Chapter 5: Open for Business
The sign was heavier than it looked.
"Left. Your other left. Shawn, you're going to drop it."
"I'm not going to drop it." I adjusted my grip on the green monstrosity and tried to align it with the brackets Gus was holding. "I'm simply... recalibrating the gravitational distribution."
"That's not a thing."
"It's absolutely a thing. I read about it in a physics magazine. At the dentist."
The Psych sign settled into place with a satisfying click. Green letters on a darker green background, the font exactly as ridiculous as I remembered from the opening credits. Gus stepped back to evaluate our work, wiping his hands on his khakis in a way that suggested he was already regretting the dirt stains.
"The font is terrible."
"The font is iconic."
"Iconic and terrible aren't mutually exclusive." He squinted at the sign. "Is that supposed to be a different shade of green, or did the paint fade?"
"It's called 'visual interest.'" I stepped back to join him. "The slight variation draws the eye. Makes you look twice. And when you look twice, you remember."
"I remember wanting to change the font."
"Too late. We already hung it."
The Psych office was officially open.
The interior was smaller than the show had made it look — three hundred square feet of corner unit that felt cramped even before we'd brought in the furniture. A desk that I'd found at a thrift store. Two chairs that didn't match. A coffee table made from what appeared to be reclaimed barn wood, though more likely it was just wood painted to look old.
And a corkboard. Empty now, but waiting.
[MILESTONE: PSYCH AGENCY ESTABLISHED][+25 XP. TOTAL: 70/100 TO LEVEL 2]
The notification appeared while Gus was distracted by a suspicious stain on the floor. I dismissed it with a quick double-blink and focused on the moment — the real moment, not the system's gamified version of it.
This was where it all started. Eight seasons of cases, relationships, triumphs and disasters, all beginning in this cramped little office with a terrible sign and a partnership built on lies I hadn't earned.
My stomach growled. We'd been moving boxes since 8 AM and I hadn't eaten anything since a granola bar around sunrise.
"Lunch break?" I suggested.
"We just got here."
"We've been here for three hours. That's practically a full workday in psychic detective terms."
Gus opened his mouth to argue, and the door opened.
Officer Buzz McNab stood in the entrance with a folder in his hands and an expression of cheerful uncertainty on his face. I recognized him immediately — the most lovably earnest cop in Santa Barbara, destined to become an unofficial ally and occasional source of inside information.
Right now, he looked like someone who'd been sent on an errand and wasn't entirely sure why.
"Mr. Spencer? I'm Officer McNab. Chief Vick sent me with a case referral."
"Buzz!" I crossed the office with my hand extended, which startled him enough to take a step back. "Heard great things about you. Come in, come in. Ignore the boxes, we're still settling."
"You've... heard of me?"
"I'm psychic." I tapped my temple. "I know things."
Gus made a small sound behind me that might have been a suppressed groan. Buzz's expression shifted from uncertainty to wonder — he was a believer, or at least wanted to be.
"The case is a threat investigation," Buzz said, handing over the folder. "The organizer of the regional spelling bee has been receiving death threats. Anonymous letters, no usable evidence. Chief Vick thought it might be your kind of thing."
I opened the folder. Photocopies of threatening letters, handwritten on plain paper. "YOUR DAUGHTER WILL NEVER SPELL AGAIN" in block letters. Crude, direct, and genuinely unsettling.
I knew this case. Spellingg Bee. Season one, early episode. The killer was—
"No."
I closed the folder before my brain could finish the thought.
"Tell Chief Vick we'll take it. We can start this afternoon."
Buzz nodded and left. The door closed. Gus immediately rounded on me.
"What was that?"
"What was what?"
"You just accepted a case about threatening letters sent to a spelling bee organizer. Without asking about fee, timeline, or whether it conflicts with my schedule."
He had a point. I checked my phone — Gus's sales route had him free for the next two days, according to the notes I'd made during our diner conversation.
"You're free until Thursday. The spelling bee regionals are this weekend. Timeline works."
"How do you know my schedule?"
"You told me. At the diner. I was listening."
Gus's mouth opened, closed, and stayed closed. The concept of Shawn Spencer listening and remembering had apparently short-circuited some fundamental assumption about their dynamic.
[BCM UPDATE: 10/100. +2 FROM DEMONSTRATED ATTENTIVENESS.]
The spelling bee venue was a community center on the north side of town — the kind of place that hosted everything from blood drives to karate tournaments depending on the season. Banners hung from the ceiling advertising the Regional Spelling Championship, and a small army of volunteers were setting up folding chairs in precise rows.
I scanned the room while pretending to examine a registration table.
[SHAWN VISION ACTIVATING — MANUAL TRIGGER]
Three highlights shimmered into existence. The first: the organizer, a middle-aged woman named Patricia Chen who was currently berating a volunteer about microphone placement. Her body language screamed stress — tight shoulders, rapid blinking, the particular jaw clench of someone running on caffeine and fear.
The second: a banner that read "SPELLING CHAMPIANSHIP" in large letters. Someone had misspelled "championship" on a sign about spelling. The irony was almost too perfect.
