CHAPTER TEN

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. . .

"Good morning, Detective," Henry Spencer said when Juliet stopped at the coffee table. "How's that Civil War case coming?"

Processing… processing… oh yes, my actual job, she thought. "You do realize it has nothing to do with the Civil War, right?"

He blinked. "Well, that's what Shawn keeps calling it."

Juliet gave him a look. "Let me guess. He's been badgering you to be assigned to the case."

Henry shrugged. "That's my boy. But if you don't need him, you don't need him."

"We don't need him."

"So I hear. Why does he want on it so badly?"

Juliet smiled. "Because we don't need him."

"I thought it had something to do with Lassiter?"

She didn't want to talk about Lassiter because she knew if she started, she'd just gush all over the place and ruin what little presence of mind she had left. "Is Shawn, by any chance, bi?"

Henry's eyebrows shot up. "Uh, come again?"

"Well," she said sweetly, "I was just wondering about his obsession with Carlton. It's like he can't stay away from him." She threw her stirrer in the trash, flashed him a bright smile, and went to her desk. He did not follow. Mission accomplished.

McNab brought her some mail later and said, "Wow, you look really... wait, I can' t remember. Am I allowed to say you look really pretty today? I don't want to get in trouble."

"With the department or with Francie?" she teased.

He looked uncomfortable. "Either, now you mention it. Forget I said anything." He loped off, and she settled down to work for a full sixteen seconds before drifting off into reminiscences about her night with Carlton. Her lover. Her love. She smiled at the folder in front of her, feeling warm and thrummy and buzzed.

She managed to focus on paperwork and details enough to get through the morning, but as the clock advanced toward the time Lassiter was due to meet her here, so did her agitation. She was very afraid she was going to jump on him as soon as he walked in. She was also a little afraid he wouldn't mind and she would end up getting fired for having sex on the police station floor.

But when he materialized—or so it seemed—in front of her desk a few minutes earlier than she expected, his blue eyes full of love, she instantly felt calmer. "Hey," he said quietly. "Did I tell you how beautiful you are before you left?"

"You may have." She was blushing. "How was your class?"

"I don't remember a thing about it." He seemed cheerful. "Are you ready to go?"

They walked out together, hands brushing so casually from time to time, and Juliet felt as if she were giving off some pink-and-dusky glow, as if some of the light from the world came from how she felt about him.

At the car, she started to get in the passenger side—habit—until he reminded her she was the official, badge-carrying cop, and besides that, had the keys.

"But you hate to let other people drive."

"You're not other people. And besides, it's policy and you know I haven't given up my love of policy." He gave her a grin, and slid his long-legged frame into the passenger seat.

"This feels weird," she admitted, starting the engine.

"Oh, and by the way, when we get to the first red light out of sight of the station, I'm going to kiss the hell out of you."

"No problem." No problem at all, and they were five blocks away when he kept his promise, his mouth warm and insistent and calling to mind everything that happened last night.

"Better. Oh, I forgot to tell you," he added, wiping a trace of her lipstick from his mouth, "I made an appointment to see a therapist next week."

She looked at him in surprise. "Really? That's—that's great. When did you decide?"

"At lunch the other day. I realized that thinking I have a handle on all these changes I'm making doesn't mean I do have a handle on them. I know simply changing my job can't make me... better."

He was right. She commented, "You've always hated therapy."

"Well, mostly I've always hated that a therapist could stop me from doing my job. I always hated that the words of one person—who didn't even know me—could keep me chained to my desk. I hated the idea that I couldn't do it all myself, that it would take another person to decide I was well, or competent, or functional." He sighed, exasperated. "The truth is, I've been in a few sessions where I really did get something out of it, some insight, or some tool to help me. And I want this to work, Juliet. Not just me, but you and me. I want what I'm doing to be something which can be done, and I want to do it for my future. And yours." He pulled her hand from the steering wheel and held it tight. "If I'm going to be someone you can love, someone you want to stand by, I need to know I'm..." He trailed off. "I don't know. Worth it?"

"Carlton, you've always been worth it."

He smiled. "I want to be worth more."

Juliet squeezed his hand. "You can't be worth more to me than you already are. I meant what I said this morning, and all the other times I only said it in my head. I love you."

