It's taken five different attempts to get this to gel. Strange that this part was so hard to get written.


God played dirty pool.

Carlton had known that since early childhood, when he had figured out that things weren't going to get any better. In his later years, after catechism and First Communion and the nuns tying his left arm behind his back to prevent him from writing with it – and causing him to develop a stutter, ala King George VI, that had taken a lot of work to get rid of – he had decided that while he did in fact believe in God, he didn't really believe Him.

There was no good in the world. There was none righteous, no not one (even Jesus, for all His love of mankind and willingness to get Himself bumped off for the whole rotten lot of humanity, had recognized that fact), least of all Carlton Lassiter, who kept wanting the impossible while knowing it was impossible and finding it impossible to put it all behind him and tell the impossible to shut the hell up, if possible.

He knew that Juliet was taken. Even if she was taken by a liar, a con artist and a pronoid narcissist who could never possibly deserve her, she was taken, and however cynical and cold-hearted he knew he was, or could be, he never went out to steal another man's woman. He had never stolen anything in his life, after all, and wasn't about to start.

But last night, she had looked – if only in his own imagination – like she wouldn't exactly mind being stolen. She had trembled when he'd touched her mouth, and as God was his witness, she had stared at him with those beautiful blue eyes and seemed to be putting out all the signals he frequently dreamed of seeing and taking advantage of because for God's sake, he was human. People might say he was a relentless, unfeeling robot, but they only said that because he didn't let them see otherwise. Problem was that he felt quite a lot, and as a result had to take a lot of cold showers and drink a lot more than was healthy and be even grouchier and colder just to get through each day without losing his mind entirely.

Growling at himself for hoping for something so utterly ridiculous, he continued through the frozen foods aisle, glancing warily into the bins at turkeys that could easily conquer Tokyo and chicken breasts that Pamela Anderson would envy. He turned a corner and headed down to the seafood section, observing the lobsters for a moment and thinking about cockroaches before finally stopping to pick up some packages of sea bream and Ahi tuna. He made a brave foray into the fruit and vegetable section of the store after that, bracing himself for his usual obstacles: women asking him how to handle fruit correctly. It had been happening a lot lately, and he still couldn't figure it out. What was so hard about handling fruit?

He was contemplating red grapes when he glanced up and saw Caroline Watson – Ophelia, formerly Sara Payton on Galaxerotica, as he recalled – fondling a cantaloupe. He paused, not sure what etiquette to use ("UCSB has a class on fruit-handing. See if you can enroll." "No, I have an unconquerable fear of handling fruit. It goes back to my childhood, when a giant grape fell on me during the Rose Parade." "Thanks, but I once got thrown out of a Piggly-Wiggly in Charleston for handling the fruit a little too fondly…"). She was aware that he was undercover, but she also wasn't that good an actress. If anyone saw them together, and recognized him, his cover could be blown.

She looked up and immediately brightened. "Detect…I mean, Mr Laughton!"

He had been given the name Tom Laughton by Hudson. Apparently Tom Laughton was an unknown actor, from Denver, and had come to take over for Sir Reginald on short notice. Apparently, Tom Laughton was a life-long bachelor, had two cats and did a lot of musical theater. Thus the bachelorhood, Carlton thought as he nodded politely to Caroline, who pushed her cart over and smiled at him, Tom Laughton, Shakespearean actor of the Rockies.

"Miss…Ms Watson," he said, grabbing an unsuspecting apple and examining it critically before putting it back, having noticed a bruise.

She was sans all the heavy makeup required for the theater – he was going to have to talk to Hudson about that – and actually looked relatively normal. Strawberry blonde hair, blue-green eyes, nice figure, good legs, and she actually seemed rather friendly offstage. Which, in and of itself, was rather frightening.

"We don't come to Santa Barbara much – only once or twice per year, depending on our schedule. I like this store a lot, though. The prices are reasonable, and when you're on a budget…well…" She picked up another cantaloupe and studied it. "How can you tell if one of these things is ripe?" she asked.

"Press into the top. If it gives a little, it's ripe," he told her, deciding to just be polite. Be too rude to fellow cast members, and backstage could end up feeling like an afternoon with the Gambinos. Or, considering the circumstances, the Borgias.

"Mm," she nodded, and began pressing into the top of the melon with her thumbs. "I'll bet you've squeezed a lot of melons in your day, haven't you?"

