Murder at the Matinee

Murder at the Matinee May 1, 2021 17:37:30 GMT

Quote

Post by Admin on May 1, 2021 17:37:30 GMT

Murder at the Matinee
Introduction

Occasionally, a mystery hero takes a big step up in her career! But it's never easy…

Setting

San Francisco, Ca. : August 1964

Murder Detector

There were about 300 people seated sparsely throughout the ratty theater, which had routinely seated over twice that number in its heyday. Still, the theater owner was pleased, especially for a midday show. At $2 head, he could pay the presenter the $100 fee he had asked for, pay his bills, and still show a little profit at the end of the week, something he couldn’t say very often in this sleazy part of town. In the crowd he recognized some of San Francisco’s rich, famous, and shady, and regretfully realized that he probably could have charged more for tickets, or at least arranged general admission and premium seating. Still, an event that actually ended in the black was worth smiling over.

The rich, famous, and shady included a California State Senator, a reclusive millionaire, the Deputy Commissioners of both the Highway Patrol and the San Francisco Police Department, and several important underworld leaders. There had been recent scandals involving the Senator and the millionaire: the top political rival of the Senator had been killed in a suspicious automobile accident just days before the last hotly contested primary, and the rich man’s wife had passed away in mysterious circumstances, reputedly after she had contacted a divorce lawyer. One of the mob leaders had recently been charged with murder, but his trial had been derailed when several key witnesses disappeared.

As well as the Deputy Commissioners, there were also about a dozen cops, some in uniform and some not. The owner wasn’t surprised that cops and robbers had shown up, as the topic of today’s lecture/demonstration could have a major impact on their lives, either personally or professionally. For some it could make life simpler, for others it could lead to major disasters. He was only surprised that he didn’t recognize any lawyers.

The rest of the audience appeared to be average citizens, curious about the claims of the lecturer. He hoped the presence of the police would keep things calm, but it wouldn’t bother him overmuch if the theater got wrecked, even burned to the ground – he had it insured for at least twice what it was worth. But it had to happen soon or he would go broke making the insurance payments.

A small man with a small pot belly strutted onto the stage as if he owned the world. He had a handlebar mustache and a goatee, and his sparse, dark, poorly-trimmed hair was parted in the middle and slicked back. His loud, cheap multi-colored suit clashed discordantly with his tie and the gaudy orange pendant around his neck. (THIS particular suit it would _always_ clash with ANY tie or personal jewelry!) He strode to the podium, took the microphone, and immediately started speaking without waiting for the crowd to quiet.

“I am Pinero, and I have made one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the ages. And today you will marvel at the genius of Pinero and witness the results of that discovery, The Pinero Murder Detector!” The PA system was turned up too high, the overdriven speakers making his voice uncomfortably loud and a little distorted. Pinero didn’t bother to adjust the microphone, but just kept talking. “I will explain what my device does in the next 20 minutes, and then if any of you dare to come on stage, I will demonstrate its operation. And show you things about yourselves that will amaze and even stun you!” The distortion made it difficult to place his accent, but it might have been Spanish or Portuguese.

‘He reminds me of a rooster!’ thought Phoenix Barrow, star reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, who was standing center stage behind the curtain. It had been Barrow’s three page story in the San Francisco Chronicle’s Sunday weekly local news magazine two weeks ago which had generated the interest that brought in the crowd tonight. ‘I expected more, but I guess the Beatless concert at the downtown auditorium is this week’s sensation. Who wouldn’t prefer the hottest band in rock and roll to a bombastic lecture on a new scientific invention?’ He shook his head at the thought. 'This is important, though! And yet, I’m the only one here tonight who knows the truth of Pinero’s words. He must have worked fast to build a new machine, or had a second one already built.’

This wasn’t really the first time Pinero had demonstrated his device. He’d managed to convince a prison warden to allow him to test his murder detector on the inmates of his prison. Phoenix had witnessed the test. Pinero had been tossed out on his ear, his device destroyed, and Phoenix and his photographer had been warned never to print this story when the murder detector showed the innocence of two convicted murders, one on death row, and revealed that more than one of the guards was a guilty murderer. The warden had balked at being tested himself, and instead ordered the ejection. Since then, Phoenix had worked tirelessly digging into the case against the innocent man and had managed to convince the fellow’s attorney to appeal.

‘We all 3 probably would have disappeared if I weren’t so famous,’ Barrow thought with a touch of smugness. ‘My editors didn’t know why my photographer and I went to the prison, but they knew where we were. And the Warden would have been investigated for sure if he disappeared three civilians, one of them famous, all at the same time!’ A secret smile, then the thought continued ‘Well, he’ll get his soon. I didn’t print a word about that test, but after tonight, the world will have to accept that Pinero’s invention does what he says it does.’ He turned his attention back to the stage.

“Yes, friends, I, Pinero, have invented a machine that can peer into a person’s soul and uncover his most guarded secret. An infallible, unbeatable lie detector that will revolutionize the investigation of murder forever, solve every murder mystery, and sweep all murderers off our streets and into prison! Only I, Pinero, have the genius to invent such an instrument, and tonight you are honored to see the first public demonstration. In only short months, there will be a Pinero Murder Detector in every precinct house, every police station, every sheriff’s office throughout the country and shortly after, the world. And only the lot of you can say you were present as Pinero introduced the greatest tool in the history of law enforcement, which is to say, all of human history!”

In the next 15 minutes, Pinero revealed that he had discovered one of the frequencies of the human soul, and soon he was sure that he would be able to detect the others. The ‘Pinero frequency’ could reveal some details of one soul’s interaction with other human souls around it. According to Pinero, every soul’s Pinero frequency was a beautiful golden glow at birth, and the deaths of others could leave ‘stains’ on your soul. Sky blue stains for deaths that saddened you, navy blue stains if you were in some way responsible for a death.

“And the final proof to me that the soul exists was the color of the soul of a murderer. Murder doesn’t just stain the soul, it changes the color of the entire soul to black. Murder is a matter of evil intent, and even the soul of an evil man recognizes this and covers itself in shame, you see. Of course you see, for I, Pinero, have revealed this truth to you.” Pinero paused, clearly waiting for applause that wasn’t happening. He hurried on with his spiel.

“Just imagine how valuable a tool this would be for law enforcement! Those falsely accused of murder no longer need fear a bump in the course of justice – Pinero’s wonderful machine will set them free! And those who have somehow gotten away with murder had best beware – Pinero’s machine will show their guilt to the world!”

“For those of you who are dubious about Pinero’s claims, I, Pinero, give you this assurance. I am not just some charlatan out to swindle you, but an honest if egotistical man who wants to make the world a more safe and just place to live by eliminating a murderer’s ability to live among us undetected. With a Pinero Death Detector installed on every corner, what murderer would dare walk the streets? I tell you this truth and I know it is true, for not only am I the inventor of this redoubtable machine, I have seen it in action and proved it to be infallible!”

“Now,” Pinero said cheerfully, rubbing his hands together, as he ended his bombastic dissertation. “Let me demonstrate my invention. I shall make a reading on anyone who is brave enough to ascend the short flights of stairs at the ends of the stage.” He looked directly at the audience during his next words, his eyes darting from one person to the next, choosing each to punctuate his words.

His glance speared a distraught-looking gentleman in the front row. ”Are you falsely accused of murder? Let Pinero prove your innocence for the world to see.”

A florid woman ten rows back had been hanging eagerly on his every word. He stared at her. “Do you feel guilty about a death, and yet you know your innocence, but still you have just a tiny shred of doubt, and your conscience won’t leave you alone? I shall set your mind free.”

Off to the right, in the back, a man with a short haircut and military bearing: “Maybe those you have killed in war haunt you, attempting to convince you that you are not a soldier, but an evil murderer? Pinero will be your exorcist.”

A very distinguished-looking man with wavy gray hear and mustache. “Or maybe you are a surgeon, and one of your patients died on the operating table, and everyone around you shuns you because they think you made a deliberate slip. Pinero will provide the cure!”

He waved his arms to show he was speaking to the entire audience. “You may suspect an acquaintance of murder, someone who lives in your neighborhood, and you are uneasy living near this person. Let Pinero be the cop on your beat.”

“Or perhaps you are an undetected murder living among us, and your conscience is bothering you…” he stared at the politician, “You are torn apart by guilt and you wish to reveal your crime to the world and accept your punishment? Tonight can be the night you redeem yourself.”

“Maybe you are being framed, or a relative is trying to weasel you out of a will. It doesn’t matter. Whatever the situation you are in, if death and murder are involved, Pinero can prove your innocence or…” his voice dropped suddenly and the audience had to strain to hear him. “…your guilt.”

Guilty or Not?

For a few seconds there was silence and nobody moved. Then a faint rustling as many people shifted positions in their uncomfortable seats. Still nobody stood, and the silence was broken by a faint muttering as people whispered to their neighbors, each wanting to try, but wanting someone else to go first. Pinero just waited, and finally, as he had known someone would, a girl in the front rose to her feet.

Her vague dreamy eyes and colorful attire proclaimed her a hippy. There was applause as she apprehensively climbed the stairs to the stage, and several other people, emboldened by her action, stood and followed her.

The young woman stood where Pinero indicated, in front of a primitive-looking aluminum box festooned with dials and gauges. The box was topped with a miniature radar dish that swung slowly back and forth as if it were somehow scanning the volunteer. The audience gasped as a golden glow faded into existence around her, and gasped again as some faint blue stripes and blotches became visible, and coalesced into small, well-defined patches of brilliant sky blue – and then the aura stabilized.

“Still golden with a small amount of blue. Not much experience with death,” Pinero proclaimed. “Perhaps you grieved at the death of distant relative, one who may have been close at one time, but you drifted apart. And perhaps you work somewhere where death isn’t unknown, but certainly is rare,” Pinero interpreted.

“My cousin Ralph! And a couple of years ago, I worked in an old folks’ home for a month or so,” she gasped. “That’s bitchin cool!”

After that, a small trickle of people made their way to the stage, including the man who might be ex-military. Three women come up as a group, a tall, statuesque beauty with shoulder length brown hair, an equally tall slender woman with very short dirty blonde hair, and a tiny brunette with brown hair cascading to her waist. The tall brunette carried a large artist’s portfolio, as if it were too precious to leave unattended. It was… The short woman was notably reluctant, with the blond practically dragging her, while their friend watched their silent struggle disapprovingly.

“Please don’t make me do this, Alex,” Tammi (Miss Music) Paige pleaded. “There are things in my past I don’t want to think about!”

Alex (Palette) Silverstone was surprised. “How bad can it be, Tams? You aren’t a murderer, are you?” She looked doubtfully at her partner, then shook her head once, and turned for her reading.

The tall brunette, Bonnie (Adventurine) Marlow, leaned down to whisper in Tammi’s ear. “You know, unless you do this, she’s going to think you ARE hiding a murder.”

Tammi glared back at her, “Well, I’m NOT, you nosy bitch!” She shook her head vehemently, while thinking ‘At least I hope not.' Then she whispered back to Bonnie, “But she’ll think so, won’t she?” she asked very sadly. “It’s like the end of my life, but I guess I have to do it.” Her shoulders slumped and she looked so sad and defeated that even those who knew her best wouldn’t have recognized their bouncy, bubbly friend.

She started to shuffle forward again, but Bonnie took a long stride and cut into line in front of her. “Let me go first, it might make it easier on you.”

“Oh, yeah, you and Alex and your auras of gold are really going to make me feel better. Just leave me alone!” the dejected young lady snapped.

“Trust me just this one time, Miss Music,” Bonnie used a different voice, the voice she used when Adventurine was on the clock. “You know I’m really on your side, don’t you?” Tammi nodded dubiously. She and Adventurine didn’t get along very well. Tammi thought Adventurine was bossy and something of a martinet, while Bonnie considered Tammi to be one step up from a street urchin, loud and impetuous. “C’mon, be honest – have you EVER seen me let one of my teammates down? Have I ever let YOU down?”

Tammi reluctantly shook her head, but Bonnie could sense that her small friend was somewhat heartened to by her teammate’s support.

Alex’s aura was mostly gold, with some beautiful blue highlights. Tammi wondered if Alex was somehow using her own power to influence the appearance of her aura, but her power to cast illusions only worked on surfaces; she couldn’t make a freestanding image with only air to hold her illusion. “Someone very important to you died in your presence,” Pinero interpreted, and Alex nodded. She had been present when her parents passed away, but she didn’t feel the need to broadcast that to the world.

Bonnie strode confidently to the machine and appeared very relaxed as it began to scan her. The crowd gasped as Bonnie’s aura was a darker blue than any other they had seen before, no traces of gold. Before Pinero could begin his analysis, Bonnie spoke up. “I was a nurse in Korea. For a time I was a prisoner of the enemy, and I was treated very poorly. Several of my captors didn’t survive my escape. End of story.”

She turned back to Tammi, who was still hanging back. “Tams, you really are a good person, regardless of our differences. You don’t have it in you to be a murderer. And if the machine says otherwise, why, the Alliance of Mystery Heroes will investigate and prove Pinero’s machine is wrong!” she spoke very softly.

Alex heard and added her support. “She’s right, little one! Give it a shot – it will help ease whatever is bothering you.” She was embarrassed by her earlier reaction to her partner’s reluctance. She hadn’t meant to make Tammi feel rejected – but she realized she had.

Tammi stood in front of the machine with her fists clenched, a look of terror on her face. Almost instantly she was surrounded by a navy blue aura, darker blue even than Bonnie’s was. The audience gasped, and gasped again when several black splotches appeared and expanded to the size of saucers. Everyone on the stage except Alex, Bonnie and Pinero took a quick step backward, but Pinero stepped forward with the microphone and began speaking before anything else could happen.

