Michelangelo's Ghost

by Gigi Pandian

  “So nobody knows the real architect of the gardens?”

  “Only theories.”

  “What else do you see in the sketchbooks?”

  “These sketches of Bahadur Shah of Gujarat’s court—”

  I gasped. “You know who these figures are?”

  “Of course.” Stefano blinked at me. “Isn’t that why you wanted me to see them?”

  “I wanted you to be part of this.”

  He smiled and patted my hand. “Grazie. I’m not one hundred percent certain, of course, since I’m no art historian. But the timing fits.”

  “A royal court,” I murmured. “Lazzaro was lured to India by a royal patron.”

  “You didn’t guess as much, based on the clothing portrayed?”

  “I suspected, but the timing also fits with the first and second Mughal emperors, which is where my mind went. But that didn’t make sense, because Babur and Humayun weren’t patrons of the arts. That didn’t come until generations later with Akbar. If he went to India with the patronage of the Sultan of Gujarat, he stayed on after Bahadur Shah’s reign.” I thought about my original answer to Lilith’s question about what would have drawn an Italian to India. Many European missionaries fell in love with India and stayed on, adopting local customs. It would have made him even more of an outcast when he returned home.

  “I would need to do more research to be sure, but Bahadur Shah was a great patron of the arts, long before the Mughals were. He supported Hindustani classical music and art.”

  “Before he was killed by the Portuguese. They were fighting at the time, explaining these battle scenes. The Sultan wouldn’t have trusted any Portuguese men, but an Italian—”

  “Very good,” Stefano said. “What I’m confused about, though, is that these are all preliminary sketches, as if he’s preparing to turn these into more finished pieces of art. The Italian text accompanying some of these illustrations bears this out. The artist’s notes describe his studio, and it sounds like he’s describing his own private grotto in the forest.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I didn’t think you read Italian. You’ve had time to get this translated already?”

  “The person I got this from translated it.”

  “The person? No name?”

  “I’ll get to that. Finish telling me what you gleaned from his notes.”

  He chuckled again. “All right. In this notebook, many of the sketches of sculptures resemble the famous Renaissance garden. The artist used his own style, so these drawings are distorted. Even so, I recognize many of the carvings: Venus, the Sphynx, Neptune, and Neptune’s sea-monster son Proteus. Plus one of the most striking stone carvings: Orcus, a king of the Underworld. The open mouth of the stone beast is a full-size door that people can walk through.” He slapped his hands together and grinned gleefully. “Here, his notes on the page with the Orcus sketches say how his artwork will be saved in his studio. He describes the grotto he used as his art studio, and goes on to say it was located there at the sculpture. This is exciting! Why are you frowning, Jaya?”

  “Orcus wasn’t the sculpture Lilith Vine thought his notes pointed to. Are you sure you don’t mean Proteus?” Was Stefano’s childhood association with the gardens clouding his judgment?

  “Lilith Vine?” Stefano’s glasses slipped down his nose. “That woman is the unnamed person who gave these to you?”

  “I didn’t want to bias your opinion by leading with that information.”

  “You’re right. It would have made me take these less seriously.” He tossed his glasses onto the table and rubbed his eyes. “How did she find it? Did she throw enough darts at the wall that she finally hit another bullseye by accident?”

  “Lilith spotted a reference to a master artist’s ‘blasphemous artwork of heathens’ in India in one of Wilson Meeks’ papers. To Wilson, it was merely a footnote in a paper on Italian trade in the 16th century. But to Lilith, it suggested Renaissance paintings deemed blasphemous had been saved by the family from destruction—but hidden from public view. The artist’s name is Lazzaro Allegri, as you can make out in his signature in these sketchbooks. He was a painter who Lilith thought might have been a protégé of Michelangelo, before leaving the Florentine art scene of Renaissance Italy when he was enticed to go to India—”

  “By Bahadur Shah. This is brilliant, Jaya. I can hardly believe Lilith Vine is the one who made the connection.”

