Brought to You by Murder

by Antje

Months have flown by since Shawn's investigated anything more than a sock lost in the laundry. But enjoying his other talents, and keeping his and Lassie's house clean (for once) soon loses some appeal: An old mystery rises from the dust of Shawn's and Gus's childhood, reviving interest and curiosity. SS/CL. JO/BG.

1. Chapter 1

Greetings: Welcome to life after Psych, everybody!

Notes: Continued from Apply Liberally at Sunrise. You might like to read/skim that first. Mentions (and uses as part of the plot) the unfinished sequel to ALaS, The Vintage Crimes of Christopher Sly (as "the Hayworth case"). - I don't know how often I'll be able to work on this, but there's at least one more chapter and I have an idea how it's going to go. Comments keep me inspired. Follow the story if you'd like to know about its random updates! A link to chapter one story notes is in my profile. Thanks to all readers!
Note (16 July 2014): I'm trying to fix the random typos as fast as I can. Also, I finished writing this story: it's fourteen chapters. If you like it, please consider leaving a one- or two-word review!

Warnings: Pretty much ignores show canon, especially after season four. (Some recent things may get a mention here and there.) Ignores show continuity, about as much as Psych ignored(!) its own continuity through the years.

Pairings: Shawn x Carlton (established); Juliet x Gus (established); Dobson x Dobson's Mike (oc).

-x-

1987…

It dawned on Shawn that he was getting older. For a while, he walked around with this burden of age sitting on his shoulders. His mother noticed his pompous strut. She asked him about it, just once; it was always funny to hear Shawn's unpredictable answers.

"I'm trying to respect myself, Mom."

Shawn usually said her name-noun like it was the epitome of important, the epitome of epitome, a fact in fact. If Maddie wasn't already chuckling, she would be in another second.

"Why the sudden burst of self-respect?"

Most eleven-year-old boys would cower at the idea of liking themselves to the point of admitting it aloud. For a blistering moment, Maddie worried that Shawn's ego might inflate a little too insupportably. Lord help Henry if it did!

"Well," Shawn shimmied into a chair at the table, eyeing a cookie on a plate and trying to decide what kind it was, "it's not so much self-respect as it is a kind of—of awareness."

Maddie folded the damp dishcloth into quarters, ignoring the tickling in the back of her throat. She coughed a little. An ant on the counter derailed her humor. "An awareness of what, Shawn? You're being cryptic. Is this about a girl?"

"Nah, no girls. I'm my own man."

"A boy at school?" Lord help Henry if it was!

Shawn just shot her a quizzical expression. After a nibble of cookie, a sip of milk, he thought he'd uncovered her motive. "Are you trying to distract me? You play with people's heads for a living."

"I don't—"

"That's what Dad says."

"Your father's not always right."

"Yeah, that's something you and I can definitely agree on! Want a cookie?" He offered her the third and final specimen of sugary goodness.

Maddie, unable to resist, and knowing he wouldn't want her around much longer—soon there'd be no lazy weekend afternoons, no snacks in the kitchen, no momentary appearances of the man Shawn would grow up to be. "Sure." She took a seat, the cookie, and made a motion as if to knock the two ends of their cookies together. "Cheers."

"Cheers!"

"Now are you going to tell me why you're prancing around like a little man?"

"Oh, see, I have this idea that the older I get the more I'm going to have to remember things. I mean—there's so much they make us remember at school. And Dad's always testing my memory, too! It's a lot of responsibility, trying to remember everything that everyone throws at me! So, I figure if I act like I'm responsible enough to handle it, then I'll be responsible enough to handle it." Feeling that he'd exposed too many of his feelings, and beginning to feel humiliated, Shawn brought the topic a slight curve. "I told this to Gus."

This had stopped being comical. "What'd Gus say?"

"He thought I was nuts. But his dad isn't trying to turn him into a walking, talking human eyeball, is he?"

"Probably not. Why do you think your father's doing this?"

"Because he wants me to be a cop."

"And you don't want to be a cop?"

He glared at her, bored-like. They'd talked about this way too many times to bear another repetition. "No. I want to work at the Noodle Factory. I told you this. You get to make cool piles of noodles, and you get to eat as many as you want."

"Life is more than making noodles."

"Life isn't much more than that, though, making noodles and eating them."

Shawn had her there. "Sure you don't want to be a cop? You'd be good at it. You might like it."

"Ugh, no. No, I wouldn't like it. For one thing, that uniform. And it's made of polyester. Do you know what happens to polyester when it comes in contact with fire? It melts. It melts on your skin. It sticks to your skin. That is so gross."

