“I don’t know,” Shawn said. “But we can ask him when he gets here.”
Gus looked back over to the trucker’s table. The man was gone. He scanned the room and found him heading straight for their table.
“What do we do?” Gus said.
“The question is, what can he do?” Shawn said. “This is a public place, and we’re surrounded by one hundred and twenty-six other people, not counting the members of his fake family. And statistically, it’s highly unlikely that they’re all members of the conspiracy. If he tries anything, there are going to be lots of witnesses.”
Gus felt a pulse of relief surge through him. “So the only thing he can do is reveal himself to us,” he said.
“Exactly,” Shawn said. “Unless he doesn’t care about his own safety, in which case he could kill us both and then take himself out. That’s the kind of thing crazed conspirators do, isn’t it?”
Gus could have sworn he’d eaten only one piece of that cake. But now it felt like there was an entire bakery’s worth hardening in his gut. He thought about jumping up from the table and running for the exit, but if this man really was a crazed killer sent by the conspiracy, there was no chance he’d be able to get away. Not if the assassin didn’t care about his own life.
There was only one chance-to stay and fight. He slid his hand onto the tabletop and felt for the knife he’d put on the tray out of habit as they went through the serving line. The blade flexed under his fingers-it was made of thin white plastic, and it would snap in two if it ever hit the slightest obstacle, like a piece of lettuce. But Gus knew from painful experience that when it did break, the larger piece would have a jagged point. It couldn’t possibly penetrate anything harder than pudding, but Gus could always aim for the killer’s eyes and hope at least to cause the same level of pain as a piece of dust on the eyeball.
As Gus tightened his grip on his weapon, the man stepped up to their table and glowered down at them.
“It’s over,” he said in a voice filled with menace.
“On the contrary,” Shawn said. “I think it’s just beginning.”
“I’ve been watching you for a long time,” the man said.
“Since last night?” Gus said, trying to inject a little steel into his voice. “Or before? Did you start when Professor Kitteredge sent that letter? Or have you been watching since I first took his class?”
The man’s brow furled in confusion. “I’ve been watching you two lazy jerks sitting here for twenty minutes while my wife and kids have been waiting for someone to take their order. Or even give us a menu. A break’s nice, but you’ve got customers waiting, and we’re hungry.”
Gus tried to understand what the man was talking about. Was this some kind of code? When he talked about his wife and kids waiting for someone to take their order, did he really mean he was holding off any action until his superiors in the conspiracy told him what to do?
He glanced over to see if Shawn had any idea what was going on. And then he understood. When they’d arrived at the gala function in their tuxedos last night, they looked like elegant gentlemen of breeding. In the light of day and surrounded by tourists in T-shirts and shorts, they looked like something else.
“There is no table service here,” Gus said. “It’s self-serve. Didn’t you see the line of people standing at the counter carrying trays?”
The conspiracy’s undercover agent did the last thing Gus would ever have expected. He blushed. “That’s what I told the missus,” he said. “But she said if there were waiters here, there must be service as well. And you don’t know my missus, but she’s not one to accept second class when someone else is getting first.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Shawn said.
“Not me,” the man said. “I don’t mind waiting in line. But my wife-she hates it when she thinks other people have it better than her. Like when we were in that gallery with all the paintings and all we had to explain it was that prerecorded thing. Sorry I bothered you two.”
“No bother at all,” Gus said, feeling the cake dissolve again in his gut.
“Guess I’ll go wait in line,” the man said. “Unless…”
“Unless what?” Gus said.
The man stared down at his sandals in embarrassment. “Well, I was thinking maybe I could slip you some money and you could get some food and bring it over to us. I know it’s a big thing to ask, but it would make my wife awfully happy.”
“I wish we could help,” Gus said. “But we’re here-”
“To be of service to our fellow man,” Shawn said. “That’s why we’re dressed like this.”
“It is?” Gus said.
“Give us your order, and my friend here will bring it over to your table,” Shawn said.
Gus stared at Shawn, trying to figure out what he was doing. “I will?” he said.
“You will,” Shawn said. “Because this nice family has suffered enough today. Like when they were back in that gallery and all they had to explain the paintings was that prerecorded thing.”
“That’s right,” the man said.
“When there were other people in the gallery who didn’t pay anything more than you did who not only had the prerecorded tour, but also got a personal introduction to every painting in the room.”
“That’s right,” the man said. “It wasn’t like he was leading a tour or anything. There were these people looking at a painting right next to us and this giant tweedy guy came up to them and started talking about the guy who did it and where he was born and what kind of paint he used.”
Now Gus understood what Shawn was after. “And did he stop talking?” he asked.
“Not as long as we were in that room,” the man said. “Honestly, I don’t know why the missus cared so much. At least the recorded thing runs out of batteries at some point. This guy was never going to.”
“We’ll get your food,” Shawn said. “But then we need you to tell us exactly where you saw this man.”
Chapter Twelve
Gus had never actually believed they’d find Professor Kitteredge at the museum. He’d let Shawn talk him into looking there because he couldn’t think of anywhere else to start the search. But it simply didn’t make any sense that the professor would be hiding out in one of the only two places in Santa Barbara where he would be quickly recognized and caught.
Not that there was any good place for him to hide. He couldn’t go back to his hotel, which was undoubtedly under constant surveillance by the police. He might try to make a break for home, but he had to know the Riverside police would be hunting for him. Gus was sure the local airport, bus station, and train depot were all being watched, and there was an Amber alert out on his car, the license plate flashing on giant signs over every stretch of freeway in the state.
But he’d been here at the museum just last night; as a guest of honor he must have been introduced to many of the staffers. And while Gus had no idea how popular Clay Filkins had been, he had to imagine that most of those staffers would be overjoyed to finger the man who had killed their colleague.
Gus had considered pressing Shawn for an explanation of his thinking, but every time he’d done this in the past he’d ended up with a blasting headache. Shawn’s mental processes were like string theory-knowledgeable people insisted they were actually valid, and when experiments were performed the results ended up confirming the predictions, but it was impossible to describe precisely how or why they worked.
Even though he remained dubious, Gus felt his heart beating faster as he followed Shawn through galleries of European paintings segregated by century. And as they reached the end of the 1800s and moved on to the 1700s, he was thrilled to hear a familiar voice.
“There are those who believe that Fragonard tired of these scenes of lust and licentiousness, and that’s why he turned to neoclassicism in his later years,” the voice was saying. “But that denies a key element of biographical research which became evident in-”