No willful tricks or deceptions
may be placed on the reader
other than those played legitimately
by the criminal on the detective himself.

S.S. Van Dine
20 Rules for Writing Detective Stories, ca. 1928

-x-

6.

Shawn had made it to his favorite place in the SBPD station: the often unused video room. It was dark, had a big table, comfortable chairs, and was probably the only room in the building that didn't contain a nasty odor of moldy mop or damp socks. His head was comfortably at rest on the crook of his arm. He was as boneless and relaxed as he could be. His mind, on the other hand, kept up a constant rotation of thoughts.

He was in such a catatonic state that he didn't even raise his eyes when the room to the video door opened and closed. Knowing the sound of his father's walk, Shawn remained motionless, hopeful to disqualify himself from holding any sort of conversation with his dad. Not really what he wanted right then.

Something slid across the table and hit him lightly in the arm.

"I brought you some tea."

"Yeah, because that'll make everything better."

Henry had learned to decipher Shawn's muffled speech decades ago. Affectionately, he ruffled up the hair on the back of his boy's head. "Come on, it's not that bad. They were just trying to help. How were they supposed to know it'd lead back to the Hayworths?"

"Because everything in my life leads back to the Hayworths." Now Shawn lifted his head, lolling it around, wincing at the dull pains pulsating around his eyes. Dad looked pretty awful, too. "Were you in on it?"

Henry said nothing, but he wasn't so good at hiding guilt from Shawn.

"Dad, seriously? You too? Was the whole department in on it? 'I know, let's get Shawn Spencer out of his retirement and make him chase that old sea chest!'" He jumped from the chair, skidding it across the floor. Once up, he paced angrily back and forth, trying to reason it out in his mind. "Why didn't everyone else just mind their own business? I was fine before—fine not working cases and doing something else with my life."

"But you're missing the point," Henry argued. "The point is that Lassiter still found that third trunk. And you were right all those years ago, Shawn. There were three. And at first Lassiter couldn't believe you were right. He told me about it and the whole thing just sort of snowballed from there. You just picked a shit day to see Mrs. Glass about it, that's all."

Shawn stared at him—hard. Henry felt miniature daggers surging through the shield over his feelings. He was disappointed in himself.

"All right. No. Lassiter and I did not do our due diligence when we set this whole thing up. We didn't check to see if Mrs. Glass and her creepy, mousy groundskeeper had a connection to the Hayworths. Why in a million years would we think of that? All the Hayworths are, as you know, dead. If they're not dead, they don't live in Santa Barbara anymore—and that's a fact, Shawn. We just thought we were doing what was best for you. It backfired. Don't be pissed at Lassiter for it. Or me, for that matter, but I'd take the blame for Carlton. He really had no idea. None of us did."

Shawn supposed that was true. The sting of the situation, the helplessness of it, hadn't left him. The coating over his father's often fumbled words were toxically sweet. Shawn fidgeted, looking at the ground. "I want to talk to Carlton. Could you ask him to come in?"

Henry nodded, not adding a word. He got up, patted Shawn on the shoulder, and took off into the precinct's open area of detective desks. Lassiter was sharpening pencils. Trying to keep his thoughts occupied the last twenty minutes had been fairly difficult. Downright challenging, in fact. No, worse than that: impossible. A glaze of hope crossed him as he noticed Henry's approach.

"Shawn will see you in his office," Henry quipped, adding a sardonic smirk.

Shawn didn't call the video room his office, but he did often refer to it as a tree house. It had a lot of wood, and a kind of elemental feeling about it. Twice, Carlton rapped knuckles on the shut door, then was hailed to enter. Standing in the middle of the crowded room, Carlton found Shawn irritated and tense—not that he'd been expecting something else.

"Sit," Shawn commanded, kicking the leg of the nearest chair.

Carlton sat, rearranging his tie nervously. The intensity of the silence burned his heart. "Shawn? I want you to know how sorry I am."

Shawn's annoyance wasn't easily absolved. "I know you're sorry," he said, tone flat with anger. "What you did was hurtful and embarrassing to me, and I know you're smart enough to know that. And you also know that I'm not going to forget about it and forgive you right away. It was an elaborate plan, Lass, I'll give you that."

"But not elaborate enough. I didn't know about Homer's father working for them, that it would lead you—" He quit talking while Shawn waved him to silence.

