Psych: A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read

by William Rabkin

  “What did you do that for?” Gus whispered.

  “I can’t be absolutely certain it’s good news,” Shawn said.

  “Mr. Guster, my name is Devon Shepler, and I’ve got good news for you and Mr. Shawn Spencer.”

  “Pretty certain, though,” Shawn said.

  “What can we do for you, Mr. Shepler?” Gus said.

  “Before you answer that, you’re not Mr. Shawn Spencer’s psychic mind slave by any chance?” Shawn said.

  The silence from the other end of the line stretched on for what seemed like minutes before Shepler’s voice returned. When it did, it brimmed with superiority and condescension even through the tiny speaker. “No, I can’t say that’s the case.”

  “Just checking,” Shawn said. “Can’t be too careful these days.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Shepler said. “Is Mr. Spencer there?”

  Shawn nudged Gus. “I’m here,” Gus said. “But it’s Mr. Guster you want to talk to. He’s the real brains behind the organization.”

  Shawn threw a pencil at him.

  There was another silence from the other end; then Shepler’s voice started again. “I represent Mr. Dallas Steele. Are you familiar with this name?”

  “Dallas Steele.” Shawn pronounced the words as if they were in some unfamiliar Eastern European language. “Dallas Steele. Was he the kid who got sent home in tears when he failed the shoe-tying test in kindergarten?”

  By now Gus suspected he could count down the seconds that would elapse before Shepler’s voice came over the speaker again. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said. “I’ve only worked for the man since he became the third-most-successful venture capitalist in Wall Street history.”

  “Just third?” Shawn said. “That must hurt. I bet the first two get together and make fun of him behind his back.”

  Gus decided to put Shepler’s predicted silence to work for him. “So, Mr. Shepler, what is the good news you’re calling about?”

  “I’m glad you asked, Mr. Spencer. As I mentioned, I work for Mr. Dallas Steele, and he has asked me to invite you to meet with him this afternoon to discuss a business proposition.”

  “He’s free to drop by if he wants to,” Shawn said. “I can’t guarantee we’ll be here, because we’re working on a murder investigation, but there’s a spray-on tan place next door if he wants to wait.”

  “Mr. Steele requests that you come to see him at Eagle’s View,” Shepler said after the by-now-traditional pause.

  Gus could feel his mouth dropping open. During the brief period when he had wanted to be an architect, Eagle’s View was the building that had inspired him most. Erected in the 1920s by shipping magnate Elias Adler, it sat in a private valley fifty miles into the hills outside Santa Barbara, and its opulence and decadence were legendary by the standards of the time. Or of any time. Even William Randolph Hearst reportedly found it “a bit too much,” and after an overnight stay ordered his architect, Julia Morgan, to scale down certain aspects of his own castle for fear of looking as crazy as Adler. Over the decades the mansion had passed through a series of extremely wealthy and private hands. Very few people had actually been through the estate’s massive gates in years, and Gus had never even met one of them. Now they were being invited in, and Shawn was refusing.

  “We’re happy with our view here,” Shawn said. “Tell him no deal.”

  “No, wait!” Gus said, but Shawn had already disconnected the call. “What did you do that for?”

  “Who does that jerk think he is?” Shawn said. “Summoning us to see him like he’s some kind of king.”

  “Most kings couldn’t afford Eagle’s View,” Gus said. “In the fifties, there was one who actually offered to trade his crown for the place.”

  “I’m not him, and I’m not giving away my crown for anything.”

  “You don’t have a crown.”

  “No, but I have my dignity.”

  Gus didn’t bother to argue. He just picked up the trophy Shawn had won in the Hollywood Tropicana Jell-O Wrestling Championship and pointed to the bottom, where the words “Dirtiest Fighter” were engraved.

  “Okay, so I don’t have dignity. But I’m not going to go crawling to Mr. Dallas Steele just because he’s got some snooty secretary summoning us.”

  “I don’t understand,” Gus said. “Why do you hate this guy so much?”

  “I don’t understand why you don’t,” Shawn said. “He spent the entire senior prom making out with your date.”

  “No,” Gus says, “that was you.”

  “Oh. Well, he asked to read your English essay, then turned it in as his own, so you got an F for copying him.”

  “No,” Gus said, “that was you, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I don’t just hate people for no reason,” Shawn said. “And I definitely hated him. So there must have been something.”

  “Because even though he was incredibly handsome, hugely intelligent, and came from the richest family in town, he worked harder than anyone else in school and honestly earned everything he got,” Gus said.

  “Right,” Shawn said. “I hate that guy.”

  The phone rang again. Shawn hit the SPEAKER button. “Psych,” he said.

  There was a familiar pause. “Mr. Guster.”

