“Of course,” I said. “I didn’t mean Grace shouldn’t go. But I’m sure there’s someone else who can cover—”
Grace’s gaze darted between me and Sanjay. “Jaya can’t cover for me!”
Even though I didn’t think I could cover for her, I was surprised she felt the same way. Sanjay kept telling me how Grace idolized me, but apparently he’d been mistaken.
“We’ll skip the levitation,” Sanjay said. “It’s not a problem. We weren’t planning on doing a full show anyway, since it’s not our full setup from the Napa theater.”
“But—” Grace and I protested at the same time.
“Children!” Raj cried, popping his head into the break room. “You have no sense of time tonight.” He tapped his wristwatch. “The diners are waiting.”
“That set nearly killed me,” Sanjay said when we were done with our second set of the evening. Grace had gone home to pack, and Sanjay and I were back in the break room.
“No kidding,” I agreed.
During our set we played a raga that made me think of northern India, and by association, my thoughts had returned to Lane. Earlier that summer, his research on northern Indian art had been instrumental in piecing together the history of an Indian artifact with a mysterious history.
“You have to show me that treasure map,” Sanjay said.
“First you have to tell me why on earth you thought you could volunteer me to be your magician’s assistant.”
“You’re the same size as Grace.”
“Why does that matter? I can’t do the contortions she does.”
“I’m used to working with someone her size,” Sanjay said, “and I planned these acts around having an assistant.”
“But—”
“It’s a great cause, Jaya. A benefit for a San Francisco homeless shelter.” On his phone, he pulled up the website with details about the benefit and handed it to me so I could read about it.
“You know why it’s important,” Sanjay said.
I did know. Sanjay had dropped out of law school to become a magician. His parents hadn’t been pleased. For the two years it took him to establish himself, Sanjay lived in a fleabag motel. A lot of his neighbors from that time never made it out of there. Because he knew what it was like to live so close to homelessness, he was exceedingly generous and also didn’t have any guilt about enjoying life’s luxuries.
I scrolled through the information, but I wasn’t retaining anything I read.
“Isn’t there a magician’s guild or something you can go to for emergencies like this?” I asked.
“I trust you,” Sanjay said.
He spun his bowler hat in his hands as he spoke, then flipped it back onto his head and met my gaze. “I trust you with my secrets.” His almost-too-large dark brown eyes had won over many an admirer. But I know the true Sanjay, the one with the maturity of an eight-year-old boy.
“No need to be so dramatic.”
Sanjay fiddled with the collar of his shirt. A nervous habit from the days when he was starting out as a magician, he told me once. He never did it on stage anymore, but I’d seen him tugging at his starched white collar a few times.
“There’s nobody else,” he said.
“You mean besides Grace.”
“I made her sign a confidentiality agreement when she came to work for me.”
“Seriously?”
“I told you there’s no one else.”
My resolve started to waver. Time to change the subject.
I was about to get the map out to show Sanjay when Raj walked in. He was there to retrieve us for our next music set. He ushered us out of the break room onto the little stage, muttering about how there was something in the stars that made us forget all sense of time that day.
By the time we finished our final set of the evening, the kitchen was winding down for the night. Juan and his staff turned on the TV in the kitchen.
“The suspense is killing me,” Sanjay said, but I barely heard him. On the TV screen in front of me was a photograph of Steven Healy.
I pushed my way past the kitchen crew and turned up the volume on the set to hear above the rain that had started to fall outside. The rain sounded like a tin drum as it hit the kitchen vents.
“What are you doing?” Sanjay asked.
“That’s him.” I swallowed hard. “The man in the photograph on TV. That’s the man who came to see me today.”
A fair-haired reporter with carefully styled hair stood in front of an upscale San Francisco Victorian house, holding an oversized black umbrella in one hand and a microphone in the other.
“Steven Healy was found dead in his home this evening,” the reporter said. “His death is an apparent homicide.”
Chapter 5
Kingdom of Travancore, South India, 1900
Five years after Anand Paravar nearly died of typhoid, he made the decision to leave Travancore to travel the world. He had been working in Kochi for two years where he met supporters of the controversial Indian independence movement. He realized he had been too vocal in support of their ideas, for he heard the maharaja was not pleased with the work he was doing. Though he was not afraid, as he was told he should be, Anand nevertheless thought it a prudent time to follow his heart and see more of the world.
Anand had seen glimpses of life beyond the Kingdoms of Travancore and Kochi -- and he wanted more. Although the British did not technically control the southern kingdoms, which were princely states under the control of local rajas, the foreign influence could be felt. Men left their villages to work in the tea plantations. Children learned English. Strange-looking women with golden hair wore clothing puffed out from their lower bodies. Light-skinned men in military uniforms told stories of dangerous sea voyages. There was a strange and fascinating world to see -- and it could be seen by traveling across the ocean.
Before he could depart, Anand almost changed his mind about leaving. On this day, he was returning to his village of Kolachal, in southern Travancore, from Kochi. The rains fell more heavily that day, or so it seemed to Anand. He was going to share his plans with his mother and little brother.