  “Lilith didn’t make the royal patronage connection. She was focusing on finding Lazzaro’s paintings.”

  “Lilith is searching for these paintings in his studio?”

  “She visited the Park of Monsters but couldn’t find it, even though she knows it’s connected to one of the statues symbolizing water.”

  “Water,” Stefano murmured. “That’s why she formed her theory? If you’d come to me earlier, I could have saved you both some trouble. Lilith isn’t fluent in Italian.”

  “She speaks Italian. I’ve heard her.”

  “She’s proficient. Not fluent. There’s a difference. True fluency includes nuance.”

  As I knew all too well. Translation was a messy process. It was all too easy to get it wrong. What misled Lilith had misled many people before her. Language had evolved between locations and over time, such as Latin becoming Italian, and countless regional dialects referred to as “Italian.” The same was true of English. Even though many of the British East India Company documents I’d consulted were written in English, it would be inaccurate to read a 16th century document as if it were a 21st century one.

  “In this sketchbook,” Stefano said, “he does write of water. But Lilith misinterpreted the reference.”

  “Acqua seems like a pretty basic word to get wrong.”

  “Mi trovate quando diluvia is what your artist Lazzaro wrote. He used diluvia, a word used to describe a biblical flood, so the phrase could be translated as ‘You’ll find me when it’s flooding.’ Proteus is a sea monster rising from the grass as if out of a fierce sea. I bet that’s why Lilith believes it’s the clue, even though the note wasn’t next to his sketch of Proteus. Yet notes about Lazzaro’s art studio and artwork are next to the Orcus drawings. Why write the notes about his art studio on that page, if it wasn’t connected?”

  “It’s the last page of the sketchbook,” I said. “He probably ran out of space. Orcus, the Ogre king, is from the Underworld. From Hell. Of course Lilith would dismiss the proximity of the note and drawing, because I can’t see how the Underworld is related to either water or flooding—”

  “It’s not,” Stefano said, “unless you’re both fluent in Italian and know the park.”

  I gaped at Stefano.

  “Mi trovate quando diluvia,” he repeated. “As any native Italian speaker knows, ‘diluviare’ doesn’t simply refer to the water that accumulates during a flood, it actually refers to the exceedingly heavy rainfall that causes the flood. Lazzaro Allegri’s note more accurately states: ‘You will find me when it is pouring rain.’ Orcus is not only the drawing where the artist chose to write his notes, but it’s the only creature at the Park of Monsters where you can walk inside to get out of the rain. Inside the Orcus is a sheltered stone room.”

  The swirl of travelers around us turned into a blur as I stared at my wise old advisor, and the hum of voices disappeared as the sound of my own heartbeat filled my ears.

  “Lilith didn’t ask the right people for help,” I whispered. “She’s been searching for his treasure in the wrong place.”

  Chapter 16

  “You sound as if you’re helping her,” Stefano said with a frown.

  “I’m afraid it’s more than that. Lilith died this week.” I didn’t want to worry Stefano, so I left it at that. “I’m the one who’s picking up the search.”

  The hunt was calling to me. But it was also calling to an unknown person who was dangerous
. I now knew where to find Lazzaro Allegri’s paintings. The person who drugged Lilith to get information out of her knew I had the notebooks. Did they also know where to find Lazzaro’s treasure?

  “Be careful, Jaya.” The earlier amusement on Stefano’s face had vanished. “Beautiful things have a way of arousing passions in people.”

  It was time for me to catch my flight, but I promised to keep Stefano posted about what I found.

  Now all I had to do was stay ahead of Lilith Vine’s killer, find the paintings of Lazzaro Allegri’s that linked Renaissance Italy and late-medieval India’s royal court in Gujarat, and pray the paintings had survived the test of time. Oh, and survive finals week at the university.

