THE CAMBODIAN CURSE AND OTHER STORIES

by Gigi Pandian

  She knew what she was looking for. Since none of the proper swords had stabbed Zachary, an ingenious device must have been in the basket itself.

  A very clever person had meant to kill Zachary Zookeeper.

  Twenty minutes later, Tempest lay down next to the man-sized wicker basket in the center of the stage. She stared at the string of lights on the ceiling and ran her fingers over the pewter charm on her necklace, a half-inch bowler hat she’d found in a thrift store that reminded her of her friend Sanjay, a stage magician who lived in San Francisco (not that she’d ever tell him about the charm or wear the necklace in front of him). Holding the necklace didn’t give her further insights. Nobody had tampered with the basket. How could she have been so wrong?

  She’d briefly considered the possibility that the attempted murderer had come back to the theater to switch baskets before she’d made it back herself, but dismissed the idea as soon as she saw the basket. It had the exact frayed spots she remembered. This was the same wicker basket in which Zach had been stabbed. She kicked the basket in frustration. It toppled, taking its stand with it. Once the basket stopped rolling, all was silent.

  Tempest closed her eyes. What was she doing here? She knew the answer, of course. In a world lacking real magic, this situation was magic.

  A faint clicking noise sounded. Tempest’s eyes popped open.

  Click.

  “Hello?” She sat up. “Francesca? Xavier?”

  Jumping down from the stage, Tempest looked down each row of seats as she walked slowly to the foyer and box office.

  “This isn’t funny!”

  Click.

  The noise came from behind her. She whirled around.

  Nothing.

  Click, click, click.

  The sound was coming from the greenroom next to the stage.

  Keeping her eyes on the door to the greenroom, Tempest picked up a saw from the shelf of props. It was a rubber saw, but hopefully whoever was inside the greenroom wouldn’t know that.

  She kicked open the door with her ruby red sneaker. The room was dark. Tempest felt for a light switch and flipped it on.

  The room appeared to be empty.

  Click, click, click.

  A wind-up monkey lay on the floor. One of those annoying creatures that holds cymbals in his tiny plastic monkey hands, banging the instrument together to amuse children and infuriate adults. Only this monkey was missing his left-hand cymbal, causing him to click rather than crash. Tempest shook her head and picked him up. In the dilapidated theater, her kicking the basket must have dislodged the monkey.

  Alone in the theater, there was one more thing she could think to do. As a magician, she knew all about secret rooms and hiding places. The sword that stabbed Zach might have been hidden in one such secret spot.

  She paused before beginning her search. Even if she found it, what would that tell her? It was still seemingly impossible for the crime to have been committed. Still, the more information she had, the closer she would be to figuring out what was going on.

  An hour later, she was regretting that decision. What kind of magician was Zach? There wasn’t a single secret room in the whole building. There wasn’t even a trap door! She supposed the audiences of a Zachary Zookeeper show had different expectations than her own.

  Before leaving the theater, she let herself into Francesca’s office, which, she noted, wasn’t locked. For a brief moment she thought she might have discovered something important when she found a secret compartment inside the desk. But all it contained was two bottles of vodka.

  Tempest turned off the lights and locked up the theater. She stood in the parking lot of the sad strip mall, thinking about her options. Next to the theater was a kid-themed pizza restaurant where many of the children who attended Zach and Xavier’s magic show would have a birthday party before or afterward. It was dinnertime, so families drove in and out of the parking lot. There was one empty car in the lot that Tempest knew wasn’t going anywhere that night: Zach’s beat-up SUV with a cheery advertisement for his magic show painted on the back window.

  On the opposite end of the lot was a miniature golf course. From where Tempest stood, she could see one of the holes clearly. Its obstacle was a giant wooden clown head with a mouth that slowly opened and closed, making it necessary to time the swing of your golf club. But in this case, half of the clown’s jaw was missing, making him look more like he should be in a horror movie than a kids’ attraction.

  That’s what was wrong with this whole situation, Tempest realized. Zach was a goofy guy who performed magic for kids in a strip mall that had seen better days, not a Las Vegas entertainer making seven figures. Neither money nor jealousy of his life could be a motive. Who would want to kill Zachary Zookeeper?

  Tempest changed out of her jeans, t-shirt, and sneakers, and donned a little red dress and sparkling red ballet flats. She was no longer Tempest Mendez. Now she was The Tempest. And she knew where to go for inspiration.

