This is a fic I started ages ago and decided to pick up again. Warning; it's a work in progress, but I'm pretty good at updating and I find it fun to make it up as I go along and I need some fun right now.
It's not going to be heavy on the smut; there's an actual dead body to deal with, and it's definitely skewed toward the fun side of things, but Shawn's good at multi-tasking and he has plans for Lassie, so it's not smut-free either.
Title A Mild Case of Murder
Author![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
janedavitt
Web page Jane's Stories
Pairing Shawn/Lassiter
Rating mild R
Length 2800 words
Spoilers/Warnings None
A Mild Case of Murder.
Part One
"I still don't get why you didn't just tell me we had an eleven o'clock appointment," Gus said, punctuating his words with pants as he fought for breath.
Shawn contemplating pointing out that he was walking at a normal pace whereas Gus was running pretty much on the spot, too busy scolding Shawn to dart ahead and out of earshot, but decided not to bother. If Gus wanted to arrive at the Psych office with the crisp corners of his shirt collar wilted, so be it. A shirt whose color Shawn had whole-heartedly admired that very morning, in fact, even if Gus had taken exception to his description of the color. Like there was something wrong with 'chewed-for-five-minutes-no-I'm-wrong-six grape bubblegum was somehow inferior to Gus' own choice of 'lilac'.
In honor of his own perceptive and accurate identification of the shade, Shawn had ordered them both a fruits of the forest smoothie for late-late breakfast instead of his current favorite, pineapple-orange. He wasn't quite sure what a forest fruit looked like, but apparently it was purple, which was close enough to Gus' shirt that the drips from their straw battle hadn't shown up. Much.
He squinted ahead. The Psych office seemed to be quiet, even deserted. Given that it was ten minutes after eleven, that was really, really rude of their client, but Shawn -- and the spirits -- were prepared to be magnanimous.
Bills. Lots of bills. Gus had been pretty vocal about them, too.
They reached the office door at precisely 11:13 A.M. and found that Gus had left it unlocked.
"What? I did not!"
"Then why is it open?" Shawn asked, pushing past Gus with a sweet smile of perfect understanding and forgiveness. He was always first out of the door when smoothies and a muffin awaited; how could it be his fault? It just didn't make sense. "Never mind, Gus. I'm sure our client just felt welcomed and trusted before making himself at home, just like…Goldilocks."
"Goldilocks?"
Shawn allowed Gus to regain pole position. "See? My chair was too hard, the floor was too soft -- or do I mean the other way around? -- and so he's sitting in your chair." He raised his voice over Gus' splutters. "Hail and well met, sirrah."
"No one says that, Shawn," Gus muttered and then took a step backward, treading on Shawn's left foot. Shawn pushed him away without thinking, then steadied him automatically when Gus tottered, off-balance. His toes hurt, but Gus' next words provided a welcome distraction from the pain. "Shawn, is that man dead?"
Okay, maybe not welcome…
Shawn waved his hand airily even as he gave their client a suspicious look. Dead. Hmm. It did seem likely, but it didn't seem much fun and Shawn had already declared this a fun-filled day, squished toes and pouting friends notwithstanding. He temporized. "Possibly not at his liveliest, but I think dead's a little harsh, Gus. We can't all be party animals."
Gus put his hand up to his mouth, making what Shawn hoped were fake gagging noises. "He's been stabbed and he's sitting in my chair. Why isn't he sitting in yours? It has that squeaky wheel. I don't mind getting rid of your chair."
"In my chair, Gus. You need to come down harder on the 'my'. You can't mess with the classics." Shawn got a few steps closer. Man. Aged forty-something. Gray hair, wispy beard, tweed suit, glasses askew on his face…dagger plunged into his chest. "Oh my God!"
"What?"
"He's been stabbed by an dagger of Oriental design! Just like an Agatha Christie novel. This is so cool, but don't let me start talking about my little gray cells, because that's copyright infringement and also kind of gross."
Hand still covering his mouth, Gus edged forward. "Shawn, just because it says 'Made in China' on the label doesn't make it that kind of dagger. They're always fancy. That's a -- oh my God!"
"I just said that." Really, Gus had to learn to come up with his own lines. People were boringly predictable enough as it was without them repeating what Shawn had just said.
