Pirate Vishnu (A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery)

by Pandian, Gigi

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t going to come over until this afternoon.”

  “It is afternoon.”

  “What are you talking about?” I yawned. “Tamarind was here just a few minutes ago.”

  “Tamarind was here?” Sanjay’s nostrils flared.

  “Yeah, we just had coffee—”

  “And she apparently drugged your coffee while she was at it.” He shook his head so furiously that a rose petal escaped from his bowler hat and fluttered to the floor. “Why didn’t you listen to me about Tamarind? She’s probably off in search of the treasure as we speak.”

  I gaped at Sanjay. “You can’t be serious.”

  “How else do you explain the fact that you didn’t realize it was late afternoon already?”

  “Jet lag,” I said. It had to be jet lag. “I couldn’t sleep at all last night.”

  “I don’t buy it,” he said. “I don’t buy it at all. Now get your things. You’re following me to my place. I’m not letting you out of my sight before the séance.”

  Chapter 43

  Lightning struck as I stood in front of the wall of glass windows in Sanjay’s loft waiting for the guests to arrive. A storm was brewing in the East Bay, but hadn’t yet reached San Francisco.

  “The storm will be great for the atmosphere at the séance,” Sanjay said, standing in front of the expansive window with me. We watched the dark clouds roll closer from the east as the sunlight faded over the San Francisco skyline before us.

  Sanjay had changed into a tuxedo after lighting a series of candles he’d placed around the loft. He placed his bowler hat on his head and stood in the dim light of the window with his hands clasped behind his back, making me forget for a time what century I was in.

  “I feel like I’m losing my mind,” I said. “I don’t understand what’s going on around us.”

  Sanjay reached out and squeezed my hand. “I hope to get you some answers tonight.”

  Tamarind was the first to arrive. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. She wore a burgundy bustled dress straight out of the Victorian era that pulled in her thick, boyish waist. Her hair was now black. It was pulled back and supplemented with a matching black bunch of fake curls that ran down her back. On her lips she wore a deep burgundy lipstick that matched her dress.

  “M’lady,” Sanjay said, kissing her hand. Tamarind giggled.

  Nadia arrived next, wearing the fox stole I’d seen her in the night before, but her dress tonight, like Tamarind’s, was from another time. A silver evening gown sparkled down to her toes with pointed silver tips poking out from beneath the dress.

  Was I the only one who hadn’t thought of dressing up?

  Sanjay handed cordial glasses of dark liquid to the two women.

  Naveen arrived a few minutes before sunset. I introduced him to Sanjay, who he hadn’t previously met. He was dressed in a formal suit as usual, but nothing extra like Tamarind and Nadia.

  “You look like hell, Jaya,” Naveen said. “Jet lag got to you? And what’s with the costumes?”

  “I told you we’re having a séance.”

  “I wonder what the dean will think of your interesting research methods, Jaya. Hardly the type of scholarly pursuit he’d approve of, I’m sure.”

  I told myself to breathe. Naveen wasn’t here so I could impress him. I needed to learn more about what he knew, and Sanjay thought his presence tonight would help. “The dean likes results, doesn’t he?” I said.

  Naveen handed Sanjay a box containing an eight-ball that predicts the future. “I brought this,” he said with a laugh.

  “Is this going to work with an unbeliever?” Tamarind whispered to me.

  Nadia remained uncharacteristically silent. Her eyes twinkled as she watched us spar. This show probably rivaled the performance she saw the previous night, at least in terms of drama. She swallowed the entirety of her small drink.

  “The electricity in the air from the spirit world runs high at this time of day,” Sanjay said. “Don’t worry yourselves with these petty thoughts. They’ll soon pass.”

  Sanjay was good. Even without the help of a stage and spotlight, he was a master performer.

