To Everything, There Is... (Solo)

The door to the law offices swung open. Lonnie and Aurum swept past the front desk like men on a mission. That mission, it seemed... was to look good. As Lonnie approached his office, his secretary caught up with him.

"Sir, Mr. Pattonson rescheduled his appointment with you. Mr. Donovan says he has something to talk with you about later, you need to check on the Brown case, and your wife is on line one." The blond jiggled the outstretched phone, blue eyes pleading. She looked frazzled.

Lonnie turned. For a second, Aurum thought he was going to break out in cliches. The man seemed to tense. Wife on the line, and all that to deal with? Aurum thought Lonnie would tell her he was busy.

"Kelly," Lonnie began.

"Sir?" She replied apprehensively.

Lonnie looked at her with a taciturn seriousness.

Oh boy, here it comes... Aurum thought. The cliche.

A casual grin replaced Lonnie's serious face a moment later. "Hand me the phone, will ya?" He ushered her on with an outstretched hand. "Tell Mr. Donovan I'll call him in a half hour to discuss things, get the Brown paperwork to my office, and... get yourself a cup of tea," the grin went sincere. "You look stressed."

The weight on the frazzled blond's shoulders seemed to ease. Her face brightened up as she passed him the phone. "Yes, sir."

"And can you get me a cup of coffee while you're at it, Kelly? Please?" Lonnie shifted his attention to Aurum. "You want anything?"

"Um. Coffee," Aurum replied, mildly put off.

"Coffee," Lonnie repeated, to Kelly.

The woman nodded understandingly as Lonnie brought the receiver up to his mouth. "Good girl. Hey, honey~ What's up?" Lonnie turned away from Aurum as he focused on the call. Aurum watched the blond walk off to prepare their coffee.

His mind drifted as he stood there. So this was a law office? His eyes swung around at the other residents of the building. A hallway stretched just outside the door to Lonnie's office. They'd walked through it. Other offices just like Lonnie's were housed behind each barrier, each with a friendly secretary with own desk, no doubt. Business was brisk, cases came fast, and things had a habit of piling up while one wasn't looking. This was what he was getting himself into with his line of work...

For a moment, Aurum was silent, letting the thought sink in. Then, the secretary returned with his coffee. Aurum took it with a smile, cupping the mug between his hands. "Thank you," he replied.

The cute blond returned the smile, and moved on to Lonnie.

Aurum took a silent sip. Several years of law school, countless hours of practice and studying, all my hopes and dreams...? Was it worth it? Defending the innocent from idiots, and having a cute secretary? Yeah. It was worth it.

Lonnie returned, coffee in-hand. He gestured for Aurum to follow him, phone pinned against his shoulder. "Well, come on."

The lights on the police car ahead of them swirled as they rolled up the hilltop mansion's drive, red, blue, red, over white.

A morbid thought passed through Aurum's mind as he eyed the other vehicles. Cherries jubilee...

The car came to a stop. A black door slammed shut. Aurum and Lonnie stalked past the three police cars in the hedge-lined drive, to the ornate front door. Lonnie knocked thrice. They waited as long as it took Aurum to note the extravagance of the garden near the mansion's front for someone to answer, then Lonnie let himself in.

Inside the mansion, things were bubbling. Men in blue police uniforms rushed past, the occasional maid made her way to the kitchen. Aurum swung his head as one swept past them.

"Wonder what this is all about..." He muttered.

"The head of the house has been murdered," Lonnie noted silently. He met Aurum's eyes for a second, then stepped forward to catch an officer's attention. "Excuse me. We're here to see Miss Hart?"

The officer paused, and thought for a second. "She would be with the other suspects, in the study."

"Thank you," Lonnie stated. He turned to Aurum as the officer slipped away. "You heard the man. Study."

"..."

Andrea Hart was a charming woman, with bangs that obscured one side of her pointed face in brown, giving her an air of mystique. As they approached, her green eyes were locked on the officer interrogating. She was in the center of the group. On her left, an older woman stood.

If Andrea was in her twenties, this woman looked to be in her thirties, forties, tops. She dressed more discretely than Andrea. While Andrea wore a glittering blue vest, white shirt, black pants, and a rose pin, this woman wore a navy skirt and a loose red sweater. She left it at that.

The man on Andrea's right was tall and charming. Perfectly perfect, run-of-the-mill, in a suit. He regarded the policeman, and indeed the entire situation, with a look of confidence.

Aurum didn't like him. He seemed insincere.

The police officer pocketed his pen on their approach. The timing couldn't have been more perfect.

"Miss Hart," Lonnie said. He caught her as she was turning.

"Ah, Mr. Ozment," Andrea stated. She took a step towards him and his accomplice as the people around her dispersed. Her eyes fell on Aurum. "Apprentice?"

"You got it."

Aurum reached out to Andrea's extended hand. The woman turned her wrist at the last second. A red rose sprang from thin air, into the dirty blonde's hand. He gave it a hard look.

"Usually something male magicians give the womenfolk..."

Her red lips pursed in a leading smile. "Shall we go somewhere else to discuss my case?"

