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It's Brittany, Bitch | Ερις (eristic) wrote in paxletalelogs, @ 2017-05-30 08:02:00

you never have time, only intentions
Who: BB, Alice, & Rafe with a brief appearance by Julian [NPC].
What: The Scooby Gang continues to investigate the building, following the clue they found in the closet.
Where: CASKET.
When: Backdated to May 20.

BB pulled the flyer out of her back pocket, unfolding it carefully like it was an ancient artifact and not just an extremely used piece of orange paper. She held the door to the club open with her other hand, a redhead and a lean Brazilian following in her wake.

"OK, so, presuming the dude who owns this place now is still the same as the guy who owned it then, feels like we might be able to finally get some answers," she said, leading them toward the bar. Of course, with their luck, Julian might be off that day. "I guess we'll start with a bartender and work our way out from there?"

Following the closet caper, BB had taken the flyer to Alice to explain what had happened (glossing over the whole getting stuck and Daniel getting hurt, mostly, instead phrasing it as a simple twist of the ankle instead of a broken leg; no one needed to know the dirty details), and finding Rafe visiting her apartment at the same time. He'd been swept up in the explanation, obviously willing to listen. They'd made plans to visit the club that weekend, during the day, presumably during one of its less busy hours so they might be able to corner the man who would know the most about the Halloween party.

Alice had been careful to keep the ordeal of her coughing up seeds from her best friend. She was both embarrassed and a little suspecting that Brittany, who was fully believing the apartment was up to no good, would blame Alice’s condition on her trip to the spa. Maybe she’d be right, but either way, Alice didn’t want to hear I told you so.

Rafael had also, thankfully, kept quiet of the situation but Alice wasn’t oblivious to his lingering looks of concern. Thankfully, Alice hadn’t been coughing quite as much, and she made it all the way to nightclub without incident. Still, with a slight frown, she followed her friends into the club. “What should we say to him? Or anyone for that matter. How are we going about this?” Alice asked, feeling slightly ill at ease with the entire situation. “Do we have roles to play? Good cop, bad cop or something?”

"I think we should be honest with him," Rafael answered, surely surprising no-one. He kept close enough to Alice to nudge her gently as they walked, silently reassuring her of his presence and continued worry for her. This makeshift interrogation would be distraction enough for them all, or so he hoped. "We're only asking questions, and it's nothing we don't have a right to know."

"Are you kidding me?" BB interjected, slowing enough to come between her two companions. She all but bodily pushed them toward the bar, keeping the flyer in hand as she herded them. "This thing was involved with a m-u-r-d-e-r, of course they're not going to actually tell us anything. Hell, I didn't see anything about this place in the papers when I was researching Pax; here's what we're gonna do, though."

She steered them to the far end of the bar, as far away from the main watering hole as they could get. If they managed to get Julian down there, they'd be golden -- alone and holding the club owner all to themselves, depending on how talkative he became. She put Alice and Rafe on the seats furthest away, herself on the far stool closest to the bar's middle.

Amid all of this steering, they did not notice another figure slip into the club; one who Rafe would be very familiar with, but the man was doing his best to remain unnoticed. He watched the trio find their seats at the far end of the bar, and took up a solitary position near enough to them, turned three-fourths of the way away from them so he might remain unseen. Yet he was still close enough to hear what was being said.

"We're journalism students from UCLA, working on an assignment about the area. We were digging up stuff surrounding Pax Letale, this apartment building with a bunch of weird rumors associated with it, and we're not necessarily looking to publish anything, just put together a report, right? I mean, what else could put people at ease?"

She eyed Rafe for a minute. "You're, like...our overseeing T.A. or something. You can handle that, right?"

His lips thinned. He fell silent for a time, carefully considering. It seemed a small lie in the grand scheme of things; enough had happened in and because of Pax, getting answers did seem increasingly important. At last he sighed, nodding slowly. "All right. Okay." He smoothed a hand over his shirt, hoping he looked professional enough to believably get through this little round of improv. Then he brought his fidgeting hands to rest atop the bar, fingers lacing loosely together. "Let's hope this works."

Alice offered Rafael an encouraging smile before turning to BB and giving a nod. “Sounds good. Lead the way, though, you’ll sound more believable.”

BB perked up at that, and folded her arms on the counter before waving a hand at the bartender. She finished up serving a handful of drinks before walking down to join them. If she had any opinion about where the three of them were sitting, so clearly far apart from the rest of the club's patrons, she made no comment.

"What can I get you?"