"My fair share," he shrugged. He wasn't stupid. He knew what she meant. Or did he? He eyed her warily - he wasn't exactly good at reading women – he had misread them more often than not, and humiliatingly so. He went back to studying the apples. Fuji, Granny Smith, Red Delicious…Jonagold! He loved Jonagolds. He was thinking of baking an apple pie, just for the hell of it, and began looking for something properly tart for the experiment. Jonagolds weren't terribly tart, but were instead nicely sweet and required considerable strength and patience to cut up properly for a pie, but the end result could be pretty damned good…

"Are you married?"

"Eh?" He looked at her, startled.

"Married?" she repeated.

"No." Good God. The Creator of the universe – who had a great sense of humor, thus lonely Irish cops and narcissistic faux psychics - had progressed from dirty pool to dirty dodgeball now.

"Kids?"

"No."

She continued to study him, and he shifted, feeling uncomfortable. Good Lord, was she checking out his chest hair? He fumbled nervously to redo the top button. He didn't know what signals to give off that read 'Not interested' without being downright rude. It wasn't as though he could pull his Glock out and wing her if she suddenly attacked him.

"I guess I'll see you at rehearsal this afternoon?" she said, moving a little closer. He could smell her perfume. It was too heavy for his taste. He liked lighter perfume, with a touch of the scent of peaches added.

"Right."

"You were superb last night, I must say," she said. "Reggie was good, but…eh…he was pedestrian at best, usually. The past three or four days before he died, he was looking particularly bad, and kept forgetting his lines, which he didn't do even when knee-walking, toilet-hugging drunk." She smiled up at him. "I must say, you looked pretty good up there on stage, too. A natural."

"Uh…thanks…so you say Sir Reginald was showing signs of getting really sick?" He picked up four big Jonagolds and put them in a bag, spinning it closed and tying it up before dropping them into the scales. He tapped in the number and got the pricetag, slapping it onto the bag. Five-fifty-five for four apples? He glanced at the sign – no, they were not the Golden Apples of the Hesperides.

"We figured he was just drinking more than usual. He drank a lot." She put a melon into her cart and began studying the grapes. "We had learned, of course, to just leave him alone. Anybody that tried to tell him to cut back on the whiskey got ripped to shreds." She shrugged delicately. "He was, as I said the other day, a real bastard. We all hated him."

"Anybody hate him more than everybody else?" he asked casually, mentally scanning his notes on the murder. He knew Spencer had a photographic memory, but it wasn't as well-trained as his own (when had Spencer ever trained for anything?), and he had honed it down to a freaking science over the years.

If he wanted to remember something, he could haul it out whenever he liked. Or, sometimes, his memory would bring up something inconvenient to the situation at hand, like the scent of peaches or light, softly sweet perfume and a shade of blue he still couldn't quite define with an actual word. One day he would have to haul out that old Gaelic dictionary his grandmother had given him – Ireland had a thousand shades of green, but what about shades of blue?

He had interviewed all members of the cast that had been present when Sir Reginald had died. Caroline Watson had been in the wings, watching the final scene, and the other cast members on stage had all been cleared of suspicion. George Pons, who portrayed Laertes, had been off the stage and in his dressing room getting ready for a date that night when Sir Reginald was determined to be dead, and come to think of it, Pons had said he was already out of the theater by the time O'Hara had arrived. He had, however, been very cooperative and she had scratched his name off the list of suspects. Now, Carlton was putting a question mark by that name.

"Not that I know of," she answered. "Hey, we're having kind of a party after rehearsal this evening. Maybe you'll come."

"I'll pass, thanks."

She studied him for a moment before finally nodding and walking away, heading toward the dessert aisle, hips swaying (he could almost hear the 'bomp-bump-a-bomp'). He stayed put and studied the oranges for a moment before heading to the checkout. His cell phone started ringing as he was unloading his cart, the girl at the register looking up at him when the theme to Cops started playing. Grumbling again, he snapped "Lassiter" at his caller and watched as a portion of his checking account went to the grocery store.

"Carlton, this is Juliet. Where are you?"

"The grocery store, losing hard-earned money."

"Oh. Well. Can I meet you at your house?"

He looked at his watch. He had to be at rehearsal at two. "Uh…sure."

"What are you making for lunch?"

