Shawn took a deep breath, putting one hand on the wall. The LCD screen of his phone was only lighting a small circular area around him, spanning all of half a foot, and his battery was flickering, clutching desperately to its last bar.
He was going to have to go back for reinforcements. A flashlight and maybe Sani, because she would probably be better back-up than Gus.
As though summoned by thought, Gus appeared at the end of the hall, backlit like some kind of avenging angel, arms crossed and glaring. "What the hell are you doing down there in the dark, Shawn?" he snapped.
Shawn was at a loss for a response, having not realized that the next working motion sensor light was all of three feet in front of him. "I'm investigating," he said defensively, "which is more than can be said of you."
Shawn's cellphone light flickered and went out as the battery finally gave out, and he snapped it shut and stuck it in his pocket before walking over to join Gus.
"I came all the way down this spooky hallway to find you," Gus snapped. "You're the one that flounced off in a huff."
"I do not flounce," Shawn said. "I wouldn't even know how to flounce. Sometimes I skip, but only rarely. I might do a little hopscotch, a little shimmy, but never a flounce."
"You flounced, Shawn," Gus said firmly. "What is wrong with you?"
"What's wrong with me?" Shawn demanded. "What's wrong with you? Why does my relationship with Lassiter bother you so much?"
"I'm not doing this with you again," Gus said.
"No, you don't get to do that," Shawn said. "Just tell me what—"
"It's because he's a guy!" Gus shouted.
Shawn looked like he'd been struck. "Wow, really? I expect better of you, Gus. And anyway, you should be the last person to judge anyone's sexuality. 95% of your wardrobe is pastel."
"No, it's not—" Gus looked frustrated. "I don't care that he's a guy. It's just that, if you just had a girlfriend, she'd be dragging you to chick flicks and the opera, and you'd have to come with me to do guy stuff. But it's Lassiter. So you don't need me to do guy stuff anymore."
"Is that what you're worried about, really?" Shawn asked. "Gus, that's ridiculous! Lassiter wants me to do stuff with him that I don't want to all the time! He watches the History Channel and movies about the old west, and he wants me to go with him to a museum! You know how I feel about museums after I saw that movie. I don't even go visit Zippy anymore."
"Okay, sidebar," Gus said. "How is it that you don't believe in ghosts, but you still think Night at the Museum was a documentary?"
"I know it's not a documentary, Gus, I am aware that Owen Wilson is life size," Shawn said. "But it's a scary movie! Little plastic figures that come to life, and have swords, and guns! It was like Chucky all over again! Museums are creepy! You should know, you won't even go in the Egyptian room."
"That's completely different!" Gus protested. "My concerns are entirely legitimate."
"Whatever, un-sidebar," Shawn said. "The point here is that you don't have anything to worry about! We can still do guy stuff together. We can even still do chick stuff together. I know how much you're looking forward to All About Steve."
"That isn't a chick movie, Shawn!" Gus said. "Lots of guys want to see that movie."
Shawn thought about it. "No, I'm pretty sure it's just you, but I'll go with you anyway. This is what I'm saying—we're best friends, Gus, that isn't going to change."
"Do you mean that?" Gus demanded.
"Of course!" Shawn said. "You're like family, Gus. And you can't get rid of family. My father is proof of that."
Gus broke out into a grin and lunged forward, grabbing Shawn in fierce a tackle hug. "I am happy for you," he said. "I think you're nuts for dating Lassiter, but I just want you to be happy, so if you're happy, I'm happy."
"Right now I'm not so much happy as about to die of asphyxiation. Want to let up a little?" Shawn said, and Gus let him go, stepping back sheepishly.
"What are you two doing here?" a hoarse voice demanded. Shawn and Gus spun around to see the butler standing there, still in his tuxedo, holding a candle. "This area is off limits. You're to stay away from the East Wing."
Shawn narrowed his eyes, taking a step back and bumping into Gus. "No worries," he said. "We were lost. We're heading back right now."
"See that you do," Aldis said, before turning and heading down the hall, the candlelight floating ahead of him.
"Okay, maybe you're right, maybe he did do it," Gus said. "He's creeping me right out. Let's go back, Shawn."
