“You’ve got some great friends, Sanjay.”
Sanjay had told me something more important than he’d realized. If someone had put the box at Sanjay’s door yesterday, it couldn’t have been Naveen.
“I bandaged it up with a couple of Band-Aids,” Sanjay said, squirming in his bed. “That was really all it needed. Only after I was on the plane did I realize something was wrong.”
“Why were you getting on a plane to fly to India anyway?”
“I—”
The elderly doctor who’d attended to Sanjay stepped back into the room.
“Rat poison,” the doctor said. “Your cut was full of rat poison. Helpful in killing rats, yes, but a dangerous substance. When it comes in contact with an open wound, the blood does not stop flowing as it should. A small cut creates much blood. You would not have noticed at first.”
“So it’s not serious?” I asked.
“Correct,” the doctor said. “No reason for losing consciousness.”
“There was so much blood!” Sanjay insisted.
“He fainted,” the doctor said.
Sanjay never ceased to amaze me. The man could escape from the most dangerous situations he created on the stage, but he fainted because of a little blood.
“He’ll be fine?” I asked.
“Very much so. Rest here one more day, you will be right as rain. In the future, you should be more careful when working with rat poison, young man.”
Once the doctor was gone, I turned back to Sanjay.
“Maybe the police can get fingerprints off of it,” I suggested.
“Well...”
“You didn’t save the evidence? Sanjay, what were you thinking?”
“I told you I thought it was a friend playing a practical joke! Why would I leave a bloody knife in my loft? That’s gross. I washed everything. Of course in hindsight now that I know it wasn’t one of my friends, I would have done things differently.”
“The only person I can think it might have been is here in India,” I said. “So it can’t have been Naveen.”
“Wait,” Sanjay said. “You need to tell me what’s going on.” He tried to cross his arms over his chest, but groaned as his forearms brushed against his abdomen. “You’re the one who took off in search of a treasure without thinking of telling me until you were on the other side of the world.”
“You still never told me why you’re here in India now.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“Because I didn’t check in with you constantly? Really—”
“Or at least that you were in trouble. You don’t have your cell phone, so I left half a dozen urgent messages for you at your hotel.”
“I left there.”
“You didn’t check out!” Sanjay said. “I asked the front desk. Repeatedly.”
“I was coming back, as you can see.”
“You could have told me. There’s a murderer running around.”
“Why were you trying to reach me in the first place?”
“Oh,” Sanjay said, blinking in surprise. “I didn’t tell you?”
“You mean before you collapsed on the hotel floor in a pool of blood and gave me a heart attack? No, you didn’t.”
“You were that worried about me?” he asked.
“Don’t ask such a stupid question.”
Sanjay smiled. “You’ll never guess what I found.”
“Not the location of Anand’s treasure.”
“That,” Sanjay said, “I would have gotten out of my mouth before passing out. No. But it gets us closer to it. I was at the library—”
“You went to the library?”
“Somebody had to pick up the slack. And you’ll be glad I did. Your librarian friend Tamarind found the next missing piece in the history. Anand’s friend Samuel—Spiritualist Samuel who you discovered—went missing in 1905.”
“What happened?”
“He was working as a spiritualist, as you know. The disappearance was written up in the papers with a story that he was leading a séance, when something went wrong.”
“What went wrong?”
“He disappeared from his spirit cabinet.”
“Isn’t that what illusionists are supposed to do?”
“They’re supposed to reappear, too.”
“And he didn’t?”
“Nope.”
“The trick went wrong, then?”
“Illusion,” Sanjay corrected me automatically. “That’s what the papers reported at the time. Since a body can’t actually disappear, they suspected foul play. There was blood found inside the empty cabinet. The press reported that he was killed and the body was hidden to cover it up.”
“But you don’t think that’s what actually happened.”
“There were gaps in the newspapers. Tamarind said pre-1906 records are spotty because the earthquake destroyed so much.”
“Then it’s just a hunch the initial newspaper reports were wrong?”
Sanjay smiled and shook his head. “No, I’m sure of it. Samuel didn’t die.”
“They found him alive?”
“No. But I know it wasn’t an accident. He disappeared on purpose.”
“How do you know?”
“I found the spirit cabinet.”
Chapter 35
Sanjay was still talking, but I ceased listening. Through the open door, a tall man with wavy blond hair was talking with a nurse.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to Sanjay, my eyes never leaving the door.
Lane stood in the hallway, an agitated expression on his face. He was speaking a mix of English and Malayalam, trying to get information from the nurse. He broke off as soon as he saw me. He wrapped his arms around me in a hug that squeezed the breath out of me.
“Does this mean I’m forgiven for the awful things I said?” I whispered.
“They told me you’d been taken to the hospital,” he said, pulling back.
“Who told you that?”
