Fic: A Scandal at the Bar
Title: A Scandal at the Bar
Fandom: Magnificent Seven, Sherlock Holmes (mostly Beeb!Lock, with an ACD!Irene)
Characters/Pairing: Ezra Standish, Maude Standish, Irene Adler, and a cast of dozens
Rating: Gen.
Summary: As with most of the disasters in Ezra's life, this one begins with his mother. It's just his rotten luck that it also involves his sister.
Notes: For
mendax, who had the original idea and then foisted the bunny off onto me. Absolutely un-beta'd; all disasters (even Ezra's) are my own.
As with most of the disasters in Ezra’s life, this one begins with his mother.
In this case, it’s a baffling text sent at 5:22 AM that reads he’s not even a real lawyer. By the time Ezra reads the text at the much more civilized hour of 10:15, Maude’s sent him five more texts -- his favorite is a TIARA!!, simply because he has absolutely no idea in what context that phrase makes any sort of sense -- and an incoherent voice mail. He deletes the voice mail without actually listening to more than a second or two, but he always deletes all of Maude’s voice mails without listening to them. By the time Ezra makes it in to work -- they’re taking down Henry Irons today, and Ezra always experiences that extra frisson of terror that comes from the increased possibility of being made by paranoid psychopaths during the run up to a take-down -- Maude’s texted him 3 more times.
it’s just like Minsk all over again the latest reads.
“Minsk?” Ezra says aloud. “When was she in Minsk?”
“When was who in Minsk?” JD asks as he finishes adjusting Ezra’s wire.
“Mother,” Ezra says, frowning at his phone, unnerved by the sheer number of messages from his mother. The last time Maude sent him so many texts was right before the Santiago debacle, and while Ezra can’t actually prove that Maude blew his cover, he has very concrete suspicions. He should probably text her back -- Maude is not the kind of person to take kindly to being ignored -- but he really doesn’t have time to deal with Maude’s newest outrage.
“Should we postpone?” JD asks, with the wisdom of someone who’s had an op blown on him on account of Maude. (It was a small op, but it’d been JD’s first, and there had been quite a lot of paperwork producing property damage.)
Ezra shrugs and glances at Chris who says, “We gonna get another shot at this?”
“Perhaps in 3 weeks?” Ezra says slowly, fiddling with his cufflinks.
“Can we afford 3 weeks?”
Ezra sighs. They probably could wait 3 weeks, but Irons has been making noises about having another buyer interested in his inventory. Ezra’s fairly certain that it’s a ruse, but he doesn’t want to take the chance.
“Think Irons will spook if you show up with a second body guard?” Chris says.
“If it’s you?” Ezra says, grinning. “Yes.”
“Listen,” Chris says, low and serious, “if you think this’ll go pear-shaped --”
“Sentiment, Mister Larabee, does not become you.”
Chris grins at that, sharp and fast and understanding. He clasps Ezra on the shoulder and says, “Well, try not to get shot.”
“I always do, Chris,” Ezra says, smoothing down his tie. “I always do.”
***
Of course Maude, being Maude, isn’t the kind of person to let herself be ignored, which is why she calls his other work phone just as Ezra’s about to get Henry Irons to commit a felony by selling him a truly excessive amount of C-4.
“Ezra,” Maude says waspishly, as if she’s the aggrieved party and not the one about to blow a 7-month operation, “why aren’t you answering your phone?”
“How did you get this number?” Ezra hisses through his teeth as he smiles at Irons and makes a “just one minute” gesture.
“Why from that lovely arms dealer you’re trying to arrest,” Maude says. “We had such a delightful lunch the other day.
Ezra winces and turns away from Irons so the paranoid psychopath can’t see his expression. “You talked with him!?”
“Oh darling boy, of course I did,” Maude says. “I’m you mother. I always want to get to know your friends.” She makes a tsk-ing noise. “Though, really, Ezra, I do wish you’d have higher standards. Why I just happened to show him a dreadful Warhol forgery and he just gave me his bank account numbers.”
Maude laughs at that, and Ezra feels that steady sinking feeling he always gets when his mother is about to ruin his life yet again. Ezra glances at Irons, who’s checking something on his computer, and edges a little closer to the stack of weapons crates. He’s not sure what shape Maude’s meddling will take but he’s pretty sure that he wants to be as far away from the heavily armed men as possible; he just hopes someone’s told Vin about Maude so he’s ready for the inevitable shooting.
“Mother --” Ezra says, as someone starts shouting behind him.
“Oh dear,” Maude says airly. “Sounds like someone’s just found out his accounts have been drained. I do hope he doesn’t think you did it, Ezra.”
“What did you--”
“Adieu, darling. Call me once you’re done with your violence,” Maude says as she hangs up. Ezra has just enough time to throw his phone across the warehouse before he has to dive behind the pile of crates before Irons and his people start shooting.
***
When Ezra finally manages to get back to his condo, he’s not at all surprised to find his mother sitting in his favorite chair and sipping from a glass filled with what is no doubt Ezra’s most expensive wine -- he’d seen the private town car idling outside his door, after all. He glares at both his mother and his wine, then goes and fetches a glass of water, making sure to play up his brand new limp.
“Oh Ezra,” Maude says watching him down his glass of water at the sink. “Tap water?” She takes a sip of her wine and primly sniffs. “Even a bottle as mediocre as this one is better than tap water.”
“The downside to a concussion,” Ezra says conversationally as he fills his glass again, “is that I am prohibited from drinking anything stronger than water. As much as I might wish to.” He takes his glass and limps his way over to his mother, groaning a little as he sits down in his second favorite chair. “On the positive side,” he adds, as he puts his gun and the handcuffs he normally keeps in his desk drawer down on the table, “I’m sure my condition meant Director Travis felt just terrible about yelling at me for blowing the op.”
“You arrested that Irons man, didn’t you?” Maude says.
“Mother, we were trying to find his supplier.” Ezra sighs and eyes the glass of wine with a deep and woeful longing.
“Attempted murder, gun running, it’s all the same,” Maude says dismissively.She puts her glass down and leans forward and smiles at him like she really means it -- it’s the one that she rarely pulls out because it goes all the way up to her eyes and, more importantly, her laugh lines -- and Ezra ruthlessly suppresses his urge to flinch. He puts his own glass down instead and raises an eyebrow in the way he knows Maude hates.
“Honestly, Ezra,” she snaps, smile dropping instantly away, “I don’t know why you always do that. It makes you look like a constipated ferret.”
“What do you want, Mother.”
“I want you to do something about your sister.”
“Who? Irene?”
“Do you have any other sisters?”
“Well…”
Maude sighs and makes a tsk-ing noise. “Ezra, that little joke of yours is no more amusing now than it was when you were twelve.”
Ezra picks up his glass and takes a sip of his water to hide his smirk. “What has she done now?”
“She’s gotten married,” Maude says, in a tone of voice more suited for announcements such as “she’s posted a confessional video on YouTube” or “she robbed a bank and gave all the money to charity”.
“And?”
“And? And?! She had a king wrapped around her little finger! And she turns him down for some odious little barrister. A barrister for god’s sake. He’s not even a real lawyer, and your sister -- who could have become a princess, or at least had a grand duchy -- throws over the opportunity of a lifetime--.”
“A princess?” Ezra says, interrupting Maude before she can really get going. He puts his glass down again and sits back in his chair. “Perhaps you should start from the beginning.”
“It was the most wonderful thing. She was doing her little singing thing in one of those tiny European countries -- Belgium, or Bulgaria or Bohemia; some place that starts with a B at any rate -- and I arrange for her to meet the king -- a delightful man, married of course, and it’s a shame about the chin, but an absolutely perfect doll of a man otherwise. At any rate, he was absolutely besotted with her, of course, gave her all kinds of beautiful things -- jewelry, patronage, an absolutely darling Renoir, a sweet little castle -- and I just know that in a few more months she could have had free reign of the royal treasury.”
“Sounds delightful,” Ezra says, steepling his hands. “But?”
“Oh you know Irene, there’s always something wrong with the men I find for her. So he happens to be a bit old fashioned about some things; like I told her, it’s not as if she’s married to the man, and a title and a tiara make up for so many faults. But no, Irene has to do things her own way, and the next thing you know, she’s run off to London and gotten herself married to some common barrister of all people.” Maude sighs dramatically and pulls a lacy handkerchief out of her clutch to dab at her eyes with. “Children. You do the best you can with them and they always disappoint you.”