Anand’s white tunic clung to his thin body as the rain soaked the fabric through to his skin.
The monsoons had always struck the kingdom of Travancore twice each year. During the hot season, the waters swelled and the people resigned themselves to being as thoroughly soaked as if they had fallen directly into the ocean.
The kingdom wouldn’t be nearly as prosperous without the rains, Anand knew, but still he wasn’t happy about it as he extracted his feet from the muddy road.
He had been away in Kochi building and fixing boats, as his Paravar caste had always done. Throughout the coastal southern kingdoms, the easiest way to travel was by boat. Foreign traders came by large ships in the Arabian Sea and local men traveled through the backwater lakes and canals. There was enough work for him near Kolachal, but he’d grown restless. His friend Faruk Marikayaer, from the Muslim caste of merchants and boat builders, invited him to work with him in Kochi. A rough season of high winds had left the port underserved by skilled workers. The men in Kochi had not been like the men in Travancore. Muslims from the north and Chinese from the east worked alongside the Hindus and Christians. Anand had learned to speak some Arabic and improved his Hindi, but Chinese remained a mystery.
Almost a mile from his home in Kolachal, Anand stopped to adjust the sodden bag he carried over his shoulder.
As he did so, he spotted his little brother Vishwan. Vishwan was too far away to call out to, so Anand turned off the main road to get closer. Vishwan wore no sandals on his feet, and ran quickly through a cluster of coconut trees in spite of his lungi being tangled by the rain. A coconut fell on the ground a few meters away from him.
Anand looked up at the coconut t
ree. The rain was light, almost done for the day. It wasn’t falling hard enough to dislodge coconuts.
“Anna!” the little boy shouted upon seeing Anand, using the affectionate term to hail his big brother.
“What are you doing, thambi?”
Another coconut fell to the ground, this time accompanied by the familiar screech of a monkey.
“I’m helping Mother gather food,” Vishwan said proudly. “I sold our sick chicken at the market, and bought Mother spices. I wanted to bring some fruit to her, but the tree was too high and too wet to climb. I did not wish to hurt myself, so I did as you said.”
The rain had finally stopped falling. Vishwan wiped his face with his shirt, which was as wet as his skin.
Anand saw a small rhesus monkey jumping up and down at the top of the coconut tree. Vishwan knelt down to pick up the two coconuts from the muddy path.
“What do you mean you did as I said?” Anand asked.
“I followed your wisdom, anna. I saw the monkey go up the tree, where I could not go, so I threw rocks at him until he wanted to throw things back at me. He had no rocks up in the tree, so he needed to use coconuts. You told me the story with betel nuts, but I thought coconuts would be the same, no?”
Anand nearly fell to the ground as his body shook with laughter.
“That was a children’s story, thambi! To make you go to sleep. I never threw rocks at a monkey in my life. And I never met a monkey who threw them at me.”
Vishwan’s large eyes grew wide. “But...” He looked up at the tall tree.
“How long have you been attempting this?” Anand asked.
“I tried since the month you left for Kochi.”
“All these months?”
“You weren’t home to help me, anna. I thought I must be doing something incorrectly.”
Anand tried to stop laughing. “You finally found a monkey smart enough and angry enough to make your persistence pay off.”
Vishwan’s lower lip quivered for a short moment, as if he might cry. But as only a child can do, a second later a wide smile replaced the sadness.
“I did better than you!” Vishwan cried out.
He gripped the coconuts firmly in his hands and ran toward the house.
Anand watched his little brother run through the tall grass. He knew he was destined to travel the world, but how could he leave Vishwan on his own?
Chapter 6
The cold rains of San Francisco are nothing like the humid rains of south India I remembered from my childhood. I shivered as I walked the three blocks from my car to my apartment. In San Francisco an umbrella is a must even when it’s a clear blue sky when leaving the house. But I hated to give up the space in my messenger bag. Between my laptop, photocopies of documents from the library, magnifying glass to study original documents, music player, phone, notebook, and pencils, who has room for an umbrella?
I left my tabla case at the restaurant, since I’d be playing another set the next night, so at least my drums would be dry. I, on the other hand, had hair plastered to the sides of my face. Water droplets pooled at the ends of my hair before falling onto my neck.
The treasure map was safely in its plastic sleeve inside my messenger bag. But at the moment I didn’t care about the map. I wasn’t sure how much of my shivering was caused by the rain versus the knowledge that a man I met a few hours before had been murdered.
The timing of Steven Healy’s murder could have been a coincidence, couldn’t it? I knew nothing about him and his life. For all I knew, he could have been a loathsome guy who a lot of people wanted to kill. Maybe something in his legal career had caught up with him. Was I supposed to call the police? What could I tell them?
I was so distracted by my thoughts that I nearly walked past my house. I had to back up a few steps to get to the side gate. I lived on the upper floor of an old Victorian house in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of the city. My landlady Nadia Lubov had converted the spacious attic into an apartment with its own entrance, accessed by a set of stairs at the side of the house. My wet shoes squeaked with each step as I climbed the stairs.
