Brought to You by Murder

by Antje

Months have flown by since Shawn's investigated anything more than a sock lost in the laundry. But enjoying his other talents, and keeping his and Lassie's house clean (for once) soon loses some appeal: An old mystery rises from the dust of Shawn's and Gus's childhood, reviving interest and curiosity. SS/CL. JO/BG.

9. Chapter 9

A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages,
no literary dallying with side-issues,
no subtly worked-out character analyses,
no "atmospheric" preoccupations.

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

-x-

9.

Shawn felt a lot like the boy upon entering the SBPD, full of anticipation and fright, cartoonish question marks practically popping over his head. Shawn didn't want to be there, either, didn't want to face Lassiter or any other judgmental glares tossed his way. Most especially from his dad.

Dad, it turned out, was the least judgmental of all, just like he'd been earlier in the video room. By the time they were gathered in the chief's office, a stiffly professional Lassiter among them, Henry Spencer was far too pleased to see Shawn's language obsessions being so useful to everyone. It was hard not to stand there refulgent with pride. Shawn had still done a couple of stupid things that morning, and Henry couldn't forget it—no more than Lassiter could.

Vick feared a holler-fest. Tensions were running dangerously high in her office. If they didn't need Shawn to interpret little Ingelow's signing, Vick would've asked him to leave. And Lassiter had to stay; it was his case. O'Hara was there, more as a mediator than anything; it wasn't her case after Lassiter had decided to bring in McNab, also in the room and providing only the information she asked for. Gus was there, thankfully quiet. Henry, too, stood by in the mediator role. Once again, it was chiefly Lassiter and Shawn doing the talking, too much of it all at once, and too loudly. Wow, just like old times.

"I think we should arrest Spencer on grounds of trespassing," Lassiter said, throwing the word at Shawn. "He shouldn't have been at the mansion and he knows it."

Vick threw him an exasperated stare. "Carlton, he's an SBPD consultant. He's been one for eight years. You know how all of this plays out."

Gus looked impressed with Vick whipping Lassiter into place. "Nice," he murmured for Juliet. She strongly agreed it'd been well-played by Vick. The two executed a clandestine fist bump.

Carlton looked very much like he'd just been smacked. But he was undaunted. If he had to look at Shawn another second, his heart might split into little tiny pieces, and he was going to make Shawn pick them up one by one if it took a thousand years. "Chief, I request that Spencer be removed from this case." He succeeded in keeping the emotional warp out of his voice.

"Your request is noted, Detective, and denied."

"Come on, Chief! He has too strong a connection to that house, those people—"

"Those people that, so far, don't seem to have any connection to Anabel Ingelow's—" Vick stopped, not sure if she could talk like that in front of the boy. "Are you sure he can't hear us?" she asked Shawn.

"Judging by the fact that he doesn't even have any hearing aids, I'm pretty sure he's completely deaf. If you want my two cents, Chief, I'd be happy to remove myself from this case. I was investigating something completely not involved with the Hayworths—at lest I thought it wasn't involved—"

"I told you," Carlton broke in, "I didn't know Mrs. Glass' groundskeeper had a connection to the Hayworths, and I was sorry about that! You don't know how sorry I am now!"

"Not as sorry as I am!" Shawn screamed back. Emotionally reset, unable to look at Carlton a second longer, Shawn returned to the chief. "Where's Hank's dad, anyway? Someone needs to tell him about his mom. I'd rather it be his dad."

Vick's brow wrinkled. "Hank?" She flipped the corner of a paper on her desk. "The Ingelow's boy is named," a pause, knowing that as soon as she read it, Shawn would go nuts, "um, Sheridan. His name's Sheridan. Henry is his middle name."

Shawn would've gone by his middle name, too, if his name had been Sheridan. Heck, Henry wasn't that much better. "Dad, quit looking so smug. It's not like they named him after you or something."

Henry's lopsided shrug just about dared Shawn to prove that the Ingelow's hadn't named Sheridan after Henry Spencer.

