I keep being attacked by RL. And then Lane and Alexa decided... well you'll see.
TOC Lois’s parents were waiting in the hotel lobby with two O’Brien Agency security people when Lois, Clark, and his parents arrived. Ellen Lane looked like she was ready to blow a gasket. Sam seemed more resigned.
“This is so bad,” Lois muttered under her breath. One of the agents approached Bob and appeared to be briefing him. Clark extended his hearing.
“Inspector Henderson suggested we up the security level for the Alexanders until the police have a better idea of what happened over at the Met Tower,” the agent was telling Bob.
“And what happened over at the Met Tower?” Bob asked.
“A lawyer was killed and his office ransacked,” the agent told him.
“You don’t think it was Jennings, do you?” Lois asked Clark. She kept her voice low.
“Why else would Henderson suggest our security team up the threat level?” Clark responded equally quietly.
“Who would want Jennings dead?” Lois murmured.
“That’s a very good question.”
The agent was still speaking. “… They came in about half an hour ago and asked for the Kent’s room number. She got a little testy when the concierge told them there was no one by that name registered here. Then they tried to get out of the elevator on our floor. She didn’t take being intercepted and sent back downstairs all that well, either.”
“Sounds like Mom,” Lois muttered to Clark before taking a deep breath. “Guys, that’s Doctor and Missus Lane, Lois Lane’s parents. The Kents invited them.”
The agent looked unconvinced. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. Add them, Perry White, and James B. Olsen to the cleared list as well,” she instructed. “White and Olsen should be here shortly.”
“Who are you and who are those people?” Ellen demanded when as soon as the elevator doors closed behind them. “And how dare they…”
“Ellen, it’s okay,” Martha interrupted. “They’re friends…”
“And that gives those thugs the right to treat us like… like common criminals?” Ellen sputtered.
“We should have told them you were coming,” Jonathan said in his low rumble. “They’re just doing their jobs.”
Ellen grumbled under her breath for a while longer, at least until the elevator doors opened onto their floor. Sam just looked too worn out to argue. Clark felt sorry for them. Sam and Ellen had started speaking civilly to one another for Lois’s wedding. Now they were facing their elder daughter’s funeral. Clark wanted to comfort them in some way, let them know that their daughter wasn’t really dead, but he knew that neither of them would take it well – Sam would ask questions neither he nor Lois could answer and Ellen… well, Lois got her temper and her babble gene from somewhere and the most likely candidate was her mother.
Martha shooed everyone into the suite and set about making coffee.
“I can do that,” Clark offered.
Martha smiled at him. “Thanks honey, but if I don’t stay busy, I… even knowing that… you know… Jonathan and I, we’re burying our baby. And so are Sam and Ellen.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Clark asked.
“You can order dinner. But no pizza. The doc wants Jonathan to cut down on the cheese and red meat… again.”
“That must be going over well,” Clark commented.
Martha managed a chuckle. “He hates it.”
“How about Chinese?” Clark suggested. “I know this great place in…” He let his voice trail off as he realized what he was about to say.
“Where?” Martha prompted.
“Shanghai,” Clark answered softly. “There’s this great little mom and pop restaurant and they have the best…”
Martha managed a chuckle. “How about someplace a little closer?” she suggested.
Clark returned the chuckle. “I know a place,” he said, grabbing the phone. He called one of the local restaurants he and Lois frequented – used to frequent, he reminded himself – and placed an order for eight dinners for delivery.
Clark’s parents, Lois’s parents, Perry, and Jimmy already had the outline for the service finished by the time dinner was delivered. Lois and Clark simply kept the coffee going while the others worked. More than once the little group threatened to break down into tears, especially when one of them started to reminisce.
It was all Clark could do to keep from bursting out with the news that Lois and Clark weren’t really dead – just changed.
“I don’t think we’re helping,” Lois murmured after the dinner dishes were taken care of. “I keep wanting to tell them, but I know it’ll only make things worse.”
“Same here,” Clark admitted. He sighed. “I haven’t had a chance to unpack the suitcase Luthor ‘arranged’ for Lois.”
“No time like the present,” Lois said, keeping her voice low. They excused themselves to go hide out in their bedroom.
“Henderson considered Luthor’s choice of clothes for Lois to be another sign of his derangement,” Lois told Clark as he opened the case. The case was filled with lace and satin and see-through fabric. Clark held up one – or was it two – of the pieces of lace. He wasn’t even sure what it was supposed to be.
“Um, do I want to know what this is?” Clark asked. Lois was trying to stifle a chuckle.
“Fredrick’s of Hollywood calls it a ‘teddy’,” Lois said. “It’s worn to be taken out of.”
“Did you ever…?”
“Have I ever worn one of those?” Lois asked. Clark nodded. He was sure he was blushing.
“Well, Dupre the depraved certainly wanted to see me in one of those,” Lois said with a grin. “But I never gave him the chance. Lex tried to get me into a slinky number but... well, Wanda may have been rough around the edges but she wasn’t as much of a slut as he’d hoped.”
“I never thought she was,” Clark told her.
Lois shrugged. “Lex believed what he wanted to believe. He believed that no woman was able to resist him and that he could convince Lois to forget everything she ever cared about to run off with him in some sick love-crazed haze.”
“He didn’t know her at all,” Clark said. He started sifting through the rest of the lingerie in the suitcase. There were two zippered leather cases tucked beneath the lace and satin. Clark opened one – cosmetics, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant. The toothpaste tube felt oddly heavy. He twisted the plastic top off to inspect the contents. The paste was an odd shade of green and the tiny dab he squeezed out felt gritty between his fingers.
“I think this was how he planned to control you,” Clark said, showing Lois the tube.
