by Gigi Pandian
The temple complex of Banteay Chhmar was over a hundred miles away in a remote location near the Thai border. So many things worried me about this location our mystery woman was interested in, but I couldn’t let that stop me.
Only once we’d driven an hour did Mr. Leap tell us we’d need to find a local guide in Banteay Chhmar as well.
“Why didn’t you tell us that in Siem Reap?” I asked.
“I wanted to go.” He grinned. “I’ve never been to Banteay Chhmar. And I can help.”
Mr. Leap was sitting in the front seat to help me read the signs along the road, and Lane was in back.
“This is where the snake bite me.” Mr. Leap showed Lane a scar on his forearm.
I took my eyes off the road for a moment to glance nervously at him in the passenger seat. “How did you get a snake bite?” I pressed the brake as I drove around a pot hole. Even in my sturdy boots, I was wildly unprepared for snakes.
“One of my cousins thought he could tame it. He was mistaken.”
Lane covered his mouth, but one glance in the rearview mirror told me he was trying not to laugh.
I saw something else in the rearview mirror. “Does that car look like it’s following us? Stop that! Don’t turn around all at once!”
Mr. Leap shrugged.
“Try drive slowly,” Mr. Leap suggested. “When the car passes, no problem.”
“I don’t think Jaya is physically capable of driving slowly.”
“I’m totally capable of it. I just don’t think it’s especially safe to do so on the highway here. Besides, it’s Becca we’re following, not the opposite.”
“Unless there are many people out to get you,” Mr. Leap said.
I scowled at him. “I’m going to pull off the side of the road to get a cold drink.”
I pulled the Mercedes into the shade of some jackfruit trees at the side of the road, letting the car pass. The suspicious car kept going, so we relaxed a little. We shouldn’t have, but at the time it seemed like the sensible decision. With cold sodas in hand, we got back on the road for the rest of the drive to the temple.
When we arrived at Banteay Chhmar, there were no other cars in the dirt lot next to the temple’s main entrance gates. I parked the car and turned off the engine. The heat hit me as soon as I cracked the door open. The sound of birds chirping filled the air, but I didn’t hear any voices.
“Wait here under the trees,” Mr. Leap said.
I was happy to do so, since the temperature had gone up at least twenty degrees since sunrise. I enjoyed the shade as Mr. Leap walked down the road to find us a local guide at the nearby NGO that trained locals to be guides.
“Come on,” I said as soon as he was out of sight.
“I was wondering if that’s what you had in mind,” Lane said.
“You even had to wonder? Of course I’m not endangering the lives of two innocent guides. We’ll ask for their help after we make sure nobody else is here.”
As soon as we stepped through the stone entrance gates into the sprawling temple remains, I saw how difficult that would be to determine. Rocks taller than me were strewn around the grounds. Thick stone doorways with ornate carvings stood at awkward angles, seeming to defy gravity. Gnarled tree roots strangled stones and stretched to the sky.
Most western tourists didn’t go to this Angkorian-era temple not only because it was a long drive from Siem Reap, but also because it was still being excavated and hadn’t yet been prepared with walkways and stairs that made exploring easy. The only way to walk through the ruins was to leave ourselves exposed, jumping from one fallen rock to the next.
“I don’t like this,” Lane whispered as we stepped through a crooked doorway that led from one outdoor room to another.
I barely heard him as my gaze locked onto the oversize stone eyes in front of me. This was one of the few sites outside of Angkor that had the enigmatic faces carved out of multiple pieces of sandstone on high towers.
The temple complex was built under Jayavarman VII, so that wasn’t surprising. Well-preserved bas-reliefs showing the history of the Khmers covered massive stone walls that surrounded the temple, but what made it most interesting historically was that after Jayavarman VII’s ambitious reign, the empire began to collapse. Scholars have never agreed on why this happened, and theories ranged from climactic changes combined with poor oversight of irrigation systems, to different religions weakening power structures and allowing foreign invaders to gain ground.
I was pulled back to the present when a movement caught my eye. We weren’t alone. A person stood under the giant enigmatic face. It wasn’t Becca Courtland. Nor was it her father, Marc Durant.
Standing before us, under the sprawling spung trees and amidst the crumbled stones, was another supposedly dead man: Rick Coronado.
Chapter 42
“But you’re dead!” I said.
Rick Coronado, in all his rugged glory from the fedora that shielded his face from the harsh sun down to well-worn hiking boots, stood on a fallen slab of stone next to a bas-relief of dancing apsaras.
“I know I skipped out on you,” a very alive Rick Coronado said, “but that’s harsh.”
“They fished your body out of the San Francisco Bay.”
“Clearly the rumors of my death have been exaggerated.” He gave a boyish grin. “I didn’t even know there were rumors, but I suppose it’s flattering. But listen, both of you—Lane Peters? I’d say it was nice to meet you, but you’re in over your heads here. You should go home.”
“You…” I stepped forward, but Lane saw the look in my eye and held me back. “You’re the one who left that note for me in my office. Trying to scare me off.”
Rick scratched the back of his neck. “I really am sorry for everything.”