  “Introductions are in order,” Sanjay went on. “May I present a librarian of the first class, Tamarind Ortega, and the most fetching landlady this side of St. Petersburg, Nadia Lubov. Professor Naveen Krishnan, whom I had not had the pleasure of meeting until tonight. And you all know esteemed historian Jaya Jones, whose great-granduncle is the reason we’re all here tonight. We will be attempting to contact him and his associate, Spiritualist Samuel, who once owned an object that has recently come into my possession.”

  A clap of thunder sounded. Tamarind jumped. The rest of us turned our heads toward the windows. The storm was approaching as quickly as the sun was fading.

  “People assume that midnight is the best time to conduct a séance,” Sanjay said, his face dead serious, “because of the myth of it as ‘the witching hour.’ In truth it’s the turning points of the day—sunrise and sunset—when the forces are strongest. We must hurry.”

  “No time for a second aperitif?” Nadia asked. “That would put us all more in the mood.”

  Sanjay shot her a sharp look. “We need to be holding hands when the sun sets,” he said. “If you’ll follow me. Leave your bags and cell phones in the main room. You will not need them where we are going.”

  He pushed open the sliding metal doors leading to the section of the loft that served as his practice studio. The doors formed one wall of the room, the glass wall of windows another, and two brick walls provided atmosphere along the other two sides. At least three-dozen candles flickered around the edges of the room.

  In the center, two objects had been placed: Samuel’s spirit cabinet, and a simple round wooden table just big enough for four people to sit around. A single candle glowed in the center of the table.

  Tamarind stopped short when she saw the setup. Her lips trembled. She must have been even more superstitious than I’d realized.

  “The four of you,” Sanjay said, “will sit around the table and complete the circle.” He pushed shut the sliding door behind us, trapping us inside the candle-lit room.

  “What about you?” Nadia asked.

  “I must take another journey,” Sanjay said. “I will be inside the cabinet of fire.”

  Chapter 44

  Nadia frowned at Sanjay. “Is that safe? The solid wood does not seem to give air flow.”

  “Thank you for your concern, madame,” Sanjay said. “I assure you I will be perfectly safe. This cabinet once belonged to the great Spiritualist Samuel, a man who did what I am about to do, one hundred years before me. You can all feel that it holds power, can you not?”

  Tamarind elbowed me. “Does he always talk like that?” she whispered.

  I’d seen Sanjay perform enough times that I knew he’d stay in character regardless of what happened. His stage voice carried more of a suggestion of British pronunciation than Indian, like the Cary Grant era of movies where the actors enunciated in that style.

  “Miss Ortega,” Sanjay said, “will you do me the honor of binding my arms and ankles?”

  The look on Tamarind’s face told me she thought she’d died and gone to heaven. She took the rope he handed to her. After he stepped into the cabinet, she wound the rope around his wrists.

  “Tighter,” he said. “And quickly. We only have a few minutes before sunset is fully upon us.”

  Tamarind grinned as she squatted in her bustle dress and bound Sanjay’s ankles.

  “Madame Lubov,” Sanjay said, squirming in his seat in the cabinet, “will you will check the knots?”

  Nadia stepped up to examine the knots. She nodded. “What is the purpose?”
>
  “I must bind myself to this world,” Sanjay replied. “For my own safety, you understand. We wouldn’t want the spirits to carry me away with them. I can already feel that there are forces connected to this cabinet trying to break through.”

  Tamarind stumbled backwards in her voluminous dress. I can’t say I blamed her.

  “Now, Naveen,” Sanjay continued, “please close the door of this cabinet and wrap this chain here tightly around the top and bottom of the cabinet.”

  “I don’t like this,” Tamarind whispered as Naveen worked. “This isn’t right.”

  “The time has come!” A voice echoed throughout the room. This time we all jumped. “Seat yourselves around the table and clasp hands. Whatever happens, do not break your bond.”

  “His voice echoes from within the cabinet,” Nadia said. She was the first to move. We followed her lead, sitting down around the table. I sat between Nadia and Tamarind, with Naveen opposite me.