"I didn't expect you to know that. I'm not angry at you about that. It's the embarrassment factor, actually. And sorta-kinda the lie factor. And it was elaborate. I mean, you did have to find a way for me to get to notice the trunk in the first place. Right? Getting me to look in a magazine that I've never opened before—that takes intelligence and a little bit of mischievousness."

"That was Gus's idea." Should that disassociate him with it even slightly. The way Shawn seethed, the only thing that'd help Carlton out of the doghouse was time—and plenty of it. All the sudden, Carlton knew what he'd done, how awfully he'd behaved in Shawn's eyes. "I belittled your life, didn't I? I made it seem like what you're doing now isn't important."

Shawn endured the weight of tears hitting the back of his eyes. It was a relief to hear Carlton say so. "Yes," he mumbled, nodding. "You did do that. Not just you. Everyone else, too." He let Carlton take a hold of his arms and press them together, just for a second before he pulled away. "I respect your work and everything you do. I even like the way you double knot the garbage bags when you gather trash on Sunday nights. I even like the way you almost constantly ask if I'm okay when I get to breathing so hard when we're in bed. I even like the way you tell me not to eat the chicken marsala on my plate because it might be too hot and I'll burn my tongue. These are the little ways you respect me and look out for me. This was wrong, and you knew it when you did it."

Carlton's face was beet red. He wasn't sure if he was going to throw up or cry. One or the other would have to happen as soon as Shawn dismissed him—which was sure to happen any second. "I am sorry that I—"

"But," Shawn clipped the word, making Carlton shut up, "I am glad you were there this morning. I should've—I don't know—shouldn't have gone except that I felt like I had to go." Shawn saw Carlton wanting to sweep him into his arms. He quickly caused a detour by holding up a palm. "I haven't forgiven you. I just understand where you're coming from. It'll take me a while to forget this happened, if I ever do. And it'll take you a good long while," he inhaled and let it out as he talked, "to respect my life as it is now, little and insignificant and different as it might be."

"I don't think your life is little, Shawn."

"But?"

"But I miss having you bug me at work sometimes, all right? I liked your hair-brained ideas, the way you solved things with thoughts and concepts I can't even grasp. You were good at it. You're good at the other stuff, too. No one can bullshit his way through an astrology forecast with your level of sensitivity and humor—" Carlton sighed, returning to the maudlin. "But you were good at this, too. I wanted you to remember that."

He tapped Shawn's cheek, the one turned toward him, and left a kiss there. He walked out, hoping he'd reached Shawn in a way that would tighten their bond rather than pull them further apart.

Shawn returned to the seat he'd vacated. His legs had refused to hold him up another second. That talk hadn't gone very well.

He sipped the tea his father had brought him. Was there a way out of this? And who was the corpse? What was her story?

Lassiter hadn't been sitting in his desk more than fifteen seconds before the great bodily giant known as McNab appeared. Pained and almost flinching, Lassiter took in McNab's sympathy—and his relayed request.

"Chief wants to see you." He watched the detective throw a palm across his haggard face. This wasn't going to get easier. "It's probably about Shawn more than the dead woman. Haven't gotten an I.D. on her yet."

Lassiter took a second to speak his mind. When he did, he was direct and to the point. "It's really unsettling that half this police station constantly interferes with my relationship with Shawn."

"Well, we're just your big fat annoying extended police family."

"That makes me John Corbett," Lassiter mumbled. He straightened a little, able to live with that.

"And Shawn's Nia Vardalos. Without the puffy white dress. And no cousins named Nick. Don't feel too bad, Detective. All of us here like the two of you together. It makes us happy. You'd better take this." He dished a folder to Lassiter. "It's just some follow-up that we finished at the mansion. Hey, how'd you know to go to the back of the house before the front of the house? Gus said that they didn't see you until they saw you at the fountain."

Sometimes listening to McNab, or anyone in the building, was like listening to a comedy sketch show while under the influence of a massive sleep deprivation. Carlton thought he might've decoded McNab's question. "I heard the fountain. I knew the house was closed up, so I figured someone had been there, or was there, messing around. Actually," he shrugged mildly, almost ashamed to admit it, "I thought Shawn might've done something, maybe turned the fountain on."

"He does get himself into a lot of pickles. Big jars of pickles," assessed McNab. "Chief's waiting," he muttered, taking off.

In the chief's office, Carlton wisely shut the door behind him—softly. He didn't need to attract more attention to himself. But he got it: Vick stood up behind her desk, a sure sign that anger simmered beneath the surface.

