by Gigi Pandian
“Bad week. Sorry I didn’t make it to your weekly brunch on Sunday.”
“Ah, that explains the untouched food. You did not see my note on the table to help yourself to food in the fridge. Jack and I took a last-minute trip to Guerneville. That reminds me.”
She eased herself out of the porch swing more elegantly than I would have thought possible in the awkward swing and slipped into the house. She returned a minute later not with a martini for me, but a stack of mail.
“Your mail since Saturday.”
Poking out from the bottom was a rush delivery from Rick Coronado.
Chapter 19
The Glass Thief
Chapter Four
“The Serpent King was damaged when it was brought to France?” Gabriela asked.
She sat at the mansion’s fifteen-foot dining table in the uninviting room that was brightened only by a narrow stained-glass design at the top of each window. She sipped a glass of sherry and studied the few black-and-white photographs that existed of Algernon Delacroix’s prize. The base of the sculpture bore not the signature of the stone carver, but a series of deep, overlapping scratches.
“If you believe your reward won’t be valuable enough,” said Laura Delacroix, “I have additional funds to pay you.”
“You misunderstand me. I don’t think this is damage. This isn’t how sandstone breaks down. Someone intentionally made these markings.” Gabriela pointed at the intersecting lines in the photograph. They looked almost like a partial grid, except the lines were squiggly. A map?
“But why?”
“I was hoping you knew the answer.”
Laura clutched her pearls and stood at one of the cold windows. “I know only what I told you, that my husband told me his grandfather won it in a foolish game in Munnar, but I believe he looted it from there.”
“Now it’s you who are lying.”
Laura gasped. “How dare you—”
“Ship manifest records show Algernon Delacroix returning not from India, but Cambodia.”
“That can’t be.”
“If you wish me to help prove the thief Tristan Rubens murdered your son, you need to tell me the truth. What else are you hiding from me, Madame Delacroix?”
Laura Delacroix proceeded to swoon. Gabriela couldn’t be sure it was a fake reaction, but the woman conveniently slumped into her chair rather than crashing into the table.
Laura had lied to her. Or had Luc’s mother been deceived as well? The family had not wished their ancestor’s looting to be discovered, so they lied about the history of the grand sculpture they proudly displayed with their other treasures.
The Serpent King sculpture was Cambodian.
Gabriela had slapped her forehead and cursed her stupidity when she found the records the previous day. How could she have been so blind? She had simply accepted what she had been told by her client, which was never wise. A naga didn’t necessarily mean it was Indian. Nobody else had seen the truth because the two styles of iconography were so similar.
Indian culture and religions had spread throughout South and Southeast Asia, and the folklore of the Kingdom of Cambodia’s origin was intertwined with India. Gabriela remembered the story because it involved a nagini princess and naga king—the rulers of the cobras. And Gabriela had always been fascinated by the majestic snakes.
As the legend went, a Brahmin prince from India had been an adventurer, much like herself. He’d braved the unchartered waters and found himself in a strange land where rice sprang from lakes. Along a tributary river’s edge he saw the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. A princess. Her father was the king of the land. A naga king. The prince proved his bravery, and the naga king blessed the union of his daughter and the valiant and handsome foreign prince. The king drank up the waters so his daughter and her husband would have a new land of their own. He named it Kambuja.
The naga king’s underground watery kingdom was filled with precious gems. Gabriela closed her emerald-colored eyes and thought back on the hundreds of precious stones she’d rescued for women in need, always saving one for herself.
She opened her eyes and took a sip of the dry sherry Laura had insisted on serving. The Serpent King was the naga king of this legend. The snake was guarding his kingdom. The sculpture wasn’t incomplete as she had originally thought. The smoothed-out base wasn’t a blank canvas that hadn’t yet been carved. It was meant to hold and protect something else. What could be more precious than his beloved daughter and her prince?
Gabriela hadn’t yet solved the murder and theft that had taken place in the Paris mansion. She understood violent murder, but this trickery that had killed Luc Delacroix was something new to her. As Luc’s mother had suggested, the best way for Gabriela to solve the murder would be to find the missing treasure. Only Gabriela now suspected there were two treasures: the Serpent King and the princess and prince that he guarded.
The king had been spirited from the mansion. Had he gone in search of his beloved daughter and her prince?
Gabriela’s work in France was nearly done. Then she would visit the sacred temples of Cambodia’s Angkorian Empire to find the prize the Serpent King was protecting.
She knew she might not find the treasure the Naga King was guarding on her own, but no matter. The historian would be meeting her in Siem Reap one week from today.
Chapter 20
Rick Coronado had discovered what the Serpent King was guarding. The Brahmin prince and nagini princess from Cambodia’s mythical origin story.
I stared at the chapter until my eyes could no longer focus. Rick had made the same deduction I had: the sculpture was Cambodian and only one piece of a larger treasure. If I could take Gabriela Glass’s latest revelation seriously, Rick had gotten one step further and discovered what that treasure was.
And if Rick meant for me to believe Gabriela, he was serious about something else too. The last line. The historian would be meeting her in Siem Reap one week from today.