"We were actually hoping to talk to the owner," BB started, laying the flyer out flat on the counter for the bartender to look over. The woman picked up the fragile piece of paper gingerly, one brow arching. "We're doing a report on past events for a school assignment, and we were hoping he could give us some insight into that."

"I think he's in the back; I'll go see if he has time," the woman offered dubiously, but BB grinned all the game.

"Greatly appreciated! Can I have that back, though?" She clung to the paper with her forefinger and thumb, and the bartender nodded, releasing the thing back to her grip. Then she disappeared, and BB grinned at her companions. "See, not so hard, right? Easy peasy so far."

They weren't kept waiting long. The familiar sight of the bar owner -- Julian Veilleux, goatee'd and dressed in the business casual of a dress jacket over jeans -- quickly reappeared as the bartender returned to her post. He smiled congenially at the three of them, eyes quickly going to the flyer still spread on the counter top. The man who'd followed them close to the bar accepted his own drink -- whiskey, on the rocks -- and seemed to listen more intently now that the trio were actually implementing their plan.

"Wow, now that's a blast from the past," he started, plucking up the flyer before being invited to do so.

"We were hoping you could answer some questions for us, about that party," BB started, using the same slightly nauseating tone she'd used with the bartender. "We're journalism students from UCLA, and we have to do a historical report on something in the area, and--"

Julian laughed. "Is this considered history already? Fine," he added, putting the flyer down where he found it and putting his hands on the countertop as he leaned forward, glancing at each of them in turn. "Can't see what interest a party would have for you guys; this is Los Angeles, there's at least ten every night."

Agreement showed in Rafael's small smile. He leaned in, tapping lightly at the top of the flyer. "Yes, but this one had a small guest list, and those are usually the most interesting. Do you remember anything about it?"

"How could I not," he started, before clearly reining himself in. "You sure I can't get any of you something to drink? You don't look like college kids..." Julian glanced between BB and Alice, eyes narrowing playfully. "Well, kids these days are looking younger and younger. Probably something in the water, huh?"

Alice’s eyes narrowed slightly but she offered a smile that seemed sweet. “I’ll just take a Coke if you have it,” she requested, sitting a little straighter and maintaining eye contact. Her voice was a little higher than usual, she wasn’t one to play pretend and her nerves always got the best of her. “Then you can tell us all about the party!”

Julian nodded, and glanced to the other two. BB ordered the same as Alice, Rafael ice water, and the bar owner waved over at the bartender for the drinks. Then he leaned back on the far counter, crossing his arms over his chest.

"OK," he finally said, as if fully acknowledging what he was being asked to do. "Shoot. What exactly do you wanna know? Cause, forgive me, but that was years ago and if I was asked to remember every day of my life, I'd have to apologize for killing brain cells in my youth."

BB nodded, leaning forward on her elbows. "Oh, no worries, at all! Now, this party, it was just for tenants at a particular apartment complex, wasn't it?"

Julian nodded, his eyes narrowing. "Yeah, yeah actually now that rings a bell. Can I see that again?" He stood, taking the flyer in his hands. "Oh yeah. I remember this now. Pax Letale, right? Why're you guys interested in that place?"

Alice glanced at Brit and Rafael before trying, her voice lower, to add to the conversation. “It’s just that… we saw the apartment was bustling with activity. It had a lot of people living there and then it closed quite suddenly. That’s how we grew interested in it, at the very least…” She glanced at Rafael and Brittany, uncertain if this was enough information or if she had said too much.

"Real estate isn't the most glamorous beat," Rafael said, quirking a small smile. The waitress returned, three glasses in hand. Rafe wrapped his hands around his already sweating glass of water. "If we can talk about changing markets and cover an exclusive little party, it might make our report a little less dry. You know?"

BB nodded encouragingly at her friends, her bright gaze going back to Julian. She grabbed her own drink.


"So yeah, you know, just trying to spice up an otherwise kinda, and not my words exactly, but boring assignment, you know? So what can you tell us? Just, like, about the party itself," she offered providing a specific entry point for Julian to start talking. The stranger in his nearby booth sipped his drink quietly, leaning slightly toward the conversation happening at the end of the bar.

"Well," he offered, gaze moving from one eager face to the next, clearly starting to warm to his audience, "like any Halloween party it was a costume event. The place was closed down -- you all just had that event back in February, so kinda like that -- just for Pax residents, and people showed up to have a good time. I mean, there's not much more to be said beside that."

BB's nails raked across the counter a bit as her eyes narrowed; clearly she was trying to tamp down her frustration. "Yeah, but, like, did anything weird happen?"