Ezra bites the inside of his cheek before he can say anything about disappointment being a two-way street and takes a deep breath. His head is really aching now and while he wants many things, for the moment he’ll settle for getting through this conversation without it devolving into a screaming match.
“While this is all fascinating, what do you want me to do about it, Mother?” He narrows his eyes into his best approximation of Chris’s glare and adds, “I’m not going to talk her out of this. It’s Irene’s life, and if she wants to be married to a barrister, then that’s her decision.”
“I want nothing of the kind, Ezra. All I want is to talk to her.”
“So why don’t you just call her? Why go through me?”
“Because she’s not taking my calls.” Maude dabs at her eyes again and says, “I make one little comment about--”
“Mother.”
“Oh very well. But honestly, Ezra, I just want to speak to my daughter. What if there are grandbabies?”
“Grandbabies? Mother, how long has Irene been married?”
“Oh a month or two. But you never know!”
Ezra rolls his eyes and sighs. “Fine. I’ll talk to her. But you know Irene, Mother. I can’t promise anything.”
“You darling boy,” Maude says, and the smile she gives him is honest in its affection -- or as honest as anything Maude does ever can be.
“Yes, well,” Ezra mumbles, looking away; he hates that Maude can still make him feel like a little boy who’d do anything for his mother’s love. “My guest room is--”
Maude laughs and stands. “Oh Ezra, you didn’t really think I’d stay here did you?”
“Well,” Ezra says as he also stands, “yes.”
Maude laughs again and pats his cheek. “I have a meeting in New York, darling, and I must toodle off.”
Ezra nods and tries to not let the relief he’s feeling show. He loves his mother, of course, but he prefers to love her abstractly and from far, far away. “If you’re sure,” he says, more out of ingrained good breeding than any real desire to convince her to say.
“I really can’t miss this meeting -- I’m this close to convincing a rather doddy old banker to give me this precious little ivory statute he owns. Adieu, darling. Call me when you find her.” She kisses his cheek and opens the door just as Vin is reaching for the knob.
“Mister Tanner,” Maude purrs, and Ezra rolls her eyes at the way Vin straightens up from his habitual slouch.
“Ma’am,” Vin says, touching the brim of his hat with the hand not holding the six pack and the bag from CVS. “Are you visitin’ long?”
“No, alas,” Maude says, “I’m just passing through. In fact, I’m off to the airport right now.”
“Shame,” Vin says, like he means it.
“Yes,” Ezra says, and he casually takes Maude’s elbow and hustles her out of his condo. “Really. Such a shame. Good bye, Mother, I hope you don’t miss your flight.”
He waits until Maude’s safely away in her hired town car -- a ride that he’s no doubt paying for, and he doesn’t even bother to verify that she’s lifted his AmEx and the hundred dollars he’d won at last week’s poker game -- before he goes back inside and glares at Vin, who looks blandly back at him from where he’s sitting with his feet up on Ezra’s coffee table.
“Just decided to drop by?” he asks Vin.
“24-hour concussion watch, Ezra. You know the drill,” Vin says as he tosses the bag to Ezra. It rattles as it flies through the air and Ezra knows without looking that it’s a bottle of aspirin.
“Mm,” Ezra says, pushing Vin’s feet off the table as he goes back to reclaim his favorite chair. “Let me guess -- you drew the short straw.”
Vin shrugs and opens up a beer. “Could be worse,” he says. “Could’ve been Josiah.”
***
He starts looking for Irene on Monday, when he’s back in the office and no longer subject to the “tender” ministrations of his friends. It takes him the better part of the morning to track down her current alias -- not too shabby, if he does say so himself, given that he had only her name and Maude’s off-hand comment about a singing career -- but once he’s verified that the Irene Adler who’d sung the role of Marta in the Teatro Goldoni’s production of Iolanta two seasons ago is indeed his sister, it doesn’t take long to track her progress across Europe. She disappears for eight months after singing in Vienna, and the next time he finds mention of her is in an article in the Daily Mail about a train wreck in the Carpathian mountains, where she’s cast as the face of the tragedy for the British public.
Ezra sits back in his chair feeling like he’s just been punched. He’d never been particularly close to Irene -- well, there was more than a decade between them and by the time Irene had gotten old enough to be interesting, Ezra had been living in Tuscany and learning how to make forgeries from “Uncle Umberto” -- but she’s still his sister. Was his sister.
He wonders why Maude didn’t tell him. It’s not like the article was particularly difficult to find. And even if she’d missed the first article, there’s no way she could have missed the ones that followed -- the fruitless search for a reason for the accident, the hysterical cries of terrorism, the tawdry memorial to Mr. Godfrey Norton and his new, blushing bride Irene (nee Adler, and hailing from New Jersey, and both those facts are lies). His mother is many things, but she’s never been this deliberately cruel.
He tastes bile in the back of his throat, and he can’t breathe; the office is too close, too stuffy. His vision dims and he knows, intellectually, that he’s experiencing shock and that he should go to Nathan or to Chris or Josiah and tell them everything. He goes to the roof instead, where the wind isn’t quite strong enough to blow away the smell of stale cigarette smoke, but it’s still better than the air downstairs. He pulls out his cellphone and stares at it for a long time before call his mother.
Maude picks up on the fourth ring and it sounds very much like there’s a party going on in the backgrounds -- laughter and innocuous jazz music and the distinctive tinkle of cocktail glasses.
“Ezra!” she says, sounding breathless and delighted, and her voice fades slightly as she goes on, “My son, you know, I was telling you all about him Preston, he is such a treasure, but helpless, absolutely helpless, without me. I simply must take this, oh you’re such a doll, please excuse me--” The background noise cuts off abruptly and for a few long minutes all Ezra hears are the soft noises of cloth against cloth, the creak of a chair, the quiet clink of ice against glass.
“Well?” Maude says at last, her voice still pleasant but plainer somehow. “Did you --”
“Did you know?” Ezra says, harsher than he means to. “Did you just -- is this some sort of punishment, Mother?”
“Punishment? Whatever do you mean?”
“The train, Mother. I’m talking about the train wreck, the one that --” but he can’t say it, yet. He can’t admit out loud that Irene is dead, in part because in his heart he doesn’t believe it to be true.
“Oh, that.” Maude laughs, airy and dismissive. “A fake, of course.”
“Mother, they found bodies. They.” He takes a deep breath. He can do this. It’s not like Irene is the first person he’s loved who died. “She’s dead, Mother. That’s why she won’t talk to you.”
“Ezra! How dare you say such things! How dare you even think that about your sister!”
“It’s the truth --”
“I am her mother, Ezra,” Maude says, cutting him off. “I would know if something happened to her. I would know.”
Her voice is sharp and brittle, and Ezra doesn’t know what to do. He’s never heard Maude sound so fragile before, and the fragility frightens him. He looks down at his shoes -- scuffed, not his best, probably need to be re-soled in a month -- and takes a deep breath, though he’s not sure what he is going to say or how he will say it.
“Besides,” Maude says, just as the silence begins to grow too long, “someone is still using her bank account. The one in Switzerland, and you know how they are about authorization. If it’s not her, then who is it?”
Ezra breathes out, and some of the queasy ache in his gut eases. “That is a fair point.”
“Of course it is. Honestly, Ezra, how you could even think that is beyond me.” Ezra hears cloth rustle again and he knows Maude is standing and smoothing herself down, preparing to end the call and head back to whatever game she’s playing. “So you’ll forget all about that train nonsense and actually look for her, yes?”
“It’s going to be an official investigation if I do,” he warns, though he knows that, should it become necessary, he can keep everything off the books. “I’ll have to go through official channels.”
“I know that, Ezra. Why do you think I asked you to look for her?” She laughs, false and gay, and says, “Ta ta, dearest. Call me later.”
She hangs up and Ezra stares at his phone for a good long minute before putting it away. He takes a deep breath and stares out at the open rooftops around him until he he no longer feels hemmed in. He’s thoughtful as he goes back to his desk and methodically begins to read through the latest bulletins. Maude’s never asked him to do something in an official capacity before, and the fact that she’s asking now means there’s more to whatever’s going with Irene than she’s telling him.
