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The Triumph Of AJ Quartermaine
Way the Cookie Crumbles
"Cookie?" Judge exclaims incredulously.
"Cookie?" Carly and Johnny say together staring at Cook.
"Ah hell." Cook mutters closing her eyes. "Johnny, get my coat; we're outta here."
"Wait a minute! Cookie, it is you, isn't it?" Judge grabs at her arm. "It's been what...years. I looked for you; where did you go?"
"Try decades but hey who's counting? Look this isn't the time or the place okay?" Cook asks plaintively. "Can't you just let it go?"
"Let it go?!" Judge snarls before getting himself under control. "You told me before to let it go and then disappeared for twenty plus years."
"You take your hands off my mother or I'm going to clean your clock." Johnny pushes himself between Cook and the Judge. He hands his mother her coat. "Come on, Ma." Johnny gives the Judge the evil eye but Cook is already moving out of the back door. Judge is in shock as he watches them leave.
"Mother? Ma? Son?" The Judge mumbles before starting out the back door. Carly grabs his hand.
"Whoa Judge. Johnny wasn't kidding about cleaning your clock. He may look like a pretty boy but he is tough and nasty when the situation calls for it; he learned from the best."
"The Best?"
"Johnny is involved in um... security for Morgan and Corinthos' coffee business." Luke says diplomatically from over the open refrigerator door.
"He's a gangster!" Judge roars.
"Alleged gangster." Carly roars back. "And I wasn't referring to Sonny or Jason. I was talking about Cook!"
Judge reverses the grip so now he is holding Carly. He pulls her back over to the seat that she had risen from when the voices started escalating and shoves her back back into it. "Tell me everything that you know about her and her son." He demands using his mess with me and you're going to jail voice.
Carly shrinks in her chair. "I don't know what you mean." Her eyes are everywhere but the Judge's she looks pleadingly at Luke, then at AJ as he walks in the kitchen.
"I think that everyone is cleared out. Michael is down for his nap. Carly..." AJ falls silent as the tension in the room hits him. "What is going on?"
"Ms. Benson has some information that I want." Judge says not looking at AJ but instead totally focuses on Carly who squirms under his gaze.
"I don't know anything. I only met her a couple of weeks ago." Carly whines shrinking back further into the chair.
"Met whom?" AJ interjects making his way over to the kitchen table, he glances over at Luke questioningly who shrugs.
"He's asking questions about Cook." Carly explains trying to get away from the Judge and make her way over to AJ. The Judge puts a hand on her shoulder and pushes her back in the chair. "I don't know anything, okay?"
"Yet she was here helping you with this little party." The Judge starts his interrogation in earnest.
"We hit it off okay? But we didn't exchange life stories." Carly tries to squirm out from under the Judge's hands on her shoulders. "She had something that I wanted; I had something that she wanted and we made a deal okay?"
Judge lets go of Carly. "That's who you reminded me of." He muses staring at Carly again. "You brought it all back. The pool hustling, the focus on goals."
AJ gets between Carly and the judge. "What are you talking about?"
"Hey and I know that Caroline is Spencer through and through... only a Spencer could try the stupid stunts that she does and pull them off." Luke declares.
"Oh thank you so much, Uncle Luke! Feel free to defend me any time." Carly protests distracted for the minute.
"Carly met Cook through me after you gave me the temporary custody order." AJ tells the Judge putting himself between the Judge and Carly. "Cook's worked for my family for years. Carly doesn't know anything about Cook. No one does except maybe my grandmother who hired her."
"So she works at the mansion?" The Judge seeks to clarify.
"Yeah, she runs the house and everyone in it." AJ says flatly. "Now why do you want to know?"
"She and I have some unresolved issues." The Judge turns to Carly again. "What about her son. What do you know about him? You lived with Morgan so you would know about him."
"I don't know what you want to hear!" Carly explodes feeling safer now that there is some distance between her and the Judge. "Why are you asking me these questions?"
"You don't have to know what I want to hear. I want to know the truth. Tell me about Johnny. How old is he? How long has he been working for Morgan?"
"Slow down a bit, Judge." Luke actually tries to calm the situation down while his mind races in mental calculations and grand leaps that only a Spencer can make. "Seems to me that you have enough information to get your own answers. No reason to bring out the rubber hoses with Caroline. If Johnny is your kid you'll be able to find out on your own neither the boy or his mother are going anywhere."
"Your kid?" AJ looks at the Judge and tries to picture the stern and fatherly Judge with the butcher knife welding lunatic that he knows Cook to be on occasion. Carly stares at the Judge and starts seeing the similar features shared by Johnny and the Judge.
"Oh my gosh, It's true isn't it? Johnny looks just like you." Carly admits before biting her tongue.
The Judge sags into one of the kitchen chairs. "I don't know. I just don't know. Would she have kept something so important from me?"
