The Call of the Mild p-3

by William Rabkin

  “Edmund Spenser, author of The Faerie Queene, is considered one of the most important Elizabethan poets,” Gus said.

  “That’s nice for him,” Shawn said. “But can he fit all one hundred and twenty different colors of Crayons in his mouth at the same time? Because I can.”

  That was true, as Shawn had proven only the night before. Gus saw the skin around the woman’s eyes tightening even further. He felt his pre-adolescent terror of any teacher’s disapproval rising in his chest.

  “This is Shawn Spencer, and he is a detective,” Gus said. “How can we help you?”

  The woman glared at Gus. “I’m having a very hard time believing that you are a walking weapon, the physical incarnation of street justice, and the unstoppable id to Spenser’s superego,” she said.

  “It’s amazing how many people have that same problem,” Shawn said. “I told him not to stop shaving his head.”

  “I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding,” Gus said.

  “More like blatant misrepresentation,” the woman snapped. “Are you or are you not Hawk?”

  “My name is Burton Guster. Most people call me Gus.”

  “Which is a kind of hawk,” Shawn said.

  “It is not,” Gus said.

  “Gus the Hawk. I remember you showed it to me on some flag when you thought you wanted to be a flexitriloquist.”

  “First of all, the bird on the flag of the Azores is the Goshawk, not Gus the Hawk,” Gus said. “And a scholar who studies flags is a vexillologist.”

  “Then what’s a flexitriloquist?” Shawn said.

  “There’s no such thing. You just made it up.”

  “I’m pretty certain I saw an ad for it on Craigslist,” Shawn said. “Are you sure it isn’t someone who can throw her voice while she does Pilates?”

  Ellen Svaco let out the kind of sigh that could paralyze a class of second-graders within seconds. “But you’re Spenser?” she said to Shawn.

  “With a ‘c,’ like the shell,” Shawn said. “Or should that be like the saw?”

  The woman breathed silently for a moment, and Gus had the sudden desire to find the nearest elementary school so he could report to the principal’s office.

  “I can’t believe that policeman lied to me,” she finally said. “He said this Spenser was America’s finest detective, his street-smart sidekick was as lethal as he was loyal, and for proof I had to look no further than a seemingly endless series of fictionalized accounts of their cases.”

  For the first time, Shawn looked interested. “And how exactly did this come up in conversation?”

  “I went in to see the police about a very serious matter,” she said. “It was serious to me, in any case. Apparently the detective in charge thought it was some kind of joke.”

  “Did this detective have a handlebar mustache, thick glasses, and eyeballs on stalks protruding from his head?” Shawn said.

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, if he did,” Shawn said, slipping the newspaper across the desk to her, “would he look something like this?”

  She gave the paper a quick glance, as if years of practice had taught her to see pictures through layers of defacement. “That’s him.”

  “Lassie sent her here?” Gus said. “Why?”

  “Because he knows when a case is too big for him,” Shawn said. “He realizes that there are some things that are so explosive, so filled with pitfalls and dangers that a mere policeman can’t be expected to handle them.”

  “Or he’s trying to get back at you for having Papa Julio’s Casa de Pizza deliver seventeen pineapple-and-anchovy pizzas to his house.”

  “Or that,” Shawn conceded. “I guess we’ll know when Ms. Svaco tells us what her case is about.”

  “Why should I tell you anything?” she said. “I have no idea who you are, and I have no intention of being the butt of some policeman’s practical joke.”

  “As I said, this is Shawn Spencer and I’m Burton Guster,” Gus said. “We are Psych, Santa Barbara’s premier psychic-detective agency.”

  Ellen Svaco stared at Gus as if he’d just shot a spitball at her. “Psychic detectives? You people must really think I’m an idiot.”

  She turned and walked towards the door, her sensible pumps thwocking hollowly on the linoleum. Gus felt a huge sense of relief to see her go-until he glanced over at Shawn and saw that his partner was studying her carefully as she walked away. Studying her in the way Gus knew meant that he was observing all sorts of tiny details that no one else would ever notice, details that Shawn would put together to tell a story about her. Just as her hand hit the doorknob, Shawn grabbed his forehead with both hands and let out a moan.

  “Murder!” he wailed. “Murder most foul!”

  Chapter Four

  Ellen Svaco froze at the door. When she turned around, Gus was surprised to see there were no actual icicles hanging off her ears. “Excuse me?”

  “That’s what you should have said if you wanted the police to take your case,” Shawn said. “An accusation of murder always gets their attention.”

  “But there is no murder,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” Shawn said. “Because that would be a hell of a case. Especially if you were the victim.”

  “If I’d been the victim of a murder, how could I go to the police?”

  “I have no idea, but it’s a great way to start a story,” Shawn said. “Gus, take a note in case someone ever wants to write a seemingly endless series of fictionalized accounts of our cases.”

  “Maybe the fictional version of you won’t be an idiot,” Ellen said, turning back to the door.

  “Yes, but would the fictional version of me know how to find your necklace?”

  For the first time since she came through their door, Ellen Svaco didn’t appear to be suffering from stomach pains.

