Double Trouble: Twenty Three;Stufinder cont'd & High on glue...
by Cariad
 
 

Double Trouble
~Twenty Three~
Jonathan was trying his damndest to charm her, Holly thought, refusing to give in to his charisma. She always knew he was dangerous, and his natural charm was why. In the back of her mind, though, she never forgot all the articles she had read about him when the order came down from above. All the subtle ways he showed the world that he was better than they were. The ways he schmoozed with all the right people and lorded it up like he was perfect. And that was where she fit in—the trophy girlfriend. The oldest Crane daughter, the ultimate prize, the god damned shrew tamed, she thought with anger. Already, he was making those small gestures to indicate she belonged to him, the way he hovered nearby, the way he kept trying to put his arm around her, the way he was always there, picking out the thrice damned dress for the Ball! Holly worked herself up into a fine temper, wishing with all her heart that she was the one staring at a wall of nails. Think of Reese, she told herself. Think of his goofy smile. Think of how he respects your intelligence.

“Holly! Holly! Holly! Holly! Holly!” Came Julia’s voice from the annals of the hardware store. “Look what I’ve got! It’s a stud-finder! It makes a noise when it finds a stud!” She held up the device in question and pushed the button, aiming it at Jonathan. “It doesn’t seem to be working.”

“On the contrary, Jules,” Holly said, “It is. I see no studs here.”

Noah walked up at a slower pace, bringing up a paper bag filled with assorted items for hanging things several coils of rope. Jonathan and Noah exchanged a look and Noah shrugged a shoulder. “What else is on your shopping list, girls?” Noah asked.

Holly looked over what Noah was holding and started checking things off the list. “Is there a drug store or something here?” she asked.

Noah shrugged once more. “Your family owns it,” he said, hiding all but a trace of bitterness.

“Oh,” Holly said, “I guess I didn’t realize all the specific things the Cranes owned here. Jules and I haven’t come home often.”

“Yeah, well, the Cranes bought out the lease. They did the same thing here and at the Book Café. They buy out the owners of the buildings and then charge tons of rent unless the lessee sells the business to the Cranes.”

“That’s preposterous!” Holly gasped, “No wonder everyone hates us!”

“That’s business,” Jonathan countered. “And you should be used to it by now.”

“That doesn’t make it right!” Holly insisted.

Julia put a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Calm down, Hollis,” she whispered, “Now’s not the time nor the place for correcting the world’s social injustices.”
 

*~* *~* *~* *~* *~*

As both the Twins’ Audi TT Roadster and Jonathan’s Ferrari each could only sit two people comfortably, Jonathan graciously offered to give Noah a ride up to the mansion, leaving the girls in one car. “I have some things I’d like to explain to Mr. Bennett,” Jonathan explained with a grin. “If he’s going to be in on this without having a personal stake, he should know some things.”
“And I should stop at my house to pick up some tools,” Noah added.

Julia and Holly shared a look but shrugged in turn as they loaded their bags into the trunk and took off for the mansion. After depositing Julia’s dress in her room, the girls met and escorted Jonathan and Noah through a side door and up a back stairway. Making sure the coast was clear, they dashed into Rebecca Hotchkiss’s room.

“The Mistress’s Quarters,” Holly proclaimed once the door was safely shut behind them.

“Is that a comment about my mother?” Jonathan demanded.

“No,” Holly replied and assumed her tour-guide voice. “Like all generations of Crane males both before him and after him, Earnest Crane, under whose auspices this house was built, was a philanderer. So, halfway across the mansion, he designed a room for his mistress, with a passageway linking this room with the Master Suite, thus enabling him to appear to be a devoted husband, while keeping up an illicit affair with his wife’s younger sister, Dorcas.”

Noah laughed. “If the Cranes are ever strapped for cash, you could certainly give tours of this place, and all the sordid little secrets hidden in these walls.”

Holly blushed and Julia turned away.

“Let’s get working if we’re going to do this,” Julia said, grabbing a length of rope, a handful of nails and a hammer from Noah’s toolbox.

“Don’t use those, Juliet,” Noah said, grabbing a power drill and revving it. “When we’ve got something better to tie the rope to!”

Gradually, laughter filled the room as the ropes of different widths were strung web-like across the room, a mere annoyance if not for the second part of the plan. Each rope, after it was tied to bolts sunk into the studs in the walls (at Noah’s insistence—if you’re going to do a job, do it right), was coated. Both Jonathan and Noah turned crimson as Julia triumphantly pulled a tube of ‘feminine lubricant’ from the drug-store bag and added it to the pile of glue and paste.

“You should have seen the look the clerk gave us!” Holly laughed. “Especially after Jules winked at me.”

Julia squirted some Elmer’s Glue into her hands and began coating the nearest string. “He was gathering the courage to ask if he could join. But I don’t share,” she added with a smile and a wink at Johnny.

Jonathan looked up from the bottle of moisturizing hand cream he was emptying into a spare. Adding just enough to get the color right, he began filling his mother’s bottle with the concoction he had worked out in the hardware store. “I should have done this long ago,” he said. “Mother was always such a bitch to my father. But we were never allowed in her rooms. When I was five, she caught Gwennie looking around for stuff to dress up with, and mother nearly ripped her head off. She was punished for three weeks. Mother has since forgiven her, once Gwen was old enough to understand ‘women’s things,’ but I never forgot the look on Mother’s face, nor the look on Gwennie’s face.”

