A Fatal Frame of Mind

Chapter Forty-four

If it had occurred just a day earlier, Gus would have thought the flight back to the States was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Handcuffed to his seat, accompanied by a uniformed U.S. marshal, he knew that everyone who walked by his row was staring at him and wondering what he had done. But compared to the ride in Polidori’s van, this was better than the luxury flight in Flaxman Low’s private jet.

And spending ten hours flying back to Santa Barbara was definitely preferable to ten years in an English jail, which was what their arresting officer had originally threatened them with. That threat began to ease when it became obvious that neither they nor Kitteredge was carrying a gun, and that there seemed to be little with which to charge them. When a routine search of their names turned up the California warrants, the English government was only too happy to turn them over to American officials.

That wasn’t the case with the Polidoris. They would be going away for a long time, especially once the police started to inventory what turned out to be multiple warehouses of stolen antiquities. It seemed that a certain division of Scotland Yard had long been suspicious of Polidori and Son Antiques, and now planned to devote substantial resources to uncovering every illegal transaction in the firm’s long history. That task would prove to be substantially easier once Leonard started talking about everything he’d been involved with, starting with directions to the barn containing Malko’s body.

“Do you realize what this means?” Gus had said to Shawn while they sat in a holding cell waiting for the marshal to transport them to the airport. “They’re going to break up the entire Cabal.”

Shawn stared at him. “Maybe you want to join Professor Kitteredge in the other cell,” he said. “This one is reserved for sane people.”

“What?” Gus said. “You can’t still be denying the Cabal exists. They nearly killed us.”

“An antiques dealer nearly killed us,” Shawn said. “Which, by the way, is nothing to brag about if you happen to tell this story to that blond sales rep at next year’s Christmas party.”

“He wasn’t just an antiques dealer,” Gus said. “He’d spent his life searching for the sword, just like Kitteredge said.”

“Yes, just like Kitteredge said,” Shawn agreed. “Because that’s where Polidori heard about it. Or, more precisely, his son heard about it from Kitteredge in class. And Chip told Daddy. And the hunt was on.”

Gus was about to object, then stopped to think it through. “You mean, this entire thing started with Kitteredge’s obsession? And that’s all there ever was to it?”

“What did I tell you about the third kind of conspiracy theorist?” Shawn said. “They’re the ones who are dangerous to themselves and others, because they’re smart enough to invent theories that are so plausible and compelling they can make otherwise sane people believe them.”

Gus thought that over. There was still one problem. “But that means the poem wasn’t really a clue,” he said. “Or the painting. That fifty-five on the two shields. Why was that there?”

“It wasn’t,” Shawn said. “Unless you chose to look at it that way. There were a couple of animals on the shields. Everything else came from Kitteredge, with some help from Low.”

Gus still couldn’t let go. “But it led us to the Needle. You led us to the Needle.”

“I didn’t lead us anywhere,” Shawn corrected him. “I made up some nonsense about a line of poetry, and they invented meanings for every word. It’s what Kitteredge has been doing for years.”

Gus still wasn’t convinced. There had been such an elegant complexity to Kitteredge’s theories that he hated to give it all up for the sad reality of coincidences and misunderstandings. But the more he worked it through, the less persuasive the evidence became, and by the time they were halfway across the Atlantic he thought back on his belief in the Cabal with the same sort of embarrassed nostalgia that accompanied memories of his once firm faith that Phil Joanou would eventually surpass Steven Spielberg in the directing hall of fame.

But there was still one piece to the puzzle that Gus couldn’t figure out. He’d mentioned it to Shawn in the cell, but the answer he got back didn’t make him feel any better.

“So if there’s no Cabal, and Polidori is just a crook with an antiques business, who killed Clay Filkin?” he said.

“It’s still possible it’s Kitteredge,” Shawn said. “He did have the bloody murder weapon in his pocket. Although our lives are going to be a lot easier if he didn’t do it. I don’t think the penalties are quite as harsh for helping an innocent man escape.”

Gus had been so busy assuming he’d never see his home again that he’d forgotten what was waiting for him there. “I’m sure he didn’t,” Gus said. “Someone must have framed him. And whoever it was must have stolen the painting as well.”

“I hope you’re right,” Shawn said. “And I hope we can figure it out before we get back to Santa Barbara. Because if we can’t, we’re going to have to blame it on the Cabal. And I don’t think anyone else is going to buy that.”

Gus groaned. “If only that picture hadn’t been stolen,” he said. “If Kitteredge had been allowed to look at it for as long as he wanted, we never would have gotten involved like this.”

Shawn was about to respond, but then he stopped himself. A smile spread over his face. “We kept thinking it was the Cabal that stole the painting.”

“But there was no Cabal.”

“So who had a reason to steal it?” Shawn said.

“I don’t know,” Gus said. “Anyone who wanted a painting worth millions of dollars.”

“Maybe,” Shawn said. “Or maybe it was someone who didn’t.”