Sorry for the wait, but I can only think so fast. Anyway, here is the next installment!

/bows/ I'm sorry I didn't address specific reviewers last time, I didn't know it would offend people. It's just that I'm not used to getting so many reviews in such a short period of time, and I thought that since most of them said similar things, it would be alright to address them together. And, I don't mind flames as much as some people, AS LONG AS THEY'RE CONSTRUCTIVE. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about ;)

I really do appreciate all the reviews, though. They make me feel special.

Oh, and I still don't own Detective Conan...

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Chapter 3: Separations and Suspicions

Ran was sitting on the couch doing homework in the room that doubled as the living room as well as her dad's office, when her woman's intuition kicked in. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but something didn't sit right regarding the hasty conversation that had passed between her and Conan no more than an hour before. Even stranger still, though, she suspected that Shinichi was somehow involved. She looked over to where Kogoro was dozing at his desk, and sighed. Her troubles would have to be put on the back burner, because the upcoming exam took precedence.

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The first room the Detective Boys wandered into was the dining room. The furniture had become quite dusty from lack of use, but that didn't really make it any less beautiful. Conan wiped a finger along the top of a chair back, putting so much dust into the air that he sneezed.

"Shhhh," Genta whispered loudly. "Do you want to get us in trouble?"

"Sorry," Conan answered sheepishly. 'It's ironic and kind of amusing. I wonder if I was ever like that...' he thought.

There were two other doors coming off of the room, and Conan slipped through one of them while the other Detective Boys ogled at the China cabinet. He closed the door as quietly as he could so that they wouldn't notice his absence, and let out a heavy sigh.

"Okay, time to get to work." Conan looked around the room he now found himself in (which happened to be the kitchen), trying to remember where certain things were kept. "Man, it's been a while... First things first, let's get the emergency mechanisms into place." He walked over to the cabinet that had the phone sitting on top of it. He pushed one of the phone's buttons, and one of the LED's turned off. He then opened the top drawer and pulled out a heavy-duty flashlight. As he lifted it over the side of the drawer, he almost dropped it. "Phew, that was close. I guess I forgot how heavy this thing was..."

He opened up another door which led to the stairs that went down to the basement. He flipped a light switch, knowing that there were no outside windows down there, and went to search for a particular old box containing a few mementos of his childhood.

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Meanwhile, the Detective Boys had taken in their fill of all the expensive-looking dishes displayed in the dining room. They turned around to see what kind of interesting clues Conan might have picked up, only to find that he was no longer there.

"Where'd he go," Ayumi screamed, forgetting that she thought she needed to be secretive.

Mitsuhiko tried to comfort her. "I don't know... Maybe we should try to look for him."

"He can take care of himself," Genta interjected. "We have much more important things to do, like figuring out what happened to Mr Kudo."

Ayumi gave him a shocked look. "We can't just leave him like that!"

"Yes, we can. He is the one who wandered off, of course."

They knew they couldn't just pull out the chairs and sit at the table, so they went back out the way they came, and looked for a more casual room where they could have the snacks that Ayumi brought.

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Ran finished her homework, and dinner, before realizing what time it was. Conan should have been back by now. "Then again, he is over at Professor Agasa's... I'm sure everything is fine." She couldn't shake her earlier concerns, though, and resolved to call Shinichi's house after the TV show ended, just in case.

At the end of the half hour, she picked up the receiver and dialed the old, familiar number. Much to her surprise, she only heard the line ringing. She knew there was an answering machine, and it worried her that it wasn't picking up. She let it go for ten rings, and then hung up. "Dad, I'm going over to Shinichi's house."

"Why? You know he's not back yet."

"I'm worried that something happened. I just tried calling over there, and even the answering machine didn't pick up."

Kogoro knew his daughter wouldn't do anything stupid. Because of that, he didn't really care what she did, as long as he knew where she was. "The tape probably filled up, or something. It's probably nothing to worry about."

Ran put her jacket on, and opened the door. "I'm going over anyway, just to make sure."

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Conan came back upstairs with his arms full, and a sly grin plastered across his face. He didn't really want to do this to them, but he couldn't let them figure out his secret. If they wanted a haunted house, they were gonna get one.

Then the phone rang.

The loud noise startled him so much that he nearly dropped the pile of fabric. Instead, he set it down on the kitchen table, and waited patiently to listen for the number of rings. When it went past four, he knew something was wrong. He ran to the window to shine the flashlight towards Professor Agasa's house, when he realized who it must have been that called – the only other person he talked to on a relatively regular basis. He hoped it wasn't her, but left the flashlight on in the window anyway, and took his pile up to his bedroom.

When the phone rang, the other three Detective Boys also started to panic. Who would be calling an abandoned house? It was then that they noticed Conan still hadn't come back to find them yet. They each took one of the flashlights Mitsuhiko had brought with him.

"Okay, no going upstairs or downstairs until we know there's no one else on this floor," Ayumi instructed the two boys. "Got it?" The other two consented, and they split up to search the ground floor of the house.

Conan had safely made it partway down the hall before the others left the TV room. He felt something in his pocket, and remembered he had turned off the ringer on his cell phone so that only he would know when he got a call. He went into his room and closed the door before picking it up. "Moshi, moshi."

"Shinichi, you left the flashlight on in the kitchen window. What's wrong?"

"The phone rang a few minutes ago, and I know it couldn't have been you, because the person didn't hang up until after ten rings. In my gut, I think it may have been Ran, and if I know her, she got worried at not hearing the machine pick up, and is on her way over..."

"What would you like me to do?"

"Head her off, stall her, anything you can do until I bring the others back over."

"I'll try, but you know how she is..."

"Yeah, that's what has me worried. Let's hope it wasn't her."

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End Chapter 3

A/N: That was short, I know... It kinda pains me that I couldn't go longer before posting, but given what I was able to include in this chapter, I thought that was a good stopping point.

LED is short for light-emitting diode, and they're generally these little lights that are used for indicators.

Stay Tuned!