“When I went back to the hotel, the clerk at the desk said you’d been taken away in an ambulance. But you weren’t registered here at the hospital.”
“That’s because it wasn’t me who was hurt.”
“You’re all right?” He looked me up and down. “Naveen didn’t try anything?”
“This has nothing to do with Naveen. It was a friend of mine admitted to the hospital. He was attacked back in San Francisco. That means Naveen can’t be our guy. He was only trying to scoop me with a discovery.”
I rubbed my hands over my face. I was so very tired. When I looked up, Lane was looking over into Sanjay’s room.
“Interesting,” Lane said, shaking his head. “I was so worried about you… But that means the murderer who also attacked you is still in San Francisco.”
“Looks like it.”
“I should go,” Lane said, looking in Sanjay’s direction. “I’m interrupting.”
“You’re not interrupting.”
“Since Naveen can’t be our guy, you’ll be okay here. Especially now that you’ve got your friend with you.”
He started walking down the hallway toward the exit. I jogged after him.
“You’re leaving again?”
Lane kept walking through the doors. The motorcycle was parked on the curb right outside the doors. He slipped onto the seat.
“What about Joseph and the missing letters?”
“I suppose if I told you to forget about them, you wouldn’t listen to me?”
“Why would I forget about them? They’re why I came—”
“I don’t want to have this fight with you again. If you’re going to pursue it, that’s your right. Now that I know you’re not in danger from Naveen
, you can handle it yourself.”
“You’re really leaving?”
“I shouldn’t have come in the first place,” he said. “Sorry I bothered you while your friend is in the hospital.”
“You didn’t bother me.”
“No?”
Lane wrapped his fingers around mine. He pulled me forward in a smooth motion. His lips found mine before I realized what was happening. I felt myself lifted onto the seat of the motorbike. His arms wrapped around me as his warm lips explored mine. The movement was intense, almost desperate. I responded on every level. My fingers ran through his hair as his ran through mine. I couldn’t tell if the intense heartbeat I felt was mine or his. I felt as if I was drowning, and I wanted more.
He pulled back slightly, leaving our noses touching. “Jaya Anand Jones,” he whispered. “Victory, Happiness, America. I’m going to miss you, you know.”
“That’s not fair,” I said, feeling the warmth of our breath entwined. “You can’t decide this on your own.”
He smiled that sad smile of his. “You’re right. I have a feeling I won’t be able to stay out of your life. But that’s for another day. Go take care of your friend.”
Chapter 36
“Who was that?” Sanjay asked when I walked back into the hospital room.
“I have no idea.” I touched my fingers to my lips.
“He hugged you in the hallway like you knew him pretty well.”
“It’s a long story.”
“There seem to be a lot of those going around right now,” Sanjay said with a scowl.
Sanjay blackmailed me into getting him out of the hospital. He swore he wasn’t going to say another word to me about Samuel’s mysterious spirit cabinet until I sat him down at a proper restaurant and got him some clothes.
I was nothing if not resourceful. I returned within ten minutes after buying Sanjay a bright orange tunic and red lungi.
“This is a woman’s shirt,” Sanjay said, holding up the orange fabric lined with a design woven in red along the bottom.
“This part of town isn’t exactly a tourist destination. The guy only spoke Malayalam. I didn’t know how to tell him I needed a shirt for a man without making a very rude gesture.”
“You really are the worst Indian ever, Jaya.”
Sanjay refused the skirt-like lungi, insisting his jeans didn’t have that much blood on them, but accepted the orange shirt instead of his blood-soaked white dress shirt that the doctors had cut off of him. At least the shirt had been cut for a large woman, so it was big enough to fit over Sanjay’s broad shoulders.
We left the hospital with Sanjay looking more like a hijra—the Indian equivalent of transvestites—than I’d ever admit to him, with his well-cut features and large eyes that were perfect for performing on the stage. Luckily we found a restaurant quickly, before any passersby began pressing coins into Sanjay’s hands, as was the custom.
“Mmmm,” Sanjay said, licking the fingertips of his right hand after taking a bite of seafood biryani. “We should ask Raj to put this on the menu at the Tandoori Palace.”
“I don’t think he’s going to expand his menu to include South Indian food.”
“I wonder if I can get this back in San Francisco.”
Most of the foods thought of as Indian food in America were North Indian and Pakistani cuisines. Sanjay was right that there was something about the freshly caught fish surrounded by spicy sides eaten with our hands and served on a banana leaf that made the food more flavorful. There was also the fact that I hadn’t eaten in ages either.
If you’re not used to eating whole meals with your hands, it might sound unsanitary, especially in a country with as many diseases as India. But eating with your hands was done for that exact reason. You could wash your hands before and after eating, eat with your right hand, and use your left hand for anything “impure.”