  Outwitting a killer wasn’t my biggest fear, I realized. It was making sure I didn’t become Lilith Vine. After the childhood Mahilan and I had experienced, I wanted stability. Reliability. Didn’t I?

  I accepted a bag of trail mix from the flight attendant, and immediately crushed it in my hand. It was better than screaming on the short commuter flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

  The man wearing an expensive tailored suit in the seat next to me gave me a sharp glance. I faked a smile, which seemed to convince him I wasn’t a danger to anything besides peanuts and pretzels. He forgot about me and returned to reading his tablet.

  I looked out the oval window and thought about why this discovery might be worth killing over.

  Bahadur Shah, the sultan of Gujarat, lured an Italian master painter to his 16th-century court, while the more famous Mughals were just getting started.

  Lazzaro Allegri created Renaissance paintings of Indian royalty, linking Renaissance Italy to India nearly five centuries ago, long before art historians had recorded such a connection.

  And if that wasn’t enough, Michelangelo had a possible hand in designing the Park of Monsters sculpture garden where Lazzaro had created his masterpieces.

  I reduced the bag of trail mix to dust, then hid the evidence of my frustration in the seat pocket in front of me.

  Lilith Vine had been drugged to coax her into revealing that I had Lazzaro Allegri’s sketchbooks. The valuable sketchbooks that rested at my feet underneath the seat in front of me.

  I was certain someone had killed Lilith, but the more I thought about it, the more I doubted they’d actually intended to kill her. They left before she died, leaving her with time to call both an ambulance and me. The killer might not have known how much alcohol she routinely drank, so they didn’t know the pills would cause her to overdose. She was a functional alcoholic, so it wasn’t easy to spot.

  It seemed likely the killer wasn’t an expert or they would have used a better truth serum, not simply anxiety medication that would put her into a relaxed state. Unless there were even more drugs in her system that a future tox screen would turn up. Pumping her stomach at the hospital would only have revealed the most obvious drugs. Perhaps she’d even taken the Xanax herself. I really didn’t know much of anything.

  I gripped the armrest of the plane, causing another furtive glance from my seat mate. I ignored him.

  Who was the ghost Lilith had mentioned? Had the accidental killer disguised himself so in her hazy state she believed it was a ghost? And what had Lilith wanted me to know? What “must I therefore know”?

  I had thought she was having trouble finishing her sentence, but maybe she was trying to tell me I knew more than I thought I did. Lilith had said she was sorry. Which could have been an apology for lying to me—or for giving me up by telling the killer I had the sketchbooks.

  Because the killer hadn’t taken the sketchbooks when they had a chance, I could make an educated guess that they weren’t after the money such a find could be worth, but wanted the sketchbooks to lead them to the paintings. They already had what they needed, so I didn’t need to worry about the sketchbooks at my feet. Right?

  Due to heavy fog, the plane circled SFO for twenty minutes before being cleared to land. When we touched down and I turned my phone on, a missed call from my brother blinked on the screen. I listened to the message, which was, unfortunately, in Hindi. Neither of us spoke fluent Hindi, but for the past year Mahilan had been trying to get better at his, so he liked to practice whenever he could.

  “I’ve got a surprise for you, JJ,” he said when I called him back on the way to my car.

  “How do you know I didn’t understand your message and already know the surprise?”

  “I’ve given up on you by now.”

  “Then why did you leave the message in Hindi?”

  “I’m an optimistic pessimist.”

  I laughed, and the release of tension felt wonderful.

  “You’ve been bugging me that I haven’t taken a ‘real’ vacation in ages,” Mahilan said. “I’m finally going to do it. I just finished a big case, which is why Ava and I were able to come up for that wine country getaway. I’ve got so much vacation time banked that Ava and I decided to go to Italy.”

  “Your reminiscences of Renaissance art history classes got you interested in Italy again? That’s great. Where are you two going?”

  “Wherever you are.”

  “Sorry, I don’t think I caught that.”