“You’re the one who asked for her help,” Lane pointed out in what I felt was an overly generous tone.
“Not like this. You’re far from civilization. This isn’t like your ‘roughing it’ on a Scottish dig or French amusement park. There’s no mosquito repellant sprayed for the tourists here, so I hope you’re both slathered in Deet.”
This wasn’t how I imagined meeting my literary hero. And how dare he leave out our motorcycle ride down the western coast of India? Though to be fair, I didn’t tell the press the full story there.
Unlike the photos of Rick when he’d been found after his missing six weeks, scrawny, sunburned, and covered in bug bites, now he was fit and dressed in appropriate light clothing for the climate.
“Your jacket…” I said. Rick wasn’t wearing his signature jacket here. “Oh no. Where’s Vincent?”
“My brother? He’s not into this kind of exploration.”
“Have you talked with him since you got here?”
Rick’s easy smile faded. “Why are you talking about my brother? I don’t need him—”
“Did you travel with him to San Francisco? Did you give him your jacket to take back home since you wouldn’t need it here?”
He looked away and pretended to adjust the brim of his hat. “Fine. Yeah, he came with me. I hadn’t flown in such a long time. I won’t exactly say it had become a phobia.” He cleared his throat. “So yeah, Vince came with me so I wouldn’t freak out on the flight, then went home.”
“I don’t think he did,” I said softly.
With weak cell phone reception, the article I pulled up about the dead man in the Bay didn’t load, so I couldn’t show him the images of the jacket that had been posted. And because the body hadn’t yet been identified, probably because the police were trying to find Rick at his home in New York, I wasn’t sure how to get Rick to believe me.
“You’re smart, Jaya. That’s why I wanted to get your help in the first place. But I can see you’re manipulating me just like I did you.”
“I’ve already spoken with Becca,” I seethed. “I kno
w her connection to you. What I need to know now is why you’re back here in Cambodia.”
“You came all the way here. You’re all in, I’ll give you that.”
“You,” I said, trying not to yell, “are the one who asked for my help in the first place.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Now that we’re all here together,” Lane began diplomatically, “why don’t we pool resources and find out the truth.”
“No offense,” Rick said, “but I don’t make deals with killers.”
“He didn’t kill Marc Durant,” I said. Though now that we knew it was Rick, not Marc, threatening me, and he was here in Cambodia…I swore. “Where’s your partner?”
“Becca?”
“Yes.”
“San Francisco—no, I expect she’d be in France by now for Christmas with her grandparents.”
“I know she’s here in Cambodia. I meant, where is she right now? Is she somewhere on the temple grounds?” I glanced around the tumbled stones that excavators were slowly working to put back together. Several towers with enigmatic faces like those in the Bayon rose above this temple complex. They would be a great place for someone to hide.
“No way,” Rick scoffed. “She’s not here.”
“We might not have much time.”
Rick looked between us, and whatever he saw on our faces convinced him it was time to stop fooling around.
“All right.” He held his hands up. “You win. Let’s pool our ideas. Even though I contributed more.”
I narrowed my eyes at Rick, annoyed with myself for once idolizing this man.
“I was working on Empire of Glass,” he said. “I did so much historical research for the novel that I knew exactly what I was looking at when I heard about the Durant family’s tragedy. I was the only one who saw the connection. You know my cobra symbolism in the Gabriela Glass novels.”
Of course I knew. His intrepid heroine killed one with her bare hands in the first novel. I remembered the scene vividly. “It’s not a unique discovery to realize the naga originated in India but took on a life of its own in Cambodia.”
“But nobody else noticed it here. I study the significance of snakes in the different cultures I write about, so I’m the only one who saw what the Durants really had. The sculpture in the Durant family’s collection had never been shown publicly or examined by art historians in person, since they didn’t wish to sell it, so there was no issue with provenance. Nobody in the family would tell me all the details, but someone had stolen the sculpture from that house. Marc’s father didn’t want it reported, and I thought I knew why. Aristide Durant had looted the statue when he was in Cambodia during the time of the French Protectorate. He’d realized there was an even greater hoard to be had, so he wrote to his son. But he drew a map instead of writing the location in case the wrong person read it.”
“The letter Becca had,” I murmured.
“That kid is something, isn’t she?”
I glared at him. “She’s certainly something.”
“Everyone missed the clues for years, but when she filled in the blanks for me, she must have told someone else about the treasure as well, because they’re after it too.” He eyed Lane suspiciously. “Probably the man who killed her father.”
“We don’t know who killed Marc,” I said before the men could come to blows. “We don’t even know for certain he’s dead. I’m sure I’m right that Marc faked his own death at the mansion.”
“Marc Durant is dead, Professor Jones.”
“He put on an act for his friend, strangling himself, so that he could disappear when everyone thought he was dead.”
“You should be a writer,” Rick said, “because that’s a great solution. It would be perfect if it wasn’t for the fact that the statue really did disappear from that house. There’s got to be a killer who smuggled it out.” He again glanced suspiciously at Lane.
“Let’s back up,” I said. “Why do you think the prince and princess statue is here?”
