7.

With Lassiter up to his eyeballs in a strange case of death, with a cause of death not yet ruled, not yet declared an accident, natural, or homicide, Shawn endeavored to have a fun evening with Sean and Gus.

After dinner at one of of the finest burger joints in town, around for sixty years for one very good reason (that it was both hokey and delicious), they stopped at Platypus Park. The name of it nearly threw Sean into a tailspin. He'd been expecting some weird dessert place, where people munched on crickets dunked in dark chocolate or scorpions in lollipops. Instead, he found a nice cafe with an array of icy coffee beverages (all with a decaf alternative to the full-octane brew) and snacks that were handcrafted at the nearby Breezeway Bakery.

"We have to take you to the Bakery," Shawn said, the three hunkered into a booth in the back of the shop. "I know you didn't get around town much when you were living here before."

Sean was hesitant to call it living. He broke off a piece of cookie the size of a dinner plate. Too bad Jason was missing this.

"But the Breezeway Bakery is meant to be looked at," explained Gus, albeit vaguely. "It's pretty much a giant display of their history. They still use old techniques for baking many of their goods, and their recipes, as well as their ownership, has been handed down through four generations. It's an impressive place. One of those places the tourist guides don't tell you about, but that locals know and love." Gus was glad for their evening together, bugged by Shawn's dismissiveness of everything that wouldn't entertain their visitor. He tried again to talk to Shawn about the trunk. "I looked into the guy that Mrs. Glass mentioned to us, her groundskeeper, Homer."

Shawn was willing to listen, if not exactly prepared to leap into action. Things about the Hayworth mansion he'd seen that morning, and things about Anabel Ingelow's death were flashing bright red warning signals. "Stop eating your very tasty pastry a second and tell us."

"I can't help it," Gus said, pointing to the iced treat of gluttony on the plate, "this thing is delicious. Now I remember why you and I don't come here very often, Shawn." Showing good manners, Gus used a crinkly paper napkin to wipe the sides of his mouth, and had a sip of decaf iced latte before speaking on. "His name's Homer Bledsoe."

"Even the dude's name is creepy," Sean said.

Shawn agreed. "That it is, See-an. I recall the name Bledsoe when I was researching the Hayworths, fat lot of good it wound up doing me. Hospital bills. A funeral bill might've been cheaper."

Gus gaped. "That's not funny, Shawn."

"Yeah," Sean snapped, "far from funny."

"Never mind him," Gus told Laramie, "he gets morbid whenever one of his fights with Carlton lasts longer than six hours."

Shawn felt bad for the horrendous joke. Sorry he'd said it, he apologized, but said that Gus was right. He did get eerily morbid during one of his fights with Carlton. "What about Bledsoe? Is he a Bluebeard? Hiding wives in the sheds at the Hayworth mansion? No, wait, scratch that, there aren't any sheds at the mansion. There is a gatehouse, though."

"That's where his grandfather lived when he worked for the Hayworths. Homer's father, Herman, also worked for the Hayworths, but he lived off the estate. Homer Bledsoe worked briefly for the Country Club, Shawn."

This didn't surprise Shawn in the least. It probably should've. "Well, that would've been after the Hayworths' time."

"True, it was. I found an old article from the Dispatch about the thirtieth anniversary of the Club, and he was in the staff photo. Jefferson Roberts should know all about Bledsoe, or at least more than I do."

It was a name from Shawn's life that Sean didn't recognize. "Who's Jefferson Roberts?"

"He's my boss," Shawn answered. "Well, not exactly my boss."

"Yes, exactly your boss," corrected Gus. "He's your superior, and he has the ability to fire your ass."

"If he wants my ass to work harder, he should just ask it. Its review is coming up next month, and we're both very titillated."

Sean appreciated the humor. Gus—not so much.

Owning to a long day of work and finding a dead body, Gus wanted to get home early. Early for him was roughly eight-thirty. Time to hang out with Juliet and prepare his route for Friday. He and Juliet liked to have a fifteen-minute meditation every night before going to sleep, too, to help clear away the bothersome stuff of the day. Gus thought he might need to double-up his meditation time that evening.