Ezra closes his email and leans back in his chair. He knows he should tell someone about Maude and Irene, but his instinct is to stay silent and solve this problem on his own. It’s a family matter and he’s always dealt with family on his own. Besides, he thinks he knows what he has to do, but the plan he’s vaguely formulated is far too much like the plans he used to come up with back before Atlanta, and that discomfits him in ways he’s not particularly eager to explore. The plan he’s formulating is not entirely illegal, of course, not even mostly, but there’s enough illegality there to cast all the old, familiar doubts upon his character, and he has grown quite used to Denver for all its faults. He’s grown used to having trust, as well, and he thinks that this -- that what Maude is asking him to do -- may destroy whatever store of trust he’s managed to accumulate.
On the other hand, Chris isn’t McCarthy, and perhaps he’s wrong to assume that Denver will be the same as Atlanta. This is the ATF, after all, not the FBI, and he’s worked outside the strict lines of the law before and with Chris’s blessing. True, he’d been doing his job, then, and the end result had always been to stop the influx of weapons onto American soil, not something as deeply personal as getting to the bottom of a train’s derailment more than half the world away.
He sighs and looks at Chris’s office -- the blinds are down as usual, but the door is open and Ezra can see Chris typing away at something and he knows that his every movement is being tracked -- and but there are no answers there.
His mother or career. Well, he knew he’d have to make this choice someday.
“You feelin’ OK, Ezra?” Nathan asks as Ezra stops at his desk.
“I’m just taking an early lunch,” he replies. He glances at Chris again, then fiddles with his phone in his pocket. “I may take the rest of the day off, however. My head is still somewhat sore.”
“You ain’t feelin’ dizzy are you?” Nathan peers up at him with his serious eyes. “I know you didn’t want a CT, but if you’re still hurtin’--”
“Just a headache, Nathan. But it does make concentrating on filling out my F-8620s.” He flashes Nathan a smile that he hopes is reassuring and thinks about nothing at all until he’s pushing open the door to The Saloon. He orders a beer and a burger with all the trimmings and is only mildly surprised when Inez brings him a bowl of chicken posole and an iced tea.
“Sorry, senor Ezra, but doctor’s orders,” she tells him.
Ezra grunts and eats his soup -- it really is quite good -- and thinks about his choices. On the one hand, he could keep this all above board -- it’s not too late to tell Chris the truth -- and make his requests through the official channels. He knows a few people at Interpol who are still talking to him, and Gregson at New Scotland Yard owes him several favors. On the other hand, he’s intimately aware with just how long an “official” investigation can take, particularly when a conclusion has already been formed. An unofficial investigation would be swift and he could start making inquiries now, since the people he’d need to call would just be beginning their work. Besides, any official investigation might eventually lead to Maude, and while Ezra occasionally fantasizes about locking his mother up and throwing away the key he knows he could never actually allow that to happen.
When he thinks in those terms, it’s really not a difficult choice at all.
He begins with a phone call to an old counterfeiter in Bucharest, which leads him to a fence in Brasov, which leads him to a minor official in Krakow, which gets him the phone number of another slightly-less-minor (but far more corrupt) official in Bratislava, who knows the girlfriend of a fixer in Vienna, who hangs up on him twice until Ezra casually drops the name James Moriarty. Things begin to pick up the pace after that, and Ezra’s passed from one country to another. He ends up speaking with a retired prison warden in Belarus, who hands him off to a journalist in Portugal, who sends him to a banker in Ireland, who gives him the number of a coroner in Cardiff, who transfers him to a coroner in London, who transfers him to an entirely different coroner in London -- a rather mouse-y sounding woman, who nevertheless manages to fend off his best phone flirtation and maintains an impenetrable front of professionalism. It takes him the better part of an hour to convince her to email him the autopsy report on the body that was identified as his sister’s when JD and Buck walk in.
“Excuse me for one second, Dr. Hooper,” he says as he moves his phone away from his mouth and waves the pair over.
“Figures you’d be here,” Buck says, smirking a little as he sits down.
“JD, give me your tablet,” Ezra says, resolutely ignoring Buck and his insinuations.
“What?”
“Your tablet,” Ezra says again, with greater impatience. “I need to borrow it.”
“Why?” JD says suspiciously, clutching at his messenger bag.
“Just give it to me,” Ezra demands, as sharp and imperious as he knows how to be. JD narrows his eyes and glances at Buck, who just shrugs. Ezra makes a small noise of frustration and says, “I just need to look at a file.”
“All right, I guess,” JD says, reluctantly, and he fishes his tablet out of his bag and hands it over.
“Hello, Dr. Hooper? Yes, if you could send that report to--”
“I’m so sorry,” Dr. Hooper says in her quiet, diffident way, “but I just noticed that I need authorization to transfer these files. If you wish to call back tomorrow--”
“No,” Ezra says quickly, because he knows that if he has to wait until tomorrow he’ll need to explain to Chris what he was doing today. “Dr. Hooper -- Molly -- please, is there any way you could get the authorization today?” He lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and adds, “We believe we have evidence connecting this woman to James Moriarty and there may be something in that report that will confirm our suspicions.”
“Oh!” Dr. Hooper says, and “Well.” and “I’ll just. I’ll just see about transferring you to … to … to someone who can help you.”
“Thank you,” Ezra says, resolutely ignoring Buck and JD’s increasingly curious stares. He drums his fingers on the tabletop and concentrates on maintaining his composure. There will be questions, he knows, but --
“Mycroft Holmes,” a deeply cultured voice says in his ear.
“Mr. Holmes. I’m Ezra Standish from --”
“I know who you are, Mr. Standish, and who you work for. And why you’re calling,” Mycroft says, sounding so must like a bored, mid-level government official that Ezra knows it’s a facade. It’s nearly midnight in London, now, and Ezra’s sure that no mid-level government official would still be taking calls at the office. “You believe that this Irene Adler person is in some way connected to James Moriarty.”
“Yes.”
“We have no evidence of any sort of connection.” Mycroft’s voice is still bland, still indifferent, but Ezra can feel the tension, the interest, buried deep within his words.
“It hasn’t been marked for broad dissemination,” Ezra bluffs. “Moriarty has eyes and ears everywhere.”
“Yes,” Mycroft says. “He does.” He’s silent for long enough that Ezra begins to wonder if the connection’s been dropped, and then he says, “Very well. I will transmit the autopsy report to you.”
“My email is--”
“We know what it is. Good day, Mr. Standish.”
Ezra ends the call and looks at his phone. “Weirdo,” he mutters, then he pulls JD’s tablet closer and logs into his email.
“You gonna tell us what that’s all about?” Buck asks.
“And what you’re lookin’ at?” JD adds. He cranes forward and Ezra twists away, shielding the screen of the tablet from view.
“A personal matter,” Ezra says as he scrolls through the report. He’s looking for the two pins in Irene’s right tibia, left in after she broke her leg skiing in Aspen when she was fifteen. It’s the only distinguishing mark he can think of, and he’s checking to see if any x-rays have been attached to the report when JD’s tablet suddenly goes berserk and the report is replaced with the picture of a man with ridiculous cheekbones.
“What the--” Ezra begins to say when the man interrupts with, “You! Why are you looking for Irene Adler?”
“Who the hell are you?” Ezra asks, while across from him JD makes a sudden squeaking noise and nearly knocks his chair over in his haste to rise.
“Irrelevant,” the man replies, and then regards him with narrowed eyes, before abruptly turning to shout over his shoulder, “Tell Mycroft he’s slipping in his dotage, John! The man’s a con artist, and Moriarty never works with con artists.” He turns back to Ezra and adds, “and a bad con artist, too, yes, or else you wouldn’t be working for the government. Tell me, is it some sort of work-release program? You Americans, always giving your greatest criminals access to government records. It’s no wonder your government is spying on you.”
“I don’t know who you think you are, sir,” Ezra says, with as much haughty dignity as he can muster -- but he’s cut off when JD snatches the tablet from him and says, in a high-pitched, breathless sort of voice, “Oh my god, you’re Sherlock Holmes.”
“You!” Holmes says snappishly, “give me back to the thief! I wasn’t done with him.”
“Sherlock Holmes,” JD says, almost reverentially.
“Yes, yes, that’s me,” Holmes replies. “Now you, thief, tell me everything you know about Irene Adler. Where is she? You will tell me where she is, right now.”
“Irene Adler? I have no clue who you’re talking about,” Ezra says, breezily, suddenly giddy. He knows the name, of course -- the man is JD’s favorite subject, after all, and now that he thinks about it he can see the resemblance with the face on JD’s “hat detective” t-shirts -- and he’s sure, now, that his sister is alive. Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t be hacking into JD’s tablet if Irene Adler were truly dead.
