Be careful, yeah?” she said with her hand on the knob. “He’s had a difficult time at home. That’s why he turned to drugs in the first place.”
She opened the door.
The kid sitting inside couldn’t have been more than seventeen. His shoulder-length hair was stringy, his jeans torn, and his shirt looked like it wouldn’t last another wash. There was a dirty bandage around his right arm, just below his elbow.
“Hi, Steve,” Avery said gently. “This is Sam. He wants to talk to you.”
Steve’s eyes shot up to Sam and then skittered away.
“Not crazy,” he muttered.
“We know you’re not. We just want to hear about what you saw. Can you tell us?”
“Told you already.”
“You’ve not told Sam.”
For a moment Sam though Steve was going to refuse to talk to him. Then surprisingly sharp blue eyes met his and Steve said quietly, almost sullenly, “Saw a ghost.”
“You saw a ghost?”
“In the mirror. Live next door to that kid that went to hospital this morning. How freaky was that? I heard the crash. Didn’t know what it was. I was getting set to go out and then I saw him behind me in the mirror. Turned around and he wasn’t there.”
“Who was he?”
“Old guy. Weird clothes. Weird hair.” Steve shrugged. “Kind of ugly, to be honest. Hooked nose, big bulgy eyes. Freaked me out, man.”
“Did you feel anything when you saw him? A sudden chill?”
“Yeah, sure,” Steve said amiably. Sam didn’t know whether to believe him. “He spoke to me.”
“What did he say?”
“Frances.” For the first time Steve sounded animated. “Just that. Frances. Five or six times.”
Sam forced himself not to react. There was no way Steve could know - he must really have seen a ghost. Or seen something.
“Thanks, Steve,” he offered. “I’ll look into it.”
“Look into it? You, what, like Ghostbusters or something?”
“Or something.” Sam reached out to pat his knee, then changed his mind and gave him a lame little wave instead. “Take care of yourself, Steve. Maybe stop using, yeah?”
“You sound like the CPS lady.” Steve snorted. “I’ve been seeing her once every six months since they found me shooting up under the bridge. I think she has a quota to fill. She shows up and tells me all about talking to people and good touches and bad touches and whether Dad did anything to me before they arrested him. Man, I’m sixteen! I don’t need any crazy government agent telling me about bad touches!”
“Your father was arrested?”
Steve’s expression grew wary. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing, I’m sorry. Thanks for talking to me, Steve.”
“Colum,” Frances said without a moment’s hesitation. She had shown up as soon as Sam had finished with Steve. “That sounds like Colum O’Donnell. Poor man, nobody could ever have called him handsome. But he was good - truly a good man. He believed me when nobody did, not even Kat. But I have no idea what unfinished business he could’ve had. Colum wasn’t the type to have dark secrets.”
“So… You knew him because he was married to your friend?”
“Kat and I had both known Colum all our lives. He was a few years older than us. He wasn’t… you know… He wasn’t the kind of boy you wanted to dance with, or the kind you hoped would steal a kiss behind a tree later. But he was the kind of boy you wanted your daughter to marry.”
“OK, so… any idea why he’s doing this, what he could want? From what the kid said, he was trying to get your attention.”
Frances turned away.
Sam studied her. “You’re feeling guilty.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Why should I feel guilty?”
“Because Colum O’Donnell wasn’t really the kind of boy you want your daughter to marry, was he?” Sam asked. “He was the kind of boy who fell in love with his wife’s best friend.”
“It wasn’t my fault! I never encouraged him and I never acted on it! I never would have acted on it. I couldn’t have done that to Kat.”
“Did Colum want you to?”
“Colum… Oh, he wanted me first. But I was in love with Ralph, and he thought it was hopeless. He married Kat, and Ralph… Well, I didn’t stay in love with him very long. Colum… He thought we could run away together. But there was Kat, and I had my children.”
“Did Kat know?”
“I think she guessed. She never said anything, but… She envied me sometimes. It was so… stupid. Everyone else we knew envied her, because whatever her difficulties, she wasn’t married to Ralph Ashby. Kat and Colum couldn’t have children. I… That hurt her. And then to know her husband was in love with me.” Frances shook her head. “But never, not once, did I encourage him!”
