Disclaimer: I don't own Psych or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.
Rating: T
Spoilers: Through season six finale, "SantaBarbaratown"
A/N: I sure hope this section makes sense. It felt right at the time but now for some reason I think it's messed up somewhere along the way. Maybe there was something I wanted to change and forgot about, that happens a lot. Anywho, here it is. Chapter Not-Thirteen.
Chapter Fourteen: Bearding the Lioness
"Sweetie, I need to borrow the car for a bit, is that okay?" Marlowe asked. Lassiter looked up from his paperwork, brows creased in a clear question.
"Er…sure. Bored?"
She shook her head. "I just wanted to meet with someone and when I called they said right now was good. I don't know how long I'll be, though, so will you be all right to get home if I run too late?"
He looked like he wanted to ask who she was going to meet, but instead he merely handed her the keys to the Fusion. "Thanks, babe. I'll call you when I finish up."
"Have a nice…visit," Lassiter said uncertainly, and did not take his worried gaze from her until she turned the corner down the stairs and dropped out of sight.
Marlowe put on her sunglasses in the bright glare outside the Santa Barbara Police Department and, with some little trepidation, drove to the home of Irene Mary Lassiter. She had not yet, officially, met Carlton's mother, and had a strong suspicion that the woman already did not like her, although she didn't know if her criminal record was the only reason. She had, in her few brief and painfully terse telephone conversations, taken away the impression she was dealing with Catholic high dudgeon for the fact that she and Mama Lassiter's Blue-Eyed Boy were living in sin, despite the fact that Mama Lassiter was, too, and with another woman.
The word "hypocrite" came to mind, but Marlowe recognized that she was dealing with a mother's love for her son, which was hardly reasonable even in the best of cases, so she tried not to think bad thoughts before she even met the woman face-to-face for the first time. Still, she felt more than a little like Perseus going to face Medusa in her lair. Harry Hamlin, not Sam Worthington. She hadn't had a chance or, particularly, the inclination to see the remake. She supposed the special effects would be fantastic but somehow she couldn't watch a movie with Liam Neeson playing Zeus, no matter how much she liked the actor in other roles.
She parked the car out front of the little house and took a deep, steadying breath. Then she climbed out of the car and up the little concrete walk to the front stoop. Before she could even open the door it was opened, and the woman on the other side was neither Irene Lassiter nor her girlfriend, Althea Daniels. The dark brown eyes were as far from the pale blue she'd seen in the picture on Lassiter's end table as she had ever seen, but something in the woman's face spoke of close relation just the same.
"You must be Marlowe," the woman said. "Nice to meet you, dear. Come in, please."
"Um, yes, er…hi. Uh…I'm sorry, I'm afraid I was expecting…"
"My sister. Irene is here, I just wanted my chance to look you over before she hit you with both barrels, so to speak. I'm Carolyn, Carlton's aunt."
That triggered a memory. "Oh, of course. You were with the Ventura PD, am I remembering that correctly? Carlton told me about you."
"That's right. I'm actually responsible for his existence, in a round-about sort of way. I introduced Irene to his father. Of course, at the time I didn't know my sister swung the other direction, but then again I don't think she knew it at the time, either. My, but you are lovely, aren't you? Forgive me if I seem to be gawking - it's difficult to get three sentences in succession out of my nephew and I'm afraid his description of you did little to satisfy my curiosity. Curiosity is both a virtue and a character flaw of any good detective, as you may be discovering for yourself."
"I'm actually finding that an ability to put oneself in the way of crime before it actually happens is the more annoying trait, at least in so far as coming up with a rational explanation for it."
The woman's pleasant expression turned sharp, and Marlowe saw a familiar spark of professional inquiry in her eyes. "I see. Come, dear - have a seat. I suspect you have something quite interesting to say."
The woman led her into a small parlor room where two other women sat at a card table laid out with a hand of King's Corner. Both women were rather heavy-set, like Carolyn, and Marlowe recognized them both immediately - the Mistress of the house and her girlfriend. Irene swept a scornful ice-blue gaze over her from head to toe and back again, a gaze that lingered offensively on her midsection for a moment too long, in that speculative way all women had to endure when newly married or living with a man. There hadn't even been enough time for…for…that to show in the first place, even if she'd managed to get pregnant their first night together.