Rafe frowned softly over at her, but made no comment. Instead he lowered his voice and reached for something that might jog Julian's memory. It was a long shot, but it was far better than BB losing her cool.

"We've heard some really bizarre stories," he explained. "Hallucinations, sometimes shared. Unexpected personality changes. Weird animals showing up. That kind of thing. I mean it's a party, sometimes people get a little out of hand…"

Alice, quiet all the while, looked from one friend to another, nodding at what Rafael added before looking back at Julian. “Anything that was just… unusual for such a party,” Alice added before reaching for soda and taking a sip, all the while keeping her eyes glued to Julian.

"Huh," Julian started. "You sure you're all just after some things about real estate? Because this sounds like something very different."

"I mean, you've had to have questions about it," BB interjected, bouncing a little in her seat. "Come on, you can tell us. Like you said, it was years ago. We just wanna know how true the stories are!"

Julian fixed her with a look, though his smile did not abate. Finally, after a long, drawn-out minute, he shrugged. "Sure, some strange things happened, but no more so than consenting adults imbibing. I've certainly heard plenty about the complex -- why it closed. It was pretty close to what happened here..." He trailed off for a moment, clearly on the cusp of admitting something but feeling unsure in current company.

"But I do recall people reporting some strange things happening. Mainly seeing, feeling strange things. Never could find out if someone was passing around drugs at the party, which would've explained a lot. I think, ah, at one point during the night, I think it was close to after midnight, people started acting...strangely.

"Like you said," he nodded at Rafe. "Animals, hallucinations. Might even go so far as to say changes, though I'm not trying to make this sound like something bigger than it was.

"Now, I think you all should kindly tell me the real reason why you're so interested in this, because none of that sounds like a journalism report I've ever heard of." He glanced between the three of them, curious and grinning all the same. The stranger in the nearby booth quickly ducked his head away, seemingly suddenly drawing interest on a painting on the far wall, but he'd scooted to the edge of his table regardless.

Alice clung to her soda, eyes still on Julian, but she didn’t say anything. Nudging Rafael with the toe of her shoe, she glanced at him and BB and gave a little shrug. If anyone was going to be upfront about it all, it wouldn’t be her. Rafe, however, who had contemplated honesty from the start, found it easy indeed.

"We live there," he said, determinedly avoiding the look he was certain BB was giving him. He stared straight ahead, his eyes fixed on their host's. "A lot has happened there, just in a few months, and management won't tell us anything. It's getting… uncomfortable."

Julian's mouth gaped a little, as if to say 'ah' without actually speaking the word. BB turned and glared slightly at Rafe, unhappy that her attempted subterfuge had fallen flat, brought her face back to Julian with a grin.

"OK, yeah, you caught us. We're just... You know, trying to find out what we've gotten ourselves into."

Julian nodded, uncrossing and recrossing his arms over his chest. "Not surprising. What I am surprised at, at all, is that that place is reopened.

"So how did you come across this?" He unhooked a hand to motion at the Halloween party flyer, gaze dipping down to it still spread out on the countertop before looking back to BB.

"I've got my sources," she replied, bristling, and instead reached out to fold it up and put it away. She tempered, curling a hand around her soda as she spoke again. "What I wanna know is if Karin Shepherd was at the party, and if it was connected to her murder at all."

That clearly took the club owner aback, as he blinked, surprised at the audacity BB displayed.

"And what makes you think I'd even entertain a question like that?"

BB shrugged, spinning her glass in her hands a little. "I dunno, helping people not end up like her?"

“We definitely don’t mean any offense,” Alice said, leaning forward a little and looking between Brit and Julian. “I mean, you can understand why we’re curious and a little freaked out about it all. It would just be really appreciated if you could kind of guide us in a direction or provide any info you can.”

Her voice had gone scratchy as she spoke and Alice leaned back and took a sip of her drink again before clearing her throat. She had a small worry line between her brows and frowned a little, worrying over not the conversation, but something else. Rafe cut her a look, his brow furrowed with concern. He bit his tongue against a question; if she wanted BB or anyone else to know, it was her place, not his, to make her strange condition known.

Rafe clicked short-bitten nails against his glass. His voice was low, as though he were ashamed to push so hard, to ask so much of a stranger. "We wouldn't ask if we didn't think we had to," he said, obviously speaking only for himself and Alice in this. "Things have happened in that building. Some people have already left. If we should consider leaving, too, for our own safety… if we should warn the others… it would help if you could give us something solid to work with. Right now all we have is what we've seen and what we've…" He gestured toward the flyer, faint color dusting his cheeks. "Guessed. Which may be completely overblown."

