Henry thought back on the Herman Walinski he knew. He was kind and gentle and happier with his life than anyone he’d ever known. All Heman had wanted to do was sit behind the counter in his tackle store and design lures. “Because Herman didn’t need it. Maybe he never did. Maybe he just stole it to keep it out of the hands of the thieves. Either way, he made his own fortune in the towing business, and never had to touch the loot.”
“And so here it sat for almost forty years, until Old Man Marichal got out of jail,” Shawn said. “He told his son what he had figured out, and young John headed west. He must have told someone else, too.”
“Someone he was scared of,” Gus said. “Why else would he talk?”
“And what would frighten this old man more than the threat of spending his last few years back in jail?” Shawn said. “I wonder who’d have the power to do that.”
“Say,” Gus said. “Didn’t Bert Coules used to work in the Miami DA’s office?”
“I believe he did,” Shawn said.
All heads swiveled to stare at Coules. He took a step backward. “You can’t believe this fraud.”
“I’ve often started off with that attitude, Mr. Coules,” the chief said. “But by the time he’s done, I almost always find myself convinced.”
“I am not going to put up with this.” Bert Coules started back toward the street, but Lassiter and O’Hara stepped in his way.
“Just for a little while longer,” O’Hara said.
“If it makes you feel any better, we’re rooting for him to get it wrong, too,” Lassiter said.
“Bert Coules came to Santa Barbara, settled into the community, and began a yearlong search for the money. He’d break into the impound lot after hours and search the cars, one by one.”
“He was even searching for the loot while you all were staring at a corpse in the shack. Remember the oil stains on his slacks? If you crawl around on the ground here, you’ll end up with spots just like that,” Gus said.
“So he kept on searching,” Shawn said. “Until one night he broke in and found someone there. He must have recognized young Marichal-and no doubt Marichal recognized him. There was a fight, and Marichal ended up permanently staring backward.”
“Like I could take on a giant like that,” Coules protested.
“You’re the one who said that someone as small as Tara Larison could break his neck with the proper technique,” Gus said.
“A technique I’m sure you learned during your time in the Special Forces,” Shawn said. “You stole the office’s computer in hopes that Herman had kept a record of where he hid the money. But it didn’t help.”
“Maybe it was in Herman’s private code,” Gus suggested. “Or maybe it wasn’t in there at all. Something drove you to see Betty Walinski and try to force the truth out of her. You snapped her neck, which not only kept her quiet about you, but also helped convince the police that Tara Larison was a mad dog who needed to be killed on sight.”
“And if I may say, that might be the worst crime of all,” Shawn said.
“What do you mean by that, Shawn?” Gus said.
“To depend on our Victorian stereotypes of the mad-woman in the attic, to play on our prejudices about women as unstable and vengeful, is to reduce countless individuals to gender-based cartoons whose entire selfhood is determined solely by their reproductive organs. It diminishes me as a man simply to hear such canards recited.”
Henry, Lassiter, Coules, and the other men in the shack stared at Shawn baffled. But Detective O’Hara and Chief Vick regarded him warmly for the first time since Tara had tried to forcibly exchange saliva with Juliet, apparently on Shawn’s psychic orders.
“Do you mean that, Shawn?” Detective O’Hara said, finally treating him to one of her warm smiles.
“I always have,” Shawn said. And it was actually true, if by “always” he meant since this morning when he’d memorized the passage from a Web site of feminist literary theory.
Coules waited for them to go on. When they didn’t, he broke out into a smile. “So aside from sisterhood being powerful, is that it?”
“I think so. Gus?”
“Sounds about right?”
“You don’t have anything,” Coules said.“It’s all supposition and theory. You don’t have one shred of proof.”
Shawn turned to Gus, suddenly troubled. “You know, I think he’s right.”
“Definitely. We’ve got no proof at all.”
Coules tried to push past the detectives. They didn’t move out of his way.
“They don’t need proof, Mr. Coules,” Chief Vick said. “They’re not police. We’re the ones who need to show proof. And if you’ll be so good as to accompany us back to the station, we’ll make a couple of calls and find out if you ever handled a case involving Mr. Marichal Senior. That should be enough to hold you while we start checking some of these cars for your prints. Mr. Spencer, you say we should start with the Florida plates?”
“It’s still all ridiculous speculation!” Coules shouted. “It’s all based on the idea that Walinsky and Marichal were involved in the race track robbery. And there’s no evidence of that.”
Chief Vick turned to Shawn. “He does have a point there. Do you have any evidence that Herman Walinsky had anything to do with the Calder Race Course robbery besides catching its perpetrators?”
“None at all,” Shawn said.
“Unless you count the three million dollars,” Gus added.
“We can’t count it if we can’t find it,” Lassiter said.
“Then you should check out a yellow nineteen sixty-five Ford Thunderbird with Florida plates about three hundred yards west of here,” Shawn said.
“If you’d be so good as to lead us, Mr. Spencer,” Chief Vick said.
“Yes, do,” Coules said. His smile had turned into a smirk.
Shawn and Gus led the group through the maze of cars until they came to the rusting T-Bird.
“This is your brilliant idea?” Coules said. “If half of what you said was true, this is one of the first cars Marichal would have checked.”
“You, too,” Gus said.
“Fine. Whatever. Go ahead and check it.”
Shawn rapped sharply on the trunk. With a groan of hinges, the lid began to lift slowly. The others crowded around to see what was inside.
“It’s empty!” Mindy said.
“Just like this clown’s head,” Coules said. “Can I go home and start preparing my defamation suit now?”
Shawn stared into the empty trunk. “Dad?”
Henry Spencer sighed wearily. “Yes, son?”
“What was the name of Herman Walinsky’s legendary lure?”
“I really don’t think that fishing tackle is going to do you much good right now.”
“Humor me.”
“Please humor him,” Mindy said. “’Cause he can stand here and keep talking if he wants. Believe me, I know.”
Henry took the scrapbook back from Shawn and flipped it open to a page with a photo of a fishing lure fastened securely in its center. He held the book open so everyone could
see. “It was called the YTBL3.”
“Did he ever say what that stood for?”
“No,” Henry said. “I always assumed it came after the YTBL2 and before the YTBL4.”
“Good thought,” Shawn said. “Here’s a better one. Y-Yellow. TB-Thunderbird. L-Left.” He turned theatrically to his left. “Three-well, three.” He walked down three rows of cars and stopped next to a decaying nineteen sixty- one Olds Cutlass. “Does anyone happen to have a crowbar?”
Gus bent down and picked one up from off the ground. “Look, Shawn, it seems that someone has graciously left one for us right here.”
“Then let’s accept their generous gesture.” Shawn took the crowbar and used it to pry open the Cutlass’ trunk. Inside were a dozen fraying canvas bags. Shawn lifted one out of the trunk. With a sound of ripping cloth,