"Well, I don't know what to tell you, Chief," continued Shawn, eager to get out of there, and Zack really needed to tell Hank about his mom. "He signed Hank when I met him, and so he's Hank to himself if no one else. Now, where's Zack Ingelow?"

The chief's inability to keep her eyes on his changed Shawn's whole outlook.

"You arrested him," he deduced. "I didn't see that coming. It's really hard to concentrate on all the psychic vibrations right now. Why has Zack Ingelow been arrested?"

"Various reasons, Shawn, and I assure you that we had no choice."

Shawn let Vick be intentionally vague. Since she wasn't quite convinced that Shawn would maintain an interest in the case, or that she could put up with a bickering couple working the same case, she reserved the right to withhold information.

"Children's Services will be here within the hour—as soon as I tell them to get down here ASAP," Karen went on, feeling the potent stress of her job. "If you don't want to tell Hank yourself, Shawn, wait until a professional social worker gets here."

What were they supposed to do until then?

Shawn took Hank into his favorite place, the video room. From Shawn's secret storage bin, card games and sudoku puzzles miraculously appeared. Hank did stare at Shawn as if he was some kind of wondrous magician. They played Crazy Eights without pausing to talk. Once Shawn had explained that someone from Children's Services was coming, Hank seemed more depressed, naturally so. Shawn's mood reflected his inner conflicts, but he tried to create a mellow if not upbeat atmosphere for Hank's sake. Hank never asked a single question about his parents, where they were or what'd happened to them. Shawn had a terrible feeling about it, and he was sure he wasn't the only one in the precinct to harbor that troubling sensation.

Gus and Juliet soared into the room, bringing with them healthy food and an unconvincing amiability.

"Guys, lay off the false cheeriness, would you? He's deaf, not an idiot," Shawn told them, then bit into his apple. He munched a moment. "Jules, what's really going on around here? Vick is hesitant to tell me anything, and that's perfectly fine. She has every right to hesitate, considering Lassie hates me right now. Actually, I hate me, too, so there's that."

Juliet didn't know what would happen to Shawn and Carlton. Like with everything, she and Gus had prepared for the worst but hoped for the best. If it turned out to be the worst, it was going to be awkward. "Nothing much. There aren't any real leads aside from Zack Ingelow. He's the only other one in town who knows that Anabel's here—was here. And no one's really sure why she was in town, anyway. There's not even much speculation as to why they're in town. And they didn't arrive at the same time. Anabel was here first. Zack followed her into Santa Barbara last night. He wanted to talk to her. He said she'd left, with Sheridan—sorry, Hank—and they were having a fight. As the theme goes."

"But Grayson doesn't even live here anymore," said Shawn. "She moved back to Missouri or wherever."

"Columbia, Missouri," Gus said. "She was from there originally and went back when Anabel was thirteen."

Well, to Shawn, that didn't seem important. None of it seemed important. But he did shoot up from his seat and wipe his mouth of apple juices. "I gotta see Vick for a second. Watch Hank, will you?"

He signed to Hank that he'd be right back, that he should keep an eye on Gus and Juliet because they were silly. The kid was pleased enough to keep eating his veggie sub, undisturbed by everything around him. Sheridan Henry Ingelow—what a name! What were his parents thinking? If he ever got a chance to talk to Zack Ingelow, maybe he'd ask.

In Vick's office, he was pleased to find her alone. With Lassiter's desk providing a decent view of what went on there beyond the mini-blinds, Shawn felt dreadful.

"Shut the door, Spencer, I want a word with you."

Doing as he'd been ordered, Shawn sighed. The problem with having your family centered around the police department was—was having your family centered around the police department. "I'm totally willing to hear you out on anything, Chief—Chief Karen Cleopatra Vick—" he was still pretending he didn't know her middle name "but just let me ask something first, okay?"

She leaned into her squashy desk chair, ready to listen, though keeping her right to refute. "Go on, Mr. Spencer."

"I assume that you've talked to the Columbia police already, and that they're sending a team over to investigate the Ingelow residence."

"Once again, your astuteness and almost-psychicness is impressive. Go on."

"I'd like it if the police took some photos of the boy's room—Hank's room."

