A Fatal Frame of Mind

by William Rabkin

  “Hey!” the voice said. “You can’t go that way.”

  The voice belonged to the uniformed police officer who had been standing guard at the gallery door. And he was marching up to them.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Now what? Gus thought desperately.There was no way the cop was going to let them in to see the painting. They’d be lucky if he didn’t arrest them just for trying. And if he got any kind of look at Kitteredge’s face, the professor would be in prison awaiting trial for murder, and they’d be sharing a cell for aiding and abetting.

  “We’re just trying to get out, Officer,” Shawn said in the same voice he’d been using to feign innocence when caught red-handed since he was spotted dumping a jar of green tempera powder on Suki Stern in kindergarten.

  “There’s no exit through that door,” the officer said.

  “Well, thank God you came along to let us know that in time,” Shawn said, an extra coating of sugar on his tone. “If we’d gone in there, we might have been broiled alive.”

  As opposed to simply getting the lethal injection, Gus thought. Which is what we’ll be facing once that cop recognizes Professor Kitteredge.

  “No danger of that,” the officer said. “There’s no fire. But we are evacuating the building. Follow me and I’ll show you the way to the exit.”

  “Thank you again, Officer,” Shawn said.

  “That is, if your friend feels like getting off the phone,” the officer said.

  Gus turned to see that Kitteredge was holding Shawn’s phone to his left ear with his right hand, allowing him to cover most of his face with forearm and elbow.

  “That’s Uncle Leroy for you,” Shawn said. “Anything interesting happens, he’s got to tell Aunt Mabel about it right away. Come on, Uncle Leroy.”

  Kitteredge seemed to recognize his cue. “Don’t worry about me, Mabel. You’ve got to see to those chickens,” he said into the phone. “And when you’re done, the cows are going to need milking. And the hay needs to be baled. Plus there are those pies to bake.”

  Shawn took Kitteredge’s free elbow and started to guide him toward the cop. “That’s plenty of rustic charm, Uncle Leroy,” he said. “I’m sure Aunt Mabel remembers what to do.”

  “I’m glad somebody does,” the cop said, turning and headed toward the main lobby. He was expecting them to follow, and if they didn’t he’d come back fast to find out why. And the first place he’d look would be Guenevere ’s gallery. Forget about three minutes with the painting; they’d be lucky to get three seconds.

  Shawn was shuffling his feet, moving as slowly as possible while still maintaining a defensible level of forward momentum in case the cop glanced back, when there was a shout from behind them.

  “Police! Help!” a man’s voice shouted.

  Gus turned to see the long-haul trucker from the café rushing past them to reach the officer, trailing his two small children behind him.

  “What’s the problem?” the cop said.

  “It’s my wife,” the trucker said. “She’s stuck in Chinese porcelain. You’ve got to help her.”

  “Is she hurt?” the cop said.

  “Her feelings are,” the trucker said. “And believe me, that’s bad enough. She saw you helping that pregnant woman out a couple of minutes ago.”

  “So?” the officer said.

  “She says she’s entitled to the same level of service as anyone else,” the trucker said. “And if assistance is being offered, she wants some, too.”

  The cop stared at him, dumbfounded. “Are you serious?”

  “I wish I wasn’t,” the trucker said. “She’s sitting on the floor and won’t get up until she gets everything she deserves. Even if that means burning up in an inferno and leaving our poor children motherless.”

  The cop looked down at the children, who stared back up at him seriously. Then he muttered something under his breath and turned back to Shawn. “Exit’s that way,” he said pointing in the direction he’d been heading. “Follow the crowd and you can’t miss it. Don’t be here when I get back.”

  The trucker led the officer back in the direction he’d come from. Gus let out a sigh of relief as the three of them crept back to the gallery entrance and pushed the door open. They bolted through and let the door shut behind them.