“You’re lying,” Holmes says, sounding pleased. “Why are you lying? What could Irene mean to you? A lover? No, you wouldn’t lie about that. But there’s something personal. After all, she’s been declared dead. No casual acquaintance would search for a woman who’s said to be dead. And calling in such favors. You want to find her quite badly, indeed. Or perhaps you wish to see her body; you did request the autopsy report; but you didn’t inquire as to the disposition of the body, so you aren’t searching for something physical. So, a man who is not her lover, but doesn’t believe she’s dead, and a con artist to boot…You, boy, turn me to see his shoes. I must see the man’s shoes.”
“I think not,” Ezra says, standing and stepping well away from the range of the tablet’s camera. He snags his jacket from the back of his chair and leaves some money on the table as he goes and adds, “Gentlemen, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
It’s a lie, of course, because he plans on being on a plane to Switzerland tomorrow, though he knows he’ll tell Chris why tonight.
As he leaves, Ezra can hear Holmes shouting some very impassioned things indeed, while another man in the background says, “Pants, Sherlock! You promised you’d have pants!”
***
Sir Edmund Featherstonhaugh, 6th Bt, arrives in London on a sunny Wednesday morning. He is dressed in a three-piece dove gray suit that still looks crisp despite a six-hour flight, and he has the obnoxiously healthy tan of the idle rich. He strolls through Heathrow with an unhurried ease, apparently oblivious to the way every security camera slowly turns and follows him. He catches a cab to a neat little flat on the south-east corner of Grosvenor Square (subsequent investigation divulges that Sir Edmund has owned this flat for four years and has a rather modest list of similar properties located all over the British Isles, some of which have been in his family line for three generations). Over the next few days he visits his banker, his investment manager, Sotheby’s (twice) and several expensive and discreet tailors; indeed, the only possible evidence that Sir Edmund is not who he appears to be -- which is to say a fortunately moneyed member of Britain’s hereditary gentry, come back home for a quick stop before heading off for more temperate climes -- is the fact that for four hours on his third day in town he completely disappears and, despite Mycroft Holmes’ best efforts, resolutely cannot be found.
***
Ezra stands in the middle of Geoffrey and Arlene Cabbot’s home and takes in the rather contradictory surroundings.
The Cabbots live on the eastern edge of Primrose Hill, in a top floor, three bedroom flat with high ceilings and stunning views. The furniture is primarily second hand -- but expensive -- mid-century modern pieces but there’s also, rather glaringly, a paisley couch and a monstrously ugly cat tower. On the parson’s table set flush to the couch’s back, there is small jade sculpture carved to resemble a dragon (which Ezra knows was stolen from the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian seven years ago) , a tiffany vase filled with sunflowers, and a model replica of the Millenium Falcon. The coats in the coat closet are a mix of very new (the price tag is still attached to one of them) and very old (the one closest to the door has been patched at least twice that Ezra can see). All in all, the Cabbot’s home conveys an impression of wealth and gentility -- although it’s clear that for at least one of the Cabbots, this wealth is newly acquired.
Ezra takes a step towards the couch and the ugly black throw pillow moves, revealing itself to be an extremely fat cat, who looks at him with kind of regal disdain that only a fat cat can deliver. Ezra stares back and the cat yawns, then rolls onto its back and goes back to sleep with its legs in the air.
“I see you’ve met Chubbs,” Irene says as she comes in from the kitchen bearing the tea tray.
“Godfrey’s, I assume,” Ezra says, as he watches Irene pour out the tea into a pair of mugs -- one plain white, the other sporting an Oscar Wilde quote. He thinks she looks happy, but she’s always looked happy to him. “You’re going to have to do something about him, you know.”
“Oh he’s just an old softy,” Irene says as she sits back on the couch. The cat cracks open one yellow eye and stares at her for a long, unblinking minute, before making a chirping noise and stretching out its back legs towards her. “And so’s the cat,” she adds, laughing like their mother, as she tickles the cat’s toes.
Ezra rolls his eyes as he takes a seat in the club chair next to the couch. “But really, Irene. Geoffrey? That’s barely a name change.”
“Give him time, Ezra. He’s new.” Irene takes a sip of her tea and regards Ezra with her pale green eyes. “So. I take it Mother sent you?”
“You know Mother,” Ezra says. “She means well. Or she thinks she does, at any rate.”
“You have got to stop apologizing for her, Ezra,” she says. “Honestly, I don’t get the two of you sometimes.”
Ezra shrugs, unable to convey in words just how different his childhood was from hers. “Will you call her? Please? She’s just going to make my life a living hell until you do.”
“Oh all right,” Irene says good-naturedly. “I will. In another month or two.”
“Irene.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll call her tomorrow.” She puts down her mug and mockingly shakes her finger at Ezra. “But if she gives me the number of another divorce attorney, I’m holding you responsible.”
Ezra smiles and fiddles with Sir Edmund’s cufflinks. “So,” he says, “what happened?”
“With Mother?” Irene picks up her mug again and idly stirs her tea. “Oh you know, lots of ranting, vague histrionics --”
“Irene, I’m quite familiar with Mother when she’s in a mood.” Ezra picks up his own mug -- it’s the plain white one, and he can see that it’s not as new as he’d thought -- and he knows before he even takes a sip that the tea will be too bitter and too strong; Irene had never developed the childhood taste for sweet tea the way he and Maude had. “I mean everything else. Let’s start with this king of yours.”
“Who, Willie?” Irene smiles and rolls her eyes. “He’s not much of a king, you know.”
“A king’s a king,” Ezra says. “I hear he had a tiara for you.”
“It wasn’t much of a tiara,” Irene says dismissively. “I’ve seen better.”
“Is that what got you into trouble? Insulting his family jewels?”
“I wish it’d been something as good as that. Oh lord it’s so gauche, Ezra, you’ll laugh,” she says, and laughs herself. She leans forward, coy and amused and inviting intimacy -- it’s a trick she learned from Maude and one that Ezra has never quite managed to duplicate -- and lowers her voice as she says, “It’s a sex tape.”
“Irene!”
“Oh not of me.” She smiles at him, pleased with his reaction, with the way he conveyed just the right amount of amused shock. “Of Willie and Bernard.”
“Bernard,” Ezra says, drily.
“He was a chorus tenor. Lovely boy, beautiful legs, queerer than a two dollar bill. Poor Willie was utterly besotted with him. It’s so sad, really, the way Willie mooned about him. And a terrible break up, too; Bernard really has no idea how to be discreet. Willie should thank his lucky stars that I ended up with the tape, or the whole world would have seen his pimply royal behind.” She sits back and shakes her head sadly. “Bernard would have posted the whole torrid affair on Twitter if I hadn’t stopped him. Really, though, it’s the wife I feel sorry for.”
“And you … what? Blackmailed him with it?”
“Nothing so crass. I merely told him I had the video and I was keeping it. Bernard was on it too, you know, and he does so want to be a real singer.” She sighs and taps her index finger against her chin. “Perhaps I should have given it to him, but I don’t think that would have made him happy. And, really, I do still think I was doing the right thing, although I could have done without the way-laying in Paris.”
“Do you think he’d kill to get it back? Is that why you faked your death?”
“Honestly, Ezra, I don’t know why that train crashed. We were supposed to be on it, but Godfrey was pick-pocketed in Salzburg, and by the time we realized that whoever it was had used his license to pick up our train tickets in Vienna, we’d been declared dead.” She sighs and stirs her tea again, and Ezra can’t help but notice that Irene’s tells are no more telling than his own. “Godfrey thinks Willie was responsible, but I can’t believe that; I know Willie’s a bully and a beast, but I don’t think he’s capable of killing so many innocent people. But it was convenient, you know, since we were planning on quietly slipping out of that life anyway. Willie is very persistent and he knows -- well, he suspects -- things; things that I think it’s better Godfrey learn from his wife than from a stranger. It’s a bit of a shame I didn’t have more time to prepare Godfrey for being Geoffrey Cabbot, but he’s doing the best he can, the dear.” She puts her mug down and clasps her hands and leans forward, the way she used to when they were children together and she was trying to persuade Ezra to show her some trick or buy her some new bauble. “Ezra, I know Mother doesn’t understand why I’m happy, but I hope you do. Godfrey’s not perfect, of course -- he’s so terribly honest, you know -- but I do love him. I love him, and he’s good to me, and he loves me back. You can understand that, can’t you? You can understand why I had to pretend I was dead, why I stopped talking to Mother?”
“I do,” Ezra says, and he drinks his tea.