“It turned out the kid was holding out on me so I’d keep writing. The family knew the location all along. Becca knew her great-great grandfather had found the Serpent King statues here at Banteay Chhmar. Only they didn’t realize the significance. I told her what I knew, but the kid didn’t care. How could she not care? It’s a real-life treasure that shows the true history from which the legend of Cambodia sprang. It’s where the naga king drank the water and gave it to his daughter and her Indian prince, and that’s where I’ll find the gemstone statue.”
Which of course Aristide Durant had wanted to claim for himself. No wonder the family was cursed.
Rick said he thought he had enough information to go to Cambodia seven years ago. He was obsessed and wanted this to be his own real-world discovery. Something that mattered. People didn’t take him seriously because of his Gabriela Glass plots. Empire of Glass was the closest he’d come to critical acclaim, because the treasure was knowledge. But he wanted more. His editor Abby had convinced him not to kill off Gabriela and write a literary novel, but he could do something else. He’d seen something others had missed. Everyone except for himself and Marc’s killer. Only they understood that on the back of the stone was the map that gave them directions for finding the treasure, or, more precisely, for where to look inside the temple where it was concealed. He was only missing the detail that told him which temple, and Becca had finally told him in San Francisco.
“Wait,” I said. “How did you learn about the tragedy of Marc Durant in the first place, seven years ago? I mean, I know Becca told you details this year. But none of the missing sculpture details were reported publicly.”
He blinked at me. “You said you knew.”
“No. I said I knew how you got your facts for your manuscript this year.”
“Then isn’t it obvious? You’re not living up to your reputation, Professor Jones.”
“Why don’t you enlighten us,” Lane said. His voice was calm on the surface, but I could tell he was about to strangle Rick, dead brother or not.
“From Abby, of course.”
Sweat dripped into my eyes, but I couldn’t move. “Your editor? How on earth would she know?”
“Because she’s Becca’s mom.”
I stared at him. “No, Becca’s mom is named Gail.” I thought back to the photograph. Marc, Gail, and Rebecca. I groaned. The name Abigail can be abbreviated to Abby or Gail. “Abby who I’ve been talking to? Abby Wu?”
“Yeah, her maiden name is Abby Courtland. She married Marc young, they had Becca and split soon after, and she married Alston Wu. She and I would have been great together, if only we hadn’t been so young when we met. They didn’t last long, but she kept his name because that’s when her star was taking off as an editor.”
I swore. Publishers didn’t usually include photos of their editors on their websites, so I’d foolishly assumed a woman named Abby Wu would be of Chinese descent, not a blonde woman.
“It never occurred to you that she could be the one who killed Marc?”
“No way. Abby would never do that.”
I looked at the man I’d once believed to be brilliant. He’d created a character I would always love, but Rick Coronado had many weaknesses. When it came to love, he was as foolish as any of us.
“You’re still in love with her,” I said.
He laughed ruefully. “I thought if I could prove myself worthy, I could win her affections. That’s why I went after the treasure seven years ago. It seemed like it would be so easy! It was like a plot from one of my novels. Only in fiction, malaria is no big deal and it’s easy to kill a snake. And the most important distinction is that I was wrong. There was no bad guy on my heels. No adventure. Only tedium, sickness, and the loneliness of working alone. And by choosing not to get help, I got lost and contracted malaria. And I never found the treasure. It broke me. I ca
me home humiliated. I couldn’t write another word.
“I gave up—until earlier this year. That’s when Becca came to me. She had a crazy story. Said she’d figured out who’d killed her father. Becca wanted the world to believe the truth about her father’s death. I wanted details to find the treasure, and that was something Abby never wanted to talk about. I didn’t think I’d be hurting you, Jaya. You must believe that. Becca didn’t tell me it was your boyfriend she suspected. She proposed it as a way to help us both—said she was your student and knew how great you were. That you could both solve the murder and lead me and Gabriela to the treasure.
“But the more she told me, the more I suspected there was something else going on. She insisted that Tristan shouldn’t be sympathetic—which totally misunderstands the narrative craft. And after you figured out the Cambodia connection, Becca was angry, saying I was focusing too much on the treasure. She let it slip that Tristan was Lane.
“I had to see her. I was complicit in creating a monster, and it had to stop. I hadn’t been on a plane since they flew me back from Thailand for my recovery, so Vincent came with me. Becca convinced me not to tell you anything else yet. It was partly mercenary, I admit; she said she wouldn’t tell me more unless I upheld the agreement. Then I left, and Vincent went…” He pulled out his cell phone, but couldn’t get a signal. His face went pale. He was finally starting to realize that I wasn’t lying to him and accept my theory about the dead man in San Francisco. “You don’t really think he’s…”
“I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t me who spoke, though I echoed the sentiment. Rick had manipulated me, and his brother was decidedly a jerk, but that didn’t mean Vincent deserved to die or that Rick deserved to be left alone, his last connection to the world taken from him.
“Abby?” Rick croaked. “What on earth are you doing here?”
Abby stepped out from behind a strangler fig tree We were all too in shock to move quickly enough as she wrapped one arm around Rick’s neck. She pressed a knife to his side.