For any number of reasons, Vick was surprised by the request. "I've already asked them to take photos of all the rooms. But if you want to look at those specifically, I will tell you when they arrive. Is that all?"

"Yes," he nodded, "that's all. And thanks." Aware that he was probably in for a stern lecture, Shawn took the guest chair in front of the desk and tried to get comfortable. He kept twitching—crossing arms, crossing legs, uncrossing everything; arms on the rests, off the rests, crossed again.

Vick reached the pith of the ordeal. "You really, really screwed up."

Shawn blew out a breath, mostly through his nose. Already, his face was heating up and he was sad, angry and hurt all over again. "It's kind and heartwarming of you to bring it to my attention. I feel like we're in the middle of an after-school special. And yes, yes I did screw up. There's still no proof that anything actually happened—except for the intent that something was about to happen."

"I wasn't looking for details, Shawn. And I don't make it a habit to root around in the private affairs—sorry—" she winced at her choice of words, "in the private lives of my fellow officers. I used to have a rule about officers involved with one another."

"Yeah, I remember," Shawn said, subdued.

"But since it's you, and you are ten times more aware of your mistakes than others, and I happen to think that our head detective is one of the best in the state, I need the two of you to figure out how to work together again because this police department cannot function without either of you."

Shawn was both flattered and belittled. About usual when being ripped apart by Chief Vick. "Understood, Chief," he said in a tone that held every ounce of respect and maturity. He went on, not sure why. "If there was just some way I could go back and do nothing over again, I would. Hurting Lassie was the last thing I ever wanted to do in my life. Even if I was angry at him about the trunk thing, the Bledsoe and Hayworth thing, and maybe that led to me drinking a little more—a lot more—than I should've. I wasn't so angry that I'd hurt him like that. It's been rough since I got out of the hospital."

"He was practically a stark-raving lunatic when that happened, you know," Vick said, hoping it helped. "He probably never told you how angry it'd made him. He resented himself because he'd failed to protect you. I guess he knew you were going there, but he didn't think there'd be anyone waiting to shoot you."

Shawn hadn't heard that side of it before, not even the one time he and Carlton had gone to a therapy session. "I need to mull over this," he admitted, rising. "Now that I feel significantly flogged and oddly cleansed spiritually, Chief, may I be dismissed?"

Vick's nod was minimal. She stopped him before he reached the door. "Shawn, you're a lot smarter than this. We know your stupidity is just a show you put on to keep yourself from being characterized as intelligent, since, for whatever reason, that scares you. But it's way too late now to start believing your own bullshit."

"Well said, Karen." He meant it, too. For a moment, he wondered if he'd gone deaf, catching the chief dropping some vulgar slang. Classy.

On the way back to the video room, he avoided glancing at Lassiter's desk. When he did, unable to stop himself, he saw it was empty. Ahead of the video room, Officer Tyas, one of the IT crew, cut Shawn off. Tyas gave Shawn a flash drive. "Probably seems like the worst time to give it to you, too. But I figured you'd want to have it." Tyas tore off to avoid hearing anything from Shawn.

Shawn's palm tightened around the flash drive, knowing it held the video of his and Octavia's splendid arrival into the station two days ago. And look what'd happened since then!

"Will you take this?" He gave the drive to Gus. "I'd put it in my pocket, but I can barely fit my butt in these pants. If you make me wear these again, Gus, I'm going shopping for a dance belt and you'll be helping me with my contemporary solo. Hank behave all right? He eats slow."

"That he does. I think he enjoys tasting food more than most of us." Gus put the flash drive in his pocket. "What's on that drive, anyway?"

"My stunt from the other day," was Shawn's bleak response. Returned to his seat, Shawn signed to Hank, "Did they behave all right?"

Hank smiled and nodded. "Where's Carlton?"

"Don't know," Shawn replied. "Why?"

"Just wondering."

Juliet found the whole thing fascinating, and could've sat there for hours watching Shawn and Hank Ingelow sign. "Unfortunately, I can't stay. Have my own work piling up, even as we speak. Shawn, let me know what Children's Services has to say."

