“That was the widow of the tackle shop guy who used to be a cop?”
“Yes,” Henry said. “Not that it makes any difference.”
“It might make all the difference in the world,” Shawn said. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?” Gus had given up trying to follow Shawn’s logic.
“You heard my father,” Shawn said. “There’s a scrapbook emergency out there, and we’re the only ones who can help.”
During the ten-minute drive into the hills, Gus tried repeatedly to get Shawn to explain what they were doing. Or why he was now so completely convinced that Tara was innocent despite witnessing her trying to kill him. But for once Shawn seemed to have nothing to say. He drummed his fingers on the truck’s seat, fidgeting nervously. His anxiety even seemed to affect Henry, whose foot got heavier as they got closer to Betty Walinski’s house.
When they finally arrived, Shawn jumped out and ran to the front door. It was slightly ajar. As Henry and Gus joined him, Shawn held up one finger for silence. He pointed to Henry and waved toward the back of the house. He tapped Gus’ chest and indicated that he should stand under the open kitchen window and be prepared to dive through it. Then he jabbed a thumb toward himself and wagged it back at the open front door. He’d handle this one personally.
“Whatever,” Henry said, and pushed past Shawn through the open front door. “Betty?”
Shawn sighed heavily. “I spent a long time coming up with those hand signals.”
Gus clapped him on the shoulder, then followed Henry into the house. As soon as he got through the door, Henry barked at him, “Stay back!”
Henry was crouching in front of the sofa. Betty Walinski was lying on her stomach, but her head was looking up at the ceiling.
“Damn it, Shawn,” Henry said as his son came into the room. “If you’d just done the right thing from the first instead of trying to be so clever. You knew this woman was crazy, but instead of helping her, you used her. And now another innocent person is dead.”
Shawn stepped up to his father. “This isn’t my fault.”
Henry wouldn’t even look up at him. “You enabled Tara for-”
“Absolutely,” Shawn said.“But Tara didn’t do this. And now I know for sure she didn’t kill John Marichal.”
“You said you knew that before,” Gus said.
“Yes, but at the time what I meant was, I had a gut instinct about it,” Shawn said. “Now it’s a fact.”
“You’re going to have to explain this to the police.” Henry pulled out his phone and started to punch in the number.
“I will,” Shawn said. “But not here.”
“Then where?” Henry said.
“Think back,” Shawn said. “Where did someone try to kill us?”
“In our office,” Gus said.
“Before that,” Shawn said. “The first time.”
Gus remembered the searing pain as he grabbed Marichal’s shotgun. “The impound lot.”
“And the second time?”
Gus heard bullets thwocking into abandoned cars. “The impound lot.”
“So where should we go to find the solution?”
“The impound lot?”
“Eagle’s View!”
Gus and Henry stared at him. “What does Eagle’s View have to do with any of this?” Henry said.
“Nothing,” Shawn said. “But that impound lot is a dump. Who’d want to waste any more time there?”
Chapter Twenty-One
When Shawn called Veronica Mason with his request, he didn’t have a chance to finish the question before she agreed. The call to Detective Lassiter wasn’t quite as friendly. In fact, Lassie hung up on him three times before Shawn finished explaining what he needed the Santa Barbara Police Department to do.
“Don’t make me go over your head, Lassie,” Shawn said when Lassiter picked up the fourth time.
“If you’re thinking about calling Chief Vick, be my guest.” Shawn could practically hear Lassiter’s smug grin through the phone. “She and Detective O’Hara will be happy to spend a couple of hours explaining how demeaning they find it to be treated as sex objects instead of law enforcement professionals. God knows they’ve already spent most of the day on the subject.”
Shawn put a hand over the speakerphone’s mike and turned to Gus. “How did Chief Vick know what I said about her?”
“I don’t know,” Gus said. “Maybe the same way Tara knew which BurgerZone outlet you prefer. Maybe sound can actually travel between the front and back seats of an automobile.”
Shawn leapt out of his seat. “That’s it!”
“Umm, yeah,” Gus said. “It was pretty obvious to anyone who’s ever ridden in a car.”
Shawn sank back in his seat and folded his hands across his desk like a third-grade teacher trying one last time to explain fractions to a particularly slow student. “No, Gus, it’s the final piece of the mystery,” he said patiently. “I know who killed Dallas Steele.”
Lassiter’s voice squawked out of the speaker. “So do we, Spencer. That’s why the entire force is out hunting for your former mind slave before she kills again.”
“They’re wasting their time,” Shawn said.
“Good point,” Lassiter said. “The way she’s going, she’ll run out of civilians to murder, and she’ll have to come to the police station just to find another victim.”
“I’ll make you a deal, Lassie,” Shawn said. “You do what I ask, and I’ll deliver the real killer to you within an hour. And if I can’t, I’ll confess to every single one of the murders myself.”
There was a long silence on the line. Gus was beginning to think the connection had been cut when Lassiter’s voice came back. “Fax me what you need.”
Four hours later, Shawn and Gus were standing outside the magnificent front door of Eagle’s View. A stream of squad cars delivered all the people whose presence Shawn had requested, then headed back to the city.
The first to arrive were Chief Vick and Detective O’Hara. They glared at Shawn as they came up the walkway.
“You have exactly one hour, Mr. Spencer,” Chief Vick said. “Where do you want us?”
“And I’d think very carefully before I answered if I were you,” Juliet O’Hara added.
“Where I really want you-”
“Shawn!” Gus whispered. “Don’t do this.”
“-is at the top of a hierarchy that for far too long has been exclusively male-dominated. But for now, the grand ballroom will do. Mr. Shepler will show you.”
Shawn snapped his fingers, and Shepler appeared from the entry hall. He stood frozen before them as his mind processed the new information; then he gave a short bow. “Please follow me.”
As O’Hara and the chief followed Shepler down the hall, Henry Spencer came up to Shawn and Gus. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he said.
“Like I always do,” Shawn said.
“That’s what I was afraid of.” He went inside as a middle-aged woman in a black dress stepped up. A uniformed officer followed, dragging a huge black plastic case. Shawn waved them both in.
“Who was that?” Gus asked. “And what’s in the box?”
“The most important element of all.”
“That can’t be,” Gus said. “Because we went over this plan together, and you never mentioned whatever that thing is. So how is it that we agreed exactly what we were going to do, and I still don’t know about the most
