Gus took a sip and swirled it over his tongue. “Intriguing,” he said. “My first thought was Sulawesi, but there’s an undercurrent I can’t place.” He took another sip. “Wait a minute-this isn’t Kopi Luwak?”
“I’m impressed,” Steele said. “It is. Have you had it before?”
“Only in my dreams,” Gus said.
“Since when do you dream about coffee?” Shawn asked. “Especially coffee with such a stupid name?”
“Since that time I studied to be a professional nose,” Gus said.
“Professional brown nose, more like it.”
“Kopi Luwak is the rarest coffee in the world,” Gus said. “And the most expensive. There are at most a thousand pounds of it available for sale every year.”
“And this is actually a little rarer than that,” Dallas said.
Gus gaped. “You mean this is Vietnamese weasel coffee?”
“In a way. I find the Vietnamese weasel produces a more sophisticated product than the Asian palm civet, which they use in Indonesia. But I’m not wild about the actual Vietnamese coffee, so I ship Sulawesi beans to my own private weasel ranch outside Saigon.”
Shawn was looking from Gus to Dallas and back to Gus again, trying to make sense of the conversation. “Wait a minute. They grind up weasels and put them in the coffee?”
Gus and Dallas shared a knowing laugh. “You’ve got that backward, I’m afraid,” Dallas said. “The coffee berries are fed to the weasels.”
“So how do they get them-Oh,” Shawn said.
“The animals eat the berries, but the beans inside don’t get digested,” Gus said. “The enzymes in the weasels’ stomachs break down the proteins that make coffee bitter.”
“So you’re drinking coffee that comes out of a weasel’s butt,” Shawn said.
“Not directly,” Gus said.
“I realize the butler isn’t down in the kitchen pumping some rodent’s tail to dispense the coffee, but what you are drinking is made from beans that were crapped out of a weasel.”
“First of all,” Gus said, “the beans are cleaned extremely well. And second, you’re drinking a beverage that’s forty percent made by French people, and their women don’t even shave under their arms.”
“Does that make sense to anyone here?” Shawn said. “I only ask because I had a spicy garlic shrimp burrito before bed last night, and I think I might still be dreaming.”
Gus took a loud sip of his coffee and turned to Dallas. “So what is it we can do for you? I mean, unless Shawn wants to ask the spirits again.”
“Yes, as much as I’m enjoying catching up on old times, I guess we should get down to business. This is really about my bride-”
“You’re married?” Gus was surprised.
“Very recently.”
“I didn’t see anything about it in the papers.”
“My bride is very shy about publicity,” Steele said. “The wife of a billionaire is subjected to a lot of pressure, and we’d rather enjoy our honeymoon privately for as long as possible. I can count on your discretion, can’t I?”
“Absolutely,” Gus said. He looked over at Shawn for confirmation. Shawn was bent over double, his fingers curled around his skull. “Shawn agrees, too.”
“Is he all right?” Steele said. He motioned to Shepler, who started across the room to check. Before he could get close, Shawn bolted upright, his eyes blazing.
“A man of your wealth is prey to any number of parasites-and the worst kind of parasite is the woman who latches on to a man’s fortune and proceeds to suck him dry,” Shawn said. “You love your bride, but you need to be absolutely certain that she loves the real you, and not just your money.”
“No.”
“Of course not,” Shawn said without hesitation. “In your business you can see through people and know their real intentions. So you know she loves you for who you really are. But lately, as you’ve been planning the wedding, a cloud has come between you. She lapses into silence, and when you ask what’s wrong, she doesn’t have an answer. You’ve come to suspect that before she met you, your new wife was in a long, complex romance with a man of great beauty but little wealth. An artist. It was a torrid, passionate relationship, and she had to break it off for fear that she was losing her very selfhood in it. But break away she did, and when she ran off to some exotic resort to forget about Reynaldo-”
“Reynaldo?” Gus said.
“They’re always named Reynaldo,” Shawn said. “It’s like a law. Anyway, she went off to this resort, and there she met you, and ever since, she’s been happy. But on a recent trip back into Santa Barbara, she ran into Reynaldo again. He’s working as a landscaper, but he’s trying to put together a new show, the one that will make him famous throughout the art world. And he wants her by his side when he does. Now she’s torn between the rich, kind man who makes her feel safe and warm and the poverty-stricken artist who treats her badly but raises her passions to a level she’s never felt before.”
“Wow,” Dallas said. “That’s really incredible.”
“You mean he’s right?” Gus said.
“There is a reason we call the agency Psych, you know,” Shawn said.
“Actually, nothing you said had any relation to anything that’s ever happened in my life, but it’s such an incredibly detailed story, for a moment I felt I was actually living it,” Dallas said.
Gus cleared his throat loudly. Shawn ignored him. He glared at Shawn. Shawn refused to meet his gaze. He drummed his fingers as loud as he could on the arm of his chair, but the noise was swallowed up by the padding. Finally he stood up, grabbed Shawn by the collar, and pulled him to his feet. “Excuse us for a moment,” he said to Steele. “Sometimes Shawn’s psychic batteries need a kick start.”
“You mean a jump start?” Steele said.
“We may try a jump, but a kick is coming soon.” Gus dragged Shawn into the depths of the forest. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Astonishing him with my psychic prowess,” Shawn said.
“He doesn’t look very astonished to me,” Gus said. “And you’re not even trying.”
“I’m giving him exactly as much effort as he ever gave me,” Shawn said.
“You’re dredging up cliches from seventies detective shows.”
“That’s okay. He never watched TV,” Shawn said. “He studied, practiced, and worked instead. I remember how he used to brag about it.” He shuddered in revulsion at the memory.
“And this is helping you how?” Gus said. “You’re making us look like idiots. You didn’t even know he was married.”
“I could have known if I’d wanted to,” Shawn said, casting a glance over his shoulder at Steele, who waved at him cheerily. “He’s got the beginnings of a tan line on his wedding finger, and he’s touched it a couple of times as if he’s trying to decide whether he likes it better with the ring on or off.”
“That’s good,” Gus said. “A little late, but good. What else?”
“Aside from the fact that he’s a phony?”
“Yes, aside from that. Because even if he’s phony, he’s rich, and he owns our building.”
Shawn sighed and cast another quick glance back at Steele. And then he saw. Saw the sole gray root on his temple that had somehow outgrown the last application of dye. Saw the tiny scar under his left ear. Saw the custom-made clothes designed to hug and show off every toned muscle in his body.
Shawn bent over as if in pain. “It can’t be,” he wailed.
“Of course it can,” Gus said. “Shepler called and told us-”
He broke off as he saw Dallas staring at Shawn.
“What can’t be?” Steele said.
“All this beauty, all this wealth, all this success,” Shawn moaned. “You’ve worked so hard for so long to reach this reward, and soon it will all be gone. Worse, it will still be here-but you will be gone. Age is catching up with you, and while you still have decades to live, you know they will pass like minutes. And then what happens? Is it all just gone?”
Gus looked over at Dallas and saw he was staring at Shawn as if his innermost soul had been torn out and
