"Some digs," he said, flatly.
"If I lived here, I would never get tired of this place," Warrick commented wistfully.
"I would," Catherine replied dryly, casting a reproachful eye at the "sensible" shoes she had opted to wear on the visit this time. Sometimes she wondered if "sensible" was ancient Sanskrit for "Horribly ugly".
Warrick shook his head in wonderment at the female obsession with shoes, then unbuckled and hopped onto the interlocking brick driveway once more, joining Brass as he removed himself from the back seat of the Tahoe. Catherine followed suit, only this time she had no problems walking up the front path. She strode purposefully and with dignity up the front path ahead of Warrick and Brass, a woman with a mission.
This mission mainly involved getting the interview overwith so she could get out of these embarrassingly grotesque granny loafers and back into her stilettos, or maybe her brand new leather ankle-boots.
Once assembled on the front porch, the two CSIs waited as Brass rang the doorbell and stepped back. A light switched on and movement flickered behind the beveled glass. Several moments went by, and then the large front door swung open, a man with mousey brown hair standing looking disheveled in its place.
"Detective James Brass, LVPD, these are..."
"The two CSIs, yeah, I saw you before," he interrupted. "Heya James, I'm Pete." He extended a hand. Brass was unused to someone being so chipper less than twenty-four hours after they heard the news that their sister was dead, and so he took a moment to settle a strange feeling in his gut before returning the gesture. He was definately unused to people calling him by his full first name.
"Peter, we'd like to question you a bit more about your sister and your relationship with her," Catherine stated, eyeing the marble flooring. "Could we come in?" she asked sweetly.
An intangible look passed fleetingly over Peter's features and he put a hand to the back of his head, scratching nervously. "Uhh, I'd love to, guys, but I kinda have something going right now, it's not really a good time..." He began to close the door when Catherine stepped into the frame assertively and got right into Peter's face, the innocent facade never leaving her own.
"Well, Peter," she said in a low voice, "this case that we're working on involves your sister. Your parents are dead and you have no other living relations that we can find, you're the only one left. Wouldn't it be better for you and for your sister if you let us do our jobs and cooperated? Or would you rather have us ask you down at the station? Or, better yet," Catherine continued, now fully in the house with a bewildered Warrick and unflappable Brass on the front stoop, "How 'bout we arrest you here and now for obstruction of justice?"
"Woah, lady, calm down! What'd I do to you? I just said I was busy, s'all, never said you couldn't come in and ask me 'bout Gracie. Don't arrest me, man, come on in."
Warrick was noticing a strange change in Peter's manner of speaking from that afternoon. He spoke with less eloquence and seemed now just a young punk of a kid instead of the more mature man they had visited earlier that day.
As Brass and Warrick joined Catherine in the spacious anteroom, Brass' eyes did a minute sweep of his field of vision and discovered dirty footprints on the marble leading to the left and under a white wooden door with light escaping from the gaps around the frame.
"Mr. Humber, could you explain to me what those dirty footprints are doing on your sister's white marble floor?"
Footprints? Thought Warrick and Catherine. They hadn't been there earlier that day.
"Yeah, sure, my sister had some contracters comin' in to renovate the basement. S'unfinished." Pete replied casually.
"Then... why is the light still on, and why weren't those footprints here this afternoon when we paid you our first visit, Mr. Humber? If they're there now that means they were hired after your sister's death, you do realize she can't have hired them, right?" Catherine asked, her brain yelling at her that they got him.
"She called them before she died, the basement was the only part of the house she didn't like. I figured I'd let the workers keep going, after all, it was what Gracie wanted..." he trailed off.
"Would you mind if we asked them a few questions?" Warrick asked.
"Sure, go ahead," Peter relied easily, not missing a beat. Brass pulled out a notebook and pen and began to question Peter - formally, this time.
Warrick and Catherine walked over to the white door, Catherine missing the satisfyingly authoritative click of heels. Pulling on a latex glove, Catherine opened the knob, carefully avoiding any areas where she may have been destroying prints. Although this was not a crime scene, Catherine just wanted to be careful.