Maddie scooped crumbs off the vinyl tablecloth. "Did your father tell you that?"

"Dad? No. I read about it," he said, as if saying he didn't know how else he gathered information. "Besides, he's been wearing suits since he was promoted, so I don't think that he thinks about it all that much anymore. I don't like the uniforms."

"I gathered."

"But I will say that they tend to cling correctly to the right curves of the right kind of people."

"Shawn!" But Maddie was unable to hold in a loud laugh. Shawn was pleased. He'd hardly heard her laugh like that in months, at least not when he was around and certainly not because he'd said something that'd humored her. When she'd recovered, she attempted reprimand. "You shouldn't say things like that."

"Why not? It's true."

"Well, your dad might be teaching you how to observe everything in a room and how to solve this or that case, but he's not doing a good job teaching you when to keep your thoughts to yourself."

"That's true. I won't deny it. Mom, is this ever going to stop? When's he going to give up?"

"Your father, give up? Oh, no, Goose, he doesn't give up."

"I was afraid you'd say that."

The slapping of feet on the front porch was soon followed by the smacking of the screen door. "Shawn?"

"In here, Gus!"

Maddie continued to have a difficult time shooing Shawn's misappropriate observation out of her mind, even as she handed a sweaty Gus a glass of ice water. She'd have to talk to Henry about that—the things he was teaching Shawn. Though beginning to feel her influence on Henry was waning, and still touched that Henry bothered to help rear Shawn after all the horror stories she'd heard from clients through the years—she had to try. She knew what Shawn was like when he grew bored. It'd happened to him in school recently, and she was afraid of what happened when Shawn's restlessness became more domestic. It wouldn't be pretty, and Henry wouldn't like it.

"There's a whole mess of cops down at the beach," Gus was announcing while Maddie thought and Shawn blew bubbles into his glass of milk. Shawn, too enraptured to continue, made a disgusted face at Gus.

"You actually came in here, said hi to us, and had a glass of water before you told us there were cops at the beach?"

"What? I was thirsty. It's hot out. And the humidity's low. I need to keep hydrated."

Shawn had no idea what to say to this. "Mom, can we—"

"Yes, but be careful. Stay out of the way. And take this to your father." She drew a paper sack out of the refrigerator. Left in Shawn's safe-keeping was taking a chance, but it was better than no chance at all. "He forgot to take it this morning."

"Ew, totally bogus tuna stink!"

"He likes tuna on Saturdays. Be home by five. I want to help you work on your science project while we're fixing dinner." If Henry was going to teach Shawn how to solve crimes, she was going to teach him how to boil pasta. It'd give him a head start at the Noodle Factory if nothing else.

"Will do!"

"Thanks for the water, Mrs. S! Bye!"

Gus left the emptied glass on the table, then darted after Shawn to the front lawn. Shawn's bike was there, with a basket on the front to cart interesting goodies around, sometimes found while they beach-combed, sometimes found in the schoolyard or scary alleys they dared one another to ride through—alone. Shawn asked him where the cops were, and Gus, already pedaling, said it was two blocks "that way."

Shawn had no trouble seeing it. Not far from the pier, and in front of some new beach-front construction of office buildings that always made Shawn roll his eyes. He hated it when land developers got what they wanted and ruined the nice view of his part of Santa Barbara. Pedestrians, seemingly hundreds of them at two o' clock on a Saturday, had flocked to the system of rails that surrounded the beach, and many more layers of surfers, roller skaters, cyclists, dog walkers, troubadours and what-have-you were crammed onto the beach, widened by low tide. Unafraid to leave their bikes unattended, they flopped them onto the ground next to the new construction. For good measure, Shawn kicked the edge of the building as he walked by.

"What'd you do that for?" Gus asked, wishing Shawn would hurry up. He didn't want to miss everything!

"I hate this building. It's stupid. I mean, if they're going to build something, why can't it be something cool like a Chuck E Cheese or a Baskin Robbins?"

"Yeah, that would be cool. What is it?" Gus took in as much of the buildings frame as he could. It was made of solid timber boards and not much else just yet.

"A dumb old office. A real estate agent or something. I want a Baskin Robbins!"

"There's one on the other side of town."