This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth where there are
comments
Fandom: Magnificent Seven, Sherlock Holmes (mostly Beeb!Lock, with an ACD!Irene)
Characters/Pairing: Ezra Standish, Maude Standish, Irene Adler, and a cast of dozens
Rating: Gen.
Summary: As with most of the disasters in Ezra's life, this one begins with his mother. It's just his rotten luck that it also involves his sister.
Notes: For
mendax, who had the original idea and then foisted the bunny off onto me. Absolutely un-beta'd; all disasters (even Ezra's) are my own.
As with most of the disasters in Ezra’s life, this one begins with his mother.
In this case, it’s a baffling text sent at 5:22 AM that reads he’s not even a real lawyer. By the time Ezra reads the text at the much more civilized hour of 10:15, Maude’s sent him five more texts -- his favorite is a TIARA!!, simply because he has absolutely no idea in what context that phrase makes any sort of sense -- and an incoherent voice mail. He deletes the voice mail without actually listening to more than a second or two, but he always deletes all of Maude’s voice mails without listening to them. By the time Ezra makes it in to work -- they’re taking down Henry Irons today, and Ezra always experiences that extra frisson of terror that comes from the increased possibility of being made by paranoid psychopaths during the run up to a take-down -- Maude’s texted him 3 more times.
it’s just like Minsk all over again the latest reads.
“Minsk?” Ezra says aloud. “When was she in Minsk?”
“When was who in Minsk?” JD asks as he finishes adjusting Ezra’s wire.
“Mother,” Ezra says, frowning at his phone, unnerved by the sheer number of messages from his mother. The last time Maude sent him so many texts was right before the Santiago debacle, and while Ezra can’t actually prove that Maude blew his cover, he has very concrete suspicions. He should probably text her back -- Maude is not the kind of person to take kindly to being ignored -- but he really doesn’t have time to deal with Maude’s newest outrage.
“Should we postpone?” JD asks, with the wisdom of someone who’s had an op blown on him on account of Maude. (It was a small op, but it’d been JD’s first, and there had been quite a lot of paperwork producing property damage.)
Ezra shrugs and glances at Chris who says, “We gonna get another shot at this?”
“Perhaps in 3 weeks?” Ezra says slowly, fiddling with his cufflinks.
“Can we afford 3 weeks?”
Ezra sighs. They probably could wait 3 weeks, but Irons has been making noises about having another buyer interested in his inventory. Ezra’s fairly certain that it’s a ruse, but he doesn’t want to take the chance.
“Think Irons will spook if you show up with a second body guard?” Chris says.
“If it’s you?” Ezra says, grinning. “Yes.”
“Listen,” Chris says, low and serious, “if you think this’ll go pear-shaped --”
“Sentiment, Mister Larabee, does not become you.”
Chris grins at that, sharp and fast and understanding. He clasps Ezra on the shoulder and says, “Well, try not to get shot.”
“I always do, Chris,” Ezra says, smoothing down his tie. “I always do.”
***
Of course Maude, being Maude, isn’t the kind of person to let herself be ignored, which is why she calls his other work phone just as Ezra’s about to get Henry Irons to commit a felony by selling him a truly excessive amount of C-4.
“Ezra,” Maude says waspishly, as if she’s the aggrieved party and not the one about to blow a 7-month operation, “why aren’t you answering your phone?”
“How did you get this number?” Ezra hisses through his teeth as he smiles at Irons and makes a “just one minute” gesture.
“Why from that lovely arms dealer you’re trying to arrest,” Maude says. “We had such a delightful lunch the other day.
Ezra winces and turns away from Irons so the paranoid psychopath can’t see his expression. “You talked with him!?”
“Oh darling boy, of course I did,” Maude says. “I’m you mother. I always want to get to know your friends.” She makes a tsk-ing noise. “Though, really, Ezra, I do wish you’d have higher standards. Why I just happened to show him a dreadful Warhol forgery and he just gave me his bank account numbers.”
Maude laughs at that, and Ezra feels that steady sinking feeling he always gets when his mother is about to ruin his life yet again. Ezra glances at Irons, who’s checking something on his computer, and edges a little closer to the stack of weapons crates. He’s not sure what shape Maude’s meddling will take but he’s pretty sure that he wants to be as far away from the heavily armed men as possible; he just hopes someone’s told Vin about Maude so he’s ready for the inevitable shooting.
“Mother --” Ezra says, as someone starts shouting behind him.
“Oh dear,” Maude says airly. “Sounds like someone’s just found out his accounts have been drained. I do hope he doesn’t think you did it, Ezra.”
“What did you--”
“Adieu, darling. Call me once you’re done with your violence,” Maude says as she hangs up. Ezra has just enough time to throw his phone across the warehouse before he has to dive behind the pile of crates before Irons and his people start shooting.
***
When Ezra finally manages to get back to his condo, he’s not at all surprised to find his mother sitting in his favorite chair and sipping from a glass filled with what is no doubt Ezra’s most expensive wine -- he’d seen the private town car idling outside his door, after all. He glares at both his mother and his wine, then goes and fetches a glass of water, making sure to play up his brand new limp.
“Oh Ezra,” Maude says watching him down his glass of water at the sink. “Tap water?” She takes a sip of her wine and primly sniffs. “Even a bottle as mediocre as this one is better than tap water.”
“The downside to a concussion,” Ezra says conversationally as he fills his glass again, “is that I am prohibited from drinking anything stronger than water. As much as I might wish to.” He takes his glass and limps his way over to his mother, groaning a little as he sits down in his second favorite chair. “On the positive side,” he adds, as he puts his gun and the handcuffs he normally keeps in his desk drawer down on the table, “I’m sure my condition meant Director Travis felt just terrible about yelling at me for blowing the op.”
“You arrested that Irons man, didn’t you?” Maude says.
“Mother, we were trying to find his supplier.” Ezra sighs and eyes the glass of wine with a deep and woeful longing.
“Attempted murder, gun running, it’s all the same,” Maude says dismissively.She puts her glass down and leans forward and smiles at him like she really means it -- it’s the one that she rarely pulls out because it goes all the way up to her eyes and, more importantly, her laugh lines -- and Ezra ruthlessly suppresses his urge to flinch. He puts his own glass down instead and raises an eyebrow in the way he knows Maude hates.
“Honestly, Ezra,” she snaps, smile dropping instantly away, “I don’t know why you always do that. It makes you look like a constipated ferret.”
“What do you want, Mother.”
“I want you to do something about your sister.”
“Who? Irene?”
“Do you have any other sisters?”
“Well…”
Maude sighs and makes a tsk-ing noise. “Ezra, that little joke of yours is no more amusing now than it was when you were twelve.”
Ezra picks up his glass and takes a sip of his water to hide his smirk. “What has she done now?”
“She’s gotten married,” Maude says, in a tone of voice more suited for announcements such as “she’s posted a confessional video on YouTube” or “she robbed a bank and gave all the money to charity”.
“And?”
“And? And?! She had a king wrapped around her little finger! And she turns him down for some odious little barrister. A barrister for god’s sake. He’s not even a real lawyer, and your sister -- who could have become a princess, or at least had a grand duchy -- throws over the opportunity of a lifetime--.”
“A princess?” Ezra says, interrupting Maude before she can really get going. He puts his glass down again and sits back in his chair. “Perhaps you should start from the beginning.”
“It was the most wonderful thing. She was doing her little singing thing in one of those tiny European countries -- Belgium, or Bulgaria or Bohemia; some place that starts with a B at any rate -- and I arrange for her to meet the king -- a delightful man, married of course, and it’s a shame about the chin, but an absolutely perfect doll of a man otherwise. At any rate, he was absolutely besotted with her, of course, gave her all kinds of beautiful things -- jewelry, patronage, an absolutely darling Renoir, a sweet little castle -- and I just know that in a few more months she could have had free reign of the royal treasury.”
“Sounds delightful,” Ezra says, steepling his hands. “But?”
“Oh you know Irene, there’s always something wrong with the men I find for her. So he happens to be a bit old fashioned about some things; like I told her, it’s not as if she’s married to the man, and a title and a tiara make up for so many faults. But no, Irene has to do things her own way, and the next thing you know, she’s run off to London and gotten herself married to some common barrister of all people.” Maude sighs dramatically and pulls a lacy handkerchief out of her clutch to dab at her eyes with. “Children. You do the best you can with them and they always disappoint you.”
