Gus had rarely heard Shawn speak this sincerely. And he knew it was true sincerity, since it was actually far less convincing than when he was faking sincerity. “We’ve got work to do,” he said.
“Great,” Shawn said. “What do we know about Tara?”
“You were the one making the list.”
Shawn glanced down at his pad. “Hmm,” he said thoughtfully. “Apparently all work and no play makes Gus a dull boy.”
Gus grabbed the pad back and stalked to the desk, where he planted himself in front of the computer. “Maybe we should do a little research and figure out what Tara was doing before she was slavishly following your psychic orders.”
Gus typed the words “Tara Larison” into a search engine. There were references to a couple of women with the same name, but since the Tara they knew was neither a housewife running an organization for the protection of songbirds in Mississippi or a teenage girl with a MySpace page devoted to resurrecting Vanilla Ice’s career, this proved to be a dead end.
“I seem to recall she used to take care of her aunt Enid in Arcata,” Shawn said. “Let’s see what we can find out about a certain fat divorcee Realtor.”
Shawn leaned in over Gus’ shoulder and typed a string of words into the search engine, then hit ENTER. After a moment, they found themselves staring at a series of photos of large, middle-aged naked women. “Tara’s aunt was a plus-size porn queen?”
“This is Fat Divorcee Realtor Dot Com,” Gus said, muscling Shawn away from the keyboard. “Let’s try actually entering her name.”
Gus typed in the name “Enid Blalock.” The first few hits were real estate listings she’d had in Arcata. The fourth was her obituary in the Arcata Advertiser. Gus clicked the link, and after a millisecond, the article loaded.
Enid Blalock, according to her obituary, was the queen of the Arcata real estate scene. Despite her short time in the profession, she was uniformly admired and even loved by the other agents in her office. She was on track to win the coveted Arcata Arrow Award for most sales in a single year when her life was cut short in a tragic accident. She had fallen down the stairs in an empty house she was trying to sell and broken her neck.
“There’s nothing there,” Shawn said.
“Yet.” Gus clicked the button at the bottom of the screen and loaded the article’s second page.
“Look.” Shawn pointed to the screen. “In lieu of flowers, donations should be made to the Association for Divorcee Rights. I told you she was bitter.”
“That’s very helpful,” Gus said.
“Okay, maybe not,” Shawn said. “What about this?”
Shawn pointed at the last line of the obituary. Apparently, Enid was survived by a sister who lived in New Jersey and a niece, Tara Busby.
“She changed her name,” Gus said. “I wonder why.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Shawn said.
Gus returned to the search engine and typed in “Tara Busby plus Larison”. The handful of results seemed to have nothing to do with the woman they were looking for, with each of the three names drawn from long- separated sections of various texts.
“I guess she didn’t marry someone named Larison,” Gus said.
“That’s good,” Shawn said. “The last thing we need is to have a jealous husband coming after us. Then we’d really be in trouble.”
Gus stared at the search engine. It was like one of those genies in a fairy tale. It would tell you everything you needed to know, but only if you asked exactly the right question. Unfortunately, there was no way to ask the one question he needed to answer first: What was the right question to ask?
“You’d think someone as crazy as Tara would have popped up somewhere before,” Shawn said. “You don’t just start out following psychic instructions to beat up burger chefs. You’ve got to work up to that. I can’t believe she waited until she heard my voice to go completely nutso cuckoo.”
Gus sat up straight. That was it-the clue he had been looking for. “She first heard you while she was listening to Artie Pine’s radio show.”
“So? Lots of crazy people listen to Artie Pine. In fact, I think it’s required.”
“Don’t you see?” Gus said. “She was already interested in psychic phenomena before she met you.”
“Because she was hearing voices in her head.”
“So maybe you weren’t the first psychic she decided was giving her orders.”
“You’re making me feel cheap,” Shawn said.
Gus typed the words “Larison plus psychic” into the search engine. The screen that popped up listed hundreds of newspaper articles and Web sites referencing someone named Fred Larison who lived somewhere outside St. Louis. Gus clicked on the third listing, which appeared to be Larison’s Web site.
Spooky music started playing out of the computer’s speakers as the page loaded. Red text flashed over a black background: Fred Larison, Psychic Detective. The glowing ENTER HERE button was surrounded by pulsating skeleton hands.
“At least I don’t feel that cheap,” Shawn said.
Gus clicked the ENTER button, and the opening screen wiped away to reveal a black-and-white photo of a thin, balding man with a pencil mustache and a pronounced overbite staring directly into the camera. Underneath, more red type exclaimed that master psychic Fred Larison was available to solve the deepest mysteries of life, rates quoted on application.
“Sure, I’m going to trust him to solve the deepest mysteries of life when he can’t tackle the basic mystery of finding a decent Web site designer,” Shawn said.
Gus picked up the phone and dialed the number at the bottom of the page. After two rings, a recorded voice informed him that the number he’d dialed had been disconnected or was no longer in service.
“He also can’t solve the mystery of how to pay his phone bill,” Gus said. He hung up and keystroked back to the search engine. The next entry down was a news article titled “Psychic Solves Mystery.”
“Does it mention if it was one of the deepest mysteries of life?” Shawn said.
“Let’s find out.” Gus hit the link, and a page popped up from the Jefferson City Gazette, “Central Missouri’s News and Classifieds Leader.” A picture showed the same man, still wearing the mustache but this time adding a cape to the look. He was holding an open jeweler’s box with what appeared to be a large diamond inside.
“‘Renowned local psychic Fred Larison solved one of Jeff City’s most perplexing mysteries yesterday when he used his mental prowess to find a two-carat diamond that had been lost since the days of the Civil War,’” Gus read. “‘The owners, Misses Bonnie and Eugenia Frakes, twin sisters, eighty-three years young, had searched their entire lives for the gemstone their late grandmother Prudence Winsocket had hidden from marauding raiders during the Civil War. But Prudence, living up to her name, went to her grave without ever telling a living soul where she had hidden the jewel. Larison’s answer? Forget about talking to the living. He contacted Prudence directly at her address in the afterlife and asked her what she had done with the precious stone.’”
“I can’t believe this,” Shawn said.
“What? That there are other psychics working the same scams as you?”
“That anyone gets paid for writing this badly,” Shawn said. “And this guy Peter Jones calls himself a reporter. I’ve never met Fred Larison, and I can tell from two thousand miles away that he’s a fraud.”
“Not everyone has your sharp eyes,” Gus said. He pointed to the photo. Next to Larison, two old ladies stared at him with a look that would be considered indecent if the faces sharing it had even one unwrinkled square inch between them.
“Can you make that bigger?” Shawn said.
“Really? You want to see him better?”
“Not him. The person standing behind his left shoulder.”
Shawn tapped the screen to show Gus what he was talking about. There was a hint of a face peeking out of the shadows. Gus centered the cursor on the face and clicked his mouse. The small section of photo enlarged. What had been a small blur of white was now a big blur of white.
“Okay, now focus in on that face,” Shawn said.
“Okay,” Gus said. “No, wait. I just remembered. This is reality, not Mission: Impossible. And this computer