The dingy staircase the door opened on to was an anticlimactic shock after the bright openness of the rest of the house. The pair descended the steps carefully, arriving at the bottom to find a cluster of four men in jeans and muscle tees huddled around a flimsy card table, blueprints spread over the edges. One of the men looked up and reached behind his back, Warrick reflexively placing his hand on his piece and Catherine holding her credentials out from the chain around her neck for display.
"LVPD, Criminalistics. How you boys doing?" Catherine asked with a smile. The jumpy man removed his hand from what Warrick had assumed was a weapon, thus prompting Warrick to release his gun. Catherine's greeting was met with a round of hellos, and the men returned to the task at hand, whatever that may be. Catherine took a look around the dank and depressing open area of the basement. "Man, they sure didn't spare any expenses down here, did they?"
One by one, the men headed up the stairs conspicuously. Warrick threw a look at Catherine who mirrored it, then pulled out her walkie-talkie to warn Brass of a suspicious convoy headed up from the basement. Warrick ambled off to have a look around the partition-free room. He jogged to the other end of the room and yelled back at Catherine, his baritone voice echoing off of the bare walls.
"Hey! You find anything strange about this place?"
"Like what?" Catherine shouted, her voice not nearly as imposing as the echo of Warrick's had been.
"Like square footage!" he yelled as he jogged back to the stairs. Soon he was standing beside Catherine, who had a puzzled look on her face.
"What do you mean?" she asked, shifting her weight onto her left foot and propping her arm on her right hip.
"This is a huge house," he said, his eyes flicking around the poorly-lit space.
"One for one," she replied.
"This basement? Not so huge."
"I see where you're getting at, but is it related to anything?" Catherine asked, narrowing her eyes.
"Maybe, maybe not," Warrick sighed, then took a glance over the perimeter of the room again. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he suggested that he and Catherine head upstairs to interview the basement workers. She complied.
Once at the top of the stairs, however, they found three of the workers and Peter corralled into a living room behind beveled French doors, Brass in an ajacent room interviewing a worker. That room was separated from the foyer by another set of glass doors, so Catherine and Warrick couldn't hear what Brass was saying, yet the bored expression on his face spoke to them of the naught he was drawing. Warrick opened a French door and pointed at a construction worker.
"You. Kitchen." he said curtly, and struck off in the direction he'd seen counter space winking at him from before. Catherine walked at a leisurely pace through the doors into a grand living area. She sat in an overstuffed upright chair across from the two remaining workers and Peter on the matching paisley couch. She'd long ago memorized what interview questions to use when, and began asking them casually, seeing if a group setting would coax information out of several subjects at once.
Brass sighed, flipped his notebook shut and gestured for the worker to stand up. He did so, and immediately struck off in the direction he came from, the living area. Brass massaged his temples for a moment with his hands on his knees, slumped over on an ottoman, then he rose, slipping his empty notebook back into an inner pocket in his suit jacket. He left the room as well and headed back to where he found Catherine talking easily with the two remaining workers and their newly rejoined buddy, as well as Peter. He observed for awhile, noting that Catherine's light tone was beguiling the men from hearing the undertones of suspicion, and moved from his leaning position in the doorframe when Warrick appeared with the fourth worker. Catherine threw a glance over her shoulder to see Brass and Warrick standing in the doorway. She turned back to her audience.
"Thank you all so much for your help. We appreciate it," she said, smiling kindly as she rose, then she turned and walked out the door between Brass and Warrick, the former and latter turning with her to leave. Peter stood up immediately.
"I'll see you to the door," he grinned, gesturing with his arms.
"Thanks, couldn't find it," Brass quipped dryly. Peter didn't seem put off in the least, and continued smiling until the trio was out the door. He let out a huge sigh of relief and turned to the "workers".
"Passed the second test, boys," he said with a malicious grin. The four men whooped and ran for the kitchen to reward themselves with beer.
A/N: I've run out of languages... review, please.