"It's my letter opener! He's in my chair, stabbed with my letter opener!" Gus moaned weakly. "I didn't do it, Shawn. You're my alibi."
"Well, you did spend a long time in the little boys' room…" Shawn said, less from a belief that Gus had been doing anything more suspicious than hiding from an overly flirtatious waitress with a muscle-bound boyfriend than the urge to tease. "You could've snuck out of the window, crept back here and --" He raised his hand high, fixed a maniacal smile on his face and re-enacted the shower scene from Psycho with the appropriate noises.
Panic crossed Gus' face for a moment, then faded away to be replaced by steely eyed accusation. "I know you're just saying that because while I was in there, you could've run over here, stabbed him, then run back to…" His voice trailed off as they both contemplated the unlikelihood of Shawn leaving a half-eaten chocolate raspberry muffin behind and running more than a few yards in two directions in less than five minutes. "Never mind. We know we didn't do it, so we call the cops and let them --"
"Are you insane?" Shawn demanded. "We call them and tell them that we have a corpse and I didn't sense impending doom while I got blackberry seeds stuck in my teeth? We blow my cover? No way! We've got to get the hell out and figure out some way to get Lassie over here to find the corpse without us being involved. Or maybe we can move the body? Yeah, that could work…"
Gus shook his head, his face set in serious lines now. "Destroy evidence? Delay when the killer can't be far away? Not gonna happen." He pointed at the corpse. "He's more important than pretending that you're a real psychic, Shawn."
Shawn took a deep breath, the truth of what Gus was saying sinking in, along with an unfamiliar pang of shame. "Sorry. Yes. Dead man comes first." He paused, something chilly trickling down his spine as he played back Gus' words. "The killer might not be far away?"
"He can't be," Gus said. "We were only gone --" He gulped, his gaze flickering around the office, horror dawning. "Oh my God. The killer might be still here, Shawn."
They got stuck in the doorway, wasting a few valuable seconds, but they stopped running before they'd gotten more than a few hundred yards away. Shawn was still out of breath when he got through to Lassiter, but it lent a convincing air of panic to his voice.
Not a squeak. Gus was so wrong about that. Shawn's panicked voice was deep and manly. He'd practiced it.
"Spencer, slow down," Lassiter said after Shawn had jabbered at him for a full thirty seconds without really saying more than "Body! There's a body! In Gus' chair, stabbed with Gus' -- ow! Stop punching me!" The memory of how incoherent he'd been would come back to haunt Shawn later, but right then the exasperation in Lassiter's voice was blissfully reassuring, coupled as it was with an underlying competence. "Is this one of your pranks? Like the time you hid my favorite pen and I wasted the whole morning searching for it?"
"In the first place, that wasn't me, you just dropped it, and if you'd asked me to help look for it sooner, you'd have gotten in back within minutes because I know your routine better than you do and I would've retraced your steps --"
"So you're admitting to stalking me?"
Shawn frowned. Lassiter didn't sound as annoyed about that as he should be. Of course, Lassie had stalker-y instincts himself; it came with the job.
"No, I'm just pointing out that the pen wasn't a prank, though if we're 'fessing up, I may have been the Moriarty behind the 'For Sale: Sense of humor, never been used' notice on the break room wall. You drove me to it. I walked in wearing one of Henry's shirts and you didn't even smile at me."
It was hard to keep the injured note out of his voice. Lassie had been particularly down that week after a nasty arson case and Shawn had gone above and beyond to get a glimmer of amusement back in those sea-stormy eyes.
Lassiter's sigh was gusty and left Shawn's ear feeling warm. "Spencer, put Guster on."
"What? No way!" Injured became hurt. "Lassie, don't you trust me?"
"No." The matter-of-fact delivery knocked the air out of Shawn's body. Okay, that really stung. He straightened, channeled Henry, and snapped off a terse description of events in a few crisply concise sentences. It felt like speaking a foreign language, but the stunned silence that followed soothed his amour-propre a tad.
"Well, Lassie? Do you want us to go back and investigate or --"
"If you set foot inside that building before I get there, I'll arrest you," Lassiter snapped. "It'll save time, because you probably did it, anyway."
"I stabbed someone? You really think that, Lassie? Me?" Shawn couldn't deny the squeak that time, but there was no need for Gus to snicker. He was a grown man. Snickering was immature and totally childish.
