A/N: The Nichoume Haunted Mansion has spawned a second sequel. They're a cute little trilogy now! You still don't have to read the first two cases to understand this (though you ought to as it gives it a much better basis), but if you choose to, they're located directly below this story in my profile. If you want a quick summary, basically the Detective Boys (minus Conan) investigate the creepy old house next to Agasa's - Shinichi's house, as we all know. Yukiko and Yuusaku are home for a short visit, and the Kudous hatch an elaborate and amusing plan to give the kids a little scare and prevent them from trying to sneak into the house anymore. Later, Ayumi became sympathetic to the ghost of Kudou Shinichi (Conan, of course, acting with his bowtie and the long-range speakers), and believes herself to now have made peace with him.

Again, First Case was meant to be a standalone, hence why I didn't add the other two stories to it as chapters. Additionally, this is set in the manga, so I've used those ages (6 for Conan and the kids, 16 for Shinichi) here.

Many thanks to mrit, who not only provided ideas for the story, but very nicely recalled them all for me when I forgot later on. XD Not to mention prompted me to actually finish this today. Thanks!

The Nichoume Haunted Mansion: Third Case

by Shimegami-chan

A meeting of the Detective Boys was called that Friday, minus Haibara who had "other things to do" and Conan, who had treated their adventure in the haunted Kudou mansion with some measure of contempt. Genta, de facto leader of the group, had taken charge of arranging this soiree in Beika Park with only the three of them on a sunny afternoon.

Sitting in a semicircle on the grass, the children opened their schoolbags and took out their special notebooks and pens. "Well, now that everyone's here," Genta said imperiously, "I've called this meeting to present new evidence in the case of the Kudou murder."

"But Genta-kun," Mitsuhiko protested, "I thought we were giving up on that case!"

"The Detective Boys never give up on a case!"

The freckle-faced boy looked troubled, flipping through the notes he'd made the previous week. "You don't really want to go back there...do you? I sure don't. And besides, we don't even know for sure that it was a murder case, right? "

Ayumi's head came up quickly and she bit her lip. "Ah..."

The two boys directed their attention immediately at her. "What? What is it?" Genta pressed. "You've got something?"

"Well..." Ayumi recalled the short conversation she'd had with the Kudou Ghost. "I do know that it was definitely a murder case-" Genta crowed loudly "-but also, I don't think we should investigate it any more."

"Why not?" Genta pressed.

"How do you know?" Mitsuhiko asked excitedly.

Fidgeting, Ayumi twined a piece of ribbon around her fingers. "Well...I went back to the mansion by myself and I talked to the ghost, Shin-kun." Genta and Mitsuhiko gasped in awe and motioned for her to continue. "He told me about himself, and he was very kind, too. He said...he said that he was poisoned by someone, but he didn't want us to get involved because we might get hurt." She didn't voice her concern over doing anything of this sort without Ai or Conan around; it seemed that they always knew what to do in an emergency, especially Conan, who probably could have stopped the whole mess in the haunted house before it ever happened. "He said he was going away forever now, but he wanted to tell me first that we should just leave the house alone..."

Mitsuhiko frowned. "It's good to know that we won't get attacked by ghosts anymore, but is it all right to leave the murder unsolved? After all, the person who poisoned this Shin-kun might still be walking around and could hurt someone else."

"That's true, I guess..."

"Well, Genta-kun, what was your new evidence?" The freckle-faced child glanced at him. "You called the meeting because you found something, right?"

Genta slammed both palms against the grass, looking more determined than ever. "My evidence is that there's no evidence! These murders were covered up!"

"'These?'" Ayumi repeated.

"That's right," the heavyset boy said with a knowing smirk. "Didn't you say that you saw more than one ghost last time? Then, here's what happened! Two of the Kudous were murdered, and their son survived and lived in the big house all by himself. I remember our kindergarten teacher used to talk about how terrible it was for him to be living all alone there. Then, the murderer came back and killed the boy, too, because they were afraid he'd talk! He probably knew something about who killed his parents, right? And that something might have left evidence in the mansion!"

The other two members of the Detective Boys let out a collective gasp. "And that's not all!" Genta continued. "We know they were murdered, but nobody mentioned anything like that in the paper, and there haven't been any unidentified bodies on the news! That makes it a cover-up, right?"