“Friends, this woman is NOT a murder. Yes, the darker blue indicates she has taken a human life, but if she had murdered this other, the aura would be entirely black. These splotches are the result of her conscious. Observe!”

He put the microphone on top the machine, then stuck his hands into the aura, one on each side of one of the black spots. Tammi jerked away, even though she felt nothing. He spoke softly to her, so softly that no one else could hear.

“Young lady, your aura indicates you killed someone, and it was either in self-defense or in the defense of someone else. You have felt guilty about it ever since, and these spots have been growing and eating onto your soul ever since. But it’s the mind that feels the guilt, the soul that knows your innocence and stubbornly fights the black stains. You should listen to your soul. I guarantee you that you only did what you had to do, that you did the right thing. I, Pinero, promise you this.”

As he spoke, he gradually moved his hands closer together and between them, the splotch started to shrink, and all the others diminished as well. Pinero knew it was not his action but his words and Tammi’s easing conscience that made the spots shrink, and he continued to speak soothingly, reassuring her of her innocence, and pointing out that the shrinking spots were proof. And even so, when they had reached the size of silver dollars, they stubbornly refused to shrink any farther.

“Very few people can kill, and not feel pangs of guilt,” Pinero told the audience. “Only those who are exceptionally self-assured. But this young woman is assuredly innocent of any crime in this death. I, Pinero, tell you so, and my instrument provides the proof.”

Pinero turned off his machine and Tammi whispered “Thank you, Dr. Pinero! That was wonderful.”

“Of course it was, my dear. For I am Pinero!” he replied predictably, and the audience broke out into a standing ovation for this brave young woman. Nothing in the world could have been a better healing tonic for Tammi, who absolutely lived to be the center of attention, and one of her fears about revealing her past had been that people would shun her if they really knew about her. Well, maybe some heroic action as Miss Music would be even better than the applause, but you couldn’t always get what you wanted. Except…

As Tammi and her friends walked toward the stage left stairs, Tammi whispered for only the 2 of them to hear: “He was attacking my mother and he told me I was next and laughed at me and told me there was nothing I could do about it and then kept hurting her. He surely didn’t believe I knew where my parents kept their pistol, and that I would use it.”

She paused, and would have continued, but Bonnie interrupted her by pulling both her friends urgently away from the stairs, toward the left wing of the stage. “Time to Snagglepus!” she gasped, and both her friends responded instantly.

Murder on the Stage

Alex turned for a quick scan of the theater before they disappeared backstage, where Alex and Bonnie instantly began doffing their outer clothing, revealing their costumes underneath. Tammi had been distracted by her own confession, so she wasn’t sure why her teammates were changing, but she sensed Alex’s urgency, and certainly wasn’t going to miss the chance for a little super powered action. In less time than it takes to read about it, Tammi, Alex and Bonnie had been replaced by the dynamic forms of Miss Music, Palette and Adventurine!

“I saw three coming up our side!” Bonnie said.

Alex nodded her head in agreement and added “Four more coming down the far aisle!” As she was confirming this, the audience was beginning to scream as they saw armed men on stage, and before the three heroines reached the stage, the first pistol shot was fired. There was a slight pause, and then more shots were fired. And the screaming really started as people in the audience either dropped to the floor or tried to rush to the door.

“Music, crowd control. Palette, this side. I got the rest!” Adventurine barked. Normally when she started giving orders, Tammi balked, usually with some nasty quip such as “Who died and made her queen?” But she had come to respect her teammate a lot more in the last few minutes, and as she began trying to insure crowd safety, she had to admit to herself that Bonnie’s quick assessment and assignments made sense.

Tammie hopped to the floor where she’d be less likely to be hit by a stray shot. She projected her voice to fill the theater, and she could be clearly heard above the screaming of the crowd.

“There’s no need to fear, AVant Guard is here!” her voice boomed, enhanced by infra sonic and ultra-sonic overtones that carried both command and reassurance. “Hit the floor, wherever you are. This will be over in seconds!” She repeated that three times. By the second time the pistol shots had stopped and after the third time, she turned to help her teammates, but it was already over.

Crouching a little to maximize the protection offered by her shield, Adventurine crossed the stage in seconds, once limping for a stride as a lucky bullet hit her leg, causing the armor cloth of her multi-hued green costume to stiffen and distribute the impact over her whole body. There were only 3 gun-wielders left standing by this point, as the 4th was writhing in agony on the stage from being shot. She bowled over the closest, who was slammed backwards into one of the others. She ignored those two for a second, as she punched out with her shield arm and instantly knocked her third assailant into dreamland. She spun back toward the other 2, just in time to get her shield between them as one fired at her. He winced as he heard his own reflected bullet whiz by his ear.

The Windy City Wonder kept driving forward until he fell, but as he fell, he managed to get a shot under her shield cover. The high caliber bullet caught her square in the middle of her chest, and even through the armor cloth, she knew she would have a bruise from her neck to her hips tomorrow. She kicked him in the head, then spun to face the last standing bad guy. But he was lying face down on the stage, his hands clasped behind his head, and his gun was sliding across the floor toward the back of theater.

“Good choice,” she told him as she pulled an armor cloth wrist restraint from her utility belt and wrapped it around his wrists and laced it tightly. She couldn’t help but notice that the insides of his trouser legs were wet. “I guess you weren’t happy to see me,” she said with a grin, in her best Mae West imitation.

She walked over to the guy who had shot her, and resisted the impulse to kick him again. “If you messed up my best features, buddy, I’ll come looking for you in prison!”

It didn’t sound like a joke to him! Another restraint, and his arms were immobilized. She turned to help her teammates, but she already knew the fight was over. One of Palette’s foes was rolling around on the ground, his hands covering his breadbasket, and she was just getting to her feet over the other one. A group of people was rushing the stage. Half of them had police uniforms on and she recognized instantly that this group wasn’t a threat. Tammi was crouching next to Pinero's body near the back of the stage. Bonnie went that way to help, but her eye and her MASH experience in Korea told her it was already too late.

Seconds ago…

Palette wasn’t quite sure what to do. She saw that one of her trio was already lying motionless on the stage. She hated to repeat a trick, but she didn’t have time right now to think of creative new ways to stop two men from shooting her. So she repeated one of her basic tricks. To the shooters, it felt as if they had been engulfed in a ray of inky black, but she was only casting the illusion of pitch black on their faces.

She moved quickly, slamming a twisting punch into the solar plexus of one man and as he leaned forward, she brought her knee up under his chin. She turned to the last man, and he was just starting to scream in fear over being blind when she tackled him and came down hard, knocking the wind from him. “Well,” she mused philosophically, “the Lightless Ray worked for the Shadow Lady for 30 years in the comic books. I guess she was on to something.”

She turned and saw the group, including some uniformed police officers, racing toward the stage, She didn’t have Adventurine’s experience; it wasn’t obvious to her that the other men were plain clothes cops, and she moved to stop them. By now, the police in the audience had reached the stage, but there was nothing left for them to do except take the shooters into custody… and begin a murder investigation. One of the uniformed cops yelled at her “We’re ALL cops, Palette!”

She had already noticed Tammi kneeling next to a body, and she also noted that Pinero’s machine was gone. She switched to infra-red vision, and she could see a scuffled path of glowing footsteps on the floor. At least two men, and probably three, had come on the stage through the curtain, taken Pinero’s machine, and vanished in the same direction. The Colorful Crusader raced to center stage to follow them.

The first thing Tammi had noticed as she turned away from the auditorium was Pinero, lying on the floor in a pool of blood. She jumped onto the stage and rushed to his side. He saw her coming and painfully reached out his hand to her.

“I, Pinero, give you a final gift,” he whispered painfully. He coughed, and tried to say more, but even with her enhanced hearing she could only make out a few words. “…safe…key…take”. He was holding his pedant in his hand. As Tammi reached for it, he made the last, greatest effort of his life. “Beautiful blue.” His last breath sighed out regretfully. Bonnie reached past her and gently closed his eyes.

“I will NOT cry!” Tammi announced loudly.

Bonnie spoke in a low, determined voice. “We’ll find out who did this… and bring him in!”

“Damn straight!” Tammi snarled. She saw Alex disappear through the curtains. “WAIT FOR ME!” she yelled in her own voice and raced after her partner.

A well-dressed man was pushing his way through the police on stage. When they tried to stop him, he uttered the magic words: “Let me through, I’m a doctor!”

“You’re too late, Doctor,” Bonnie said sadly. “He’s gone.”

He agreed but he tried anyway, with Bonnie’s assistance, because that’s what doctors and nurses do. But their best efforts came to naught.

“Did you see who shot him, sir?” Bonnie asked as they worked. He had been down before the heroines had reached the stage. “Was it one of the ones we captured?”

“No, I think it came from backstage. There was a shot, three men rushed through the curtain and grabbed the machine, and then rushed back out the same way. The others were trying to stop them, but they vanished behind the curtain before the others could shoot. So they started shooting each other instead.”

As Alex and Tammi were pushing through the closed curtain. Alex stumbled over a body, a body Tammi instantly recognized. “It’s Phoenix! He’s still breathing, his heart sounds OK, and there’s no blood. He’s just been knocked out.”

Alex agreed. She had already seen the welt on his head, where he’d been hit. “You stay here and take care of him.”

Tammi leaped to her feet. “Wrong! I’m going with you! I’ll tell Bonnie.”

Alex was already following a jumbled trail of infrared footprints. “There were at least 3 of them. That’s good for us, makes an easier path to follow.”

Tammi paused for less than a second, and then raced to catch up to her partner. On the other side of the curtain, her voice spoke loudly. “Boss Lady! Unconscious body behind the curtain. He’s one of the good guys.”

It wasn’t surprising that the trail led directly to the back door. They barreled through into the back alley, in time to see two men throw Pinero’s machine into the back of an already-moving pickup truck and then pile in after it. They raced after it, but by the time they reached the mouth of the alley, the truck was making a turn a block away.

“We’ll get them, Tam!” Alex swore grimly. “I got the plate.”

“You betcha, we’ll get them,” her friend replied, just as grimly but with a faint whisper of satisfaction. “I’ll know that truck the next time I hear it! AVant Guard is on their tail!”

“Tell you what,” Alex proposed, “Let’s start looking for those guys tonight, down on the waterfront.”

“Do you think we’ll find them there?” Tammi wanted to know.

“Well, not really, they didn’t look like the type to hang out in waterfront places. But we’ll get a chance to bust up some bars!”

“Now you’re talking!” Tammi was excited. “Some AVant Guard action is just what I need!”

Donna got a Promotion; Phoenix got a Bump on the Head

It wasn’t long before a team from Homicide was on the scene. They had expected to see Detective Hunter in charge, but instead, it was newly-promoted Detective Donna Sparks. Her team was very efficient and Donna soon organized the other officers, and asked the doctor and Adventurine to check on anyone who’d been injured in the shooting or the panic. Under other circumstances, she might have been a bit daunted at meeting Adventurine, one of her childhood heroes, but right now she had a job to do.

It wasn’t long before they finished getting contact information for everyone who hadn’t escaped the theater before her team had arrived. Detective Sparks had little hope that anyone they talked to would have any useful information – she was sure that any bad guys who had been involved here today had beat feet long ago.

Tammi’s good humor had been slipping away again, and Bonnie noticed her glowering away from most of the people, so she casually wandered over that way. “What’s up, teammate? I know you’re sad about Pinero, but there’s more. You’re a little jealous of Donna and Alex, aren’t you?”

Tammi was about to deny it strongly and walk away in a huff when she remembered that trusting Adventurine earlier had really helped her. “Well, yeah, I mean, who wouldn’t be? She’s so big and self-assured and she’s been Alex’s friend so much longer than I have, and Alex almost seems to forget me whenever Donna’s around.”

Bonnie nodded slowly. She was a larger-than-average woman and Donna was a bit bigger than she was, and both were in good trim. “Take it from me, Tammi, women our size look at you and we feel so big and clumsy. Heck, I was the 'athlete on the team' until you came along; now I’m the JV!” She said this with good humor, but there was a little sting behind it, as well. “And we’re jealous of the clothes you get to wear, too. A burlap sack would look as good on me as anything I can buy in a store. I think I keep two different tailors in business full time, trying to make clothes that look as good on me as what you buy right off the rack! And don’t get me started on shoes.” She grimaced. “Even sneakers! They just don’t make women’s sneakers in my size. I’ve worn men’s sneakers since high school. And yes, we had sneakers back then!” Tammi teased Bonnie unmercifully about being elderly. “And I know that Alex is just as jealous of your friendship with Phoenix as you are about Donna.”

Tammi‘s sullen expression brightened considerably. “Really? Mystery Sister’s Honor?” She had just made that up.

“Really! Cross my heart,” Bonnie replied solemnly, as she crossed her heart. Tammi looked at her quizzically, so she quickly added “Mystery Sister’s Honor, for sure.”

“WOW, Thanks, Bon!” Tammi turned away, enthusiasm once again bursting out with her voice. “I’d better go see how Phoenix is doing!”

Adventurine could only sigh. Tammi was on her way back to being her usual boisterous, bratty self.

Pinero’s Last Jest

A tall, handsome, dark haired man in an impeccably tailored suit stepped out of a limousine in the private parking garage in one of the most prestigious buildings in San Francisco. His door was opened for him by his driver, who then scurried to call the elevator. If her employer had to wait for more than a few seconds, she would be severely disciplined. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that it was only one floor up and descending.

She got in and quickly inserted her override key to make sure they would ride to the penthouse floor without stopping on any other floor. She felt a (very) brief flash of pride; the only authorized users of such a key were the building owners, police and firefighters. But her employer held a lot of influence in this city.

The man strode through the outer office and into a workroom. There were five men present, four of them lounging while the fifth was closely examining Pinero’s machine.

“Well, Mr. Smif, it looks like things went according to plan?” he asked one of the loungers.