"You probably talked to him and he stabbed himself to end the torment," Lassiter said, which was actually verging on witty for him. Cruel, but witty. Shawn opened his mouth to say so but he was talking to dead air.
"He hung up on you, didn't he?" Gus said smugly.
"You have chocolate smeared on your nose and you over-tipped the waitress by seventy-six cents," Shawn said, dispiritedly.
This had started out to be such a good day.
Lassiter and Jules arrived just as Shawn had decided that his head didn't count and was craning his neck to look around the door of the room containing the corpse. Which was clearly the only room that Lassiter hadn't wanted him to enter, and since he already had, what difference did it make anyway?
Lassiter's hand gripped the back of his collar, strong, long fingers digging into his neck. Shawn shuddered, goose bumps breaking out in unexpected places, and allowed himself to be hauled backward against Lassiter's chest. The wriggle he gave when he landed made Lassiter release him abruptly, but it had been an interesting, crowded three seconds.
"I thought I gave you explicit instructions," Lassiter hissed, still close enough for Shawn to feel every word, Lassiter's breath as soft as his hands and voice were rough.
"Detective Lassiter!" Juliet called from inside the room. Shawn blinked. He hadn't noticed her passing by. Lassiter really was good at distracting people with his manly charms. "We have a dead body in here. Stabbed through the heart."
"Do not move," Lassiter ordered Shawn. Gus had crowded up close and he got a narrow-eyed look of totally unwarranted and unfair suspicion that Shawn still envied him. Getting glared at by Lassie turned him on and he wasn't ashamed to admit it to himself and his pillow. "Your chair, Guster?"
"It doesn't have a squeaky wheel," Gus offered by way of explanation.
Shawn sighed. It was going to be a long day if he had to clear their names and solve a murder, and figure out his next move in the seduction of a man who was enjoying the foreplay way too much.
Or hadn't realized that he was being seduced. Shawn pursed his lips, letting the flurry of snapped-out orders and calls for back-up pass by him. Rejection was one thing, but cluelessness required that he take this slow, relentless, jungle cat hunt to the next level.
"Do I look good in leather, Gus? Be honest with me."
Gus gave him one long, level stare of sheer incredulity, then moved away with a toss of his head that spoke volumes about his opinion of Shawn's fashion sense (awesome!) and lack of focus (unfair; he'd been lusting after Lassie for months).
The sounds of sirens were getting louder, and soon the crime scene would be dusted and photographed, all the juice squeezed out of it. Shawn bit his lip before he remembered that his lips needed to stay smooch-worthy and stuck his head around the door. Lassie and Jules were moving around, pale gloves on their hands, making notes and conversing in a low mutter. Shawn let his gaze wander and zoom, a process as natural as breathing.
Definitely a stranger. Definitely dead. A smart suit, but scuffed soles on his shoes and his socks didn't match. Not obviously; they were both black, but the ribbing on them was slightly different. Single, then, or stingy. Or he just didn't care. Okay, maybe the mystery of the mismatched socks was never going to make the best-seller list.
"Do you have a confirmed name for Mr. Sinclair?" he asked, drifting casually closer. "Not that our clients lie to us much, but I have known the odd one to give a nom-de-plume when they book an appointment, especially the ones with naughty secrets."
"Nom-de-plumes are for writers, Shawn," Gus said, appearing in the doorway.
"No wallet," Juliet replied before Lassiter could tell Shawn to shut up and Shawn could tell Gus that he'd heard it both ways. "We'll run his prints when we get him back to the station."
"You really don't know what he was coming to see you about?" Lassiter asked.
Shawn shrugged. "My psychic powers work best after the client's handed over an expense check. He said he needed to see us about a matter of life and death -- which is a phrase people throw around way too much -- and that he'd explain when he came at eleven sharp."
"And you weren't here." The accusation in Lassiter's voice weighed it down, made it low and heavy which was probably why Shawn felt the urge to fall to his knees. He needed to work out more. "But your client was and so was his murderer. How did they get in, anyway? Don't you lock your door?"
"I do, Gus thinks it's unfriendly," Shawn said absently.
"I do not!"
"Detective Lassiter? This man was outside. He says he has an appointment at twelve with Mr. Spencer and he wouldn't go away."
