Snoops Next Generation Chapter 1

Snoops Next Generation: Closeted Skeletons

by Mister Mistoffelees

1 New Robes

“Say it again,” Ella Giles cooed over her  phone as she gazed at the date on her screen.  March 30, 2035.  A happy birthday indeed.  “I just like hearing it, Mom!”

“You can get so full of yourself, Helena Giles!  What would your sister say?”

“Penny’s nice about it,” tittered Ella, plunging again into the cleaning-out of her minuscule office.  “Come on, Mom, say it again!”

“Oh, all right…Supervisory Special Agent Giles!”  Despite her lighthearted scolding, Abby Giles found she could not be more proud of her daughter Ella, perhaps the youngest newly-frocked SSA in FBI history at only twenty-seven.  “I sure hope Director Spencer knows what she’s getting into!”

“Oh, she does!” Ella replied airily, sweeping the detritus from her desk into a cardboard box.  “It’s SSAC O’Day who doesn’t know what’s going to hit her!”

“But didn’t Ginger request you?” Abby asked.

“Yeah, but you know me, Mom!  I’m betting SSAC O’Day just thinks I’m limited to terrorism and organized crime.  Just wait ‘til I show her what I can do with a psychological profile!”

“Now Ella,” another voice chimed in over the link—Ella smiled at the familiar face—“you grew up with a case study, so how surprising can it be for her?”  Which instantly soured Ella’s exuberant mood—

Which expressed itself in a sour huff.  “Would you please stop talking about yourself like that, Penny?  You know I hate it!”

“It’s only the truth,” Penny replied, her voice betraying no sarcasm, no humor, little emotion that anyone but Mom and Ella could read.  “High-functioning autistic spectrum disorder, social phobia, attention deficit”—

“Stop it, Penny!” Ella demanded.  “Besides,” she temporized, “that’s not the kind of case studies the BAU tends to deal with, you know that.”

“Ella,” Penny scolded, although to anyone else her voice was as even and uninflected as ever, “you know for a fact I worked up a general profile for autistic serial offenders with sadistic tendencies.”  Ella’s brown-hazel eyes started reflexively—“We both know that the profile is accurate, and based on actual case data.”

“So,” Mom interjected hastily, frightened of the turn in the conversation, “you said you’re getting some time off, Ella?  You are coming home to visit, aren’t you?”  Both daughters took Mom’s hint.

Ella grinned.  “And pass up a chance to pick on my big sister?” It was a badly-played deflection of the topic, but only Penny recognized the emptiness behind it.  “Besides, she’ll have another present for me, I’m sure.  I’m still driving the last present she got me, and I’m thinking of re-gifting it if she’ll let me.  Our twin cousins are whining about needing a ride!”

“I know,” Penny replied mildly.  “Gram and Grandpa won’t take too kindly to it, though.  Especially considering how risk-attracted they are.  Especially Eugene.”

Ella snickered.  “Only behind a steering wheel!  It’s Audrey who’s almost gotten killed a few dozen times!  Grammie whines about her mother’s curse going on forever!”

“Well,” said Mom with a wink, “she did pass it onto your Aunt Trish, didn’t she?  It’s only fair that Audrey keeps up the family tradition!”

“So how is Aunt Trish doing lately, Mom?  Still whining about how her job is nothing but pushing buttons?”

Both mother and sister picked up on the philosophical spark which now lit Penny’s eyes.  “If you think about it, Aunt Tricia brought it on herself, actually.  Not that DNA trait profiling isn’t the most profound breakthrough in the history of criminal forensics, but she had to know it would reduce much of the investigative work involved in identifying subjects.”

Ella snorted a little laugh. “And of course she gets to fly all around the world lecturing about it!  Probably wears both her Nobels at every lecture, if I know her!  So pardon me if I don’t much care for her whining!”

“So you won’t pass up a chance to tease her about it, will you, Helena?” Mom asked meaningfully—

“I’ll take off in the morning, Mom!” Ella reassured her anxious mother.  “Have my party ready when I get there!”
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The buxom young brunette, all of seventeen, gaped in pleased surprise.  “She is?  Has she mentioned anything about”—

“Your Cousin Helena can do anything with her car she wants, Audrey Anne!” Trish scolded her eldest daughter.  “If she wants, she doesn’t have to”—

Audrey pouted in the general direction of her twin brother Eugene. “Yeah, thanks to Genie the Kamikaze Driver!” He continued to contentedly munch a croissant in the Martin family breakfast nook while scanning the sports articles in the online Intelligencer on his spectacle screen, pretending to be oblivious to his twin sister’s rant.  Retinal implants were the latest vogue for information-tech junkies, but Mom had declared that any child of hers would get a retinal implant only over her dead and badly decomposed body, and even then she would haunt any child of hers who waited until then to disobey Mom’s specific orders.  “If you’d stop treating cars like Ohka bombs, maybe Cousin Helena would give us hers when Cousin Penny gives her that new car for her birthday!”  Indeed, Genie already had an impressive accident record, and an insurance rate to match.

