Sheridan Holmes: The Last One to Drop (PART 27)

"Sheridan Lynn Holmes!" Lestrade yelled, "I want to know exactly what that man said to you and I want to know now!"

"Shouldn't I get a welcome first when I enter a room?" Sheri asked sarcastically as she walked back into the hospital room. Lestrade glared at her harder than he ever had before, and it sucked the life out of the room. Or at least no one wanted to interrupt the silent hatred filling the room. "If you must know, I recorded the rest of the conversation on Mark's phone." Sheri held up a beaten up blackberry, and Mark patted down his pockets.

"When?" Mark asked, watching her hand his phone to Lestrade.

"You really shouldn't walk so close to me Mark, you know I'm a pick-pocket."

"If I have any reason to believe that you are with-holding evidence..." Lestrade warned.

"Relax, I only left the room to save your boys-" Sheri motioned to the officers in the room, "Some embarrassment if the conversation headed where I thought it would." Eli felt her own head get warm as she thought of what Sheri was talking about. Oh the embarrassment of having that being announced publicly. "Now if you don't mind, I need to use the restroom and Watson is coming with me."

Sheri grabbed Eli's hand and dragged her out of the room.

***

"You know, if you took care of yourself-" Eli said from outside the door of the bathroom.

"Shut up, Watson! I still had room for a knife in my pockets!" Sheri said through the door. Eli heard the sink turn on.

"I'm sorry, but as a pediatric doctor I know a lot on this topic. For once it's nice to be the smart one." Sheri thought about this for a second. Was it everyone else getting emotional today, her mood affecting them, or was it just the lens of hormones letting all the emotions through her filter? She'd never thought of Eli being jealous of her intelligence.

She always assumed that the plus to having a friend was that they would be there when she was nice or mean. Warts and all. She didn't have to be nice to them all the time to receive respect or companionship, but now Eli was jealous?

"Pediatric doctor?" Sheri asked.

"Yeah?" Eli looked back at the door.

"That's what, with children and stuff?"

"Uh-huh. What of it?"

"No, it's just...I could never do that. All those kids and acne and hormones..." Eli smiled, for once Sheri was taking an interest in her feelings. "That's very noble of you to focus on that area of medicine."

"Sheri?" Eli asked through the door.

"Yeah?"

"Just tell me what you really think." Sheri smiled to herself. Good old Watson, she was still her friend for better or worse.

"I think that you'd be better suited as a surgeon or as a paramedic." Sheri unlocked the door and walked outside. "I just can't see you with children."

"You can't see anyone with children." Eli laughed.

"They chew on everything!" Sheri sighed, "I was particularly disappointed by the care kids receive at such an age. It is the prime age for brain development, what stimulation do they get from Tele-Tubbies?"

"They're the future of the world, Sheri! Kids are needed to keep the world going. Hence why-"

"Just stop right there!" Sheri groaned, squeezing her eyes shut, "I got enough of 'the talk' when I was an adolescent. I don't need it now." Eli smiled, "Besides, there's no time for teasing me, we have a second murder to solve." Sheri showed Eli her phone screen. It was a teenager with long blonde hair and dark sweats. She was in her bedroom, hanging from bar in her closet by a black cord.

***

The bus dropped them off half a mile away from the house, and the walk was bitterly cold. It made Eli wish for the days of summer with the grueling eighties.

"Her name is Jolie Whitman." Sheri finally explained, her face buried in the collar of her coat. "I remember her from when I investigated a case for her mother to find out if her accountant was stealing from her paycheck."

"Were they?"

"It was an accountant. People involved with moving your money around rarely don't steal it." She looked over at Eli and continued seriously, "Yes that also means Martin."

"I don't get why you don't like him. He's been nothing but nice to you." Sheri sneered.

"Bankers..."

"I get that you don't like bankers, but can you at least try to like Martin. He is my boyfriend."

"He collects stamps and has had knee surgery. I don't think he's some sort of criminal mastermind, but I don't trust people who's main purpose is to collect money by giving it out." Eli rolled her eyes. She had met Martin only a few weeks ago, right before Christmas. And already Sheri had refused to talk to him for more than two minutes in total.

In truth Sheri did not just dislike his profession, she did not like they way he talked or way he held himself. He had a mustache that just oozed untrustworthy. Plus he was extremely boring. Politics this and economy that, Sheri had only spent a little while talking to him and she already felt herself falling asleep days before she needed to.

"So, what is it about this that looks like a murder?" Eli said, desperate to change the subject from Martin Morstan.