Shawn turned his head, smiling a welcome. "McNab! Buddy! Arrest that man, he's totally lying."
"What? No!" The man, small, slight, pale to the point of seeming almost translucent, twisted his head from his horrified study of the stabbed man to look at Shawn. "Mr. Spencer, it's me. Simon Sinclair. We spoke on the phone."
"Wait, you're his eleven o'clock appointment?" Lassiter asked, a frown appearing.
"Twelve," Sinclair said firmly. "I entered it into my day-planner. I'm a little late, I know, but this, uh, gentleman wouldn't let me in until I'd explained how important it was."
"Important?" Juliet said.
Sinclair blinked. "Oh, yes. It's a matter of life and --"
"Pineapples?" Shawn offered hopefully.
"Death," Sinclair finished.
"It's never pineapples," Shawn said sadly.
"So if you're his appointment, then who is this guy?" Lassiter demanded, jerking his thumb at the corpse.
Sinclair glanced at the body and moistened his lips. "I really couldn't say," he said. "So distressing. So much blood. Oh dear, I feel quite sick."
Lassiter sighed. "McNab, get him out of here and down to the station. We'll need a statement."
"What? But I have nothing to do with this! I've never seen this man before, any of them."
Lassiter smiled and advanced on Sinclair with what Shawn had to admit was a nice prowl going on. Good hip action. "Life and death, Mr. Sinclair? Congratulations. You've got my attention. Now if you'll be so kind as to cooperate with my investigation, I might even help you with your problem for free if it really is serious. It's what the tax-payers like me to do."
"No fair poaching my clients, Lassie," Shawn objected.
Lassiter's eyes darkened. "You're going there, too, Spencer, you and Guster. Just think yourselves lucky you're not in cuffs as the prime suspects."
"Suspect?" Gus said, alarm evident. "I can't be a suspect! I didn't do it!"
"Well, isn't that nice for you," Lassiter said sourly. "Suppose you let me prove that first, Guster and then we can all laugh about this later over drinks."
Shawn brightened. "Seriously? Because it's Happy Hour tonight at --"
"Spencer, shut up and get your ass in my car," Lassiter said and swept out with a magnificent disregard for the fact that he'd kinda, sort of asked Shawn out on a date.
Sort of.
It's not going to be heavy on the smut; there's an actual dead body to deal with, and it's definitely skewed toward the fun side of things, but Shawn's good at multi-tasking and he has plans for Lassie, so it's not smut-free either.
Title A Mild Case of Murder
Author
janedavittWeb page Jane's Stories
Pairing Shawn/Lassiter
Rating mild R
Length 2800 words
Spoilers/Warnings None
A Mild Case of Murder.
Part One
"I still don't get why you didn't just tell me we had an eleven o'clock appointment," Gus said, punctuating his words with pants as he fought for breath.
Shawn contemplating pointing out that he was walking at a normal pace whereas Gus was running pretty much on the spot, too busy scolding Shawn to dart ahead and out of earshot, but decided not to bother. If Gus wanted to arrive at the Psych office with the crisp corners of his shirt collar wilted, so be it. A shirt whose color Shawn had whole-heartedly admired that very morning, in fact, even if Gus had taken exception to his description of the color. Like there was something wrong with 'chewed-for-five-minutes-no-I'm-wrong-six grape bubblegum was somehow inferior to Gus' own choice of 'lilac'.
In honor of his own perceptive and accurate identification of the shade, Shawn had ordered them both a fruits of the forest smoothie for late-late breakfast instead of his current favorite, pineapple-orange. He wasn't quite sure what a forest fruit looked like, but apparently it was purple, which was close enough to Gus' shirt that the drips from their straw battle hadn't shown up. Much.
He squinted ahead. The Psych office seemed to be quiet, even deserted. Given that it was ten minutes after eleven, that was really, really rude of their client, but Shawn -- and the spirits -- were prepared to be magnanimous.
Bills. Lots of bills. Gus had been pretty vocal about them, too.
They reached the office door at precisely 11:13 A.M. and found that Gus had left it unlocked.
"What? I did not!"
"Then why is it open?" Shawn asked, pushing past Gus with a sweet smile of perfect understanding and forgiveness. He was always first out of the door when smoothies and a muffin awaited; how could it be his fault? It just didn't make sense. "Never mind, Gus. I'm sure our client just felt welcomed and trusted before making himself at home, just like…Goldilocks."
