A Fatal Frame of Mind

Chapter Nineteen

“Cell phone!”Gus hissed at Kitteredge.“Keep that cell phone pressed to your face.”

“What’s the point?” Kitteredge moaned.

“The point is not getting caught,” Gus said. “And you’re not making that easy.”

Actually he seemed to be trying to make it as hard as he could. As Shawn and Gus led the professor through the crowd of people thronging the museum steps, he refused to hide his face behind his conversation with Aunt Mabel the way they had urged him.

“I can’t hide forever,” Kitteredge said. “And now that they’ve got the painting, I have no other choice. Because the only clues to the sword’s hiding place were hidden in it. How can I ever hope to prove my innocence if I can’t point at the people who framed me?”

“I don’t know,” Shawn said. “How about an alibi?”

Kitteredge stared at him blankly, exposing his face to a pair of uniformed police officers who were, fortunately, engaged in directing traffic around the crowd of evacuees who were spilling onto the street. Gus lifted the professor’s arm and placed his left hand against his right ear, so that his elbow would hide his face again.

“An alibi?” Kitteredge said, his voice muffled by the tweed of his sleeve.

“You know, the place where you really were when the murder was being committed,” Shawn said.

Kitteredge looked rattled and dropped his elbow away from his face. Gus pushed it back into place.

“I can’t,” he said.

“What do you mean, you can’t?” Gus said.

“Well, there are two possible meanings,” Shawn said. “The logical one is that no one seems to know yet exactly what time the murder actually happened, so it’s impossible to pinpoint where he was at the time. But I think he’s aiming for meaning number two, which is that he refuses to say where he was.”

“Why?” Gus was shocked. “This is your life, Professor. What could be more important than that?”

“I was probably driving up from Riverside at the time,” Kitteredge said.

“And let me guess,” Shawn said. “You didn’t stop, you weren’t clocked speeding by a highway patrolman, and you didn’t wave at any little kids who might suddenly remember having seen you right before the jury comes back.”

“Nothing like that,” Kitteredge said. “You see, I have a bad habit. When I have a lot on my mind, I get in my car and drive without paying any attention to where I’m going. I let my body take over the driving, and my mind focuses on my work. And when I was coming up from Riverside, I had so much to think about as I was preparing to view the painting. I can’t say exactly where I went or what roads I took, but I left Riverside at seven in the morning, and I didn’t arrive here until close to twelve hours later. And no, I didn’t stop for gas. I have a hybrid.”

“Which is not good, if it’s true,” Shawn said. “But there’s still that other possibility.”

“Which is what?” Kitteredge said.

“That there’s another reason Filkins was killed,” Shawn said. “It has nothing to do with the painting. It’s really about Kitteredge coming home after a couple of weeks. He stops in a bar, and his old buddy Andy gives him the bad news. His new bride wasn’t home that night. Since he’s been gone she’s been sleeping with everyone in town, including Filkins. Kitteredge picks up his gun and goes to Filkins’ house, but when he gets there, he’s lying in a pool of blood.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Kitteredge said.

“That’s ‘The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,’ ” Gus said.

“That’s the night they hung an innocent man,” Shawn agreed. “All because his wife couldn’t stay faithful.”

“I don’t have a wife,” Kitteredge said.

“Sure,” Shawn said. “That’s one body that’ll never be found, because little sister don’t miss when she aims her gun.”

“I don’t have a sister!”

It was a good thing he was keeping the professor’s arm pressed to his face, Gus thought, because it might have started beating Shawn around the head and neck.

“That does complicate things,” Shawn admitted. “You don’t know anyone who wanders these hills in a long back veil, do you?”

Kitteredge pulled his arm away from Gus. “What an arrogant fool I’ve been,” he said. “All these years thinking I could best the Cabal, never realizing how powerful they really are. If I’ve stayed alive this long it’s only because they chose to let me live. I should go up to the nearest policeman and turn myself in. Because there’s nothing I can do to clear my name.”