“So… Given that he was calling for you, it could be a possibility that his unfinished business was with you.”
Before Frances could reply, Sam’s phone rang. He glanced at it.
Dean. Finally.
“Dean.”
“Hey, kiddo. Where are you?”
“At the rec centre. Where are you?”
“On my way there.” Dean hesitated. “Listen, Sammy, what I said earlier…”
“I know,” Sam said quickly.
“Great. So Mathieson’s going to have the place fully evacuated this evening - he’ll figure out something - and he’s sending a couple of his guys to help us. We pinpoint the grave, they get to work with the heavy equipment.”
“Dean, about that -”
“See you in ten minutes, Sammy.”
The line went dead.
Chapter V: Alexander Ashby
Chapter III: Isabelle Beaudreau
Chapter IV: Colum O’Donnell
Dean’s phone rang. He glanced at it - Josh Mathieson.
He answered.
“Hello?” he said, just as the motel room door opened and Sam came in with breakfast.
“Dean.” Mathieson sounded stressed. That was weird. He knew where his daughter was now, and even if she was pissed at him, that had to be better than wondering if she’d been mugged and left for dead. “How are you getting on with the case?”
“We’re working on it,” Dean said. He took the coffee Sam handed him, patting his arm in thanks.
“You find anything useful in William Winn’s diary?”
Dean choked on his sip of espresso.
“You know about that?” He ignored Sam’s concerned expression. “How?”
“Dean.” Mathieson sounded a little condescending. Dean felt a pulse of anger. “I’m one of Connor and Connor’s biggest clients. Amanda told me you were there yesterday.”
“Amanda?” Dean opened the paper bag and pulled out a jam doughnut. “Who’s Amanda?”
“Amanda Velour.” It was a little hard to hear Mathieson over the music that had suddenly started playing in the background. He seemed to guess that, because he said, “Sorry, I’m in the elevator. Amanda, you spoke to her yesterday at Connor and Connor.”
“Oh, yeah. You know her?”
“She was a friend of my wife’s. We stayed in touch after Peggy died, and she’s the one who handles the account whenever I want to buy anything. She mentioned your visit to me because she knew I was interested in the diary… If you must know, I asked her to make sure you and your brother could break in last night. I thought you might try.”
“They do that?”
“When they’re hoping that you’ll bid ten million for a painting worth maybe half that, yeah, they do anything you want. Especially smaller auction houses. Sotheby’s is a different story. You didn’t think the alarms staying quiet was all Sam’s doing, did you? Your brother might be good, but he’s not that good.”
“Yeah.” Dean glanced at Sam, who had some sort of green smoothie and was hunched over his laptop again. “I guess not.”
“Anyway,” Mathieson said briskly, “that wasn’t why I called.”
“What is it, then? I can’t help with your daughter.”
Sam looked up sharply. Dean held up a hand to keep him from coming closer.
“No.” The stress was back in Mathieson’s voice. “This isn’t about Avery. That’s between her and me now. I wanted to tell you there was another incident last night.”
“What happened?”
“A mirror fell off a wall onto a small girl. She broke her arm - clean fracture, and some cuts. Nothing too deep. She’ll be fine. When her parents went to help her, they found the biggest piece of glass fogged over with Frances written on it.”
“Crap,” Dean hissed. “Can you give me their names?”
“I’m getting my secretary to send you a copy of the tenant information sheet. It has all the details.”
“I didn’t do it,” Frances insisted.
“I know,” Sam began, but Dean interrupted him.
“You know?” he snapped. “What are you, crazy, Sam? She said she wasn’t hurting people!”
“I didn’t do it!”
“Dean, we should at least listen to her!”
“You’re not thinking clearly, Sam. This is an actual person!”
Dean held up the sheaf of papers that he’d been clutching with a death-grip ever since Mathieson’s secretary had delivered them half an hour ago. Sam had tried to read them, but he’d barely had time to take in Mathieson’s company logo in the corner before Dean had snatched them away, insisting that Sam was too biased in Frances Ashby’s favour to do it right.
“This is a kid that got hurt, and I’m not going to see it happen to more of them because you can’t get your head on straight.”