"Yeah, but it'd be cool to have one we could ride our bikes to. One of these days, I'm going to be rich enough to buy that building and burn it down. Hey, look, Dad's car! He's definitely here. And I have his stinky tuna sandwich." Shawn held up the sack for emphasis. It still stank, even when they were a stone's throw from the ocean. The ocean bored him, too. Like the sand, like the Santa Ynez mountains—it was just kind of there, year in and year out, season in and season out, always the same. Boring. He wanted to see something different for once. Maybe go back to his crazy uncle's place and shoot cans off the rail fence by the barn…

Through a series of "Excuse Us" and "Pardon Us" and such mumbles and pleas to get the spectators out of their way, Shawn and Gus swerved their way through tan bodies and fat bodies, long legs and short legs, stepped over small dogs and veered around large ones—who were more interested in the smelly sack than Shawn and Gus. Finally, they broke through the barrier and stood on sand, with a fine view of the teeming officers of the SBPD. They swarmed around like brown and blue bees. Shawn blinked, wrestling with sweat and hair clinging to his eyelashes. When he winced to deaden some of the July sunshine, he spotted his father standing with two other plain-clothes detectives and three uniforms. An important man took a long, final look at the ocean before meandering his way back to the men.

"Chief Wilkins," Gus said, spotting exactly who Shawn did. "Must be something big."

"I see Officer Grayson not far. I'll talk to her. She likes me."

"I'll wait here."

"Coward," Shawn teased, smiling.

He knew Gus liked Officer Grayson. She was pretty, had some serious curves that her uniform showed off, and one of the specimens that'd popped into his head when Shawn had mentioned it to his mom. Shawn left Gus to stew in his daydreams, wondering if his lack of fear facing the opposite sex meant there was some deformity in him. But, just standing at the threshold of puberty, he had a long way to go before everything was settled. Still, the sight of buxom Grayson was intriguing, about as intriguing as the well-sculpted derriere his eyes glazed across—and looked away with striking alacrity when realizing it was the bum of Officer Ortiz—a dude. Oh well, maybe he'd grow up to have a butt as muscled as that someday. But probably not, if genetics offered any foreshadowing.

He got the gist of the ordeal from Grayson. Fascinating it was, so much so that Shawn's hair along his forearms stood up, his skin popped out in gooseflesh. When he returned to Gus, the tale was at the tip of his tongue. But he didn't want everyone around them to overhear. He pulled Gus under the yellow tape, having the blessing of Grayson and another nearby officer. Special privileges! It was nice to be appreciated.

Shawn licked his lips before talking. "They found a body in a trunk. The trunk washed up on shore."

"A trunk?"

"Yeah, you know, like one of those humped-back sea chests we saw at your grandma's house that one time."

"Oh—oh that kind of trunk. Well, whose body was it?"

"They dunno. It was all gross inside, Grayson said. The trunk's old. Grayson said that the chief said that my dad said that he was surprised that the trunk had held together that long. They think it must've been dumped way out somewhere."

"That's crazy."

"I know. Creepy, too. Imagine being killed, murdered even—then thrown into a trunk and then thrown into the ocean. Sounds like something the Goonies would investigate. Wanna play? We can get Dennis and Morgan and—"

"Well, all right, but I'm not playing Chunk again."

"I make no promises."

"Aw, man! Come on, Shawn!"

"Let me just run this gross sandwich over to Dad. I think he's part porpoise, but I'm not really ready to align him with such a friendly species just yet. Be right back!"

As soon as Henry spotted his son parading across the sand, devil-may-care attitude wholly on display, Henry's systolic blood pressure rose by twelve points. "Shawn, what are you doing here?"

"I brought you your lunch. Or dinner. Your stinky fish thing Mom said you had to have."

Henry snatched at the sack. "So that's where it went!"

"It didn't go anywhere. It was always in the fridge. Grayson told me about the trunk." He could barely see the ancient thing, black and brown and cedar through the legs and around the bodies of five men. "Think it's old?"

"Yeah, and the body's old, too. And I'm going to have a long talk with Grayson."

"Don't do that. She's a good officer." And she's hot! But, wisely, he neglected to say that part out loud, even if his dad had agreed with him. Most warm-blooded men would agree with him. They'd probably agree with him, objectionably, about Officer Ortiz's chiseled and manly bum, too, and that made Shawn feel that his earlier and accidental ogling was normal. "You know she wouldn't do anything that'd hurt me. But Gus and I are going to go meet Dennis and Morgan and see if we can't solve this case on our own, Goonies style."

"Don't go out by the rocks again, Goonies or no Goonies. And be home by five. You need to finish your science project before Monday."

"Mom's given me this rigamarole already. Five. Science project. Got any more info about the trunk or the body in the trunk?"