He kissed her fingers. "Thank you." He leaned in quickly and kissed her again. "I love you more than I can possibly explain."

"Maybe your therapist can help with that," she suggested cheekily, and drove on.

. . . .

. . .

They started with the houses to the east of the Napoli residence. It was an older neighborhood in terms of the typical age of its residents, so they found a number of people home and not unwilling to have a chat.

They learned Phyllis Napoli had a variety of daytime visitors, but didn't go out much. The lady in the green Victorian said she thought a book club met there monthly, because she'd been once but hadn't returned after an incident with someone's Pomeranian and her new shoes.

The retired teacher in the tan Victorian across the street said some quilters, complete with accoutrements, showed up every few days, but she didn't understand the appeal of sticking a needle into fabric repeatedly.

The retired banker in the blue house next door said he had no idea who the Napolis were.

Phyllis was known to putter in her garden, read on her porch, and receive visitors, but no one seemed to pay much attention to who those visitors were or remembered anything unusual about them. Needless to say, no one remembered anything out of the ordinary about the night Jim Napoli was murdered.

Lassiter leaned on the brick mailbox near the end of the block, contemplating.

"Let's check out the street behind their house," Juliet said. "Sometimes back windows can tell a lot more than the front, you know?"

He agreed, and they crossed over to Esterly, walking down to the end. They would have started at the house directly behind the Napoli's, but there was an elderly couple sitting on the porch at the house next to that one, and why miss an opportunity?

Juliet flashed her badge and a smile. "We're looking into the death of your neighbor Jim Napoli. Could we talk to you a minute?"

"Possibly," said the tiny old lady, whose glass of iced tea was nearly as big as her head. "What's your name, dear?"

"I'm Detective O'Hara, and this is my partner Detective Lassiter." She'd been introducing him as such all along, and no one had demanded to see his badge yet. "You are?"

"The Smithers, Viola and Beau. We've lived here forty-two years and think we might just stay on!" It was clearly an old joke, but her faded blue eyes twinkled as if it were brand new.

Beau Smithers nodded, disturbing his lone strand of hair.

Lassiter nodded back. "Do you spend a lot of time out here on your porch?"

"No, no," Viola trilled. "We mostly sit out back in the mornings to catch the sun, and then we come out front to wait for the mailman, and then we go out back again to watch the gardener."

"And the squirrels," Beau offered meaningfully.

An odd expression crossed Lassiter's face. He was no fan of squirrels.

"Then," Viola continued, "we come out here again to watch everyone coming home from work, though really most everyone around here is retired, but they do have children and grandchildren coming to visit, and we watch them arriving." She beamed. "It's especially nice at the holidays."

"I'm sure. Do you—"

"I don't mean to imply we never go inside, you know. We do have breakfast inside, and lunch and dinner too, though on very nice days we will have an afternoon tea out back, and sometimes we take a stroll down to the end of the block. And sometimes my niece will come and take us out to lunch. And of course we sleep inside, too!"

"I understand," Juliet assured her. She expected Lassiter to be restless, but when she glanced at him, he only seemed bemused. "So you see a lot of the back of the Napoli's house?"

"I suppose you could say that. Phyllis is very nice and she has lovely rosebushes in her yard."

"Got squirrels, too," Beau offered again, just as meaningfully. He addressed Lassiter directly. "You like squirrels?"

Lassiter frowned. "Not even remotely. If it were up to me, they'd all be—"

"Carlton," Juliet intervened.

But Beau was smiling. "I like you, son."

She wasn't sure that was good, but she caught Lassiter's grin to the old man. "Does anyone in particular come to visit Mrs. Napoli?"

"Oh, yes. Her friend Pat is there quite often, and Drew. At least I think that's the name. Could be... no, it's Drew. Is it Drew, honey?" She peered over at her husband.

Beau shrugged.

"Do Pat and Drew live around here?" No one else had mentioned a Pat or Drew.

"Well, Pat lives next door, there, at the end. Drew comes from someplace else."

Lassiter inquired politely, "Do you know where that someplace else might be?"

"Oh, no." She smiled brightly. "We don't talk to Drew."

"No?"

