Here's the next chapter. With a few hours for concentration and some reviews *cough* I should be able to get this done by February's end.

A couple of hours later, Wayne and I were sitting in a dead guy's living room running through pile after pile of old papers. It didn't help that he'd been a pack rat as well as computer illiterate while he'd been alive. "You wonder how we ever get things like this done, eh?" Rigsby said, grimacing as he slit open another box.

I leaned over. "What's in that one?"

"More papers. Ugh. Didn't anyone ever teach this guy how to organize?" Wayne shook his head, tutted, and started arranging the papers in orderly piles. He'd been acting more and more like this recently, and straying further away from the Rigsby I'd once known. Maybe it was just one of those natural sorts of changes, like when you love peanut butter and wake up one day and decide that you don't. But I suspected otherwise.

Boss was upstairs combating the same kind of mess in the bedroom, so I decided to open my mouth. Nothing to gain, but nothing to lose, either. "You know, you sound more and more like Van Pelt each day."

"Really"

"Yeah. It's gotten more obvious lately. Sometimes it seems like you blow hot and cold on us, too."

"What?" Quickly I ducked my head down towards the papers, trying to look like a Humble Cho. Unfortunately, Rigsby wasn't buying it. "You mean blow hot and cold on the team?"

"Since you started hooking up with the rookie, yeah."

"I do not!"

A creak on the front porch startled us into silence. There were two more footsteps, small and tentative, and the doorknob started to turn. Putting down all previous hard feelings, Wayne and I nodded to each other. Automatically, we raised our guns at the door.

The door unwedged a crack, and a curly blonde head peeked through. "Thought I heard yelling in here."

Shoot. I'd forgotten Jane. Rigsby sighed in relief and lowered his gun, then stomped over and pulled him in by his collar. "Didn't Lisbon tell you to get your ass home?"

"Well yes, she did. But you should know by now that I never listen to her, unless she gives me a really good incentive to do so."

"But how'd you get here? Shoot, the place's sectioned off and everything."

"Oh, Cho smuggled me over in the back of the van," Jane replied, jerking his thumb over at me. I gritted my teeth behind my closed lips. The man tattled shamelessly.

Rigsby glared at me, but let Jane go. There was an awkward silence, as all three of us looked back at the mess of papers behind us.

"Where's Teresa?"

"Looking through stuff upstairs. Man was a real pack rat."

"Ironic, isn't it?" Jane neatly sidestepped the boxes and headed over to the fake fireplace, inspecting all the little trinkets lined up neatly on its mantle. "You collect so much stuff, hoarding all your memories in one safe place, and yet you never stop to realize that someday, another person will come and look at your precious memories and deem them completely redundant." He picked up a beer bottle sculpture and toyed with it, tapping his finger against the thin aluminum.

Rigsby rolled his eyes. "Right, Patrick, enough playing around. You wanted to do your thing, so start by moving these aside and getting some more stuff out from the broom closet." I walked over with Jane, standing on tiptoe and handing items off the top shelf to Jane. We were going to find the wall, no matter how long it took us.

"You're wasting your time," Patrick muttered as he came back for another box.

"Oh really?" I grunted. "If there's really something worthwhile that isn't in this mess, why haven't you shown it to us yet?"

"Patience, patience," Jane replied. "And anyways, I didn't mean that. You're wasting your time thinking about whether you'll meet her again, and whether she'll chat you up next time. Which she won't, by the way, because she's just as conservative as you are and doesn't talk to anyone who can't prove that he's not chauvinistic."

He was right. And annoyingly so. But it hadn't really been in the way he'd described. Having seen Wayne's slow merge into a new being called RigsPelt, I'd been wondering what would happen if I ever managed to find someone, and whether I would have to change too. The lawyer girl had seemed nice, but if I was supposed to turn into some girly guy who brought her flowers and watch romantic comedies, then it was a no-go. Still, I hadn't been able to push her out of my mind long enough for Jane not to suspect it.

"Oof!" Jane said, crashing a heavy box down on the floor with a loud thump. Boss's footsteps sounded upstairs, and Jane instantly looked terrified. "Hide me," he whispered, and darted off to the kitchen, where I heard some loud clanging before everything went silent. A small head peeked out from the top of the stairs.

"Everything okay down there? I thought I heard someone yell."

"Yeah, fine. I just dropped something." Boss looked suspiciously at me, then at the box ten feet away. Quickly, I stepped over and shoved the box into the living room. "Rigsby and I were just thinking that we might be getting close to finding something."