"We can't head back now," Shawn protested.
"The lights are broken in this hallway or something, we'll come back in the morning," Gus said.
"You know I can't stand it when people tell me not to go somewhere," Shawn said. "It's kind of like the opposite of when people tell me to go somewhere."
"It's exactly the opposite of that," Gus said.
"No, I mean, if someone tells me to do something, I don't want to, and if they tell me not to, I want to," Shawn said.
"I don't want you to give me your Nintendo DS," Gus said.
Shawn bit the inside of his cheek in thought. "I probably shouldn't have told you that about myself."
"I don't want to go back where it's bright and warm and safe," Gus said.
"Oh, stop it," Shawn said. "It doesn't count when you do it anyway. We've got to go find out what he's hiding."
"I'm not going down there, Shawn," he said.
"Take out your cellphone," Shawn said. "We can use the light on it. It'll be fine."
"Use yours," Gus said.
"Mine died, come on, Gus! This could break the whole case wide open," Shawn said. "Let's go."
"I don't know why I keep letting myself get talked into these things," Gus said, as he pulled out his cellphone and turned on the display light. He looked down the hallway with narrowed eyes, and Shawn gave him a push to start him moving. "What if the butler is hiding there in wait? What if he is the killer?"
"Don't worry about him," Shawn said. "It's not him we're looking for. It's Holly. I may have seen her wandering around creepily."
"Holly?" Gus said. "The dead sister? You think there is a ghost now? Oh my god. If even you believe it, then there really is a ghost. We need salt. We need an EMF. We need—"
"I did not see a ghost," Shawn interrupted. "I saw a person that is supposed to be dead but obviously isn't dead because I saw them."
"You saw a ghost," Gus said. "You're taking me down a dark hallway looking for a ghost? Have you gone mad?"
"She's only dead allegedly," Shawn said, and gave Gus another push. The lights behind them had automatically turned off again, a power-saving technique that Gus had appreciated at first but was starting to resent. The light from his cellphone did not extend very far.
"These pictures are weird," Gus said, eyeing the portraits that lined the hall. "I feel like I'm taking the Haunted Mansion tour at Disneyland."
"That's good, go to a happy place," Shawn said.
"I was terrified on that tour, Shawn," Gus said.
"You probably shouldn't admit to that," he said. "Five-year-olds have gone and that tour and not been impressed."
"That's not true, that—" Gus was cut off abruptly as Shawn put a hand over his mouth and covered the light on his cellphone. They saw Aldis, still holding his candle, come out from a door on the left side of the hall, before walking across and entering through another door on the right.
There was a window at the end of the hall, and there was another flash of lightening lit it up as the door clicked shut behind Aldis. Shawn removed his hand from the cellphone and Gus's mouth, and tilted his head towards the recently vacated room.
The lights in the room came on automatically as they entered, and Shawn carefully closed the door behind them. "Harvey's study," Shawn said, glancing around. There were pictures of Holly and Eveline arranged on the shelves holding Harvey's books. Holly looked to be about fifteen in all of them, the same way she'd looked in that portrait that was painted shortly before she supposedly died.
"What are we looking for?" Gus asked.
"Whatever we're not supposed to find," Shawn said.
"That's helpful," he said. "This is just a study, Shawn. There's books and papers."
Shawn frowned as he surveyed the room. Something was bothering him about the dimensions, the way the desk was situated at the back wall. He went to the door and leaned back out into hall for a moment, measuring the distance to the window in his mind before stepping back into the office and closing the door behind him.
"What?" Gus asked.
Shawn ignored him, stepping past him to stare at the back wall. He ran his eyes over the old fraying wallpaper. The background was a dark brown, with a gold-hued almost geometric design overlaid on top, lines crossing vertically and horizontally, interspersed with drawings of leafy vines crawling up and across them.
He looked for any break in the design, any evidence of something off center, but whoever had put it up had known what they were doing. When he finally found the crack it was right at the edge of one of the gold-hued vertical lines, following it up almost seamlessly. It would never be seen unless someone was looking for it.
"Shawn, what are you doing? Are you going to help me look through this stuff or not?" Gus demanded.