"Well, look what the cat dragged in," Irene said in her three-pack-a-day voice. "Looking for handouts, Cookie? Sorry, but Booker's the only one in the family who ever had a soft spot for stray animals."
"Oh, put a cork in it, Reney," Carolyn said. "Haven't you gotten tired of alienating your family by now?"
A well-manicured fingernail stabbed the air in Marlowe's direction. "That is not family."
"She might as well be. Besides, I meant Carlton. He won't be at all happy to hear you're mistreating his beloved, will he? And he is currently the only child you've got who's still masochistic enough to put up with you on a regular basis. Now, Marlowe, dear, please do have a seat and say what's on your mind. Can I deal you in?"
Marlowe eyed the card game warily. "Oh, no, thank you, I never intended to stay long. Carlton is at the police station right now and I'd like to get back soon so he doesn't have to beg a ride from someone. I just had…what I hope is a simple question to ask."
Carolyn shuffled the deck with an expert's hand. "Good call, dear. King's Corner is the dullest game in the history of cards, with the possible exception of Old Maid. I come here once a week to play it. I consider it a family duty."
"You never complained about it before," Irene said huffily.
"I don't complain, sister dear, because King's Corner is the only game I have ever managed to teach you to play. Frankly, Althea and I would rather play Five Card Stud or Texas Hold-'Em. Do you play, dear?" Carolyn asked Marlowe abruptly. "If you did perhaps we could start up a Poker Night with Carlton for our fourth. If he'd be willing to play surrounded by women, two of whom are old biddies."
"I've played before," Marlowe admitted. "I mostly lose."
"But you're teachable, I assume. Anyway, that's a matter for another time. Please, dear, ask your question. Don't worry about hostile witnesses - I have my way of wringing confessions out of recalcitrant fools."
Marlowe didn't doubt it. She had assumed somehow that Carlton got his love of and aptitude for police work from his father, but though this woman could not have looked less like him and still be obvious family, there was more than a little about her shrewd manner that Lassiter had inherited. Or adopted.
"I was wondering if perhaps, while Carlton was growing up…you noticed anything unusual about him?"
Irene snapped her hand of cards against the edge of the table. "Of course not. There's nothing wrong with my boy. Is there something wrong with you that you'd think so?"
"I don't think there's anything wrong with Carlton whatsoever," Marlowe said, defensively. "I asked if there was anything unusual about him, not wrong."
"Irene is not a woman who understands distinctions like that," Carolyn pointed out. "Be specific, dear. There's no attorney to call out an objection for leading the witness here."
"I want to know if Carlton ever showed signs of being psychic."
"What? Don't be stupid. Of course not. Where would you ever get an idea like that?" Irene said, but Marlowe couldn't help but think she was lying through her teeth.
Apparently she wasn't the only one who thought so. "What about Imogene?" Carolyn asked. "Explain that, if you would."
"Carol, I don't know what you're talking about."
Carolyn turned to Marlowe and explained. "Imogene Lassiter was Carlton's father's great-aunt. She lived in Missouri, never married, and lived off a sizeable inheritance from her parents. When Carlton was seven years old he walked into the house from the back yard and told his parents that Great-Aunt Imogene was dead. 'She had an art-attack,' he said. The next morning the family got a call from a Missouri law firm. Imogene was dead and Charles was the primary beneficiary of her Will."
"She had a heart attack," Irene said, sounding sulky.
"Which could still be excused as a seven year old who doesn't quite understand the message he's passing on," Carolyn pointed out, "except it gets better. Turns out Imogene had her heart attack at the art gallery where she volunteered the bulk of her time. She fell off a ladder and managed to pull a rather large and heavy Jackson Pollack canvas down on top of her. That sounds like an 'art attack' to me."
"It still doesn't mean anything," Irene Lassiter grumbled. "Just a coincidence."
"Honey, where I come from they've got another name for something like that," Althea said. "They call it the Shine."