"Moriarty sent me the picture." Sheri admitted.

"I thought you weren't gonna hide stuff from Lestrade. You promised him-"

"I know I said I wouldn't hide stuff from him, but I don't need anyone sticking their neck out for me. Moriarty is serious about killing me and I don't need anyone getting in the way."

"But how are you going to stand up to Moriarty without the police on your side?"

"Wing it." she smiled unconvincingly.

"You have got to be kidding me!"

"I haven't been a kid in years." Sheri said walking faster.

"Your plan to defeat the most dangerous crime leader in years, is to wing it?"

"Obviously he needs me to go along with what he's planned and I can't plan against that until I know what he's doing so for now we follow Trevor's lead."

"So we're pawns? Great." Sheri nodded at Eli's analogy.

"We're more of Queens, Watson, give us some credit." Eli shook her head, the whole situation was crazy. "Well I'm a Queen."

"And I'm a knight!" Eli declared. Sheri shook her guiltily. "Bishop?" Sheri continued to shake her head. "The castley thing?"

"At least know what it's called!" Sheri laughed, brushing her hair out of her face.

"Sorry, I don't play chess. Checkers is more my speed."

"Clearly." Sheri muttered and Eli raised an accusing eyebrow at her, "You are a rook, Watson. And be glad you aren't a memorable piece, I'll be in infinitely more danger than you."

"I'd still rather be a Knight." Eli grumbled.

***

Sheri knocked on the front door of a small city house. It was well kept and reminded Eli of her parents' house when she was a kid. Small and old, but taken care of by someone who was proud to own it.

The dark green front door opened a small woman with hair as blonde as her daughter's appeared in the screen. She was wearing stained sweats and her eyes were blood-shot like she had been crying for a long time. She sniffed mucus back in her nose and spoke with a mouth-breathing slur, "Sheri?"

"May I see your daughter?" the woman looked behind her for a second then sobbed heavily.

"She's...she..."

"I know, I have reason to suspect that she's been murdered." Sheri's voice was slow and calm. She wasn't generally nice to people who had experienced a great loss, but today she didn't really feel like arguing.

"I knew it!" Mrs. Whitman said in a half sob, "Come in." she opened up the screen door and they walked in. It was a cozy little house, with a specific country-western style decor. The front room was the living room and Eli and Sheri could see a small driftwood coffee table covered in used tissues and an ice cream tub. The TV was playing a "Housewives of..." show. "I knew it the moment I saw... All those things you said when we met last time, I think I can see what you mean."

"Where was Jolie?" Sheri asked, gazing around at the house.

"Her bedroom." Mrs. Whitman began to show her, then stopped herself. Tears filled her eyes again and she pointed down the hall with a gulp. "It's just down the hall, help yourselves."

"Thank you so much Carol." Sheri said, walking down the hall to the little bedroom. Eli followed and Carol Whitman sat back down on the couch and blew her nose.

Jolie's bedroom screamed girl. Bright yellow walls with photos hanging on every available wall space at head level, which for Jolie was under Sheri's shoulders. By the door was a large bed with a colorful messy quilt and flowery pillows that still held the shape of Jolie's head. On the next wall was an OCDly organized desk with a few more pictures, a camera, and a laptop that was still on, but on standby with the screen black. The closet was open and a few of the hangers were kept up only by the pressure of the clothes around it. A chair, probably from the desk, was lying on the ground, back up, in front of the closet.

Sheri went instantly to the closet and picked through the clothes, letting some of the clothes drop to the floor, then inspected the chair. She then looked at the desk, and picked up the dusty camera.

"Photographer." Eli said softly. Sheri nodded and set it down. She swiped the touchpad of the laptop and it flickered on. Sheri flicked through the pictures for a minute then looked at the rest of the room.

"I'm seeing two different scenes here." Sheri admitted.

"Two?" Eli asked leaning against the door frame.

"A murder and a suicide." Sheri looked around at the room again. "What do you see?"

"Me?" Eli glanced at the room again. "A suicide, but I know it's not."

"And why do we know it's not?" Eli groped her mind for an answer.

"Because Moriarty said it wasn't?"

"Implied." Sheri corrected, "So we'll investigate the murder first. Now we know from the picture that she was hanging from the bar in her closet. She jumped off of the chair." Sheri picked up the chair and stood on top of it in the closet space. "If I jumped off with the noose around her neck..." she held a hand around her neck and jumped off the chair. She pretended to flail around until she finally gave up looking like a idiot. "Being as short as she was she might catch the chair on her leg." Sheri tipped the chair over so that the back fell out of the closet, seat up.