  “It is done,” the booming voice said. “The sun has slipped from our world. I can feel the power flowing.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Not because of Sanjay’s words, but because of what I felt. Cold wind blew over me. It was so cold I could have sworn I felt icy tendrils touching my neck. I wasn’t the only one who felt it. Tamarind gasped. I glanced around the room. The only light came from the candles along the edges of the room and the solitary candle in the middle of the table. I couldn’t see well enough to tell where the breeze was coming from. Sanjay must have hidden a fan somewhere. He must have.

  “Samuel!” The voice was simultaneously a whisper and a shout. How had he done that? “You are here with us. It is your presence I feel, is it not?”

  The cold wind picked up. The candles flickered violently.

  “No? I am mistaken. Is it Anand who is here with us tonight?”

  The wind swept around us, extinguishing the candles along the sides of the room. Only the light from the candle on the table remained. But not for long. I felt myself shiver as another light appeared.

  A ghostly glow materialized above the cabinet. A strangled scream escaped from Tamarind’s lips.

  “The air is cold,” the voice said. “So cold in this place. Not like the sandy beaches of Cape Comorin where Vishwan and I played as children.”

  The sound of rain striking against the windows shifted my attention. The storm was now right above us.

  “I know,” that strange loud whisper continued. “I know who has killed.”

  I knew it must have been Sanjay speaking. It had to have been. But it certainly didn’t sound like him. He spoke with only a hint of an Indian accent—probably because he didn’t know how to do a South Indian accent, only a North Indian one, which is quite different. Not that Tamarind would have noticed. But when Sanjay performed, he did it right. Was he using a distorted amplifier to deepen and disguise the voice?

  The glow that had appeared above the cabinet continued to hover there like an oversized lightning bug. The glowing circle didn’t exactly move, but it wasn’t completely still either, its energy pulsing. It didn’t take shape. Of course it couldn’t. Because it wasn’t really Anand. But what on earth was it?

  “What the hell?” Naveen said.

  I felt Nadia’s body jerk. “Do not break the circle,” she whispered tersely to Naveen. Air swirled around us. I swallowed hard, reminding myself this was only a trick. It was only a trick.

  “Tamarind Ortega,” the disembodied voice whispered.

  A burst of frigid air blew against my ear as the words were spoken. Tamarind screamed, but she didn’t move from the circle.

  “What do you want from me?” Tamarind cried out, clasping my hand tightly.

  “Murderer,” the voice whispered. “Thief!” Cold air whipped around us. The candle on the table blew out. The glow above the cabinet was the only light left in the room. “Tell what you know!”

  Tamarind screamed.

  “Stop!” Tamarind shouted. “You win! I promise I’ll tell them everything! Just go away! Go away!”

  A popping sounded. Along with the noise, the glow disappeared. But the room did not fall silent. A low rumbling began. It was a voice, but unlike the disembodied voice echoing through the room before, this one was clearly coming from the cabinet. It grew louder into a piercing deep scream. It was so loud, we let go of each other’s hands to cover our ears. The horrid sound chilled me to the bone.

  The scream stopped. Its echo reverberated.

  Nadia was the first to lift her hands from her ears as she ran toward the cabinet. “Do not just stand there,” she cried. “Help me get this chain off.”

  “Where’s the key?” I asked. I couldn’t look at Tamarind. Sanjay was more important right now. “Sanjay?”

  There was no response.

  “That wasn’t at all like I thought it would be,” Tamarind said, her voice dead of emotion.

  “We have to get him out of there,” Nadia said.

  Naveen rushed to help her, and Nadia stepped away from the cabinet.

  I thought of what Sanjay told me of Samuel’s faked death. What if he was wrong? What if Samuel really had died in this cabinet? What if there wasn’t enough air inside, like Nadia had thought? Was that why Sanjay had screamed so horribly?