  “What about my necklace?” she said dubiously, almost exactly at the same time as Gus.

  “Not much,” Shawn said. “Just that you ordered the head detective of the Santa Barbara Police Department to find it for you.”

  “I did go to the police station to request help in finding my necklace.”

  Gus sighed and settled back in his seat. It looked like they were getting a client. “Where was the last place you saw it?” he asked.

  Shawn held up a hand to stop her before she could respond. “If she knew that, she wouldn’t have come to a psychic-detective agency,” Shawn said. “A regular detective is perfectly capable of asking the same questions your mother did every time you lost your mittens.”

  “I grew up in Santa Barbara,” Gus said. “I never had any mittens to lose.”

  “Which made your perpetual search for them even more pathetic,” Shawn said, then turned back to Ellen Svaco. “I don’t want you to tell me anything. I just want you to think about the necklace. Think about how much it means to you, about all the good times you’ve had together.”

  She looked like she was about to say something, but Shawn gave her a calming shush and she stopped herself, closing her eyes. Shawn studied her carefully and he saw. Saw the small scratch on the side of her neck. Saw the four red stripes of rash on the back of her hand. Saw the smudge of chalk dust high on her forehead and the small brown spot on her blouse. He pressed his fingers to his temples and bowed his head.

  “I’m sensing something,” he said. “A banana.”

  “A banana?” Ellen Svaco sat back up in her chair.

  “Not just a banana,” Shawn said. “A giant banana, hurtling through the world at amazing speeds, filled with songs of joy. Does that mean anything to you?”

  It did to Gus-that they were going to be here all day while Shawn played silly games with the new client. “Sometimes the visions take a while to coalesce,” Gus told her. “He just gets random images at first, and eventually they come together into a coherent whole. So maybe we could call you tonight and-”

  “That’s what we call the school bus,” Ellen said. “On Monday I took my s
econd-grade class on a field trip to-”

  “No, wait,” Shawn said, again pressing his fingertips to his temple. “I see a magical land of enchantment. A place of peace and happiness where no voice is ever raised in anger and everybody loves everyone else.”

  “She took them to Fairyland?” Gus said.

  “Nicer than that,” Shawn said. “Canada.”

  “It was only a half day,” Ellen said. “And I’d be fired if I took the kids out of the state, let alone the country.”

  “No, not Canada.” Shawn scrunched his eyes shut even more tightly. “ La Canada. You took them to the Descanso Gardens outside Pasadena.”

  She stared at him suspiciously. “How do you know that?”

  “That’s where the necklace is,” Shawn said. “You left it there, and a little piece of your soul with it. That’s what was communicating with me.”

  For a moment a pleased expression almost appeared on Ellen’s face, but she managed to banish it before it resolved into a smile. “You must think you’re pretty clever,” she said. “Now I’m supposed to write you a check and go off happy?”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Shawn said. “You pay us in cash, and we won’t care what your mood is.”

  “Meanwhile, all you’ve said is that my necklace is somewhere within a hundred and fifty acres of public gardens, not including the parking lot. So when I can’t find it, you can still say you solved the big mystery.”

  “We’ll recover your necklace,” Shawn said.

  “We will?” Gus said.

  “And we will bring it to your doorstep. I might even bring it across your doorstep if you promised to open the door when I got there.”

  Ellen made a show of thinking it over then scrawled an address across the top of Shawn’s newspaper. “Just put it in the mail along with your bill. But don’t even think about sending the bill without the necklace. I’ve got every state licensing agency on my speed dial.”

  Gus waited until she’d left the bungalow, and made sure the door was closed, before he said anything. By the time he was certain they were alone, Shawn was rooting around on Gus’ desk.

  “I don’t know what that little piece of her soul is telling you, but the necklace isn’t on my desk,” Gus said.

  “No, but these are.” Shawn held up Gus’ keys, then tossed them to him. “If we hurry, we can get to La Canada before lunch-time. There’s a new burger stand I’ve been dying to try.”

  “It’s going to take us at least two hours to get to La Canada from here,” Gus said. “And besides, we had lunch an hour ago.”

  “Which means we’ll be ready for another one as soon as we grab that necklace,” Shawn said as he headed towards the door.

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me why you’re so sure it’s there. And if I hear the word ‘soul’ one more time I’m going to throw up.”

  Shawn sighed and turned around. “We could save an awful lot of time if you’d just watch my eyes when I’m observing. Then you could see what I see. Pretty soon you could think like I think.”

  “And right after that I could commit myself,” Gus said. “How did you know about the field trip?”

  “She had a strange rash-four short stripes on top of her hand and one across the heel of her palm,” Shawn said. “At least it was strange until you knew what it was. It was the shape of four little fingers and one thumb clutching her hand.”

  “She’s allergic to children?”

  “Only if they’ve been picking a bouquet of pretty green and red leaves,” Shawn said.

  “The kid got poison oak on his hand and then grabbed Ellen Svaco’s?”

  “Exactly.

  “But poison oak grows all over Southern California. How did you know this happened at Descanso Gardens?”