  “No, this is Mr. Spencer,” Shawn said. “Can’t you even tell our voices apart?”

  “But I—”

  “I told you before, we’re not coming.”

  “I thought that was Mr. Guster.”

  “I’m Mr. Guster,” Gus said. “I’m the one who isn’t crazy.”

  “And I’m Mr. Spencer,” Shawn said. “I’m the one who isn’t a suck-up toady for any multibillionaire who happens to have his assistant call my office.”

  The silence on the other end of the line lasted twice as long as any of Shepler’s previous pauses. “Mr. Steele expects to see you within the hour,” he finally said.

  “Then he’s coming to our office?” Shawn said.

  “He would,” Shepler said. “But it seems there’s a problem.”

  “I’m sure he can get someone to tie his shoes for him,” Shawn said.

  “The problem is not with Mr. Steele,” Shepler said. “It’s with your office. You see, since our last conversation Mr. Steele has bought your building, and if you’re not here within the hour, he’s going to demolish it and put a community garden on the lot. So you can spend the next hour driving out to Eagle’s View or moving your possessions to another location. But I wouldn’t bother with the spray-on tan parlor next door. Mr. Steele bought that building, too.”

  There was no pause before Shepler hung up his phone with a loud click.

  “Now do you see why I hate that guy?” Shawn said.

  “You don’t get to be a multibillionaire by letting people say no to you,” Gus said. “I wonder what he wants.”

  “Too bad we’ll never find out.” Shawn walked around the office making a mental catalog of the items stored on the shelves. “How long do you think it will take to pack all this stuff up?”

  “Almost as long as it did to collect it all,” Gus said. “You’re not going to let him knock down our offices?”

  “I don’t see that we have a choice.”

  “Can’t you just get over this bizarre high school fixation with the man?”

  “Of course I can,” Shawn said, “because I’m a professional. I can get over just about anything. Last year, didn’t I get over the bird flu?”

  “You didn’t have bird flu. You got food poisoning after eating week-old chicken salad.”

  “But I got over it, all the same.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “There’s one thing I can’t get over.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Santa Ynez Pass. At least, not without a car.”

  That did present a problem that hadn’t occurred to Gus. To get to Eagle’s View required a long and arduous journey up a windi
ng road into the mountains above Santa Barbara. The route was so slow and twisty that even if they had the Echo, it would still be a fight to get there before the sixty-minute window had closed. On foot they wouldn’t even make it to the base of the mountains, even if Gus could walk at his normal efficient pace.

  “Maybe your father would let you borrow his truck,” Gus said.

  “He’s off fishing.”

  “Again? Isn’t he fishing an awful lot lately?”

  “He’s old. He’s bored. He needs an excuse to wear that hideous hat.”

  “But the coast is closed for fishing right now. There was another sewage spill last week, and the fish have been marinating in human waste.”

  “Maybe he went to a lake.”

  “What lake?”

  “Lake Why the Hell Are We Talking About This,” Shawn snapped. “Can we get back to whatever we were talking about?”

  “We were talking about how to get out to see Dallas Steele before he bulldozes our building,” Gus said. “But now I’m curious about why you’re so touchy.”

  “You’re not going to let this drop, are you?” Shawn said.

  “Would you?”

  That was one argument Shawn couldn’t counter. “Okay, he’s not fishing. He’s . . . he’s . . .” Shawn’s voice trailed off in disgust.

  “He’s what?”

  “Scrapbooking.”

  From Shawn’s tone of voice, Gus’ first thought was that “scrapbooking” must be a new slang term for drug running. Or murder for hire. Or white slavery. “What do you mean scrapbooking?”

  “Exactly what it sounds like,” Shawn says. “Some old lady dumps a load of old photos, ticket stubs, used napkins, and all sorts of other garbage on him, and he sorts through it and pastes it all into a tastefully designed photo album.”

  “Why is he doing that?”

  “I can only think of one reason,” Shawn said. “To humiliate me and destroy any last vestiges of respect the world might have for his many years as a fine police detective.”

  “That’s two reasons.”

  “It’s two more than he’s given me. In fact, he’s so terrified of having to answer the question that every time I call, he hangs up before I can demand that he justify himself again.”

  “So no ride. Why don’t we just call Shepler back and explain the problem? I’m sure they’d send a car.”

  “And let him know you’re so poor you can’t even afford to get your own car out of the impound lot?” Shawn scowled. “There has to be a better way. One that will allow us to arrive there in style. In elegance. In—”

  Gus felt his heart sinking. “You can’t be serious.”

  Shawn was. “In sane,” he said.

  Chapter Eight

  “Stop!” Gus shouted.

  Tara stomped on the brakes, and the Mercedes left rubber along a hundred yards of narrow mountain road before it came to a screeching halt. Shawn felt his appendix sliced neatly in two by the seat belt.