"Oh, great. Want me to come down and help?"

Jane peeped his head out from behind the kitchen doorway and made a throat-slitting motion.

"Nah, we're good. And it's just a gut feeling."

"Well, if you need anything, I'm upstairs." Boss sighed and disappeared out of sight. I heaved the box into the living room and went to confront Jane.

"Weren't you gonna announce your presence?"

"Not yet," Jane said, holding a finger to his lip. "I'm supposed to lead you guys to the treasure trove, first, right?"

"Fine, shoot."

The man beamed and pulled me back into the living room. Plopping down on the couch, he swung his legs up and made himself comfy. I sifted through some random files, keeping one eye on Jane. For a while he sat there, looking thoughtful, then turned around and peeked behind the sofa.

Rigsby was still sorting papers furiously. "Hey," he complained, "if you're going to come on an investigation, the least you can do is help out."

When Jane turned back and grinned at us, he had a guitar in his hand. "Dead guy was a musician!" He picked it up, squinted an eye to look on the inside. "And it's a nice one, too. This was probably one of the loves of his life."

I've got to admit, it was a piece of work. All burnished wood and inlays, with the gloss rubbed off in a few places where the guitar'd seen more wear and tear. I'd never been one for singing cowboy movies, but looking at it made me wish I'd paid more attention when Mom had borrowed tapes from the library.

"Ha," Rigsby let out a short laugh. "Bet you can't sing something for us, Jane."

"Never underestimate a blonde," Patrick said, and with that, he laid the guitar on his knee, opened his mouth wide, and started belting out the first chords of a Sara Bareilles song. I let my jaw open too. Not to sing, mind you, but because I recognized the tune from the radio. I don't keep up with song names, but the part Jane was singing went something like this:

"I'm not going to write you a love song, 'cause you asked for it, 'cause you need one, you see…Jane, what are you doing here?!"

Like Rigsby and I, the Boss had heard the music. Unlike Rigsby and I, she wasn't clapping her hands, or mentally singing along, or even smiling.

"I thought I told you to get home."

"But I did take my shower," Jane whined. "And anyways, I was planning to help you with the case. After, of course, I gave you all a very important message."

Boss snorted. "You mean a message about some girl who dumped you because of your flightiness, demands and bad singing?"

"You've got to admit though Lisbon, he's pretty good." Rigsby looked at me, then back at Boss. "And anyhow, he was going to show us where we could find the evidence we need."

She snorted again and smiled generously at us. "In this rat hole? I doubt he will. Jane may have alleged psychic habits, but he's not a supercomputer."

"Of course I'm not. I'm a real live man, and I know where to find it simply because I am one." Jane tossed the guitar to Boss, then slid over to the fake fireplace and looked up the chimney.

"Already checked there when we got here, Jane." I said, deciding against my will to save him from embarrassment. "There's nothing."

"Appearances can be deceiving," Jane replied, sliding his hand up and feeling around. We all looked at him, with one hand stuck up the chimney, the other absently scratching his thigh. I don't know whether the scratching bit helped, but either way, Jane hit gold. "Aha," he said, his 'aha' look coming up on his face. He pulled a small bundle of envelopes out of the chimney and handed it proudly to Boss.

Rigsby breathed a sigh of relief. "That's got to be the one. I've got to ask though, can we go now? I'd like to get home."

"Right, we'll work on this tomorrow. Let's get back to the office and drop these off, then call it a day. I'll be waiting in the car." Boss slung her bag over her shoulder and walked out the door, leaving the three of us to clean up and turn off the lights.

"Say, Patrick," Wayne called as we organized our gear and collected extra files, "What was the message in the song, anyway? Something for Lisbon?"

"Actually, it was meant for one of you," Jane replied carelessly. "I thought you'd figured it out already." He looked at us square in the eye. I guess our clueless faces hinted to him that we'd missed the point.

Sighing, he rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Always the theatrics. "Don't write people love songs just because they ask for them," he said. "Write them because they don't." And with that, he turned and followed Lisbon's steps out the front door.

"Now what's that supposed to mean!" Rigsby yelled after him, but he'd already gone. Wayne shook his head and pulled me up to get going. I clenched my jaw and followed him. Jane was playing with my head again. What'd he mean, write a love song for those who didn't ask? If he was planning to set me up with Lawyer Lady, he was in big trouble. I handled my own business, just like everyone else on this planet. And if Patrick thought he could mess with me just like he did with everyone else on this team, he was dead wrong.