“Kryptonite?”
“I think the tube is lead and plastic instead of just plastic. I’m not feeling any effects aside from a slight tingling, but low grade exposure over the long term might keep powers from developing, and keep his victim vulnerable to the drugs he was using,” Clark said.
“We should have Klein check it out when he has a moment,” Lois said. “I’m also sure that isn’t the only trick Luthor had for keeping control of the situation. I just wish I had some clue about what else he had planned.”
“He gave no hints at all?” Clark asked.
Lois shook her head. “I was so out of it that he might have told me outright and I probably wouldn’t have picked up on it, but he was playing everything really close to the vest. And after what happened at STAR Labs, I don’t think he trusted me to go along with everything he had in mind.”
“There were no drugs in the luggage,” Clark said. “If the police had found any someone would have mentioned it, which means that Luthor either had a cache somewhere or a trusted supplier.”
“Maybe Scardino’s found out something,” Lois said.
“He’s not going to share anything with us,” Clark reminded her. “We’re lucky Henderson’s willing to give us the time of day.”
Clark opened the second case and promptly closed it again, hoping he wasn’t blushing too badly. He felt like his face was on fire.
“Sex toys?” Lois asked. Clark nodded.
“Maybe he wasn’t as sure of his ability to please Lois as he made out,” Clark suggested bleakly.
“Or maybe it was another of his control things,” Lois said. “Plus some people just get off by watching. I’m sure he had plans for his ‘toys’.” Disgust colored her voice. Obviously she didn’t think very highly of Luthor’s choice of ‘toys’ either.
In the next room Perry was arguing for his selection of music – Elvis Presley’s renditions of Amazing Grace and Memories. The Kents had no particular objection but Ellen Lane was pushing for more traditional music. She had even objected to Martha’s suggestion of Dylan Thomas’ Death Is Not the End as being not traditional enough. Jonathan, Sam, and Jimmy seemed to have enough sense to stay out of it.
“Poor Perry,” Lois commented. “I wonder how many of his Elvis stories are true?”
Clark managed a chuckle. “Considering how many of them he has…”
Now Ellen was digging in her heels and refusing to consider anything Perry, or anyone else, suggested.
Lois shook her head. “She couldn’t micro-manage her daughter’s wedding, so now she’ll do it to her funeral.”
“It’ll work out,” Clark assured her. “After all, funerals are for the living. The dead, the really dead, are beyond caring.”
Lois grabbed the remote to the television and turned it on. GNN – Galaxy Communications had bought LNN for pennies on the dollar after Luthor’s dive from his penthouse over a year ago – was running video of a burned out auto in Racine. A man named Douglas Sanborn had been murdered by someone using a grenade launcher. It wasn’t exactly your typical drive-by murder.
“You know, if it weren’t for Luthor, that would probably be our story,” Clark said, studying the pictures on the screen.
“You don’t think we’d still be on our honeymoon?” Lois asked.
“We would have been back yesterday, chafing to get back to work,” Clark said. “That is assuming we hadn’t gotten ourselves involved in something bizarre beyond belief while we were supposed to be enjoying ourselves.”
“We do do that, don’t we?” Lois agreed with a grin.
Clark turned his attention back to the story on the screen. “A rocket propelled grenade is a little bit of overkill, don’t you think?”
“Not your garden variety assassination, that’s for sure. Organized crime?”
“I don’t recall Sanborn’s name coming up as being involved with Luthor or Intergang,” Clark said. “But it’s possible there’s a new player in town.”
“I hadn’t realized exactly how much I’m going to miss chasing after the story,” Lois said. “I want to run over to the Planet and start researching and talking to the cops assigned to the case…”
“You want to go check out the crime scene?” Clark asked, realizing that was what he wanted to do.
“Well, Perry did say he’d be interested in any freelance work we gave him.”
“Bob is not going to be happy with us,” Clark pointed out. “We’re supposed to be safely tucked in and out of harm’s way. I mean, that is what we’re paying him for.”
To answer, Lois levitated above the bed by six inches. “Control’s still a little iffy, but if I’m careful I should be okay.”
She gave him an expectant look. He tested his own powers. Hearing and vision were almost there. Strength was harder to test without breaking something and so was speed. Flight wasn’t there yet but that was usually the first to go and the last to recover.
If Lois was disappointed they weren’t going to be able to just fly to the crime scene she hid it relatively well. “I wonder if Bob would mind a late night outing to Racine?”
It wasn’t Bob but Gary who was accompanying them to Racine. Like Bob, Gary was a retired police officer. Unlike Bob, Gary was a wiry black man with graying hair and a limp who simply chuckled when told where they were going.
“We figured you kids wouldn’t want to stay put for long,” he explained once they were on their way. “The other guys thought you might want to go clubbing but you don’t strike me as that type.”
“And what type do you think we are?” Clark asked.
Gary gave him an appraising look and Clark had the feeling that Gary, like Bill Henderson, saw a lot more than he normally let on.
“The type that doesn’t want to sit home and hope somebody else will pick up the slack. The type that wants to see what the world is really like and doesn’t want to be spoon fed what they’re supposed to do or think,” Gary said finally.
Gary instructed the driver to park a block away from the crime scene then pulled out three heavy-duty flashlights.
“McCloskey pulled the case,” Gary told them as approached the area. “He’s thorough. He wouldn’t have missed much. Figure the shooter was over by that tree.”
Clark pointed his flashlight at the base of the tree. The ground was trampled and even with ‘special’ vision he couldn’t make out much aside from some odd seed pods that had been ground into the dirt.
“Find something?” Lois asked.
“Maybe,” Clark said, picking up one of the pods to look at it more closely. “Just maybe.”