"Right!" Ayumi and Mitsuhiko chorused.

"And that means we have to solve this case!"

"Right!" Mitsuhiko cried.

Ayumi paused, then frowned. "Wrong."

"Huh?"

"I promised Shin-kun that I would stay out of it," she said, her voice troubled. "He said we'd get hurt, and I trusted him. I won't go back there, and I don't want you two to go either. Please?"

Genta's exuberant smile slipped away. "But, Ayumi-chan...we've never given up on a case. And we've got something to work with now! You don't really want to run away, do you?"

"We're not giving up," she said with sudden renewed enthusiasm. "We're just going a different way. Give me your notebooks - and here's what we'll do..."

Three days later, there was a sharp knock on Inspector Megure's door and the police chief laid down his coffee mug, surprised. Had he missed an appointment? A questioning? He was supposed to be on break right now. "Come in!"

The heavy wooden door eased open and then shut, but whoever had entered was simply too short to be seen over his the towering pile of file folders. "Hello?"

"Hello there, Megure-keibu," a serious voice greeted from the side of the desk. It was the boy Mitsuhiko, with Ayumi and Genta behind him. He carried a large folder in both arms and wore a grave expression on his small face.

Megure blinked in surprise and offered the children a smile. "Well, hey there. I wasn't expecting to see you guys...ah, and Conan-kun's not with you?"

"We're sorry to interrupt you on your break," Ayumi cut in politely. "But we have some very important information for you. It's so top-secret that we couldn't even bring it to Satou-keiji, because many lives could be in danger."

Unsure whether to be genuinely alarmed - after all, these kids were associates of Mouri's - Megure accepted the folder from Mitsuhiko's outstretched arms. "What's all this?"

"Information on an unsolved murder," Mitsuhiko said gravely.

Genta coughed into his fist and cleared his throat. "Of course it probably seems strange for an experienced group of detectives like us to hand over an important case to the police without catching the criminal first. However, for the sake of safety, we must leave it in your capable hands." He nearly tripped over the word capable, as though reading unplanned from a script.

"Everything you need to know is in there," Ayumi nodded seriously at the folder. "It's not much, but it may help you to arrest the culprit. And now, we have to run back to school - we're on lunch break."

"We're looking forward to hearing how the case is going," Mitsihiko informed the Inspector, his face absolutely stoic. "Please keep us informed, Keibu! And thank you for your time, as always."

"Thank you!" the other two chorused, and together they trooped back out of his office as quickly as they'd come. Megure was left staring after the closed door long after the sound of footsteps had faded away.

After a long pause, he cleared a space on the desk and laid the folder upon it, drawing the cover back to reveal a neatly hand-written cover page. In red crayon. "The Nichoume Haunted Mansion/Murder Case," Megure read out loud. The second page was a table of contents, the third was an essay with the torn page from a phone book stapled to the back, the fourth an array of colour photographs of the nameplate on the outside of a house...Megure's features assumed a frown. On the fifth page was a printout of Internet search results - what on earth were they looking up? The input seemed to be a simple katakana 'e' paired with the kanji for 'dou' - and the sixth page was a diary of sorts, written in a feminine hand, and a drawing of a stick figure wearing a Tokyo Spirits soccer uniform. The rest of the sketches made little to no sense at first glance - a ghoulish mask, a flooded library, a tumbleweed?, a Victorian-style window, the exterior of a house with the details unskillfully but intricately penciled in. Megure flipped back to the introduction page and scanned it quickly, words like "mysterious disappearance" and "murder cover-up" leaping out at him in oversized childish characters.

When he had reached the end, his expression was even more troubled than before, and he reached for the phone and his address book, dialing out overseas, unwilling to let this curious matter bother him for the rest of his coffee break. On the sixth ring, someone picked up and grunted blearily into the phone. "'lo."

"Ah. I'm sorry to have woken you."

The voice became more alert, and there was a scrabbling sound at the other end as the person searched for and found his spectacles. "Megure? You do know what time it is over here? Has something happened?"

"I know." Megure coughed once and harrumphed, unsure how to start this most bizarre of conversations. "Yuusaku-kun...we need to talk."

-end of the Third Case-

-fin-

A/N: And that's it! These were fun to write - hope you enjoyed.