“Actually, I think he thought he could scare us away by killing us,” Gus said.

“Either way, he was wrong. And we’re going to take him down.”

“Did the police find out anything?”

“The police?” Shawn said. “What do they have to do with anything?”

“Didn’t you call them to say he’d tried to kill us?”

“So they could bungle the case the way they did with Veronica Mason’s?” Shawn asked. “This guy is ours, and we’re going to make sure he pays for what he did. We’re going to spend every minute of every day uncovering his criminal conspiracy. We’re never going to stop until-Hey!” Shawn shoved the newspaper at Gus, pointing at a small boxed headline in the bottom right corner. “Look at that.”

Gus focused on a small headline that read “Local Businessman to Invest in Area, details page six.”

“Way to focus, Captain Attention Span,” Gus said.

“Just look,” Shawn said.

Gus managed to stretch his arms far enough apart to open the paper to the correct page. At least it was the page indicated by the tease. All Gus saw was a large ad promising that the junior partner in a major mattress company would commit suicide if he were forced to sell his stock at the insanely low prices his senior colleague had promised.

“‘You’re killing me, Larry?’” Gus read.

“Oh, we’re killing him all right-but Larry’s got nothing to do with it.” Shawn pointed to a small article running directly under the mattress chain’s generous delivery policy.

“‘A venture capitalist has pledged to invest several billion dollars in the Santa Barbara economy, helping local companies compete on a national playing field,’” Gus read.

“Keep reading.”

“‘Santa Barbara native Dallas Steele, who spent the last ten years as the managing partner of a New York investment bank-’” Gus stopped. “Dallas Steele? From high school?”