And then there was three; a Sherlock Fanfiction

Seven

John opened the door to 221b Baker Street, climbing the staircase two steps at a time. Lilly followed closely behind.

"Sherlock?" John pushed open the door to the flat hesitantly, fully aware of the possibility that Sherlock only wanted John to hand him his laptop or something.

"John!" Sherlock jumped up from his chair, "Where's Lilly?"

"Don't you mean 'the girl'?" Lilly said somewhat bitterly, stepping out from behind John.

Sherlock ignored her comment, "I talked to Lestrade. When we visited the crime scene, most of it had been cleared already: the sister took anything that survived, and they documented the possessions destroyed in the fire for insurance reasons. I went through the documents and a list of the items Amelia took, and one object wasn't found on either,"

"The laptop," Lilly and John said in unison; Lilly sounded a bit excited, while John spoke in a more tired tone.

"Precisely. Gracie never went anywhere without her laptop, so why is it that the only thing missing from her home is the computer?"

"Then if we find the laptop, we find the murderer?" John asked.

"It would depend on multiple factors, but the odds are, yes. The killer is most likely still in possession of the laptop." Lilly told him. Sherlock nodded silently, racing with ideas.

"Well you must be able to track the laptop somehow, right?" John questioned Sherlock.

"Yes but we need more information. It would depend on the laptop brand and such. I checked her credit card purchases over the past year and nothing. I can't find anything even remotely related to any electronic other than the phone."

"We really need to find out where she was getting all this money from," Lilly added, "the laptop and the job must be related, it only makes sense,"

"There has to be another way to track the computer. Maybe Mycroft...?"

"If we had the IP address it would be easy," Lilly noted, racking her brain for anything computer related.

Sherlock thought hard; John continued to think aloud: "Would she have wrote it down?"

Sherlock answered simply, "if she did write it down then the fire would have destroyed it,"

"Wait, what about emails? Maybe we don't need the actual physical laptop; maybe there's something in her emails? And we should check her recent bank account activity too, for any suspicious transactions?" Lilly offered, glancing at John and Sherlock.

Sherlock stared at her, revealing no emotion, while John cleared his throat: "Yeah, yeah. So how do we get into her email? Sherlock?"

Sherlock turned his attention to John for a moment, "call the sister. Ask for the email address. Don't bother asking for a password, she won't know it."

John sighed and brought his phone to his ear, stepping into the kitchen to make the call. Sherlocks hands curled around his violin gently, his grasp particularly firm. He played a simple melody absentmindedly, while Lilly watched curiously. He played facing the window, back turned to her.

"Do you play?" he asked without bothering to turn around, playing the tune with ease.

She watched his fingers and their precise movements, "no, but I do play piano,"

Sherlock chose not to respond, playing the stringed instrument contently.
 
John returned minutes later, "well, she wasn't sure, but she thinks her email was grbrown@hotmail.net. She said that she never actually sent or received any emails to or from her sister, but she thinks she saw her using that email once,"

Sherlock wasn't listening anymore: he sat down on a hard wooden chair, typing on his laptop furiously. Soon he had pulled up the site to log into Gracie's email. He'd already typed in her email, now all he needed was a password.

"Password..." John looked at it, brow furrowed.

Sherlock thought quickly, reviewing everything he knew about the dead woman. He used his mind palace, attempting to figure out the password.

"She hasn't had the laptop long, so it will be a fairly new password. Let's see, she was smart, not many friends, parents died when she was young,"

Sherlock pictured Gracie's house in his mind, trying to imagine it before the fire.

"There was a book shelf in the corner of the living room," he remembered the charred remains of memoirs and novels littering the burnt and deteriorating shelf, "self help books, biographies, cook books, all random. In the kitchen: stove, pan, picture," he squeezed his eyes shut, hard enough to hurt, "there has to be something,"

Lilly watched the detective as he twitched and shook his head. She was familiar with the memory technique that Sherlock called his "Mind Palace". She used the same method, but hers was more of an enormous library, rather than a palace.

"Wait!" Sherlock snapped his head up, eyes opening wide as he stared at the empty space calling for a password. Hesitantly, he began to type, selecting each key carefully. He chose six digits and pressed enter, all three holding their breath.

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Sorry for the short chapter. School has been keeping me agonizingly busy, but I have less than a month left, so soon I'll have a bit more time to write. I'm actually sitting in class waiting for these people to finish with their tests right now...

some action should be coming soon,
don't fret

M