"No," Henry said flatly, intensely. Then, he figured, why not? It wasn't likely they'd ever figure out where the dead person inside the trunk came from. Why not let Shawn have his chance? "Well, the trunk is old. Grayson's dad's an antique dealer. And Grayson thinks it might be from the early 1900's. The body's not in good shape. Mostly bones at this point. There's some liquid inside."

"That's from decomposition, right?"

"How'd you know that?"

"Stop the presses, Dad! I'm not an idiot! And the trunk's been sealed. It was dunked in wax or something. I can see it from here."

Henry scooped his palm over the top of Shawn's hair, a gesture of pride. "Just a paraffin wax, maybe. I don't know. You run along now and play. We'll deal with this. And don't make Gus be Chunk again!"

For a second, Henry watched Shawn's detachment from the beach with a pang of remorse and a twist of envy. He shouldn't have been so hard on Shawn through the years. He should've let him be what he was: a kid. The games had begun as a fun pastime, but somehow they'd become more like lessons than playful diversions. He sighed, lowering aviators back on his nose, and returned to the dead body in the old steamer trunk.

-x-

1994…

Despite embarrassments—and one really big ado four months ago—Shawn Spencer still considered the SBPD headquarters a home away from home. He could walk through it with his eyes closed. He could walk through it with his nose in the air and half his face turned from the oceanic blight he carried in a paper sack.

"Make way! Coming through! Keep the aisle clear! Smelly fish sandwich! Out of the way! That means you, Dobson!"

Shawn cooled, demeanor shifting, catching sight of the tall brunette babe Dobson was with.

"Hellooo, Dobson's friend."

He was glad neither Dobson nor Dobson's "friend" heard him, and everyone, including the chief, gave him a three-foot circumference. They knew it was Stinky Sack Saturday.

At last, Shawn drew to a halt, complete with braking sound effects, at his old man's desk. With grandness befitting his persona, Shawn set the sack down—right in the middle of Henry's stack of paperwork. Shawn hunted for every flicker of information he could, from the file folder to the people in the room, to the amount of coffee left in the pot on the snack counter. He noticed that the clock on the wall was two minutes fast, who was at his desk and who wasn't, what color of tie the chief wore and what color eyes Dobson's paramour had. Just in case his dad asked him something, although that had faded into the bygone days of glory the last six months.

"Stinky Sack Saturday," Shawn said, "as promised. You forgot your lunch again." Dad had forgotten a lot of things since Mom left. He couldn't think about that now, not the mismatched socks or laundry left in the washer for days until it stank. Until it smelled like tuna.

Henry aimed a glare at Shawn over his reading glasses. "You brought me my lunch?"

"As you see." Shawn refused to sweat or break his role. He was the suave and carefree character, free to do whatever the hell he wanted—just as soon as he found a way out of Santa Barbara.

"And that's the only reason for your visit?"

"I thought it was a pretty good reason, actually. You don't think so? Well, I can take the tuna fish sandwich away." Shawn's hand aimed for the sack, soon swiped away by Henry.

"I want the sandwich. I just thought—" Henry paused, reflecting. He couldn't tell if Shawn knew and that's why he'd brought the sandwich, or if Shawn hadn't heard and had brought the sandwich out of the goodness of his heart—and perhaps a chance to get some exercise and sunshine.

"Thought what?" Shawn waited, and, fed up with waiting, uncomfortable the longer his dad continued to scrutinize him, he gestured, palms open and jerking to the floor. "What, Dad, what? Thought what?"

"That you might've heard."

"Aaaa-bout—about what?" Shawn's lungs rapidly filled with cold police department air, and his carefree slack tightened as if ready for a hangman's noose. "Is it Mom? Is she—"

"Oh, no, nothing like that." Jeez, Shawn really hadn't heard. Sometimes the daisy-chain of weirdoes that outsourced department information managed to miss Shawn. Sometimes not. "I didn't mean to freak you out. Your mom's fine. She—"

The desk phone rang.

"I'd better take this, Shawn. I'm waiting for the Assistant DA to get back to me. Hang out for a second, though. I want to talk to you."

"Sure. I'll go down and get my digits inked. Been a while since I've done that. I want to see if any of those chemical burns freshman year changed my prints."

Not waiting for Henry's nod of approval, Shawn returned to the front of the building, just to turn left at the doors and descend into the abysmal lower-levels. It had a smell all its own, partly the soft heat of electronics, partly like the massive amounts of paper and cardboard in storage there, and partly something that carried the aroma of perpetually damp mop.

