William Rabkin - Mind-Altering Murder

“Again, I say, what’s the big deal?” Gus said.

Shawn looked at him gravely. “The big deal,” he said, “is that the president is going to be killed next week.”

Gus took a deep breath and held it in his lungs. He’d only been gone for a few months but he’d forgotten how sweet the Santa Barbara air tasted. Funny how you could spend an entire lifetime in one place and never notice how special it was until you went away.

It wasn’t just the soft breeze from the ocean or the light scent of jasmine that made this air smell so good to Gus. There was another scent. The aroma of triumph.

Gus had left Santa Barbara as a failed detective, a parttime salesman, and an all-around loser. He’d spent close to thirty years on the earth and what had he accomplished in all that time? He’d lived in a crummy one-bedroom apartment, driven a company car that was barely one step above a skateboard, and spent all his free time hanging out with the one close friend he’d ever made, arguing about nonsense and doing nothing.

Now look at me, he thought as he walked along the edge of the cliff that marked the western edge of the fabulous Zahara Resort and Spa. In a few minutes he would be striding to the stage of the resort’s conference center to be named president of the world’s largest privately owned pharmaceuticals company. He had a penthouse apartment in San Francisco, thousands of devoted employees, and a mandate to make a real difference in the world. Best of all, he wasn’t afraid anymore. Now that he knew where his future was taking him he could look back on his days at Psych without even a tremor. There was only one thing that could make his life even better, and that was the love of a beautiful, intelligent woman who would be his partner in the future.

And maybe he was about to have that, too.

He was still having a little trouble believing it. It had just happened a little more than an hour before. He’d put on his best suit for the occasion of his swearing-in, giving himself plenty of time to make sure the end of his tie just kissed the top of his belt buckle, a process that could take anywhere from one minute to an entire workday, when there had been a knock on the door.

“Come on in,” he called, assuming it was the roomservice waiter come to take his tray away. He’d been too nervous to do more than pick at the food, and normally he would have made sure he was out of the room before letting the tray go, so as not to have to answer questions about whether or not he’d liked his breakfast. But he’d left it out on his ocean-view balcony, and a couple of seagulls had eaten everything except the rind of the decorative melon slice.

The door didn’t open, but the knock came again. Gus gave the Windsor knot in his tie a quick tug into position, then walked over and threw open the door.

It took Gus a moment to recognize the woman standing in his doorway, even though he’d seen her every workday since he started at Benson. It must have been because she was wearing a long coat that came down nearly to her ankles. Until this moment Gus had never known Chanterelle to cover any part of her body lower than midthigh.

“I’d like to talk to you for a moment, Gus,” she said shyly. “That is, if you’re not too busy for me.”

“I can’t imagine being too busy for you,” Gus said.

At least those were the words his brain sent down to his tongue. What actually came out of his mouth sounded more like the distress call of a geriatric harp seal, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Maybe we could walk along the bluff,” she said.

Gus glanced out the sliding door to his balcony and saw the palm trees on the terrace bent nearly double in the wind. If it blew any harder Gus would not have been surprised to see one or more of his elementary school teachers fly by, pedaling on bicycles with stolen dogs in the basket.

“I’d love to,” he said, and if his tongue couldn’t make his meaning clear, he managed to convey his intention by grabbing his room key, stepping into the hallway, and closing the door behind him.

“Not now,” she said, looking around as if to see if she’d been followed. “Meet me there in twenty minutes.”

Gus passed the requested time span watching an enormous seagull lift the breakfast plate in its beak, then smash it down on the table like a mussel it was trying to shell. Then, with two minutes to spare, he walked quickly through the broad avenues that wound around the resort’s whitewashed haciendas. Finally he reached a metal gate, elegantly dusted with rust to show that it dated back to the area’s agricultural roots even though it had only stood here since the resort’s construction three years ago, and passed through onto a long meadow that ran to the cliffs overlooking the ocean.

Chanterelle was waiting for him on the edge of the cliff, staring out to sea as if waiting for her French soldier to come back and make an honest woman of her. As Gus came up to her she started, then gave him a warm smile.

“You came,” she said.

“Of course,” he said. “How could I refuse? I’d never get another phone message.”

He winced at the stupidity of his joke. The most beautiful woman he’d ever met had asked him to meet her at this, the most romantic place in the world. And what did he do? Act like she was the receptionist and he the boss.

She didn’t seem to notice. She took his hand and led him to the edge, although once he had felt the touch of her skin against his he had stopped noticing where he was going.

They stood together and watched the waves pounding against the rock far below. After a moment that Gus would happily have let stretch into eternity, Chanterelle dropped his hand and turned to face him.

“May I ask you a question?” she said shyly, her face cast down to the ground but her eyes peering up at him.

“Anything,” Gus said.

“They say,” she said, then broke off. “This is stupid. Maybe I should just go back…”

“No, go ahead,” he said. If the question was so personal or so difficult she was this hesitant to ask, there was no way he could let the moment slip away. “Anything at all.”

She smiled up at him and his heart fluttered. It’s amazing how much prettier her face is when you’re not distracted by those legs, he thought.

“They say that you’ve got just about no experience in the pharmaceuticals field,” she said. “That before you took this job you were some kind of security guard.”

If anyone else had said this he would have bristled. From her it was an adorable misunderstanding. “I was a partner in a private-detective firm,” he said. “But I was also a salesman for a local pharmaceuticals company.”

“I see,” she said. “But still it’s such a huge thing, to go from that to being president of Benson. It’s so impressive.”

Gus was even happier he hadn’t become defensive at her first question. “I guess I was in the right place at the right time,” he said, assuming as much modesty as he could.

“It’s got to be more than that,” Chanterelle said. “It has to be.”

“I hope I bring some fresh perspective to the position,” Gus said.

“The very freshest, I’m sure,” she said. She turned her eyes back to the ground as if she were searching the ground for a particular blade of grass.

“What’s this all about?” Gus said. “I’m sure we didn’t come all the way out here just so I could recite my resume.”

“It doesn’t seem like it would take all that much time, does it?” she said, then colored. “Oh, no, that came out all wrong.”

“It’s all right,” Gus said. “Please go ahead.”

“I wanted to talk to you about a job,” she said. “Something in the executive suite.”