"I will," he said, signing simultaneously. It quickly became involuntary, talking and signing at the same time. It was also difficult, since the two languages didn't often have a direct linguistic overlap. He and Hank waved Juliet on her way.

Gus stayed as long as he could, beginning to wonder if Children's Services was ever going to show up. They were notorious for being late, and that notoriety was dismally highlighted that afternoon. He waited until twelve-thirty, when it became imperative that he finish up his route for the day. It was difficult leaving Shawn in the middle of everything.

"You sure you'll be all right?"

"I can handle the next couple of hours. I don't know after that, though. Might be just slightly more challenging. And I so used to thrive on challenges. These pants are adding to it, too."

"You can always stay with me and Juliet—if Carlton throws you out."

"Thanks for that awesome boon of support, buddy. I've already thought of that as a possibility. A very real one." Shawn had thought of it, and it scared him. He felt like he and Lassie had built a whole life around one another, intentionally or unintentionally, and it was insane to sit by and watch that decompose. There had to be a way to fix everything, or at least patch it together long enough that it could start healing itself.

Shawn patted Gus when his oldest and dearest friend hugged him from the side. Hank hugged Shawn and Gus, too, not entirely sure of the reasons, but he could read Shawn's expression of sadness.

Kennedy came into the video room so soon after Gus had left it that Shawn wandered if Gus had come back. Kennedy hailed Shawn for another visit to the chief's office. This time, though, he was asked to bring "the Ingelow kid" and anything of his that was lying around. It wasn't the first time Shawn's attention had been drawn to Hank's missing paraphernalia. A peculiarity, but probably one with a sound explanation.

In the chief's office, Shawn was rambunctiously greeted by friendly social worker Kat, to whom Shawn was no stranger. He'd solved two cases for Kat in the last seven years, and they bumped into one another at the weirdest times—the grocery store, the beach, the park, the Ice Cream Hut, the police station where the stomping grounds of their jobs collided.

"Shawn!" cried Kat. "Shawn Spencer, that is you! How are you?" Kat's bosom squished against Shawn as the two of them hugged—well, as Kat did most of the hugging. Shawn felt comfortably rolled up in a vanilla-scented fluff of chocolatey dough, so delightfully ample was Kat. And taller than him by two inches. Her kinky black hair had not been tamed by the town's late infestation of dry air, but puffed out all over and below her big shoulders. Her makeup, expertly applied, brought out her dark eyes and lovely bow-shaped mouth. She looked as pretty and cheerful as she did when Shawn had gone to her wedding three months ago. With Lassiter. It'd been Carlton's first lesbian wedding and he'd found it both thrilling and terrifying—probably because he found Kat's larger-than-life personality equally thrilling and terrifying.

Kat stooped to be eye-level with the boy. "So this is Hank Ingelow, huh?" She waved hello, the extent of her ASL. She turned her attention back to Shawn. "Did anyone tell him about his mom yet?"

Vick shook her head. "Not yet."

"I'll work on it," Shawn said, taking the responsibility—though, if his hunches were correct, he wouldn't have to tell Hank anything.

Kat wished he knew what went on in the boy's head. "Is he doing all right, Shawn, and communicating well?"

"He seems to be okay. He was hungry. We just gave him some lunch." Shawn was bugged by Children's Services taking Hank and putting him temporary care. He guessed there weren't too many families equipped to handle a deaf child. With Nina Grayson, Hank's grandmother, still unaccounted for, Hank had to be under someone's guardianship. Hank must've sensed Shawn's waffling, since he sidled closer to Shawn and seemed to cling to his etheric energy as if for dear life.

"Well, you've made yourself a friend," Kat said, observant and shrewd. "Good. If you'll just sign a couple of things, Shawn, I'll get out of your hair."

An eruption of noise from everyone else in the room, Vick, Henry and, having snuck in a second ago, Lassiter, stopped Kat dead in her tracks. She noted the enormous uprising against her suggestion—and laughed at it.