The four-foot-square landing at my doorway was empty. I must have beaten Sanjay back. Not surprising. He drove like one of the timid bunny rabbits he could pull out of a hat.
I had agreed to meet Sanjay at my apartment. He said I shouldn’t be alone. But that’s not why I agreed. I’m good at being alone. But I think better with someone to bounce ideas off of, and there was a hell of a lot that I needed to figure out. Just because I didn’t understand what was going on with Lane, didn’t mean I would stare at my walls feeling sorry for myself.
Sanjay was a better person to help me, anyway. With no romantic entanglement, there wouldn’t be any distractions. And I trusted Sanjay completely. He was like the little brother I never had. My older brother Mahilan had always been more like a father to me than a brother. At least much more like a father than our dad, who self-medicated his problems away. Mahilan had told me he wasn’t always like that, but I was too young when our mom died to remember much.
My mom died so long ago that I didn’t actively miss her. Yet sometimes I felt her presence. I wished I could have asked her more about Anand. As a child, I hadn’t realized that I would want to know more, or that her time with me would be cut short.
I knew that Anand had made an impression on my mom’s grandfather, Vishwan. Through Vishwan, Anand had touched many lives. My mother gave me the middle name of Anand, which means “happiness” in Sanskrit. My first name, Jaya, means “victory,” a testament to what she was able to achieve by marrying a man of her own choosing, because of the uncle who had come before her and made his own choices.
But what if nothing we knew about him was true? Even if I wanted to learn the truth, my last link to the past was now dead. All I had was the map.
Where was Sanjay, anyway? I was in no mood to be left with my own thoughts.
I changed out of my wet clothes, slipping into a pair of black leggings and trading my black turtleneck for a fuzzy black sweater. I wrapped a towel around my wet head just before Sanjay knocked on the door.
“You didn’t have an umbrella?” he said, looking at the towel. “You should have told me. I would have given you mine.”
“People survived for thousands of years before the invention of the umbrella.”
“You really need to move to a building with parking,” he said, closing his sprawling umbrella and wiping his feet before stepping inside. He removed his bowler hat and twirled it in his hand.
“Do you want anything to eat?” I asked, remembering that he hadn’t eaten at the restaurant.
“You actually have food in your house? That would be a first.”
“Probably not.” I opened the fridge. “Definitely not. Unless you want to eat that half-full jar of spicy mango pickle. But I can offer you the finest coffee this side of Golden Gate Park.”
“You don’t have any milk,” Sanjay said, peering over my shoulder into the fridge.
“Lightweight.”
“Some of us like our stomach linings intact. I don’t think that type of cheese is supposed to be fuzzy. Can I put that in the trash?”
I closed the fridge and turned to face Sanjay. “I can’t believe he’s dead.”
“I know,” Sanjay said. “That’s a really odd coincidence.”
“We should put on the news to see if they’ve said anything else.”
“I was listening to the radio on the way over here,” Sanjay said. “They’re now saying how he was killed—someone bludgeoned him to death.”
My knees felt weak. “What the hell is going on?”
“I’ll make the coffee,” Sanjay said. He tossed his hat so it landed squarely on the coat hook next to the door. I leaned against the counter and watched Sanjay struggle with the stovetop p
ressurized contraption.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Are you going to call the police?” Sanjay asked.
“And tell them what exactly? That he told me one of my ancestors was murdered because of some mysterious treasure over a century ago? Maybe he was a horrible guy and someone completely unrelated to the treasure killed him.”
“Are you going to give the map back to his family?” Sanjay asked.
“God, I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose I should.”
“Don’t do it,” Sanjay said. “He gave it to you. Besides, it’s probably rightfully yours.”
“He loaned it to me,” I reminded Sanjay. “He even gave me a receipt. I think a receipt from a lawyer is a little bit better provenance than my saying a distant relative may have drawn it to hide his illegal treasure.”
“Point taken,” Sanjay said. “It’s too late to do anything tonight, anyway.”
“Maybe I should go to the police,” I said. “What do you think?”
“I think you should show me this thing that may have caused all this trouble.”
The Italian coffeemaker hissed. Sanjay poured us two cups of strong black coffee as I retrieved the map from my bag.
I hung the map on a corkboard on the wall across from the couch, careful to pin the protective sleeve so I wouldn’t damage the map. I placed it between copies of a detailed map of British India from the 1940s and a set of black-and-white photos of unnamed Indian Sepoy soldiers. I liked to tack up photocopied pages of research to help me organize my thoughts. To the casual observer, my apartment might have looked like a disaster area, but I knew the purpose of each of the papers strewn about my furniture and across the floor. It was easier to spread out at home than in my office since colleagues and students came by my office on a regular basis. Fewer people visited my apartment, so I could mostly avoid comments about my organizational habits. I could gather my thoughts together at home, then get work done at the office.
Pirate Vishnu (A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery) Page 4