That was a strange question. "I dunno." He watched as the girl swept a package of thin-sliced Black Forest ham across the scanner. "Ham and cheese sandwiches, I guess. I wasn't…"

"That'll be fine. I'll be there in an hour." She hung up. He stared at the cell phone for a moment, bewildered, and looked at the girl.

"That'll be eighty-four sixty-five," she said, smiling pleasantly. "You have really pretty eyes, sir."

"Right." He pulled out his checkbook. "What?"


They discussed ricin and abrin between bites of Black Forest ham and cheese sandwiches – his with honey mustard, hers with mayo – and debated who could obtain the two poisons, and how. Neither of them could really get a good handle on where, though, which would be a pretty good lead. She promised to make a few calls while he was at rehearsal, and he caught her little smile.

"Okay, out with it. What's so damned amusing?" he asked, clearing away the paper plates.

"I just never would have thought…"

"What? It's that surprising that I can…act?" He couldn't help feeling a little defensive. The girl in the checkout line had left him discombobulated. Then the woman behind him in the line had chimed in with another compliment about his eyes and he had almost forgotten to sign his name to the check and then when he had gotten into the parking lot, he couldn't remember where he had parked his damned car. Yeah, great memory for some things, definitely, but he was apparently forgetting how to avoid losing his mind.

"No, that's not surprising. Well…a little. But then again, you do have that element of surprise about you. Frankly, I'd be more surprised if you couldn't act, since you're so good at hiding what you're thinking and feeling. It's just that you were refusing to be in the spotlight last night, Carlton," she pointed out. "I know you. You love the limelight."

"And the nightlife. I like to boogie," he deadpanned.

"No you don't!" she laughed, and his heart skipped a beat. He relished every time he could make her laugh. It was a sound he could store away in his head for moments when he felt the most rotten.

"That's true. I don't." He settled back in his chair, crossing his knees, heart still banging around in his ribcage. "I just…well, hell, if people find out I act, or did act, they'll be on me like a monkey on a cupcake, you know? Most people already think I'm crazy or not quite right. You know – teched in the 'ead, like. Being an actor just puts the final nail in the old Lassiter coffin of the perpetually strange. Give me a few years and I'll give up and start hanging out with Woody."

"Oh, come on!" she said, punching him in the arm. "Nobody thinks you're crazy."

"Creepy, then. Paranoid."

"That's because they don't bother to get to know you." She shrugged and ate a potato chip. "Or maybe they're not brave enough. Anyway, I know you're not crazy. I know you're not…that…paranoid." At his expression, she shook her head. "You just think that the world is against you. Only these days, you don't think the entire world is against you. And when you were up there, you were completely at ease. Very, very confident. You were born for the stage, weren't you? Admit it. You're an actor."

He snorted and took a drink of his iced tea. "I was born to be a cop. Acting was just…a…a blip. Something to do, to decompress, or something. I was already graying at eighteen. Not a lot, but it was disturbing to find gray hairs and I was already antisocial. Trying out for Hamlet was a lot like British food – a dare. Except that unlike British food, it never did make me nauseated."

"But you got the part. And awards and some scholarships…"

"Eh…" He shrugged. "Okay, I admit it, O'Hara. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed stepping outside myself, getting away from…from me for a bit." He swallowed when he saw her expression.

"What was so awful about you?"

"Please. You've known me for almost seven years, O'Hara. What's not awful about me?"

"Stop that."

"Stop what?"

"Putting yourself down. You're a pretty nice guy when you give yourself a chance, and particularly when nobody's looking, and just in case you didn't know, I have always been looking. Like…how you are with crime victims, and with children in particular."

"I hate children."

She laughed again, shaking her head. "No you don't. I saw you with that little boy a few weeks ago – the one we found wandering around by himself, lost and crying his poor little heart out…? You were very kind to him. In fact, you were sweet. You dug around in your desk and found that yo-yo and taught him how to walk the dog."

"It's the only yo-yo trick I know. I try anything else, I end up beaning somebody upside the head, which is why I had the damned thing in the first place – Spencer had brought it into the station one day and knocked Dobson's lights out. Poor guy kept asking me if I had seen his little dog. I had confiscated it, as a deadly weapon." He brushed salt off his hands and looked around his back porch, where they were seated at his wrought-iron patio table, the umbrella blocking the sun. The backyard needed mowing, but the hydrangea bushes that lined his property were in full, delirious bloom, and he studied them for a moment, comparing their rich blue to the color of her eyes.

