Psych: A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read

Chapter Nine

“Who’d ever think it would be so hard to spend a hundred million dollars?” Gus looked up wearily from his desk, which was littered with brochures, prospectuses, and press releases. “Haven’t we bought enough companies already?”

In the weeks since they’d agreed to consult for Dallas Steele, Shepler had inundated them with paper. Apparently every request Dallas got for venture capital was being shipped directly over to the Psych offices. And as Gus was discovering, there were a lot of people in the world who wanted a multibillionaire to make their dreams come true.

At first Gus and Shawn hadn’t intended to spend so much time on the consulting job. After Tara had brought them back from Eagle’s View, their first priority was to solve the murder of the impound lot attendant. It was the one way they could be certain they wouldn’t be blamed for the death.

Shawn was sure it wouldn’t be all that hard. After all, they knew that the attendant wasn’t who he claimed to be. He’d served time on a chain gang, and even if he had finished his sentence rather than escaping, the city of Santa Barbara didn’t hire ex-cons to work in jobs where they’d be handling money. So first up was to figure out who the dead man really was. From there it would be easy to see who might have had a grudge against him. Probably someone he’d served time with or an old criminal associate. Couple of days to put it all together tops.

But even as Shawn walked into the Psych office, the taste of that amazing Coca Cola Blak mixture still dancing on his tongue, the fax was already whirring a stack of financial documents into its in tray. Before the day was out, the FedEx and messenger deliveries started to arrive.

Even so, they might have shoved all the papers into the corner and focused on the murder. But their visit to Eagle’s View had changed them in ways they didn’t realize. They’d had a tiny taste of the life available only to the superrich, and they liked it. Shawn had never cared much about money, and if you asked him, he’d say he hadn’t changed. But the ability to have absolutely whatever you wanted whenever you wanted it-even if you didn’t want it all that badly-was a more powerful idea than he’d ever imagined. Every time he tried to concentrate on the dead impound lot attendant, he found his mind wandering to that sixty/forty blend of European and American Blak. And though they never discussed it, Shawn was sure that Gus was dreaming of coffee emitted from weasel butts every time he sipped his Starbucks.

As much fun as Shawn and Gus found solving murders, it was never going to make them rich. True, they were living comfortably, but they were hardly amassing huge savings. And even after Shawn offered the contents of his own bank accounts, Gus was still almost three thousand dollars shy of the cash he needed to ransom his company car. Steele had promised them ten percent of whatever profits were generated by the companies they chose to invest in. After the cash started rolling in, they could go back to detective work, and this time they’d do it in style.

“It’s only hard because you make it hard.” Shawn was standing in the center of the office, a stack of prospectuses in his hand.

“When you say ‘make it hard,’ you mean we actually do our due diligence and make sure we’re investing the money wisely,” Gus said.

“Exactly.”

“You have a better plan?”

“Of course.” Shawn screwed his eyes closed and let the dossiers fly. Once they’d all flapped to the ground, he grabbed one up. “This is it. The big moneymaker.”

“And you know that how?”

“Look where it landed.”

Gus got up to see the floor was covered with DVD boxes. Shawn pointed at a spot directly to his right.

“The prospectus landed on top of Wall Street, so you think it’s a good investment?”

“Greed is good, right?” Shawn flipped the file open.

Gus stared down at the boxes on the floor. “All this time, this is how you’ve been designing our investment strategy?”

“Of course not,” Shawn said, kicking through the files scattered around his feet. “At first I was doing it your way.”

“Studying the financial documents, checking the potential upside against the risk involved, trying to understand the underlying technology and whether it means a real step forward?”

“Really? Is that what you do?” Shawn said. He shuddered. “I just pick the companies with names I like.”

“You do what?”

“If Dallas wanted to make investments based on sound judgment, market experience, and financial wisdom, he could make them himself,” Shawn said. “That’s not why he came to me. He wants that something extra.”

“Bankruptcy?”

Gus knew that wasn’t fair. Despite the appalling method Shawn claimed he was using to discover them, he had come across a lot of businesses that seemed extremely promising. Some of them were predictably Shawn, like the Chinese company that made a line of toy boats that transformed into killer robots. But together Shawn and Gus had steered investments into alternative-energy firms, futuristic transportation designers, and others that looked like they could be as profitable as they were boring. Gus suspected that Shawn was doing a lot more work than he’d ever admit.

If only those profits would start rolling in soon. Their deal with Dallas granted them ten percent of all the profits their investments netted, but not a penny of cash up front. After a long and strenuous negotiation, Gus had persuaded the billionaire to guarantee the lease on their offices for the next five years, but that was the only concession he’d been able to add to Steele’s initial offer.

“Don’t even think that word,” Shawn said. “Between this and the media bonanza from the Veronica Mason trial, the money’s going to start pouring in faster than we can count it.”

“I don’t need to count it. I need to spend it,” Gus said. “Every day that car sits in the impound lot they add another two hundred dollars to my bill.”

“In a few days that will seem like nothing,” Shawn said. “We’re expecting a big payday from Veronica Mason, remember?”

