“Are you saying there are two killers, Mr. Spencer?” Chief Vick tapped her watch significantly.
“Disappointing, isn’t it?” Shawn said. “Classically, it’s much more satisfying to wrap up everything together. So if you want to go that way, I’ll understand and I’ll testify against Mindy.”
“That’s it,” Mindy said. “You are so banned from the Coffee Barn.”
“But if we want the truth, we have to dig a little deeper. Let’s think back to the first time Gus and I went to the impound yard.”
Shawn stopped. The others began to murmur their irritation as he stood silently, his head slightly cocked, his hands frozen in the air.
Gus nudged him. “What are you doing?”
“I’m waiting for the flashback.”
“We don’t have flashbacks. This is real life, not CSI.”
Shawn looked crushed. “Really?”
“Get on with it!”
Shawn sighed. “I’ve been informed that the flashbacks aren’t working. So while I go through this, please try to picture it in grainy black-and-white, maybe with a slight blurring effect on the action. Alicia?”
A harp glissando filled the room. Gus turned and saw that the woman in black had unpacked her case and taken out a full-size harp, which she was now seated in front of.
“What the hell is that?” Lassiter said.
“If we don’t have different film stocks, how are we going to differentiate past and present? Please, when you hear the harp, assume the image is dissolving away.”
“My life is dissolving away,” Galen said. “What am I doing here?”
“Quiet, you,” Lassiter snapped.
“I thought we went over the plan,” Gus said. “You didn’t mention any of this.”
“I was born to improvise.”
“When you call hours in advance to request the services of a harpist, that’s not improvising anymore?”
“It’s not?”
Chief Vick cleared her throat. “Your time is up, Mr. Spencer.”
Shawn checked his own watch, then cast a glance around the room.
“Okay, fine, you’re right,” Shawn said. “No drama, no flashbacks, no suspense, no craft. If all you want is the killer’s identity, it’s yours. Bert Coules did it. Come on, Gus.”
Shawn headed for the door. Walking behind him, Gus saw that his feet seemed to be dragging on the floor.
“That’s outrageous,” Coules shouted. It seemed like he was shouting, anyway. The words came out slowly and hesitantly. “You can’t accuse me of killing three people and just walk out of here.” He turned to the detectives. “Stop him.”
The detectives seemed frozen to the ground. They stared blindly into space. Gus looked around the room and saw that the others all appeared to be imitating department-store mannequins.
“There you go again,” Shawn said. His feet were barely lifting off the ground with each step. His words were beginning to slur. “Not three people. Just John Marichal and Betty Walinski. Although I might suggest revisiting her husband’s autopsy, just in case.”
“What’s going on here, Shawn?” Gus said. “And who killed Dallas Steele?”
“Look in your glass,” Shawn said, the words coming out with obvious effort. “The killer just revealed hims…”
Shawn’s voice trailed off. He stared blankly into space. Gus nudged him, but Shawn didn’t react. He seemed to be in a coma, like all the others.
What had happened to them? And why wasn’t it happening to Gus? He dumped the glass on the ground and scrabbled through the ice cubes to find the piece of gray plastic. It wasn’t the broken shard he’d assumed it to be. It was a tiny model of a gun. The kind you’d find mounted on a toy warship.
The kind you’d find mounted on a toy ship that transformed into a robot. And that would come off easily, since the glue holding it on, when exposed to water, dissolved into a hallucinogenic drug.
Someone must have spiked the Blak Shawn served here. And, Gus realized, it wasn’t the first time. Whoever it was must have also drugged Dallas Steele before killing him, and drugged Tara before putting the knife in her hand. That would explain why Tara seemed so lost and so docile when she was discovered standing over the body, and why she couldn’t remember anything about the killing. That was what Shawn had been trying to tell him.
It could have been Veronica. But Steele told her he’d given them the consulting position to help them. He wouldn’t have revealed the truth about the toy boats. And even if she wanted to kill her husband, how would she know about Tara? Gus could ask her, but she was as frozen as her guests.
At least Gus knew the crucial question to ask: Who knew both about Tara and the toy boats? And how had they found out?
Something was tickling the back of Gus’ brain. Something Shawn had said earlier. When he’d jumped up and announced he knew who killed Dallas Steele.
Except it wasn’t something Shawn had said-Gus had said it. That sound traveled between the front seat and backseat of a car.
Devon Shepler knew all about Tara, because they’d talked about her on the way up to Eagle’s View. And he knew about the disastrous investments because he’d been waiting to lead them up to the tower when Dallas revealed the truth. If he’d caught Tara breaking in to the house looking for them, it would have been easy to manipulate her into ingesting some of the drug-and even easier to slip it into Steele’s late-night beverage.
But why would Shepler kill the man to whom he seemed so devoted? To whom he had dedicated every minute of his waking day? Who relied on him for everything?
Gus tried to put himself in Shepler’s mind-and discovered it was frighteningly easy. He could feel the man’s resentment at being constantly needed and never rewarded, or even acknowledged. At being taken advantage of.
How blind Gus had been not to see this all along. The way Shepler would freeze before answering a question or following an order-it wasn’t the pause of a methodical brain searching for the correct response. It was the moment he needed to get his rage in check before acting like the proper gentleman’s gentleman.
Maybe Shepler tried to build a little something for himself. When Dallas told him that he’d hired a psychic genius to invest his money, it would have seemed like a perfect chance to get some for himself. How much of his life savings did he pour into their ridiculous investments? How much of Steele’s had he borrowed without permission? And then when he found out the truth that Dallas had casually destroyed him as collateral damage in a cruel scheme to humiliate Shawn, how great would his rage have been?
And then Gus realized something else. Shawn had stopped him from drinking the Blak. Stopped him by drinking it himself. At the time, Gus attributed it to his typical self-centeredness. Now he realized that Shawn had sacrificed himself for his friend. He was giving Gus the chance to get away-or to save the day.
Gus patted Shawn on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, buddy,” he said. “I won’t let you down.”
The door the waiters had come through swung open. Gus froze in position as Shepler led Tara in. Her eyes were blank, her steps unsteady. Gus suspected he knew how she’d disappeared after trying to kill him. Shepler found her and started feeding her small doses of the drug, not enough to paralyze, but sufficient to keep her extremely pliable.
“Here we are, Tara,” Shepler said cheerfully. “All your friends are in one place.” He turned to the paralyzed crowd. “No, just stay where you are. No need to bother yourself for me.”
Chuckling, he reached into his pocket and came out with the ugliest handgun Gus had ever seen. It had a wooden handle and black steel barrel, and when Shepler unfolded the front grip down, it looked like some kind of evil alien insect. Gus didn’t know enough about guns to identify the make or model, but he was pretty sure it would be able to take out everyone in the room.
Shepler walked through the room, studying his victims like they were statues in a gallery. He stepped up to Veronica and leered in her face.
“All this time you’ve thought I was just that useless little servant. You thought-” Shepler broke off. He raised the gun and pressed it to her temple. “Why am I making a speech? You’ll all be dead in thirty seconds.”