Siem Reap. The modern city near Angkor was the jumping off point to reach the famous temples of Cambodia. Had Rick figured out the location of the second half of the treasure?
Rick had mailed me this chapter as a rush delivery on Saturday before he’d traveled to San Francisco. The day he referenced would be the first official day of the university’s winter break, when Rick knew I would be done with my teaching responsibilities. Was he really egotistical enough to think I’d drop everything and fly to Cambodia to help him find the Serpent King and his missing daughter and her prince?
I hated that he was probably right.
The note accompanying the chapter read, I look forward to hearing what you and those closest to you think of this chapter. I should have thought more about the brief message, but the last words Rick conveyed to me before he died were at the forefront of my mind. The historian would be meeting her in Siem Reap one week from today.
The information from Rick was the start of a quest, but there wasn’t enough information to complete it. I couldn’t ask Rick about the next phase of the journey beyond Siem Reap. But there was no way I could ignore it. Not now.
“Couldn’t you have given me a name of the treasure, Rick?” I whispered to my water-stained ceiling. “Or anything more to go on? Why the games?”
Rick had been manipulating me. Reeling me in by allowing Gabriela to be drawn into Cambodian history in the same way I’d originally been drawn to it. The women who’d done so much for their country had been erased from written history, but their stories were still alive through stone carvings and local oral histories. What else had been lost to history through war, genocide, and looting? What had become of the princess and prince, if they truly existed?
I closed my eyes and tried not to let guilt wash over me. I was supposed to receive the latest Gabriela Glass chapter before he was killed, but because of my not-quite-legal living arrangements,
I never received my mail when Nadia was out. Would I have done anything differently if I’d received the chapter on time? Could I have saved him?
I couldn’t help feeling like I could have helped him avoid whatever had caught up with him. If only Rick had asked for my help in a more straightforward way, I would have known if there was more I could do. It was true that I turned down hundreds of requests from amateur treasure hunters. Did he think I would have refused to hear him out?
I sent a message to Tamarind that Nadia needed me that night, but that I promised to make it up to her with dinner at my place soon. Nadia was dramatic enough that it was a believable lie. I hated lying to Tamarind, but she wanted to convince me not to act, when I knew I had to.
I sat in my drafty apartment feeling sorry for myself. There wasn’t anyone left I could turn to. I tapped my finger on Lane’s name on my phone. In addition to the brief visit to my office, he’d texted and called, but only once in each medium, but hadn’t pressed further. Damn him, why couldn’t he make it easier to hate him?
The photo attached to Lane’s name on my phone was one where I’d captured one of his rare unguarded smiles. A moment before he’d been deep in concentration, cooking a Scandinavian dessert he’d learned to bake from a childhood nanny. When he’d noticed me watching him he grinned like he was the same seven-year-old boy who’d gotten away with creeping downstairs to steal a slice of her cake.
I slammed down my phone. Cake wasn’t the only thing he’d been stealing for decades.
I wasn’t ready to deal with my complicated feelings about Lane’s past. An understandable yet problematic history that I believed he’d left behind not only for me, but for himself.
What would Gabriela do? Not sit around indecisively. I’ve never been good at sitting around doing nothing and feeling sorry for myself, so I got back to work. Whatever Rick had stumbled onto, it had gotten him killed. And now they were after me. I wasn’t going to stick around and wait for the next attack.
In spite of Rick’s deception, I already knew a lot.
The first four chapters of the Gabriela Glass novel I’d seen mirrored true crimes, both murders and a theft. Someone wanted to make it look like a family ghost had killed two people three quarters of a century apart on a deadly anniversary in the ancestral Parisian mansion.
Two Frenchmen who were old college friends decided to steal family heirlooms. One of them ended up dead, the other swearing it was a ghost who killed him—twice. And the sculpture that had been in the family for generations disappeared. This took place seven years ago, around the time Rick Coronado disappeared for six weeks. The murderers were never caught, and the theft went unreported because the sculpture was obtained illegally.
I had only one more day of the semester with classes to teach. Rick Coronado had asked for my help. Maybe I could have turned him down then. But not now. To finish what he’d started, I needed to follow Gabriela’s footsteps. I booked a flight to Paris for the following night.
Chapter 21
I landed at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris as the sun was setting. A light snow was falling on the tarmac as the plane approached the gate.
I turned on my phone and it lit up like a Christmas tree. When I was boarding the flight, I’d texted both Tamarind and my brother where I was going and where I’d be staying. I was impulsive, but not too stupid to live.
As the plane taxied to the gate, I read their messages of concern and also checked the university portal where students submitted their final papers, which were due today. I’d been disappointed that Becca hadn’t been in class the previous day. It was an optional class for students who needed help finishing their research projects, rather than a formal lecture, but I’d been hoping for an update on the sunken ship project.
Darkness had fallen completely by the time I took a taxi to the tiny apartment I’d rented online. As I stepped out of the cab, I could see my breath in front of me, and light snowflakes dusted my cheeks. I breathed in the cold air. Paris smelled like cigarettes and sweet cream. In my black clothes and three-inch heels, I fit right in. Except for my red messenger bag, which couldn’t be considered a classy handbag.
