Two Pink Lines

11

Trying to clear FP's name proved to be harder than expected. Fred had gotten in contact with Mary, who thankfully was willing to help FP legally. So they had her on their side for sure.

However, they still didn't have a clue who could've framed him. Jughead had already shopped around the Wyrm, and he and Betty had put her lock picking skills to use when they broke into Tall Boy's trailer and searched for evidence. They came out empty handed both times.

All of them had done something to help, had searched high and low for evidence, but there seemed to be nothing. Whoever framed FP knew what they were doing and didn't leave a trace of evidence.

"I don't know what we're going to do Fred," Alice sighs into the phone. "I mean we've looked into every single suspect and have come out empty handed. What if we never find them?"

"We'll find them, Alice, I promise."

"You can't promise that, you have no idea if we will or not. I just... I don't want him to miss out on being a part of the baby's life because we couldn't figure out who planted drugs in his vehicle. I mean we solved Jason Blossom's murder for crying out loud. You'd think we'd be able to solve a case on jingle jangle."

"Clearly whoever did it has done this before, or they had help." Fred says. "And if it's Hiram, he's not a stupid man, he's good at cleaning up his tracks."

She's about to say something else when her phone buzzes, she pulls it away from her ear and sees that Betty is trying to call her. "Hold on a second, Betty's calling." She informs Fred before answering her daughter's call. "Hi honey, is everything alright?"

"How fast can you get to the Jones trailer?"

"What?" She's up from the couch in a flash, heading over to the front door and grabbing her keys. "I can be on my way right now, are you okay? Are Jughead and Jellybean okay?"

"They're fine, Jellybean and Gladys went to the store to get groceries." She pauses. "We found something."

•

As soon as she hung up from Betty she had practically yanked Fred out of his house and into her car, speeding off towards the Southside of town.

"What is it?" Alice asks, bursting through the front door of the trailer, startling her daughter who's comforting a clearly distraught Jughead. "What did you find?"

Jughead looks over at her and sighs, opening his hand to show her a small packet. She arches an eyebrow and takes it from him, inspecting it. Fred looks at it over her shoulder, a pit forming in his stomach.

"Where did you find this?" Alice asks the teens.

"In my dad's old bedroom, it looked like someone had dropped it and didn't realize it, it was under the dresser." Jughead answers. He's quiet for a moment. "So I'm guessing this means, he did it, huh?"

"What?" Alice shakes her head immediately, kneeling down in front of the kids. "No, the cops tore this trailer apart, they searched every nook and cranny. They would have noticed this then if it was here when they searched. This is obviously new, Jughead, as hard as it is to hear, I think this belongs to your mom."

He drops his head into his hands and Fred frowns, setting his hand on his shoulder to offer him some comfort. "It's okay, it'll be okay."

"You can't say that," Jughead mumbles. "You don't know what it feels like to have a parent in jail and another possibly the reason behind it."

"I do." Alice interrupts. "My parents were the greatest people, I dealt a lot with them being in and out of trouble. Honey, I know what you're going through and it's terrible but you will get through this."

He's quiet for a moment. "I just don't want her to be a bad person. I don't want her to be the person behind this whole mess."

"And I hope she isn't, but unfortunately you're going to have to prepare yourself in case she is."

"Why don't Alice and I take this to Sheriff Keller and give you two some time to talk." Fred says. "Did you search the room any further?"

"No, we wanted to wait for you two." Betty answers.

"Ok, don't even touch anything in there. If she has more the last thing we want is your fingerprints all over it."

"We'll get to the bottom of this. Maybe Keller can trace this for fingerprints, see who's been in contact with it besides us. Hopefully they can do that." Alice says. And with that, she and Fred walk towards the front door

"Ms. S!" Jughead calls after her as she walks out the door. She stops and turns to the nervous looking boy and he lowers his voice. "I just wanted to say thanks for helping us with this. I know you and my dad don't exactly get along so it means a lot that you're helping us clear his name."

Alice gives him a smile. "I know he would do the same for Betty if I was in his situation. We'll get him out of there, I promise you."