Date Chapter Written: July 9, 2008.
Authoress: Bella7
Beta'd By: TexasJen
3 Elements From: TexasJen
1. Burned hot dogs
2. A margarita
3. The hotel pool
A/N: I loved being a part of this little experiment, hope ya'll like what I've added to the mix! Thanks to TexasJen for her help in the beta department. The title, in keeping with our song title theme, is from Teddy Geiger. Without further ado... chapter eight.
Chapter Eight: Cannonball
Calleigh squinted at the shrubbery and tilted her head to the side. "Could you move the light a little more to the left?" she requested politely.
Eric obliged and watched as she leaned closer, the tip of her nose nearly brushing against the leaves of the bush. "Cal, don't you think it would be better if we waited until morning?"
She turned back and shielded her eyes against the glare of the flashlight. "Why wait when I've got a big strapping man to hold my spotlight for me?" she asked with a grin. "More to the left," she added with a jerk of her head as she returned her gaze to the leaves.
"What are you looking for exactly?" he asked, holding the light higher to offer her a greater vantage point.
"I don't know yet…" Calleigh said slowly, pushing back a branch. "These shrubs are where you and Matt found the red fiber, right?"
"That's right."
"Call it instinct," she began, moving more leaves. "But I feel like there's something more here."
Eric said nothing but watched as Calleigh buried her head further in the foliage and came up after a moment with something shiny clutched between her gloved fingers. "And I guess you were right," he admitted with a nod. He squinted at her findings. "What is that?"
"I don't know." She held it closer to her eyes, peering in the light Eric was still shining on her. "Looks like a button off of a shirt," she added after studying it for a few more moments. "There's a letter 'M' on it... or maybe a 'W'." She dropped it into an envelope and slipped it into her back pocket. "Let's get this back to the lab."
As they walked back to the car in silence, Calleigh couldn't help but feel a wave of tension radiating between the two of them. She cleared her throat. "Eric, it's not a big deal... that thing was buried. Anyone could have missed it."
"What?" He shook his head. "Yeah, I know."
She glanced sideways at him. "Everything okay?"
He nodded without looking at her, trying to force himself to focus on the task at hand. "So we've got this guy's blood, a fiber, and now a button."
Calleigh noticed his topic skirting but said nothing of it. "We're putting him together, piece by piece." She let a few more moments go by. "You sure you're all right?"
"Yeah," he nodded again. "I'm fine."
He wasn't fine. He hadn't been fine for the past few days. He needed to talk to Calleigh, really talk to her, about what was going on between them. He'd been waiting for a moment to present itself, but so far, work kept getting in the way.
Calleigh was on the phone with Angela before he realized they'd made it all the way back to the car. "Yeah… it was on one of the lower branches... could have popped off if our suspect was using the bush to hide himself." She paused, waiting for a response. "No, we're still at the scene... just about to leave."
Eric watched as a smile spread over her face.
"Yeah, we'll stop off at the lab on our way back to the hotel." She nodded again. "Okay, I'll see you in the morning."
"So I guess we're making a stop?" Eric ventured, opening her door for her.
"If you don't mind... I know I keep putting off dinner, but we can grab something afterward, I promise."
"Actually," he rounded the car and got in next to her, sticking the key in the ignition. "I think I'm just going to order in."
"What happened to grocery shopping?"
"I really don't feel like cooking," he said honestly, realizing how tired he was and thinking with disgust about the 7-11 across the street from the hotel. "Plus, pizza will be better than anything any of these all-night places have to offer."
She grimaced. "Nothing like heat-lamp-burned hot dogs and stale coffee to make you miss all the comforts of home, huh?"
He shook his head. "Yeah, home's sounding pretty nice right about now." At least at home, he reasoned, things were normal. Boundaries remained constant, flirtatious banter was left un-scrutinized, and he could sleep better at night without his mind wandering through a thin wall of lime green palm trees.
- - -
The next morning dawned bright and early and with a phone call from Miami.
"Good morning, Eric, hope I didn't wake you," Horatio greeted, sounding far too pleasant to Eric considering it was 6:30 and they had at least two unsolved murders on their hands.
"No, no," he lied around a yawn. "I had to get up to answer the phone anyway."
His boss caught his joke and offered an audible smirk. "I just got back from talking to Susanna Venkman... "
"So early?" Eric asked before he could stop himself.
"She works odd hours... it was the only time she knew she'd be available," Horatio reasoned quickly before continuing. "Anyway, she's still pointing the finger at her mother, but I don't think it's as cut and dry as that."
"Well it can't be," he shrugged. "The blood at the scene was male and there was no familial match to either victim."
"Right, but it was the way she said it, Eric. She said, 'It's all her fault. She's the one who caused all of this.' She didn't say she was the one who did it."
Eric ran a hand over his face. "She didn't say anything else?"
"No, she's been rather unhelpful through this whole thing."
He sighed. "Looks like we're going back to talk to Mrs. O'Shea."
"Looks like," Horatio mimicked. "Eric."
"Yeah?"
"Tread lightly."
- - -
Eric showered and dressed quickly and pulled open his door to find Calleigh, fist poised for a knock, with a carrier of two large coffees. "Hey," he smiled.
"Angela called... have a coffee."
He accepted it and closed the door behind him. "Good morning, Calleigh."
She offered an apologetic smile. "Good morning, Eric. Angela called," she repeated with the same urgency. "She wants us to come down to the lab."
"Well that's good, because H just called to tell me about his latest run-in with Susanna Venkman."
"Looks like we're skipping another lecture."