Shawn ran a hand over the break in the wall, before stopping where the door handle might have been and applying pressure. He heard a magnetic click, and then the hidden door was opening slowly, creaking like the background sound effects in a made-for-Halloween CD.
"Is that a hidden door?" Gus asked, stepping up behind him. "Did you just find a hidden door?"
"The room wasn't big enough," Shawn said. "It was about four feet too short. I knew there had to be something behind this wall."
Gus gulped. "Are you sure you want to know what it is?" he asked.
Shawn pulled the door open in answer, and stepped inside. No lights came on, but Shawn saw a lamp and clicked it on. The room was only about four feet wide, but it was at least fourteen feet across. A bed lay pushed up against one wall on one side, a pink daisy comforter laid across it, while a dresser was pushed up against the other. There wasn't room for anything else.
"There's no place for anyone to hide in here, I think you're safe," Shawn said. Gus followed him in reluctantly.
Shawn went straight to the dresser. There was a framed picture of a woman he didn't recognize, smiling at the camera. She looked a little like Holly. Shawn was pretty sure the shoulder on the left side, belonging to someone that had been cropped out of the photo, was Harvey's. He turned the picture over and pulled it open to see if there was an inscription on the back of the picture.
There wasn't one, though he had found something else of interest. Shawn set it back down and noticed a pair of pearl earrings sitting beside a velvet red ribbon with a cameo tied to one end. He pocketed the earrings, and then turned back to see what Gus was doing. He had his face half-laid on the bed, and was grunting and muttering to himself.
"What are you doing?" Shawn asked. "Nevermind. Actually, I don't think I want to know."
"I'm looking for—" Gus grinned triumphantly. "Ah ha!" He pulled a diary out from under the mattress.
Shawn frowned at him. "How did you know that would be there?" he asked.
"Please, Joy always kept her diary under her bed," Gus said.
"I didn't know girls really did that," he said. "I thought that was a television myth."
"That's cause you didn't have a sister, Shawn," Gus said.
"No, but I had you," Shawn said. "You were almost like having a sister."
"Please," Gus said. "Like you ever could have found my diary. I had the best hiding place ever."
"You call it a diary, I rest my case," Shawn said. "Anyway, everyone knows you kept it on your bookshelf behind your first edition copy of Ender's Game and your Algebra text book."
Gus froze. "How do you know about that?"
"Are you kidding?" Shawn asked. "I almost had that thing published, it was brilliant. I can recite most of it by heart. January 8th, 1989, Shawn was mean to me today—"
"Stop it," Gus snapped. "I can't believe you read my diary."
"Well, I didn't read all of it," Shawn said. "You were more prolific than Judy Blume."
Gus glared at him. "It was only like twenty pages," he snapped. "If you were going to invade my privacy you could have at least had the decency to read the whole thing."
Shawn took the diary from Gus and pulled at the lock, trying to wedge it open. "It's like trying to get into Tut's tomb," he said, before pulling one hand away, shaking it out and then sticking the tip of a finger in his mouth.
"Give me that," Gus said, ripping it out of his hands. He gripped the front cover with one hand and the back cover with the other, closed his eyes and scrunched up his face, and proceeded to try and pull it open. He moved his head side to side and then gave up, standing up straight and glaring at it.
"That was a very manly display of power," Shawn said. "I'm a little in awe of you."
"Shut up, Shawn," he said. "That lock's made of titanium or something."
"I'm fairly certain it isn't made of titanium," Shawn said. "It has My Little Pony on the cover. Typically twelve-year-old girls don't require that kind of security."
"You couldn't get into it either!" Gus snapped.
Shawn held his hand out. "I'll get it open," he said.
"Yeah right," Gus said, handing it back.
Shawn grabbed it and turned his back on him, wiggling one hand in the air, and whispering, "open sesame!" He spun around, and held the diary out, holding it by one edge of the cover so it sprung open and the pages all went spinning to the other side. "Ta da!"
"What the hell?" Gus said, taking it back. "How did you do that?"
Shawn held up his other hand, and a little gold key dangled from a pink string. "I found the key in the picture frame."