"But you were still very kind to him. He was crying, and you distracted him, got him to calm down, and then you tracked down his mom and you were even nice to her, though I know you wanted to tear her to shreds for losing track of him."

"He wandered out of a grocery store. She had five other kids with her, all under age ten. It must have been like trying to herd cats. Not that losing track of her kid is an excuse, but it was a reason, and it all turned out okay…" He scratched the back of his head.

She laughed, tipped her head back and making him need to cross his knees, to cover his reaction to the sight of that smooth, silky skin on her neck. "So that's why you didn't yell at her?"

"She was already yelling at herself," he shrugged.

"Well, see, that's it right there. You're like a coconut, really. All hard on the outside, but once the shell finally gets cracked, you're all sweet inside."

He felt his cheeks warming. He struggled to get his brain working properly, and the best thing for that was to talk shop. "Hey, listen…what have you found out about the…uh…poisons? The…the ones that killed Sir Reginald whatisname."

"Livingstone."

He wagged his index finger at her. "That's him."

"Ricin is made from castor bean plants, ancin is made from rosary peas, or…" She dug in her purse and extracted a sheaf of papers. "Lucky beans!"

"Hm. Lemme see." He took the papers from her and read its opening notes. "Woody wrote this!"

"Yes."

"I recognized the drawings of fairies and…is that a Grim Reaper? Anyway…" He took a sip of his iced tea. "Castor beans…who would have castor beans and…rosary peas…?"

"I haven't a clue."

"Yeah. I lost my rosary beads years ago. I think they might be in a can of peanut brittle, actually." He rested his chin on the heel of his palm and read over the paper. It was pretty in-depth, even for Woody, but then again, the weirdo was pretty intelligent when he put aside his worries about Colombians with hooks. "Both drugs kill mice in droves. Then again, so does the music of Barry Manilow and the early speeches of Al Gore. The current speeches don't so much kill the mice as make them suicidal."

She giggled, putting her head down and covering her mouth with her hand.

"Anyway, both are extremely lethal, and if anybody finds you have any sizable quantity of one or both, you're in heap-big trouble with the law."

"Right. So who would have either of them around?"

Carlton continued reading the paper, with Juliet watching patiently. He knew he read slowly – he had to mentally flip letters over to their right sides – and he also appreciated the fact that she never said anything about his slowness or showed even an iota of annoyance about it. "Okay, so…somebody around here somewhere has ricin and abrin, or knows how to make it."

"Right, but who?"

"Your guess is as good as mine." He sat back, shuffling the papers. "Y'know, Woody said something about witch doctors and voodoo priestesses."

"Does Santa Barbara have any witch doctors or voodoo priestesses?"

"I'm sure they're in the Yellow Pages," he said dryly. "Look under 'Locusta' or 'Borgia', and if that doesn't work, try 'Poisons R Us'."

"We could draw a pentagram and chant something like 'We summon thee, ye demon priestess! We need to question you!'" she said excitedly.

"That would only call up my ex-wife, and I don't need her to know I've done any acting. God only knows what she'd do about it. Probably declare whatever talent I might possess as an actor is community property and then demand half of it."

"Wait…she didn't know about that?"

"Why would I tell her?" he asked simply, shrugging. "I would have told her eventually, I guess, but by the time 'eventually' came along, we were fighting all the time and…" He ran a hand through his hair. "You know, whenever we fought, I would send her roses. Towards the end, our house looked and smelled like a flower shop on Mother's Day."

Juliet smiled at him, her expression sad nonetheless. "I'm sorry you had to go through that, Carlton," she said simply. She had expressed her sympathy to him long ago, and already knew he wouldn't accept any more of the same again. It was frightening and heartening to know that she could read him so well and knew when not to push a subject.

"I got over it." He drank down the rest of his iced tea. "I've got ice-box lemon pie for dessert, if you'd like."

"Ooh! Yes!" she clapped her hands. "Mind if I come to the rehearsal this afternoon?"

"No. I don't mind."

"Need to run some lines?" she grinned. "I was hell as Juliet. The…other Juliet, I mean, but I can at least read back lines."

