tossed on the table in front of them.
“I need to know,” Steele said.
“You called me up here to see if I actually had a connection to the world of spirits,” Shawn said.
“To find out if that world exists,” Dallas agreed. “I have to know.” Dallas had risen from his seat, almost physically reaching for the answer.
“If I said yes, it wouldn’t help you at all,” Shawn said.
“Maybe a little,” Gus said. “Maybe enough to get our building back.”
Shawn ignored him. “You thought it would be enough for you to believe, but it’s not. That’s why I was spinning you all those ridiculous plots from seventies detective shows. It was a test.”
“Is that what they were?” Steele said. “I never watch TV. I’d rather read or work.”
Shawn worked to suppress his shudder.
“If belief was enough, you would have seized on one,” Shawn said. “But you didn’t become a billionaire by believing what people told you. You did your own research, found your own truths. You need to prove it for yourself.”
“That’s exactly right,” Steele said. “Funny thing is, I didn’t even realize it until you said it out loud. I need proof that there’s a life after this one.”
“You need to test me in a way I can’t possibly cheat. No looking at cards or bending spoons. You will test me in a field you understand and I don’t.”
“That doesn’t narrow it down much,” Gus said.
“Investments,” Dallas said. “It’s what I do. I want to take a small pool of capital and put it at your disposal. If you’re really psychic, you’ll pick winners.”
“See?” Gus whispered into Shawn’s ear. “You put in a little effort, you get something back.”
“The spirits don’t respond to money,” Shawn said.
“Some of them do,” Gus said.
“I don’t mean to insult them or you with the offer,” Steele said. “We could arrange to give all the results to charity.”
“Spirits aren’t so crazy about charity, either,” Shawn said quickly.
“Then let’s just do it this way,” Steele said. “I’ll give you a pool of money to invest. Anything you earn over that initial nut, you do with whatever you feel will please the spirits best.”
“I don’t need anything, but I think the spirits would be pretty happy if my friend Gus could raise about six thousand dollars about now.”
“I was thinking of a slightly larger pool.”
“How slightly?” Shawn asked.
“How does a hundred million dollars sound to you?”
Chapter Nine
“Who’d ever think it would be so hard to spend a hundred million dollars?” Gus looked up wearily from his desk, which was littered with brochures, prospectuses, and press releases. “Haven’t we bought enough companies already?”
In the weeks since they’d agreed to consult for Dallas Steele, Shepler had inundated them with paper. Apparently every request Dallas got for venture capital was being shipped directly over to the Psych offices. And as Gus was discovering, there were a lot of people in the world who wanted a multibillionaire to make their dreams come true.
At first Gus and Shawn hadn’t intended to spend so much time on the consulting job. After Tara had brought them back from Eagle’s View, their first priority was to solve the murder of the impound lot attendant. It was the one way they could be certain they wouldn’t be blamed for the death.
Shawn was sure it wouldn’t be all that hard. After all, they knew that the attendant wasn’t who he claimed to be. He’d served time on a chain gang, and even if he had finished his sentence rather than escaping, the city of Santa Barbara didn’t hire ex-cons to work in jobs where they’d be handling money. So first up was to figure out who the dead man really was. From there it would be easy to see who might have had a grudge against him. Probably someone he’d served time with or an old criminal associate. Couple of days to put it all together tops.
But even as Shawn walked into the Psych office, the taste of that amazing Coca Cola Blak mixture still dancing on his tongue, the fax was already whirring a stack of financial documents into its in tray. Before the day was out, the FedEx and messenger deliveries started to arrive.
Even so, they might have shoved all the papers into the corner and focused on the murder. But their visit to Eagle’s View had changed them in ways they didn’t realize. They’d had a tiny taste of the life available only to the superrich, and they liked it. Shawn had never cared much about money, and if you asked him, he’d say he hadn’t changed. But the ability to have absolutely whatever you wanted whenever you wanted it-even if you didn’t want it all that badly-was a more powerful idea than he’d ever imagined. Every time he tried to concentrate on the dead impound lot attendant, he found his mind wandering to that sixty/forty blend of European and American Blak. And though they never discussed it, Shawn was sure that Gus was dreaming of coffee emitted from weasel butts every time he sipped his Starbucks.
As much fun as Shawn and Gus found solving murders, it was never going to make them rich. True, they were living comfortably, but they were hardly amassing huge savings. And even after Shawn offered the contents of his own bank accounts, Gus was still almost three thousand dollars shy of the cash he needed to ransom his company car. Steele had promised them ten percent of whatever profits were generated by the companies they chose to invest in. After the cash started rolling in, they could go back to detective work, and this time they’d do it in style.
“It’s only hard because you make it hard.” Shawn was standing in the center of the office, a stack of prospectuses in his hand.
“When you say ‘make it hard,’ you mean we actually do our due diligence and make sure we’re investing the money wisely,” Gus said.
“Exactly.”
“You have a better plan?”
“Of course.” Shawn screwed his eyes closed and let the dossiers fly. Once they’d all flapped to the ground, he grabbed one up. “This is it. The big moneymaker.”
“And you know that how?”
“Look where it landed.”
Gus got up to see the floor was covered with DVD boxes. Shawn pointed at a spot directly to his right.
“The prospectus landed on top of Wall Street, so you think it’s a good investment?”
“Greed is good, right?” Shawn flipped the file open.
Gus stared down at the boxes on the floor. “All this time, this is how you’ve been designing our investment strategy?”
“Of course not,” Shawn said, kicking through the files scattered around his feet. “At first I was doing it your way.”
“Studying the financial documents, checking the potential upside against the risk involved, trying to understand the underlying technology and whether it means a real step forward?”
“Really? Is that what you do?” Shawn said. He shuddered. “I just pick the companies with names I like.”
“You do what?”
“If Dallas wanted to make investments based on sound judgment, market experience, and financial wisdom, he could make them himself,” Shawn said. “That’s not why he came to me. He wants that something extra.”
“Bankruptcy?”
Gus knew that wasn’t fair. Despite the appalling method Shawn claimed he was using to discover them, he had come across a lot of businesses that seemed extremely promising. Some of them were predictably Shawn,
