Sheridan Holmes: A Scandel from Buffalo PART 16

Sheri gave Eli ten minutes to pack. Explaining that in Myka's folder was two tickets to Nashville, Tennessee. Then the two of them spent a good three hours flying to Nashville and when they finally got there Sheri dragged her to the Tennessee Star hotel where as soon as they put there bags in the room they left.

"I need to find the proper disguise." Sheri explained as they walked to Irem Adler's recording studio. The Cardinal Direction studio. "I know that Irem, goes by I.A. when he sings, but beyond that it's all whispers. So today we observe and tomorrow we infiltrate."

"So we're stalking him?" Eli decided.

"Pretty much. This is your first case without the law on our side, so try not to mess it up. It will take roughly three hours for Myka's gang to break us out if we get caught and if this guy is even the tiniest bit smart that'll give him enough time to figure out our entire operation."

"Got it, super careful."

"I'm going to pretend that I believe you." Sheri said as they walked into Cardinal Direction.

***

Paparazzi swarmed Irem. It was an average day for him, an unaverage man. He was about six feet two inches with a slim, but muscular figure. He had fluffy blonde hair that was almost white. It was stuck up with a little more gel than he was comfortable with. His skin was as white as it could be this far south in the country.

Today his wardrobe decided to put him in a royal blue suit over a dark blue dress shirt that was left slightly unbuttoned at the top. All of this cost about 6,000 dollars. All in all he was the cheapest project the record company had worked on.

Paparazzi burned his eyes with their flashes. But still his head turned. Something felt off. One of the paparazzi was wearing the loudest shade of purple he'd ever seen, but beyond her flashing camera he couldn't see her, but that didn't stop him from noticing her right leg, the red pattern that could not be a tattoo.

Shrugging off his feeling about her he continued on his way.

***

He was sitting in his favorite table at his favorite tea shop: Titan Leaves Tea Shop. He looked over the menu, trying his hardest to ignore the people from the neighboring table staring at him.

Finally the waitress came over. Something was familiar about her. She was wearing the tea shop's green shirt and kaki pants, but something about her was familiar.

She had bright blue eyes, and a thick brown ponytail. She seemed irritated for some reason, and kept looking over her shoulder at a goth girl sitting at a table across the room.

"Uh...What would you like to order?" she asked him, her eyes wide and her hands trembling as she tried to grab her notepad. Not an unusual reaction to seeing him.

"I'll have a pot of Oolong and a chicken panini." He looked up and handed her his menu.

She took it, biting her lip and looking over her shoulder again. "Mm-kay."

She walked as fast as she could away from the table.

A minute after she left another waitress came over and asked him what he wanted to order.

***

After brunch he found himself back at Cardinal Direction. He was recording his new track, "Enemy Lines", when he looked up through the soundproof glass and he saw another girl who reminded him of someone. He just couldn't put his finger on it, but something about her chin structure was familiar.

He'd be able to figure it out if he could see the rest of her face, but she was wearing her technician's headphones under her black hoodie with the hood up. The weirdest part, was despite being a music technician, she never laid a finger on the sound board. The guy next to her was scrambling to adjust all the dials and switches, looking pretty annoyed as he did.

When I.A. finished his track, the girl was gone. He asked the other technician about it and he said he was too busy to notice when she slipped out.

***

Eli met up with Sheri at the end of a long hallway of Cardinal Direction. Pulling her hood down she called out, "I can't believe you made me follow him like that." Sheri stood off the wall and held her hand out. Eli rolled her eyes and handed her a tiny camera she had attached to the headphones wire.

Sheri took it and smiled. "I can't have him seeing my face yet, he might recognize it when I'm in my proper disguise."

"Yeah, but why did I have to pretend to be a waitress? Couldn't we both have watched him from a distance?" Sheri shrugged.

"What's the fun in being a detective, if you can't get some face to face experience?"

"So, you've been testing me this entire time? I thought we agreed I was you're assistant, not you're apprentice monkey." Sheri motioned for Eli to follow her, as she walked down the hall.

"You agreed." Sheri told her, "Now come on, I have a disguise."

***

"Irem, is a classic example of fame taking control." Sheri explained as the walked into the fabric section of the Joann's craft store. "You can see that in his suit."

"Should I ask, or are you just going to make fun of me?" Eli said, watching Sheri grab gold, black, and purple fabrics off the wall.

"Yes, and yes." Sheri said pulling on the gold fabric than putting it back.

"Okay, what?" Sheri smiled and pulled an electric blue fabric out.

"Did you see the way he was pulling at his shirt collar?" As usual, Eli shook her head, "No one wears their shirt opened like that and then plays with it all day. Also he played with his hair too." Sheri paused to inspect an indigo fabric than put it in her pile, "Constantly checking if it was still up. I bet my french horn, his wardrobe made him wear it like that."

"You play the french horn too?" Eli asked as Sheri traveled to the next aisle.

"Of course," she pulled an indigo denim off the shelf and stared at the other bolts of fabric. "It's currently getting the blood cleaned out of the tubing." Eli's eyes widened, but she didn't dare ask why there was blood was in her french horn. Being a Psychopath, The answer would probably not be what Eli wanted to hear.

