A Fatal Frame of Mind

Chapter Thirty-four

Rarely was Gus able to hear good news without contemplating its darker side, and when things were clearly getting bad, he always managed to figure out a way they could be worse.

But his feelings had rarely been as divided as they were right now. On the positive side, he and Shawn were on their way to England. That sceptered isle had never made his top-five list of destinations to visit, but it was hard to deny the romance of the unexpected trip.

Especially since they were flying across the globe in a private jet without a moment’s notice. They were even wearing tuxedoes. You didn’t get much more romantic than that, unless there was actual romance involved.

But somehow the reality wasn’t matching up to the description. Which might explain why Gus was still wide awake when Shawn and Kitteredge had been asleep for hours.

There was the tuxedo, for instance. When he’d put it on thirty-six hours earlier, it had felt like a timeless symbol of elegance, the uniform for entrance into a world of glamour and wealth.

But while the rented suit still looked shockingly good after all this time, it was feeling less and less comfortable. Apparently it was woven out of some kind of super-synthetic fabric that kept it from wrinkling or showing stains even during the most extreme circumstances. But it seemed to be accomplishing that by absorbing all the dirt with which it came in contact, mixing it with Gus’ sweat, and holding it all inside. Gus felt like he was sitting in a sauna whose water hadn’t been changed in months.

That could be remedied once they were on the ground, he assumed. Gus didn’t know a lot about contemporary Britain, but from the YouTube clips he’d seen of an audience watching some homely lady singing a sad song, he knew the Brits wore clothes that were strikingly similar to the ones worn back home. He didn’t have a lot of cash to lay out for a wardrobe, and he was pretty sure he had a lot more than Shawn, but the TV commercials his credit card company ran during sporting events assured him he could charge anything he wanted anywhere in the world.

And it wasn’t like they were exactly welcome in Southern California right now. The police had clearly decided that they were involved in a criminal conspiracy with Professor Kitteredge, and they seemed to be devoting a good many resources to looking for them. He’d figured for a while that the best way to clear Kitteredge’s name was to learn the identity of the real killer and present that to the cops, and now the same went for himself and Shawn. If that search took them ten thousand miles out of the SBPD’s jurisdiction, Gus could live with that.

But before they could start searching, they had to get into London, and maybe even out into the countryside. And that was the one part of this trip he couldn’t figure out.

Shawn stirred himself up from sleep and glanced over at Gus. One look at his friend’s face woke him up the rest of the way.

“You find the most amazing times to start worrying,” Shawn said. “We’re on a private jet over the ocean, the fridge in the back is stocked with food, and in a couple of hours we’ll be in England. You should try to relax and enjoy the adventure.”

“I didn’t just start worrying,” Gus said.

“That’s true,” Shawn said. “I have very clear memories of you worrying about whether we were allowed to use the swings on the upper playground or if those were reserved for the big kids in second grade. But as I read the wrinkles on your forehead, you are not fretting about access to recreational areas right now. This particular concern has something to do with our current excursion.”

“It does,” Gus said. “Do you remember the conversation we had when you suggested we might flee to Canada?”

“I do,” Shawn said. “And I have to say I’ve felt much better ever since, knowing that I don’t belong to a culture that accepts DaVinci’s Inquest as entertainment.”

“Do you recall the objection I raised about undertaking such an expedition?” Gus said, avoiding the opportunity to engage in yet another conversation about the lack of conflict in Canadian television dramas.

“Something about not having passports,” Shawn said after a moment of thought.

“Not something about not having passports,” Gus said. “But the fact itself that we don’t have passports. Which means the English immigration people aren’t going to let us into the country.”

“What are they going to do?” Shawn said. “Shoot us down? It’s not like Malko’s going to radio down to the airport to say we don’t have passports, so by the time they find out, it will be too late. We’ll be there.”