"You had that the whole time?" Gus demanded.
"Yes," Shawn said. "But I didn't want to deprive you of your Herculean efforts. Seriously, I thought you were the master safe-cracker, I thought no lock could stop you."
"It's the simple ones that are surprisingly effective," Gus said defensively.
"I'll be sure to recommend Hasbro to the NSA," Shawn said.
Shawn looked back at the diary, and flipped to the last used page. He started to read it, and Gus pulled it over so he could see it too, nearly slamming his head into Shawn's. "Ow, be careful!" Shawn protested.
"Then move over," he snapped. "I want to see it too!"
Shawn grudgingly held it over so they could both read it:
May 23, 1994.
He thinks I don't know what he's planning, but Andie told me. He told Andie to pack and get rid of all my things, to make my room into a study, before she gets here. Andie waited until he was gone and had my room walled up against the edge, like it wasn't ever there, hidden behind the wall so it'll be waiting for me, our little secret. Andie says not to worry, but Harvey says it's time for me to move on to a better place.
I don't want to go.
"Oh my god, Shawn, he killed her!" Gus said. "She's is dead, she's the ghost! Oh my god, you saw a real live ghost!"
"Okay, firstly, that doesn't even make any sense, it's an oxymoron," Shawn said. "Secondly, there's no such thing as ghosts. And thirdly, he didn't kill her."
"A better place, Shawn?" Gus snapped.
"Yeah, I don't think the place he sent her was really better," Shawn said, and grabbed a brochure up off the dresser to hand to Gus.
"Acres and Groves?" Gus asked incredulously. "The metal institution that was formed after they closed Wispy Sunny Pines?"
"Yeah, and it gets worse," Shawn said. "I don't think she was his sister either." He held open a birthday card that had been sitting beside the brochure.
On the inside it was signed by Harvey, with love, to daddy's little girl.
"Who signs a card to their kid with their first name?" Gus asked in disbelief. "And who has their daughter committed and tells everyone she's dead?"
"Someone that didn't want the new wife to know about her," Shawn said. "He had this place remodeled to get rid of the traces, claimed Holly was his dead sister, only someone didn't want to just get rid of all her things like she'd never been here."
"You think Harvey Graves didn't even know this room was here?" Gus asked.
"Holly said in the diary that he wanted it all taken away," Shawn said. "Andie must have been in charge of the remodeling, and had a new wall put up, leaving a little space left to keep some of her room."
"That's creepy," Gus said. "No one could live in this room. It's like something out of Edgar Allan Poe, getting walled up in here."
"There's a door, usually in Edgar Allan Poe people walling up other people don't bother with doors," Shawn said. "Creepy though it may be, whoever did this cared about Holly, they couldn't stand the thought of her just being erased."
Shawn paused as he heard a raised voice coming from the hallway, and beside him, Gus went very still. "It's the ghost!" he said nervously.
"Only if she's on testosterone," Shawn said.
"Let's just get out of here," Gus said, tugging Shawn back to the door. "This place gives the willies."
"Yeah, okay, but only if you promise not to say 'the willies' anymore," Shawn said, putting the diary under one arm and reaching out to turn off the lamp. He pressed the door to the room closed behind them, smoothing down the edges of the wallpaper to hide it again.
Gus opened the study door and he and Shawn both stuck their heads out, looking both ways before exiting the room. Gus pulled out his cellphone and started leading the way back down the hall.
He was holding his cellphone in front of him like he was Indiana Jones and it was a torch, which made his very unmanly gasp when the light on his display flickered out extra amusing for Shawn. "The battery died!"
"I did notice," Shawn said.
"Neither of us have cellphones now, Shawn! We have no way to communicate with the outside world!"
"You mean the outside world that's like twenty feet away?" Shawn asked.
"Twenty dark scary feet away," Gus snapped, and latched onto his friend, digging his fingers into his arm.
"What is with your nails?" Shawn demanded, trying to pull out of the death grip that Gus had on his arm. "Are you auditioning to be Edward Scissorhands? Ease up!"
"I can't see anything, Shawn!" Gus snapped. "We're going to die here."