"Well, our policy is that if we're not altogether sure of a person's name, we don't associate." She patted her husband's arm. "Beauregard taught me that."

"If you hadn't introduced yourself when you came up, we wouldn't be talking to you." It seemed to take a lot out of Beau to say that much.

Juliet thanked them, declined the offer of an iced tea, and went back down the walk with Lassiter, who said, "If Pat next door is a frequent visitor, we can probably get Drew's name from him."

"Her," she countered. "Pat could be either a man or a woman."

"So could Drew."

Pat's house was a big Colonial, and appeared to encompass two lots, both large. A tall fence blocked the view of what lay behind. The name on the mailbox read Fisher, and the doorbell was unexpectedly shaped like an elephant. She was about to press it when they heard a voice behind them.

"Jules! Lassie!"

Both turned: Shawn was jogging up the sidewalk. He took off his sunglasses and stood, hands on hips, as if waiting for some praise for his arrival.

"Spencer," Lassiter asked for what had to be the 8,658th time in his life, "what are you doing here?"

"I should think that was obvious, Lassieface. I'm here to help."

"Well, turn around, bright eyes."

To Juliet, this remark seemed inexplicable until she remembered what he'd said about Shawn and drunken karaoke. Shawn himself seemed taken aback. "Where's Gus?" she asked.

"He dropped me off. He was whining about having to go to some other job."

"You mean the one he gets a steady income and health insurance from?"

Shawn waved that off. "It's just a fad. So who are we talking to now?"

"We," Lassiter said flatly, "are going to talk to the occupants of this house. You are not."

"Oh, but I am." Shawn smiled, and since she wasn't going to shoot him and knew Lassiter wasn't carrying his gun, he was probably right.

She settled for inquiring, "Is that because you're living in a powder keg and giving off sparks?"

Shawn frowned. "Okay, what is it with the Bonnie Tyler—hello!" He looked past them up to the porch, where a woman stood in the open doorway.

She was at least sixty, tanned and weathered—and puzzled. "May I help you all?"

"Mrs. Fisher?" Getting a nod back, Juliet showed her badge and introduced herself and Lassiter, hesitating about Shawn.

However, he smoothly stepped between them and extended his hand to the woman. "Shawn Spencer, head psychic for the SBPD. May we come inside, and do you have any pineapple?"

"We don't need any pineapple," Lassiter interrupted, "but we would like to come in and talk to you about your neighbors, the Napolis."

She was a bit nonplussed, but let them in and led the way to a large bright room furnished in far more styles of wicker than Juliet had known existed. The walls, in contrast, were hung with various dead animals. Here a deer, there a deer, everywhere a—Juliet gathered herself.

She noticed Lassiter put himself between her and Shawn when it was time to sit (not that he sat).

"Mrs. Fisher," Lassiter began, "is your husband home, and by any chance is his name Pat?"

"He is home, but I'm Pat. He's Harry."

"He's hairy?" Shawn turned from the mantel, where he'd been adjusting knickknacks. A large rifle hung above, with its twin over by a door leading into the back of the house. "Has he tried Nair For Men? That's a real product, isn't it? It ought to be. There's a guy down at the pier who could really use some."

Pat glanced at him, frowning. "His name is Harry."

"Ah. Sorry. My bad. Carry on." He wandered the room.

Beside her, Lassiter sighed. "Sorry. Anyway, you're a friend of Phyllis Napoli's, correct? We're looking into her husband's death."

"I know. It's so sad. I mean I didn't know you were looking into it, but it's sad. I thought it was a heart attack?"

Juliet said, "Apparently not. Do you know if Phyllis has a friend named Drew?"

"Yes, that's her cousin. Drew—"

"Not Barrymore!" Shawn nearly yelled. "That would be so cool, though."

"Drew Salerno." Mrs. Fisher gave him another glance. "Excuse me, why is he sniffing my wallpaper?"

Lassiter muttered, "Because he's an idiot." More loudly: "Spencer, stop sniffing everything!" To Mrs. Fisher again, he added, "Every now and then he falls apart."

Juliet almost laughed out loud when Shawn spun around and glared at them. "So, you've been friends with Phyllis a long time yourself?"

"Yes, of course. We've been neighbors for twenty years."

