Creeps and Crawls. Include a "creepy" creature in today's entry.

Lead-up. Investigation. Unexpected twist. Innocent proven guilty. Guilty found—

"If you do not stop putting spiders in my dresser, Watson, I will put a snake on your pillow."

Actually innocent. A lying parent. A desperate child. A—

Wait a minute. What?

The grumbled order completely destroyed several hours of concentration, and long seconds passed before the meaning behind his words finally clicked. My pen clattered against my desk.

"What are you talking about?"

"You know exactly what I am talking about!" he shot back. "Once could be considered payment for the beetle, but that was one. You have made your point!"

I did not have a point to make. Did not even know what he referenced. I tidied my papers and set them aside. If he would not tell me the problem, I would decipher it myself.

He crouched in front of that darkly stained dresser, stubbornly refusing to flinch even as muted thwaps signified a slippered assassination. I barely resisted the urge to laugh.

"How many spiders have you found?"

"Ten," he growled. "How many did you place?"

"One. I am serious," I added at his incredulous glance. "I placed one spider in the top drawer three days ago. No more. You probably have an egg sack. Have you pulled the dresser away from the wall to look?"

He stared at me, apparently both judging my truthfulness and deducing an answer to some question he had no wish to voice. Whatever the query, a halfhearted scowl finally turned back to the dresser.

"No."

The slipper he still held smacked another spot inside the dresser, then he tossed the footwear to a corner to take the dresser's other side. Together, we carefully dragged the wood away from the wall.

"Start looking for a white ball," I ordered on my way to the sitting room. "I need to grab something."

Ensuring him fully hidden beneath the wood, I hesitated only a moment before retrieving a beaker and two reactants from his chemistry set and hurrying back to his room. He spoke without looking up.

"How big of a sack, do you think?"

A half shrug answered though I knew he could not see me. "Pea sized? Depends on the species. Don't forget to look under and behind each drawer."

One hand waved me away, as if he had somehow already checked everywhere I could imagine. I simply rolled my eyes and knelt against the wall to scan the back panel.

Minutes passed in silence but for the creaking and groaning of wood. He opened, closed, and removed drawers. A candle checked every crevice I could find. Two spiders died to its flame, but the third finally revealed their hideaway.

"Holmes, do you see anything in the top left corner?"

He stilled, then shifted. I faintly caught the shine of his own candle breaking through a tiny crack.

"Yes, but I cannot reach it."

"Don't try to flatten it," I interrupted quickly. "You'll only scatter them all. Let me in."

He grumbled something uncomplimentary but switched places. I easily found what he had seen first.

And noted it hung a full inch from any wall. We could do this the fun way. He probably heard my grin.

"Hand me that beaker, would you?"

"Which—" Footsteps turned a circle, then the scraping of glass against wood announced he had seen what I had retrieved earlier. He deposited it in my grasping hand and knelt to watch.

"Chemical warfare," I smirked at the unasked question. "This is how Harry and I used to deal with spider eggs."

Mixing the two reactants produced a wisping vapor, and the beaker's rim easily formed a seal against the desk's underside. Less than a minute later, the white ball trying to disgust the detective behind me had shriveled into a mummified husk. He steadied me to my feet as the silk holding it to the wood broke in one spot to make it dangle.

"Ignore the superstition and throw that in the fire, would you?"

A harrumph protested my teasing, but he did as I suggested, thankfully neglecting to protest my using part of his chemistry set. He may not dislike spiders to the same degree I despised snakes, but he would take any route to keep them out of his room—even letting me borrow something he would not otherwise. I returned to my manuscript while he put his dresser to rights.

And hopefully found the other crawler I had left in the process. While I doubted the cut-out would be lifelike enough to earn a good reaction, I would get a reaction, nonetheless. One ear monitored his movements though my thoughts returned to my writing.

Now how to conceal the mother's identity…

Hope you enjoyed :)