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hadn’t used Gus’ keys and driven off in the Echo.
    He hadn’t, which was the first good thing that had happened to Gus all day. But when they got to the parking lot, Shawn didn’t go to the Echo. Instead he started looking in the trash barrels that stood outside the park’s wrought-iron fence. The first two were empty aside from trash. The third, however, held their clothes.
    “How did you know they’d be here?” Gus said as he pulled his underpants on under his tissue paper diaper.
    “I sort of figured that not even a mime would risk life in prison to steal some clothes he could buy at Goodwill for under a buck,” Shawn said, slipping on his jeans before he stepped into his shoes.
    “Then what was that all about?”
    Shawn dug in his pockets. “Not my wallet,” he said, fishing it out and flipping through it. “Or any of the four dollars left inside it.” He checked Gus’ pants before tossing them to him. “Or your wallet, or your car keys.”
    “This doesn’t make any sense at all,” Gus said. “Could it all have been some bizarre mime initiation ritual?”
    Shawn dug in his pants again, and his face turned grim. “The necklace is gone,” he said. “We’ve been set up.”

Chapter Eight
     
     
     
     
     
     
    T he freeways on the drive back to Santa Barbara were nearly empty, the sky was a vivid blue, and dolphins were dancing in the waters off the Pacific Coast Highway. But Gus didn’t notice any of that. His foot was jammed down on the accelerator and his eyes locked on the road ahead.
    In the passenger seat, Shawn snapped shut his cell phone in frustration. “I can’t believe Lassie hung up on me again.”
    “When he understands what’s happening, he’ll listen.”
    “That’s the problem,” Shawn said. “Before he can understand, he has to listen first. And as soon as I start to tell him the story, he bursts out laughing and hangs up.”
    “If you tell him we were held up at gunpoint—”
    “In a public men’s room by a killer mime who stole our clothes.” Shawn finished Gus’ sentence for him. “Last time I tried that he put me on hold, then forwarded my call to Papa Julio’s Casa de Pizza.”
    “What did he say when you mentioned Ellen Svaco?”
    “One word,” Shawn said. “Who?”
    Gus tried to make sense of this. Had Lassie simply forgotten he’d sent the teacher to see them, or did this suggest something more ominous? “There’s got to be something we can do.”
    “You can start by getting off the freeway here.”
    Gus had been so agitated he hadn’t noticed they were almost at the Los Carneros Road exit into Isla Vista. Giving his rearview a quick scan, he tore across four lanes and flew down the ramp, slamming on the brakes for the stop sign at the bottom. Making sure there was no cross traffic, he turned left onto Los Carneros and headed into town.
    “Maybe we’ve got this all wrong,” Gus said. He could see the traffic light at Hollister straight ahead. It was red. He gunned the car, figuring to make the next green. “How do we know this was a setup?”
    “Do you really have to ask?”
    Gus checked to make sure Shawn was wearing his seat belt. He was. Which meant there was no point in slamming on the brakes to watch him go flying through the windshield. Instead he pressed his foot on the accelerator as he turned right through the green light onto Hollister.
    “Are you asking if I have to ask why anyone would send us to a public garden to be held up by a mime?” he said through clenched teeth.
    “It was a rhetorical question,” Shawn said. “Because the answer is so obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention.”
    “I guess I’ve been a little distracted,” Gus said. “Little things like being kidnapped do that to me.”
    “You should work on that,” Shawn said. “You let the bad guys know they can throw you off with a little gunplay and you’ll never have a moment’s peace.”
    “That’s good to know,” Gus said in a close