  “What is it?” Shawn said, clutching at the belt release.

  Gus was already out of the car. He walked the few feet to the top of the mountain’s summit, then stopped, gazing down at the valley below him. It was like an enormous cereal bowl carved out of granite, deep, almost perfectly round, with enormous boulders protruding from the walls like stray Lucky Charms stranded after the milk was gone. A one-lane road spiraled around the bowl, taking three full revolutions before it finally reached the bottom of the valley and straightened out into the mansion’s long driveway.

  And exactly in the center of the circle, Eagle’s View sprawled majestically, an artistic testament to attention-deficit disorder. Elias Adler was a man of great and sudden passions who could fall in love with an architectural style as quickly as a chorus girl, and dump it just as easily. When Adler first commissioned this house, he had just come back from a month in Italy, and the entrance was designed to look like a Roman villa’s. But before construction could be completed, Adler took a trip to Germany, where he fell in love with Ludwig’s Bavarian castle. So behind the villa’s atrium there rose three stone towers, each one topped with crenellated watchtowers. Apparently, however, Adler’s attention drifted away again during this construction, because the rearmost third of the house seemed to be modeled on a Japanese palace.

  Even from half a mile away, the house was everything Gus had ever dreamed it would be. He was so totally engrossed in studying it, he didn’t notice Shawn come up behind him.

  “That has got to be the ugliest house in the world,” Shawn said. “It’s like an aerial view of Disneyland, if each different land was a building and they were all crammed up against one another.”

  “Spectacular, isn’t it?” Gus agreed.

  “If you’re a lunatic.”

  A car door slammed and Tara tottered up to them on her spike heels. She was about to say something when she saw the landscape spread out in front of them.

  “What a beautiful house,” she cooed.

  “There you go,” Shawn said.

  To be fair, Tara hadn’t acted particularly crazy on the long trip. Even her driving was shockingly sane on the road’s tight turns, although Gus supposed she was still acting under Shawn’s earlier instruction to drive safely and obey almost all traffic laws.

  Even that wasn’t enough to keep him from spending the first half hour of the ride ducking under the window every time they passed a police cruiser. A stolen car was a stolen car, no matter how considerately driven. Finally Gus decided he needed to tackle the question head-on. Or at least slightly to the left of head-on.

  “Say, Shawn,” Gus said as insouciantly as he could with his head lying on the armrest, “how’s that other case going? You know, the one in Arcata?”

  “I don’t know, Gus,” Shawn said. “Why don’t you tell me? After all, you’re the one who insists there’s a case in the first place.”

  Gus studied Tara closely to see how she’d react to the mention of the scene of her crime. She didn’t seem to notice at all. At least, the small lock of her hair Gus could see poking around the headrest didn’t. From his position, he couldn’t see the rest of her. After a quick check for police vehicles, Gus sat up and tried again.

  “You remember what I’m talking about, don’t you, Shawn? The Enid Blalock case?”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Gus realized he’d made a terrible mistake. If Tara was as crazy as he feared, what was there to stop her from driving them right off the edge of this twisty road, sending them all plummeting down to a fiery death? Gus didn’t know the odds against surviving two cliff plunges within a twenty-four-hour period, but he didn’t want to test them.

  “I’m sorry, Gus. I couldn’t hear you over the all the subtlety flying around in the car,” Shawn said. “What was that name again?”

  “Enid Blalock.”

  “Not the Enid Blalock,” Shawn said.

  “It’s hard to imagine there could be more than one,” Gus said.

  “I wonder if Tara has an opinion on the subject,” Shawn said.

  Gus realized he didn’t know what he was expecting from Tara. A stern denial, possibly, or a look of fake incomprehension. Or worse, a look of real incomprehension, which would suggest pretty strongly that she’d never learned the name of the woman whose car she had stolen. And of course, that long shot in the back of his mind: the terrifying plunge off the cliff after she deliberately missed a turn.

  The one thing he definitely didn’t expect was what he saw—one tear running down her cheek.

  “What’s wrong?” Shawn asked.

  “That name,” Tara said. “It reminds me of my own aunt Enid.”

  “Aunt Enid?” Shawn shot a chiding look back at Gus.

  “She was so kind to me.” Tara sniffed. “When I needed a place to live, she helped me find an apartment, even though she specialized in houses.”

  “So she’s a Realtor?” Shawn said, barely trying to hide the victory in his voice.

  “She was,” Tara said. �
�She got her license after the divorce.”

  “That is something new and different,” Shawn said. “Where is she now?”

  “I hope she’s in Heaven,” Tara said. “I mean, I know they say gluttony is a sin, but do you really think someone would get sent to Hell just because she could polish off a pound of See’s Soft Centers for breakfast?”