Who quickly nodded and almost jumped to attention. “Even better, boss! A few minutes after you left, Jackie shot that Pinero character, while Paul and Donny heisted the machine over there. Then some guys from Big Eddie’s mob and Quiet Johnny’s gang got inta a shoot-em-up whiles da heist team lammed outta there.” He was going to say more, until the boss interrupted.

“A bonus indeed,” their employer nodded. “Next time, Evan, it’s ‘got into a shoot ‘em up, while our team left in a hurry’. Grammar is important. Please continue.” He was proud of his Stanford degree, and never let his business associates forget it.

Evan nodded his head enthusiastically. “Anything you says… er.. say, Mr. Grande.” He pronounced it ‘Granday’. His conversation slowed down as he struggled to find the grammatically correct words (or at least words his boss would accept). “I remained in the theater until additional police officers arrived, and then quickly and unobtrusively took my leave.” Evan didn’t know why Mr. Grande was so concerned with his grandmother, but he did know that he got paid better working for Grandie… er Mr. Grande than he had when he was running with Big Eddie’s gang, and he very strongly approved of not getting shot at so much anymore.

“So,” Grande began and turned to the man examining Pinero’s machine. “What do we have here? The ultimate lie detector, I presume?”

“It’s a goddam piece of horse pucky is what we got,” the technician began loudly, forgetting temporarily who he was talking to. “The damn box is almost empty.”

“We saw it work, Mr. Jomse,” Grande said quietly. His aides could sense his anger and pulled away from the technician, but Randy rarely encountered the boss and didn’t realize the dangerous ground he was treading.

He did note the aides’ movement, though, and he was barely wise enough to be a little more careful with his next words, however, as he continued quickly. “I’m sorry, Mr. Grande, but what you saw was some kind of a scam. This box must be almost completely empty; it is too light to have any kind of real electronics inside. I’ll have the back open in a few seconds and I’ll show you.”

He was as good as his word, and after he removed a large panel from the back of the box, he took a quick glance inside, then stood back so Grande could look inside as well. For the other men, he gave a quick description of what he had seen during his brief visual inventory: “An A-cell battery, hooked up to the on/off switch and some peanut bulbs on the front panel, and a small motor of some kind which drives the dish on top. There are a bunch of gauges and dials on the front, but they aren’t connected to anything!”

“Thank you, Mr. Jomes, very accurate and succinctly put. But here is something you missed, on the back of the panel you removed.”

Indeed, Jomes had been in such a hurry to show the boss the empty interior of Pinero’s ‘invention’ that he had missed the sheet of paper taped to the inside of the panel he’d removed so hastily. They all clustered around to look at it, as closely as they dared without jostling the boss.

“So, it was never this empty box all along…” the boss said slowly. “You were right, Randy, Pinero was running a scam.” Jomes beamed with pride, as his boss showed approval by using first names “If he’s not lying to us again, it was that big phony pendant he was wearing.”

The drawing on the paper was labelled ‘Pinero’s secret’ in crude lettering, and it showed a stick figure of a man, labelled Pinero, standing next to a crudely drawn box, another stick figure standing in front of the box, and a stylized ray or beam shooting from the pendant around the neck of the Pinero figure and illuminating the other stick figure.

“Why would he do something like that, boss?” Randy dared to ask. The aides looked at each other nervously; he should have said “Mr. Grande”. But the great man (as Grande thought of himself) had been wondering the same thing.

“That’s a good question, Randy.” Grande replied slowly, as he pondered the answer. “I think he’s laughing at us. Not us specifically, but anyone who stole his machine.”

Smif nodded, he could almost hear the dead man talking: “Once again, even from my grave, I, Pinero, have made fools of you!” From the startled looks on the other aides’ faces, they all heard the same thing. “Geez, boss, I think that thing’s spooked!”

Grande ignored that remark. He didn’t believe in haunts. “I don’t suppose you boys noticed what happened to the pendant, did you?” he asked, his tone implying that they had better have noticed, indeed!

“Yes sir, I certainly did,” replied Evan. “I did. Before I took off, I saw him hand it to that little bimbo baton twirler. He croaked right after.”

“Mr. Smif, that little bimbo is known as Miss Music,” Grande pointed out. “She and her partner, Palette, are San Francisco’s most famous and dangerous mystery heroes. You really should know things like this, being in the profession that you follow.”

Evan was stung by the reproof. “Hard ta believe dat little bimbo is dangerous, boss,” he said, forgetting his grammar. “A good fart’d blow her away.”

“In that case, Mr. Smif, you won’t have any problems getting that pendant for me, will you? If you have it for me by noon tomorrow, I’ll forgive your lapse into profanity… this time.” He paused for a few seconds, then: “Why are you still here, Mr. Smif? The next time I see you, I expect you to hand me that pendant. Now, shoo!” Smif shooed.

As soon as Smif was out of hearing, Grande turned to the other men. “Jackie, he’ll be in jail tomorrow morning. Before he gets there, make sure he doesn’t get a chance to say anything. To anyone.” Jackie hustled out. To the remaining trio. “Excuse me, gentlemen, I have some calls to make. You will remain available in the event that I require your services again.”

Tammi wins the Pendant. Beach Celebration Follows…

While the Homicide team was interviewing and processing the civilians, Bonnie and the doctor continued to minister to the wounded and traumatized. Several shots had strayed from the stage, and two of the audience had been wounded, neither seriously, but one of the wounded gangsters died despite everything they could do. As she moved purposefully between patients, Bonnie noted that Alex was wandering around the stage randomly, and Tammi was alternating between kneeling alongside Pinero’s body and sobbing, and tending Phoenix, who didn’t really need the attention but enjoyed it anyway.

Bonnie was privately appalled at the casual actions of her teammates. Though she previously had battled powerful and dangerous foes alongside her younger teammates and they had been properly heroic and brave, they clearly didn’t know how to comport themselves on a crime scene. ‘This is the scene of a double murder!’ she thought sternly to herself. ‘They need to be more professional and pay more attention to the investigation.’

After a professional medical team had arrived, and the last audience member had been sent home with instructions to remain local until this investigation was wrapped up, she approached her teammates, ready to give them a quick lesson in crime scene deportment. She was very annoyed to discover that they were now chatting casually with Phoenix – who, as an investigative reporter certainly wasn’t doing any of that investigation stuff, either!

Before Bonnie could say anything, Donna walked up to the group, her approach heralded by the theme from Dragnet, the opening notes perfectly choreographed with her stride. ‘Dohm da Dohm Dohmm, Dohm da Dohm Dohmm, Dohm da Dohm Dohmm DOHM!’ The last note emphasized her arrival.

“Geez, Tammi, I wish you would quit that!” the detective lady groused, but Tammi only grinned. “OK, you guys, what do you know that I don’t?” She was talking to AVant Guard and Phoenix, but Bonnie had already decided they had couldn’t possibly have learned anything new, so she prepared to provide her own observations. Before she could start, though, Alex spoke up.

“There are faint burns and powder stains on the curtain where the first shooter poked his pistol through between them.” Spots at the edges of the curtain began to glow, and one of the cops began cutting those sections out for lab analysis. Alex continued: “He was holding his pistol like this,” she demonstrated, her feet apart, leaning forward slightly, both arms extended in front of her to aim and stabilize her imaginary pistol. “He is about as tall as I am, wears size 9½ shoes with this tread pattern,” she projected the pattern onto the floor for the police photographer “and I didn't get a chance to see his face, but I’m pretty sure this is his profile.”

She projected a picture of two men climbing into the bed of a pickup truck and zoomed in on one of the men, whose profile was sharply pictured. “Never showed us his face,” she repeated, then triumphantly, “But I did get the plate!” A second image of the truck appeared, next to the first one. Again, she zoomed in, but this time on the license plate, which grew until it was easily readable. One of the cops hurried away to radio the plate information to the dispatcher.

“The other guy in this picture,” Tammi said as she touched the first image, “had a severe breathing problem.” They couldn’t see his face; all Alex had got of him was his rear end as he had tumbled face first into the truck bed. Alex zoomed in a little more, and they could see that he was severely overweight. “Wouldn’t doubt he had a heart attack after his excitement today.” She turned and spoke directly to Donna. “None of the people you interviewed was involved in the shootings, but you should have someone check out these two.” She named two names, overheard during the police interviews. “Each of them was covering _something_ that they really really didn’t want the police to know.”

‘Geez, Bonnie, good thing you didn’t speak up first,’ she chastised herself. ‘I shouldn’t jump to unsupported conclusions,’ she thought with a little chagrin. She’d worked with these two since ’61 and she was still sometimes amazed at their competence and expert use of powers she had once thought useless. But she wasn’t either a slouch. “There were 3 men who snuck out after your team arrived but before they got the place locked down, Detective Sparks. I can describe them for your sketch artist.”

“We can do better than that. Describe them to me instead,” Alex suggested. “I’ve got faces for almost everyone in the crowd.” As Bonnie described the men, Alex projected images of men in the crowd who resembled Bonnie’s descriptions, and they quickly narrowed it down to three men whose faces Bonnie remembered.

Donna instantly recognized two of them. “That’s Big Eddie Suttle himself, one of the top crime bosses in the city. This one is State Senator Gary Grande. No wonder he left… every cop in San Francisco knows he murdered Mike Milano, even though we can’t prove it… yet.” The third man was very handsome and dressed casually, but his clothes were clearly several cuts above those of the people around him. “He’s familiar, but I can’t quite place him.”

“That’s Trevor Matlock, the gazillionaire,” Phoenix interjected. “Richest man in California, philanthropist, philanderer, and suspected wife murderer.” Everyone looked at him in surprise – he’d been hanging around quietly and had been so inconspicuous that they had forgotten he was there.

“It’s a gift,” he explained hastily; clearly he understood their reaction. “Not much like the real me at all, was I? But a great talent for a reporter.” He grinned and winked at Tammi – Phoenix was usually very boisterous and skirted the border of obnoxious, often on the wrong side.

“Anyway, I did a feature article on him last year. Big feather in my cap, it was, too – he never gives interviews to anyone! Except me. Pretty hot stuff, huh?” He preened, skirting again.

A cop hurried up with a report for Donna. “The truck was reported stolen around 10:30. We’ve put out an APB and HQ is sending someone out to check on the owner, but he seems legit.”

“Thanks, Bill,” Donna replied. She succinctly summed up what the heroines and Phoenix contributed, then: “One more thing. Tammi, a lot of folks from the audience saw Pinero give you something before he died. What was it? I might need it as evidence.”

Tammi reluctantly surrendered the pendant. It was about the size of a finger, brilliant orange, dangling from a silver chain, molded from hard rubber to look as if it had facets. Alex inspected it closely, using uv, ir and zoom-in vision, but found nothing unusual – the only prints were Pinero’s and there were no seams or marks on it. If it had been only a third as big, it might have come out of a Crackerjack box.

“I don’t see any reason to hold this as evidence, Tam. You can keep it, for now. If I need it, I’ll call you.” She turned to the tall blonde. “Alex, you make sure she surrenders it if I need to ask for it.” Both heroines nodded assent. “In that case, you’re free to go.” She paused and then continued reluctantly: “Adventurine, I’m sorry if you were due home soon, but I’m afraid I need to ask you not to leave San Francisco for a few days; you are a material witness to two murders.”

She was about to apologize again but Bonnie cut her off. “No need, Detective Sparks. I’m familiar with murder investigations,” she acknowledged with a wan smile.

Donna turned to Alex, Tammi and Phoenix. “Same goes for you three as well. Also, I know you’re all going to be investigating this further, and I can’t stop you, but… stay out of trouble. I can’t be there to rescue you all the time.”

“As if!” Tammi muttered enthusiastically under her breath – but Alex, Donna and Bonnie heard her clearly. Bonnie smiled and the police took their leave. The soft strains of the Dragnet theme faded, leaving the stage in relative silence.

Bonnie smiled a little wanly as she spoke to her teammates. “So, ladies, looks like you have a house guest a little longer. What exciting things are there to do in San Francisco at night?”

“We were thinking of entertaining ourselves by dropping into some seedy dive bars down on the waterfront,” Tammi spoke up enthusiastically. Suddenly the background music was back, the Surfaris’ instrumental Wipeout.

“Um… don’t get me wrong, but isn’t that the bad part of town? What kind of entertainment are you looking for?” Bonnie asked cautiously. After all, they DID live in San Francisco – who knew what kind of weird their lifestyle might be.

“What we really want to do is ask some people some questions,” Alex replied with a grin. “Sometimes, it does get a bit rough if they don’t like the questions we’re asking.”

“When she says ‘rough’, she really means fun, actually,” Tammi was grinning too. “Sometimes they’re smart and just give us answers, but that’s not nearly as ‘entertaining’. Don’t try to be coy with us – I’ve heard that you and your partners have done the same kind of thing, occasionally.”

“That Tomas, he talks too much!” she sighed. Then she laughed. “I know better than to try to fib to you two… yeah, the three of us have busted up some bars, down on the waterfront.” Red Rocket was Cody Mason, her husband, and Tomas Thomas was Tom Atomic, and the three of them were crime-fighting partners in Chicago.

“Say, ladies, you won’t mind if I tag along, will you?” Once again they were startled by Phoenix, who had been quiet like a mouse. “I’m planning a follow-up feature on Pinero, and it would be great if I got the facts first hand.”

“Not this time, Phoenix, please?” Tammi asked. “The last time you ‘tagged along’ you spent a week in the hospital and 3 months in a walking cast. And I got a concussion trying to protect you, and felt like crap for a week.”

“And the bad guy got away in the fight, and it took me a week working alone to track him down again,” Alex added. ”Just stay out of this one and let the pros handle it.” Before Phoenix could explode, she turned and headed for the door.

“You’ll get the exclusive when we catch him, I promise!” Tammi tried to lessen the pain of their refusal, then she turned and followed her partner.