“When did you start calling your sister, ‘Gwennie’?” Holly asked.

“When I was bigger than her, and she couldn’t sit on me,” he replied.

“I know it sounds mean,” Noah said, continuing the thread of storytelling, “but the kids around here would always play tricks on Tabitha, the crazy old woman. But God forbid if you ever got caught! There was a kid I knew who did get caught, and she cursed him—or so he said.”

“Like a witch 'hocus-pocus' cursing?” Julia asked.

“Yeah, and he spent the rest of his time in harmony trying to prove that she was a witch. He said she made his hair fall out. We all think he was just trying to cover up for a prematurely thinning hairline! Pass the K.Y., please.”

Holly threw the tube at him, and the room burst into laughter as the cap fell off and splattered Noah’s face.

“Sorry,” Holly mumbled, smothering her giggles, which sent Julia into another fit of laughter.

“You know,” Jonathan said, “if you’re going for tricks, these girls are the ones who take the cake. I remember Ethan’s graduation party, and they were both dressed up in identical outfits, down to the bows in their hair. By the end of the party, half of Ethan’s friends thought he only had one sister, and the other half thought he had four identical ones.” Jonathan tested some of his glue-cream creation, and ‘accidentally’ stuck himself to Holly. Trying to free herself, Holly got tangled in one of the pasted ropes. Jonathan’s help only tangled them further, causing Holly to laugh hysterically.

“You’re not so bad, Johnny Hotchkiss,” she giggled, “when you get that pole out of your ass.”

“Is that a compliment I hear from you, Holly-hocks, or are you high on the glue.”

“I think I’m high on glue,” she said on another laugh.

“We all are,” Noah said, carefully moving to the window to let in some fresh air. On the way back, he picked up something discarded and tucked halfway under the bed. Producing a pair of silk boxers, he held them up to his waist, proving them to be far too small through the hips.

“Those must be Father’s,” Holly said, now trying desperately to free herself from Jonathan.

“No, they’re too small for Daddy,” Julia mentioned. “They look like they would fit Aidan, though, but that would mean, ewww!”

In the disgusted silence that followed, they heard a troubled voice calling in the hallway, “Julie! Julie! You’ve got to help me! Ethan HATES me!”

The four conspirators looked at each other before Julia moved towards the closet. “Who let her in!” she muttered under her breath. “Noah, help them get untangled and if we’re all done, let’s meet up in Holly’s room, get cleaned up and wait for Mommy Dearest’s notice of our little contraption.

Julia stepped into the closet and disappeared.

“That’s interesting to know,” Jonathan murmured. “Where does it come out?”

“Father’s closet,” Holly replied, forgetting that she did not like Jonathan. Realizing her glue-induced mistake, she pulled away from the ropes and from Jonathan, landing on the floor of Rebecca’s bathroom with a very sore arm.

“Are we finished?” Jonathan asked.

Noah fished out the list. “Nair in conditioner”

“Diluted,” Jonathan said, “but check.”

“Special hand cream?”

“Works,” Holly replied, rubbing her arm wondering if she had any skin left.

“And the spider’s web.”

“Fit for a black widow,” Jonathan said.

“Then we’re done,” Noah said cheerily, wiping his hands on Aidan’s discarded silk boxers and gathering his tools and toolbox. Holly crawled under some ropes to fish out discarded wrappers and stuff them all into a plastic bag—which would be disposed of in the main Crane trash.
 

*~* *~* *~* *~* *~*

Julia stepped out of her father’s room, grabbing Theresa and hushing her. “Do you want to rouse the entire house?” she asked. “You don’t know if Rebecca’s here, and if she finds out you’re already married to Daddy, you will be dead meat!”
“I’m so sorry!” Theresa wailed, “But Whitney stopped by in such a fit! She was so angry and upset. She said Ethan had blamed her for keeping secrets, and then Whit got mad at ME! She said it was all MY fault!”

Julia put an arm around her stepmother. What a day it was turning out to be.

“Oh, but that’s not the worst!” Theresa cried. “Because Chad is now mad at Whitney, and he’s mad at me too! What have I done?”

You were self-centered and inconsiderate, Julia thought. “Well, real friends stick with you through thick and thin,” Julia said aloud, not even sure what she was saying, since she could hear the front door open and the hurried click of shoed that signaled Rebecca Hotchkiss’s entrance. “Let’s get you into someplace private,” Julia said, trying to usher her stepmother away from the balcony overlooking the foyer.

“Why?” Theresa asked. “If I’m Mrs. Julian Crane, can’t I go wherever I want to?”

“Because that’s Rebecca Hotchkiss who just came in,” Julia hissed, “and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s armed. Now move!” She pushed Theresa back towards the wing with the master suite and the family’s rooms as she heard Rebecca coming up the stairs.

They ducked into Ethan’s old room, shutting the door before they heard Rebecca’s shrill voice yell, “Who let the vermin in?”

In Rebecca's closet, Holly, Jonathan and Noah all froze.
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