  “It’s such an interesting challenge you’ve got. Finding the lost masterpieces of an Italian who traveled to India during the Renaissance. Ava and I can experience Italy and help you at the same time.”

  I stared at the phone and swore under my breath. How could I head this off? “I’m going really soon, just as soon as finals wrap up this coming week. And don’t you two want to take a romantic vacation on your own?”

  “We’re both Type A overachievers, JJ. Can you imagine me lying on a beach?”

  “I can, actually. As long as you had your phone tethered to your hand.”

  “Touché.”

  “Truly, Fish, I’d love to take a vacation with you, but this isn’t really a vacation.” I reached my car and climbed inside.

  “I understand. It’ll be a working vacation. You can put me to work.”

  “That’s not exactly what I meant.” I locked the car doors and looked out at the parking lot. Was my assumption correct that there was no reason for someone to come after me for the sketchbooks? I pushed my messenger bag out of sight under the glove compartment. “There’s more to this than I’ve told you. The professor, Lilith Vine, who brought me the information...”

  “The one who passed away?”

  “Right. I think her death might not have been an accident. I mean, I believe it was an accidental overdose, but not by her own hand. Someone broke into my office to look at the sketchbooks I told you about after they visited Lilith and drugged her so she’d tell them where Lazzaro Allegri’s sketchbooks were. They wanted information, but she accidentally overdosed.”

  Mahilan swore. “Where are you? The police station?”

  “No, the police don’t believe me. Hello? Are you still there, Fish?”

  “Tell me,” he said in his cross-examination voice, “exactly what happened.”

  I told him what I’d worked out on the flight.

  “There doesn’t seem to be enough evidence,” he said when I’d concluded, “to irrefutably prove what happened.”

  “This isn’t a court of law. I don’t need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt who searched my office and killed Lilith—”

  “You’re missing my point, JJ. There’s no proof that anyone besides Lilith had a hand in her death, nor is there proof that anyone searched your office.”

  “Didn’t you hear what I saw with my own eyes in my office?”

  “Eyewitness testimony is the least accurate type of evidence. It’s a problem in court, because jurors give it more weight than they should. We firmly believe what we think we saw, but our eyes deceive us.”

  “I’m not wrong about this.”

  “I understand you be
lieve someone moved the valuable notebooks in your office, but your eyes could have deceived you. As for Lilith, she had an addiction. You’d lost touch with her. You don’t know what else she was taking. Lots of people accidentally overdose, and they say crazy things before they lose consciousness.”

  I sank down into the seat of the car, more deflated than ever. “I thought you, of all people, would believe me.”

  “I don’t disbelieve you.”

  “You were easier to understand when you were speaking Hindi.”

  “Even though there’s no hard evidence to support your claims, I’m concerned about what you’ve told me. And it’s all the more reason for us to come with you to Italy. What kind of big brother would I be if I didn’t protect my little sister?”

  I felt a lump in my throat. “Really? You still want to come with me after everything I told you?”

  “I’m going to tell you something, because you and I promised to never keep secrets from each other. But don’t go acting all weird on me, okay? You promise?”

  “Now you’ve got me worried. You don’t have a terminal disease or something, do you? One that’s making you seize the day?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know where your imagination came from. No. I’m perfectly healthy. It’s just…I want you to get to know Ava better. I think she might be…I mean, someday…”

  My brother was not usually one to get tongue-tied. “Are you saying you’re going to propose to her?”

  “No! I mean, not now. Maybe not ever. It’s just…” A long sigh sounded over the phone. “She might be the one, Jaya.”

  Chapter 17

  One week later, a driver with a sleek black town car picked us up at the Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome. Mahilan had arranged for the luxury.

  Our flight had arrived in the morning, and it was a two-hour drive to the villa Mahilan had booked. He’d insisted I stay in a suite with him and Ava, instead of the pensione that was more in my price range. With the luxurious presidential suite, we’d have our own separate space but also be able to spend time together.