"You're perfect as the real one," he said. She stared up at him, and he grabbed the paper plates and fled back into the kitchen. He shoved the remains of their lunch into the trash and stood in the middle of the kitchen for a moment, running a hand through his hair, and turned around to bump into his partner, who put her hand on his chest for just a brief, terrifying, exhilarating moment before stepping back.

"I'll meet you at the theater then," she said briskly.

"Right. Right. Good." Okay, so she's going to let that go and pretend it didn't happen. Resetting the boundaries, of course. Don't stand so close, keep your hands to yourself, mind your own business, avoid eye contact for any inappropriate number of seconds, and it'll all clear away and she'll go away for another weekend with her idiot boyfriend who treats her like she couldn't possibly do her job without him around to do it for her, and things will get back to normal and I'll be around to at least attempt to comfort her when the jackass does something stupid again, which is as likely as snow in the North Pole.

Or maybe she was just being nice, because she was always nice and he was always either horrible or inappropriate or a twit and she accepted that anyway and appeared to like him, or at least tolerate him pretty well.

He was thinking in run-on sentences again. He remembered why he had come in here, and opened the 'fridge, its contents rattling as he took the pie out and released it onto the countertop, where it waited, trembling, for consumption. He cut her a slice and plopped it onto another paper plate.

"Should I curtsy to the Prince of Denmark?" she asked, looking amused again as she tucked into her pie. He felt like a giant live wire, watching her as she took a bite of the pie and closed her eyes, sighing happily.

God, he wished he were lemon pie. Or at least that incredibly lucky fork.

He dragged his fevered mind out of the gutter and gave himself a hard mental slap. "Good Lord, no. Besides, I think we're rehearsing the final scene – the swordfight. I'll be lucky if I don't break an actor."


"Okay, people! People! This is a preliminary rehearsal," Hudson was yelling from his seat. "Tom, are you ready?"

Carlton didn't initially react, because he was keeping an eye on Juliet, who was seated in the front row, knees crossed and obviously dreaming about lemon pie with whipped cream topping. She had eaten two pieces.

"Tom!"

He jerked back into reality, telling himself to focus. "Right. I'm ready."

"Good. Now, we're just going to do a little sword-fighting here, for practice, before we go into the final scene. Tom, pick a foil and try not to put out anybody's eye. Our insurance premiums are high enough what with the dead Englishman."

As an Irishman, Carlton couldn't help but think that the more dead Englishmen there were, the better, but he shrugged and picked up a foil. The actor portraying Laertes – George – picked up another sword and slashed the air with it. Unfortunately, he didn't have a good grip on it and the sword flew out of his hand and skittered across the stage, the grip smacking against Carlton's foot and finally rolling toward the footlights, where it stopped. He glared at George, who looked apologetic and picked up the sword again.

"Okay…I assume you can remember your lines," Carlton said, keeping his voice low, feeling no need to humiliate the man – yet - and George nodded.

"Good. My ears aren't impressive, but I want to keep them – they tend to be useful at times, so no upward slashes. And no low slashes, either, as I also want to keep other appendages, thank you. So keep your balance. Pretend you're Inigo Montoya, but that I don't have six fingers on either hand. Take it easy and we'll get through this alive." He studied the other man carefully, taking in his nervousness. He frankly didn't look like a murderer, but then most people don't look like murderers. Their neighbors were always surprised when a killer is hauled away and they tell reporters, 'He was so nice and quiet, and we really didn't take much note of the dogs and cats in the neighborhood disappearing, or of that strange odor coming from his basement…'

"Who will you pretend to be?" George asked nervously.

"Well, I think I'll try for Hamlet for now, if you don't mind. If that doesn't work, I'll give Cyrano de Bergerac a shot. Shall we?" He slashed the air with his foil and moved easily into a proper stance. He had taken a few fencing lessons in college, mainly for stage productions, but had also found the discipline useful in other areas of his life.

Carlton went through the practice well, and they went into the final scene from there. George held his own, and showed that he did actually possess some talent, albeit not really as a fencer. Carlton forced King Claudius to drink the poison from the (empty) cup, gave his final speech and 'died' without making much of a fuss (there never was a point to a lot of gasping and drawing out the scene too much, to him). Fortinbras strode onto the stage, did his thing, and Hudson clapped, looking pleased. "Very nice, everybody. Very nice. George, a word?"