Genie smirked dryly.  “Yeah, so you and your insane buddies can go find even more cases to almost get killed over!  Why don’t you stick to rescuing cats out of trees instead of pretending you’re Cousin Helena?  At least Cousin Helena can shoot straight!”  One of her many talents.

“And Audrey can drive straight!” Tricia Martin incised, depositing the last of the breakfast dishes in the sink.  “Which is more than you can say, Eugene!”

“But you can share the car with me, Aud!” another smallish, brunet young man called out, hefting his book bag.  “Now that I have my license, I could”—

“Yeah right, Junie!” a young lady beside him—no more than fourteen—said with a sarcastic snigger as she brushed back a lock of her long raven tresses.  “You’re the only person in the world who can make Genie look like a good driver!  I want to know how much you bribed the examiner to pass you on your test!”

“Oh shut up, Trix!” gibed Robert Martin Junior at his sister Beatrix, nicknamed Trix or Trixie.  It had only taken him three tries to pass, and was tired of being teased about it.  Especially by a sibling who wasn’t yet old enough to drive.

“Will you guys finally shut up about that stupid car already?” the smallest and youngest of the Martins, ten-year-old Grace, complained as she hurried to gather up her class materials.  “Did you sign my permission form for the field trip, Mom?” she asked.

“It’s already sent, Mary Grace,” Mrs. Dr. Martin assured her.  “Now when your class shows up at the lab, should I act like I know you or not?”

“I wouldn’t!” the last two Martins downstairs, twelve-year-old Edgar and thirteen-year-old Maddie, interjected in near unison as they hefted their bags for the bus.  School was mercifully almost done for the year.  “I wouldn’t claim Gracie to save my life!” said Edgar in reply to Grace’s stuck-out tongue.

Maddie giggled.  “Which explains why you’re still fixing your makeup for work, Mom!  You barely even dress for work anymore!”

“Enough, kids!” Tricia finally burst out.  “I’m down to one nerve, and all of you are getting on it!  Your father’s waiting for you, Grace, and the rest of you, get to the bus stop before I decide I have a few too many kids!”  With more good-natured ribbing, the Martin kids filed out the kitchen door to the front of the house—

Just in time for Trish’s earpiece to go off.  She checked her watch to ID the caller with an impatient huff—“And on top of everything else, the lab just blew up, didn’t it, Dr. Housely?”

“Is that a way to greet your assistant director?” Dr. Housely replied lightly as her image resolved itself on the lenses of Tricia’s glasses.  “I was just calling to remind you of Gracie’s field trip to the lab today.  Try to dress for the occasion.”

“I am, Serenity!  Does everyone in the lab think I have prionic dementia?”

“Well, they say memory is the second thing to go when you age!”

“And I forget the first,” Trish finally relented with a giggle.  “But between the field trip, and Ella coming home to show off her promotion to SSA, and Audrey and Eugene slobbering over Ella’s old car before she even makes it back here”—

“Don’t even go there, boss!  Between Joely’s orthodonty and Mom flipping out over Charity’s mission, I don’t have any nerves left!”

“It’s not like Charity hasn’t gone up before.  And NASA wouldn’t even be attempting the lunar mission if they weren’t ready.  I’d think she’d be happy that Charity’s going to be in the history books as the first woman on the moon!”

“She’s more worried about Charity getting off the moon when she’s done.  And of course I’m the one she unloads on when she has the nightmares.  It’s what I get for being her favorite daughter!”

“I thought Lissy stole that one from you!” said Trish with a chuckle as she finished a last touch-up to her eyes, then settled her glasses back on her nose.  Yes, most people in that year opted for the surgical procedure now that it was done in-office and took only five minutes, but Dr. Tricia Martin simply did not feel like explaining her phobias to anyone.  And besides, she looked more intelligent in glasses.

“Marrying that jerktus erectus didn’t help her case.  For the second time, even.”  No one could quite understand what Felicity Mabrey saw in Mitchell Danielson—for the second time, even—but for some reason known only to Felicity, she kept going back for more.  “And of course you had that little talk with Audrey.”