"Goldilocks?"
Shawn allowed Gus to regain pole position. "See? My chair was too hard, the floor was too soft -- or do I mean the other way around? -- and so he's sitting in your chair." He raised his voice over Gus' splutters. "Hail and well met, sirrah."
"No one says that, Shawn," Gus muttered and then took a step backward, treading on Shawn's left foot. Shawn pushed him away without thinking, then steadied him automatically when Gus tottered, off-balance. His toes hurt, but Gus' next words provided a welcome distraction from the pain. "Shawn, is that man dead?"
Okay, maybe not welcome…
Shawn waved his hand airily even as he gave their client a suspicious look. Dead. Hmm. It did seem likely, but it didn't seem much fun and Shawn had already declared this a fun-filled day, squished toes and pouting friends notwithstanding. He temporized. "Possibly not at his liveliest, but I think dead's a little harsh, Gus. We can't all be party animals."
Gus put his hand up to his mouth, making what Shawn hoped were fake gagging noises. "He's been stabbed and he's sitting in my chair. Why isn't he sitting in yours? It has that squeaky wheel. I don't mind getting rid of your chair."
"In my chair, Gus. You need to come down harder on the 'my'. You can't mess with the classics." Shawn got a few steps closer. Man. Aged forty-something. Gray hair, wispy beard, tweed suit, glasses askew on his face…dagger plunged into his chest. "Oh my God!"
"What?"
"He's been stabbed by an dagger of Oriental design! Just like an Agatha Christie novel. This is so cool, but don't let me start talking about my little gray cells, because that's copyright infringement and also kind of gross."
Hand still covering his mouth, Gus edged forward. "Shawn, just because it says 'Made in China' on the label doesn't make it that kind of dagger. They're always fancy. That's a -- oh my God!"
"I just said that." Really, Gus had to learn to come up with his own lines. People were boringly predictable enough as it was without them repeating what Shawn had just said.
"It's my letter opener! He's in my chair, stabbed with my letter opener!" Gus moaned weakly. "I didn't do it, Shawn. You're my alibi."
"Well, you did spend a long time in the little boys' room…" Shawn said, less from a belief that Gus had been doing anything more suspicious than hiding from an overly flirtatious waitress with a muscle-bound boyfriend than the urge to tease. "You could've snuck out of the window, crept back here and --" He raised his hand high, fixed a maniacal smile on his face and re-enacted the shower scene from Psycho with the appropriate noises.
Panic crossed Gus' face for a moment, then faded away to be replaced by steely eyed accusation. "I know you're just saying that because while I was in there, you could've run over here, stabbed him, then run back to…" His voice trailed off as they both contemplated the unlikelihood of Shawn leaving a half-eaten chocolate raspberry muffin behind and running more than a few yards in two directions in less than five minutes. "Never mind. We know we didn't do it, so we call the cops and let them --"
"Are you insane?" Shawn demanded. "We call them and tell them that we have a corpse and I didn't sense impending doom while I got blackberry seeds stuck in my teeth? We blow my cover? No way! We've got to get the hell out and figure out some way to get Lassie over here to find the corpse without us being involved. Or maybe we can move the body? Yeah, that could work…"
Gus shook his head, his face set in serious lines now. "Destroy evidence? Delay when the killer can't be far away? Not gonna happen." He pointed at the corpse. "He's more important than pretending that you're a real psychic, Shawn."
Shawn took a deep breath, the truth of what Gus was saying sinking in, along with an unfamiliar pang of shame. "Sorry. Yes. Dead man comes first." He paused, something chilly trickling down his spine as he played back Gus' words. "The killer might not be far away?"
"He can't be," Gus said. "We were only gone --" He gulped, his gaze flickering around the office, horror dawning. "Oh my God. The killer might be still here, Shawn."
They got stuck in the doorway, wasting a few valuable seconds, but they stopped running before they'd gotten more than a few hundred yards away. Shawn was still out of breath when he got through to Lassiter, but it lent a convincing air of panic to his voice.
Not a squeak. Gus was so wrong about that. Shawn's panicked voice was deep and manly. He'd practiced it.