“We’ll be in immigration at the airport,” Gus said. “They’ll let us out of the plane. They’ll take us to a counter where they’ll ask us for our passports. And when we can’t produce them, they’ll put us in a cell until we can prove our identities.”

“That’s easy. If they ask me who you are, I’ll just tell them. You do the same for me, and we’re fine.” Shawn unbuckled his belt and ambled to the back of the jet, where he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a plate of sandwiches. “Looks like we’ve got roast beef with some kind of blue cheese horseradish sauce and a tarragon chicken salad on raisin bread. You want one?”

If the seat back hadn’t been made of such soft, supple leather, Gus would have slammed his head against it. “They’re not going to take my word for our identities.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Shawn said through a mouthful of sandwich as he returned to his seat. “You can be very convincing.”

“There are laws and procedures,” Gus said. “Trying to enter the country without a passport is some kind of felony. They’ll throw us into a cell. And if we’re lucky enough to be able to get through to the American consulate, he’ll probably e-mail our pictures back to the Santa Barbara police for confirmation-and then we’ll be arrested and sent back there.”

“Then you really should try one of these chicken sandwiches,” Shawn said, holding out his plate with the untouched half on it. “Because it would be the highlight of a much better trip than the one you’re describing.”

If Gus had thought to pack his shoes with explosives, he would have definitely set them off at this point in the conversation. “How can you be so calm about this?”

Shawn took back the half sandwich and crammed it into his mouth, then returned to the refrigerator for another one. By the time he got back to his seat, he had swallowed just enough of the chicken salad to be able to talk through the rest of it.

“Because we’re not going through immigration,” Shawn said. “We’re not going to be locked in a tiny cell for not showing our passports because no one is going to ask us for our passports.”

“You have to believe me on this, Shawn,” Gus said, wishing there was some way he could get through his friend’s astonishingly strong denial mechanism. “Maybe there was a time a few years ago when that was possible, but after 9/11 there isn’t a country in the world where you can land at an airport and just waltz into town without proving you’re not some wanted terrorist.”

“I’m sure you’re right about that,” Shawn said. “But we’re not landing at an airport.”

Gus stared at him. “If you think we’re jumping out of this plane with parachutes, you’re insane.”

“Really?” Shawn said. “You want to jump out without a parachute?”

Gus resisted the temptation to shove Shawn’s second sandwich down his throat and watch him choke on chicken salad. “We can’t do any kind of jump out of a jet,” Gus said. “We’d die. Even if we had any idea what we were doing, we’d still die.”

“True,” Shawn said. “Which is why it’s a good thing we don’t have to jump out of the jet. We’re going to land.”

“But you just said-”

“What did I just say?” Shawn said. “I can’t remember that far back. We’d better rewind the tape.” He made a series of noises that Gus assumed were meant to approximate the sound of an audiotape rewinding. “No, really, Gus isn’t a complete dweeb. He just comes across that way. You should go out with him.” Shawn stopped. “Sorry. Ran that tape back too far. That was when I was talking to that blond sales rep at your company Christmas party.”

“I didn’t invite you to that party,” Gus said, the humiliation over the recent past momentarily eclipsing his fear of the near future.

“Don’t I know it,” Shawn said. “And let me tell you, that was one tough ticket. I think I had to walk almost all the way up to the door before they let me in.”

“In fact,” Gus said, as the memories came rushing back, “I didn’t even go myself. We were supposed to be on a stakeout that night. Instead, I was alone, because you said you were watching the rear entrance while I was covering the front.”

“I stake much better on a full stomach,” Shawn said. “Besides, that was the wrong part of the tape. Here.” Shawn made a slightly different set of noises to indicate that the tape was now fast-forwarding. “Here it is: ‘We’re not landing at an airport.’ Although I can see how you got confused. Most of the time it’s not worth listening to the second half of a sentence, anyway.”

Gus thought through his options and decided which of these subjects he wanted to talk about the least. Eliminating both the Christmas party and Shawn’s victory in the rhetorical battle, that left only asking exactly what he had meant. “So where are we going to land?” Gus said. “A petting zoo?”

