Part 3 and a morsel

Belle had washed the tears from her face and redone her hair before she had gone to the Brady Pub. Shawn would tease her if she was late, but be concerned if she looked like she’d been crying. She didn’t want him worrying about her. Not now. He had bigger problems, like the fact that Detective Irving was investigating most of his family on suspicion of murder.

She leaned heavily on the counter behind which Caroline stood, polishing glasses. "Have you seen," she stopped briefly, as if to catch her breath, but in reality pushing back the word my, "Shawn tonight?"

"No, dear," Caroline’s blue eyes were as bright as ever. "He hasn’t been in today at all. Was he meant to meet you?"

Belle nodded sadly. She was already an hour late. Where was he? "It doesn’t matter. I’ll just call him on his cellphone."

Caroline smiled and moved off to help another customer.

"Hey, this is Shawn," his voice gave her instant relief.

"Shawn, thank God," but he was going on.

"I’m sorry I can’t pick up right now, but I’ll get back to you if you leave your name, number and message after the be-" As always he was cut off before he could finish.

Belle left a brief message, hoping the strain in her voice wouldn’t worry him.

*******

Detective Irving was back facing John Black across his temporary desk, only this time he had Abe Carver, Roman Brady and Bo Brady also in tow. Undoubtedly, if he had heard of Rex’s confinement, Tony Dimera would probably also be in attendance. The detective was quietly thanking whatever deity was looking over him. He was beginning to feel like Jack Bauer in an endless episode of 24. At least he didn’t have a daughter or a pregnant wife to be kidnapped and held to ransom.

He thought of his dog at home, and hoped nothing would happen to her before he got back to Chicago.

"Irving," John slammed his fists down on to the desktop. "I demand a full apology and immediate release for my daughter."

The news of that infamous smile was spreading through Salem like wildfire through the Australian outback after a rainless summer. The detective’s latest use of it would act like a can of petrol thrown over the flames. "I don’t understand, Mr Black." He subtly emphasised the ‘Mister’. Mr Black had no official capacity here, no matter how closely he and the SPD usually worked. "I’m not holding your daughter."

John was brought up short and snorted like a war-horse feeling the bit pulled back between his teeth. "What about my apology?"

"Apology for what?" Irving’s tone became sarcastic, "For doing my job? For tracking a man who killed your," he turned to the Brady boys with a look of disdain in his eyes, "cousin? For arresting a pair of teenagers who broke the law and contaminated a crime scene?" He was growing angry, his blue eyes boring into John’s cerulean ones, but his anger burned like dry ice, coldly. "Mr Black, if you don’t get your over reaching, unofficial, sneaking, pompous, over bearing, double crossing ass out of my office right now, I’m gonna have you arrested for trespass and harassment."

John Black, unsure of the psychological soundness of Salem’s newest detective, backed away a little.

Irving turned to the Brady men. "I’ve explained this to Abe, now I’m going to say it again, and I’m going to keep repeating myself until someone understands me. This is going to be a clean case, that means no interference from anyone connected with the Brady, Black or Horton families, however tenuous," he shot a glance at Abe, who was standing a little further away out of feelings of self protection than he usually did, "that connection might be. I don’t want to see any of you in my office again until this case is over unless I am the one who called you here." Irving, his anger crystallising in his mind until it was as hard and as unforgiving as diamonds, spoke slower now, spacing his words as if speaking to an idiot child. "Do you understand me?"

The four older men nodded, reprimanded.

Irving nodded once, curtly. "Good. Now get out of my office. Don’t you people have work to do?"

Their pride in tatters, the three police officers and Mr Black left the room.

Still resisting the urge to smoke or grin in self satisfaction, Irving settled down to the difficult work of assessing just who had killed Colin Murphy, and, crucially, why.

This is not to say that he allowed himself no victory pleasure having defeated the combined forces of the Brady boys, Abe Carver and John Black.

Instead of the cigarette or the smile, he opened his door and yelled. "Hey, Ruiz! Any of those chocolate sprinkled doughnuts left?"