Sam was hurt at the implication, but more than that he was pissed. He and Dean might not see eye-to-eye about Frances, but Dean should know better than to think Sam would let that get in the way of doing his job.
“Why would I harm the child and then leave my name if I intended to lie to you?” Frances asked, before Sam could say anything.
“I don’t know. Maybe because you’re insane? That can happen when you linger for hundreds of years instead of passing on like you’re supposed to. You said your grave’s under the rec centre?”
“You can burn my bones if you want. It won’t help.”
“We won’t know until we try. I’m going to give Mathieson a call, see if he can arrange to have the building emptied out. And maybe figure out a way we can get through the concrete without blowing up the place.”
“What about Isabelle Beaudreau?” Sam demanded. “You’re just going to give that up?”
“You’re the philosophy geek, Sam. What’s that thing about the teapot orbiting the sun? All we have against Isabelle is accusations of witchcraft made by a crazy person -”
“Nobody ever had more than that against me!” Frances protested.
“No.” Dean turned on her. “Maybe back then nobody did. Maybe you didn’t kill your husband. Thing is, I don’t care. I’m not here to avenge everyone who got victimised by superstitious idiots three hundred years ago. I’m here to prevent people from dying now. I don’t care about Walter Winn, or Isabelle Beaudreau, or anyone else, unless you’re telling me they’re the ones who hurt that little girl.”
“Dean,” Sam began.
Dean silenced him with a glare.
“I’m going to talk to Mathieson. I’ll meet you at the rec centre in two hours.”
“I’ll come with you,” Sam said. “Just let me get my -”
“No. He’s having a hard enough time with his daughter. He doesn’t need you looking down your nose at him because you think doesn’t care enough about his tenants. The guy’s doing the best he can! Two hours. Rec centre.”
“He reminds me of Kat,” Frances said when the door had slammed behind Dean.
“Who?”
“Kat O’Donnell. She was there that night.”
“Oh, yeah. Your friend.”
“My best and closest friend. She knew what I suffered with Ralph, but there was nothing she could do to help me. She was… like your brother. Protective.”
Sam scoffed. “I don’t think Dean’s feeling very protective right now.”
“Kat didn’t feel very protective, either… at the end.”
Frances fell silent after that, neither of them speaking until Sam’s phone startled him out of his thoughts.
He grabbed for it, hoping it was Dean, feeling a flash of disappointment when Avery’s name flashed on the screen.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Sam. Is Dean with you?”
“No, he’s gone to see -”
“My dad?” Avery huffed. “I suppose it’s just as well. I don’t want to see Dean right now.”
“Avery,” Sam said, feeling like he should defend his brother, “I understand why you’re upset, but Dean was only doing what he thought was best.”
“Save it. Can you meet me at the rec centre, now?”
Sam looked out the window. Dean had taken the Impala, and he didn’t want to hotwire a car, since they were probably going to be staying here a few days. But he could probably get a bus out to the rec centre. He had to go there to meet Dean anyway.
“Sure. I’ll see you soon.”
Avery was waiting outside for him when he got there.
“There’s a kid you should meet,” she said as soon as she saw Sam. “He’s… Oh, I’ll be honest. He’s got a bit of a drug problem, so he tends to ramble a lot. Nobody takes him very seriously. But he says he saw a ghost, and that’s something I’ve never heard him say before. Usually it’s all, you know, pink elephants or dancing hippos.”
“Sure, I’ll talk to him.”
Avery led him inside, down a corridor to a plain metal door.
“Just… Be careful, yeah?” she said with her hand on the knob. “He’s had a difficult time at home. That’s why he turned to drugs in the first place.”
She opened the door.
The kid sitting inside couldn’t have been more than seventeen. His shoulder-length hair was stringy, his jeans torn, and his shirt looked like it wouldn’t last another wash. There was a dirty bandage around his right arm, just below his elbow.
“Hi, Steve,” Avery said gently. “This is Sam. He wants to talk to you.”
Steve’s eyes shot up to Sam and then skittered away.
“Not crazy,” he muttered.
“We know you’re not. We just want to hear about what you saw. Can you tell us?”
“Told you already.”
“You’ve not told Sam.”