Relieved that Shawn and Sean wanted to slip inside the house for a minute to say hello to Juliet, Gus conned Shawn into the kitchen so he could have a private word.

"You need to go home. Quit hanging around with Laramie and let the man rest already. And put Carlton's mind at ease. You're not really that angry at him. If you were, you'd be angry at me and Juliet, too. We helped."

Shawn despaired. He lacked the energy to spread around so much useless resentment. "I know you did, you and Juliet, not to mention my dad. Yeah, you all helped. Maybe I'm just angrier at Lassie for some other things, things that have no connection to the rest of you. Don't worry, I'll figure it out. And See-an and I are just going to do a couple more things before we call it quits for the night. How about you and I go back to the mansion in the morning, just the two of us?"

Gus was extremely displeased. "Why do you want to go back there?"

"I just want to check a couple of things out, that's all. Then we can find Homer Bledsoe and get him to let us see the trunk."

"You still want to find the trunk."

"Of course I do. You know how I feel about giving up on things."

"You used to be pretty good at it, giving up on things. I had to talk you into staying at high school four times, and in the end I think you really only stayed to ogle Abigail. And maybe Jamie Brothgate."

"The guy had some serious cheekbones. How did he not turn out to be a male model?" Shawn conceded, shrugging limply. "All right, so maybe we shouldn't look into the trunk-slash-sea chest thing anymore. Is that what you want me to say?"

Gus got confused. "Don't turn this around on me. That tactic won't work this time. I'll pick you up at nine o' clock. There'd better not be another dead body at the mansion, Shawn, that's all I'm saying."

That sentence took Shawn another ten minutes to fully unravel. Another dead body—as opposed to what, the single dead body they'd found that morning, or the one dead body they'd found that morning and the one almost-dead body of Shawn Spencer they'd found months ago?

Sean was aware that his friend's mind was elsewhere, occasionally in the present, but mostly in the past. Shawn lived more in the past than anyone he'd ever met. "Want to talk about it?"

"I appreciate it, but I don't think we really have the time."

"I don't know about you, but I've kinda got all night."

"That's true. And, for once, so do I."

Unsure about Shawn blowing off any attempt to reconcile with Carlton, Sean was willing to believe that Shawn would act responsibly. Sean had his own issues, too, unworthy things pressing against his conscience. "Well, let's go to my hotel. It's a suite, nice sitting room where we can dish our problems to one another. Just let me stop at the front desk and make a request."

Shawn guessed that See-an wanted to check to see if Jason had finally shown up and taken the key Sean had left for him. When See-an returned to Shawn by the elevators, in an alcove away from the main lobby, it was obvious that Jason hadn't put an appearance.

Through two bottles of wine and started on the third, Shawn's phone started chirping at him. He could hear it through the tingles in his brain and the soft drone of his own voice, the thrum of music in the background. Lassiter kept messaging him, and Shawn kept dismissing the messages. Then his dad messaged him. No messages from Gus, though. It was eleven-thirty and Gus was in bed.

Shawn wriggled out of the chair, his butt sore from having sat so long and his legs wobbly. "I really need to do something about this floor. It's moving again."

Sean laughed. "I hate it when that happens."

Stomping his foot seemed to make the dizzying carpet stand still. "Stop moving! I'm trying to walk on you!"

They were horribly drunk and they knew it. Shawn went to the suite's kitchenette for a glass of water, and used ice from the bucket that kept the wine cool—what were those wine bucket's called, were they just called wine buckets?—and made his ice water icier and cooler and waterier.

"I don't know what they call them," See-an was saying. Shawn had had no awareness that he'd been rambling about the wine bucket thingy out loud. How novel that he could talk and not be aware of it. He drank down the whole glass of water, but carried the glass of ice with him to the bedroom.