"We're not going to die," Shawn said. "Probably. Most likely we aren't going to die."
"You're not helping," Gus snapped, and then let out a high-pitched scream as a bright light appeared hovering behind them. Shawn spun around and held up a hand to try and make something out, but the light was blinding them both. Gus grabbed Shawn's sleeve and started tugging. "It's the ghost! Run!"
Shawn was about to protest again that it wasn't a ghost, it was probably just a murderer, but meeting a murderer in a dark hallway didn't sound like much fun either so he started after him. He didn't make it very far before an arm slipped around his throat, wet and cold, and pulled him to a sudden stop.
"Shawn!" Gus cried anxiously, as Shawn was pulled backwards. He reached out to try and grab him, missing his leg and clutching onto Shawn's left Kangaroo shoe. "I've got you! Hold on, Shawn!"
Gus flew backwards as the shoe came off in his hands, and they both heard someone give a long-suffering sigh. "Oh for—will you two calm down?" a voice snapped. "It's me."
Shawn slipped out of the grip around his throat. He stepped away to adjust his shirt with forced fastidiousness as it became apparent that the ghost-murderer was only Lassiter, a little wet from the rain, holding a high-powered flashlight. "I knew it was you, obviously," Shawn said. "I was just waiting for Gus to figure it out."
"Don't lie, Shawn! You were just as freaked as I was," Gus said.
"Yeah, well, you're useless as a savior," Shawn said, and grabbed his shoe back from Gus. "If Lassie really had been our murderer I'd be dead. And missing a shoe."
"It's not my fault you don't properly tie your shoes," Gus said.
"They're Velcro!" Shawn protested.
"Well, no one forced you to buy shoes without any laces, did they?" Gus asked. "I hope you've learned your lesson."
Shawn narrowed his eyes and started towards Gus, but Lassiter grabbed him around the waist, spinning him around so he was between them. "Alright, enough!" he snapped. "One of you needs to tell me what's going on, right now."
"Shawn saw a ghost," Gus told Lassiter.
"I did not see a ghost," Shawn corrected. "I saw a person."
"Shawn saw a dead person," Gus told Lassiter.
"Gus, there's no reason to think Holly is really dead," Shawn said. "That's what Harvey told Eveline. It doesn't mean that it's true. He also told Eveline that Holly was his sister. That's what we in the investigative trade call an unreliable source." Shawn turned to Lassiter. "How did you get in here?"
"You call me, tell me you've seen some non-existent dead person, and you thought what? I wouldn't worry?" Lassiter asked. "I found a way in, Shawn. I thought you were in trouble."
"Sorry," Shawn said. "I was going to call you back, but my battery died. How did you know we would be here?"
"I tracked down the butler, he told me he'd sent you back, so naturally I knew you'd still be snooping around here," Lassiter said.
Shawn grinned. "You know me so well," he said. "Were you in the other room?"
"What?" Lassiter asked.
"You came from behind us," Shawn explained. "And we didn't see you when we came out. Were you in the room across the hall?"
"Oh, yeah," Lassiter said. "It's the butler's room."
"He let you in?" Shawn asked. "Were there creepy collages plastered everywhere? Any Edger Allan Poe books? Maybe a How To Build A Wall For Dummies?"
"I didn't stay long," Lassiter said. "I was just asking him where to find you."
"Right," Shawn said. "Well I hope you know you passed up a perfect opportunity to get some dirt on my lead suspect."
"That's your lead suspect?" Lassiter asked, disbelievingly. "He's like a hundred years old."
"What is with this bias against old people all the sudden?" Shawn demanded. "As though they're not just as capable of murder as anyone else. I'm highly offended on their behalf. You and Gus should both be ashamed of yourselves."
Lassiter rolled his eyes. "Come on," he said, ushering them both down the hall.
The three of them headed back to the kitchen. Sani had finally left for bed, but she had left pudding chaos in her wake. There were pudding filled bowls littering most of the surfaces, chocolate powder sprinkled all over the floor. When Shawn opened the fridge, it was pudding top to bottom shelf.