"Why don't you tell Marlowe about what happened when Charles was killed?" Carolyn said. "That was no coincidence, by any standard."
"What happened?" Irene asked. "Booker was sick, that's all. I don't see how a supposedly rational woman, a former police detective, could call that anything other than a coincidence, particularly since he was sick a lot in those days."
Carolyn made an "Oh, Pish" noise. "Carlton got headaches, Irene, he didn't get sick, ever as far as I could tell. If he did he never said boo-hiss about it. And what happened that day was not a simple illness and you know it. Would you call me up in a dead panic over a case of stomach flu?"
"He gave me a little fright."
"A little fright? Irene, when I got here that boy was dead. Laid out on his back in bed, still in his school clothes, eyes wide open, no breath, no pulse, no life. He was dead when you called me and he was dead when I walked through the door twenty minutes later, and he only sprang back to life when the call came in from the Chief of Police about Charles, at least five minutes later. And then he acted like nothing happened at all."
"The doctor said he had a spike of extremely low blood pressure," Irene mumbled. "You made a mistake."
"Bullshit. I know a corpse when I see one, Irene. I don't know how it happened or even why, but somehow Carlton shared Charles's death."
"Carolyn, if there was all this…psychic phenomena associated with Carlton when he was a boy, why doesn't he realize now that he's psychic?" Marlowe asked.
"I'll tell you exactly why," Carolyn said, and pointed at her sister. "That's why. Right after the Imogene incident, Irene took it upon herself to guilt the psychic right the hell out of the poor boy. She went the whole Catholic route, short of exorcism, and I'm fairly certain she considered that, too. Any time he showed the slightest sign of having a vision or even just a bit of intuition she squashed him under Bible studies and Confession and the most gruesome possible stories about false prophets and Inquisitions. I think she had him half convinced he'd be burnt at the stake, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn he had nightmares where she tossed the first torch on the pyre."
Irene's face was bright red by the time her sister finished. "Booker was odd enough without that nonsense to contend with," she said.
"Yes, and what you did for him really made him so very normal," Carolyn scoffed. "Seems to me he would have been a lot better off if he could've learned a bit about who he is and what he's capable of, rather than having to hide it down so deep he can't even tell the truth about it to himself."
"So if Carlton has been repressing it all these years, why does it all seem to be coming up now?" Marlowe asked. "Even his Chief suspects he might be psychic, although I don't know how long she's been wondering about it."
Carolyn shrugged. "Beats me, dear. I'm afraid I really don't know the first thing about abilities like Carlton's, if anyone does. But I would hazard a guess that you might have something to do with it, if I had to."
"Me? Why me?"
"Don't take it the wrong way, dear, but…er…well, the circumstances of your relationship have been a bit…stressful. And then moving in, that's a big adjustment to make. Add that to all the work stress he's had over the past few years, this past year in particular it seems to me, and I for one am not surprised to hear that he's losing control. I'm just glad it's his over his psychic abilities and not his temper, like in years past."
"So how do I help him through this?" Marlowe asked.
"Just be there for him, I suppose. I'm not a motherly person, I never cared much for children, but I will confess I've always had a special fondness for my nephew - of course, he never was particularly childlike so that might be the reason. You will take good care of him, won't you? He's had it kind of rough in the romance department."
"I have every intention of it, Ma'am."
"Good to hear. Keep me posted on the psychic situation, won't you? Maybe I can give you a hand here and there in coping with it."
"I will, Ma'am. It was a pleasure to meet you," Marlowe said, and she meant it. She was less truthful when she said it to Irene. "I'd better get going. Carlton is probably close to finished with his report by now, if he hasn't finished already."
"Nice to meet you, too, dear," Carolyn said. "Keep that Poker Night idea in mind, won't you? It would be so nice to play a hand every once in awhile with someone who isn't on Medicare and has more to talk about than their latest bowel movement."
Oh yeah, Marlowe could see where a lot of Carlton's idiosyncrasies came from. She smiled. "I'll bring it up to Carlton, but I don't know if he'll be easy to sway. I have a feeling he might try and hide in the closet or under the bed if I ask him to play a poker game where there's bound to be a lot of girl talk."