"I'm going to watch TV for a while," Shawn said. His shins hit the end of the mattress far sooner than he thought they would. He felt around in the darkened room for the nightstand, leaving his glass on it, and slowly dribbled to the bed. It smelled good—very clean. But he could only smell wine on his breath and the outdoors stuck to his clothes, at least until See-an wandered in. He tipped as he walked. Shawn thought he looked like a boat, and spoke aloud, too.

"I feel like a boat," Sean returned, palms reaching the end of the bed and his belly flattening to it. "Ah, that's no good at all. Still—moving—too—much. I thought you were going to watch TV."

Shawn realized he hadn't gotten around to turning the TV on. Slapping the remote, the giant flatscreen ignited. A late-night talk show was just ending. Was it that late already? He flipped through channels, stopping at a movie with a man and a woman kissing. "I know this movie—I think I know this movie." He watched, captivated by the kisses and the bucolic imagery, by the fact that he knew the movie but couldn't think of its name or who the man and woman were.

"I miss Jason," Sean muttered through a sigh. He finished off whatever number of gulps had been left in his oversized red-wine glass. His hand patted Shawn on the thigh, an effort to show their dilemmas of domestic discord. "You must miss Carlton, too."

It was far more pleasant to kiss someone he loved than to watch it on the screen. "Yeah," Shawn said, "yeah, I do."

-x-

Carlton didn't like the look of the hotel suite when he entered. It smelled like feet and old wine, for one thing. For another, there was no obvious sign of Shawn and Laramie. A very not-good thing. He'd already spent a semi-sleepless night wondering what in the hell had happened to Shawn, but stuck to the secret plan he'd executed to bring Sean and Jason together again. And, so far, he neglected to leap to monstrous conclusions. If Shawn was in that hotel room somewhere, there had to be an explanation for it.

Unfortunately, Jason Laramie's brain was not the methodical beast then lodged in Carlton Lassiter's skull. Jason had been dealing with jealousy and his spouse for many years. Sean never strayed, of course, but temptations were temptations for a reason, and for a daytime television idol, temptations were plentiful.

"I don't think we should—" Carlton's warning that they stay calm fell on deaf ears.

Jason sprang for the bedroom. Reluctantly, Carlton followed, and stopped dead right across the threshold. Even though he'd spotted Shawn and Laramie under the covers together, Carlton wasn't too anxious to think everything was how it appeared. But the four bottles of wine in the other room—they failed to make him feel optimistic about the whole thing. He could hear Jason gulping on unfinished sobs.

Jason faced Lassiter. "Get him out of here before I strangle him."

Carlton assumed Jason meant Shawn—his Shawn. Sucking in a breath to calm himself, and hoping to any and all deities of the pantheon that Shawn had pants on, Carlton gripped the end of the bed covers, hesitating a second. He looked at Shawn's profile, the good chin, heavy nose and lips parted in the relaxation of sleep. In another second, he'd know if it was the last time he'd be able to look at Shawn without feeling sick. If it was that bad, how were they going to get through it? But jumping to conclusions wouldn't solve anything. It didn't even help in murder investigations. Carlton made the covers fly back, off both Shawn and Sean. Neither woke. Across the comatose bodies, Carlton and Jason matched heartbroken gazes.

While Jason's hand came down sharply across Sean's cheek, Carlton turned away. He found the majority of Shawn's clothes haphazardly in one corner. And when he got back to the bed, Shawn was awake, bewildered but moving. Pounds of clothes landed on him, and a smelly sock fell across his nose. He brushed it off, sniveling. Carlton couldn't have planned it better if he'd tried.

"Get your clothes on and meet me in the other room," Carlton demanded through teeth clenched to keep them from chattering. "You have thirty seconds."

Shawn, shaking, raced into his jeans and shirt, shoving a sock in his pocket. Toward Jason and See-an, he gave the briefest, humblest look of apology, but it'd take more than that to fix this. He looked at Sean and knew they hadn't done anything. At least, he was pretty sure they hadn't done anything. It wasn't even required that he and Sean say that they would talk to one another later, because of course they would. They had to know exactly how much trouble their significant others were going to put them in. Shawn thought it'd be fair if he got tarred, feathered and quartered for it—if, in fact, he'd actually done anything. He wasn't sure. Not knowing terrified him. Was he capable of committing infidelity while inebriated? Was he really that stupidly cliché?