*******

She’d never been into a club like this one before. Officially, she wasn’t supposed to go into any club until she was twenty-one, but she was desperate. She couldn’t go home, couldn’t go to her usual haunts of the Brady Pub or anywhere in Salem Place, the Blue Note and the Cheatin’ Heart’s doors were closed to her and her dorm room, currently occupied by the ET-wannabe was even less attractive than standing in the rain outside.

So she had come inside the Bat and Cricket Bar and was now sitting at the counter drinking beer, and completely failing to drown her sorrows. The fact that the beer was non-alcoholic root-beer wasn’t helping. The music, however, was suitably depressing.

She tried to place the singer. She wasn’t modern, that much was for sure.

"Sometimes you hurt me so bad
My tears run like water."

Oh, did she ever know that feeling. She felt herself tuning more and more into the song, and an entirely different lyric flashed through her tired mind - ‘strumming my pain with his fingers’. Except the singer was a woman, soulful and heartsick.
"You get me up
Right before your friends
Then you disown me baby
Until we´re alone again."

The young man was staring into his beer like he had never seen a drink before. It wasn’t his salvation, he was no fool, but for a little while it numbed the pain. He couldn’t deny that he missed his ex-girlfriend, but in time that feeling would pass. He just had to be patient.

"Who am I kidding?" he groaned, resting his head briefly on his crossed arms and loathing himself for his cowardice. "This feeling isn’t going anywhere."

"Tell me about it," the short blonde sitting a few seats down from him looked up from her drink and caught his eye. "Evening, Detective Irving."
Barely raising his head, the Detective murmured, "Evening, Miss Black."

"Love got you down?" The dark haired bartender, unusually good looking even by Salem standards, slowly turned his dark eyed gaze on them, polishing a glass with a cloth he usually kept slung over one well built shoulder.

"You don’t know the half of it," his customers said in unison.

"Who’s the singer?" Belle jerked her thumb at the record machine playing in one corner.

Irving shook his head, slowly and solemnly. "That’s the trouble with the youth of today. Can’t tell their Arethas from their Ellas."

Shaking his head in despair, Tony moved away to try his hand at cocktail shaking.

"Hey," Belle didn’t quite manage righteous indignation but she did make the word sound livelier than a graveyard at midnight. "There’s no need to mock the ignorant. If you’re so good on the soul singer, teach me."

He took a long draw on his beer. "No point. You’re too self absorbed at the moment to learn anything and I’m too self pitying to teach you."
"Your love is like a see saw
Goin´ up and down all around
It´s like a see saw."

"Normally," Belle confessed, "I’d argue with you, but right now I really do feel too self absorbed to care."

Her companion nodded wisely. "See? That’s what heartbreak will do to you. Aretha knew that. Now you do too."
"Sometimes ya tell me
Ya don´t need my sweet candy man."

"How did you get to be so wise?" Belle’s blue eyes were softened by the Detective’s gentle tone.

"Experience," he took another swig of his beer, emptying the bottle this time. "Lots and lots of bad experience."
"And then sometimes baby
Go-go away
An I´ll stay
You lift me up…"

"Ah, the school of hard knocks," Belle copied her companion and finished her own bottle in a single gulp. "I know a lot about that."
"When I´m on the ground
But as soon as I get up now
You send me tumblin´ down…"

"Aretha," Detective Irving was half smiling now, "there’s a real lady. My ex, she loved Aretha, but she didn’t behave like a lady." His expression clouded over as he remembered the way she had acted. "Living with her was like having your heart played by an angel with no conception of humanity."

She checked her bottle to make sure that what she was drinking was truly non-alcoholic. She surely couldn’t have heard him right. "Huh?"
"Now your love is like a see saw
Your love is like a see saw baby…"

Irving’s blue eyes were turned to the heavens. "She was wonderful, but she didn’t know that some things hurt like hell even if they aren’t meant to hurt you at all."
"Your love is like a see saw
Goin up.... down
All around
Just like a see saw…"

"I still don’t get you," Belle signalled to the bartender and ordered another round of drinks. "What did she do?"
"When I kiss you and I like it
And I ask you to kiss me again…"

"She used to kiss me," this time he sighed gently, "she was an incredible kisser."
Belle nodded sagely. "So is Shawn. I swear he’s got voodoo lust potion in his lips."

