“What?”

Shawn pointed across to the museum entrance. “The bear.”

Gus looked where Shawn was pointing, and felt a huge surge of relief. Because there did seem to be a bear standing in the doorway. It stood six and a half feet tall and was covered with thick black hair. A large snout protruded from a face almost entirely hidden by fur.

But bears don’t generally wear tweed coats or corduroy slacks, and this one was dressed in both. Which meant that it was not some ursine marauder come to wreck the museum and eat its patrons. It was the evening’s guest of honor, Professor Langston Kitteredge, looking exactly as he had the last time Gus saw him over a decade earlier.

At least he did at first glance. But before he could walk across the plaza to meet his newest client, Gus realized there was one great difference between Kitteredge now and Kitteredge the way he remembered him.

When Gus had seen Professor Kitteredge in the past, the teacher was always surrounded by students. Students who wanted to ask him a question or transfer into his already full class or just bask in the glow of his brilliance.

But while the professor was once again surrounded by people, these weren’t students. They were Carlton Lassiter and Juliet O’Hara, and they were Santa Barbara’s finest homicide detectives.

And they were holding his arms like they were taking him into custody.

Chapter Four

Despite his irritation at Shawn’s horror of museums, Gus hadn’t actually set foot inside one in years, except for a few times when he’d had to go on a case, and then he’d spent his entire visit looking for clues, not admiring the art.

But there had been a time when he was prepared to devote his life to the study of art history. Granted, it could only be considered a “time” in the way a grain of sand can be thought of as a boulder, but for the four or five weeks of his college career during which he intended to major in art history, Gus was completely enthralled by the subject.