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The Best Laid Plans - gena
It was a dark and stormy night, the kind all evil doers and wishers of chaos dream of happening on the night of their greatest triumph. A hunched figure labored over a morbid collection of human remains - a twisted gizzard, a rumpled spleen, a flattened brain. With each crash of thunder a cackling laugh would rise from the bowels of the laboratory and a hideous smile split the face of this particular bringer of mayhem.
"Ah ha!" Carolyn Plummer crowed, "the night of my greatest triumph is at hand! I will set in motion a plan so devious, so cunning, so unstoppable that no one will - no one will be able to stop it." She sighed, and wrote herself a note to practice her evil gloating speech. It wouldn't do to have such a lame one at that crucial moment with the victim lying bound and helpless at her feet. That done she gathered her disgusting collection of cast-offs and with a last villainous laugh, headed for Cascade, Washington and the man who had broken her heart. She drove staight through, stopping only once to use the restroom and buy a Big Gulp at a Seven- Eleven. Eight hours later she pulled her nondescript Ford to a halt outside 852 Prospect and sat gazing up at the third floor balcony.
Silver/gray light spilled out from the floor to ceiling French doors and she could hear the faint sounds of a Jags game on the slight breeze. That was one of the things she didn't miss about Cascade, no matter what the season the Jags played every stinking night.
Carolyn glanced around, noting Sandburg's battered vehicle in a parking slot close to the door, Jim's truck wasn't there. She could just imagine the scene inside the loft, Sandburg in layers of flannel shirts, his jeans tight and tattered would be bent over his computer, working on whatever important paper he needed to finish. He would have his hair down, letting it whirl around his exotically beautiful face and the television's glow would make him appear unearthly. Dinner would be cooking and the moment Jim entered the apartment they would smile at each other, Jim would say how delightful the food smelled and they would sit down to eat. Later they would sit together on the couch, Jim watching the ever present game and Blair, alternating between watching and working. It was a relaxing and comforting scene that played out in her mind. And it drove her further into the madness which had destroyed her mind.
She gathered her materials and headed inside. The elevator worked for once and before she could change her mind Carolyn found herself standing outside apartment 307. She raised a hand and knocked. Blair opened the door, grinning at her. "Carolyn! Wow, what a surprise. I thought you were still in San Francisco."
"Blair," she kissed his cheek and stepped inside. "I am. I just had family business and thought I'd stop in to see Jimmy. He isn't here?" She gaze the place a quick look. It was just as she had suspected, Sandburg's things were all over, mingled intimately with Jim's. A red haze sprang up before her eyes, this would be much easier than she had thought.
"He's on his way. Will you stay for dinner -" Blair turned to close the door and she struck. Snatching the frying pan from the stove she whalloped him in the head. Blair gave a squeak of pain then collapsed in a shower of chickpeas, carrots, and noodles. Supper was ruined.
"Steal my husband, will you?" Carolyn growled. She quickly dug in her bag for the things she would need and set to work. Soon Blair lay hog tied on the floor, a blindfold over his eyes and a gag in his mouth. She rolled him inside the blanket she pulled form his bed, then fished out several large plastic bags from her carryall. With great care, Carolyn scattered the contents around the room. Glistening hunks of internal organs glopped onto the floor, blood spattered the walls and furnishings. She extracted a fur covered object and set to work stamping prints from the mess in the kitchen to the open balcony doors.
Just then Ellison's blue and white truck pulled to a stop in its usual place. Carolyn grabbed the end of the blanket where she'd stashed Sandburg and heaved it over the railing. He fell, landing with a gently thump in the garbage bin she'd rolled there. She was poised on with one foot on the rail herself when the door burst open and Jim launched himself at her.
"Carolyn!" Jim screamed and tackled her. Carolyn writhed and bucked, her body twisting so that she managed to rub over every delicious inch of Jim's amazing chest. She was panting for breath and on the edge of orgasm when he finally pinned her arms behind her back and grabbed a fist full of hair. "What is it this time?" He demanded. "Huh? What sick plan have you come up with now?"
"Why, Jimmy," she purred and struggled in his grasp, "whatever do you mean?"
Ellison shook her. "I mean, what have you done this time to try and ruin the greatest friendship I've ever had? Veronica didn't work, you know? And Alex Barnes is dead, though I'll give you credit for that one. It came very close to working. If she hadn't almost killed him twice I don't think I would have seen your handiwork there."
"Hah! You don't know the extent of my workings, Jimmy," Carolyn snapped. "How do you think Lila got to Cascade?" Jim went white and she laughed. "You didn't suspect me, did you? What about Elaine? And Maya? And even Rhonda, they all work for me!" Jim swayed on his feet, the magnitude of her evil genius too great for him.
"What have you done with Blair," he finally managed to ask.
"You're too late, Jimmy," she said with a diabolical grin. "A band of marauding sugarcane workers got him."
His sharp gaze took in the wet lumps littering the floor and bile rose in his throat. "No," he whispered, shaking his head and staggering towards a liver. "Oh, Chief," he wailed and clutched the gory organ in his hands, "what has she done to you?" Carolyn watched, her brown eyes gleaming in the light.
"He's dead, Jimmy," she crooned. "You're all alone now, you have no one to help you." She crept closer, watching as Jim picked up a lung here, a tongue there, a kidney and an eyeball. "You need me, Jimmy. I'm the one you've always -"
"Hey, wait a minute!" Jim roared. He picked up the other eyeball and peered into it. "This isn't Blair!" He examined the liver. "The kid doesn't drink that much." With dawning clarity he spun and faced Carolyn. "You tricked me. Blair hasn't been ripped apart by sugarcane workers. This is not Sandburg," he declared, shaking the lung in her face. "Where is he?" Jim tilted his head and listened and moment later a smile spread across his face. "Ah ha! I hear him, he's down in the dumpster."
"Yeah, he was looking a bit depressed -"
"No! You hurled him off the balcony and into the dumpster." Jim advanced on her, looming over his ex-wife. "What made you think this dastardly plan would work, Carolyn?"
"Isn't Cassie Wells still the chief forensics officer?" Jim's eyes widened in shock. He knew how close they had come to total disaster. If he hadn't noticed the slight differences in the dripping organs scattered around his apartment Blair would a dead man. There would have been no way Cassie's incompetence would have allowed for the proper identification of his roommate and partner. Jim gulped and closed his eyes. It was the break Carolyn had been looking for.
"We will meet again, Jimmy and when we do you will lose your little guppy for good," she yelled and dove over the balcony rails. There was a muffled curse from below and then she was sprinting for her car. Jim took the stairs, reaching the mouth of the alley in time to inhale her exhaust fumes. With a choking cough, he went to the dumpster and retrieved his partner. Blair smelled like rotting bananas and had spaghetti in his hair but he grinned once Jim unrolled him from the blanket.
"You know this whole thing is getting a little old," Blair said as Jim helped him from the trash.
"Which thing is that, Chief?"
"The thing where psycho women beat on us, abduct us, or just make our lives a living hell." Sandburg wrapped and arm around Jim's waist and together they headed towards their home.
"You got a suggestion, then?" Jim asked.
"Yeah. We should give up women." Jim stopped and looked down at him, a smile playing over his lips.
"We should give up women? Hmm, and what would we do for companionship, for sex?"
Blair smiled, a slow heat growing in his eyes. "Well, I think two intelligent men like us will think of something." He reached up and pulled Jim's mouth down to his.
Somewhere in the night, Carolyn screamed.
The End.