"Sit." Vick directed him to a chair.

Immediately enswathed in deja vu, Carlton executed the command. On his lap, the crisp new folder. He cleared his throat as he opened it.

"I have a few theories about this, Chief, and I—"

"Save your theories until we know who she is. I'm having Dobson run through Missing Persons now. We'll find her." Karen slipped into her own seat, sure that Lassiter knew he hadn't been called in solely because of the body in the fountain. Unable to imagine what had exactly occurred between Shawn and her best detective, she was nonetheless interested. "What did Shawn say when he found out?"

Carlton inhaled, heart thumping. "Everything I thought he'd say when I was planning the thing. Do you think I'm an idiot?"

Karen waited. Was he asking her, or was he repeating his conversation with Shawn?

"Well, I'm not an idiot," continued Carlton. "I knew he would find out what I'd done, that I'd planned the whole thing—more or less. But I didn't expect the Hayworths to come into it, and I didn't expect that Shawn would go back to that house."

Karen grimaced for his sake, for her own when she realized the heightened level of her confusion. So, it was true that Lassiter did know Shawn better than anyone else. Who would've doubted it? Even Gus had thought Shawn wouldn't find out that nearly everyone in the police department knew of Lassiter's plan to raise Shawn's sagging interest in crime-solving. None of that helped her. "But what did Shawn say?"

"That I lied to him and embarrassed him, belittled his life. Which is true. I did. I owned up to it. Maybe that's good enough. Maybe it's not. Do you want me on this case, Chief, or don't you?"

Falling back into her role, Vick waved a hand at him. "I haven't made a decision yet. It'll be you or Arlette, I guess. I don't want O'Hara working on it. She has as many bad associations with that house as Shawn."

Carlton tightened his mouth. True, O'Hara had shot Scobie just after Scobie had tried shooting Shawn to death. O'Hara had succeeded. Gladly, Scobie hadn't. Carlton hadn't seen Shawn until he was at the hospital, the second he was rushed in. "Good decision, Chief, regarding O'Hara. She's having a hard time with that armed robbery, anyway. I might take McNab on this one, unless you protest."

"Why McNab? You can't stand him."

An irrefutable observation. But who could Carlton really stand, except O'Hara? "Because he wants to take his exam again and he could use the work. Plus, his family's been around this town for ages. He knows a thing or two about the Hayworth place."

It was clear that Karen didn't believe McNab capable of such a thing.

"No, really. Watch." Carlton held up a finger, turned his head and yelled into the bowels of the building. "MCNAB! GET IN HERE!"

He barreled into the office five seconds later, eager to be of use.

"Tell our esteemed chief what year the Hayworth house was built."

"Eighteen ninety-eight." McNab didn't flub or hesitate. "Although that was really the second house, the first one having been built in 1873 and burned to smithereens. Many a local historian will gladly tell you that the house was set on fire by a mad servant they had working for them at the time. But that story was never actually proved, and there's no record of the Hayworths even keeping servants until the second house was built, as I said, twenty-five years after the first one. Between Seventy-three and Ninety-eight, the family spent a lot of their time traveling through Europe, though they kept a smaller house on Nova Place. Construction for their new house started in 1890. There were a lot of delays and changes before it was finished, and the family moved in sometime in May of 1898."

Vick rubbed an ache out of her temple, eyes momentarily closed. "How do you know all of this, McNab?"

"I read a lot of Shawn's notes. The ones he took before he got—er—shot. And, also, my cousin wrote a book about a lot of the local historic homes here in town. She's really into architectural history. And, you know, I have a theory—"

"The chief doesn't want our theories until we know who the victim is." Lassiter filled him in, and he quieted. It sorta made sense to them.

But Vick was curious. She hoped Dobson soon had the woman identified. It'd make everyone's day a little better. Probably not Shawn's, though. "You'd better take Shawn home," she said to Carlton. "I'm sure he's had enough excitement for one day, and something tells me he won't be interested in this case. You can go home yourself, if you want."

"I'll call you when the vic's I.D. comes in," McNab offered to his superior officer. Shawn really should go home. Lassiter, too.

"I'm not sure he'll let me take him home," Carlton admitted. Though not quite ready to try his luck with Shawn, he gave his compatriots nods of gratefulness, for their sympathy, their understanding—and for being his big fat annoying extended police family.

Lassiter bypassed asking Shawn if he wanted to go home. Instead, he relegated the duty to Shawn's father. Seemed far more painless that way.