Bonnie looked at the reporter and shrugged. “Don’t be upset with them,” she whispered to him. “Pinero’s death really shook them up, especially Tammi, and if you got hurt too, well… there’s some things even Miss Music’s not good about putting into words.”

“Remember, I can hear you!” Tammi’s voice said from the air around them. Bonnie made a ‘what can I do?’ gesture, and then she turned and hurried after her Alliance of Mystery Heroes teammates.

Before they left the theater, they changed back to their civilian identities. There was a very distant hint of music in the air, which strengthened into a popular song, ‘Wave Babies’ and Tammi’s mood brightened as the song swelled. As they exited from the theater, she enthusiastically asked her friends, “We’ve got a couple hours until dinner. Why don’t we hit the beach and give some boys a thrill? I’ve got this new bikini I’ve been dying to wear!”

“I’ve seen it,” Alex whispered to Bonnie, “and it’s even smaller than that one she wore in the Virgin Islands.”

“How can that be?” Bonnie whispered back in disbelief. “She might as well have been naked.”

“I can STILL hear you,” Tammi reminded her friends, a pleased smile on her face. “So are we going to the beach or what?”

Later, as they basked in the sun and the admiring stares of all the guys on the beach, Bonnie had some thoughts for her friends.

“Tams, this was a great idea. Good to know that an old dame like me can still get a few whistles.”

Tammi smiled and replied graciously. “If you weren’t with us, there’d be a crowd of boys hanging around you. Not bad for someone as ancient as you.”

Bonnie continued. “So I’ve got a question for you two. With Donna and Phoenix using your real names while you’re in costume and a crowd of people around to overhear, how do you keep your identities secret? It’s not like you two just blend into the crowd. Why doesn’t everyone in San Francisco guess that the tall, trim, short-haired blonde artist and her short but curvy friend and model with brunette hair down to her shapely butt are the same people as the tall, trim, short-haired blonde heroine and her short but curvy partner with brunette hair down to her shapely butt?”

“Most people who figure that out forget it again, almost instantly.” Tammi replied, rather pleased at Bonnie’s description. “It’s magic!” she proclaimed, as if ‘It’s magic!’ explained everything, rather than nothing. “Say, I think that cute guy over there likes me! I wonder if he wants my phone number?”

“Which cute guy, Tams? There’s at least 30 boys staring at you, and you know all 30 of them want your phone number,” Alex sighed. “Please don’t tell them all!” She turned to Bonnie. “Last time we hit the beach, she wrote her phone number in the sand while I was dozing, and the damn phone was ringing off the hook for a month!” She stared daggers at her friend, who only giggled as she stretched and then rolled over on her towel so everyone could stare at her shapely butt.

Alex returned to her explanation. “So anyway, when we were on our Caribbean vacation, Val gave us a magic bottle that she pulled from her wishing bag.* It makes people instantly forget that Alex and Tammi are also Palette and Miss Music. People who it’s OK if they know, like Donna, Phoenix, you and the rest of the Alliance of Mystery Heroes, are somehow immune. So when Donna calls Miss Music ‘Tammi’, the other cops hear it, but the next second they don’t remember it. Pretty neat, huh?” Val Coppersmith, also known as Majique, was another member of the Alliance of Mystery Heroes.

*see 1962: The Mystery Sisters of the Caribbean

“The magic of that bottle must be VERY powerful,” Bonnie mused. “I’d be extra careful with it if I were you two. Whatever item Val pulls from her bag always seems to help Val but cause mischief and trouble for everyone else, and the more powerful the item, the worse the consequences. Like Gr’Bash.” Gr’bash, the Goddess of Wat’ry Doom, a giant kracken, had been held in magical stasis for over a hundred years by the magical Shining Blade of Glory piercing her heart, and Val’s wishing bag had pulled that sword loose 1).

“Can’t we enjoy the beach for a while?” Tammi complained. “We beat Gr’Bash, and we’ll be able to handle anything the bottle might throw at us. Aren’t we the Mystery Sisters?”

“Guess you’re right,” Bonnie agreed, but privately she had her doubts.

Let’s All Go Ride Our Bikes

Evan Smif was regretting his bold words to the Senator. ‘How’m I even goinna find that Miss Music bimbo? And if’n I find her, what if she don’t got the pennant wit’ her?’ He considered what he knew about AVant Guard – which was a lot more now than an hour ago. He’d talked with some others of the Senator’s men, and was starting to realize that AVant Guard might be more formidable than just ‘a couple of girls in skin-tight costumes’. ‘I can deal wit the Music bimbo wit earplugs, but how d’I keep Blondie from blinding me? ‘less I can separate ‘em…’

He started to make plans. First he had to find them, then capture Miss Music and hold her hostage while her partner went and got the pendant, and then… He had heard that the two of them were dogged investigators, with a reputation like the Canadian Mounties – they always ‘got their man’, and they would hound him forever if he let them live. So he added another plank to his plan – once he got the pendant back, he’d have to kill them both.

‘Not a bad idea, dat,’ he considered. ‘That’d make my rep, sure as shootin’, as ‘the man what offed AVant Guard!’ The Senator would have to show some respect and stop complaining about the way he talked after that. So: find them, separate them, capture the Music bimbo, use her as a hostage to get the other one to bring him the pendant, off the both of them. All that was left was the details.

He thought for a while. ‘This is gonna be cake!’ But he had to add ‘…if I can find them.” That was the one weak spot in his plan. He knew they were often seen near Haight-Ashbury, so he’d have to hang out and wait for them there. If he didn’t find them tonight, he’d lose the Senator’s challenge, but as soon as he had decided to kill the heroic pair, that had become his most important goal, and he was prepared to wait as long as it took. He hopped onto his motorcycle (a Western Auto Wizard motorcycle which sometimes brought him ridicule from the rest of the Senator’s men as it looked more like a bicycle than a motorcycle, but it had been cheap: $300 new in 1960, but he’d bought it used for $5 earlier this year). He headed for Haight Ashbury, prepared to hang around there as long as it took.

A quiet moment

As they were getting ready for dinner, Bonnie took a moment to talk to Tammi quietly, where Alex couldn't overhear. "Say, Tammi," she started diffidently. "If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you about something that happened when we were getting ready to fight Gr'Bash."

"I think I know what it is," Tammi replied, also a bit hesitatingly. "Alex asked me about it too. Why'd I act like such a ditz when you told me to use my power to fly like a rocker - or zoom through the water like a torpedo. Right?"

*see 1962: The Mystery Sisters of the Caribbean

"Yeah, that's it. If you don't want to talk about it..." Bonnie's hesitation was very different than the take-charge attitude she had displayed in the theater.

"I don't, not really. I don't like to remember it. But I was scared. I don't know if you've noticed it, but I'm actually pretty tiny." Bonnie smiled at that. Tammi's personality was big enough that you quickly forgot her physical size. "And Gr'Bash was so BIG - bigger than a 707, bigger than a cruise ship. She seemed to be as big as a mountain. I wasn't afraid of the skeletons or the ghost - but I was overwhelmed by Gr'Bash. I was so afraid that I couldn't even think. So I just did what you told me to, no matter how stupid I acted."

"I'm sorry I didn't think of that at the time," Bonnie apologized. "I was..."

"You were figuring out how us teeny tiny humans were going to absolutely trash a giant vastly powerful enraged magical goddess, who was strong enough to knock Zenith, our most powerful teammate, right out of the sky!" Tammi finished for her. "And you even found a way for teeny tiny me, with my teeny tiny power, to help! After I thought about it, I decided I'd never again let being scared make me stupid!"

Bonnie wasn't quite sure what to say. She was proud of her friend, and suddenly proud of herself, too, for putting her friend in a position to succeed. She was about to protest the 'teeny tiny power' part, But she didn't have to continue, as Alex called them both to eat.

On the Prowl

Two virtually silent, 20 year old electric motorcycles carrying three mystery heroines cruised sedately west through Golden Gate Park. Miss Music was in her traditional seat behind Palette on the larger of the two bikes, which was painted in splatters of bright colors over yellow and matched Palette’s costume. The bike Adventurine was riding was a somewhat smaller model from the same manufacturer. It was painted a ruddy reddish-brown and had been extensively customized, the most noticeable addition being a small cannon mounted above the front wheel with the three-pronged head of a grappling hook protruding from the barrel. The faux gold chain of Pinero’s pendant peaked out from the collar on Miss Music’s action costume. Both her friends had noticed when she’d put it on, but she glowered at them so fiercely that neither said anything – if Miss Music wanted to keep her memento close, what harm could it do?

Adventurine had been curious about the customizations on the smaller bike, so her teammates had given her the short version of its history:

Flashback: Fossa

“Do you remember Fossa?” Alex began. Bonnie shook her head. “Not surprising, not many do now. She had a short stint as a mystery heroine in San Fran from the mid-40s to the early 50s, and was always second fiddle to the Red Lynx 2). This was her bike. She apparently did all the customization herself. She disappeared suddenly without a trace in 53.” She looked a little annoyed when the Zombies softly began singing “She’s Not There”, but she’d learned years before that making background music was something Tammi usually wasn’t even aware of. And, she had to admit, sometimes her partner’s choice of background music was very appropriate, and often quite funny.

“Years later, I bought this place,” she continued, “and a few years after that Tammi discovered a hidden door behind the basement workbench. Here behind it, we found the Lair of Fossa. She didn’t leave us much, just this bike and some old pictures. But let me tell you, she was one hot number!”

Alex projected a series of pictures on the wall, like a slide show, and Bonnie had to agree. Fossa was of average height, but she had a fantastic figure, with the muscular legs and physique of a sprinter, which she showed off in a skin-tight costume of tawny red. In some of the pictures she seemed to have claws. Most of the pictures appeared to have been clipped from newspapers, but there was no sign of any of the accompanying stories.

“After I found this place,” Tammi continued the story proudly. “I did some research on Fossa at the library and in the tombs of some of the SF papers. She had cat-like powers, another reason she was always overshadowed by the Red Lynx. Anyway, her powers: very strong, silent, see in the dark, hear really well, that kind of stuff.” The music changed to the sad refrains of The End of the World. “One day I was talking to some neighbors, and they told me that in the 40s and early 50s a night club torch singer named Elinencia Ralaivao lived here, and then suddenly disappeared. The rumors were that she got on the wrong side of one of the club owners, and he killed her – but nobody knows for sure. Guess she didn’t have a ‘9 lives power’, then…” She shrugged her shoulders. “I found some pictures of her in the society pages, and had Alex take a peek at ‘em.”

Alex projected more pictures, of a dark-skinned woman with exotic features and long dark hair, usually wearing a glittering ultra-tight floor length gown with daringly low neckline over towering stilettos. It was pretty clear to all three that the pictures were of the same woman.

“We’ve talked on and off about trying to find out more about her, maybe look for her and clear up the mystery, but something urgent always seems to come up,” Alex finished sheepishly. “Hadn’t thought about her in months, till I took the tarp off her bike an hour ago. But as soon as we wrap up this case, I’m gonna take up the hunt again,” she vowed seriously. “So let’s get going. Bonnie, you ride the Fossa's cycle.” Alex indicated the one with the harpoon cannon.

From the moment Bonnie had seen the customized bike, she had been itching to take it for a spin. Her own bike was back in Chicago, and she was surprised to realize how much she missed riding, even though she’d only been away for a couple of days.

“She added a lot of stuff,” Alex continued, pointing out some of the Fossa’s customizations as she named them, “Grapple cannon, catapult seat, police radio, smoke screen generator, JATO assist.” She pointed to a small numeric keyboard: “If you start the bike, but don’t type in the proper code, you’ll get a shock from the handlebars that will knock you right off!”

“Nice,” Bonnie was envious. “I’ll have to get Red Rocket to whip up some of those things for my own bike. Unless you’ll let me have this one?” she asked with a grin. As she had expected, Alex turn her down flat. She was puzzled about something: “I don’t see anything like these on your bike?”

“Well, no… Tam and I got along fine without a lot of gadgets before we found this bike, and we decided we don’t need them.” From the sour look Bonnie caught on Tammi’s face, carefully hidden behind Alex’s back, Bonnie guessed that Alex was the one who had nixed the gadgets. “Careful, Tuneful Titan! Any surface can be a mirror for me. I can SEE you!” Alex joked, poking back at her partner a little bit.

“Well, lucky me, riding the hopped up bike. Hope I get a chance to try out some of that stuff!” Bonnie waxed enthusiastic. “Let’s get moving!”

An Old Acquaintance

Bonnie pulled her mind back to the present – an absent-minded motorcycle rider was heading for serious trouble. She’d had to fight her well-honed riding instincts already – the silence was sort of disorienting, she kept trying to shift, and every time she twisted the throttle, the bike almost leaped out from under her. She was catching on, but nothing was easy yet. She was startled when something passed her – moving too fast to see; all she could make out was a green blur. It was familiar to her, though, and by the time it circled twice around the women on their bikes as if they were standing still, she knew who it must be. When it slowed and became a small woman, dressed in a revealingly brief green costume, running easily between the bikes, she wasn’t surprised to see Zing, the self-styled Queen of Quick, even though she hadn’t seen the speedster for years.

Zing had begun her super career as a petty criminal in Chicago, and she had quickly run afoul of Adventurine, her partners, and the CPD’s Mystery Villain Apprehension Team.* She’d left town shortly after she had almost been captured. She’d next surfaced in San Francisco a year or so later, and had been a thorn in the sides of AVant Guard since they first began working together in 1960.

*see The Origin of Zing, Queen of Quick

“Hey, Bonnie Victory!” Zing greeted her first foe enthusiastically. “It’s great to see you! Whatcha up to?”

‘So, you know who I am, do you?’ Adventurine was a little bit taken aback to discover that Zing seemingly knew her civilian ID. ‘Well, two can play that game.’