The booking officer on duty was none other than Officer Beanpole. At least, that's what Henry always called him, what Shawn called him in his mind. Lassiter cemented the belief that everyone should carry a descriptive name, not just a familial one. He was gangly, legs and arms nearly the same length, his neck thin and graceful like a swan's, and Shawn could've written odes to Lassiter's fingers. There was a disturbingly hygienic quality about Lassiter. Regardless of what he did, he was utterly spotless afterwards. He was one of the most difficult people to humanize; Shawn couldn't imagine him eating dinner let along screwing his wife, or whoever it was that'd put a ring on an important finger.

"Hi," Shawn said, laying his forearms on the high counter.

"What do you want?" Lassiter didn't look up from adding signatures to a fresh stack of fingerprints. More gang members. Would it never end? But he did glance at the punk kid in front of him, seventeen, eighteen, coarse brown hair bleached in strands by summer sun, though his face remained oddly free of sun's touch. "Oh, Henry Spencer's offspring. Did you get arrested again? Need your fingerprints taken?"

"I came for a double-fudge brownie sundae. Am I in the wrong place?" He'd do anything to get under Officer Beanpole's skin—and stay there. It didn't take much. Lassiter, regardless of what he might think, wore a whole lot of his heart on his navy blue polyester sleeve. Better that Lassiter was in that uniform than Shawn Spencer.

But Lassiter looked into the middle-distance at the mention of food. "God, that sounds so good right now." He came to his senses, the one that didn't have to do with hunger. "I missed lunch. What are you doing down here?"

"Waiting for my dad to get off the phone. He wants to talk to me about something,'n I dunno…"

Lassiter had one guess as to what that was, only he thought it best not to spill it. Detective Spencer wouldn't like it one bit, and he was an important person in the precinct. Unfortunately, Carlton couldn't decide if he liked Detective Spencer. He faced the same dilemma with Detective Spencer's kid. Thank goodness he didn't have to work with two Spencers. One was more than enough.

Shawn scared him to death with a single, ambiguous question.

"Is it true what they say about you?"

Playing it aloof, Lassiter responded with the first nonchalant sentence that came to mind. "Any number of things you hear about me might be true."

Shawn debated on whether or not he should go on with it, by asking if all those things were true. It was intriguing, nonetheless, having Lassiter admit that people talked about him. There was always scuttlebutt about the rookies and the almost-rookies. "Is it true that you're in a master's program while you're working full-time at this firetrap?"

"Oh, that."

Shawn wondered what other caverns of secrets and rumors it could've been. "Seriously, you've never been more appealing to me than you are right now." He was glad Beanpole ignored the comment—or flirtation—or, at this point, Shawn wasn't even sure. Maybe just a statement of stalwart curiosity. "So it is true?"

Lassiter took a second before nodding. "True. All of it. And, on top of that, being married is a whole lot of fun."

"Double-fudge brownie sundaes every night kind of fun, or mostly that she washes the dishes while you do your homework?"

"More of the latter than the former."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"What do you want, Spencer? There are umpteen ways you can waste time in this building, and why are you wasting it down here?"

Shawn cut to another piece of gossip. "Who's the dude with Dobson? No, not fair, you can't look away and say you don't know when I know you know who I'm talking about!"

Lassiter reached his final sheet, sorry that he wouldn't have anything to excuse him from Shawn Spencer's presumptuous yet oddly friendly and conspiratorial presence. "His name's Mike. He's been here a few times. They go to lunch together. That's all I know."

"Sushi bar, or Dairy Queen?"

"I don't know! Sometimes they eat at the sushi bar, I guess, and sometimes they go to that weird place down by the quays—the Vine-something. I can't remember its name."

Shawn supposed Lassiter meant the Tanglevine Club, but didn't feel like prancing this knowledge. It was no fun playing brain games with Officer Beanpole. It wasn't as though extra knowledge of silly things would win him points, not like it did with Dad or Gus. "Sushi bar. Just as I suspected. They are lovers in the night! And sometimes daylight, too!"

"Eh—" Lassiter eked the surprised interjection from stunned vocal chords. "Will you go bother someone else for a change?"

Shawn was on the verge of retreat when his name was hollered from the stairwell. "Speak of the devil," he said to Lassiter, finding it was Dobson who came toward him.