  “I didn’t know,” Shawn admitted. “But I did read the Santa Barbara Times today.”

  Shawn refolded the newspaper and handed it to Gus. On the bottom of the page was a small article about a group of parents who were furious because their children had gone on a field trip to Descanso Gardens and come back covered in poison oak. A couple of them had even been sent to the hospital.

  “Maybe she should have been watching her kids a little more closely instead of worrying about her necklace,” Gus said.

  “I think she was watching the kids,” Shawn said. “In fact, I think that’s how she lost the necklace. There’s a scratch on her neck that looks like it was made by a chain-that’s how I figured out she had lost the necklace. I’d guess she saw one of her students playing in poison oak, she rushed over to pull him out, and her necklace chain caught on a tree branch and snapped off. Now all we have to do is locate that patch of poison oak, find the nearby tree, and the necklace will be waiting for us there.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s an inanimate object, so there’s very little chance it will get tired of waiting for us and head out on its own.”

  “No,” Gus said. “Why are we doing this? She’s a nasty bat, the case is a dog, and there are a million other things I’d rather spend my afternoon on. So why are we driving to La Canada?”

  “Because Lassie sent her over to us.”

  “Yeah, to get rid of her and piss us off.”

  “Exactly,” Shawn said. “And it’s really going to annoy him if we not only take her case and solve it in hours, but also get paid for doing it.”

  Gus had to admit there was a certain logic to Shawn’s reasoning. And he’d been curious about the new burger place in La Canada, too. Besides, the sun was out and the sky was bright blue; it was a great day for a long drive.

  Apparently he wasn’t the only one who thought that way. Because as Gus eased the Echo out of its parking spot in front of the Psych office, a black Town Car three spaces down started up-and stayed exactly three car lengths behind Gus and Shawn all the way into La Canada.

  Chapter Five

  Shawn’s plan was flawless-at least in the confines of the Psych office. Because from their perspective in that cozy bungalow on the beach, there was only one stand of poison oak in the entire hundred and fifty acres of Descanso Gardens, and it was surrounded by chain-link and crime scene tape. But this was July in the San Gabriel Valley, and the noxious weed was spreading faster than the army of professional gardeners could stamp it out. Shawn and Gus were going to have to check every tree near every stand of the stuff-and hope that Shawn’s analysis had been correct.

  They split up so they could cover more ground, and all had been going fairly well until Gus started searching the nature trail. That winding path took him out of the tree cover and up a steep hillside into the region’s natural chaparral. By the time Gus realized how hard the sun was beating down on him, he was already becoming dizzy and disoriented. And for some reason, the idiot who designed that part of the gardens decided that drinking fountains were not to be considered part of nature. As the blasting sun, untempered by the lovely ocean breezes he would have been enjoying back in Santa Barbara, leached the moisture from his body, his heat-exhausted brain brought him back into his standard nightmare.

  Now, with the giant camellias providing blessed relief from the blazing sun, Gus could feel the last wisps of fever dream retreating from his mind. That left only his irritation.

  “Would it make you feel any better if I told you the snack bar also sells root beer slushies?” Shawn said with what was as close to an expression of concern as he would get unless his friend had been run over by the train.

  “What would make me feel better is finding that stupid necklace and getting out of this hellhole,” Gus said.

  “Heckhole,” Shawn said, gesturing at the many small children running on the paths around them. “And it just so happens I’m the magic wish fairy today.”

  Shawn held out the hand that wasn’t clutching the sticky plastic pink popcorn wrapper. Lying across his palm was a heart-shaped gold locket about an inch across. A broken gold chain dangled off the end. He pressed a latch by the locket’s left ventricle and the
front popped open. Inside were facing photographs of an unbelievably homely middle-aged man and a slightly younger, if even homelier, woman. The photographs were badly trimmed to fit inside the uneven space, revealing a shiny green surface behind them.

  “So you can see where she gets her fine looks from,” Shawn said.

  “At least it’s done,” Gus said. “Was it where you thought it would be?”

  “First place I looked,” Shawn said. “It was at the lost and found.”

  Gus stared at him. “You went straight to the lost and found desk?”

  “Of course,” Shawn said. “Why search if there’s a chance someone else has already found it?”

  “You let me hunt for hours in the blazing sun.”

  “I couldn’t be sure.”

  “But you were sure,” Gus said. “After you got it back. And you still let me stay out there.”

  “It was for your own good,” Shawn said. “Immersion therapy. To help you get over your irrational fear of being lost in the wilderness. This stupid dream is crippling you. And believe me, I know how bad a recurring dream can be.”

  “If you did, you wouldn’t have done this to me,” Gus said.

  “It’s not like I’ve been taking it easy,” Shawn said. “I had my own version of immersion therapy.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. I had to get over my irrational fear of ice-cream sandwiches,” Shawn said. “It took a lot of tries, but I think I’m almost there. Want to help me finish it off?”

  Gus tried to stay angry, but the thought of ice cream pushed everything out else out of his brain. And after they’d emptied the snack bar’s freezer chest, he felt so happily sated that he couldn’t bring himself to darken the mood with even well-deserved negativity.