“Probably something like that,” Shawn said. “I’d guess it would be a farm out in the countryside that just happens to have a long paved road right through the middle leading directly to a barn with suspiciously wide doors.”

“And you know this because you had a chance to study the flight plan, I suppose,” Gus said.

“I know it because it’s the only way a smuggler like Flaxman Low is going to be able to get his loot in and out of the country,” Shawn said. “He’s probably got some people on his payroll at air traffic control, too.”

“You keep saying he’s a smuggler and a forger,” Gus said. “But I didn’t see any evidence of that.”

“Sure you did,” Shawn said. “You saw everything I did. You just didn’t happen to notice any of it.”

“Then why don’t you tell me what I missed,” Gus said.

“Really?” Shawn said. “You don’t want to take a few guesses? Because we’ve got hours of flying time left, and since you won’t let me sleep, you might as well entertain me.”

Gus glared at him. “Forger and smuggler.”

“Fine,” Shawn said. “Start with forger. Perhaps you noticed a diploma on the wall of that room we were in.”

“From Harvard,” Gus said. “What about it?”

“Do you remember what it said?”

“It said he graduated from Harvard,” Gus said. “Isn’t that what Harvard diplomas generally say?”

“Yes, but this one said it in Latin,” Shawn said. “And while my knowledge of that language is pretty shaky, I did recognize the numbers 1963, which told me what year he was supposed to have graduated in.”

“If you’re going to tell me Harvard hadn’t been founded in 1963, I’m going to have to argue with you,” Gus said.

“Harvard stopped using Latin on their diplomas in 1961,” Shawn said. “Even though the students rioted over the change, they’ve been in English ever since.”

“There is simply no way you could know that,” Gus said.

“Unless I had undertaken an in-depth study of the history of higher education in this country,” Shawn said. “Or it was a clue on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? ”

“Okay, fine,” Gus said. “But they made that change almost fifty years ago. You’d think he would have noticed by now.”

“I’m sure he did, and he’s got himself a Harvard diploma done right hanging in some prominent place,” Shawn said. “The fact that this was on the wall in a guest bedroom suggests he’s only held on to it for sentimental reasons, like it was one of his first forgeries.”

Gus looked for holes in Shawn’s reasoning but couldn’t find anyway. “And smuggler?”

“Remember the razor, bowl, and shaving brush in that room?” Shawn said. “They were made out of ivory. And judging by the style, they were made in the past ten years.”

Shawn didn’t bother to explain further, but Gus didn’t need him to. “It’s been illegal to import elephant ivory since before 1990,” Gus said. “But this could have been a gift. Or a souvenir. Bringing a trinket back in your luggage doesn’t make you a smuggler.”

“Except by definition,” Shawn said. “But that’s not the kind of smuggler I’m talking about. Again, this is in the guest bedroom, as if it was nothing special. I suspect it was part of a large shipment and he decided to keep a sample back for himself.”

Gus worked through the logic and again could find nothing definitive to suggest it was wrong. He glanced over at Kitteredge to make sure he was still asleep. A quiet snore assured him he was. “If this was so obvious to you, how come Professor Kitteredge hasn’t been able to see it in all these years?”

“The same as with the conspiracy thing,” Shawn said. “Call it the Bernie Madoff effect. It’s because he’s smart. He’s certainly too intelligent to be taken in by an obvious crook. So he never bothers to question his assumptions about his old friend-because any assumption made by such a smart person must be right.”

This time Gus could poke a hole in the logic. “But we don’t know there isn’t a conspiracy, just like he says,” Gus said. “Somebody killed Clay Filkins, and somebody managed to steal that painting. If it wasn’t a mysterious cabal run by some shadowy characters, who was it?”

“That’s an excellent question,” Shawn said. “And I suggest we wake up your professor and figure it out.”