“Good evening, Lee Han of Freshport. I wondered if I’d run into you before I left. Why’d you decide to leave Vegas?”

It was Zing’s turn to be taken aback. Nobody was supposed to know she was from another dimension! And she’d only appeared twice in costume in Las Vegas and only to mobsters. Adventurine had some very good intel.

“So, what do you want, Zingo?” Miss Music spoke up crossly. “In case you can’t tell, we’re busy – and don’t have time for you right now.”

“Aww, Musicus, I’m hurt. I always find time for YOU! Of course, my powers GIVE me a lot more time than you have...” Adventurine thought they sounded more like two sarcastic friends than a mystery heroine and her mystery villain nemesis. Then Zing’s tone changed, and she actually sounded worried. “I’m here to warn you – somebody wants this.” she held out Pinero’s pendant. “And he wants it bad – put a million dollar bounty on it, with an additional bonus for your heads. 50 grand for Musicussy here, 25 grand on the artist.”

Miss Music’s hand went to her neck in surprise, and the pendant was back in place. She hadn’t even noticed when Zing had removed it or put it back. “If you can take it that easily, why don’t you just take it and leave?” she barked stridently. That pendant was HERS and she was pissed!

“I don’t need a million dollars,” Zing replied breezily. “I had a million once, two million, in fact, and all I did all day and night was worry that someone was going to steal it. 24 hours a day – and that’s one hell of a lot longer for me than it is for you!”

Palette was more practical. “Any idea who DOES want that bounty?”

“I heard Atoma and maybe the Blackflare. Who knows who else?” Zing tossed off dismissively. “Doesn’t matter, you can take ‘em. You can take anybody but ME!” There was more than a grain of truth in that boast – AVant Guard often managed to disrupt Zing’s activities, but the one time they had actually managed to capture her, she’d escaped custody almost immediately. It was hard to hold a woman who could vibrate her body into invisibility and pass easily through walls.

“Doesn’t sound like you’re going to stick around and give us a hand,” Adventurine commented dryly.

“C’mon, Bon, you know I’m one of the bad guys. Anyway, no, I have plans of my own for the night. Nice to know you’ll be busy elsewhere so you won’t get in my way. Cheerio!” and with that, she was gone.

“Uh, guys, incoming at 12 o’clock High!!” Miss Music pointed to the sky. “Sure SOUNDS like Atoma.”

“Yup, it’s Atoma, and she’s alone,” Palette confirmed after a quick glance. “Type G, Level 3F. Doesn’t talk much,” Palette explained to Adventurine. Bonnie's own teammates, Red Rocket and Tom Atomic, had devised a super powers classification system years ago, and the Alliance of Mystery Heroes sometimes used it as shorthand in situations like this. Adventurine could expect a foe who relied on technology, wore passive armor (such as her own armor cloth costume) and could fly.

Now Adventurine could see their new foe as well, a tall blonde with a costume that made her look like a go-go dancer with wings: a white mini-dress with long sleeves flared at the wrists, a high collar, red booties, a wide red belt of the sort boxers get when they win, a white skullcap, goggles, and two red ornaments that looked like pigeon wings stuck to her head just above her ears. And she had wings – ribbed glider wings between her arms and her waist – of the same red color. 4)

The ribs were jets or rockets of some kind, which allowed her to fly – loudly, awkwardly, and relatively slowly compared to her husband, Red Rocket. ‘No wonder she doesn’t talk much,’ the Windy City Wonder grinned to herself. ‘If that’s the best tech she’s got, this shouldn’t be too hard.’

Atoma Bomb

The trio was just passing a well-lighted empty parking lot, fronting a wide meadow surrounded by trees – just the place for a twilight super-fracas. Adventurine squealed into the lot and was already off her bike with her shield raised as her friends approached her. Just in time; Atoma was hovering in front of her about 20 feet off the ground, and must have decided she was finally in attacking range. A decorative embossing on her belt suddenly began glowing, and a cone of violet light, so pale and faint it was hard to see, slowly descended from Atoma’s belt buckle towards Adventurine. Even before it reached her, she could feel her costume getting warm, as if she were standing near an open blast furnace.

‘Light doesn’t work like that!’ the green clad heroine recognized, and as she swung her shield up, she remembered something she’d said to her overly-macho partner Tom Atomic years ago after something he hadn’t recognized knocked him off his pins: “If it puzzles you, treat it as a threat!” The cone hadn’t quite reached her yet, so she quickly sprinted toward Atoma. As soon as she was out from under the cone, she could tell her costume was no longer heating up.

“Watch it, team, she’s got an invisible heat ray!” she warned her partners, who by now had left the bike and were quickly moving to flank the hovering villain.

“Invisible to you, bright as spotlight to me. Microwaves!” Palette yelled back. “That’s a new trick.”

“She can only aim the beam by moving her hips,” Adventurine warned her partners, as she thought ‘Awkward again! She’s not very good at the mystery villain business.’

Atoma was rotating frantically in place, trying to refocus her beam on Palette or Adventurine when Miss Music struck, with a ‘sonic grenade’, a super-amplified sonic boom that originated a foot from their foe’s head, reinforced with ultrasonic frequencies which were intended to cause intense pain in an opponent’s ears, disrupt her balance, and induce acute nausea. Atoma jerked violently as if she’d been struck physically, but an instant later, she was surrounded by a sparkling transparent sphere, which apparently totally nullified Miss Music’s sonic attack.

This spherical force field was new, too, and it was clear that Atoma hadn’t thought through the consequences of being surrounded by a force field while flying using rocket propulsion. The sphere trapped her rocket thrust inside, and she began falling. A fall from 20 feet could be fatal, but just a few feet from the ground, the bubble snapped off and her rockets blasted louder and harder than ever, slowing her enough that the impact probably didn’t do any major damage, but she was stunned and collapsed face down on the pavement.

The three heroines rushed to reach their foe before she recovered. Atoma had a large flat case strapped to her back, with a hose like that of a scuba tank which split in two and fed spines along the top of her wings. It had a quick disconnect, and Palette used it, then removed the backpack from their dazed foe. “Power supply for her gadgets and fuel tank for the ‘atomic rockets’,” she explained to Adventurine.

“She seems pretty inept for a mystery villain,” Adventurine asked curiously.

“She isn’t actually trying to be particularly ept,” Miss Music explained. “She claims she’s a historian from the future, not a mystery villain. Says she read a journal written by one of her ancestors that tells how she would one day invent a time machine, travel back to 1964, and have a career as a ‘mystery criminal’ and recurring foe of AVant Guard. She spent much of her life building that time machine, so she could come back and make the events in the journal come true, in order to avoid creating a space-time chronosynclastic anomaly which would destroy the universe.”

“Then she has to have known she was going to lose today,” Adventurine observed, a little puzzled.

“Yeah, and she knows in advance every time she’s going to fight us, and whether she’s gonna win or lose,” Palette replied, sounding a little frustrated. “But she won’t tell us – says if we know, it might change the outcome – and destroy the universe!” She didn’t sound convinced.

Adventurine was even more confused. “So she wouldn’t be here, acting like a mystery villain, if she hadn’t read in the journal that she had been a mystery villain, and her ancestor wouldn’t have written about it if she hadn’t done it, and if her ancestor hadn’t written about it, she wouldn’t have read it, and she wouldn’t be here? My head is spinning! It seems like the whole cycle started itself, for no reason.”

“Yeah, she says it only seems that way to us because we have such a limited understanding of space-time phenomena,” Miss Music spit out. “She’s so much damn smarter than us – but she loses every time. Doesn’t seem so smart to me!”

“Why isn’t she in jail if you beat her every time?” Adventurine wondered.

“Well, she hasn’t actually ever done anything really illegal enough to get locked up. All she ever does is attack us and lose, no one ever gets hurt, and no property is damaged. It’s probably against the law to attack someone with no good reason, but we don’t really have the heart to press charges,” Palette replied sadly. “So we just let her go. Poor girl… trying to save the universe and she doesn’t even know why.” Then her voice turned apprehensive. “Blackflare, on the other hand, is deadly!”

“Agreed,” Adventurine agreed. “Tom Atomic has a file on her in case she ever turns up in Chicago, but so far, we’ve been lucky. She’s done assassinations in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Atlanta and San Antonio, and she seems to be one of the best assassins in the world.”

“Not just one of the best, bitch!” A very loud voice barked from not far away. “The greatest in the world!”

Blackflare

Along with the words, Miss Music heard a soft sigh of displaced air, the vital sounds of another person behind her, and a faint hiss, somehow sinister, that she’d never heard before. As she started to whirl around to confront the speaker, something struck her from behind. She felt as if she had just been slammed with a blast of water from a high pressure hose and was instantly knocked sprawling. She could feel that whatever had hit her was now sticking to her back, growing larger and flowing over her, almost as if she was being engulfed by some giant primitive living thing. And where it went her body became numb, and as it progressed, she felt weaker and weaker. She squealed with pain and panic!

Adventurine and Palette spun just in time to see an impressive woman who had been pointing at Miss Music with one hand, now swinging the same hand to point at them. A stream of black plasma jetted from her clenched fist. Adventurine charged fearlessly into that stream, which splashed harmlessly from her raised shield. Blackflare had not expected the green clad champion’s shield to be proof against the black stuff. The Windy City Wonder hit her hard before she could react, slamming her shield at the villain’s solar plexus and knocking her down. She trampled over her fallen foe, then stumbled and almost fell when the villain simply disappeared!

At the same instant, the black glob that was trying to engulf Miss Music vanished as well. The Tuneful Titan felt as if she’d just finished a marathon and needed a rest before she could even summon up the energy to encourage her partners. She rolled to her stomach and closed her eyes.

Everything she’d seen in the last few seconds flashed through Palette’s mind. Blackflare was taller than Adventurine, almost rail thin, and so dark she seemed to be wrapped in shadows. Everything about her was dark or black, her coloring, her hair, her costume, even ‘the whites of her eyes’ were so dark as to almost disappear in her face. Her hands seemed to be on fire, but even the ‘flames’ were black. Next to her was a spot where the ground was spitting black sparks and fire into the air, similar to what a black road flare would look like, if it were possible. As she had turned to face her foe, the Colorful Crusader had registered many similar flares scattered around the parking lot and open field nearby.

Blackflare popped back into existence maybe 50 feet away, right next to another of the black flares, seemingly unaffected by Adventurine’s attack and already back on her feet. Palette could see a faint, quickly fading black ribbon stretching between the flare in front of them and the flare where the villain was now. In the growing dark of the evening, even with her enhanced vision, she could barely make out the figure of the villain.

“Let’s see what you think about this, witch!” she snarled, and suddenly Blackflare’s figure began radiating bright light, as Palette projected the illusion of bright sunshine on her body. For a few seconds, that worked, but then Palette felt something she’d never felt before – something resisting her power. And not just resisting, but sucking away all the energy she was using to create and sustain the illusion! Before she could react to that attack, her illusion disappeared like a popped soap bubble. The effect on Palette was instant: psychic feedback snapped back at her and hit her like a lightning bolt. She was actually thrown backward several feet, where she collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

Adventurine was shaken to see her partners taken out of the fight so easily. She needed to attack! Even as she moved as fast as she could, she was analyzing the fight so far and working on fighting tactics. She had no idea what had happened to Palette, but her shield had already proved to be proof against that black fire goop stuff. She pulled two golf balls from a compartment in the back of her shield and threw rapidly, one after the other. They both hit the villain and exploded open violently, one low and one high, knocking her off balance. The explosion left behind a writhing mass of tendrils of thin, flexible wire that started to wrap around Blackflare.

Before she could be totally cocooned, she disappeared again, leaving the tangled wires behind, waving in the air, seemingly disconsolate over their failure. The Windy City Wonder spun completely around trying to locate her foe’s latest landing point, and there she was, next to a flare even farther away, pointing her arm at Adventurine. The shield came up as she noticed that it was the other arm, and she could see nothing happening. This worried her; what was the villain doing? Shield high, she spun again on her heel, trying to scan everywhere at once. She completed her turn into a sidekick to the jaw. She had never noticed the new flare that had just appeared at her feet.

Adventurine’s costume protected most of her body, but her cowl left the lower half of the face exposed. With no armor cloth to protect her, the vicious kick snapped her head around violently and dangerously, and she dropped to the ground, the third victim of the self-styled ‘greatest assassin in the world’ in under 30 seconds.

Blackflare looked around at her 3 defeated foes, all lying flat on their backs. “Some mystery heroes you lot turned out to be,” she said scornfully, as she walked among them.

She stopped next to each unconscious woman, pulled off her mask, and drew on her face with a black Magic Marker™. “Miss Tragic #100”, written on Miss Music’s forehead with comic strip style upward-pointing eyelashes and a handlebar mustache. “Advanquishedurine #99” got a heavy unibrow and Hitler-style mustache. “Toilette #98” was adorned with heavy eye shadow above and below and cabalistic designs drawn on her cheeks.

The assassin gloated loudly to herself as she went about her unholy artwork. “I was SO hoping that number 100 would be more of a challenge. Oh, yes indeed, I’ve killed many more than a hundred, but I don’t count collaterals, no, just the payed-for targets. It’s unbelievable that you feeble idiots are considered heroes… pardon me, you WERE considered heroes, right?” She giggled. “Pretty soon, you’ll be considered DEAD!” She practically shouted the last word.

“I don’t remember an easier assignment – I’m almost ashamed to take money for it. But heh, a girl’s got to have her pride, you know? If I lower my rates, people might think I’m delivering cut-rate services, yes. I do so wish at least one of you was awake, so I could enjoy a little terror.”