  As Gus looked around the deserted gallery he marveled that less than twenty hours had passed since he’d been here. Since then the entire world had changed. The man he respected most in the world was a wanted fugitive, and Gus was helping him escape the police. He might have expected the gallery to have changed in that time to reflect the new situation, for the lights to be lower or the walls to be closing in or the floor split by a jagged fissure through which they could fall straight into hell.

  But nothing looked any different than it had the night before. Sure, there were gray smudges on the walls where crime scene techs had brushed for fingerprints, and there was some dried blood etched in the grout between the marble tiles of the floor. But if you didn’t know what you were looking for, you’d never know this had been the scene of such a terrible crime. You couldn’t even see the tape outline of Filkins’ body on the ground, as the red velvet drape had been closed over the painting again.

  “Okay, Professor,” Shawn said. “You’ve got three minutes.”

  Gus looked back to see that Kitteredge was frozen by the gallery door. “Professor Kitteredge?” he said.

  Kitteredge seemed to shake off the spell. “Sorry,” he said. “This picture has haunted me for so long, it’s hard to believe that it’s actually behind that curtain, even though I saw it last night.”

  “And we know how well that turned out,” Shawn said. “We’ve got to move fast. If you start staring moonily at that picture, or start lecturing us about it, we’ll all be caught and you’ll never see it again. Get up close, take the pictures, and get out. Okay?”

  “I understand,” Kitteredge said. “I’ll try to hold off my emotional reaction until the proper moment.”

  “Here’s a hint,” Shawn said. “You’ll know that the proper moment has arrived when I’m not around.”

  Kitteredge nodded absently at him, and Gus went to the draped wall. He tried to move the curtain along its rings, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “It’s stuck,” Gus said, feeling a new sense of panic rising in him. “We’re going to have to pull it down.”

  “Or we could just do what Lassie did and use the control thingy.” Shawn stepped past Gus, reached into the folds of the curtain, and came up with the device. He pushed the button.

  Above their heads, the small motors whirred and whined, and the red curtain began to move across the wall.

  “This is exciting,” Shawn said. “I’m so glad we didn’t do what I wanted to do last night. Because we’d never see anything like a red velvet curtain if we went to the Bijoux Theatre. Oh, except for the one in front of the screen.”

  “If C. Thomas Howell is in jail because someone framed him for murder, then I’ll consider the possibility that we went to the wrong event,” Gus said.

  “I’m sure C. Thomas Howell is perfectly capable of ending up in jail without the help of someone framing him for murder,” Shawn said. “And then he could solve the crime from inside his cell with the help of the beautiful young warden’s daughter, who just happens to stroll around the prison yard topless. In fact, I think that one is playing at the festival.”

  “Well, if we clear Professor Kitteredge’s name before eight o’clock tonight, we can still make it in time for night three of the festival,” Gus said. “Meanwhile, maybe we should focus on this case.”

  Shawn shrugged. Gus turned to make sure that Professor Kitteredge had started taking pictures instead of staring in awe at the painting.

  But Kitteredge wasn’t taking pictures. He was staring straight ahead, a look of despair on his face.

  “Professor, we need to get moving,” Gus said.

  “We’re too late,” Kitteredge said. He raised a hand and pointed at the
wall the curtain had just revealed.

  Gus turned to see what he was pointing at, and his heart sank. On the wall, the ornate frame was hanging just as it had the night before. But inside the frame there was nothing but blank wall.

  The painting was gone.

  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 co
uld 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.

  Chapter Twenty

  When he first joined Shawn in the business, Gus had often felt embarrassed at telling people whose respect he craved that Psych was a psychic detective agency. The work they did was excellent and their solve rate was the highest in town, but for so many intelligent, educated professionals the word “psychic” invoked so much skepticism that all they could hear afterward was “fraud.”

  That might not have bothered Gus so much if it weren’t for the fact that they were, indeed, frauds. Shawn wasn’t the slightest bit psychic. He simply had astonishing powers of observation and an amazing ability to interpret the tiny details that only he noticed. Gus had spent weeks trying to get Shawn to give up the pretense of supernatural powers and to simply take credit for his great skills.