"Spencer, slow down," Lassiter said after Shawn had jabbered at him for a full thirty seconds without really saying more than "Body! There's a body! In Gus' chair, stabbed with Gus' -- ow! Stop punching me!" The memory of how incoherent he'd been would come back to haunt Shawn later, but right then the exasperation in Lassiter's voice was blissfully reassuring, coupled as it was with an underlying competence. "Is this one of your pranks? Like the time you hid my favorite pen and I wasted the whole morning searching for it?"
"In the first place, that wasn't me, you just dropped it, and if you'd asked me to help look for it sooner, you'd have gotten in back within minutes because I know your routine better than you do and I would've retraced your steps --"
"So you're admitting to stalking me?"
Shawn frowned. Lassiter didn't sound as annoyed about that as he should be. Of course, Lassie had stalker-y instincts himself; it came with the job.
"No, I'm just pointing out that the pen wasn't a prank, though if we're 'fessing up, I may have been the Moriarty behind the 'For Sale: Sense of humor, never been used' notice on the break room wall. You drove me to it. I walked in wearing one of Henry's shirts and you didn't even smile at me."
It was hard to keep the injured note out of his voice. Lassie had been particularly down that week after a nasty arson case and Shawn had gone above and beyond to get a glimmer of amusement back in those sea-stormy eyes.
Lassiter's sigh was gusty and left Shawn's ear feeling warm. "Spencer, put Guster on."
"What? No way!" Injured became hurt. "Lassie, don't you trust me?"
"No." The matter-of-fact delivery knocked the air out of Shawn's body. Okay, that really stung. He straightened, channeled Henry, and snapped off a terse description of events in a few crisply concise sentences. It felt like speaking a foreign language, but the stunned silence that followed soothed his amour-propre a tad.
"Well, Lassie? Do you want us to go back and investigate or --"
"If you set foot inside that building before I get there, I'll arrest you," Lassiter snapped. "It'll save time, because you probably did it, anyway."
"I stabbed someone? You really think that, Lassie? Me?" Shawn couldn't deny the squeak that time, but there was no need for Gus to snicker. He was a grown man. Snickering was immature and totally childish.
"You probably talked to him and he stabbed himself to end the torment," Lassiter said, which was actually verging on witty for him. Cruel, but witty. Shawn opened his mouth to say so but he was talking to dead air.
"He hung up on you, didn't he?" Gus said smugly.
"You have chocolate smeared on your nose and you over-tipped the waitress by seventy-six cents," Shawn said, dispiritedly.
This had started out to be such a good day.
Lassiter and Jules arrived just as Shawn had decided that his head didn't count and was craning his neck to look around the door of the room containing the corpse. Which was clearly the only room that Lassiter hadn't wanted him to enter, and since he already had, what difference did it make anyway?
Lassiter's hand gripped the back of his collar, strong, long fingers digging into his neck. Shawn shuddered, goose bumps breaking out in unexpected places, and allowed himself to be hauled backward against Lassiter's chest. The wriggle he gave when he landed made Lassiter release him abruptly, but it had been an interesting, crowded three seconds.
"I thought I gave you explicit instructions," Lassiter hissed, still close enough for Shawn to feel every word, Lassiter's breath as soft as his hands and voice were rough.
"Detective Lassiter!" Juliet called from inside the room. Shawn blinked. He hadn't noticed her passing by. Lassiter really was good at distracting people with his manly charms. "We have a dead body in here. Stabbed through the heart."
"Do not move," Lassiter ordered Shawn. Gus had crowded up close and he got a narrow-eyed look of totally unwarranted and unfair suspicion that Shawn still envied him. Getting glared at by Lassie turned him on and he wasn't ashamed to admit it to himself and his pillow. "Your chair, Guster?"
"It doesn't have a squeaky wheel," Gus offered by way of explanation.
Shawn sighed. It was going to be a long day if he had to clear their names and solve a murder, and figure out his next move in the seduction of a man who was enjoying the foreplay way too much.
Or hadn't realized that he was being seduced. Shawn pursed his lips, letting the flurry of snapped-out orders and calls for back-up pass by him. Rejection was one thing, but cluelessness required that he take this slow, relentless, jungle cat hunt to the next level.
"Do I look good in leather, Gus? Be honest with me."