He smiled down at her as she pushed the button for the elevator. "I'm sure today counts as a learning experience."
- - -
The button and the red fiber, it turned out, were linked together. The button had come off of a uniform from Margarita's, a cocktail bar in the heart of town. The color of the fiber matched the red of the shirts, but not the consistency.
"They're thinking the fiber might be thread from when the button popped off," Calleigh explained on the way to Mrs. O'Shea's.
"And how do we find out who is missing a button from their shirt?" Eric asked, steering through the unfamiliar city streets.
"One uniform at a time, I guess," she shrugged. "They might have a warrant by the time we get back."
"Let's hope Mrs. O'Shea can shed some light on the subject."
"Let's just hope she's more forthcoming than her daughter."
- - -
"She said what?" the line between Mrs. O'Shea's eyebrows creased further. "Why would she say something like that?"
"Mrs. O'Shea," Calleigh began softly, glancing to Angela for the go-ahead. After receiving a nod, she continued. "Your daughter isn't saying you're responsible for your husband's death. She was merely suggesting you might be able to give us a little more information."
Angela cleared her throat. "But please, Mrs. O'Shea, can you think of any reason your daughter might have to suspect that your marriage was in trouble?"
The widow pursed her lips in thought. "I can't believe she would remember something… it happened years and years ago… she was only a few years old at the time, for Heaven's sake."
"What is it?" Angela interrupted the woman's rambling.
"Jim and I," she began, her eyes welling once more. "We hit a rough patch, when Susie was only a baby... he was unfaithful. But we moved past that," she insisted. "We went to counseling, we did everything we could to get back on track, and we did. We were very happy."
Calleigh nodded, feeling her stomach twist at the question she was about to ask. "Mrs. O'Shea, please don't take this the wrong way, but I have to ask."
"What is it?"
"Your husband's affair… was it with a man?"
The older woman's eyes widened in surprise. "Of course not!" she exclaimed, deeply offended. "We were having trouble, Miss Duquesne, but not that much trouble."
"I'm sorry," she apologized quickly, ignoring the ghost of a smile that Angela tried to suppress. "I didn't mean to offend you, I just needed the information to eliminate certain people."
Still huffy, Mrs. O'Shea offered a weary eyebrow and less than encouraging looks in Calleigh's direction for the remainder of the interview.
"I realize it happened over thirty years ago," Angela began, taking out her notebook. "But would you mind telling us the name of the woman your husband had an affair with?"
She gave a heavy sigh. "Carrie Young," she snipped. "Certainly not a name I thought I'd ever be saying again."
- - -
When the four CSIs returned to the lab from the O'Shea home, it was to a large pile of plastic bags.
"What is all this?" Matt asked, lifting the bags carefully, watching as a uniformed officer brought in another pile.
"Uniforms from Margarita's," the young woman answered plainly. She gave a mirthless smile. "Four shirts each from all thirty six employees. Have fun."
Angela raised an unimpressed eyebrow at the officer's retreating back. "Almost one hundred and fifty shirts to go through." She raked a hand through her hair and sighed, looking down at the overflowing glass that marked the restaurant's logo. "A margarita sounds pretty good right about now."
Eric smirked and checked his watch. "Margaritas before noon? I think I like this place."
"It's not even noon?" Calleigh checked her own watch. "You know, we should probably get back to the seminar."
Eric groaned.
"Come on," Calleigh added. "We've barely gone all week... we can at least catch an afternoon lecture."
He groaned again. "If we have to…"
She rolled her eyes and smiled. "It won't kill us, I promise."
Angela waved with a smile. "Have fun, guys."
"Let us know if you get anything from Carrie Young?" Calleigh requested, backing up toward the elevators.
"Absolutely."
- - -
The lecture they attended together — Forensic Entomology and Its Uses — lasted through the better part of the afternoon and was led by a man whom Eric thought was old enough to be the very first entomologist. He had a shock of white hair sticking out in an Einstein fashion, a deep and soothing voice and a habit of drawing out the 'o's in all of his words.
After the entomology lesson, Eric and Calleigh went their separate ways. She to a ballistics lecture and he to burn off some of his frustrations in the hotel pool.
He'd lost track of how many laps he'd done when he heard a splash from the other end of the pool. Eric turned to see Calleigh seated on the other side of the deep end, dunking her feet in. He felt the corners of his mouth turn up at the sight of her in her bathing suit, modest though it was.
She caught his grin and smiled back, sending a wave his way. "Mind some company?"
Eric took only a few moments in crossing the pool. "Not at all," he assured her, surfacing. He watched for a few moments as she swished her legs back and forth, the water lapping over her calves. "Are you coming in or what?" he asked, raising a teasing eyebrow in her direction.
"I don't know," she rested her hands behind her and leaned back. "It feels a little cold."
"It's not," he promised, meeting her eyes. "Just come in."
"I can't decide," Calleigh replied softly as her gaze intensified.
It suddenly occurred to Eric that they weren't talking about the water anymore. "It seems like an easy decision to me." He allowed another smirk to tug at the side of his mouth.
Calleigh rolled her eyes as she brought herself back up to sitting. "It would seem easy to you." She looked down toward the water again. "It's pretty deep." Her eyes moved back to his, "I'm not that strong of a swimmer."
Eric hoped she couldn't hear his heart pounding as he ran his hands up her calves, over her thighs and finally brought them to rest at her waist. "Tell you what," he said softly. "You jump in," he gave a tug and slid her into the water with him, "And you can hold onto me."
Next Author: TexasJen
Next Chapter Post Date: July 27th, 2008.