"Your dad went to meet Mr. Grimes. He told me to tell you that he'd tell you what he wanted to tell you later." Dobson's eyes roamed about, deep in thought. He was a sweet-faced twenty-something with cedar hair that he wore too long over his ears. Shawn had discovered months ago that Dobson had trouble with his weight, judged by the wear around the holes of his belt. No wonder he and Mike were eating more sushi than Dairy Queen.

Shawn wasn't disappointed that his dad had gone off and left him—for the Assistant District Attorney. "That figures. Thanks, Dobs. Hey, wait." He called Dobson back. "Don't suppose you know what he wanted to tell me?"

Dobson shook his head, shrugged, glanced furtively at Lassiter before juggling farewells with Henry Spencer's only child.

Shawn combed a hand through his hair, then left his elbow again on Officer Beanpole's booking counter. True to his nature, Lassiter had out the bottle of blue cleaner and a paper towel, wiping off the surface to keep it dust-free. "It's amazing how you can't tell people are gay just by looking at them."

Lassiter aimed a stream of blue cleaning fluid at Spencer's fingers. Shawn jerked them away. "It's amazing that you can tell who's a smart-aleck punk just by looking at them."

"I was just making an observation. I have way more gay friends than I do, uh, not-gay friends."

"I don't doubt it," Lassiter uttered it as if it was a death sentence. "Now that you know your dad's abandoned you, either get your sad little-boy tears out now, Spencer, or get out of my sight." Lassiter helped Shawn make the right decision, grabbing him by the collar of his Oingo-Boingo t-shirt and urging him closer to the staircase. Shawn whacked at the inside of his arm, able to release himself. The next thing Lassiter knew, he was on the floor, blinking rapidly at the lights in the ceiling. "What the hell did you just do?"

"Magic skills," Shawn said, helping Beanpole to his feet. He brushed off the shoulders, the chest—and let his hands fall, starting to enjoy it a bit. "Sorry. Do you know what my dad wanted to tell me?"

It would be fun to tell Shawn. Fun, in the sense of the word that was absolute purity to Lassiter. He put his face close to Shawn's, grabbing fistfuls of t-shirt and leather-string necklaces. "If I tell you—you can't tell him I told you. Got that? It would mean my ass. But I do so want to see the look on your face." One hand came up, lightly smacking Spencer's cheek. "Promise not to tell your dad you heard it from me?"

"Jeez, what are we, in the fifth grade or something?"

Lassiter tightened his grip. "Promise?"

"Yeah, all right—dammit, I promise!" Because, by now, Shawn had to know what it was. But Lassiter hadn't moved yet, was still calculating his trustworthiness. "Unless you're going to slip me some tongue or spill some secrets, Beanpole, let me go."

Blue eyes all winced together, Lassiter tossed Spencer from him. "Come on." He swung a set of keys free from a uniform pocket, and paraded with a sultry, easy walk down the dark corridor. Shawn grew excited when Lassiter unlocked the door to the Unknown Room. For years, Shawn had entertained the idea that the Unknown Room housed the grandest amount of donuts, perhaps cooked fresh by an on-site baker, with coffee and snacks, strippers on Friday nights (this was a thought he had when slightly older), and huge televisions always tuned into ESPN.

He followed behind Beanpole and into the Unknown Room. "This is one of the greatest moment's of my life. I'm happy to share it with you, Carl."

"That's Carlton, Spencer. Lassiter to you."

"Officer Lassiter if I'm feeling aristocratic," Shawn conceded, gesticulating grandly, bowing just as grandly, before he examined the surroundings. He wasn't far off from part of his imaginings. There was no stripper's pole, not even a fireman's pole, and there was no baker on duty. But there was a television, and ESPN was on, and there was one carton of donuts left.

"Sweet, the Breezeway Bakery!" Shawn pounced on the sky-blue carton known to all in Santa Barbara as a symbol of quality and succulence. "Can I eat this?"

"Over here." Lassiter pinched Shawn's sleeve and hauled him to another door. After trying a couple of keys, Lassiter found the right one. The door swung out rather than in, an indicator that the room ahead was tiny.

It was about the size of the instant photo booth at the mall. It was a closet. It was a bathroom stall. Shawn couldn't tell what it was, but when Lassiter flicked on the bare bulb suspended from the ceiling by a risky-looking wire, he knew what he was looking at.

"There's two of them?"

Lassiter stood next to Shawn, now able to soak in the expression of surprise and intrigue. That's what he wanted to see: the real Shawn Spencer. "There's two of them."

Shawn glared at the steamer trunks, twins of one another right down to the corrosion of the brass handles and the presence of paraffin wax. "Two of them," he repeated, contemplating them while stroking his chin. "When'd you find the second one?"