Ezra bites the inside of his cheek before he can say anything about disappointment being a two-way street and takes a deep breath. His head is really aching now and while he wants many things, for the moment he’ll settle for getting through this conversation without it devolving into a screaming match.
“While this is all fascinating, what do you want me to do about it, Mother?” He narrows his eyes into his best approximation of Chris’s glare and adds, “I’m not going to talk her out of this. It’s Irene’s life, and if she wants to be married to a barrister, then that’s her decision.”
“I want nothing of the kind, Ezra. All I want is to talk to her.”
“So why don’t you just call her? Why go through me?”
“Because she’s not taking my calls.” Maude dabs at her eyes again and says, “I make one little comment about--”
“Mother.”
“Oh very well. But honestly, Ezra, I just want to speak to my daughter. What if there are grandbabies?”
“Grandbabies? Mother, how long has Irene been married?”
“Oh a month or two. But you never know!”
Ezra rolls his eyes and sighs. “Fine. I’ll talk to her. But you know Irene, Mother. I can’t promise anything.”
“You darling boy,” Maude says, and the smile she gives him is honest in its affection -- or as honest as anything Maude does ever can be.
“Yes, well,” Ezra mumbles, looking away; he hates that Maude can still make him feel like a little boy who’d do anything for his mother’s love. “My guest room is--”
Maude laughs and stands. “Oh Ezra, you didn’t really think I’d stay here did you?”
“Well,” Ezra says as he also stands, “yes.”
Maude laughs again and pats his cheek. “I have a meeting in New York, darling, and I must toodle off.”
Ezra nods and tries to not let the relief he’s feeling show. He loves his mother, of course, but he prefers to love her abstractly and from far, far away. “If you’re sure,” he says, more out of ingrained good breeding than any real desire to convince her to say.
“I really can’t miss this meeting -- I’m this close to convincing a rather doddy old banker to give me this precious little ivory statute he owns. Adieu, darling. Call me when you find her.” She kisses his cheek and opens the door just as Vin is reaching for the knob.
“Mister Tanner,” Maude purrs, and Ezra rolls her eyes at the way Vin straightens up from his habitual slouch.
“Ma’am,” Vin says, touching the brim of his hat with the hand not holding the six pack and the bag from CVS. “Are you visitin’ long?”
“No, alas,” Maude says, “I’m just passing through. In fact, I’m off to the airport right now.”
“Shame,” Vin says, like he means it.
“Yes,” Ezra says, and he casually takes Maude’s elbow and hustles her out of his condo. “Really. Such a shame. Good bye, Mother, I hope you don’t miss your flight.”
He waits until Maude’s safely away in her hired town car -- a ride that he’s no doubt paying for, and he doesn’t even bother to verify that she’s lifted his AmEx and the hundred dollars he’d won at last week’s poker game -- before he goes back inside and glares at Vin, who looks blandly back at him from where he’s sitting with his feet up on Ezra’s coffee table.
“Just decided to drop by?” he asks Vin.
“24-hour concussion watch, Ezra. You know the drill,” Vin says as he tosses the bag to Ezra. It rattles as it flies through the air and Ezra knows without looking that it’s a bottle of aspirin.
“Mm,” Ezra says, pushing Vin’s feet off the table as he goes back to reclaim his favorite chair. “Let me guess -- you drew the short straw.”
Vin shrugs and opens up a beer. “Could be worse,” he says. “Could’ve been Josiah.”
***
He starts looking for Irene on Monday, when he’s back in the office and no longer subject to the “tender” ministrations of his friends. It takes him the better part of the morning to track down her current alias -- not too shabby, if he does say so himself, given that he had only her name and Maude’s off-hand comment about a singing career -- but once he’s verified that the Irene Adler who’d sung the role of Marta in the Teatro Goldoni’s production of Iolanta two seasons ago is indeed his sister, it doesn’t take long to track her progress across Europe. She disappears for eight months after singing in Vienna, and the next time he finds mention of her is in an article in the Daily Mail about a train wreck in the Carpathian mountains, where she’s cast as the face of the tragedy for the British public.
Ezra sits back in his chair feeling like he’s just been punched. He’d never been particularly close to Irene -- well, there was more than a decade between them and by the time Irene had gotten old enough to be interesting, Ezra had been living in Tuscany and learning how to make forgeries from “Uncle Umberto” -- but she’s still his sister. Was his sister.
He wonders why Maude didn’t tell him. It’s not like the article was particularly difficult to find. And even if she’d missed the first article, there’s no way she could have missed the ones that followed -- the fruitless search for a reason for the accident, the hysterical cries of terrorism, the tawdry memorial to Mr. Godfrey Norton and his new, blushing bride Irene (nee Adler, and hailing from New Jersey, and both those facts are lies). His mother is many things, but she’s never been this deliberately cruel.
He tastes bile in the back of his throat, and he can’t breathe; the office is too close, too stuffy. His vision dims and he knows, intellectually, that he’s experiencing shock and that he should go to Nathan or to Chris or Josiah and tell them everything. He goes to the roof instead, where the wind isn’t quite strong enough to blow away the smell of stale cigarette smoke, but it’s still better than the air downstairs. He pulls out his cellphone and stares at it for a long time before call his mother.
Maude picks up on the fourth ring and it sounds very much like there’s a party going on in the backgrounds -- laughter and innocuous jazz music and the distinctive tinkle of cocktail glasses.
“Ezra!” she says, sounding breathless and delighted, and her voice fades slightly as she goes on, “My son, you know, I was telling you all about him Preston, he is such a treasure, but helpless, absolutely helpless, without me. I simply must take this, oh you’re such a doll, please excuse me--” The background noise cuts off abruptly and for a few long minutes all Ezra hears are the soft noises of cloth against cloth, the creak of a chair, the quiet clink of ice against glass.
“Well?” Maude says at last, her voice still pleasant but plainer somehow. “Did you --”
“Did you know?” Ezra says, harsher than he means to. “Did you just -- is this some sort of punishment, Mother?”
“Punishment? Whatever do you mean?”
“The train, Mother. I’m talking about the train wreck, the one that --” but he can’t say it, yet. He can’t admit out loud that Irene is dead, in part because in his heart he doesn’t believe it to be true.
“Oh, that.” Maude laughs, airy and dismissive. “A fake, of course.”
“Mother, they found bodies. They.” He takes a deep breath. He can do this. It’s not like Irene is the first person he’s loved who died. “She’s dead, Mother. That’s why she won’t talk to you.”
“Ezra! How dare you say such things! How dare you even think that about your sister!”
“It’s the truth --”
“I am her mother, Ezra,” Maude says, cutting him off. “I would know if something happened to her. I would know.”
Her voice is sharp and brittle, and Ezra doesn’t know what to do. He’s never heard Maude sound so fragile before, and the fragility frightens him. He looks down at his shoes -- scuffed, not his best, probably need to be re-soled in a month -- and takes a deep breath, though he’s not sure what he is going to say or how he will say it.
“Besides,” Maude says, just as the silence begins to grow too long, “someone is still using her bank account. The one in Switzerland, and you know how they are about authorization. If it’s not her, then who is it?”
Ezra breathes out, and some of the queasy ache in his gut eases. “That is a fair point.”
“Of course it is. Honestly, Ezra, how you could even think that is beyond me.” Ezra hears cloth rustle again and he knows Maude is standing and smoothing herself down, preparing to end the call and head back to whatever game she’s playing. “So you’ll forget all about that train nonsense and actually look for her, yes?”
“It’s going to be an official investigation if I do,” he warns, though he knows that, should it become necessary, he can keep everything off the books. “I’ll have to go through official channels.”
“I know that, Ezra. Why do you think I asked you to look for her?” She laughs, false and gay, and says, “Ta ta, dearest. Call me later.”
She hangs up and Ezra stares at his phone for a good long minute before putting it away. He takes a deep breath and stares out at the open rooftops around him until he he no longer feels hemmed in. He’s thoughtful as he goes back to his desk and methodically begins to read through the latest bulletins. Maude’s never asked him to do something in an official capacity before, and the fact that she’s asking now means there’s more to whatever’s going with Irene than she’s telling him.