"Then she’d wander off like nothing had happened. Like we were just good friends." He stared into his drink morosely.

Belle snorted. "Down with being ‘just good friends’." She slammed her bottle onto the countertop.
"You change just like the wind
That ain´t right
That ain´t right…"
"She wasn’t like most women," Irving was getting maudlin. He hated himself when he was maudlin, however, and so tried to coax and cajole himself out of it at once.

"They never are," his companion let her gaze run over the other patrons of the bar.

"I should never have let her go." Already the detective’s words were becoming slurred, and this was only his fifth beer.

The blonde sitting next to him dropped her bottle, only for it to be caught by their new, and already bored, bartender by the name of Ella. "You’re damn right. Never let anyone go who you can hold onto."

"You’re both drunk," Ella was in no mood for another night of drunken ranting. She wanted to be at home on the net, or curled up with a good Georgette Heyer novel and an early Rolling Stones record.

"You’re very beautiful," the inebriated detective told her.

"Your love is like a see saw
Your love is like a see saw baby
Your love is like a see saw…"

"You may be drunk, but I’m not." It was true that she did not sway as she rose to her feet, but Belle was not entirely steady either. That could, however, be something to do with not having eaten for some eight hours straight. "I’m going to find Shawn. You’re still damn right. I’m not letting him go. Not again."

"That’s a dollar fifty," Ella held out her slender hand for the money.

Belle stared at her like she was crazy. "I have to pay?"

"You may be the daughter of the third richest and most insane man in Salem, but that doesn’t mean you get free drinks, pay up." She rapped her knuckles against the wood of the bar. Grumbling, Belle obeyed.
"Your love is like a see saw
Your love is like a see saw baby
Your love is like a see saw…"

A sudden thought seemed to strike her. She turned around again. "Any idea where I can find the love of my life?"

Ella shook her head, swinging her gold earrings. "I’m not his Mama, but I may well be his second cousin on his Daddy’s side."

In friendly fashion, Belle patted Detective Irving’s shoulder. "Good luck with the drinking, and if you see Shawn, tell him I’m looking for him." She thought about this. "If you see Cassie, tell her to go to hell from me."
"Goin´ up goin down
All around…"

"Sweet kid." Irving noticed his bottle was empty again. "Bartender, another beer here if you will."

Ella leaned over the bar and glared at him. "You’re drunk."

"You noticed," he looked back at his bottle, wondering why it was still empty. "Sweet of you."

"It’s my job to notice things like that," Ella watched him as he poured the last drop of alcohol down his throat and groaned his disappointment. He was kind of cute, in a blood shot eyed, exhausted puppy kind of way.

Irving smiled at her lopsidedly. "And it’s my job to notice things like the tension between Belle and Cassie, partly due to the fact that Cassie knows some secret about Shawn and Belle doesn’t, Abe is still covering up for that rat, Larry Welch, the DA has it in for the Bradys, the Bradys have it in for Dimeras and vice versa, Roman’s worried about Sami, Marlena’s more worried about the Gemini twins than her own daughters, especially Belle, John’s getting more pissed off by me than I should have any right to expect, and you are particularly beautiful tonight. You want to know who killed Colin Murphy?"

"You’re evidently a gifted detective, if a drunk one." She wasn’t in the slightest softened by his compliments, though his heaven blue eyes were beginning to take effect on her unusually delicate sensibilities. She allowed herself the smallest grin back at him. "So who killed Colin Murphy?"

He leaned towards her as if about to reveal a dark secret. "I don’t know, but I’m damn well going to find out."

"Well, when you know, tell me." Sniffing the air, she detected the smell of Jack Daniels on the Detective’s breath as well as the heavy aroma of Budweiser beer. "You’re still drunk, Irving, and after this next beer, I’m cutting you off and sending you home in a cab."

Irving was grinning now. "I maybe drunk, but you’re still beautiful. Want to come back in that cab with me? I’ve got a whole stack of Aretha records in my room."

Ella grinned in reply. "Some other night, maybe. I sure do like Aretha…"