"But the chair fell seat down." Eli remembered.

"Exactly!" Sheri picked the chair up again. "She had a lot of clothes, the chair wouldn't fit comfortably in there with the back. You'd have to want it to look weird to set it up like it was."

"So you think someone came in here and murdered her then made it look like she committed suicide, because of a chair?"

"More or less." Sheri picked up the laptop and folded it under her arm, "It'd be easy enough to strangle her and tie her up to look like a suicide, but..."

"But?" Eli repeated skeptically. Sheridan glanced at a photo on the wall.

"This is a suicidal victim."

"How can you tell?" Sheri smiled proudly and Eli knew she'd made a mistake by asking.

"You remember when I told you that you can tell a lot about a person by the room and a lot about a room by a person?" Eli shook her head hesitantly. Sheri frowned, "Must have been an inner monologue. Okay, well, crash course." Sheri motioned to the closet. "The clothes."

"'The clothes'..." Eli said mockingly.

"Yes the clothes. On the edges are a bunch of colorful blouses that are meant to show off her shape. In the middle are sweat-pants and gray fabrics. She shoves them in every time her laundry comes in. You can tell by the dust that she hasn't taken them out in a while. She's wearing dull fabrics even though she has more than enough colors. Some of the clothes on the edges are smaller than the rest. She hasn't sorted through them in a while. So dull fabrics for a long time."

Sheri rushed to the desk.

"The writing utensils are in separate cups and positioned at very specific angles and yet her bedspread is hanging off the side. We can, again, tell from the dust that the last time the cups were positioned right was a while ago. My guess is it was when she stopped making her bed in the morning."

Sheri motioned to the pictures on the walls.

"The pictures on her walls are just as old, dust again is our friend. All of them showing her smiling and her friends and such, but her computer-" Sheri opened the laptop, "No pictures of herself or her friends at all."

"Could just be a phase." Eli suggested.

"Always the optimist." Sheri smiled, "Okay how about this?" Sheri closed the laptop and picked something off the furthest corner of the desk. A long sharp razor blade.

"Oh god." Eli managed to say through her fingers.

"Dried blood." Sheri said sadly, "Either she was cutting or the sky is yellow. My diagnosis is prolonged Depression."

"So it was a suicide?" Sheri sighed.

"No, it was murder." Sheri insisted.

"But you just said-"

"I know what I just said, but it's murder. It has to be. Why are you so eager to believe it's not?" Eli shrugged.

"I don't know, you haven't mentioned how they got in the room." Sheri stopped in the middle of almost suggesting that was ridiculous.

"Actually..." Sheri paced back and forth through the room for a few seconds, "There isn't is there. Well done Watson." Sheridan rushed to the window and popped the locks open. She shoved her head out and dangled for a second before popping back in and looking at the doorframe after she motioned Eli away with one hand.

Her delicate fingers graced the wood frame and her eyes narrowed at the smallest of crevices. "No sign of a struggle and no sign of anyone breaking in this specific room. Whoever came in knew Jolie well enough for her to let him or her in the room."

"The mom?" Eli suggested, but Sheri shook her head and sucked on the corner of her mouth.

"No, too upset. Not jumpy enough to be hiding anything. We're looking for someone who she'd let into her room but not someone who lives here." Sheri walked abruptly out of the room. "Carol? Did Jolie have a boyfriend?"

Carol Whitman looked up from where she was curled up in a ball on the couch. She sniffed and wiped her eyes clear. "I told her he was no good! As soon as I saw him."

"Who was he?"

"Big football star. Mickey Carr."

"Where can I find him?" Carol's mouth quivered.

"Just up the road a bit. You can't miss it, it's the big purple house with the Saints banner on the patio." Sheri nodded and left without another word. Eli face-palmed as she walked into the living room to leave.

"Thank you." Eli said shaking her head.

"You get the boy for what's he's done to my daughter!" Carol instructed, "Don't trust a word he says. He's bad news, and he deserves to be locked up." Eli was at the doorknob when it hit her.

"This isn't the first time he's hurt her, is it?"

"He choked my little girl." Carol said with cold eyes and a snarl, "And she stood there in took it for years. Don't hold Holmes back, girlie. He needs to feel pain."

Eli didn't know what else to say. She'd heard the same about Sheri, and Sheri wasn't perfectly innocent, but she wasn't evil. Once again she was doubting that this was murder. What if he was just doing the wrong crimes at the wrong times? Abusive relationships were hardly uncommon.