She drew a target on Palette’s chest, the bulls’ eye right over the heart, surrounded by 3 rings labeled with declining point values. “Might as well get some target practice out of this, even with no collaterals around to practice on, no, none at all. You know, even some of those so-called ‘innocent bystanders’ were harder than you lot, yes indeed, much harder to kill. Stupid name, that, no one is ever innocent, are they, no.” She laughed, almost manically. “Hell, even that 8 year old kid I killed his parents, yes, he went batshit crazy, didn’t he? Scratched my face before I killed him too, I did! But his crybaby sister didn’t even try to run, did she? Just bawled her eyes out…”

Miss Music surged to her feet, engulfed in a rage that made her seem 10’ tall. Blackflare stumbled back a step in shock. And then she saw Miss Music’s face, and started looking around for a distant flare so she could make her escape. But she couldn’t see a one of them. “That’s impossible, my flares NEVER go out!” she shrieked.

“A scumbag like you stole my childhood,” Miss Music roared, so loud that Blackflare instantly thought she would never hear anything again, while her body trembled in sympathetic resonance with the powerful subsonics the Tuneful Titan was adding to her voice. Under the thunder of her words, the tiny heroine was rapidly varying the subsonic pitch, and suddenly Blackflare was shaking, then abruptly contorted as if she were having a seizure and fell to the pavement. “But you’re even worse. I lived through it and had a chance to grow up, but you’ve taken away these kids’ entire lives! They never had even a chance!”

Fueled by adrenaline and powered by her furious rage, she struck again. Blackflare was the target of a high intensity ultra/infra sonic attack, and she was almost instantly nauseous and retching. Her ears and nose were bleeding, and she was seeing ghostly images fluttering across her field of vision. She was sure she was about to die, and then suddenly, Miss Music’s silent sonic attack faltered and cut off. The Tuneful Titan had expended so much energy that even her rage couldn’t sustain her any longer and her voice and legs simply refused to work. She toppled backward and landed on her rump, and was barely able to end up seated. Her head slumped forward onto her chest, her eyes closed, no longer really aware of what was happening around her.

But Blackflare wasn’t off the hook yet! Palette was sitting up and Adventurine was beginning to stir. The dusky villainess was too battered to resume the fight and panic drove her to flee. With a desperate effort she raised her arm a few inches and concentrated on a point on the ground about 300 yards away. Instantly a black flare appeared at that spot, spitting black sparks. The villainess made the mental effort she needed to teleport to the flare and disappeared. At that exact instant, the flare went out. The villainess didn’t reappear, not near the now extinguished flare, not anywhere between here and there, nor anywhere else within Palette’s range of vision.

Moaning and groaning, Adventurine crawled to her shield and pulled a small first aid kit from the back-of-the-shield compartment. She crawled over to Miss Music and broke a tube of smelling salts under her nose. Music woke up with a start and tried feebly to slap her hand away.

“God, that stinks!” She looked around in a daze. “I guess you guys beat her, huh? I was hoping you would.” She forced herself to concentrate on Adventurine. “Advanquishedurine, not what I would have chosen, but heh, I like the new look.” Her eyes closed again.

“It wasn’t us, Tams, it was all you!” Palette told her tiny partner with as much emphasis as she could – which wasn’t much.

“Wow, Missy Muse, remind me never to get you mad at me!” Zing’s voice sounded awestruck as she appeared out of nowhere. “I was still a quarter mile away, and that noise of yours shook me up good! And such language you were using, especially for one so young!” When Zing was using her super speed powers, the world around her slowed down, and she could actually hear ultrasounds which were inaudible to regular speed humans.

“Her flares never go out – but they went out tonight. Did you have anything to do with that?” Adventurine asked the mystery villainess.

“All but the last one,” the Queen of Quick agreed proudly. “Couldn’t let somebody kill my favorite punching bags! Fencing with you guys is half the fun in my life – but you should SEE the other half.” She paused for a second, then: “There’s an ambulance on the way. Glad to see you probably won’t need it. I called the cops, too, so I gotta go before they get here, Bye!” and just like that she was gone.

Smif’s Final Hurrah

Adventurine examined the Tuneful Titan and reported to the two of them, “Her blood pressure is low and her pulse is fast. She’s in shock, but I don’t think she’s in any danger. She really should see a doctor asap, though. I hope Zing really did call for an ambulance; a night in a hospital would be good for her.”

Miss Music’s voice spoke from the air between them. “I hope I don’t… look as bad… outside, as I feel… in here. And tired too… never been… so tired. Can’t even talk…” Her voice fell silent.

“But never too tired to say what’s on your mind, huh, Tams?” Palette asked. “And, by the way, you look like death warmed over.”

“You must be OK, Al, if you’re using… that old ‘speak your mind’ joke.” Miss Music’s testy voice sounded a little stronger. “A few minutes rest, and I might be one of the walking dead. At least I think so…” she complained wistfully. “But I’ll tell you this. I AM NOT going to any hospital!” She paused as if considering. “Well, not unless the doctor’s a real dreamboat, anyway. Could be a great ride in the ambulance.”

Alex winced; she hated to be called ‘Al’, but she was relieved to hear her partner’s quip. “You must be OK, Tams. Why don’t you take it easy for a while – we’ll head downtown as soon as you feel a little better,” she promised.

“Don’t you DARE try to leave without me!” the Tuneful Titan ordered, sounding yet a little bit better.

Adventurine had always before considered Miss Music as the ‘comedy relief’ in the Alliance of Mystery Heroes, but she had been revising her opinion, of both of her San Francisco-based teammates.

‘I’ll bet the way Tammi behaves, always showing off and hogging the limelight, has something to do with the guy she killed as a little girl. She didn’t want anyone to guess how guilty she thought she was, how terrible she felt about herself… I hope she feels better about herself now! But… I hope she doesn’t change and become more serious now,’ she smiled a little at herself as she thought this, ‘I guess I’m used to the way she acts…’

As a nurse in Korea, she had seen the widely varied effects extreme trauma could have on people; it had just never occurred to her before that there had ever been any such extreme trauma in Tammi’s life. ‘She concealed it well!’ Adventurine thought approvingly. ‘Funny, how much difference it makes to look at something from a more informed viewpoint.’

“You sure did a good job against Blackflare, Tams,” the Windy City Wonder complimented her weary friend. “Stopped her all by herself, after she’d take out the both of us.”

Even with her eyes closed, the Tuneful Titan smiled. “Hey! Who said you could call me Tams?” her amused voice complained humorously.

“I was out of it, but if Tams hadn’t blasted her, you would have figured out how to beat Blackflare all by yourself,” Pallette stated confidently, surprising the Windy City Wonder again and bringing her mind back to the present. “You always do. That’s why the rest of us Mystery Sisters don’t have any problems with you being so bossy – even Zenith.” Most of the women members in the Alliance of Mystery Heroes had taken a vacation together a few years ago, and they had come up with a name for the distaff side of the team – the Mystery Sisters. 5)

Adventurine was more than a little bit flattered, but she reluctantly recognized the truth in this. “OK, but I’m going to put in a call for a little help. The three of us, banged up, might not be up to the task of taking on the whole San Fran underworld. And we don't know who else might be out to get that reward!“

Before Palette could agree or object, a car squealed into the parking lot, a car Palette recognized. “That’s Barrow’s car! It can’t be him driving, though. He would NEVER treat it that way.” Phoenix drove a 1955 Corvette C1 that he had found in a junkyard and painstaking restored to near-showroom condition, and he treated it better than he treated himself. She zoomed in on the driver and was instantly certain that this was one of the men whose pictures she’d captured jumping into the pickup truck back at the theater. “Incoming!” She’d picked up that expression from Adventurine and rather liked it.

The vintage ‘Vette screeched to a stop and Evan Smif jumped out and hurried around to the passenger side. He yanked open the door and a body tumbled out; Palette could see instantly that it was Phoenix, his wrists, ankles and mouth wrapped in duct tape, and he was still alive.

Smif pointed a gun out the writhing figure on the ground and demanded from the group, “Gimme the pennant or I’ll plug ‘im.” He fired a shot into the ground near Phoenix. “I ain’t kidding.” He kicked the human bundle. “Stop yer wigglin like a worm or da next one blows up your knee!” Phoenix instantly froze in place. Smif sat on the edge of the door well and touched his gun to the back of Phoenix’s head. “I start seein’ funky tings, or hearin’ weird noizes, and I plug da guy, got it?” He examined the three of them closely. “You, da dame in green wit da big knockers, bring me da pennant and no funny biz.”

Adventurine resembled that remark. She reached down and took the pendant from Miss Music’s neck. As she did so, Miss Music deliberately turned her head so she could see the villain, making it seem as if Adventurine had done it in the process of retrieving the pendant. Her voice whispered in Adventurine’s ear. “Gotta save Phoenix… If you can distract him for a second I can take him out. I think… Gotta do it right the first time, though, too weak to do it again. Don’t stand between us, I have to see him.” Adventurine gave a barely perceptible nod, then stood and walked toward the villain, angling to one side of him until she was sure Miss Music had a clear line of sight.

“OK, bitch, close enough. Don’ come any closer, jus’ toss it over.”

“How do I know you won’t just shoot him then?” she asked, making no move to toss the pendant.

“No stallin’.” He fired another round into the ground.

By now she was close enough to recognize the gun, a Colt Detective Special. A round from that would knock her down and hurt like hell, but unless he hit her in the face, her costume should protect her and she would probably live through it. ‘I’m going to have to ask Cody and Thomas to do something about protecting my face,’ she thought as she made her calculations, ‘assuming I do live through it.’

“OK, catch!” she aimed at his head and tossed it at him as hard as she could underhand. He had to catch it or it would hit him in the face. This action pulled his gun hand away from Phoenix’s head and Adventurine charged. He saw her, swung his pistol up to shoot, and was hit by Miss Music’s sonic grenade just as he pulled the trigger. The Tuneful Titan made one of the most difficult efforts of her life, dredging the bottom of her stamina, putting everything she had left and a little more into a sonic grenade centered on his face. He was knocked backward which jerked his arm and aim up, and the bullet missed Adventurine entirely. Smif’s head smashed into the door frame behind them, and he was already unconscious by the time the Windy City Wonder reached him.

Adventurine pulled a knife from her utility belt and cut free Phoenix, who was half unconscious from the tape over his mouth which had made it hard to breathe. At that same instant, a police car tore into the parking lot, followed closely by an ambulance. Miss Music was now unconscious as well, and the noise of the sirens drowned out for everyone else the sound of the single gunshot that ended Smif’s life. Adventurine saw a red flower sprout from his chest, and spun around to see if she could spot the shooter, then fell on top of the startled Phoenix; her costume might protect them both. But whoever had shot Smif had no interest in any of the others. While she was down, she adjusted the Alliance of Mystery Heroes communicator in her cowl and sent out a request for assistance, and some instructions.

Nobody could have seen the shooter, and among the trees surrounding the parking lot where the shooter had set up, the shadows and darkness were as good for concealment as being invisible. How was anyone going to trace the flight of that bullet back to the shooter’s location? Still, while he didn’t quite rush, he didn’t either waste any time waiting around. He sent the prearranged success signal to his waiting partner via walkie talkie, then hustled away as quickly as possible, holding his rifle behind him by the barrel so it wouldn’t get caught in any of the sparse underbrush. He was certain he’d get away scot-free – nobody had even been looking in his direction when he fired, and his accomplice was in an idling car on the road just past this stand of trees.

He’d left Palette out of his reckoning, though. She had been using her zoom-in-vision to closely watch the confrontation between Adventurine and Smif. She saw the blood splatter from the bullet and instantly replayed the scene in her mind, slowing down the replay until she could actually see the bullet. She then ‘ran the movie backward’ in the same super slow motion and the bullet was in her field of vision long enough for her to get a good idea of the direction it had come from.

She instantly projected an illusion on the side of Phoenix’s car, a sign in glowing letters that read: “Adventurine, leave the body to the cops and catch up with me.” In much smaller letters, there was a taunt: “If you can!” The she turned and raced for the trees, projecting small patches of illusionary light on the ground behind her to leave Adventurine a trail to follow. Along the way, she switched to infravision, and it really wasn’t very difficult to find the spot where the shooter had been standing, and two trails of glowing footprints leading back among the trees, one much brighter than the other. As she changed directions to follow the brighter trail, she left a glowing arrow on the ground behind her and the message “He went thataway, pardner.”

Alex wasn’t gifted with super-speed, as some of her Alliance of Mystery Heroes teammates were. She didn’t have the gymnastics skills of Miss Music, or the all-around agility and athletic prowess of Adventurine. However, she could outrun any of her non-powered teammates. Years ago, her natural speed, along with years of practicing when she was growing up, and elusiveness granted by her excellent reflexes, had enabled her to win the ‘Rookie of the Year’ award in the Bay Area Derby Girls Roller League (BAD GRL) as a very good jammer for the Dolls of Doom 6). More recent years of training with the Alliance of Mystery Heroes had helped her to become even faster and more agile than she’d been during her brief career as a professional roller skater. When her infrared vision was added to the mix, she could easily avoid the trees and bushes, and move across the uneven ground almost twice as fast as the shooter.

As soon as she caught sight of him, she started using her illusion power to harass him. She needed a surface as a screen, so she couldn’t create the illusion of trees where there weren’t any, but it was very easy to make trees virtually invisible, and to conceal any bumps or dips in the terrain he was hustling across. He stumbled and banged into one of the hidden trees, hard, and staggered backward, almost stunned. As he recovered, he saw a ghostly figure seemingly approaching him, becoming larger and more clear, and he finally realized it was the ghost of Evan Smif, and screamed!

By now, Palette could hear the engine on the idling car, and she raced past the shooter, hitting him with her shoulder and knocking him to the ground with a move she’d learned on the track.

“I’ve got that one!” Adventurine yelled at her. She knew better than telling her partner to stop the car – Palette was already doing that, and she absolutely hated people telling her to do something that she was already doing.