“I’m no good at those sort of talks, it seems,” said Trish as she gathered her bag for the trip to the crime lab.  “It goes in one ear and out the other.”

“She is so going to end up in trouble!” Serenity said with another dry chuckle as she broke the connection.  Like mother, like daughter…
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The girl, a Darius Allen High junior, flipped her long, rich brown hair—an inheritance from her father—back over her shoulder, a protest against the grilling she had been enduring as she drove to school.  “I am so not up to something!  You’re imagining things, Lucy!”

“What I’m imagining,” said Darius Allen freshman Lucy Housely, irritable enough in the first place at having to put up with her sister’s driving, and made even more irritable by Mary’s attitude, “is having to put up with Mom treating us like prisoners because you and your insane buddies get yourselves in another death trap!  So ‘fess up, Mary, before I sic Mom on you!”  Which drew an angry pout to Mary’s lips.

“It’s nothing, really,” muttered Mary as Lucy stared back at her beneath her customary raven-black bangs, her mother’s heritage.  “Just a little something from the missing-persons database.  And no, I didn’t use Mom’s login again, before you ask!”  Lucy stomped her trainer-clad foot in the passenger footwell of her sister’s ancient, hand-me-down 2022 Prius—

“God, Mary!  I told you and your stupid buddies to stop investigating that!  If there was anything new, Mom and Dr. Martin would have found it!”

“Cherish Logan’s our friend, Lucy!” Mary shot back.  “We can’t just do nothing!”

“She’s been missing for two years, Mary!” Lucy shot back in turn.  “There’s nothing more to do!  Why do you and your buddies”—

“Then how could it hurt for us to keep looking?  Even if she is de”—and again, her eyes were sneak-attacked by the same gust of tears which always came about when that word—dead—attached itself to the thought of Cherish Logan—“Even if she is, how could it be dangerous after two years?  Maybe you could give up looking for a friend, but I can’t!  Audrey or Gina neither!  So just go on waste time with your stupid freshman friends and be a stupid coward!”  She swooped the car into her spot in the student parking lot with a surly swing of the wheel, and a silent moment later, Mary had slammed the door and stalked away from her sour-faced kid sister and toward the front courtyard where Audrey Martin and Mary’s cousin Gina Housely awaited…
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

“Come out come out wherever you are, big sister!” he called through the familiar old bedroom door.  He faced some derision from some quarters—especially his sweetheart Mary Housely—but Billy Giles rather liked commuting to his Snowden State classes from home.  He felt comfortable—and there was a certain obligation he felt.  Especially to the person on the other side of the door.

“I’m all right, William,” said Penny, her soft voice barely penetrating the wall of the bedroom where she had lived for the last twenty-seven of the twenty-eight years of her life.  The same bedroom where she could remember her favorite old princess bed with perfect clarity, among every other thing in her life.  “I’ll be out soon.”

“You know Ella won’t like you hiding out in there,” Penny’s youngest sibling observed significantly.  “You can spare a few minutes from draining the world’s economies dry to be ready for her, can’t you?”

“There’s a selloff on the London market,” Penny temporized through the door.  “Genetetech has been having some problems with their new hepatitis C regimen and some investors are getting nervous.  The price should be bottoming out in about eight minutes.”  Investors all over the world would have given their kidneys to know how Penny Giles could sit in the bedroom of her parents’ house and make millions of dollars in a half-day’s private trading.  “That’s when the Genetetech press conference is scheduled.  The regimen is good, so the conference will solidify their price.”

Billy allowed himself an exasperated sigh.  “So you only make enough today to treat me and Mary to a trip to New York instead of to Paris!  I think we can sacrifice a  little so you can”—

“For someone named after Shakespeare, William,” said Penny in an acerbic tone which only a Giles would recognize as anything other than calm quietude, “you have a poor grasp of grammar.  The proper phrasing is ‘Mary and I,’ not ‘me and Mary.’  And I said I’d be out soon.”

“Defined as anything between five minutes and two weeks.”  And two weeks in her room, Billy knew, was not out of the realm of Penny Giles possibility.  He chose a gentler tack.  “Look, I know having Ella home upsets you, but this is a celebration!  She made SSA!  So just be happy for her and forget about”—

“I can’t forget, Billy, you know that.  And I’m pleased to see Ella again, you know that too.  She understands me perfectly.  I’ll be out soon.”  Which left Billy confounded at Penny’s bedroom door—again.  Anyone who thinks forgetting is a curse, Billy swore to himself as he stared at the closed door, ought to get to know Penny.  For some people, forgetting would be a blessing and a divine one…