  The Magic Castle had been L.A.’s clubhouse for professional magicians since the 1950s. To Tempest, it was the closest thing to the classical era of stage magic that existed long before she was born.

  After battling her way through Hollywood traffic to reach the castle, Tempest said the magic words, causing the foyer doors to open for her. She smiled and stepped through the opening in the false wall. She walked through rooms lined with framed photographs and posters as she descended into the magical world.

  At the Hat and Hare pub, she ordered The Lovely Assistant, a cocktail that included both vodka and champagne, a combination that was definitely called for that day. A retired magician she knew was having a drink by himself and invited her to join him.

  “Tough crowd?” he asked.

  “Toughest I’ve faced to date.”

  “You know what I do when I’ve had a day like that?”

  “What?”

  “I make sure to make a young lady smile.” He handed Tempest a necklace with a ring of bright yellow daisies wrapped around it.

  “Hey! That’s my necklace.” She snatched it back, but she was smiling as she smelled the fresh flowers. “I was watching you the whole time. How did you do it?”

  “Not the whole time, my dear. I saw your face when you entered the room, when you headed straight for the bar. I knew you needed cheering up. I borrowed your necklace while you were placing your drink order, not here at the table.”

  “The location,” Tempest murmured. “I had the location wrong, didn’t I?”

  “Don’t worry. It happens to the best of us.”

  At the hospital, Zach was sleeping. But Tempest didn’t feel the slightest bit bad when she grabbed his foot to wake him up.

  “Hey, I’m an injured man!” he said.

  “I know what happened.”

  “Um, we all do, Tempest. Something went wrong with a prop.”

  “You’re protecting him. Though I suppose it’s also protecting yourself. Scandal might be good publicity for musicians, but not so much for a children’s entertainer.”

  “Am I dreaming?” Zach asked. “Because it sounds like you’re speaking gibberish.”

  “Xavier is in love with your wife, isn’t he?”

  Zach’s bloodshot eyes bulged.

  “That’s what you two were fighting about when he stabbed you,” Tempest continued. “Don’t bother denying it. I’ve already told the police my suspicions. They’ll find the knife at either your or Xavier’s apartment. Now that they know what they’re looking for, they’ll find the trace evidence.”

  Zach groaned. It must have been a trick of the severe hospital lights, but his disheveled black hair appeared to have more streaks of gray than it had earlier that day. “It was just an accident. You’ve got to believe that, Tempest. Things got a little out of hand when Xavier and I were arguing. I didn’t want it to come out that my own broth
er had stabbed me.”

  “So you came up with a plan to make it look like you’d been accidentally stabbed while on stage practicing your act.”

  Zach nodded. “It was the perfect plan. I didn’t think I’d been hurt too badly, so I drove to the theater and got right to work on the illusion that really could stab me. Xavier had a meeting on the other side of town, so it would look like he had nothing to do with it.”

  “But you didn’t count on Aurora refusing to use a real blade.”

  “She doesn’t have the stomach for stage magic.” He shook his head and gave a sad laugh. “And I, apparently, don’t have the stomach for being stabbed. It was worse than I thought, so I really did pass out inside the basket.”

  “Did you always know Xavier was in love with your wife, or only once he started dating her doppelganger?”

  “I suspected it, but never knew for sure until I confronted him today. He’s my little brother, Tempest. Can’t you understand that I’d want to protect him? He didn’t know what he was doing when he hurt me. I wish you hadn’t sent the police to his apartment.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “What?”

  “This is L.A., Zach. The police have more important things to worry about than two brothers acting stupidly.”

  “But you said…”

  Tempest shrugged. “I needed to know. And if the police don’t let Aurora go, you’ll need to tell them the truth. Otherwise I won’t force you to.”

  “You’re a great magician, Tempest. And an even better person. Thank you.”

  “I’ll leave you to get some rest.”

  “Now that I’m awake, what do you say about getting us some tea?”

  “That,” Tempest said, clicking her sparkling red flats together as she turned to leave the room, “is the best idea I’ve heard all day.” She paused in the doorway. “We can figure out how to turn this little mishap into something one of us can use in a show.”

  A Dark and Stormy Light

  This Jaya Jones short story originally appeared in Malice Domestic: Murder Most Conventional, edited by Verena Rose, Barb Goffman, and Rita Owen, published by Wildside Press in 2016.