The third: a fire extinguisher near the back exit. Red metal, standard issue, but the system had flagged it with that faint golden shimmer.
"Why the fire extinguisher?"
I approached it casually while Gus introduced himself to Patricia Chen. The extinguisher looked normal. No obvious tampering, no suspicious residue. But someone had moved it recently — the dust pattern on the wall showed a rectangular clean spot where the extinguisher usually hung, and the current position was offset by about six inches.
Could mean something. Probably didn't. The system's false positive rate was still around forty percent, which meant one of these three highlights was leading me nowhere.
"Shawn!" Gus waved me over. "Mrs. Chen wants to show us the threatening letters."
I left the fire extinguisher for later analysis and joined them. Patricia Chen looked exactly like someone who'd been receiving death threats — pale, jumpy, constantly scanning the room for danger.
"The first letter arrived two weeks ago," she explained, leading us to a small office off the main hall. "Generic threats about the spelling bee being 'rigged' and my daughter being 'punished.' I thought it was a prank."
"But then they got specific."
"My daughter's school. Her volleyball practice schedule. Her favorite color." Patricia's voice cracked. "Whoever this is, they've been watching her."
The letters were spread out on the office desk. I'd seen copies in Buzz's folder, but the originals had more detail — paper quality, ink pressure, the particular way each word was formed.
[SHAWN VISION: HIGHLIGHT REFRESH]
Two new highlights. A smudge on the corner of letter three — fingerprint oil, but degraded, probably not usable for identification. And a crease pattern that suggested the letters had been folded precisely in thirds — someone with neat habits, organizational tendencies.
The fire extinguisher highlight faded. False positive confirmed. The system had flagged it because someone had moved it recently, but that someone was almost certainly a volunteer doing routine safety checks.
Two out of three. Better than forty percent.
"Mrs. Chen," I said, touching my temple for the performance, "I'm sensing something about these letters. The person who wrote them is careful. Organized. They fold their correspondence precisely, probably iron their shirts, and have strong opinions about alphabetical filing systems."
Patricia stared at me. "You can tell all that from the paper?"
"I can tell all that from the universe." I made my voice mysterious, mystical, annoying enough to distract from the fact that I was just reading physical evidence. "The spirits speak to those who listen."
Gus, behind Patricia's shoulder, rolled his eyes so hard I thought he might strain something.
"The misspelling on your banner," I continued. "Champianship with an 'a.' Who designed that?"
"The printer. Local company. Why?"
"Because either your printer doesn't know how to spell championship, or someone switched the file before it went to print." I watched her face for recognition. "Someone who wanted this event to fail."
Patricia's expression shifted. Fear becoming something sharper — the beginning of understanding.
"Richard," she whispered.
"Who's Richard?"
"My ex-husband. We... there was a custody dispute. He lost. He's been..." She trailed off, the implications cascading. "He always hated the spelling bees. Said I spent too much time on them instead of our marriage."
[INVESTIGATION LEAD: RICHARD CHEN. CUSTODY DISPUTE. POSSIBLE MOTIVE.]
I already knew Richard Chen was the killer. I'd watched this episode. I could name him right now, wrap up the case in ten minutes, collect my fee and move on.
But the system would know. The meta-knowledge penalty would cut my XP in half, maybe worse. And more importantly, I wouldn't learn anything. I wouldn't get better at actual detection.
"Gus," I said, "I need you to interview the other parents. Find out who else might have a grudge against the spelling bee or Mrs. Chen specifically."
"Why me?"
"Because you're better with people than I am." The truth, actually. "Your pharmaceutical sales training — you know how to put anxious people at ease. That's exactly what these parents need right now."
Gus straightened slightly. The BCM probably ticked up another point.
"What are you going to do?"
"Check the venue for physical evidence. Someone tampered with that banner, which means someone had access to this building before the official setup began."
We split up. I spent the next two hours searching the community center while Gus charmed nervous parents in the main hall. The stage had rigging for lights and microphones — standard community center setup — but several of the mounting brackets showed fresh tool marks. Someone had been up there recently, making adjustments that weren't part of the official event preparation.
[SHAWN VISION HIGHLIGHT: STAGE RIGGING — POTENTIAL SABOTAGE]
I photographed the tool marks with Shawn's phone camera. Low resolution, but good enough for evidence if the case went to court.
By 6 PM, I had two solid leads: the rigging tampering and Patricia Chen's ex-husband. The fire extinguisher had been a dead end. My accuracy was improving — two out of three on the first scan, one out of one on the second.
I pinned everything to the corkboard back at the Psych office and stared at it while Gus drove home for dinner.
The system wanted me to solve this the hard way. Fine. I'd solve it the hard way.
But I knew how it ended. And that knowledge sat in the back of my mind like a safety net, ready to catch me if I stumbled.
The phone on my desk rang at 9 PM.
Patricia Chen's voice, shaking: "Mr. Spencer, there's been another letter. This one had a photograph of my daughter."
I grabbed my keys.
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