The shooter had rolled onto his stomach and was scrabbling weakly to find his rifle. ‘How do you fight a guy who’s lying on the ground?’ she asked herself. ‘Kick him in the head? Doesn’t seem fair… Wait until he gets up and punch him out? He might have a pistol or a knife…’ She solved her problem by moving behind him and dropping her knee, with much of her weight behind it, between his shoulder blades, which forced his face to grind into the ground. She pulled her flexible restraints from her shield, and in a trice, the assassin was trussed like the calf at a rodeo.

Palette Cuts Loose

When he heard his partner scream, the driver of the getaway car didn’t waste any time thinking about anyone but himself. He’s already reported that Smif was dead; he wasn’t responsible for anything after that. He was getting out of here! He stomped the gas pedal to the floor and popped the clutch. The car jerked forward, almost stalled, and then started picking up speed, the back tires screeching in complaint and spitting thick black smoke.

‘Don’t get to stop a fleeing car very often,’ Palette thought, and an evil grin shaped her face as she sprinted toward the side of the road. ‘Zenith sure has it easy, just pick up the car and shake it until the crumbs fall out. Well, Alex, make do…’ She skidded to a halt and looked after the car.

A giant mouth, much like that of a shark, suddenly popped out of the road ahead of the car, and opened so wide the driver could see down its throat. If he hadn’t been totally spooked already by his partner’s scream, he might have reasoned out that the mystery girl heroine with illusion powers who was chasing him might have something to do with this monster. Instead, his first panicked reaction was to slam on the brakes with both feet. This time, the maltreated engine did stall and the brakes locked. It was lucky he hadn’t been going much faster; instead of a possible disaster, the abused tires merely squealed like a dying animal as the car slid another 20 yards down the street, coming to a stop inside a toxic cloud that stank of burning rubber.

The driver had been thrown violently out of his seat and smashed to the floor when the car slowed so abruptly. He’d bounced off the steering wheel and had almost been skewered by the floor-mounted stick shift before he ended up with his face almost under the passenger seat. He was pretty dazed, but he almost instinctively managed to push away and reach under the passenger seat to grab the piece he always kept there. But what was he going to shoot?

It was almost totally dark in the car, except from the dim instrument lights. Outside he could almost make out some shifting… things, and an occasional reflection showed that they were pinkish, slimy and pulsating. “Oh my god it swallowed me!” he screamed in terror, and fired his pistol at the front windshield. Which shattered and spoiled the illusion, as Palette no longer had a screen on which to project that part of her illusion.

But that was OK; by that time, Palette had reached the passenger door. It was unlocked; she yanked it open and instantly projected darkness on the driver’s eyes. “Ha!” she said out loud in satisfaction as she roughly twisted the gun out of his feeble grip. “Bet the Shadow Lady never used her overrated Lightless Ray Projector to stop a car like that!”

“Out of the car, scumbag. And no false moves, or I’ll shoot!” she ordered, pointing his own weapon at him. His only response was more moans and groans. By now, Adventurine had reached the car, propelling the handcuffed assassin in front of her, carrying his rifle and walkie talkie carefully in a plastic evidence bag.

“Mother Gaia!” Palette exclaimed in dismay as she realized, “Tams is back there with only the cops to protect her! They’d be helpless against someone like Blackfire or even Atoma.”

“Relax, Anamaria should be there by now,” Adventurine spoke with more assurance than she felt.

“And that’s supposed to reassure me?” Palette shouted anxiously. “What are the cops and medics going to do when they see a ghost?”

She turned, but before she could run back the way she’d come, Adventurine managed to grab her shoulder.

“I told her to stay invisible until we get there or there is some kind of trouble the police can’t handle.”

“Oh, yeah, like that’s any better!” Palette shrugged free of Adventurine’s hand. “How could that POSSIBLY go wrong?” She raced off back through the grove of trees at top speed. Meanwhile Adventurine stayed to help load the two captives into the police van, which had headed their way after she called them on her helmet readio, then climbed in and gave them the story as they raced back to the scene of the earlier battles.

Mystery Sis Teammates, Congregate!

Anamaria Saldana, now also known as 'The Phantom Corsair', was a ghost, formerly a Caribbean privateer captain (many would say pirate) who had gone down with her ship over 250 years ago saving the world from ‘der grranm’thrr a all krracken, Gr’Bash, the Goddess of Wat’rry Doom’. Val ‘Majique’ Coppersmith (or Val’s ‘wishing bag’, actually) had accidentally released Anamaria from the mystical bonds that had held her spirit tied to Gr’Bash, but the former privateer captain found that even after the Goddess had been defeated, her own dying curse kept her bound to this world7).

As she knew no one and had no ties in this new world, she hung out with the Alliance of Mystery Heroes and discovered that she enjoyed their adventures. As a ghost, she had some unique and useful powers – she could be invisible and intangible, she could fly, she could travel between distant locations almost instantly, and she was very sensitive to magic. She could become tangible for short periods of time, and when solid, she was a skilled brawler, a fair shot with a pistol, and her skill using her magical sword was unequalled by any modern practitioner of swordplay. As a privateer (pirate?!), her rough-and-ready ethics were not always acceptable to some members of the squad, and she would never be accepted as a full member. But she got on well with Adventurine and was very fond of Miss Music despite a rocky start with both of them, and she did have good intentions (usually).

Palette raced almost desperately back to the earlier scene, where she found a crowd of policemen and medics in a circle around Tammi, who was lying on a gurney. They were arguing with Anamaria, who in turn was keeping everyone away from Miss Music with swipes of her spectral cutlass, while Phoenix was trying to calm everyone down.

‘Te poppin’s unerr ter prrotection of Anamaria Saldana, am I don’t ken one’a yer, s’stand ye back or savorr a taste’a me steel, yer lackeys a’der King!” she ordered the men in uniform, with a swish of her magical blade. “Anotherr step and I’ll rrun ye thrrough!”

“She’s the Phantom Corsair! She’s part of the Alliance of Mystery Heroes!” Phoenix was hollering. “She’s one of the good guys!”

“We have to get her to the hospital RIGHT AWAY!” the ambulance doctor was loudly insisting, as he tried to return to the side of the gurney, to see if all this excitement was affecting his patient. “You might be killing her!” he screeched at the Corsair as he ducked away from a vicious sweep.

“Everybody stand away and shut up!!” a cop was yelling. “You two are under arrest!” he was pointing at Phoenix and Anamaria. “You, buddy, for obstructin’ justice, and you with the sword, for carrying an unsheathed blade longer than 6” and public intimidation. And if you don’t stand down, right now, both’a you, I’ll add resisting arrest, and pile on more charges until you do!”

These were just the voices Palette could pick out; the area was filled with the general babble of everyone else also trying to talk at the same time, and it was getting louder and more chaotic. She had to get their attention, and she knew just how to do it.

Suddenly, every surface within about 20 feet began radiating a bright lime green – not bright enough to be blinding, but enough to get the attention of everyone in the crowd. It blinked off again a second later, and by then everyone was silent, at least for a second.

“Barrows and Saldana, simmer down!” she bellowed. She had been fascinated by Adventurine’s ‘command voice’ and she was proud that she had produced a reasonable facsimile.

“These two are with me, officer,” Palette indicated the reporter and the pirate. “Anamaria, you have to let the doctor take care of her. You can ride in the ambulance with her to the hospital.” She glared at the doctor, daring him to disagree. “And the cops are on OUR side!”

The police van had just joined the rest of the vehicles in the now-crowded parking lot, and Adventurine joined the conversation. “Saldana, don’t you EVER listen? I told you not to interfere with the doctors and police.”

“Yarr, am glad I’m ter be seein’ ye too, ye scurrvy slimy harrlot!” the ghost snapped sarcastically. “Ye wanted me har; har’s war I be. Ye ken that I place no stock in ‘doctorrs’, t’was one of ter butchers what cut off me foot.” Her perfectly normal-appearing left leg below the knee was suddenly replaced by a wooden peg, then switched back a second later. “One of ter benefits of bein’ a ghost!” she cackled. “Am ‘t’wer der blaggard lackeys a’ter King ought run me am ter Black Lusca to our wat’ry grraves!” She glared at the medical team and swiped her ethereal blade at the police for emphasis.

A few seconds ago, Miss Music had abruptly awakened, very confused, so she cautiously took inventory before she opened her eyes or moved. What she found was unpleasant, and more than a little scary!

‘Umm… I feel like crap, I’m in my costume, not my bikini, and I’m TIED DOWN! Hey, déjà vu!’ flashed incongruously through her head. It wasn’t the first time she’d awakened in similar circumstances – she’d been abducted by aliens once and had awakened strapped to an operating table. Fortunately, the heroes who were now the Alliance of Mystery Heroes had intervened before they could experiment on her! 'At least, I don't THINK they had a chance to experiment on me,' she thought. The idea that the aliens might have had time to experiment on her before her rescue had never occurred to her before…

She listened intently before she opened her eyes, identified Alex, Phoenix, Anamaria, a cute young EMT whom she (in her Tammi identity) had run into several times at various night clubs (but DON’T tell Alex! or Phoenix either…), Bonnie and a crowd of others. ‘Well, I’m were definitely NOT on the beach any more. But it seems relatively peaceful. Guess I’ll let them know I’m awake,’ she thought calmly.

“SOMEONE BETTER UNTIE ME FAST OR THERE’LL BE HELL TO PAY!” her voice boomed from the air, loud enough to make a dead man flinch in pain. She opened her eyes on a scene of confused activity, and ‘her’ EMT was beside her, and she was on a damn gurney, and he was already loosening the straps, and a doctor was trying to stop him, and Alex was restraining the doctor and Anamaria was floating overhead and Phoenix was pushing people out of the way to get to her side and some cops were trying to stop him and there were two muffled voices plotting escape from inside the van and… and… if she’d been anyone other than Tammi Paige, she’d have been overwhelmed.

‘But,’ she told herself, ‘Tammi Paige, Miss Music, the better half of AVant Guard and the most prominent and attractive mystery heroine member of the Alliance of Mystery Heroes is NEVER EVER overwhelmed. It would wreck my image.’ So, as soon her straps were removed, she sat up. “Hey, everybody! What did I miss?” she spoke, flashing her perkiest smile. “Wow, a crowd and an ambulance? Did somebody die already?” She looked around once more. “You know, I really enjoy waking up on the beach a lot more than this.” Now that she was free, she put her head back down and seemed to fall instantly asleep.

As her friend and teammate seemed to be OK, Adventurine wanted to follow up on an idea. “Anamaria, can you do me a big favor?” The ghost looked at her questioningly. “The two men in that truck there…” Anamaria looked puzzled, so she pointed at the police van. “Can you ask them a couple of questions without scaring them to death?” She got a little worried at the sudden gleeful expression on the face of the Spectral Marauder, and reiterated: “I’m serious – without scaring them to death!”

“It’s wounded I’m wit’yer lack’a faith,” Anamaria growled. “Yer got me worrd, and me worrd’s me bond!”

“Somebody sent some goons after the poppin, and those two probably know who it was. Do you think you could get that guy’s name for me?”

“Aye, matey. I’ll ave der name fer yer in’a trrice,” Anamaria replied with an evil chuckle. “Am doan yer worry none; I’ll be gentl’r n’a summerr rrain!”

The Phantom Corsair floated through the door of the van, her sword at ready. There was some male screaming, muffled by the van’s insulation, then she could almost make out an inaudible conversation. And then the ghost floated back out again, and up to Adventurine.

“The lubber’s name be Gangrene, the vicerroy a this stinkin’ porrt, sittin in ter Goverrnment House, hornswagglin der King am takin ‘is coin, am rrobbin’ ter people blind besides. Rreminds me of ter scurrvy bilge rratt Woodes Rrogerrs, ‘e does. N’ honest Corsairr can’t make narry a crrown in this town without crrossing ter blackguard’s palm, not’d I’d everr knowed’un.”

Adventurine blinked in astonishment. If she’d parsed that right, Anamaria had just made a joke! Years commanding a cutthroat and murderous crew, a sudden and painful death, and over 240 years as an Earthbound ghost, bound to the side of a sleeping goddess, and denied proper access to the afterlife accounted for her normally dour attitude, and the concept of humor had seemed beyond her grasp. But she had no idea who the pirate captain could be talking about – who was the viceroy of San Francisco?

That’s what Palette was trying to figure out as well. ‘A viceroy named Gangrene? Living in the Government House?’ Then a light dawned, a name she’d heard earlier today. “You don’t mean Senator Grande, who lives in the penthouse of the Royal Savoy Hotel?”

“Aye, wench, ‘ats ought I said… yer savvy? Am d’yer ken why ter scurrvy blackguarrd is chasin’ ter wee lassie?”

“We think they are after this,” Palette showed her teammates the pendant.

“Aye, am powerrful magic that bauble is, lass.” Before the Colorful Crusader could react, Anamaria reached out to touch the pendant. The teammates were stunned when it instantly dissolved into mist which then instantly dissipated. “Well, a powerrful bauble t’wer,” the ghost corrected, almost apologetically.

Palette found that she was relieved, and Adventurine was suddenly very thoughtful. “One less thing we have to worry about!” Then, to Anamaria: “Tammi is going to kill you when she finds out!”

The Phantom Corsair only chuckled. “Aarrgh, then ter lucky I be, seein’ tr’ah’m er ghost a’rready!”

A Sinking Ship

A few minutes ago and a mile away, two sinister figures had been observing the scene through senses not their own. They were standing next to a bizarre flying machine, apparently a vintage autogyro retrofitted with articulated batlike ornithopter wings for propulsion and decorated with painted-on feathers, a set of Mickey Mouse ears and a vicious beak like that of a giant eagle. When the pendant vaporized, they exchanged a brief conversation.