Henry griped about it, and wasn't above mentioning his reasons for disliking the idea. "You're a wuss sometimes, Lassiter. You gotta have more backbone to deal with Shawn. I'm not taking him home. You do it."

So far, it was the closest Henry had come to saying what he'd thought for two years, that Shawn and Carlton were a damn fine couple, as long as they stood up for one another. Even their fights were short, brief and ridiculous. This, though, was certainly important and significant. It couldn't be ignored and forgotten after a few hours, or smoothed by a few solemn apologies.

Taking umbrage at Henry's insightful quip, Carlton returned to the video room. He knew that the best way to deal with Shawn then would be to command him. There was no asking to take him home. There'd be a direct order.

"I'm taking you home," he said as soon as he was inside. It'd gone unnoticed that Shawn was on the phone. Shawn made a gesture for him to wait, a sign that Carlton took as favorable. Shawn couldn't stay angry at him forever… It was almost all right if Shawn stayed angry an hour or two. Carlton would've been.

Off the phone, Shawn passed the pertinent information along to Carlton, though the heat of frustration continued to color the tips of his ears. "That was Sean. His room at the hotel is ready, so he's taking his stuff over there. Before you ask how he's doing that, I'll tell you: his rental car. We're going to hang out later. What'd you say you wanted? To take me home?"

Carlton refused to entertain one iota of jealousy regarding Shawn's relationship with a hunky actor. For one thing, Sean was married. Shawn would've been married by then if he'd just said yes. Carlton's brow took on a twitch. Stress was flung at him from all directions. He hated bickering with Shawn; this was no minimal dispute, either. Unfortunately. He hated having Jane Does on slabs in Woody's office, too. "Um—yes, I'm taking you home."

So the afternoon lunch at Cafe Del Sol was off, then. Okay. Shawn could deal with that, but it didn't help get the point across to anyone. "I'm really all right." Maybe less all right than he'd let on the last hour, sure, but everyone stretches the truth once in a while. If ever he needed to, now was one of those times. "I'm more upset about it for Sean's sake than mine."

The pun was irresistible. "And I'm more upset it for my Shawn's sake than Sean's sake."

Shawn didn't find this so funny that he busted a gut laughing. A smirk touched his mouth and that was all. Out of the chair abruptly, scooting it back in place—he tried to leave the video room as tidy as he'd found it—Shawn permitted Lassie to take him home. Before Sean stopped by, some alone-time would provide time to write down his thoughts, digest what he'd seen and what'd happened.

But on their way out, in front of the Administration desk, Lassiter's pocket blurted, and he took a call he related to Shawn thirty seconds later. He didn't tell Shawn who'd called. "I have a stop to make on the way."

The stop was the county coroner's office. Shawn insisted that a wait in the car was fine with him. Watching Lassie disappear behind the dark glass doors, Shawn's interest escalated. Either Woody, with Dobson's research expertise, had found the woman's identity already, or it was something else far more powerful than a name.

Woody brightened at Shawn Spencer's unhurried, nearly cautious entry into the bowels of the small office. "Ah! There he is! There he is," Woody repeated, wrapping blue-gloved hands around Shawn and pressing him into the white lapels of his lab coat, thankfully clean. "Aw, our boy's found his way back to the dead and those who can't speak for themselves! I've missed you, Spencer the Younger. I really have."

Shawn tapped Woody's elbows, hoping to be let go soon. Really soon. Like, three seconds ago. Was Woody smelling his hair?

"That's our Shawn! Same old greasy coconut smell, like cooking spray," Woody commented about Shawn's hair-scent. He turned back to Detective Lassiter, grinning in his unnerving way. "I do so love it when the kids smell like kids."

Carlton tried to reach for Shawn's arm, but Shawn took a full step to the side. Shawn: 3. Carlton: 0.

"I sensed that I should be here for this." Shawn's voice was moody and soft, and most of it wasn't acting. "Something about the fountain water, Woody? What's up with the fountain water?"

"Right you are, my heroic, super-powered friend." Woody held up a phial of somewhat clear liquid.

"It looks like water," Carlton said, grumpier than usual.

Woody wasn't immune to the tensions that lovers' spats created, and Shawn and Carlton were in the middle of a doozy. "I see that the two of you are going through an ordeal, more personal than not—am I right? So I'll make this quick and let you get back to ironing out your issues."

Neither Carlton nor Shawn wanted to say anything.