"Pudding, anyone?" he asked. He turned back around to find Gus and Lassiter in some weird kind of face-off. Lassiter looked as confused about it as Shawn, but Gus had on his don't mess me with me face, which really was quite an impressive feat for someone with such a high-pitched scream. "What? No one likes pudding?"
"I think it's time Lassiter and I had a talk," Gus said. "Seeing as how this thing between the two of you looks like it's getting serious."
"What talk?" Shawn asked.
"The best friend, significant other talk," Gus explained. "To see where we stand."
Lassiter looked at Shawn. "Do you have any idea what he's talking about?"
Shawn shrugged, grabbed a spoon, and started eating a bowl of pudding.
"I know you've always felt threatened by me," Gus told Lassiter, his eyes wide and earnest.
"Guster, I can tell you in all honesty, that I've never been even remotely threatened by you," Lassiter said.
Gus smiled wryly. "Ri-ight," he said. "Of course not, detective, I've got you." He winked for effect, and Lassiter opened his mouth to protest.
Shawn grabbed onto his arm before he could. "Gus has an eye twitch," he whispered. "Best you don't point it out."
Lassiter glanced over at him warily, but he had lost his chance to interrupt. Gus had started talking again. "Shawn and I, see, we're a package deal. We're partners. We solve crime together. We have movie nights on Tuesdays and Thursdays—"
"All the days that start with T, actually," Shawn said helpfully.
"Exactly. On T-days, we have movie nights. And we have video game marathons on Mondays. But you can have him Wednesdays and Fridays and the weekends, because honestly, I could use the break," Gus said.
"Hey!" Shawn protested.
"Are we arranging shared custody?" Lassiter asked in disbelief.
Gus thought about it, and then nodded. "Yeah, I think we are. Maybe we should put this down in writing?"
"There will be no writing anything down," Shawn said quickly. "You know binding contracts freak me out."
"Okay, it'll be an oral contract, then," Gus said, and paid no attention to Shawn's disturbed glance. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be leaving."
"Where are you going?" Shawn demanded.
"It's Saturday, Shawn," Gus said. "That means you're Lassiter's problem now. I'm going home to get some sleep."
"But you're going to miss out on everything!" Shawn protested.
"Sorry, Shawn," Gus said. "I need my six hours of sleep, and I can't take this stress. Call me in the morning."
"Gus!" Shawn called, but Gus was out the door. He turned to Lassiter with a pout. "Can you believe that?"
Lassiter sits on the barstool beside him and rests his head on the counter. "Yes, I told you Guster was the only one with sense," he said. "Six hours of sleep sounds pretty good."
Shawn sighed. "What is it with you people? You act like you've never stayed up all night before."
"I don't usually," Lassiter said. "Sometimes on a big case."
"This case is big, and we still have lots of work to do," Shawn said.
"You're eating pudding," Lassiter said, eyeing him dubiously.
Shawn licked the spoon clean. "It's all part of my process," he explained. He finished off the bowl of pudding and then jumped to his feet. "Okay, let's—" He broke off as he realized Lassiter had fallen asleep, his head resting on his crossed arms, the toes of his shoes braced against the tile floor.
Shawn sighed. He wasn't about to leave Lassiter asleep here with the undead on the loose, and he didn't want to wake him up. He moved quietly around the kitchen, searching for something to keep him occupied, and grinned when he saw the roll of butcher paper leaning against the counter.
He slid it to the floor and rolled it open, laying a long piece of paper parallel to the counter. He found a box of markers in one of the drawers, and pulled the cap off the blue one with his teeth before getting to work.
He paused with the marker held against the paper and closed his eyes for a moment before opening them and drawing the lines from memory, labeling everything he recognized and leaving the rest blank. He pulled out a red pen next, tracing along the edges and moving to the side, nearly running off the edge of the paper.
He was nearly finished when he felt he was being watched, and he glanced up to see Lassiter was awake. "What are you doing?" Lassiter asked quietly.
"Drawing a map," Shawn said. "The one they have is wrong."
Lassiter stood from the stool and then kneeled beside Shawn, frowning at what he saw. It was an intricate blueprint of the house. He'd seen the map in the entryway when he came in, and this seemed to match it almost exactly from what he could recall.