Ezra closes his email and leans back in his chair. He knows he should tell someone about Maude and Irene, but his instinct is to stay silent and solve this problem on his own. It’s a family matter and he’s always dealt with family on his own. Besides, he thinks he knows what he has to do, but the plan he’s vaguely formulated is far too much like the plans he used to come up with back before Atlanta, and that discomfits him in ways he’s not particularly eager to explore. The plan he’s formulating is not entirely illegal, of course, not even mostly, but there’s enough illegality there to cast all the old, familiar doubts upon his character, and he has grown quite used to Denver for all its faults. He’s grown used to having trust, as well, and he thinks that this -- that what Maude is asking him to do -- may destroy whatever store of trust he’s managed to accumulate.
On the other hand, Chris isn’t McCarthy, and perhaps he’s wrong to assume that Denver will be the same as Atlanta. This is the ATF, after all, not the FBI, and he’s worked outside the strict lines of the law before and with Chris’s blessing. True, he’d been doing his job, then, and the end result had always been to stop the influx of weapons onto American soil, not something as deeply personal as getting to the bottom of a train’s derailment more than half the world away.
He sighs and looks at Chris’s office -- the blinds are down as usual, but the door is open and Ezra can see Chris typing away at something and he knows that his every movement is being tracked -- and but there are no answers there.
His mother or career. Well, he knew he’d have to make this choice someday.
“You feelin’ OK, Ezra?” Nathan asks as Ezra stops at his desk.
“I’m just taking an early lunch,” he replies. He glances at Chris again, then fiddles with his phone in his pocket. “I may take the rest of the day off, however. My head is still somewhat sore.”
“You ain’t feelin’ dizzy are you?” Nathan peers up at him with his serious eyes. “I know you didn’t want a CT, but if you’re still hurtin’--”
“Just a headache, Nathan. But it does make concentrating on filling out my F-8620s.” He flashes Nathan a smile that he hopes is reassuring and thinks about nothing at all until he’s pushing open the door to The Saloon. He orders a beer and a burger with all the trimmings and is only mildly surprised when Inez brings him a bowl of chicken posole and an iced tea.
“Sorry, senor Ezra, but doctor’s orders,” she tells him.
Ezra grunts and eats his soup -- it really is quite good -- and thinks about his choices. On the one hand, he could keep this all above board -- it’s not too late to tell Chris the truth -- and make his requests through the official channels. He knows a few people at Interpol who are still talking to him, and Gregson at New Scotland Yard owes him several favors. On the other hand, he’s intimately aware with just how long an “official” investigation can take, particularly when a conclusion has already been formed. An unofficial investigation would be swift and he could start making inquiries now, since the people he’d need to call would just be beginning their work. Besides, any official investigation might eventually lead to Maude, and while Ezra occasionally fantasizes about locking his mother up and throwing away the key he knows he could never actually allow that to happen.
When he thinks in those terms, it’s really not a difficult choice at all.
He begins with a phone call to an old counterfeiter in Bucharest, which leads him to a fence in Brasov, which leads him to a minor official in Krakow, which gets him the phone number of another slightly-less-minor (but far more corrupt) official in Bratislava, who knows the girlfriend of a fixer in Vienna, who hangs up on him twice until Ezra casually drops the name James Moriarty. Things begin to pick up the pace after that, and Ezra’s passed from one country to another. He ends up speaking with a retired prison warden in Belarus, who hands him off to a journalist in Portugal, who sends him to a banker in Ireland, who gives him the number of a coroner in Cardiff, who transfers him to a coroner in London, who transfers him to an entirely different coroner in London -- a rather mouse-y sounding woman, who nevertheless manages to fend off his best phone flirtation and maintains an impenetrable front of professionalism. It takes him the better part of an hour to convince her to email him the autopsy report on the body that was identified as his sister’s when JD and Buck walk in.
“Excuse me for one second, Dr. Hooper,” he says as he moves his phone away from his mouth and waves the pair over.
“Figures you’d be here,” Buck says, smirking a little as he sits down.
“JD, give me your tablet,” Ezra says, resolutely ignoring Buck and his insinuations.
“What?”
“Your tablet,” Ezra says again, with greater impatience. “I need to borrow it.”
“Why?” JD says suspiciously, clutching at his messenger bag.
“Just give it to me,” Ezra demands, as sharp and imperious as he knows how to be. JD narrows his eyes and glances at Buck, who just shrugs. Ezra makes a small noise of frustration and says, “I just need to look at a file.”
“All right, I guess,” JD says, reluctantly, and he fishes his tablet out of his bag and hands it over.
“Hello, Dr. Hooper? Yes, if you could send that report to--”
“I’m so sorry,” Dr. Hooper says in her quiet, diffident way, “but I just noticed that I need authorization to transfer these files. If you wish to call back tomorrow--”
“No,” Ezra says quickly, because he knows that if he has to wait until tomorrow he’ll need to explain to Chris what he was doing today. “Dr. Hooper -- Molly -- please, is there any way you could get the authorization today?” He lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and adds, “We believe we have evidence connecting this woman to James Moriarty and there may be something in that report that will confirm our suspicions.”
“Oh!” Dr. Hooper says, and “Well.” and “I’ll just. I’ll just see about transferring you to … to … to someone who can help you.”
“Thank you,” Ezra says, resolutely ignoring Buck and JD’s increasingly curious stares. He drums his fingers on the tabletop and concentrates on maintaining his composure. There will be questions, he knows, but --
“Mycroft Holmes,” a deeply cultured voice says in his ear.
“Mr. Holmes. I’m Ezra Standish from --”
“I know who you are, Mr. Standish, and who you work for. And why you’re calling,” Mycroft says, sounding so must like a bored, mid-level government official that Ezra knows it’s a facade. It’s nearly midnight in London, now, and Ezra’s sure that no mid-level government official would still be taking calls at the office. “You believe that this Irene Adler person is in some way connected to James Moriarty.”
“Yes.”
“We have no evidence of any sort of connection.” Mycroft’s voice is still bland, still indifferent, but Ezra can feel the tension, the interest, buried deep within his words.
“It hasn’t been marked for broad dissemination,” Ezra bluffs. “Moriarty has eyes and ears everywhere.”
“Yes,” Mycroft says. “He does.” He’s silent for long enough that Ezra begins to wonder if the connection’s been dropped, and then he says, “Very well. I will transmit the autopsy report to you.”
“My email is--”
“We know what it is. Good day, Mr. Standish.”
Ezra ends the call and looks at his phone. “Weirdo,” he mutters, then he pulls JD’s tablet closer and logs into his email.
“You gonna tell us what that’s all about?” Buck asks.
“And what you’re lookin’ at?” JD adds. He cranes forward and Ezra twists away, shielding the screen of the tablet from view.
“A personal matter,” Ezra says as he scrolls through the report. He’s looking for the two pins in Irene’s right tibia, left in after she broke her leg skiing in Aspen when she was fifteen. It’s the only distinguishing mark he can think of, and he’s checking to see if any x-rays have been attached to the report when JD’s tablet suddenly goes berserk and the report is replaced with the picture of a man with ridiculous cheekbones.
“What the--” Ezra begins to say when the man interrupts with, “You! Why are you looking for Irene Adler?”
“Who the hell are you?” Ezra asks, while across from him JD makes a sudden squeaking noise and nearly knocks his chair over in his haste to rise.
“Irrelevant,” the man replies, and then regards him with narrowed eyes, before abruptly turning to shout over his shoulder, “Tell Mycroft he’s slipping in his dotage, John! The man’s a con artist, and Moriarty never works with con artists.” He turns back to Ezra and adds, “and a bad con artist, too, yes, or else you wouldn’t be working for the government. Tell me, is it some sort of work-release program? You Americans, always giving your greatest criminals access to government records. It’s no wonder your government is spying on you.”
“I don’t know who you think you are, sir,” Ezra says, with as much haughty dignity as he can muster -- but he’s cut off when JD snatches the tablet from him and says, in a high-pitched, breathless sort of voice, “Oh my god, you’re Sherlock Holmes.”
“You!” Holmes says snappishly, “give me back to the thief! I wasn’t done with him.”
“Sherlock Holmes,” JD says, almost reverentially.
“Yes, yes, that’s me,” Holmes replies. “Now you, thief, tell me everything you know about Irene Adler. Where is she? You will tell me where she is, right now.”
“Irene Adler? I have no clue who you’re talking about,” Ezra says, breezily, suddenly giddy. He knows the name, of course -- the man is JD’s favorite subject, after all, and now that he thinks about it he can see the resemblance with the face on JD’s “hat detective” t-shirts -- and he’s sure, now, that his sister is alive. Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t be hacking into JD’s tablet if Irene Adler were truly dead.