Kitteredge took a step in the direction of the cops who were still directing traffic. Gus grabbed his arm again.

“Please, Professor, don’t do that,” Gus said. “We will find a way to prove your innocence. You had enough faith to come to us for help in the first place. Don’t let go of that, now that things look bleak.”

Kitteredge barked out a bitter laugh. “I came to you for help? That’s the rock I should build my faith on?”

“I still have the letter,” Gus said, patting his breast pocket and hearing the crackle of twenty-four-pound bond.

“Maybe you should reread it,” Kitteredge said.

“If you want me to, I will,” Gus said. “But it’s not safe out here. My car is parked across the street. I’ll read it there if you’ll come along with us.”

“Now,” Kitteredge said.

Gus turned to Shawn for help, but Shawn only shrugged. “Unless you want to pick him up and carry him, you’ve got to do what he says.”

Keeping one eye on the cops, Gus pulled the letter out of his pocket and unfolded it. “Dear Mr. Guster,” he read. “These are dark and difficult times. Events are conspiring to bring an end to those things which we hold most dear. And there is only one way out-if you are willing and able to help. Together we can find a way to make it through the dangers that face us. I will be appearing in your area in the near future, giving a lecture on the occasion of the unveiling of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The Defence of Guenevere at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. I would be happy to speak further about these issues if you would like to see me there. Thank you so much for your kind consideration. Sincerely, Langston Kitteredge, PhD.”

Gus held the letter out to Kitteredge and then to Shawn, to see if either of them wanted to check the accuracy of his reading. For some reason, the professor’s face was a mask of contempt. And even Shawn was staring at Gus like he’d reported for work wearing footie pajamas.

“What?” Gus said. He looked from Shawn to Kitteredge and back again. “What? He’s asking for our help. He’s practically begging for it.”

“He’s asking for money, Gus,” Shawn said. “It’s a fund-raising letter.”

That couldn’t be right. Gus read the letter again. And again. “But ‘dark and difficult times.’ You ask for my help right here.”

“And the help of every other person in the Santa Barbara area who ever passed through the doors of my classroom,” Kitteredge said. “I sent out similar, albeit slightly altered, letters to former students in fourteen other geographical regions.”

“You said there were dangers,” Gus said, his confusion turning to irritation and veering perilously close to anger.

“There are,” Kitteredge said. “The state legislature keeps cutting the funding to the University of California system. Student fees have been raised much more than they should have been, and still there isn’t enough money to keep all the departments open. We need the alumni to open their hearts and their wallets if we are going to survive as one of the nation’s great public institutions of education.”

Gus read the letter again, and this time he finally saw it for what it was. A plea for cash. How could he have been such a fool?

Shawn saw the despair on his friend’s face and stepped in. “Still,” he said, “you might not have needed the help of Santa Barbara’s finest psychic detective agency when you wrote this letter, but it’s hard to deny you’re in trouble now.”

Kitteredge turned his withering stare on Shawn. “Psychic?” he boomed.

It’s an interesting thing about conversations in public places: sometimes two or three people can talk for hours at the top of their voices about the most intimate subjects and no one will notice. And then at other times one of the speakers will utter one simple word and the entire zip code will overhear.

That was the effect of Kitteredge’s exclamation. Everyone standing on the steps around them swiveled to see what the commotion was about.

“Maybe we should keep our voices down a little,” Gus whispered, pulling Kitteredge down the stairs.

Kitteredge allowed himself to be led, but he didn’t take his eyes off Shawn. “This is a psychic detective agency?” he said, his volume still well above what any mother would consider his inside voice.

“It is for now,” Shawn said. “But in about two minutes it’s going to be a psychic inmates’ association.”

He pointed down the steps to where the two policemen had been directing traffic. But now the cars were hopelessly snarled as drivers tried to jockey their way through the crowd of pedestrians with no one to give them direction.

Because the cops weren’t paying attention to the cars any longer. They weren’t standing on the curb.

They were heading up the stairs toward Kitteredge.