“Then let’s get our education started,” Shawn said. “You know how much I hate an uninformed opinion.”
Although they were no more than half a mile from the house, it took them another twenty minutes before the Mercedes pulled up in the circular drive outside the villa’s front door. There was no straight road from the summit to the valley floor; instead, the drive hugged the side of the bowl, running slowly down in three concentric rings.
When Shawn and Gus stepped out onto the flagstone driveway, the house’s mammoth front door yawned open and a small man in a precisely tailored gray pin-striped suit stepped out, checking his watch. His razor-cut hair seemed to have been combed with tweezers, each strand placed exactly in the right location. When he walked over to them, he placed his feet so deliberately Gus found himself looking for the marks he appeared to be hitting.
“You’re thirteen minutes late,” the man said. “The bulldozers were on their way.”
“No point in wasting them,” Shawn said. “Maybe they could knock down this monstrosity while they’re on the clock.”
“I am Devon Shepler,” the man said. “You must be Mr. Spencer.”
“Or what?”
Gus had gotten used to Shepler’s pauses on the phone, but to see one in person was unexpected. It was as if Shepler existed only on a DVD, and someone had pressed the PAUSE button. His muscles froze; his breathing stopped. Gus couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the breeze even stopped rustling through his hair as he decided on the appropriate response. Then, after a few seconds, Shepler came back to life.
“Mr. Steele is waiting for you,” he said. “Come this way.”
Shepler turned and marched toward the front door without checking to see if they were following him.
“If Steele asks us to invest in his robot factory, we are so in,” Shawn said. “That thing is amazing.”
Shawn and Gus followed Shepler through the door into a wide-open atrium flanked with ancient columns that reached up to the sky. A shallow still pool glowed blue in the sunlight.
“This is based on the Villa Uffizi, the most famous house in Rome,” Gus whispered as if they were walking through a museum and a guard was glaring at them.
“I guess they spent all their money on the pool, so they couldn’t afford a roof,” Shawn said. “And would it have killed them to dig the swimming pool a little deeper? I like to get in above my ankles.”
At the end of the atrium, Shepler was holding another door open for them. They passed through into a wide corridor, its walls covered with elaborate tapestries. Their footsteps rang out on the gleaming marble floor.
“This place would be a lot less noisy if they put some of those carpets on the floor where they belong,” Shawn said.
Shepler stopped outside a stained oak door and rapped sharply on it with his knuckles, then swung it open. “Mr. Spencer and Mr. Guster are here,” he said, then moved out of the way to let them through.
The room was the size of the international terminal at a major airport. All four walls appeared to be lined with antique books, but they were too far away for Gus to be sure.
“Shawn! Gus! Great to see you!” The voice seemed to be coming from right next to them. Gus jumped, then turned in all directions. He didn’t see anyone.
“You didn’t tell me Steele was a ghost,” Shawn said to Shepler.
“It’s the acoustics,” the disembodied voice said cheerfully. “Amazing, isn’t it? The design was based on the fortress citadel of Golconda, the famous sixteenth-century Indian palace built by Ibrahim Quli Qutb Shah Wali. They said you could clap your hands at the main gate and they’d hear it at the top of the citadel.”
“That’s a really useful invention,” Shawn said.“I mean, it would be if no one had ever invented the doorbell.”
Gus squinted his eyes, and in the far distance, he was able to see the outlines of an enormous desk. There seemed to be a person behind it, waving at them.
Shawn and Gus crossed the great expanse of office, finally reaching a mahogany desk the size of the Hindenburg. By the time they got there, Dallas Steele was coming from behind it, his hand outstretched in welcome.
“Shawn! Gus!” Steele’s pearly teeth flashed in a warm smile. Gus could hardly believe what he saw. The years hadn’t just been kind to Steele-they’d been his best friend in the world. Somehow he’d become even more handsome now than he had been as quarterback and homecoming king in high school. “It’s so good to see you!”
“Why?” Shawn said. “Need someone to tie your shoes?”
Gus slapped Shawn’s arm. But Steele just let out another booming laugh. “Devon told me how you remembered that nursery school thing. What a memory you have! I’d forgotten all about it-but you were right. I cried my eyes out for a week after that humiliation.”
“Some people would be bitter about things like that,” Gus said. “Some people can’t ever seem to get over what happened to them in school.”
“Got to move on, right?” Steele said.
“Possibly,” Shawn said.
“Besides, there were no hard feelings. Especially not after I bought the company that made those shoes, drove it into the ground, and sent the CEO to prison on trumped-up embezzlement charges.”
Shawn and Gus stared at Steele, who burst out laughing again. “I’m joking,” he said. “Not all businessmen are evil, any more than all psychics are frauds.”
“Who’s a fraud?” Shawn said.
“No one, no one,” Steele said. “That’s why you’re here, because I believe you’re the real deal. But let’s not stand around my crummy old office. Let’s go somewhere we can be comfortable.”
“Is it far?” Shawn said. “Because I forgot my hiking boots.”
Gus hit Shawn again. “That sounds great, Mr. Steele.”
“It’s Dallas. But to you, it’s Dal. Just like the old days.”
Steele led them back across the office toward the door.
“What old days?” Shawn whispered. “We don’t have any old days with this guy.”
“Sure, back in high school-”
“When he was the king of all he surveyed, and we were nothing. In four years of high school, did you ever once call him ‘Dal’?”
“I don’t think anyone called him ‘Dal.’ The teachers used to call him ‘sir.’”
“Exactly,” Shawn said. “He’s up to something.”
Gus took one last look around the office as they stepped back into the corridor, trying to calculate just how much bigger it was than every place he’d ever lived put together.
“Yeah, he’s up to about four billion dollars as far as I can tell.”
“And how do you think he got all that money?”
“His official biography says he took his inheritance and invested it in-”
Shawn raised a hand to cut him off. “Does the phrase ‘massive criminal conspiracy that reaches into the highest echelons of Santa Barbara society’ mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“Yes, it does,” Shawn said. “I saw it on your face. Isn’t it suspicious that a day after we stumble across the Impound Lot Massacre-”
“What massacre?”
“Fine, the day after a refugee from a chain gang tries to kill us for revealing his identity at the impound lot and ends up murdered,” Shawn said. “Although I think Impound Lot Massacre is a lot punchier. Anyway, one day after that, Dallas Steele drags us up here for a chat. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
“Not necessarily,” Gus said. “It could be a complete coincidence.”
“Exactly!”
“Exactly what?”
“Exactly what Auric Goldfinger said: First time it’s happenstance. Second time it’s coincidence. Third time is enemy action.”
Gus tried to follow the logic. “Then this isn’t even a coincidence. We’re still on happenstance. You know, I
