Fic: “Truth or Dare" by momonoki - PG-13 - Lassiter/Spencer 5/5
Horrified, Shawn and Lassiter leapt away from each other, comically landing into respective piles of shoes. Shawn was just glad he didn’t land wrong and end up with a Gucci heel in the ass. In a frantic moment, he made sure they hadn’t accidentally crushed the evidence in their mad scramble. They hadn’t, thank God. As they lay there panting, there was loud banging at the door, some creaking, and then the door flew open.
“Carlton! Shawn! Are you okay?” Juliet stood at the door, holding a fast food bag and looking in at both of them anxiously. Lassiter and Shawn stood up immediately. Behind Juliet stood Chief Vick, McNab, and much to Shawn’s surprise, Gus; all of them giving Lassiter and Shawn looks mixed with concern and confusion.
“I’m sorry you had to wait so long. We weren’t sure what room you were in.” Juliet looked a little suspicious. “You guys were awfully quiet in here. Seems kind of awkward that you weren’t biting each other’s heads off.”
“We were, sort of, actually.” Shawn said nonchalantly, his mouth feeling a little bruised from his fierce kissing with Lassie-face moments earlier. Lassiter smacked him.
“Carlton, you look a little feverish,” Juliet turned to her partner. “Everything okay? Your shirt...” Her eyes trailed down to his disheveled shirt and missing button. She narrowed her eyes a little, but said nothing.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine!” Lassiter insisted, looking anywhere but his partner’s face. He folded his hands in front of him, apparently trying not to look too obvious at what he was hiding. Just think of baseball, buddy, Shawn thought.
“Shawn! I thought you were going to leave with Lassiter right after I left!” Gus piped up, pointing a finger at Shawn. “You never said there were any clues left to find.” Gus folded his arms in annoyance.
“Dude, I never said there wasn’t any clues!”
“Weren’t.” Gus corrected him. “I just hope whatever you found was worth me coming back here. I had to cut my date short because of you.” Shawn opened his mouth to answer, but he was cut off.
“Okay, so what did you find, exactly?” Chief Vick interjected, in no mood to wait for the two best friends to finish their bickering. “David Westmore is in our custody. He has clear motive. So what are you talking about?”
Overeager to get himself out of this awkward situation, Lassiter offered his two cents, clumsily sputtering, “Look Chief, Shawn here thought he had a psychic pulsation…err, throbbing-- err, vibration--in his pants-I mean, in this closet so we came--I mean went-- in here to check him out-- I mean, it.”
Everyone stared at him.
“Something troubling you, detective?” Chief Vick raised her eyebrows. Lassiter looked mortified, the color draining out of his face as he awaited her next remark. Shawn fought with himself not to do a facepalm. Everyone knew what they had been doing now!
“It’s not everyday you call him Shawn.” Chief Vick gave a smile of approval. Lassiter’s face fell. Shawn nearly snorted. That was what she noticed?
“No, Lassie’s right. And also extremely awkward,” Shawn noted. “We did go into this closet at the behest of the spirit realm.”
“If he’d just swall-err, spit it out, then you’d know it wasn’t completely a load of…err,” Lassiter turned beet-red and bit his lip, afraid to finish his own sentence. Wow, Shawn thought. Once Lassie-face has sex on the brain, that’s all she wrote.
“Better let me take this one, dude,” Shawn said, patting him on the shoulder. “But again he’s right-it wasn’t a waste of time. I found the murder weapon, which establishes that Meredith Westmore is the actual killer. And after I found it, me and Lassie played Truth or Dare. Fun times.”
“What?” Everyone looked at Shawn in confusion, while Lassiter took a few deep breaths, apparently trying to cool down. While they were apparently not at all surprised by Shawn finding the murder weapon, Gus and Juliet shared an bewildered look after hearing the words “Lassie” and “Truth or Dare” in the same sentence.
“The murder weapon?” The Chief didn’t look convinced.
“Yeah, I saw it almost immediately when we came in. You see,” Shawn said, gesturing towards various shoe piles in the closet, “a ridiculous amount of these shoes are red, right? And a lot of them have some kind of glitter or bedazzle on them. If you check Keith’s neck area you’ll see the same glitter as…” Shawn pointed to one particular shoe that was lying in one of the shoe piles. “That one.”
At the Chief’s nod, McNab sidled past the group at the door and scooped the shoe up with a gloved hand, gingerly taking it back to Jules who was ready with an evidence bag. Once it was set apart from the other red shoes, it was apparent this one had blood on it. Fairly fresh blood at that. Gus’s eyes widened at the gruesome sight.
“Another thing you should know,” Shawn added, “is that if you look at the heel of the shoe, it’s the same size and shape of the puncture wounds on Keith’s neck. Just look at the spike on that thing! The murder weapon wasn’t a gardening tool belonging to Keith or David. It was that shoe, which obviously belongs to Meredith.”
“So you’re suggesting that Meredith did this?” The Chief shook her head in disbelief. “Why in the world would she kill her gardener?”
“Well, to put it simply, because her gardener was boinking her husband and she apparently doesn’t like to share her men and especially not her money.”
Everyone was stunned.
“Wait-David was having an affair with Keith? It wasn’t Meredith? She told us-”
“She lied,” Shawn shrugged. “They don’t have kids. David doesn’t even wear a wedding ring. Meredith probably figured there was nothing holding him back from divorcing her and going halfsies on this house and their money just so he could get with Keith. Did you guys even look at Keith? He had Gus’s sexy pecs and Lassie’s “do me” eyes. David was all over that, I can assure you.” At this Gus and Lassiter exchanged squeamish, uncomfortable glances. Shawn continued. “Meredith didn’t want to deal with that, so she got rid of the problem.”
“But David didn’t object to us taking him into custody!”
“But he hasn’t confessed yet, has he? He has guilt-he married the woman, and he betrayed her. Maybe he felt, even for a moment, that taking the fall for her could be some kind of penance. All you have to do is question the wife. She’s definitely your killer.”
Shawn suddenly turned and whispered to Lassiter, “Just be glad you didn’t try to say the word ‘penance’-it’d probably come out like “peni-” Lassiter shoved him hard before he could finish saying it.
Chief Vick smiled. “Well, all I can say is good work, Spencer. We’ll have forensics take care of the shoe-looks like it might very well turn this case on its head. It was astute of you not to automatically assume the classic scenario of ‘husband kills wife’s lover’ when it was actually ‘wife kills husband’s lover’ this time. Thank you for your help, Spencer. Now, if you’d both come on out of the closet, we can all head home.”
Shawn bit back a grin at the Chief’s little joke. He wasn’t sure if it would be as easy as just walking forward. Beside him, Lassiter looked like he wanted nothing more than to disappear.
Gus, Juliet, and McNab, who had been silent for a while, were all suppressing grins, but along with the Chief, they finally stepped aside to let the “closeted” fake psychic and head detective out. Juliet held out the rapidly cooling In n’ Out bag for Shawn, as if desperate to get away from the greasiness of it.
As the two men walked forward out of the closet, Lassiter leaned toward Shawn and hotly whispered something in his ear, low enough so that only Shawn could hear:
“Next time, let’s play ‘Hide and Seek.’”