"All right, well, I guess I got the wrong idea. Wouldn't be the first time." She'd noted that the only one who hadn't protested the idea was Shawn. That spoke very large volumes, larger than that of his naysayers. "Honestly, everybody, we don't have the room for him with a family capable of handling a deaf child in a comfortable environment. We only have one family that can take a deaf child, and they're already watching three of our kids. It's Shawn or it's a place that won't be able to accommodate him. Believe me, I know how bad that can be on a kid who's going through a lot. The more comfortable he is, the better off he'll be."

Hank tugged severely at Shawn's wrist, drawing his attention. Shawn interpreted what he'd been told. "He said he wants to stay with me."

"Now wait a second!" Lassiter stepped forward. With lots of eyes on him, what was he supposed to do? If he didn't agree, he'd be the bad guy. "It's not that I don't want any child to suffer, Kat, it's just—Shawn and I are having some problems," he heard Henry's derisive snort, "and I don't know that having anyone else around is a good idea."

"Good, this'll distract you and bring the two of you together again," Kat joked—sort of. "Really, Carlton, I'd rather see him with any family that can sign, as long as they have a roof and food and a place for Hank to sleep, than see him with a family that can't communicate with him except with a dry erase board and magnetic poetry. Be a sweetheart," Kat said, trying to charm Carlton into acceptance, "and put your signature on the papers."

Shawn didn't need sign language, intuition or any sort of telepathic development to understand what Lassie was telling him in one long, heavy glare. Shawn's cheeks turned red, not from anger but from surprise. He drew the pen across the papers soon after Carlton.

"Great!" Kat seemed to be the only one capable of speech. She stood in a room full of watchful owls. "I'll be at the house later this evening to check on things and make sure he's all settled in. Well, I've got places to go, gang, so I'll leave you! Bye, Hank, nice meeting you," she patted him on the head—he had a cute if severe cowlick, "be good to Shawn and Carlton. Bye Shawn," she hugged him again, and hugged Lassie, who hugged her back. She said something in his ear that no one but Carlton heard. He looked rather diffident when Kat let him go.

Shawn wanted to get out of the office, the police station. He just wanted to get home before he bawled his eyes out. What a day! It wasn't even one-thirty yet! Shawn hoped that the communion between him and Lassie a moment ago would open the magical portal to a decent conversation, but Lassie was out of the office almost as soon as he could get away. So much for that!

Henry pitied his son. "Here, take the truck and go home. Go to the house, if you'd like. A lot of your old toys are still in your room. Some are in the attic. Or take him to the beach."

Shawn's eyes squinted. "Under no circumstances are you ever, ever to quiz Hank about how many hats are in a room."

In spite of himself, Henry chuckled. "I wouldn't dream of it, Shawn. Just—go home. I'll call you if you're needed."

"I don't have my phone. I left it at the hotel. I could stop and get it." But a part of him didn't want to. Well—all of him didn't want to, really. He'd learned too much about villains returning to the scenes of their crimes.

"Then answer the house phone," Henry suggested. "And don't worry. I think Lassiter's softening. He knows you didn't really do anything."

"Action is one thing. Suggestion is another. Both are equally nefarious in this case," Shawn said, eager not to be so easily exonerated from all wrong-doing. "I did screw up. Badly." Jovially, Shawn pecked his dad on the cheek. "Thanks for the keys. I'll call you later if I don't hear from you."

Shawn was anxious about his phone, almost breaking from protocol by driving by his house to see if Sean and Jason had dropped it off before they went into Los Angeles. He nixed the idea quickly. It'd be best if he brought some calm to his life. Driving around in his dad's stinky old buttercream truck wasn't the way to do that. He'd have to live without his phone a little longer. But he was distracted by everything that'd happened, and wondered if Jason had gone back to New York alone, if Sean had gone to his screen test alone. He looked forward to sitting down and writing out his thoughts—and realized he'd be without his notebook. It was still at his house. His phone might be there, too.

"Sorry," he signed to Hank, who ogled after the quick lane-shift the truck had completed, "I want to go somewhere else."