"Does everyone know our business?"

By not acknowledging it, Shawn devalued Carlton's facetious question. Instead, perhaps to pique Lassie's aggravation, Shawn rooted around in his repertoire of expressions for one that was both accepting and hurtful. "Thanks, Woody. Lassie and I appreciate your understanding. Tell me, what do you do when your wife gets you to do something through an artful lie?"

Woody's smile was flat, humorless. Was that what'd happened? Leave it to Lassiter… But Woody supposed even psychics like Shawn couldn't see every wall they were about to hit. "If that happens, and it rarely has—though one time she got me to go to a nude beach in Greece, only it turned out to not be a nude beach—it was a lot like that episode of The Golden Girls when they found themselves—" Wait, what was Shawn's original question? "If she lies to me, I see how clever it was, appreciate her for that, then I make her mow the grass. She hates mowing the grass."

That was no good. Lassie already mowed the grass—and took out the garbage. Shawn supposed he could make Lassie do his own laundry for the next month. Lassie hated doing the laundry. Antithetically, Shawn loved it. Throw it in the washer, leave it. Throw it into the dryer, leave it. And everything came out so fluffy and warm and clean! No, Shawn would miss doing the laundry for four straight weeks. He could just make Lassie iron his shirts. That was a bigger torture. And they could bond whenever Shawn applied dollops of Neosporin to Lassie's tiny iron burns.

Carlton wouldn't let Shawn think about this longer than necessary. "What about the fountain water, Woody?"

"Oh! Right! Sorry, I just get so involved in the lives of my coworkers. It's like a reality TV show around here. So—fountain water. Right. Well, here's a big secret: It's not fountain water."

Shawn had anticipated this. "Is it seawater?"

"Winner, winner, chicken dinner, Mr. Spencer! It's just old-fashioned seawater, bits of kelp in it." He held up a plastic slide with the bits of kelp on it. "Kelp's native, from around here. So, when she drowned it was in shallow seawater somewhere along our wonderful coastline. But that's only one of three different ways she could've died."

It was worthwhile to see the looks on Lassiter's and Shawn's faces. Even Lassiter's ears seemed to droop right along with his jaw.

"What?"

"One of three?" repeated Shawn.

"One of three," Woody said for the second time. He showed examples on the body. "See these? Abrasions. I didn't find any debris in them, thanks to the water. I'm not sure what they're from. Could be wood. Could be rocks. But from the work of the Crime Scene Unit, it doesn't look like she was killed at the mansion."

CSU hadn't recovered any new blood at the house. Carlton's jaw tightened for a moment. "What's option three?"

"Oh," Woody had almost forgotten, "heart attack, actually. She had quite the weak ticker. She was in the process of having a fairly fatal heart attack when she was killed. I haven't heard from Officer Dobson yet about the identity of the woman. But she's between thirty and forty-five. No distinguishing marks. Probably has a kid or two out there."

Shawn's heart went cold. A mother. That figured.

Woody droned on to what he believed was a receptive audience. "At least one. Tailbone's had a minor fracture, usually a common affliction for women during the birth of live young. Only in humans, though. We're the only species illy adapted for giving birth. Well, the women of our species are. Men, definitely not. There is that story of the transgender man who gave birth to his own children. Absolutely fascinating."

Shawn wanted Woody to stop talking, but his thoughts toiled around seawater. "Anything else, Woody?"

"—she told me a tall tale once of a fisherman who'd given birth to baby lobsters but I—what? Oh, no, that's pretty much all that's interesting. Time of death is somewhere between five a.m. and seven a.m. this morning. And she did have a few body piercings. And I said 'did have' for a reason: they've closed up, and some have left scars. I didn't know what the scars were at first, because they were on her areolae and—wow!—who'd want piercings there, huh?" Woody rubbed his own nipples through his clothes, sympathetic to their sensitivity. "And also one in her upper pinna," he pinched his own upper right pinna to demonstrate, "and one in her nose. But, like I said, they've been closed up for years. Looks like someone in the post-Grunge era that might've come to regret her wild side."

"Post-Grunge era," Lassiter said, feeling around for conclusions, "that'd be the middle-late Nineties, wouldn't it? So she could be," he glanced at the handsome man next to him, "Shawn's age."

Woody calculated this. "I don't know. Can't say I know how old you are, Spencer the Younger." He threw his common affability into the statement.

It should be illegal for someone to be that cheery at work, Shawn thought. "I knew plenty of people around that time who got piercings and lived to regret it, sure."