"Around three this morning. It was found out by Goleta. Unfortunately, it's not really ours: the sheriff's department has custody of it." Lassiter strolled around the table that held the two steamer trunks. "They don't have the room for it, and we barely have room for it, as you can see. We're going to keep it as long as we can."

"Was there a body inside?"

"Yeah. Too decomposed to do anything with it. Mostly goop when it was opened. Same as the other. Buu-uuut."

"Oh, I like that but. Hit me with it, Beanpole. But what?"

Lassiter's eyes shimmered, and his whole soul seemed to glow two times its regular size. "We found this!"

He shone his issued flashlight on a specific portion of Chest Number Two. Shawn raced to examine the spot. The wax had an incurvation akin to the shape of a human fingertip. The wax was compressed in a striped pattern, hardly discernible to Shawn's eyes. He shot up, matching excited gazes with Lassiter.

"A fingerprint!" they said at the same time, each whispering it with quelled passion.

Shawn was thrilled—and curious—and wondering why his dad wanted to tell him about the second trunk.

"But the first trunk never led anywhere. No one ever found out the deceased's identity."

"DNA evidence is going to change all of that, once the results come back in. Once they do come back in, we'll be able to know, at the very least, if it's male or female. That's more than we knew before."

"Yeah, I'll probably be old and gray when those results finally get here. Well," Shawn folded his arms over his middle, finding the room chilly and his enthusiasm for this ancient mystery not enough to keep him warm, "this is interesting, but I'd better go. If anyone found me in here—"

"Good point." Lassiter escorted Spencer from the Unknown Closet in the Unknown Room to the Unknown Room.

"We're under the video room upstairs, aren't we?" Shawn, head back to look at the ceiling, touched it with a flattened palm. "Just trying to get the layout of this place. I always knew there had to be another room down here."

"Take that donut, if you want it."

Shawn wasn't going to pass up a chance to snack on a Breezeway Bakery lusciousness. "Thanks." He binned the empty box and put most of the donut in his mouth. "Thanks for showing me the chests, too, even if it would've cost you some office cred."

"Not likely, not if your dad wanted you to know about them. He thought of you when we were ogling the two chests earlier."

"He did?" Shawn was so enthralled that his chewing slowed, and he forgot to watch Lassiter's magic fingers turn the key to lock the Unknown Room. "What'd he say?"

"Just that—you know—you were so excited about that first chest when it was found, he thought you'd like to know about the second one."

"That's true. I can't wait to tell him that I think there's probably a third one." Shawn finished off the donut—so good that his tastebuds were practically in orgasm—but Lassiter gave him a fixed eye. "What, and you think there isn't? Come on, things like that always come in threes. Like hexes. And hurricanes in Hartford and Hereford and Hampshire. Always in threes!"

This wasn't something Lassiter was ready to believe, thrilling as it could be. "I'm just telling you what your dad said. It's up to you to tell him anything else."

Beanpole was right about that. Shawn, momentarily weakened by the thought that his dad had considered him, even out loud and in front of his coworkers, even Lassiter, decided it was tit-for-tat to repeat what he'd heard his father say about Lassiter. "Dad thinks highly of you, too—or, you know, as highly as he ever thinks of anyone. He admires you. Thinks it takes a lot for a man to work full-time and be married and still go to school."

Returned to his bottle of blue cleaner, Lassiter found freedom from embarrassment in the cleanliness of the countertop. His cheeks burned, and the back of his neck throbbed. "It is hard," he said quietly, "and some days are better than others."

"What's are you in graduate school for, anyway?"

"Criminology."

"They have degrees in that now?"

"You'd be amazed."

"What's your minor?"

"A couple of things."

"How can you have more than one minor?"

"Easily. I like to learn."

"Well, so do I, but I'd rather be out in the real world gaining my knowledge and not having my brain sucked out by years and years of very expensive college. No, seriously, what's one of your minors?"

"History."

"What's the other?"

"I'm not telling."

"Is it something sissy, like poetry?"

"I'm not telling. And maybe it's time for you to go out in the real world, Spencer, and get some of that knowledge you're so hungry for. Don't let me stop you."

Squeeze, squeeze. Wipe, wipe.

Squeeze, squeeze. Wipe, wipe.

Wheeze, wheeze. Sigh, sigh.

Wheeze, wheeze. Sigh, sigh.