“Of course I remember,” Gus said. “But remembering her isn’t doing us a whole lot of good-she needs to remember us.”

Despite the fact that they’d saved her from a lifetime in prison, it did seem that Veronica Mason had forgotten all about Shawn and Gus. They hadn’t heard a word from her since the day of her acquittal. No matter how many messages they left at her various houses, she never got back to them.

“I have to admit, that one really puzzles me,” Shawn said. “After the trial, she seemed so grateful. I thought it was going to be the beginning of something special.”

“You mean you thought she was going to show you all her birthmarks.”

“That, too,” Shawn said. “But more important, after all that time investigating every tiny corner of her life, I really began to feel that we were close. Connected.”

“But that was a completely one-way relationship, Shawn. You were spending all your time thinking and learning about her-that didn’t mean she was thinking about you. You fooled yourself into thinking it was mutual.”

“I can’t believe that,” Shawn said. “What existed between us was real. It’s just not possible for one person to feel so connected to another human being and not have that feeling reflected in some way.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Shawn was about to answer when he noticed the look on Gus’ face. “This is a trick, isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

“Don’t you dare go Yoda on me,” Shawn said. “I’m not going to go into the swamps and battle a hideous creature only to discover it’s my own dark side. I see what you’re up to.”

“And what is that?”

Shawn thought. “I have no idea.”

“Maybe you should think a little harder about the people you take advantage of.”

“Gus, I do not take advantage of you. I treasure your friendship and your partnership. You know it’s true. Everything I do I do it for you.”

“I’m not talking about me,” Gus said. “And I’ve told you never to quote Bryan Adams at me. I’m talking about Tara.”

“Where is she, anyway?” Shawn said. “We sent her out for lunch ages ago.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Gus said.

“You think that I’m taking advantage of her?”

Gus did. And he’d been saying so for days. After she had driven them back from Eagle’s View, Shawn once again told her that he was freeing her from all psychic control. But instead of leaving, she just kept idling in front of their office. When the owner of the tanning parlor next door complained about the exhaust fumes, Shawn invited Tara into their office and tried again to send her away. Again, she seemed incapable of understanding. Short of calling the police and having her hauled away, there seemed to be no way to get rid of her. So Shawn started assigning her errands that would keep her out of the office. At first, it was only to give Gus and him privacy to talk about their cases and their investment strategy. But as the days went on, Shawn started to discover how convenient it was to have someone whose only desire in life was to do all the things he didn’t want to do.

“Last week she did your laundry, cleaned your office, and brought you four meals every day.”

“The woman has a void where her life goals are supposed to be. She’s decided to fill that gaping black hole by anticipating and fulfilling my every need. It’s not that I really want her to do all these things for me. In fact, I find it extremely draining. But it’s what she needs, so I’m willing to sacrifice my own desires for her health and well-being. It’s like Major Nelson and Jeannie, except Jeannie’s outfits weren’t quite as revealing.” Shawn looked down at his watch. “How long does it take to get a medium-rare cheeseburger?”

“Since you sent her to Oxnard to get it-”

“There you go again. I didn’t send her. She instinctively knew that I preferred the Oxnard BurgerZone to any of the closer branches.”

“And the fact that you mentioned this to me in front of her didn’t have anything to do with her intuition?”

Shawn sighed heavily. “She thinks she’s taking psychic orders from me. If she gets them wrong, she’s going to start doubting the very fabric of her existence.”

“Yes,” Gus said. “She might even start to act on her own initiative, instead of waiting to figure out the smallest thing you might want.”

“So you’re saying that if I were to leave these prospectuses and DVDs scattered all over the floor, knowing that as soon as she comes in with our lunch she’ll pick them up, that would be taking advantage of her?”

“Of course it would.”

Shawn stared down at the mess on the floor.

“And that would be wrong?”

“Obviously.”

“So if there’s something I’d like her to do for me and she’d like to do for me, if I let her do it for me, that’s wrong.”

“You’re not going to pick up this mess, are you?” Gus said.

“I’m still working on the morality of the issue.”

“I knew it.” Gus bent down and started to pile all the prospectuses together.

Shawn watched him curiously. “Okay, here’s my question: If I let you pick this stuff up before she has a chance to, am I taking advantage of you? Or am I still taking advantage of her, because you’re only doing this to protect her from my evil ways?”

Gus dumped the files back in the box and jammed the top over it. “All I’m saying is that Tara is a sweet, sad, delusional girl who’s just lost her beloved aunt Enid and is looking for some purpose in her life. And she’s never going to find it as long as she can convince herself that taking the pickles off your cheeseburgers is what she was put on Earth to do.”

“She wouldn’t have to if you could ever get a burger without them,” Shawn said. “Even if you ask specially, it’s like they’re incapable of hearing it.”

Gus was back on his knees, gathering the DVDs into stacks. “This isn’t about pickles.”

“You’d be surprised how much turns out to be, in the end, about pickles.”

“Shawn!”

