'Mere, where do you keep your fabric softener?'

'I don't use any.'

'What, no Bounce, no Snuggles, nothing?'

Meredeth looked up from her laptop where she was drafting an email to Robina to Lanie's baffled expression. 'Javi's skin gets irritated when I use anything other than Sunlight soap. Found that one out the hard way.'

'Oh?'

'Yeah, I was doing some laundry when we'd just moved in together and some of his boxers were mixed in, and-'

'I think I know where this is going and I'd just as soon not think about Javier Esposito's junk being itchy,' Lanie shuddered. It was Thursday afternoon which meant it was her turn to be on Meredeth watch and she was thrilled to have a little time out of the house. Even if going to Meredeth's meant that Lanie was helping her friend do her laundry and other household chores, it was still some outside her apartment and the kids were thrilled for a Dave-only day.

'Okay, darks are in the wash, whites are in the dryer and towels are ready to be folded.'

'Oh, Tessi loves helping with those.'

'I help.' From her spot on the floor near Arturo playing with her Playskool sea-creatures palace - a birthday present from Carey, fittingly enough - Tessi looked up. 'I big help.'

'You are, princess,' Meredeth smiled, then shifted as she felt a little bit funny in her belly, like her muscles were twitching. 'Come on over here, and help Lanie and Mami.'

'Not Mami, just Lanie,' the doctor corrected sweetly but firmly. 'You know the doctor's orders Mere, take it easy, especially early on while there's a lot of the major developments happening.'

'But-.'

'You are, you're growing two babies, that's enough multitasking on its own. Tessi, show me how you fold the towels.'

The little girl abandoned her toys to boost herself onto the couch and reached in the basket for a wash-cloth, fastidiously put the corners of one side to the other. 'Mash donas.'

'Yep, we match the corners.' Since Lanie spoke toddler, she could make out the garbled words of Tessi's communication. She folded the larger bath wraps while Tessi worked through the face cloths and hand towels until they'd finished. 'Way to go, girl,' she said brightly, holding out her hand for a high five and laughing when Tessi bunched her fingers together to tap Lanie's. 'You're doing that too, huh?'

'Dell teesh.'

'Of course he did,' Meredeth snickered, then sat up a little straighter. 'Okay, the house work is done for the day, now what?'

'Nooze, Mami,' Tessi said on a yawn, and smacking her lips together. 'Noozey-time.'

'I'll take her upstairs, why don't you turn on the kettle for some tea?' Lanie suggested.

Meredeth nodded and Lanie held out her hand to Tessi, who kept an iron grip on it while they walked upstairs. Once in Tessi's room, Lanie smiled as she walked over to her bed and climbed right in, her stuffed turtle in a headlock i her arm.

'Music peas Lanie.' Tessi nodded, pointed to the bureau where there was a small table-top stereo. 'Fansha.'

'Fansha.'

'Fansha ho-sies.'

Lanie repeated the phrase to herself a few times until she realized the disc in the player was the original Fantasia sound track and she wanted the horsies music - Beethoven's Sixth Symphony was apparently popular amongst their tots. She turned it on softly, then tucked the blankets up around Tessi's body.

'Lanie, babies soon?'

'No, not for a little while, honey.'

'Wan' see-um 'gin.'

'Okay, well, you'll see them soon.'

'Noozey,' Tessi mumbled, then closed her eyes as she pulled Crush closer. 'Dush nooze too.'

Within seconds, she was out like a light and Lanie left the door open for Arturo to come in and stand guard over his young mistress. The scent of freshly made tea caught Lanie's nose and she followed it into the kitchen where Meredeth was at the table with a cup of tea and one of her pregnancy books. 'Mere, has Tessi gone with you guys to see the babies with the doctor?'

'Yeah, she came with Javi and I the last time and Harvey showed her how little they are. Why?'

'She was asking to see them again.'

Meredeth nodded, then heaved a tired sigh. 'Lanie, thank you so much for everything, but I swear if I don't get to do something for myself pretty damn soon, I'm going to go a little nuts. I think it's all the rain this week. Usually Tessi, the babies and I would be taking a walk over to the park and I'd let Arturo out on his long leash to get some exercise or we'd walk over to my favourite bagel place a few blocks away and pick up a snack for our workin' man, we'd go shopping or something.'

'I get what you mean.' Lanie stirred milk into her tea, pursed her lips in thought. 'What are you and Javi up to tonight?'

'He's off at six and all three of us are going out for dinner since those plans got kiboshed on Monday. Although...'

'Although what?'

Meredeth scratched her head. 'Right now, I just want to get in the car and drive over to the precinct, pick my man up for dinner and have a night out for just us because God knows with two babies coming those nights are going to be hard to come by soon enough.'

'So do it.'

Meredeth gave her friend the wall-eye. 'What?'

'Do it. Surprise him at work and go have fun.'

'What about Tessi?'

'She can spend a few hours at my place with Carey and Violet. I'm making them grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner, does she like that?'

'Oh yeah, soup is how I've tricked her into eating her veggies.'