“You’re lying,” Holmes says, sounding pleased. “Why are you lying? What could Irene mean to you? A lover? No, you wouldn’t lie about that. But there’s something personal. After all, she’s been declared dead. No casual acquaintance would search for a woman who’s said to be dead. And calling in such favors. You want to find her quite badly, indeed. Or perhaps you wish to see her body; you did request the autopsy report; but you didn’t inquire as to the disposition of the body, so you aren’t searching for something physical. So, a man who is not her lover, but doesn’t believe she’s dead, and a con artist to boot…You, boy, turn me to see his shoes. I must see the man’s shoes.”
“I think not,” Ezra says, standing and stepping well away from the range of the tablet’s camera. He snags his jacket from the back of his chair and leaves some money on the table as he goes and adds, “Gentlemen, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
It’s a lie, of course, because he plans on being on a plane to Switzerland tomorrow, though he knows he’ll tell Chris why tonight.
As he leaves, Ezra can hear Holmes shouting some very impassioned things indeed, while another man in the background says, “Pants, Sherlock! You promised you’d have pants!”
***
Sir Edmund Featherstonhaugh, 6th Bt, arrives in London on a sunny Wednesday morning. He is dressed in a three-piece dove gray suit that still looks crisp despite a six-hour flight, and he has the obnoxiously healthy tan of the idle rich. He strolls through Heathrow with an unhurried ease, apparently oblivious to the way every security camera slowly turns and follows him. He catches a cab to a neat little flat on the south-east corner of Grosvenor Square (subsequent investigation divulges that Sir Edmund has owned this flat for four years and has a rather modest list of similar properties located all over the British Isles, some of which have been in his family line for three generations). Over the next few days he visits his banker, his investment manager, Sotheby’s (twice) and several expensive and discreet tailors; indeed, the only possible evidence that Sir Edmund is not who he appears to be -- which is to say a fortunately moneyed member of Britain’s hereditary gentry, come back home for a quick stop before heading off for more temperate climes -- is the fact that for four hours on his third day in town he completely disappears and, despite Mycroft Holmes’ best efforts, resolutely cannot be found.
***
Ezra stands in the middle of Geoffrey and Arlene Cabbot’s home and takes in the rather contradictory surroundings.
The Cabbots live on the eastern edge of Primrose Hill, in a top floor, three bedroom flat with high ceilings and stunning views. The furniture is primarily second hand -- but expensive -- mid-century modern pieces but there’s also, rather glaringly, a paisley couch and a monstrously ugly cat tower. On the parson’s table set flush to the couch’s back, there is small jade sculpture carved to resemble a dragon (which Ezra knows was stolen from the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian seven years ago) , a tiffany vase filled with sunflowers, and a model replica of the Millenium Falcon. The coats in the coat closet are a mix of very new (the price tag is still attached to one of them) and very old (the one closest to the door has been patched at least twice that Ezra can see). All in all, the Cabbot’s home conveys an impression of wealth and gentility -- although it’s clear that for at least one of the Cabbots, this wealth is newly acquired.
Ezra takes a step towards the couch and the ugly black throw pillow moves, revealing itself to be an extremely fat cat, who looks at him with kind of regal disdain that only a fat cat can deliver. Ezra stares back and the cat yawns, then rolls onto its back and goes back to sleep with its legs in the air.
“I see you’ve met Chubbs,” Irene says as she comes in from the kitchen bearing the tea tray.
“Godfrey’s, I assume,” Ezra says, as he watches Irene pour out the tea into a pair of mugs -- one plain white, the other sporting an Oscar Wilde quote. He thinks she looks happy, but she’s always looked happy to him. “You’re going to have to do something about him, you know.”
“Oh he’s just an old softy,” Irene says as she sits back on the couch. The cat cracks open one yellow eye and stares at her for a long, unblinking minute, before making a chirping noise and stretching out its back legs towards her. “And so’s the cat,” she adds, laughing like their mother, as she tickles the cat’s toes.
Ezra rolls his eyes as he takes a seat in the club chair next to the couch. “But really, Irene. Geoffrey? That’s barely a name change.”
“Give him time, Ezra. He’s new.” Irene takes a sip of her tea and regards Ezra with her pale green eyes. “So. I take it Mother sent you?”
“You know Mother,” Ezra says. “She means well. Or she thinks she does, at any rate.”
“You have got to stop apologizing for her, Ezra,” she says. “Honestly, I don’t get the two of you sometimes.”
Ezra shrugs, unable to convey in words just how different his childhood was from hers. “Will you call her? Please? She’s just going to make my life a living hell until you do.”
“Oh all right,” Irene says good-naturedly. “I will. In another month or two.”
“Irene.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll call her tomorrow.” She puts down her mug and mockingly shakes her finger at Ezra. “But if she gives me the number of another divorce attorney, I’m holding you responsible.”
Ezra smiles and fiddles with Sir Edmund’s cufflinks. “So,” he says, “what happened?”
“With Mother?” Irene picks up her mug again and idly stirs her tea. “Oh you know, lots of ranting, vague histrionics --”
“Irene, I’m quite familiar with Mother when she’s in a mood.” Ezra picks up his own mug -- it’s the plain white one, and he can see that it’s not as new as he’d thought -- and he knows before he even takes a sip that the tea will be too bitter and too strong; Irene had never developed the childhood taste for sweet tea the way he and Maude had. “I mean everything else. Let’s start with this king of yours.”
“Who, Willie?” Irene smiles and rolls her eyes. “He’s not much of a king, you know.”
“A king’s a king,” Ezra says. “I hear he had a tiara for you.”
“It wasn’t much of a tiara,” Irene says dismissively. “I’ve seen better.”
“Is that what got you into trouble? Insulting his family jewels?”
“I wish it’d been something as good as that. Oh lord it’s so gauche, Ezra, you’ll laugh,” she says, and laughs herself. She leans forward, coy and amused and inviting intimacy -- it’s a trick she learned from Maude and one that Ezra has never quite managed to duplicate -- and lowers her voice as she says, “It’s a sex tape.”
“Irene!”
“Oh not of me.” She smiles at him, pleased with his reaction, with the way he conveyed just the right amount of amused shock. “Of Willie and Bernard.”
“Bernard,” Ezra says, drily.
“He was a chorus tenor. Lovely boy, beautiful legs, queerer than a two dollar bill. Poor Willie was utterly besotted with him. It’s so sad, really, the way Willie mooned about him. And a terrible break up, too; Bernard really has no idea how to be discreet. Willie should thank his lucky stars that I ended up with the tape, or the whole world would have seen his pimply royal behind.” She sits back and shakes her head sadly. “Bernard would have posted the whole torrid affair on Twitter if I hadn’t stopped him. Really, though, it’s the wife I feel sorry for.”
“And you … what? Blackmailed him with it?”
“Nothing so crass. I merely told him I had the video and I was keeping it. Bernard was on it too, you know, and he does so want to be a real singer.” She sighs and taps her index finger against her chin. “Perhaps I should have given it to him, but I don’t think that would have made him happy. And, really, I do still think I was doing the right thing, although I could have done without the way-laying in Paris.”
“Do you think he’d kill to get it back? Is that why you faked your death?”
“Honestly, Ezra, I don’t know why that train crashed. We were supposed to be on it, but Godfrey was pick-pocketed in Salzburg, and by the time we realized that whoever it was had used his license to pick up our train tickets in Vienna, we’d been declared dead.” She sighs and stirs her tea again, and Ezra can’t help but notice that Irene’s tells are no more telling than his own. “Godfrey thinks Willie was responsible, but I can’t believe that; I know Willie’s a bully and a beast, but I don’t think he’s capable of killing so many innocent people. But it was convenient, you know, since we were planning on quietly slipping out of that life anyway. Willie is very persistent and he knows -- well, he suspects -- things; things that I think it’s better Godfrey learn from his wife than from a stranger. It’s a bit of a shame I didn’t have more time to prepare Godfrey for being Geoffrey Cabbot, but he’s doing the best he can, the dear.” She puts her mug down and clasps her hands and leans forward, the way she used to when they were children together and she was trying to persuade Ezra to show her some trick or buy her some new bauble. “Ezra, I know Mother doesn’t understand why I’m happy, but I hope you do. Godfrey’s not perfect, of course -- he’s so terribly honest, you know -- but I do love him. I love him, and he’s good to me, and he loves me back. You can understand that, can’t you? You can understand why I had to pretend I was dead, why I stopped talking to Mother?”
“I do,” Ezra says, and he drinks his tea.
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