"Did you get along with Jim Napoli?" Lassiter asked neutrally. Pretty good, Juliet thought, considering Shawn was now attempting to reach up and touch the antlers of the lowest-hanging deer.

"Oh, I suppose so. He wasn't usually home when I would visit." She seemed a touch uncomfortable.

"What about your husband? Did he get along with the Napolis?"

She shrugged. "I guess. Harry's not, um, very... social." Her volume had dropped. "I'm very worried about Phyllis. You don't suspect her of... anything, do you?"

Juliet studied her, and noted she did seem very concerned. She wasn't even reacting to Shawn holding up two candlesticks to his ears while humming something about kiwi. "We're just looking at all the possibilities. Do you think we could talk to your husband?"

"Oh, um, certainly. I'll go find him." She hurried out of the room, and as soon as she was gone, Shawn and Lassiter spoke at the same time.

Shawn said: "It's not her, and enough with the Bonnie Tyler. At the station earlier, Dobson kept calling me bright eyes, too. What is up with that?"

Lassiter, closer to Juliet and more quietly: "Do you remember if Phyllis ever referred to her lover's gender?"

Juliet looked at him sharply.

Shawn came closer, pointing one candlestick at them. "Look around, Lassie. All this macho posturing with the deer and the antlers and the thing and the buffalo and stuff? The kind of man who's into that doesn't like having a pesky husband in the way of his conquest."

"The kind of man who's into that doesn't use poison to get rid of his competition," Lassiter retorted.

They both hushed up (and stood up) when Pat Fisher returned with her husband. He was as tanned and weathered as she was, but probably ten years older. He had an unlit cigar and a scowl. "What's going on?"

"These people are police detectives, and that's—" She paused, helpless to explain Shawn, which sentiment Juliet had often shared. "That's a guy they brought."

"A guy?" Shawn protested. "Really?"

"Well, what do they want?" Harry demanded.

"They're asking about Jim's death."

"Who the hell is Jim?"

Pat glared at him. "Phyllis' husband!"

He glared back. "You didn't tell me he died!"

"Harry! Of course I told you!"

Lassiter murmured to Juliet. "Got an answer my question yet?"

Her mind raced through every conversation with Phyllis Napoli, and no, there was no time when she used either the masculine or feminine gender to refer to her lover. None. "Mrs. Fisher," she said instead, "what do you do for a living?"

Pat stared at her, expressionless.

Her husband scowled again. "She's a nurse, though you can't tell when she acts dumb like this."

Lassiter's tone was edgy. "What kind of nursing?"

Pat didn't seem to have heard her husband's insult. "I—I—does that matter? It's all the same, really."

"It's not all the same, really," he said politely. "Pediatrics? Geriatrics?"

"Surgical," Harry barked. "What are you getting at?"

"Mrs. Fisher, I think we need you to come down to the police station with us," Lassiter went on, still calm, because like Juliet, he knew that the question of the murderer's access to succinylcholine had just been answered.

"Hold on now. She may not be that bright but she's my wife and you're not taking her anywhere."

"Like you're that bright," Shawn said as if he weren't a foot shorter than Harry. "Killing Bambi like that. Over and over and over and—"

"Shawn, shut it." Juliet held up her badge to Harry Fisher. "Sir, we are taking your wife in for questioning. It's possibly nothing, but we—"

"The hell you are," he snarled, grabbed Pat by the arm, shoved her out of the room, and in the next second had yanked the rifle out of its rack on the wall. "This is loaded, and you're leaving."

"We are police officers," Juliet said firmly, "and threatening a police officer is a—"

"Don't care!" he bellowed, fired the rifle into the ceiling over Shawn's head, and took off into the depths of the house.

"Son of a bitch," Lassiter breathed, while Shawn hurriedly shook plaster out of his hair. "Call it in," he told her, and went for the other rifle.

"That one's broken," Shawn said. "See, the doohickey is all a-thwack. You don't have your gun?"

"Spencer, I'm on leave!"

"So you don't have your other gun either?"

Of all times for Lassiter's new way of life to affect them. Juliet quickly called for backup, told Shawn to stay where he was, knew he would ignore her, and the three of them headed into the unknown.

. . . .

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