'Okay, then go have a lie-down and I'll keep an ear on things here.'

Intrigued at the

Meredeth stepped off the elevator at the precinct just in time to see Ryan coming out of the coffee room, muttering under his breath.

'Is it so difficult, really, Javier to freakin' wash a cup, I-'

'Kevin?'

Ryan paused his mumbled rant and glanced up, smiling when he saw his partner's wife. 'Hey mama, how are you feeling?'

'Cooped up. I've been stuck in the house with all this weather, so I brought the car to meet Javi. He said you guys will be finished soon?'

'Yeah, I'm waiting to hear on CSU for a test result to the MacNamara case and your man's just got started sweating down his suspect.' Ryan gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. 'You wanna come watch?'

'Sure.'

They went towards Interrogation Three, with Ryan snagging his comfy desk-chair for Meredeth to sit in while she watched. Through the one way glass, she could see her man in his Oxford-shirt and co-ordinating tie, patient as a panther and just as sexy while on the other side of the table, a brittle stick of a man with an splotchy olive complexion and six stitched above his left eye was doing his best to avoid Esposito's stare.

'This is the guy from the case we caught on Sunday night.'

'Mister MacNamara, right, the one you were working on when you came over on Tuesday night.'

'Yeah, and it's a good one, just listen.'

They watched through the glass as Esposito began to work the guy over, staying his usual cool self while the stick-man was sweating bullets.

I'm telling you the truth, I did not go to the fourteenth floor. Yeah I was in my office, but that's on twelve and I was on a conference call to Bangladesh.

Really, than why would your keycard say you took a little trip around nine-fifteen, Damien?

Could be someone got ahold of my lost one, got into the building.

You conveniently lost your keycard, interesting and are you often in the habit of losing passes for a secure building, Damien?

It's the truth! Last week, I was walking through the lobby and this dude bumped into me, sent me face first over the floor, my briefcase looks like a paper bomb went off, everything in it goes flying, including my key card. I needed

'We can verify that from the video surveillance, we pulled the whole week to look for suspicious activity amongst the employees,' Ryan murmured to Meredeth.

Damien, you gotta start bein' straight with me. The only other keycard issued to Weston Figg used on Sunday night was yours, so right now, you're looking like a nice rib-eye steak to the dogs at the D.A.'s office. Now, you tell me honest from the start, maybe we can figure it out.

You think I'd kill Carson? He had my back, I had no reason to twist him up when he went to bat for me.

What do you mean went to bat for you?

I'm the go-between for the manufacturers and the marketing staff, my field is chemical analysis so I can tell those jerkoffs on Fourteen if they can put 'Less fat' or 'Sugar-free' on their labels without risk of breaking the law. I saw there was some discrepancies in the formulas I was getting from Product Testing over at the soft-drink's manufacturing plant and went to Carson, who went to the rest of the big-wigs and said we had to hold off on the presentation to the firm in Melbourne until we had it sorted out.

When did this happen?

Thursday afternoon, around three. My wife had just called and was picking our son up from school

'And now Damien's shifted from suspect to informant,' Meredeth said. 'So who stood to lose the most from waiting on this deal? There's the soft-drink company sure, but a lawsuit over a bad product and the money wasted on its advertising campaign would be far pricier than delaying a product launch. So that leaves the people at Weston Figg who worked on the campaign. Obviously Damien's out since he wouldn't have repaid a guy for being a stand-up by bumping him off, so the others on the campaign had to have gotten wind of it, not to mention the guy in charge. He'd be the most likely suspect now, since allowing false information to go public who fall back on him.'

'Gold star for you, Mere,' Ryan said, impressed.

'Well, I do write mysteries for a living, maybe not traditional ones like Richard Castle but Lady Hawk is a vigilante and crimes are formulaic. It's the window dressing of the people that makes them their own special bloody snowflakes.'

The door to Observation opened and Meredeth smiled warmly when she saw her husband come in. 'Hey baby.'

'Mere!' Esposito gave his wife a warm kiss, thrilled and surprised to see her. 'What are you doing here? Where's Tessi?'

'With Lanie, she offered to babysit for a few hours so we could have a date night.'

'Oh, sweet.' Esposito kissed her again, nodded towards Damien in Interview. 'So what you think of the master at work?'

'Mmm, think we could play Interrogation like that a little later?'

Esposito nodded eagerly, then cleared his throat. 'What do you have Ryan?'

'CSU re-ran the elevator swipe keys and there were two swipes too close together both on Damien's card, so they're checking into it. Meanwhile, we've got the warrant set for tomorrow morning for dipping into Paul Prescott's financial data as well as the financial records for this soft-drink deal at Weston Figg, we'll have both by nine am thanks to Leipner, so there's really nothing more we can do tonight.'

'Until you have the hard data, it's just speculation and makes you look like first-year guessing rookies, right?' Meredeth offered and got another kiss from her hubby.

'You are a quick study. In that case, let's get out of here and we will go have a bite and you can tell me how my babies are feelin' today.'

R&R&Enjoy.