He'd been roughly halfway to his dad's before turning around to go to his and Lassie's on Sunberry Street. The truck he left in the driveway, the side that Lassie didn't use to pull into the carport. He supervised Hank getting out of the tall vehicle, remembering the awful time he'd had getting in and out when he'd been ten—or however old Hank was. It prompted Shawn to ask him.

"I'm eleven," Hank replied. "How old are you?"

"Old," Shawn signaled, Hank smirking.

As usual, he went to the back door rather than the front. The front door was almost exclusively used for the retrieval of delivered food, packages, and the mail. No lost cell phone was at the back door, unfortunately.

Never in the last few years, since he'd started staying at Carlton's off and on, was Shawn so happy to be home.

It smelled intensely closed-up, though, and Shawn went around opening windows, his little shadow following everywhere. The tour happened then, too—a short tour. It was a small house. But Hank was enthralled by it. He liked the nautical theme of the bedroom Shawn said he was to use. He seemed more fascinated by their collection of books than their collection of movies. Hank was perfectly at home as soon as he found Shawn's original copy of James and the Giant Peach, and the big red reading chair by the oversized front window. Shawn had always imagined the chair being occupied by the cat he'd wanted him and Lassie to get, and not a kid they'd never dreamed of. Much like a cat, who may or may not be around very long, Hank was only temporary.

Hank's enjoyment of reading allowed Shawn the time he needed to take notes. It helped him focus, too. He honed in on one issue rather than letting his mind zip around, relive what he hadn't wanted to relive again and again.

Eventually, stiff and sore at the neck and cramped in the hand, Hank came round carrying a DVD. Seeing what it was, Shawn smiled. Hank was much better at yoga than Shawn was, but he struggled through it, though often felt like it was a much-less fun version of the game Twister. His foibles humored Hank. Already sweaty and exhausted, yet feeling better and more optimistic, Shawn started when he heard the back door screen open and close.

"You should really figure out how to fix that lock, that's all I'm saying." Gus went straight to the kitchen, helping himself to a glass of water from the filter pitcher in the refrigerator. "Where's your au pair?" He'd no sooner asked than Hank showed up at the other kitchen entranceway, the one that went straight to the front door and, to the right, down the hall. "Don't worry, I know all about it. Your dad called me. And I've been all over Santa Barbara looking for you."

"Yes, it's so odd that I'd be at my own house. I mean, what was I thinking? I had to get out of those pants you gave me before ceased circulation did damage to parts unmentionable. You're not getting those pants back, either, just so you know. I'm donating them to a society that helps clothe eunuchs." He poured Hank a glass of water, too, after being asked if it was okay if he have one. Hank must've found them less interesting than he'd initially thought, since he wandered back to the living room for more yoga. "I think he's a miniature Jedi knight or something," Shawn said, not exactly for humor only. "He's smart, and something tells me that if I were sick enough in the head to do it, if I took him to a truck stop he'd probably be able to tell me exactly how many hats are in the room without looking. We've been doing yoga. His idea. Did you finish your route? More importantly, did you stop at the hotel and pick up my phone?"

"Yes—to your first question. Absolutely not is the answer to the second. I still think it'd do you some good if you lived without that thing for a few days. And, FYI, Shawn, Jason and Sean are in Los Angeles together."

Shawn leaned against the kitchen counter. That was a relief. "Did they text you?"

"A few times. Wanted me to know that they'd worked it out between them, more or less. I told them I wasn't so sure about you and Carlton."

"A completely fair assessment."

"I thought so."

"I'm guessing it's not the first time Sean's woken up hungover and naked. Addendum," Shawn swung his hand around, "make that mostly naked. He, at least, had his shirt on. Meanwhile, I had my necklace on and not much else. Oh, a sock. I think I had a sock on. On my foot, yes, before your dirty mind starts working overtime. Because I only remember putting one sock on after Lassie left me and Juliet outside the hotel. I'd had it shoved in my pocket before that. No wonder I left my phone. Did they say if they had my phone?"

"They didn't. I didn't ask. It's probably at the hotel. When I'm feeling more amiable, I'll get it for you, but not until then. Besides, without it, maybe you'll stop wandering into creepy mansions."