-x-

2014…

Shawn flung up his eyelids, aware of the world around him, the celery-hued walls of his and Lassie's bedroom, the mixture of sunlight and daylight filling it up. The noises that'd woken him from a combination of memories and dreams was nothing more than Lassie's wheezy early-morning breathing. A phenomenon that only occurred between the hours of five-thirty and seven, July through September. It was late August, the heart of Wheezy Lassie time.

Beneath the sheets, Shawn shimmied closer to Carlton. In a moment, Wheezy Lassie ceased and regular old Carlton found Shawn Spencer's head resting on his chest. Briefly, Carlton forgot what day it was—just another August day. But it raced to the forefront of his mind, past the fading images of weird dreams that, if he remembered, he'd tell to Shawn later and they'd laugh over them. He toyed with the tips of Shawn's out-of-control hair, always pleased to find a streak of gray among the thick heap of desert golds and earthy tones.

"Hi," he croaked the greeting. "Happy anniversary."

Shawn's mind worked a different way; he couldn't even repeat the phrase. He had that all figured out, anyway, saving it for later. From the top of his head, he grabbed Lassie's hand and cupped it around his. "Do you remember, a really long time ago, those steamer trunks that the SBPD and Sheriff's department confiscated? They had gross, watery dead bodies in them and were covered in wax."

Lassiter gaped at him, flicked at Shawn's bottom lip. "Honestly, how do you remember that? I mean, yeah, it was interesting and all. Part anthropology, part archeology, part forensics and a murder investigation—but how do you remember that?"

"I remember you showing me the second chest hours after it'd gotten to the precinct. Remember?"

"Vaguely. I remember a punk-ass kid who wouldn't leave me alone. Heh," Carlton chuckled, swabbed sleep from his eyes, "you were the first one who told me Dobson was gay."

"Who told you, but I think you had suspicions of your own. I was just the first loud-mouthed punk-ass that said everything that no one else would. And how hot was Officer Grayson? Seriously—that woman was smoking! The cause of all my wet dreams. Well, most of them. But-but-but, you remember those trunks, don't you, Lass?"

"Of course I do. Why were you thinking about them, now? What brought this on?"

Shawn didn't answer. He had a way of sidestepping questions he didn't want to answer, a lot more in the last eight months, too. "What happened to those things? And whatever happened to the case?"

"It got stuck in a box with all the other cases we couldn't solve. I came across it once. Let me see, when was that? More than a year ago now. I was going to tell you about it, but—somehow it escaped my mind." He pressed Shawn's hand to him, still searching for a reason why Shawn would think about those chests. Being no idiot himself, Carlton divined a way, an almost plausible explanation, for Shawn's mind to go back to those old and ugly trunks. "Thinking about that case again? The Hayworth case?"

He'd pushed too far, knowing it when Shawn grumbled, "I don't want to talk about it," and kicked himself free of sheets. Anything that reminded Shawn of old Santa Barbara, he didn't want to talk about, didn't want to deal with, didn't want to think about. It'd been funny, and, for a while, Carlton, Gus and Juliet had supposed Shawn had meant it to be funny, until it wasn't anymore and Shawn clammed up and stormed off whenever one of them brought it up. They'd stopped bringing it up. Carlton's loose morning tongue was the first reference that case had had in more than five months.

Shawn slithered into underwear and the first pair of jeans he found on the floor. Actually, now that he was home so often, he was proud to see they were the only pair of jeans on the floor. He gave Lassie a stern poke in the chest, harder than usual to be sure his hairy man-shield didn't protect him.

"You screwed up. Don't talk about it again. Now," he nicked a sour-tasting kiss, "I will make you breakfast—a small one—since I have plans for us this afternoon. And I'm not telling, so there's no point in asking."

"You? You planned something?"

"Of course." Shawn stopped in the doorway, perfectly framed by it. "How many of my own anniversaries do you think I've had to celebrate in my life? Try, like, zero—or maybe zero-and-a-half. Well, not many. I mean—prior to you. So—wait—two? Is that all? Huh! I need to pee and I need tea. In that order."

He zipped down the hall, out of sight, but sung a Monkees song at the top of his lungs. Carlton, lying in bed for another minute, heard the comforting sounds of kitchen cupboards banging, and, as he stepped into the bathroom the aroma of coffee filled his nostrils. He was just a smidgen afraid of Shawn's plans—but that trace of fear was far better for his heartstrings than nothing at all. He'd take it.

But what had made Shawn think of those damn old sea chests? Today, of all days? Carlton shivered as he stepped beneath the shower stream. He'd have to chalk it up as another crazy bit of proof that Shawn Spencer really was psychic.