“My name is Ellen Svaco and I’m looking for a detective named Spenser.” She said the name in a tone that made it sound like she was referring to a skunk that had crawled under her house to die. “With an ‘s’ like the poet. At least that’s what I was told.”

Shawn barely glanced up from the newspaper photo of Detective Carlton Lassiter he was busy defacing with a ballpoint pen. “Whoever said that is playing some kind of joke on you,” he said as he added eyeballs to the ends of the springy antennae he’d drawn on Lassiter’s forehead. “There is no ‘s’ in ‘poet.’ ”

Gus saw the skin around the woman’s eyes tighten in irritation and felt his hand shooting up in the air. He tried to stop it before his fingers had cleared the desk, but he had spent so much of his school years saving Shawn from academic selfimmolation that it had become a reflex as impossible to restrain as jerking his leg when the rubber hammer hit his knee or fleeing from a movie theater when they started showing a trailer for any movie where Eddie Murphy played more than two roles.

“Edmund Spenser, author of The Faerie Queene, is considered one of the most important Elizabethan poets,” Gus said.

“That’s nice for him,” Shawn said. “But can he fit all one hundred and twenty different colors of Crayons in his mouth at the same time? Because I can.”

That was true, as Shawn had proven only the night before. Gus saw the skin around the woman’s eyes tightening even further. He felt his pre-adolescent terror of any teacher’s disapproval rising in his chest.

“This is Shawn Spencer, and he is a detective,” Gus said. “How can we help you?”

The woman glared at Gus. “I’m having a very hard time believing that you are a walking weapon, the physical incarnation of street justice, and the unstoppable id to Spenser’s superego,” she said.

“It’s amazing how many people have that same problem,” Shawn said. “I told him not to stop shaving his head.”