Julian glanced between the trio, face impassive. It remained apathetic as he continued to speak. "Yeah, she was there. But she left before all of that. Alone, I might add. Like you said, it was a small gathering, so I do remember some faces and names. That's one that's definitely stuck with me."

Fingers tapped against his arm. "But the police already came and went; it's a cold case file now. No suspects, no clues. I believe the general consensus was that she'd left the party, drunk, decided to go for a swim, and ended up on that island out in the middle of the bay."

"But The Beach Reporter published a small piece saying that she had wounds that you don't get from a swim--" BB interjected, before Julian suddenly cut her off.

"And this conversation is done," he said, rising to stand. BB mimicked his movement, rising in her seat, standing on the foot railing for the stools, which gave her a few extra inches. Rather than look angry, though, he looked sad, as if the topic pained him. "You're welcome to stay and finish your drinks. But I'll kindly ask you to not bother the rest of my staff with questions about this, or else I'm going to have to have someone escort you out."

"There's weird shit going on at our apartment building, and you're just going to let all of this happen again?"

Julian's mouth pressed into a thin line. "What you need," he replied, slowly and carefully, "is to get out of that building." With that, he glanced once more between the three of them, and then turned to walk away. He paused, briefly, with the bartender, clearly relaying his orders about not talking on the subject again. She glanced in their direction, and then nodded at him in compliance. Without a second look back, Julian disappeared into his office.

BB slunk back into her seat. "Well, shit."

Alice’s shoulders slumped significantly and her bottom lip pouted forward for a moment as she watched Julian disappear. She let out a sigh and looked at her friends. “Well, I mean, it’s something,” she tried to reassure. “I know it’s not what we wanted but he definitely seems to agree that the place is weird--”

And then the coughing came. She had been trying to clear her throat but the tickle was there, that feeling of something stuck to the inside of her throat. Quickly, Alice reached for a spare napkin and turned on her seat in the direction of the man who'd been not-so-surreptitiously spying on them; BB's attention was immediately drawn in her direction. But Alice didn’t know the man and wasn’t particularly observant as she coughed heavily and more seeds fell from her mouth.

Quickly, she tried to cover it up and squeezed the napkin into a ball in her fist, but even still seeds snuck out and fell to the floor beyond Alice’s recognition. Rafe raised a hand, rubbing gently at her back. He watched her for a moment, carefully studying her face as the fit passed. His brow knit with worry, but he said nothing to call any additional attention to her situation.

Then he caught sight of a familiar face, and the shadowed crease in his forehead deepened further. Something about Chris's appearance just there, just then, set off warning bells in his mind. But that seemed foolish on its face, and he dismissed his feelings as paranoia borne of recent events.

"We should go," he said, glancing from Alice to BB and back again. "Before someone tells us to."

"What..." BB stopped herself from finishing her question about just what was wrong with Alice, her worry written across her face. Instead, she nodded and pushed up, off the bar, remembering enough to pull out her wallet and put a couple of crumpled bills on the counter. Then she wrapped an arm around Alice's shoulders, eager to help her toward the door and out of it.

The man in the booth across from them made a pointed move to look away, clearly trying to hide his profile. He stared down into his drink, one hand moving carefully over his hair as if to set it back into place.

“I’m okay…” Alice’s voice was weak and she cleared her throat once more, feeling that the cough had passed. She tried to offer her friend a smile but her lips were pale and embarrassment shown on her cheeks. “Let’s finish our drinks, they can’t kick us out because I had a coughing fit. It’s fine.” But she allowed Brit to wrap her arm around her torso as she quietly stuffed the seed-packed napkin into her pocket.

BB steered her friend out of the club, around chairs and tables, until they were breaking into bright sunshine out of doors. In that moment, she'd all but forgotten Rafe, leaving him behind in their wake as her attention focused solely on Alice.

"OK, seriously, what the fuck, skittles?" She whispered, keeping her questions private. She'd seen the seeds, things that should not be coming out of any living human being. At least, not without reason, and BB already suspected what that reason was.

Rafael took advantage of their distraction. He sidled up to Chris's table, determined to prove to himself that his concern was unfounded. He fixed a small smile on his face and tried to appear more nonchalant than he felt. Even as he opened his mouth to speak, their last encounter and the circumstances that had led to it flooded his thoughts. "Hey, Chris. Um. What brings you out tonight?"

