“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.