"Let's change the subject," Shawn suggested, aware again of that sensation of tears lurking in the back of his eyes. "What do you think about Zack Ingelow being arrested for murdering his wife? And has Woody even called it a murder? I feel really out of touch without my phone." Along with everything else. He just felt really out of touch. His snafu with Lassie had broken his bridge to everything that'd once mattered. The links to everything that made him had been damaged.

Gus caught Shawn's hug as soon as it began. He could hear Shawn sniffling. "Don't you dare start bawling. If you start, I'll start—and I don't want to." It was already too late, though, and Gus's heart sank several degrees, its dead weight springing water into his eyes. "It'll be all right. I don't know how yet, but it will."

"From your mouth to Lassie's soul, Gus," Shawn muttered, breaking off to splash cold water on his face at the sink. He'd completely forgotten what he'd asked Gus moments ago, and Gus had completely forgotten what he'd been asked.

Shawn heard the mail slot jangle, the mail fall on the tiled strip in front of the door. When he and Gus got out of the kitchen, they found Hank with his eyeballs glued to the open mail slot. Shawn took him outside and showed him Caroline, their mail carrier, as she made her way to the next house. "Imagine being a kid and not knowing what a mail slot is," Shawn said to Gus as he collected the mail off the floor. "I was always hoping you and Jules would produce a cute twist cone of a baby so we could totally introduce it to all the fun Eighties stuff we grew up on. Oh," Shawn's heart tilted toward sad again as he read a yellow envelope, "a card from Mom." He'd been missing his mom for a while. She'd stayed a week, as long as she could, when Shawn had been recuperating. Though she'd always liked Carlton, Maddie believed that nothing was perfect and everything took hard work. Moms are almost always right.

"Did anyone tell Hank about his mom?" asked Gus, watching the eleven-year-old sort through the movie collection. He'd certainly come across many Eighties goodies in there. "Juliet never said, just that Zack is in custody."

"No," Shawn said dismissively, "no one's told him because no one has to tell him: he knows."

"He knows? How's he know?"

"He must've seen it on the news or something."

"I can't follow your brain, Shawn. You know I can't. Saw what on the news?"

"Dude, the body found at the mansion. Do you want some iced tea? I think I'll make some."

This was where Shawn had thrived since coming home from the hospital: peaceful domesticity. Gus didn't question it—even if he wanted to, he wasn't really sure what he could question about it. Juliet suspected that Shawn was merely passionate about creating a heathy environment for him and Carlton, a place that was homier and more blissful than the house he'd grown up in. What was to argue if that were true?

Shawn got tugged on the wrist, already growing used to it. Hank held up the first season of Glee. "Sure, you can watch that," he signed. "Know how to work everything?" Hank nodded at him, already powering up the television and DVD. "Big fan of Glee," Shawn remarked, reconnoitering with Gus in the kitchen. "That'll make me and Carlton's life somewhat easier, depending on how long Hank's with us. What was it we were saying? Oh, right, the body on the news. What else would draw Hank to the mansion but seeing that a body had been recovered there?"

Gus purged himself of the empathy. "That's just great. Poor kid."

"He seems pretty resilient. Besides, unlike Paul Harvey, we don't know the rest of the story. Maybe he didn't know Anabel very well. Or maybe he didn't know his father—or his grandmother." Shawn took out the ingredients and wares necessary to make tea. In the background, Glee's pilot episode started, oddly comforting. "I'm not involved in the case, and I don't think it'd do me any good to talk about it. I'm going to watch Hank, and somehow patch things up with Lassie. Those are my main goals right now. I do better if I have something to focus on."

"Focus on the sugar," Gus said.

"What?"

"The sugar spilling all over the floor."

The box of fine sugar had tipped over, some of it falling on the counter, most of it on the floor. Gus helped Shawn sweep it up and wipe it away.

"Yeah, I'm really at my best when I have one or two things to focus on at a time," said Shawn, now positive the statement dripped with self-derision.

"You do all right, considering what you have to work with." It was the first time in a long time Gus had ever heard Shawn Spencer be so hard on himself. He rather hoped it wasn't a trend that'd outstay its welcome.