Woody grimaced and patted his beloved nipples again. "Yeah, I can see why."

A fuzzy stare of Shawn's landed on the sheet covering the body. Without thinking, and moving too swiftly for Lassie or Woody to stop him, Shawn whipped back sheet's hem and revealed her face. He didn't know her. For a second, he wondered if it could've been an old classmate, if it was true that she was close to his age and, presumably, local. But he didn't know her. Somehow, that made it less weird. But he looked at her again, the shape of her chin, the roundness of her nose. She wasn't familiar, but pieces of her—a curve, a wrinkle in her bottom lip—were familiar. Shawn slid the sheet back into place.

"What is it?" Lassiter asked him.

"I don't know yet."

Phone ringing, Lassiter lifted it from hiding and gave the caller a grumpy greeting. Shawn heard a thanks, the brush of cloth as Carlton returned the phone to his pocket.

"Dobson. They think they've identified her."

Shawn noticed Carlton was far more perplexed and bothered than he'd been a minute ago. Might be someone they knew, after all. But, oddly, her name was not the first question Shawn asked. "How'd they I.D. her?"

"Her husband came into the shop and reported her missing. McNab and Kennedy are bringing him over now."

"They don't have to—"

"I know that," Carlton said, fuse to his short temper burning quickly. "I know he doesn't have to come in to see the body to identify it. But he wants to see it. Let's get out of here. I still have to take you home. And Woody's office is not exactly spacious."

"Yeah," Woody said, not offended by the observation. "I wish there was a way I could open it up a bit more in here. I'd love to have a sofa, and possibly a wet bar. Well, thanks for dropping by, kids. The next time I see you, I hope you'll be in love again."

Carlton rubbed the annoyance out of his face, and Shawn's neck throbbed with the heat of humiliation and anguish.

"Oh, wait, that reminds me. I got you something." Back in his office, Woody found the present and returned to them promptly. He gave to Lassiter an elegantly wrapped box, flat and small. "Happy anniversary, you two crazy lovebirds."

No one had given them anything, which was probably Shawn's fault—at least as Shawn saw it. He'd been too busy insisting that everyone help pull off the Pony at the Station prank that he'd used up their time and their goodwill, and they had nothing left to think of something as trite as a present.

"Open it now," Woody urged, excited as a child. "If you don't like it, I can use it and I'll get you something else."

Carlton, without looking once at Shawn, ripped off the paper enough that he could wrestle the lid free. The bow, with its still-sticky tape, he pushed against Shawn's shoulder. It stayed until Shawn immediately removed it. It was going to be a long day. Just hoping it wasn't anything too embarrassing, Carlton found a gift certificate inside.

"One of those trail-riding places out north of Santa Ynez," Woody clarified, still thrilled to give them something they could use happily. "You know, where you rent the horses and you go around in the mountains for an hour or two. Thought you'd like it. Or—maybe you can take your own horses." He didn't really know how Shawn and Carlton's horse usage worked, knowing enough that they rode and liked horses. "Enjoy!"

On their way out, Carlton wanted to say something profound and meaningful to Shawn, but could think of nothing. Shawn wanted to continue saying nothing. It comforted him the most. None of that awkward need to apologize, say he was sorry for expecting too much…

Shawn paid attention again when Kennedy and McNab appeared, escorting their visitor. Shawn caught the man's eye, then looked away hastily. But he turn his head around for a final glance at the man. The whole exchange haunted Shawn.

In Lassiter's car, their present from Woody on his lap, Shawn went over what he'd learned of the victim. This was easier to assess than his antagonistic, seemingly unending episode with Lassie.

"I think I should make you iron your own shirts for a month," Shawn blurted out.

Carlton accepted this. "I can do that."

There—argument done.

And yet—no. Not really done.

Parked in the carport of home, the engine still running and their seat belts still fastened, Lassiter answered the phone, putting it on speaker.

"Hey, Detective, this is Officer Dobson."

"What is it?"

"It's about the Jane Doe. Her husband—uh, Zack Ingelow—identified her as his wife of twelve years, Anabel Ingelow."

"All right, thanks, Dobson. Gather the information you can and question him."

"You don't—" Dobson restarted, voice thinned by excitement and wonder. "You don't recognize the name. Detective, she was born Anabel Grayson. She's Officer Grayson's daughter."

Lassiter leaned into the seat, turning white. "Crap."