Gus gave him one long, level stare of sheer incredulity, then moved away with a toss of his head that spoke volumes about his opinion of Shawn's fashion sense (awesome!) and lack of focus (unfair; he'd been lusting after Lassie for months).
The sounds of sirens were getting louder, and soon the crime scene would be dusted and photographed, all the juice squeezed out of it. Shawn bit his lip before he remembered that his lips needed to stay smooch-worthy and stuck his head around the door. Lassie and Jules were moving around, pale gloves on their hands, making notes and conversing in a low mutter. Shawn let his gaze wander and zoom, a process as natural as breathing.
Definitely a stranger. Definitely dead. A smart suit, but scuffed soles on his shoes and his socks didn't match. Not obviously; they were both black, but the ribbing on them was slightly different. Single, then, or stingy. Or he just didn't care. Okay, maybe the mystery of the mismatched socks was never going to make the best-seller list.
"Do you have a confirmed name for Mr. Sinclair?" he asked, drifting casually closer. "Not that our clients lie to us much, but I have known the odd one to give a nom-de-plume when they book an appointment, especially the ones with naughty secrets."
"Nom-de-plumes are for writers, Shawn," Gus said, appearing in the doorway.
"No wallet," Juliet replied before Lassiter could tell Shawn to shut up and Shawn could tell Gus that he'd heard it both ways. "We'll run his prints when we get him back to the station."
"You really don't know what he was coming to see you about?" Lassiter asked.
Shawn shrugged. "My psychic powers work best after the client's handed over an expense check. He said he needed to see us about a matter of life and death -- which is a phrase people throw around way too much -- and that he'd explain when he came at eleven sharp."
"And you weren't here." The accusation in Lassiter's voice weighed it down, made it low and heavy which was probably why Shawn felt the urge to fall to his knees. He needed to work out more. "But your client was and so was his murderer. How did they get in, anyway? Don't you lock your door?"
"I do, Gus thinks it's unfriendly," Shawn said absently.
"I do not!"
"Detective Lassiter? This man was outside. He says he has an appointment at twelve with Mr. Spencer and he wouldn't go away."
Shawn turned his head, smiling a welcome. "McNab! Buddy! Arrest that man, he's totally lying."
"What? No!" The man, small, slight, pale to the point of seeming almost translucent, twisted his head from his horrified study of the stabbed man to look at Shawn. "Mr. Spencer, it's me. Simon Sinclair. We spoke on the phone."
"Wait, you're his eleven o'clock appointment?" Lassiter asked, a frown appearing.
"Twelve," Sinclair said firmly. "I entered it into my day-planner. I'm a little late, I know, but this, uh, gentleman wouldn't let me in until I'd explained how important it was."
"Important?" Juliet said.
Sinclair blinked. "Oh, yes. It's a matter of life and --"
"Pineapples?" Shawn offered hopefully.
"Death," Sinclair finished.
"It's never pineapples," Shawn said sadly.
"So if you're his appointment, then who is this guy?" Lassiter demanded, jerking his thumb at the corpse.
Sinclair glanced at the body and moistened his lips. "I really couldn't say," he said. "So distressing. So much blood. Oh dear, I feel quite sick."
Lassiter sighed. "McNab, get him out of here and down to the station. We'll need a statement."
"What? But I have nothing to do with this! I've never seen this man before, any of them."
Lassiter smiled and advanced on Sinclair with what Shawn had to admit was a nice prowl going on. Good hip action. "Life and death, Mr. Sinclair? Congratulations. You've got my attention. Now if you'll be so kind as to cooperate with my investigation, I might even help you with your problem for free if it really is serious. It's what the tax-payers like me to do."
"No fair poaching my clients, Lassie," Shawn objected.
Lassiter's eyes darkened. "You're going there, too, Spencer, you and Guster. Just think yourselves lucky you're not in cuffs as the prime suspects."
"Suspect?" Gus said, alarm evident. "I can't be a suspect! I didn't do it!"
"Well, isn't that nice for you," Lassiter said sourly. "Suppose you let me prove that first, Guster and then we can all laugh about this later over drinks."
Shawn brightened. "Seriously? Because it's Happy Hour tonight at --"
"Spencer, shut up and get your ass in my car," Lassiter said and swept out with a magnificent disregard for the fact that he'd kinda, sort of asked Shawn out on a date.
Sort of.
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