  Nadia gently pushed Naveen aside. “I have found the solution,” she said. In her hands, she held a large set of wire cutters. “These were in the closet.”

  With a snap, the front section of chain fell to the ground.

  Naveen pulled the chain from around the cabinet, not worrying about scraping the intricate fire carvings. As the last strand of chain hit the floor, he yanked open the door of the cabinet. The rope that had bound Sanjay’s hands and feet lay at the bottom of the wooden cabinet, along with Sanjay’s black bowler hat. But there was no sign of Sanjay.

  The cabinet was empty.

  Chapter 45

  San Francisco, 1906

  Anand was nervous about meeting Li at the Siren’s Anchor that night. He was sure that Li would see from his face that he had been courting his sister Mai. But Li’s note had been insistent.

  When Anand entered the saloon, Li was standing at the bar with a young Chinese man, at the age between a boy and a man. There was something familiar about him...

  The young man smiled at Anand and extended his hand for Anand to shake. A scar ran from the man’s hand up the side of his arm.

  “Recognize your friend?” Li asked. “This is Eddie. This is the boy whose life you saved three years ago. He’s here to return the favor.”

  The three sat at a table together and leaned in close.

  “Eddie is from a family of sailors,” Li explained.

  “I owe you a great debt,” Eddie said.

  “It was nothing more than any man would have done,” Anand replied, remembering that dark night when he, Li, and Samuel had rescued Eddie from the gang of men beating him. There was never any question that he would help the boy.

  “You are too humble,” Eddie said. “My brothers agree we are in your debt. We want to repay you.”

  “No payment is required, my friend,” Anand said.

  “Wait until you hear what he has to say,” Li said.

  Eddie grinned. “We’re going to help you intercept the ship you’re after,” he said. “The ship that holds the treasure you seek.”

  Chapter 46

  “Oh my God!” Tamarind screamed, pulling at the sides of her hair. “Where did he go? Something went wrong! Anand’s ghost took him!”

  Though I didn’t agree with her assessment, I didn’t like this one bit. Where could Sanjay have gone? The wind had distracted us in the near darkness, which would have allowed for his escape, but I didn’t see where he could be hiding. I found my way to the wall in the semidarkness and fumbled for a light swi
tch. The lights came on, but didn’t do much to illuminate the situation. I still didn’t see where Sanjay could be.

  I knew why I was so uneasy. I couldn’t think of any reason why Sanjay would be hiding.

  “There is no such thing as ghosts,” Nadia said. “You have all been deceived. Am I correct that this was for the benefit of Tamarind?”

  “We have to find Sanjay,” I said.

  “He will reveal himself in good time,” Nadia said.

  “Tamarind,” I said, squinting in the new light, “what were you talking about back there?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear her confession, but it’s what we’d set out to do, and I knew I needed to hear it. I still couldn’t quite believe Sanjay had been right about her all along.

  Tamarind lifted the bustles of her dress and walked over to the window. She looked out over the rain falling between us and the sparkling lights of the city before turning back to face me.

  “I never wanted you to get hurt,” she said. “That’s why I did it.”

  “What did you do, Tamarind?”

  “I did it to protect you.”

  “What did you do?”

  The metal sliding door to the room groaned as it slid open. We all gave a start, but we must have been all screamed out, because nobody screamed.

  Sanjay stepped into the room. He looked no worse for wear except that his bow tie was askew and his thick black hair was running a bit wild without his hat.

  “Tamarind didn’t do it,” he said. A stack of papers was clenched in his hand.

  “Hey,” said Tamarind. “Those papers are from my bag.”

  “I know. You were trying to protect Jaya. Not to hurt her or anyone else.”

  “Would someone,” I said, “please tell me what’s going on.”

  “I was trying to protect you from the truth about your uncle,” Tamarind said. “I know how important he was to your family. I didn’t want you to know the truth, or get yourself killed in the process.”