Shawn picked up one of the stacks of discs and carried it over to a shelf. There were several empty slots where the DVDs had come from. Gus had spent two full days organizing their collection. Shawn glanced back to make sure Gus wasn’t looking, then pushed the discs together and slid the new stack in at the end.

“I guess you’re right,” Shawn said, “even if I don’t understand how giving her what she wants is wrong. But what can I do about it?”

“To start with, you can put those discs back in the right order,” Gus said. “And then you can have a nice, quiet conversation with her in which you graciously thank her for everything she’s done for you and explain it’s time for her to leave.”

“Haven’t I done that about fifty times?”

“And then tell her you’re going to have her arrested if you ever see her again.”

“That sounds kind of cruel.”

“Of course it’s cruel,” Gus said. “You’re going to have to break her heart. But it’s for her good and it’s for our good. And I think we both know that nothing else is going to work.”

The bell over the door rang, and Tara came in carrying white take-out bags. She was dressed in red, as always, but she’d traded the minidress for a pair of tiny shorts and a T-shirt so tight that Gus could see the order in which the cells of her lungs gave up their allotment of oxygen.

“Sorry it took so long,” Tara said. “That guy did the pickle thing again, and I figured it was worth a little extra time to make sure he didn’t do it again.”

“That was thoughtful of you,” Shawn said, “although it’s hard to believe you’d have to say anything twice to any man who saw you in that outfit.”

She blushed happily at the compliment. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem in the future,” she said.

Gus cleared his throat. “Did you hear that?” he said significantly to Shawn. “Tara says it’s not going to be a problem in the future.”

“Are you expecting that she should somehow do something about the problem in the past? Because that would risk bringing up the whole time-travel paradox thing. We start out trying to change the pickle count on a cheeseburger, and before we know it, I’ve killed my own grandfather, the Nazis won World War II, and there’s a dinosaur in the White House.”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

If Shawn was hoping for a reprieve from Gus’ judgment, he wasn’t going to get it. “I do,” he said.

“Are the cheeseburgers okay?” Tara asked. “Because I’m feeling like my orders have changed.”

“Just a little bit,” Shawn said. “Maybe we should talk outside for a moment.” She dropped the three white bags on the desk and headed brightly for the door.

Gus waited until Shawn was outside, then moved over to the window and drew the curtain aside so he could watch what was happening. Tara was leaning happily against the Mercedes as Shawn went up to her. But as Gus watched, whatever Shawn was saying to her seemed to be bringing her mood down to earth. At first, she just looked confused, as if Shawn’s words were in direct conflict with the psychic orders she was receiving from him. As he kept talking, her face began to darken and she started trying to object. Gus had to give Shawn credit-it seemed like he wasn’t letting her get out more than a syllable before he was able to talk over her objection. Even from this distance, Gus could see her protests getting weaker and weaker.

Just as Tara’s anger was beginning to fade away into tears, the phone rang behind Gus. He knew he should answer it. It might be Shepler, asking if they’d decided which firms they were putting their funds into. It could be Veronica Mason, apologizing for her long absence and offering to messenger over a check right now. It could even be a new client with a hot case who’d be willing to give them a big cash retainer in advance. But for the moment, none of that was as intriguing as the scene that was going on outside this window. Nothing would keep Gus from watching Shawn finally send Tara away for good.

Nothing, that is, except for the voice that came over the machine.

“I know you’re there, Spencer. This is Carlton Lassiter of the Santa Barbara Police department, and you have exactly ten seconds to pick up this phone.”

Immediately Gus forgot what he’d been so engrossed in just seconds before. He sprinted for the phone and snatched up the receiver before half the allowed time had passed. “Psych Investigations. Burton Guster speaking,” he said.

“If I were interested in talking to a sidekick, I’d have called Ed McMahon,” Lassiter growled.

Normally Gus might have given in to his instinctive desire to defend Ed McMahon’s underrated acting career. He certainly would have bristled at being called a sidekick. But there was something in Lassiter’s voice that strongly suggested this wasn’t the time for repartee. “Whatever you have to say to Shawn, you can say to me.”

“You sure about that?”

“Absolutely.”

Lassiter did.

And Gus tried to figure out why he had been so insistent that Lassiter tell him personally.

When the bell over the door chimed and Shawn came back in, Gus was still staring down at the receiver in his hand.

“That was tough,” Shawn said. “And I don’t mean ‘figuring out your taxes’ tough. This was more like ‘Babe finding out his mother had been ground up for hamburger’ tough.”

Gus didn’t even look up at him. He just kept staring at the phone.

“Don’t tell me you don’t want details, Gus,” Shawn said. “Or that you’re not dying to tell my that Babe’s mother was a pig and they make hamburger out of cow. Let me have it.”

Shawn waited for Gus to take the bait. But Gus didn’t even seem to hear him. “Lassiter called.”

“Speaking of Babe. Which, to protect me from charges of cliche-mongering, you may apply to the lovely Juliet O’Hara, not to the oft-drawn comparisons between police officers and our oinking friends. So what did he want?”

“Us,” Gus said. “There’s a warrant for our arrest.”