"Anyway," Sheri continued, pulling a corse black fabric from the other side of the aisle. "My theory is that he follows everything his publicist tells him to do."

"Don't tell me your planning what I think your planning."

"Exactly." Sheri said picking a silky patterned fabric with a blue and purple color scheme.

"You're going to arrange one of those fake superstar couples." Eli said shaking her head disapprovingly.

"I think I'll go by Agatha. What do you think of that as an alias?" Sheri walked off to the counter to get the fabric cut.

"You're supposed to be some sort of superstar, correct?" Eli asked, leaning her right side on the counter.

"Yes." she told the cutting lady her amounts then turned back to Eli.

"Then I'd go for something a little more stylish." Sheri shrugged, obviously loving the name Agatha. "Try something like...I don't know, Eva Blackwell." Sheri paused to consider it then nodded.

***

When they got back to the hotel room they had more sewing supplies than Eli had seen in her life. Sheri pulled a large sewing machine out of her one suit case, and laid out her fabric over the bedspread for cutting. Eli watched for a while, but watching someone sew was almost as boring as sewing something herself. Although Eli finally had to ask. It was two in the morning and Eli was watching a BBC show, and Sheri was sewing up her outfit with pins sticking out of her mouth.

"How do you know how to sew so well?" She asked, tucked into her queen bed with dark circles forming under her eyes.

"My mother taught me." Sheri told her, pulling a pin out of the fabric and putting it in her mouth. "Why?"

"It's just I thought with your whole 'attic head' thing, something like sewing wouldn't make it into your bank of facts." Sheri sighed and backstitched her top closed and began feeding the denim under the foot.

"As you know," Sheri began, and Eli instantly knew what was coming next, "My head is like an attic. If you fill it up with everything you come across it fills up and you have no room for useful information."

Eli had heard this speech every time she questioned something Sheri didn't know. Which was almost every other week.

"Well it's kind of like when you have an ice cream cone, with sprinkles. And no matter how hard you try there's a rainbow sprinkle mixed in with the chocolate sprinkles. No matter what you do, if you try to get rid of the colored sprinkle you end up getting rid of a chocolate sprinkle too. Believe me I've tried to delete sewing, but there's too much useful information mixed in with all the sewing information."

"I still don't get it." Eli told her, exhausted.

"Well when I was a kid my mom would have me read while I sewed-"

"No, no, no." Eli laughed, punch-drunk. "I mean how you delete memories." Sheri rolled her eyes. "I mean, you can't just purposely forget stuff. The brain doesn't work like that." Sheri could feel an old continuous argument coming back into light.

"I just do." Sheri said, starting to sew up the pants again.

"How do you forget the solar system!" Eli almost yelled. There's the old argument.

"I don't need to know if the sun is the center of the universe. All I need is the physics down here."

"The sun isn't the center of the universe." Eli muttered.

"Yeah, I am." Sheri said purposefully annoying the tired doctor.

***

Eli somehow fell asleep with all the sewing machine racket and Sheri swearing not so under her breath. When she woke up, Sheri was on the phone and ironing her new outfit. A black jacket with a silk liner, a shirt that was mostly black with stripes of different colors running down the left side, and a pair of indigo skinny jeans.

"Yeah, I know it's been a while, but I'd like to take you up on that offer..." Sheri said over the phone, "No, just for a case. It'll be like a week tops... Fine!" Sheri half sighed and half yelled. Causing Eli to jump a little bit. "But just the once. And you can keep the profits, but I'm not agreeing to any concert deals...Oh I can get you one in...hmmm...two hours. I'll have to dig it out of my memory, but yeah it'll do... Thanks, you are a life saver...okay bye." she tapped her phone out of the call and looked up at Eli who was clearly lost.

"That was my old friend Austin from last time I was in Nashville. He's going to help me pose as a famous singer as long as I record a track for him." Sheri looked down at her ironing again.

"Last time you were in Nashville?" Sheri smiled.

"Yes, I was about seventeen, and I was just passing through. Of course I was teaching myself how to play the violin at the time."

"Family vacation?" Eli supplied.

"No, I was living on my own."

"When you were only seventeen?" Sheri nodded, then unplugged her iron.

"Nice and warm." she said, holding her clothes to her cheek. "I'll be one to two hours." Sheri announced as she locked herself in the bathroom behind her.

Eli yawned and checked the clock on the bedside table. It was about seven in the morning and it didn't look like she'd get a chance to use the shower, so she got herself dressed and watched more crime dramas on TV. They were a lot easier to follow lately. Except she kept seeing how unrealistic the corpses looked and it threw off the illusion.

It was eight-thirty when Sheri came out.

It surprised Eli that Sheri wasn't wearing anything that dramatically changed her appearance, but she looked completely different. She still had her hair hanging loose over her jacket, but it was swept to the right shoulder and parted down the left side instead of the middle. Her skin looked like it had been powdered so that her odd lopsided freckles were covered and her eyes were out-lined lightly in blue and the eyelashes were mascaraed black. Aside from that is was normal old Sheri, but she looked almost like a different person. If Eli had seen her on the street she would have said she looked like Sheri, but would never have guessed it was actually her.

"What do you think?" Sheri asked, her smile glossed over in a light pink.

"I don't think I've ever seen you in colors." was all Eli could think to say.