"See this," Shawn said, pointing to the red marks on the map, a hallway that went down from the entryway and ended at two rooms. "It isn't on the official guide they have tacked up out there. Everything in red is what they didn't bother to put on the map."
"You did this from memory?" Lassiter asked quietly, turning to look at Shawn with something like disbelief. Since he learned the truth, Lassiter sometimes thought the psychic thing was the easier story to believe. "And the rest just from walking through the halls?"
Shawn nodded. "It's not like it's to scale or anything," he said, though Lassiter noticed that the lines all seemed perfectly straight, as though he'd drawn them with a ruler and not by sight. Shawn pointed to a small section lined off from the study. "This is where we found the hidden room."
"What hidden room?" Lassiter asked.
Shawn tossed Lassiter the diary. "Part of his daughter's old room, they had a wall built up around it when Harvey wanted it gone," he said. "Sent her off to an institution far as we can tell, though she came home recently. I saw her earlier. She's Gus's ghost."
"Daughter?" Lassiter asked.
"Oh, yeah, you were right that he doesn't have a sister," Shawn explained. "Holly Graves was his daughter, and she isn't dead."
Lassiter glanced through the diary, before looking back at the map. "What else is down there?" he asked.
"Aldis's room, which you saw, and Harvey's study," Shawn said. "Maybe it's not on the map because Harvey wanted to keep his office private. Maybe it's because someone had his daughter locked up in the walls."
"Don't you think someone would have noticed?" Lassiter asked.
"People did notice," Shawn said. "It's just that they all thought she was a ghost."
Lassiter frowned as Shawn ripped the paper off the roll, before spreading out a new piece. "What are you doing now?" he asked.
"I like to make lists," Shawn said.
"Huh. That's what we do, too," Lassiter said, leaning over him. He looked at what Shawn was doing. "Actually, that's nothing like what we do. What is that supposed to be?"
"I write in code," Shawn said defensively. "Well, pictograms, anyway. I need to look again at my suspects. I feel like I'm in the middle of a rousing game of Clue. We've got the maid in the kitchen with pudding, the butler in the hall with a candlestick, the widow in the upstairs bedroom with the sleeping pills. The ghost in the hidden room."
Shawn squinted at his paper, drawing everything he described in stick-figure style. "And then we've got Harvey," Shawn said. "An expert swimmer who drowned in a seven foot pool."
"They're all good suspects," Lassiter said. "It could have been any of them."
"Except I don't think it was any of them," Shawn said.
"I thought you were blaming it on the butler?" Lassiter asked.
"Oh, he's definitely hiding something," Shawn said. "But I don't think he killed anyone, and Holly was the one spotted at the scene of the crime."
"What are you talking about? We haven't heard anything about that," Lassiter said.
"Sani didn't tell the police," Shawn said. "She thought she saw an apparition. She didn't think anyone would believe her."
"So it's obviously Holly then," Lassiter said. "What's the problem?"
"It's obvious," Shawn said. "That's the problem."
Lassiter rolled his eyes. He settled down on the floor and paged through the diary for awhile before laying out and falling asleep beside Shawn. Shawn couldn't sleep, even if someone didn't need to stay on watch, so he laid out another strip of butcher paper and started to write down all he knew.
Eveline
Motive: Harvey was mean. Also lots of money.
Means: The pills were hers.
Defense: Probably didn't use a tripwire on herself. Or try to choke herself.
The Butler
Motive: Harvey was mean. Wanted the East Wing to himself.
Means: Access to Eveline's pills, trusted by Harvey.
Defense: Really really old.
Sani
Motive: Thought Harvey was gross. And mean.
Means: Access to pills and kitchen, could have slipped it in a drink.
Defense: Would not have had time to make so much pudding if plotting murders.
Holly
Motive: Harvey was really mean. Also, she's crazy.
Means: She can make her way through the house unnoticed. Access to everything.
Defense: She saved the card her father gave her. Lives in a wall. Obviously does not care about material gains.
It could have been any of them, but that didn't mean it had to be one of them.
Shawn had the worst feeling he'd left someone off the list.