“I promise I’ll take you to a good South Indian restaurant once we’re home,” I said. “Now can we get back to the matter at hand? You said you found the spirit cabinet Anand’s friend Samuel used during a fake séance.”
“Let’s order some more of this fried fish first,” Sanjay said.
I flagged down a waiter and ordered more of the bright red fish.
“When I hit a dead end with Tamarind at the library,” Sanjay said, “I called a guy I know who runs a magic supply store that specializes in antiques and memorabilia. I asked him about a spiritualist from the turn of the last century called Spiritualist Samuel.”
“I thought you said spiritualists were nothing like magicians.”
“Morally, yes. But they do use some of the same tools. Houdini did fake séances to prove how they were done.”
“Really?”
“It ruined his friendship with Arthur Conan Doyle, who believed in séances.”
“They let their spiritual beliefs ruin their friendship?”
“They were both strong-willed guys.” He shrugged. “But that’s beside the point. Back to Anand’s friend’s spirit cabinet. The dealer I know was able to track down Samuel’s spirit cabinet. It was in Las Vegas. I lucked out—it was for sale by a dealer, not in a private collection.” He paused. “I bought it.”
“You have it at your loft?”
“It should arrive by the time we get back. But I had a chance to study photos of it before I bought it, so I’d know what I was getting.” Sanjay paused to scoop up another piece of fish.
“And?”
“I know how he did it—and why. Based on what you told me about the Heart of India disappearing, this cabinet explains what happened.”
“People said the Heart of India disappeared,” I said, thinking of Abdul’s certainty, “not that it was stolen. Exactly the kind of illusion a spiritualist could pull off.”
Sanjay grinned. “Magic.”
“Anand was in San Francisco,” I said, “presumably being a pirate in the bay—while his accomplice Samuel left for India and stole the Heart of India. Samuel was the one who stole the Heart of India from Thoothukudi. But Anand wanted it for himself and his own family, so he stole it back.”
“It looks like it,” Sanjay said.
“This sucks.”
“I love it when you’re so eloquent. It’s good to see all those years of schooling paid off.”
“This does suck. Anand was a common thief.”
“Not a common one. Pirates have a certain cachet.”
“He was still a thief.”
“It certainly looks like it,” Sanjay said. “But you shouldn’t worry about that. You never knew your great-granduncle, so you shouldn’t care about what he was or wasn’t.”
I was no longer hungry.
“You don’t understand,” I said pushing aside my banana leaf. “He was a hero in my family. It’s the stories about his life that are the reason my mother had the courage to make her own way in the world and marry my father. If it wasn’t for Uncle Anand, I wouldn’t exist.”
“But you do exist, Jaya. You don’t need to live in the past.”
“If you hadn’t noticed, I kind of signed up to live in the past.”
“I don’t mean your job—”
“It’s more than a job. Aside from my dad and brother, I have no family. No one. This is my way of being connected to the world.”
“You’ve got me, you know.” Sanjay suddenly grew fascinated with his banana leaf and cast his eyes downward.
Sanjay’s brush with death must have given him a burst of sentimentality. He didn’t usually say silly things like that. I gave his forearm a little squeeze. He looked up at me.
“I used to have Anand, too,” I said. “The knowledge of his life gave me some semblance of a personal history.”
“You don’t need anyone to make you any more than you are. Yo
u’re the most—” Sanjay broke off.
“What?”
Sanjay cleared his throat. “Nothing,” he said, his face turning red.
“You were going to say something.”
“Nothing.” He coughed. “I think I swallowed a pepper.”
“You didn’t even have any food in your mouth,” I pointed out.
“Look, I know it’s not the news you wanted to hear about Anand. But what you should care about more is that there’s someone in your life right now who isn’t what they seem.”
“You mean the murderer,” I said, giving up on getting Sanjay to tell me whatever he was starting to say. “Yeah, I know. It’s kind of hard to forget.”
“I have a theory.” He paused. “You’re not going to like it.”
“Since when have you ever held out on me?”
Sanjay gave me a cocky half smile, back to his old self. “There was someone else enquiring about Samuel’s spirit cabinet. Someone else is following all the leads that we are. The dealer didn’t have a name—but it was a woman.”
“A woman?”
“It’s got to be Tamarind,” Sanjay said. “She hit the same dead end as me at the library. I was thinking about how strangely she acted when she found that information about Samuel disappearing. And she had the research skills to pursue it.”
“You’re saying all amazingly competent librarians should be murder suspects?”
“Then forget that point. There’s more. She conveniently disappeared right before your mugging.”
“She was working, Sanjay. Some of us have real jobs.”
“But you can’t swear it wasn’t her who attacked you. She’s tall enough to be a man. She could have changed clothes quickly. It would explain the face covering.”
“I don’t think it was her. It felt like a man.”
Pirate Vishnu (A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery) Page 18