Shawn stared at the phone. And then spoke one syllable that chilled Gus to his liver.
“Dad?”
Chapter Three
The drive from the Psych offices usually took fifteen minutes, twice that at rush hour. But Gus kept his foot jammed down on the gas, blasting through stop signs and red lights, screaming around traffic, and violating every precept of the state vehicle code that didn’t involve the transportation of livestock. In the passenger seat, Shawn desperately dialed and redialed his father’s number, but every call went direct to voice his father’s number, but every call went direct to voice mail.
As he hurtled past a bus full of nuns on their way to a local convent, Gus cursed himself. How could he have failed to recognize Henry Spencer’s voice? He’d heard it almost every day of his life since he was in single digits. He knew it as well as his own voice-better, actually, since he always covered his ears and hummed loudly whenever he was forced to listen to a recording of himself.
Logically he knew that part of the fault was Henry’s. If he’d only identified himself, or even just engaged a little more of his vocal cords, there’s no way that Gus wouldn’t already have been there to help him. But that only made Gus worry more. Henry had been a cop for decades. He knew better than anyone how important it was to identify yourself clearly in an emergency. That meant there was only one reason he didn’t-because he couldn’t. Whatever danger he was facing, it was bigger than anything Gus could imagine.
Gus took his eyes off the road for one second to sneak a glance at Shawn. His best friend was ashen faced as he listened to his father’s voice on the outgoing message.
“Shawn, I’m so sorry,” Gus said for what must have been the hundredth time.
Shawn shook his head tightly. No need for apologies. He knew how much Gus cared about Henry.
Gus yanked the wheel hard and felt the Echo rise up on two wheels as it screamed around a corner. The car slammed back down on all fours and Gus jammed the gas pedal even harder. He could see Henry’s house straight ahead.
Two more seconds and they were out front. The Echo screamed to the curb and Shawn and Gus leapt out, tearing up the walkway to the front door. Shawn twisted the knob. It was locked.
“Stand back,” Shawn said, raising his leg to kick the door in.
“Hey, I just painted that!”
Gus and Shawn wheeled around to see a man emerging from the garage. It took Gus a moment to realize that this was indeed Henry Spencer, because he’d spent the last eight minutes visualizing him covered in blood, his ears and hands cut off, and set on fire. The fact that he was dry, intact, and completely unflamed simply didn’t make sense.
“Dad?” Shawn’s face seemed to be torn between relief and disbelief.
“We got here as fast as we could,” Gus said.
Henry checked his watch. “Did that include a stop for doughnuts along the way?” he said. “Because if it didn’t, eight minutes is pretty pathetic.”
He walked past them to a corner of the house where red paint was beginning to peel after simmering through another summer of Santa Barbara sun.
“You said it was an emergency,” Shawn said.
“Good thing it wasn’t,” Henry said as he pulled a paint scraper out of his back pocket. “Three phone calls before you guys figured out who I was? I could have been murdered a dozen times over.”
“The day’s still young,” Shawn said, relief turning to anger.
“Wait a minute,” Gus said. “This was all some kind of test?”
“Not exactly,” Henry said. “I do need help.”
“You want us to scrape the paint off your house, you call like a normal human being and ask politely,” Shawn said. “That’s the way human beings do it.”
“If I called and asked you politely to scrape the paint off my house, you’d invent some ludicrous excuse for not coming over immediately, promise to drop by in a couple of days, and then I wouldn’t hear from you until the rainy season started,” Henry said.
“Exactly,” Shawn said. “That’s the way human beings do it.” He turned and headed back toward the Echo. “Come on, Gus.”
Gus was frozen, if only by the desire to find exactly the right parting shot for Henry. Finally he realized there was nothing he could say that would sum up everything he was feeling. He gave Henry a look he hoped would convey a bevy of emotions, then turned and followed Shawn.
“Okay, hold on,” Henry called after them. “I’m sorry if I scared you two little girls.”
“Way to apologize, Dad,” Shawn called over his shoulder.
“But I really do need your help,” Henry said. “And it doesn’t involve scraping paint, and it is kind of an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?” Shawn said.
“The kind that’s best discussed over pizza,” Henry said. “Fortunately, Giuseppe’s took a lot less time to get here than you guys.”
By the time the three of them had finished two large pies, a family-size chopped salad, and a side of buffalo wings, Gus found his anger had been drowned in a sea of carbohydrates. That’s when Henry consented to discuss the nature of his crisis.
“It’s about Bud Flanek,” Henry said.
“What is that, some kind of skin disease?” Shawn said. “Because if you’re hoping I’m going to donate my flesh to you, I’m still using it.”
“Bud Flanek,” Henry said irritably. “You remember him. He was on my bowling team years back. Tall guy, one shoulder lower than the other, always wore bib overalls.”
“Let me guess,” Shawn said. “He’s been accused of a crime against fashion, and you want me to get him off. Sorry, Dad, I don’t think I can help.”
Gus admired the way Shawn could continue to hold his grudge even when he was stuffed with pizza, because he couldn’t fight against the warm feelings his digestive system was sending through his body.
“Is your friend in trouble?” Gus asked.
“In ways he can’t begin to imagine,” Henry said.“He’s about to get married for the first time at sixty-two.”
Shawn stifled a bored yawn. “And you want us to investigate his fiancee and prove that she’s actually some floozy who’s going to steal all his money and break his heart.”
“Why would I want that?” Henry said. “I think it’s great that Bud’s finally found someone who makes him happy. And she hardly needs his sewer department pension. She manages a very profitable bakery in Summerland. Not bad for a recent immigrant from Eastern Europe.”
“Then what do you need us for?” Shawn said. “Or did you drag us up here just to make us listen to the joyous news about one guy I barely remember marrying some woman I’ve never met? Because if that’s what’s going to make your life worthwhile, you should start a blog, and then you can bore complete strangers, too.”
Henry pushed off from the table and wandered out of the room. When he came back, he was carrying a brightly wrapped box about the size of a mediocre dictionary. He tossed it on the table in front of Shawn.
“That’s really special, but didn’t you get anything for Gus?” Shawn said.
“It’s not for you,” Henry said. “I’m in charge of Bud’s gag gift. I need you to deliver it to his bachelor party tonight.”
Gus and Shawn stared at him, not understanding.
“That’s the emergency?” Shawn said finally.
“Maybe ‘emergency’ was a little strong,” Henry said. “But it’s important to me that Bud get this tonight.”
“Just not important enough that you would bother going to his bachelor party.”
“I have my reasons,” Henry said.
“Like what?” Shawn said.
“When a man is preparing to declare lifelong fidelity to one woman, it seems morally wrong to celebrate that by spitting in the face of those vows,” Henry said.
“First of all, vows don’t have faces,” Shawn said. “You’re thinking of cows, which do have faces, but you really don’t want to spit in them, because they can spit back.”
“Those were llamas,” Gus said, remembering that one long afternoon when their elementary class field trip had taken them to a farm. “And the teacher warned you about five hundred times not to taunt them.”