Tara. What I took to be an adorable eccentricity turned out to be a psychotic compulsion, and if I had realized that earlier, I probably could have saved us all a lot of trouble.”
“Us all?”
“Well, you more than me,” Shawn admitted.
“That’s a beginning.” Henry patted Shawn on the shoulder, then picked up one of the less charred file boxes from the floor and handed it to him. “This is a better one.”
Shawn stared at the soggy mass of charred cardboard. “That’s a box.”
“More precisely, it’s an empty box. At least it is until you get busy cleaning this mess into it. Then it will be a full box.”
“I’ve got to find Tara,” Shawn said.
“Yes, you do,” Henry said. “But first you need to restore my house to the way it was before she showed up here.”
“Couldn’t we just burn the rest of it down? It’ll be faster.”
Henry picked up another box and handed it to Gus. “He’s going to get you to do most of the work anyway. You might as well start now.”
Gus didn’t bother to argue. He took the box and started dumping sodden photos into it.
“And while we’re cleaning up your house, what are you going to do?” Shawn said.
“I’m going to sit in my chair and watch you work,” Henry said. “And when I’m done enjoying that, I’m going to try to figure out what I can tell the Perths.”
Shawn picked up a stack of prints, each one of the happy couple sitting on their living room couch and staring straight into the camera.
“Maybe you can tell them that something interesting finally happened to them.”
Henry scowled at his son, then headed for the armchair in a far corner. But just as he settled in, there was a knock at the door. All three men froze.
“She’s back,” Gus said.
“What do we do?” Shawn said.
Henry pulled himself out of the chair. “I don’t know what you two brave souls are going to do, but I’m going to answer the door.”
“What if it’s Tara?” Shawn whispered.
“Then you can send her a psychic order to commit herself to the nearest nut hatch.” Henry walked to the door and threw it open.
His first thought was that someone had left a mannequin on his porch as a joke. The man was frozen absolutely still, one hand outstretched in retreat from the door it had just knocked on. After a brief moment, the man seemed to come to life, the hand retreating mechanically to his side.
Henry glanced back over his shoulder. “Shawn,” he said, “this has got to be for you.”
Chapter Fourteen
The ride through the mountains to Eagle’s View seemed even longer than it had before. The first time Gus had spent most of the drive terrified at the probability that he was being chauffeured by a psychopath. Looking back, that seemed like such a small problem, on a level with being caught reading under the covers with a flashlight or attracting the attention of the mean kids from first grade or all the other things that used to send him into a panic when he was six.
Now Gus realized that there was a great advantage to having a psychotic stalker as your driver: You didn’t have to worry about where she was or what she might be doing.
As Shepler piloted the car mechanically through the hairpin curves, Gus tried to keep his mind on the possibility that Steele’s assistant might slip into one of his mind-freeze moments just as they rounded a switch- back, and send them plummeting hundreds of feet to a fiery death. But as with most of Gus’ attempts to keep a cheery thought in the face of imminent disaster, the appealing notion of dying kept being replaced by the more troubling image of what Tara might be doing now.
It was an issue he’d tried to raise with Shawn when Shepler first showed up at Henry Spencer’s door. Shawn, not surprisingly, had seen his arrival as a reprieve from the onerous task of cleaning up his father’s house. Of course he tried to hide that fact from Henry by insisting he was motivated only by his fiduciary duty to a man who’d entrusted him with an investment fund of one hundred million dollars. And that started an entirely different argument.
“Please tell me that this is another attempt to cheat your way to the world Monopoly championship,” Henry said.
“First of all, that wasn’t cheating,” Shawn said, jumping back into an argument that had reached an armistice fourteen years ago as if they’d been in the middle of it when Shepler knocked on the door. “I was going to bring the concept of monopolization to Monopoly itself. If I’d been successful, it would have changed the game forever.”
“Whatever,” Henry said. “It’s a silly game for silly children, and nothing a grown man should be wasting his time on.”
“As opposed to say, cutting out pictures and gluing them into albums?” Shawn said.
“I’m preserving my clients’ precious memories, and if you think that’s a waste of time, I feel sorry for you,” Henry said.
“And I’m being paid to invest Dallas Steele’s money,” Shawn said. “Maybe you can feel sorry for me about that, too.”
“Technically speaking, we’re not getting paid,” Gus said. “Not until we show a profit.”
“If I wanted to speak technically, I would have chosen a profession that required some actual knowledge,” Shawn said.
“Maybe that might have paid some actual money,” Gus said.
There was a discreet throat clearing from the front door. Shepler stood at the doorstep like a vampire waiting for an invitation into the house. “Mr. Steele has a small window available and would very much like to speak with the two of you.”
“I’d think in that monstrosity of a house he’d have every size window you could think of,” Shawn said. “How did you find us here anyway?”
“Is that how you talk to a man who entrusts you with one hundred million dollars?” Henry said.
“This isn’t that man,” Shawn said. “And how would you talk to someone who gave me a hundred million dollars?”
“First I’d make sure his straitjacket was on securely,” Henry said.
“Oh, well, as long as we’re speaking respectfully,” Shawn said.
Gus glanced at his watch. He figured that Shawn and Henry could keep going at each other for at least another three minutes, which was fine with him. He needed the time to figure out what they should do.
The first choice was easy-they could go with Shepler. After all, Steele had entrusted them with a huge responsibility, and if he wanted to meet, it seemed ungenerous to refuse. It was disconcerting to have Shepler simply arrive with a summons, Gus had to admit, but he’d never met a multibillionaire before. Maybe that was how they did things.
Still, Gus didn’t like to think that Steele could send his minion for them whenever he wanted, and they’d be expected to jump. Even ignoring the question of just how Shepler had tracked them down to Henry’s house, there was the issue of the precedent this would set. If they agreed to come now, would that say that they’d be available for Steele no matter what they were doing? What if they were in the middle of a case? What if they were undercover? What if they were tracking a dangerous suspect?
And that was what was really troubling Gus. They weren’t tracking a dangerous suspect, and they should be. Tara was somewhere out there planning to enforce some twisted version of Shawn’s desires, which was a truly terrifying thought once you considered how twisted Shawn’s own version of Shawn’s desires could be. She was a monster they had helped to create, and it was their responsibility to track her down and put her back in a