The man seated at the table visibly winced, upset that he'd been found out. The arm semi-nonchalantly combing his hair came down, and he turned to look at Rafe, fixing as much surprise to his face as he could. His other hand remained wrapped around his drink.

"Oh, hey, Rafe. Nothing much, just..." A hand extended, rolling, accompanied by a shrug. "Just needed to get out you know. How come you're here?"

"Drinks with friends," Rafael said, his head tipping toward the door, already closed behind the girls. "Just getting out, too. Sometimes the apartment building starts feeling a little claustrophobic."

"Exactly," Chris nodded, glancing in the girls' wake. He looked back to Rafe; somehow, he managed to stay completely calm, though this wouldn't have been the first time he'd needed to pull out his poker face. "Heading out now?"

Outside of the club, Alice turned to her best friend and frowned. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she started, knowing that Brittany would be hurt by the secret she had kept. “It’s been happening for the past couple of days… this cough…”

She pulled the napkin free from her pocket and glanced at it, considering looking at the seeds or if it would be better off to just throw it out in the trash can by the door. “The cough’s going away anyway…”

They came to a stop just outside the club, slightly to the right of the doorway to not impede the flow of traffic (which was currently nonexistent, but). BB's hands lingered on Alice's shoulders, unwilling to let go.

"But when did it start?? And the seeds! Skittles, this is just like..." Her voice dropped, sounding far more dire than it honestly needed to. "It's just like Uke Mochi!"

“I know,” Alice whispered, opening her grip and allowing the napkin to come undone slightly. Seeds of different shapes and colors lay within the napkin, innocent enough to look at but certainly creating a large bit of concern. “It started earlier in the week. You know I’ve been suffering from allergies or something and I thought I was just getting a full cold, but then I coughed and seeds came up. I… I didn’t want to tell you and freak you out. I know you’re freaked by the apartment and I think this has something to do with it, or at least--rather, definitely--with Uke Mochi. But I don’t think she’s doing this.”

The door opened and shut, and Rafael moved out into the sunlight behind them. His gaze flicked between both women, reading easily the revelations they had had in the time he was away. With that particular obstacle out of the way, he breathed a small sigh of relief and slid an arm around Alice's shoulders. "Everything okay?" he asked, the question directed at either of his companions.

"Honestly?" BB said, with no small amount of sarcasm toward Rafe's question. "In this scenario, I don't know what's OK and what's not anymore." She looked back at Alice. "So you're telling me that this has been happening all month and you just decided to keep it to yourself?? Like, maybe we should get you to a hospital??"

Alice sighed and dropped her hands at her side. “And what is the hospital going to do when they see what I'm coughing up, Brit? And it's been a week, not a month, and it's going away. Right, Rafael? It's not as bad as it was earlier this week.” She looked at her other friend who she was nestled against, feeling less freaked with his calming presence so close.

"It does seem to be getting better," he tried. His hand rubbed between her shoulder blades; his eyes stayed on BB, clearly pleading with her to be reasonable, or to at least hold off on any particularly aggressive responses until they were somewhere more private. He lowered his voice, leaning in toward BB. "We've got enough going on, don't you think? The last thing we need is to become some case study in bizarre medical problems."

"I'm not--" BB started with a huff, then her hands relaxed, sliding down to Alice's elbows. "Fine. We're taking this home, and you better believe you're giving me the whole story," she allowed, looking back to Alice with narrowed eyes. She slipped her hand into one of her friend's, threading fingers together as she lead her toward the car.

"Guess we'll have to try this again, another time," BB finally commented, on the unsuccessful nature of their outing. "I guess we did learn something, after all? I'm going to have to dig more into that island out in the bay. You're a surfer -- you know anything about it?" She glanced at Rafe, true curiosity dispersing the earlier annoyance from her face.

He shook his head. "Not much," he said. "There are some decent breakers on the eastern side of it, thanks to the rocks, but no-one really goes out there. Too easy to actually get caught on the rocks." His brow furrowed as they walked. He drew slightly away from the pair, leaving BB to the consolation she clearly wanted to provide. "There are some stories of noises on the island, but I'm sure it's just animals."

BB frowned, opening her mouth to ask more questions, and then, perhaps wisely, shutting it. She glanced back at Alice, refocusing her attention, and, inwardly, apparently deciding that there were more important things. The three of them trooped to the vehicle they'd arrived in, quietly musing on what little they'd learned during their short run at the club. BB was unsure what the next course of action was, but Alice's condition worried her.