Carlton pushed and shoved Shawn out of the hotel room, and out of the hotel. To Shawn's surprise, halfway to Carlton's car he spotted Juliet. Evidently on her way to see what the hold-up had been, she halted at the sight of them. Shawn saw her disappointment, too. He got hit on the back of his head with Carlton's open hand, and forced forward a second later. Juliet grabbed hold of him to keep his momentum from carrying him too far. He was mightily hungover, head aching, stomach turning, vision blurry. He would've been perfectly happy kissing the parking lot's pebbly, dirty pavement.

"Take him and get him out of my sight," Carlton told O'Hara. "I don't even want to look at him right now!"

He got into his car and drove off, leaving them somewhat stranded at the China Tree Hotel on the north side of town. Juliet smacked Shawn on the face, lighter, more sympathetically than angrily. There were tears in her eyes.

"Please tell me that you didn't do anything that would make me ashamed of you."

"Don't I usually?"

"Shawn."

"I don't know what happened," he said, shaking his head, ashamed.

"I'm catching a very strong whiff of what happened."

Being nice about it hadn't gotten him anywhere. He could try being crass. "Well, it couldn't have been anything too serious because parts of me that are commonly sore after such things are not so sore today. That's a good sign."

"Ugh," Juliet grumbled, hiking her eyes to Heaven. But maybe that was a good thing, just a little more perverted than she was used to hearing from Shawn—ever—let alone at nine-thirty in the morning. "Gus is going to have kittens when I tell him. And I'm going to tell him—right now." She sent the call on her cell to her husband. "We found him. It doesn't look good. You'd better come to the China Tree and give us a ride." She hung up. "He's on his way. Shawn, you're in a serious dilemma. Carlton's never had trouble with you, ever, ever."

"Please don't start, Jules. Don't. If you do, and if you start crying, I'll start crying, and I really make it a rule not to cry because of something stupid I did that hurt a lot of people." It was a lie, of course. If he cried for anything, it'd be that.

Juliet took a bottle of water and some ibuprofen from her bag. "Take three of these and I'll give you the granola bar I've been carrying around for a month. I never did wind up eating it when I thought I was pregnant."

That was a fun-filled week, Shawn recalled, swallowing his angel's offered panacea. Juliet had thought that her constant hunger and need to snack was the result of hormones, and the second person growing inside of her. For a solid week she'd thought the doctor's test wrong, convinced that she was pregnant. Granted, none of them had quite believed it, least of all Gus. He knew perfectly well that his wife's appetite had come from two things, and one of them was less believable than the other. The first was a depression she'd slipped into while Shawn recuperated in the hospital. Depression did have a way of making people seek comfort through food, without realizing it. The second was Shawn's insistence that Juliet was being strongly aspected by a transiting Jupiter. While in the hospital, Shawn had done a lot of astrology work, and even predicted that Gus's company would trade in the Blueberry for something new.

If Juliet mentioning it was a way of drawing attention away from Shawn's plight, it'd worked for about five seconds. Shawn collapsed on the bench near the hotel's portico, face in his hands. Juliet sat with him, rubbing his back.

Shawn could just imagine how easily he had it compared to See-an's verbal row then taking place in room 312. "I really don't think we did anything," he told Juliet again, but regarded her hurtfully. "But I'm not positive we didn't. He's a very attractive man, and I'm an idiot. Ten times more an idiot when I drink. Remind me not to drink ever again. You'd think I'd learned that by now."

"You probably just got carried away. It's been a rough few days."

They sat in silence for a while, detached from the situation and each other, though Shawn couldn't think of anything else but what'd happened. Had that even really happened? It seemed so unlike him, and anything unlike him seemed impossible. But someone had once said that even the word 'impossible' implied possibility. He massaged his aching eyes, burning from lack of sleep, alcoholomania, and a need for a good cry. He hated breaking things and hurting people through his own stupidity.