Carlton got up off the floor and everybody sat down for a break. Carlton helped Queen Gertrude up, then assisted King Claudius back to his feet, and the remaining actors lounged around, murmuring amongst themselves. The director climbed up on the stage and talked briefly with George, who nodded vigorously. Carlton sat down at the table with Queen Gertrude and chatted amiably with her, lazily slashing the air with his foil.


Caroline Watson sat down next to Juliet, smiling a polite hello, which surprised her. She eyed the slightly older woman, remembering all too well that last night, Shawn had forced her to watch an episode of Galaxerotica from his DVD collection of the entire series. To sit next to a person she had seen naked just a few hours ago was more than a little unsettling, she realized. Shawn sure hadn't been laughing, and Juliet had left his apartment without him even really noticing, what with his eyes being glued to the screen.

"So…how long have you been working with Detective Lassiter?" Caroline asked, keeping her voice at a low whisper.

"Um…almost seven years now."

"Really?" Caroline looked up at Carlton, who was now trying to give George pointers on holding a sword correctly and not putting out eyes. "Is he dating anybody?"

"W-what? Oh. Um…no. Not that I know of."

"Really. Well, that's good to know. I mean…really…good." She smiled a little. "Call me old-fashioned, but I do like a cute butt and sexy eyes…tall and dark…a little shy, big and strong. He's got that all going for him, doesn't he?"

Juliet swallowed. "Uh…" Yes, so he had a cute butt. She had always thought so. And 'sexy' wasn't even a completely apt description of Carlton's eyes. Sexy wasn't even scratching the surface. Shy, definitely, though he covered that by being grouchy and growly and touchy-tempered, and he was as strong as a team of Clydesdales on steroids when properly motivated.

"Oh, it's all right. Nothing wrong with looking, is there? I mean, look at the guy – not cute at all, I'll admit, aside from the butt, but cute is boring, don't you think? After a while, when you've gone through the boys, you want a man. Cute, non-threatening boys…bleh! This man, though…the nose is a little crooked, but very interesting, and you know there's a story there, and the ears stick out, but that actually makes the package all that much more…arresting," she said, laughing at her own pun. "Salt and pepper hair, unbelievably blue eyes…mmm…yes, break me off a piece of that!"

Juliet wasn't sure if she should shoot Caroline or pull her hair out. She was leaning toward the former. "Um…Carlton is…well, he's…divorced…it was very painful for him…he's still a little…"

"Somebody threw that back?" Caroline looked astonished, and studied her partner carefully. He was galloping through the scene in Queen Gertrude's bedroom. "What, was she blind or just stupid?"

"Both," Juliet muttered under her breath.

"Well. Her loss. I think I'll ask him out. I tried to get him to come to the party tonight, but he passed."

"I…I'm not sure if that's a good idea."

"You're not dating him, are you?" Caroline whispered. Up on the stage, Carlton was stabbing Polonius through the window curtain.

"What? No. No, of course not. I'm…I'm dating…the…uh…"

"The psychic? Are you kidding me?" Caroline hooted with laughter. "Oh. Sorry. But…really? What's he, about twelve?"

"He's thirty-six," Juliet muttered.

"Still twelve, though, and lousy in bed, huh?"

Juliet stared, aghast, at the actress, who raised her hands in mock surrender. "I can always tell if a guy's good in the sack. He's selfish, right? It's all about him, him, and only him. I'll bet he screams his own name at the Climactic Moment."

The sound of the doors opening made Juliet jump, and she looked back to see Shawn and Gus bounding up the aisle. Carlton rolled his eyes heavenward, the scene screeching to a halt. Juliet stood up, feeling heat rise to her cheeks, partly from embarrassment and partly from anger at how easily Caroline had pegged Shawn's deficiencies. She marched up the aisle and headed her boyfriend off, giving Gus a look that told him to stand still and not speak until spoken to.

"Listen to me, Shawn," she hissed. "Listen carefully, which I know you're not good at, but I want you to try. Carlton is under cover. His name, as far as the cast knows, is Tom. If I hear you refer to him as anything other than Tom I will shoot it off."

Shawn looked down toward it and nodded. Gus nodded, too. Juliet gave him a hard look. "If he starts anything, I don't care if you have to gag him, but you will shut him up!" she hissed. Gus nodded vigorously.

"Hiya, Tom!" Shawn crowed, grinning and waving at Carlton, who glowered down at him. "Tom! Can I talk to you a minute? Please? I want your autograph, for one thing and…"

"What is this blithering idiot doing here?" Hudson shouted, clattering down the stairs and zeroing in on Shawn, eyes ablaze with rage.