Though I’d traveled extensively in Asia and lived in London, until the last couple of years I hadn’t seen much of continental Europe. My last memory of Paris was being coerced into stealing a hidden item at the Louvre. Lane and I had pulled it off together. And I’d loved the thrill of it more than I’d admitted to anyone, even him.
My apartment was in the 7th Arrondissement, home to the Eiffel Tower. I quickly discovered how it had been possible to find the rental so close to Christmas time. It was a fifth-floor walk-up with no elevator, and the apartment itself was roughly the same size as the bathroom of the luxury hotel in Paris where I’d stayed the last time I’d been here. At the time, I’d been essentially kidnapped (though my captor insisted it was friendly coercion), so I much preferred this cramped abode.
I leaned my head out one of the two narrow windows, affording me a view of half of the Eiffel tower, which was easy to spot as its golden lights sparkled in the dark night sky. The mansion wasn’t too far. Had Rick Coronado had a similar view when he was here seven years before? He’d never set a Gabriela Glass novel in Paris before The Glass Thief, so I didn’t have much of a sense of how he and Gabriela thought of the city. In spite of owning a New York City penthouse, Gabriela was more at home in the wild corners of the world than metropolitan habitats. A flurry of snowflakes blew into my face, bringing me back to reality. I closed the window.
The apartment was charming in an impersonal way. Vintage black and white photos of Paris were framed in faux-aged wood, pillows crocheted with fleur-de-lis symbols had been tossed on the narrow couch that converted into a bed (more to say “you’re in Paris” than to indicate the nobility the symbol had once signified), and most of the countertop space in the minuscule kitchenette had been taken up by a welcome basket. Champagne with two glass flutes tied with a red bow, a box of Godiva chocolates, shelf-stable fancy cheeses. I’d planned on dropping off my bag and finding the mansion, but as I got settled in the warm, cramped apartment, the snow began to fall harder.
I opened the champagne and poured myself a glass. “Here’s to Gabriela living on forever,” I said as I raised the glass. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, Rick.”
I took a sip, then left the glass on the counter.
I’d slept for most of the ten-hour flight, so I wasn’t tired. I’m one of the only people I know who can sleep so well on flights. I’m only five feet tall in socks, which helps. I’d dreamt, unsurprisingly, of noble serpents swimming through winding waterways, and the legend of the Indian prince and nagini princess who married and formed Cambodia. I’d always been annoyed by that story, because in the version I’d learned, the prince had shot an arrow into the princess’s boat to frighten her into marrying him. Not the greatest start to a marriage.
Gabriela’s version of the story was different. She mentioned the prince proving his bravery, not asserting his might. In each version, the legend was slightly different, which wasn’t surprising. In one version I’d read, the naga king’s daughter was named Soma, meaning the moon, and the prince Kaundinya represented the sun. Soma was also a historical queen with a husband of that name. In a Chinese version, Kaundinya was given sailing directions in a dream, and enchanted winds guided his ship. Yes, historical research has its challenges.
I knew what I wanted to do, but it felt terribly selfish. There was one person in France I could turn to. Sébastien Renaud, the retired French stage magician who’d been devoted to me since we’d saved each other’s lives.
No, that statement wasn’t quite true on two counts. First, he’d sacrificed more to save me than I had him, so I didn’t deserve the devotion. Second, though he’d retired from the stage, he refused to retire from magic. He was a magic builder, one of those behind-the-scenes geniuses who think up the mechani
sms for an illusion and who build the props to bring an act to life. He was brilliant at building mechanical automata for the Machines de L’ile in Nantes and at coming up with ingenious additions to classic magic acts.
Sébastien’s home in Nantes, including its adjacent mechanical workshop converted from an old barn, was one of my favorite places on earth. To gain admittance to the house, you had to appreciate the unconventional doorbell, two mechanical birds routed along the gutter of the roof to follow and serenade visitors. Once their song was over, a mechanized claw would spring from the door and hand you instructions.
His home was almost as much of an amusement park as the Machines de L’ile, where machine-powered animals from giant flying herons powered by hydraulic lifts to sea creatures spinning on carousels entertained children and those young at heart, and a giant mechanical elephant roamed the grounds.
“As much as I love hearing your voice,” Sébastien said, “you call me once a month and it hasn’t been nearly that long. I take it this isn’t merely a social call?”
“I’m in Paris.”
“Another vacation already?”
“Not exactly on vacation.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“Because I never go anywhere these days without some breaking and entering.” I told him about the family mansion I was interested in.
“Ha. I’d leave now, but my eyes, they’re not what they used to be. I’ll leave at first light.”
Nantes was a four-hour drive from Paris, so I had a few hours on my own after I woke up. I got an espresso and a croissant across the street at an impossibly cute café. I would have thought of it as romantic with the cozy seats if the purpose of my visit had been different. While waiting for Sébastien, I tried to do research by looking up French library archives, but, not surprisingly, everything was in French.