Meanwhile in a car speeding away from the Happy Family house. Johnny focuses on the road while his mind races. Cook looks out the window seeing nothing her mind already back in the past to a face she never planned on seeing again but that her son was a constant reminder of. "I got some vacation time coming. I think I'm going to take it." Cook declares seemingly out of nowhere.
"What?" Johnny's momentarily distracted but then starts putting things together. "What has he got on you, Ma?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. I need a vacation. Think I'm going to take one. There is a cooking seminar being put on by one of those fancy frou frou chefs in New York. Got to stay current." Cook evades.
"Look if he's hassling you; I'll take care of it. He won't bother you." Johnny declares.
"You stay away from him. You hear me?! Stay the hell away from him." Cook hollers.
Johnny pulls over to the side of the road in a rush slamming on the brakes. "That's it!" He turns off the ignition. "I want to know what he has on you. You don't back down from anything."
"I don't know what you are talking about." Cook evades. "Look he and I had a thing years ago... long before he became a Judge. When he was a law student, alright? He's a good guy but it didn't work out."
"If it didn't work out, then why all this secrecy; why this need to get out of town. Ma, you aren't making any sense." Johnny questions.
"One has nothing to do with the other." Cook denies even as Johnny's BS detector is going on overload. "I need a vacation. Last break I had was when your idiot boss declared a strike and I ended up walking a picket line out in front of the mansion. And even then I was under stress knowing those blasted Quartermaines were going through my kitchen."
"Yeah, and we all know how well you deal with stress." Johnny quips rolling his eyes.
"You keep a civil tongue in your head, boy. You're not too old for me to take you."
"I know, Ma; you'll blister me but good." Johnny placates.
"Just don't think that I won't." Cook harrumphs crossing her arms in front of her defensively. "Now get this car moving. I have to talk to Mrs. Q about my vacation."
Johnny's eyes narrow but he sets the car into motion. "Yeah, maybe getting out of town for awhile would be good." He sets his jaw. No matter what his mother said he was going to get to the bottom of this and if she wasn't around for it that would make it all the easier. Things were always complicated when his mother got involved. The rest of the trip to the mansion was made in silence as each is consumed with their own thoughts and plots.
Happy family house--
Luke has left after gathering a bunch of leftovers to take with him. The Judge just left as well. Carly grabs the phone and starts to dial Cook's number at the mansion. AJ reaches over and disconnects the call. "Don't."
"Don't what? Why did you do that?" Carly starts dialing again. "We have to warn her."
"Nope, we're going to stay out of it." AJ insists disconnecting the call again. "I think you know where I'd come down on the issue of fathers not knowing that they have kids."
"But we don't know why, Cook could have had a good reason." Carly insists grabbing the phone from AJ.
"Cook is a nut like someone else I know. And there are damn few good reasons to keep a man from knowing about his kid. Look Carly, she knew what was going on; you don't have to warn her. Let them handle it." Carly hesitates then sets the phone down.
"This is going against everything I think is right." Carly bites her lip. "What do you think happened?"
"See and this is why I figure you wanted to call. You want to know the story. She's not going to tell you, Carly. Cook has worked at the mansion for years and I still don't know her first name. She doesn't give away her business. Hell, I didn't even know Jason's bodyguard was her son until...now. How long have you known?"
Carly thinks about it for a moment. "Today. Today for sure. Nothing was ever said before and Johnny never said anything either back when I was living at Jason's. And when I was living there Johnny was actually my primary bodyguard... he didn't move up to Jason and Michael until Renaldo was killed." Carly shrugs. "And I was locked up then. When Jason got out of the business-- Johnny started a restaurant. He's only still working with Jason cause Moreno is a prick that has been hassling him and his staff."
"So if Johnny wanted you to know then you would have known months ago."
"Yeah, I guess. Johnny was always sweet but quiet, you know?" Carly muses. "You think that Cook planted him in Jason's organization to keep an eye on Jason for Lila? I wouldn't put it past her."
"I doubt it. Jason's bodyguards are like the redshirts on the original star trek." AJ answers.
The Penthouse--
Johnny knocks on the door and enters interrupting Jason and Sonny. "I want to know everything that you know about the Judge that settled Michael's custody."
The Mansion--
After getting clearance from Lila Cook is throwing clothes into a suitcase and calling for a cab. Within twenty minutes of being dropped off she is out of the mansion in a cab and on her way to the train station to catch the train to New York City.
The Judge's study in his upper middle class neighborhood--
The Judge grabs his rolodex and looks up a private investigator that he had used before. "Yeah, I got a job for you. This is for me so send the bill to me directly. I want to know everything about Margarita Cook She's about 45; she works at the Quartermaine mansion. I want to know everything from 1970 on: children, jobs... men. And I want it yesterday.