Shawn hid behind Juliet and peered at Hudson over her shoulder. "I was just here to visit my good friend Tom here."

"Where in the name of all that's holy did you ever get the idea that we were friends?" Carlton snapped from the stage, still holding his foil.

Shawn had the gall to look hurt. Gus held his tongue, and Juliet glanced over at Caroline, who was gazing up at Carlton as if he were the answer to every prayer she had ever said. Her partner was glaring at Shawn, clearly irritated, and Juliet was tempted to get her Glock out and start shooting, starting with Caroline and ending with Shawn.


"Okay. For starters, let me just say, Lassie - I really like the sword."

They were standing in a small area backstage. Juliet was standing close to her partner, and could smell his cologne - something kind of cedary and pleasant. She took a brief whiff of Shawn. He smelled like...cheese. Old cheese. That had gone bad.

"It's a foil…you starvelling, you eel-skin, you dried neat's-tongue, you bull's-pizzle, you stock-fish. O for breath to utter what is like thee, you tailor's-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck!" Carlton hissed, glancing around to make sure no one had heard Shawn call him by his almost-real name.

Juliet and Gus stared, wide-eyed, at Carlton. Shawn gasped and took a step backwards, looking bewildered.

"That was…I…well…well, you're a…I mean…I'm rubber and you're glue! Whatever you say bounces off me and…and sticks to you!" Shawn said. "I think. Unless, of course, that was a compliment, then…thanks."

"I'm pretty sure he insulted you," Gus said. "In fact, right now, as the former King of Snarky Ass-Hatted Put-Downs, you should be on the floor, screaming 'Medic!'"

"It was from Henry the Fourth, Part One," Carlton finally said, rubbing his forehead. He had sat up all night reading through Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, and it had all come back to him pretty easily, particularly the more colorful insults. The only play he had never acted in had actually been Troilus and Cressida, and that had been because he had come down with the flu right before rehearsals started and the fever had killed off most of the dialog from his brain. The understudy had done all right, actually. He had seen him in a movie recently, actually…

"Part one? Did Henry beat Mr T in that one, or was it the Russian?"

Carlton's hands formed into fists and Shawn took another step back. The faux psychic nodded and tried again. "Listen, Gus and I did a little research about the rice-aroni and the Ambien and found out they're made from casters and rosary beads."

"Castor beans and rosary peas," Gus corrected, looking annoyed.

"I know!" Carlton snapped. "And it's ricin and abrin, you idol of idiot-worshippers."

"Whoa…Shawn, he zinged you again! And pretty damn' good, I gotta say," Gus said, staring at Carlton with newfound admiration. "I'm amazed you're not bleeding, dude!"

"He…wh-…hey, now…" Shawn looked truly offended now. "What's that one from?"

"Troilus and Cressida," Carlton nodded. "One of the lesser-known plays. Listen to me, thou loathed issue of thy father's loins - I know how the two poisons are made. O'Hara's already looking into it, and Woody sent us a report."

She nodded, still staring at Carlton in awed wonder. Shawn just looked bewildered, while Gus looked strangely triumphant. "We haven't found anybody in the area that is making either poison, much less supplying them. Ricin and abrin are both illegal to possess, but you can possess the plants used to make them. Everybody in the cast and crew checked out, but it's obvious somebody connected with the play did the poisoning. We just need to know where they got it and we might have a lead."

"Caroline said that Sir Reginald had been drinking a lot more than usual," Carlton pointed out. "He was forgetting lines, even, for a few days before the performance. Somebody really was actively poisoning him, then, and for a while. Maybe even putting the poison in his drinks, and his poor health helped the poison along." He studied O'Hara, whose eyebrows went up.

"I'll check with the CSU and see if they found anything. They may not have checked the bottles that were in his dressing room."

"I'm sure they did. They're trained professionals, O'Hara, and you know they do a damned good job. They don't even need a fake psychic to tell them what to do." Carlton said, giving Shawn and Gus a cold look. The fraudulent psychic had the good sense to look chastised, while Gus just grinned. Carlton stalked away, back to the stage, to put a bit of sharpening to the first two acts of the play. He almost forgot to give up the foil before he started the scene.

It was going to be a long day.