“Did you see the same thing I heard?” Batmaster, a short, thin male with very long arms, a snub nose and very large ears asked his partner diffidently. “The pendant just seemed to vanish.” Batmaster was able to control bats, and observe the world through their senses. There had been several bats flitting unobtrusively around the crowd in the parking lot, enabling Batmaster to not only ‘see’ what was going on via echolocation, but also to listen in with acute bat hearing that rivaled Miss Music’s. “What now?”

His partner, the Red Talon, a tall, thin woman with a long neck and a slightly hunched back and the power of controlling birds, was clearly the decision-maker of the pair. She’d been observing the scene through the eyes of a pair of owls, who she now released to return to their evening hunt. “Let’s look up that guy in Ohio. Without the million bucks for the gem, this job suddenly became low reward, and very high risk. A couple hundred grand to bump off some members of the Alliance of Mystery Heroes just ain’t worth it!” She pointed at their flier. “To the BirdBat Plane!”

“I never felt good about this operation,” Batmaster confided in his partner with relief as the two bounty hunters hopped into their home-built vehicle, which rose reluctantly into the sky, clanking and groaning as it went.

Similar sentiments were being expressed by several other interested observers, most of them Bay Area C-list mystery villain wannabes who had been hoping for a big score. The million for the pendant had seemed like a worthwhile risk, but none of them had been confident about killing Palette and Miss Music, and Adventurine made that part of the operation a non-starter. BeeBoy and Lady Bug buzzed away. Toxic Sludge melted into a gooey mass and flowed into the sewer. The Three Threats: Menace, Peril and Scourge, mounted their palomino ponies to gallop away. In his haste, Menace failed and fell to the ground, his foot still caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged a hundred yards before his partners could catch up to and calm his scared mount. Vibratron and Repelatron activated their Escapatron™ belts, shrank to the size of 10 year old kids, hoped on their Mototron Bikes™ and raced away.

The area near the parking lot, only seconds ago crowded with heroes, emergency responders and hidden villains, was now empty and quiet, as the action moved downtown.

The Royal Savoy Hotel

Senator Grande was mildly surprised when he received the report of Smif’s capture and sudden, unfortunate, totally unexpected heart stoppage so early in the evening. ‘I didn’t think he’d even find them until after midnight!' he thought with contempt. ‘Still, he was a blundering amateur who never had a chance, and he would have spilled everything at the first question. Glad to be rid of him!’

His began idly planning how he would make use of the gem. ‘I suppose I _could_ destroy it, and make sure it never gets used against me. But how can I profit from it?’ Grande had already begun campaigning for governor for next year’s election on a ‘law and order’ platform. Some of the elements of the campaign would need to remain secret, and he needed ‘campaign workers’ he could trust implicitly for those tasks. ‘If I can prove they are murderers and threaten to get them put away if they betray me, they’ll keep their mouths shut!’ he crowed silently. ‘And I can identify and get rid of those weak sisters like Smif.’

His thoughts moved on to greater schemes. ‘Suppose I could somehow become the gem’s legal owner after the election? What great publicity it would be if the state’s Attorney General - my Attorney General! – had an infallible tool to convict murderers! Hmm… After the election, someone will tip off the police to who now has the gem and a squad of my CHiPs, hand-picked by me, will recover it, while the crooks who stole it stupidly die in a gun battle with the CHiPs, and I’ll issue an Executive Order declaring it a state asset.’ He smiled in pleasure at the future successes that were unfolding in his musings.

And so, he was totally stunned when his security alarm went off, and the panicked voice of his security officer reached him over the intercom.

“Boss, a buncha cops just rushed the lobby, and the hotel manager’s spilling his guts about us! There’s buncha cop cars all around the block. I locked the elevator, but they got the hotel key and are on the way up! Cops and superbitches on the front and back stairs and the service elevator, too.”

Grande got on the PA himself. “Attention all! This is the Senator. There is no reason to panic. The police have nothing on any of us, and our lawyers will have them out of the building in minutes with a public apology on TV and in the papers tomorrow morning! Dewey, Ketchum and Howe, meet me in the lobby, now! This is just like the last time. Nothing to worry about!”

Meanwhile, he had been frantically grabbing an already-packed valise from the safe, stuffing in a few stray papers and rolls of bills, and then he slid back a section of the wall to reveal a simple control panel. A press of an inconspicuous button and a concealed door panel slid aside to reveal a secret elevator and an instant later, he was headed non-stop to the subbasement.

As he exited into a very small room, he smiled as he heard a small explosion which wrecked the elevator entrance above him – nobody was going to follow him down that elevator! This room was sealed off from the rest of the subbasement and it had only one door, which opened into the sewer. He quickly climbed into the chest-high waders stored there, donned the backpack, gas mask, and elbow-length rubber gloves, picked up the lantern and flashlight, unlocked the door, and slipped through into the dark, dank, smelly sewer. He was relieved but not at all surprised that the lantern showed him that the pipe was empty as far as he could see both ways. Everyone who knew about this secret exit had passed away of natural causes years ago.

The water was virtually stagnant, covered with puckered brown scum with stuff floating in it that he didn’t want to even think about. It was quiet, the only sounds being the occasional dripping of water that had condensed on the slimy bricks overhead. Even through the gas mask, he was almost gagging on the stench. He carefully located the first mark on the path out, and began slogging through the sludge. He knew that if he kept to the marked paths, the disgusting ooze he was wading through would never come above his knees. Fortunately, he only had to go about a quarter mile, but even before he was around the first bend it already seemed as if he had been trudging for miles.

Suddenly he stopped. ‘What’s that?’ he thought in alarm. ‘It sounded like… footsteps on a wooden floor?!?’ He listened intently for a few seconds, the shook his head. ‘Damnit, Grande, you KNOW that’s not possible. Just keep moving, and you’ll be out of here in a few minutes!’ He trudged on.

From the corner of his eye, he saw something flicker. His head jerked around – nothing. He flipped on the powerful torch and aimed it that way. ‘Crap, it’s just slime on the wall, reflecting from the lantern.’ The wall in that direction _was_ slicker and shinier than adjacent sections, and he could see water running from a small hole in the top of the pipe. ‘Just a leak…’ he remonstrated himself. ‘Maybe, when I’m governor, I’ll get them to fix the sewer. It’s disgusting down here!’

He moved more slowly now, the lantern in one hand held high, with the torch in the other, probing the darkness ahead, flashing quickly to the sides or rear whenever he thought he saw or heard something unusual. By now he was stopping to make 360 degree sweeps with the light every other step.

‘Listen, you coward, at this rate, you’ll be down here until next week, unless you scare yourself into a heart attack!’ His breathing was coming faster and he could feel and even hear the rapid thud-thud-thud of his heart. ‘Why didn’t I have them put lights up down here?’

Der best old brrig that everr done weigh…

It sounded like a sea shanty, being whispered. Then, a thump, and what sounded like a footstep, and then a funny, almost indescribable sound that reminded him of something sliding across a wooden floor, and then another thump.

“Who’s there?” he yelled, and winced as his anxious shout was echoed back at him many time. ‘God, Grande, you’re like an old woman! Buck up, man!’ Of course, nobody answered. He tried desperately to calm himself. ‘It can’t be far to the exit now. Get moving, jackass!’

“Sailed out’a Nassau on a blustrr’y day.

Black Lusca’s ‘err name am ‘er skipperr’s a ghost,

‘There’s no way I’m just hearing things! There’s somebody else down here!’ “COME OUT AND SHOW YOURSELF!” he screamed, backing against the nearest side wall. It seemed like seconds before the echoes faded away. Far to his left, back the way he had come, was a glimmer of light, approaching him, and the chanting seemed to come from there.

Pulled t’ter bottom off Jamaica’s coast.

Bound t’ter Earrth by her dyin’ currse,

You'll nay see tomorrow if Davey Jones spies yer firrst.

“Leave me ALONE!” he screamed again, as he dropped the lantern, pulled out his pistol, and fired three shots in that direction as quickly as he could pull the trigger, then turned and ran, relying on the flashlight to spot the markers.

“T’won’t d’yer n’good t’rrun, y’bilge rrat,” he heard from behind. “‘Tis Anamaria Saldana stealin’ yerr wind!”

‘There! There’s the ladder!’ he shouted to himself. ‘Another few steps and up and I’m safe!’ He was almost there, and he tripped and fell headlong into the foul sludge, but it hardly slowed him down. He climbed to his knees and grabbed the lowest rusted steel rung, set into the wall, and pulled himself upright. He’d lost the torch and his gun, and he scrabbled desperately for the next rung, and then discovered there must be 30 pounds of sewage in his boots.

“Now yer smells like ter rrat y’ve alw’s been, matey!” Anamaria was cackling wildly; her brightly glowing figure appeared floating in the air next to him and took a precisely-calculated swipe with her sword at his legs, putting slices through the rubber but not cutting the man underneath. Terror gave him strength and he swarmed up the ladder as if he was rocket-propelled, as dreadful, hideous toxic sludge, not all of it originating in the sewer, spewed behind him through the cuts in his boots. He hadn’t expected the manhole cover to be open, but he wasn’t going to stop and worry about it with a ghost pursuing him!

The manhole was surrounded with a ring of San Francisco’s finest, though they quickly took several steps back as he erupted from the hole and then collapsed on the pavement. “Get me away from here!” he screamed. “There’s a ghost down there chasing me!”

“Phewzus, you smell like shit baked in an oven!” Palette almost retched. “I’m awfully glad I have super vision instead of super scent.”

“You and me both, partner!” Miss Music chimed in. “Whatta you think, bossy lady?”

Adventurine frowned a look of disapproval, but then smiled. “I think we just wrapped up several murder cases and brought the killers to justice, took out the most dangerous assassin in the world, gave Atoma another entry for her journal, learned a lot more about ourselves and each other, and did our part to help clean up California politics. Not bad for one day, that’s what I think!” She paused and . “Tell you what – we were planning on hitting some bars tonight, weren’t we? Anything still open? I’m buying!”

The Phantom Corsair floated through the manhole just in time to hear the offer. “Best be some’rr ters rum!”

Epilogue: Introducing Crescendo

Adventurine, Palette, Miss Music and the Phantom Corsair, in their heroic attire, were sitting around a table in a dingy bar just off the waterfront in the Embarcadero area of San Francisco. Anamaria was drinking rum from a one liter beer stein, tossing it back like water, and every time she slammed her mug down, Tammi filled it again from one of the bottles in front of her. Her heavy drinking didn’t seem to be affecting her, but compared to 20th century standards, her normal behavior was almost always raucous and outrageous, so who could tell? Bonnie and Alex were on their second bottles of beer, while Tammi had ordered a shot of tequila and followed it up with a ginger ale.

There had been quite a ruckus when they had first walked in but things had quieted down when Bonnie had bodily picked up the loudest patron and tossed him through the door into the street. Fortunately for him, Tammi had been holding the door open at the time. Almost immediately thereafter, clients had started to filter out surreptitiously, and everyone else had left at the nominal closing time, though AVant Guard knew that this place routinely welcomed the sunrise before the last patron was shooed out the door. The bartender, also the owner, owed AVant Guard a favor for saving the place from being wrecked in a fight a few months earlier, so he figured this made them square again. And fervently hoped he’d never see any of them again – although strangely, he realized that he found the ghost attractive.

The heroines had been discussing their adventurous evening. The energy eating spell Blackflare had hit Tammi with, and her heroic exertions after, had left her weak, but more significantly, had somehow totally taken away her memory of much of the day. Alex and Bonnie were recounting everything that had happened after they left the beach, highlighted by scenes projected by Alex.

“So I really beat Blackflare? The super-powered world’s best assassin?” Tammi was incredulous.

“She ran away after your silent sonic attack, Tams,” Alex assured her friend. “And then, your sonic grenade may have saved Phoenix’s life. Even though you were practically comatose at the time…”

“But Blackflare got away!” Tammi object mildly.

“I don’t think she did,” Bonnie spoke slowly. “Somehow, she was able to set those flares of hers, and then teleport between them, but just when she made her last jump, the last flare went out. I think she’s gone forever.”

“But what made her flares go out?” Tammi asked curiously.

“Zing told us she put out most of them, but not the last one. We might never know about that one,” Alex replied. “Would that be so bad?”

“Well, I think it was the ghost of that sweet Hugo Pinero, that’s what I think!” Tammi stated flatly and then glared at her friends, daring them to contradict her. And with a real ghost sitting at the table, who could argue with her? “It makes up for Aanmaria destroying my pendant.”

“Ken’d yer d’nt b’lieve’n ghosts, poppin?” Anamaria spoke sardonically. “T’werrnt no never mind t’me.” Another liter of rum poured into her mouth like a waterfall, with only a little spilling down her shirt. “Morre rrum, blast ye!” she demanded.

“So I’ve learned a lot about you two in the last couple of days.” Bonnie opined seriously. “Alex and I were talking, and we think that beating Blackflare like you did shows that you’ve really outgrown ‘Miss Music’. There’s a lot more to you than just a song these days and we both think you ought to consider a new costume and especially changing your working name to something that sounds more powerful.” She smiled, and continued in a bantering tone. “You KNOW my fashion sense is awful – look what I run around in! So I’ll leave designing the costume to you and Alex.” Then she turned serious again. “But I’d be really honored if you would consider the name Crescendo.”

“Yo HO! A toast, me hearrties, t’terr poppin! Yo HO!” Anamaria cried and they all raised their glasses.

The other two women clinked glasses and added their own toast: “To Crescendo, the Acoustic AVenger!”

Tammi Paige, aka Crescendo (formerly Miss Music)

Tammi smiled and raised her glass as well: “I’ll drink to that!”

Eorth

Murder at the Matinee

Post by Admin on May 1, 2021 17:37:30 GMT

Quick Reply