"Certainly," Lonnie said. As Andrea turned to lead the exit, he nudged Aurum to ditch the rose. A bit of slight of hand, and it vanished... into a trash can on the way out.

The detective's green eyes locked on their retreating backs, and fell to the garbage.

Silence.

The interview continued. It seemed that Mr Lafleur had taken Wertz in as his apprentice a few months prior. Andrea Hart didn't have an exact time frame. She just knew she hadn't liked him when he first joined them. He'd bugged her.

Lonnie asked why.

Andrea looked him hard in the eye. "He was interested in tricks. He wanted to know the secrets behind every one of Mr. Lafleur's tricks. I think he wanted them for his own. Magicians like that..." She shook her head confidently. "Won't last long. You need the skills to create your own tricks."

"And do you?" Aurum cut in. "Do you create your own tricks?"

Lonnie looked at him like that was a stupid question, but Andrea answered it like it was fine. "Of course," she replied.

"Which ones?" The blond delved deeper. He was curious.

Andrea looked towards the window. "We were working on several. Levitation, place-switching, the saw box... all with our own particular twists, of course."

Aurum nodded. He'd figured they'd want to make their tricks unique. "I don't expect you'll tell me how some of those are done?" He joked.

Andrea shook her head.

"And what of the last person you were with?" Lonnie said. He seemed put-out by Aurum's banter.

There was a moment of hesitance before Andrea answered. Could she have been thinking?

"His wife," she concluded. Her tone was succinct.

"You don't sound like you like her much," Aurum noted.

Andrea arched an eyebrow. "She got jealous easily," she replied. "I believe she thought something was going on between her husband and I."

"Was there?"

Lonnie glared at Aurum for a second, then shifted his focus back towards their client.

"No." She replied with finality.

To think the crime scene extended beyond the study in which the victim was killed... was, perhaps, an excellent idea. By searching the entirety of the house, one could find evidence of events leading up to the murder, if one had the proper eye for detail. One could think backwards, from the place of death, to everything before it. As Holmes stated in A Study in Scarlet, reasoning backward was a simple, yet neglected skill, and the very basis of analytical thinking. For every one who practiced analytical thinking, Holmes believed, there were fifty who could reason synthetically. It was invaluable... but neglected... and not everyone was a master of it. Unfortunately, while Aurum grasped the concept of analytical thinking, he was still a novice. He was one of the fifty to every one. Lonnie was right there with him. The results of their search was inconclusive.

It started in the room outside the study. The two men looked around, eyes trailing the walls, the carpets, and wooden floors, for any sign of struggle, any thing out of place. Under the eyes of various police officers, they examined vases, eyeballed bare hallway, went as far out as the front entrance, and checked the mail. Their search pattern was chaotic, and Aurum realized, as he caught sight of the mailman walking away from the entrance, through the window, wouldn't accomplish much.

He turned to Lonnie sheepishly. "You... uh... see anything?"

"Nope." His mentor replied impassively.

"You... were you even paying attention when we looked?" Aurum felt exhausted. They'd hit every room but the study. If the magician had been killed anywhere but his study, they'd have noticed... unless the police already caught that as they came upon the scene.

Lonnie shook his head.

"The carpets were untouched. There wasn't anything noteworthy about the house. No glowing footprints, no 'Rache' on the wall. This was routine..." Aurum pondered, looking to the ground as he held his chin. "That makes things significantly harder. How boring..."

"Come again?" Lonnie arched an eyebrow.

Aurum suddenly realized what he was thinking out loud. He waved off Lonnie's glare. "No, no. I'm just talking to myself. It doesn't look like there's any notable evidence. That probably means the victim died in his study, like the police suspect." If he'd been dying outside the room, there would have been something. Up to his death, he wasn't aware someone was working to murder him. He'd gone about his day leisurely, Aurum assumed.

His mind trailed back to the man he'd seen picking up the post. Maybe the Frenchman magician had put something in the mail before his death? But that was just speculation. There wasn't anything incriminating about mail.

"Until we get the autopsy, it looks to me like any of the suspects could have done it... if it was poison, alibis wouldn't mean much... of course, that still doesn't mean our client did it, but--"

"Aurum." Lonnie said. "Shut up."

"Sorry, sorry. Detective nerd."

"Babbling detective nerd," Lonnie replied seriously. "Soon-to-be-out-on-his-ass detective nerd, if he keeps it up."

"Geez. Sorry." Aurum grumbled. He looked away from Lonnie, back down the hall. Aurum clicked his tongue impatiently. Now, he wanted to see the crime scene. If someone forced the poison, it would be evident by the marks on the body and the scene of the crime. If the man died peacefully in his recliner... that'd mean someone had gotten him to take the poison without struggle. He recalled the study had been clean...

Someone must've slipped him poison, and gotten him to take it without knowing...

Now, how would they go about doing that...

And why?

Bad marriage? To erase a secret? Apprentice getting uppity, wanting to steal the man's magic tricks, and pass them off as his own?

He sighed. Until they got their reports, all these speculations would be useless. They'd be distractions.