For a moment Sam though Steve was going to refuse to talk to him. Then surprisingly sharp blue eyes met his and Steve said quietly, almost sullenly, “Saw a ghost.”
“You saw a ghost?”
“In the mirror. Live next door to that kid that went to hospital this morning. How freaky was that? I heard the crash. Didn’t know what it was. I was getting set to go out and then I saw him behind me in the mirror. Turned around and he wasn’t there.”
“Who was he?”
“Old guy. Weird clothes. Weird hair.” Steve shrugged. “Kind of ugly, to be honest. Hooked nose, big bulgy eyes. Freaked me out, man.”
“Did you feel anything when you saw him? A sudden chill?”
“Yeah, sure,” Steve said amiably. Sam didn’t know whether to believe him. “He spoke to me.”
“What did he say?”
“Frances.” For the first time Steve sounded animated. “Just that. Frances. Five or six times.”
Sam forced himself not to react. There was no way Steve could know - he must really have seen a ghost. Or seen something.
“Thanks, Steve,” he offered. “I’ll look into it.”
“Look into it? You, what, like Ghostbusters or something?”
“Or something.” Sam reached out to pat his knee, then changed his mind and gave him a lame little wave instead. “Take care of yourself, Steve. Maybe stop using, yeah?”
“You sound like the CPS lady.” Steve snorted. “I’ve been seeing her once every six months since they found me shooting up under the bridge. I think she has a quota to fill. She shows up and tells me all about talking to people and good touches and bad touches and whether Dad did anything to me before they arrested him. Man, I’m sixteen! I don’t need any crazy government agent telling me about bad touches!”
“Your father was arrested?”
Steve’s expression grew wary. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing, I’m sorry. Thanks for talking to me, Steve.”
“Colum,” Frances said without a moment’s hesitation. She had shown up as soon as Sam had finished with Steve. “That sounds like Colum O’Donnell. Poor man, nobody could ever have called him handsome. But he was good - truly a good man. He believed me when nobody did, not even Kat. But I have no idea what unfinished business he could’ve had. Colum wasn’t the type to have dark secrets.”
“So… You knew him because he was married to your friend?”
“Kat and I had both known Colum all our lives. He was a few years older than us. He wasn’t… you know… He wasn’t the kind of boy you wanted to dance with, or the kind you hoped would steal a kiss behind a tree later. But he was the kind of boy you wanted your daughter to marry.”
“OK, so… any idea why he’s doing this, what he could want? From what the kid said, he was trying to get your attention.”
Frances turned away.
Sam studied her. “You’re feeling guilty.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Why should I feel guilty?”
“Because Colum O’Donnell wasn’t really the kind of boy you want your daughter to marry, was he?” Sam asked. “He was the kind of boy who fell in love with his wife’s best friend.”
“It wasn’t my fault! I never encouraged him and I never acted on it! I never would have acted on it. I couldn’t have done that to Kat.”
“Did Colum want you to?”
“Colum… Oh, he wanted me first. But I was in love with Ralph, and he thought it was hopeless. He married Kat, and Ralph… Well, I didn’t stay in love with him very long. Colum… He thought we could run away together. But there was Kat, and I had my children.”
“Did Kat know?”
“I think she guessed. She never said anything, but… She envied me sometimes. It was so… stupid. Everyone else we knew envied her, because whatever her difficulties, she wasn’t married to Ralph Ashby. Kat and Colum couldn’t have children. I… That hurt her. And then to know her husband was in love with me.” Frances shook her head. “But never, not once, did I encourage him!”
“So… Given that he was calling for you, it could be a possibility that his unfinished business was with you.”
Before Frances could reply, Sam’s phone rang. He glanced at it.
Dean. Finally.
“Dean.”
“Hey, kiddo. Where are you?”
“At the rec centre. Where are you?”
“On my way there.” Dean hesitated. “Listen, Sammy, what I said earlier…”
“I know,” Sam said quickly.
“Great. So Mathieson’s going to have the place fully evacuated this evening - he’ll figure out something - and he’s sending a couple of his guys to help us. We pinpoint the grave, they get to work with the heavy equipment.”
“Dean, about that -”
“See you in ten minutes, Sammy.”
The line went dead.
Chapter V: Alexander Ashby