  “Why are you looking at that old postcard from India instead of packing for your conference?” My best friend twirled his bowler hat in his hands. A mangled rose petal escaped from the interior of the hat and wafted down to my coffee table. “Damn. I thought I’d solved that problem.”

  “Did I ever tell you about the second history conference I ever attended?” I asked. “It was back when I was a grad student.”

  “I don’t think so,” Sanjay replied, but he was only half paying attention as he fiddled with the secret compartments in his magician’s hat. “Boring? We all have to pay our dues, Jaya.”

  “That wasn’t the problem.”

  “Traumatic?” He tossed the hat onto his head. With his signature hat, perfectly styled thick black hair, and impeccably pressed tuxedo, he looked far more mature than his twenty-eight years. The boyish grin that followed ruined the effect. “I didn’t take you for someone who’d get stage fright from public speaking.”

  “I’m not. It was the most exciting conference imaginable. I’m procrastinating on my packing because I can’t imagine any future gathering living up to it. All I have to remember it by is this postcard of Pulicat.”

  “The conference was in India?”

  “No, it was here in the US. And I wish I’d known you then. I could have used your skills of misdirection to figure out what was going on before the situation got out of hand.”

  “I’m supposed to be the cryptic one, Jaya.” Sanjay plucked the postcard deftly from my hand. He’s a stage magician, so I couldn’t have stopped him if I’d tried. His eyes widened as he looked over the text. “This postcard is signed by Ursula Light. I don’t care if I’m late for my dress rehearsal. Now you’ve got to tell me how you crossed paths with the famous mystery writer. What does she have to do with an academic conference and a postcard from the east coast of India?”

  A few years ago, while I was still a graduate student, I began attending Asian History conferences. At the fateful gathering I will always think of as The Conference, we didn’t fill up the entire hotel. Instead, we found ourselves sharing the space with a mystery writers’ convention.

  If I’m being true to the story, I need to say that it began on a dark and stormy night. If it hadn’t been for that storm, the whole fiasco would have been avoided.

  I was drenched after my brief walk from the metro stop to the hotel. After changing into dry clothes, I was more than ready for a warming drink at the hotel bar. That night I learned that mystery writers are even bigger drinkers than historians. It was barely five o’clock and there wasn’t a single free table. Two women invited me to join them. They moved two hulking bags of books to make room for me and my behemoth three-olive martini, even after I confessed I wasn’t there for the mystery convention. These mystery folks were a friendly bunch. They introduced themselves as a mystery novelist and a children’s librarian.

  “What do you think?” The librarian tilted her head toward a gaudily dressed woman standing at the bar. “Is that Ursula Light?”

  I’d heard of the famously reclusive mystery novelist, of course. Even though I prefer historical adventure novels, I don’t live under a rock. The woman who might have been Ursula Light adjusted an oversized pair of dark sunglasses and the scarf tied around her head.

  “Isn’t Ursula Light younger?” I asked.

  The librarian tried and failed to suppress a smile. “Her book jacket photos are a few years out of date.”

  “A few decades is more like it,” the writer added, raising an eyebrow beyond the confines of her cat-eye glasses.

  “Why don’t you ask her?” I suggested.

  “The convention hasn’t officially begun. She’s probably trying to get a drink in peace.”

  “She doesn’t look very peaceful.” I watched as the woman gripped the stem of a martini glass with a forcefulness usually reserved for killing a mortal enemy. She looked to be in her seventies, but I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to tangle with her. She knocked back the drink and scanned the crowd. Was she looking for someone?

  “She hates being in public,” the librarian said. “She’s only here because she’s being honored.”

  “In that case I’m sure she’d be happy to be recognized. She probably feels bad that nobody is talking to her. Why don’t we—”

  “Jaya!” Stefano Gopal called to me from across the bar and waved for me to join him. He was impossible to miss. He stood over six feet tall, wore the thickest glasses I’d ever seen, and had a full head of white hair that framed his dark brown complexion.

  I excused myself from my new friends and joined my professor. As he pulled me farther away from the crowds of the lobby bar, I caught a glimpse of the two women walking up to Ursula Light. A second later, all thoughts of mystery novelists disappeared from my mind.

  “Milton York,” Stefano said, “is missing.”

  “What do you mean, he’s missing?”

  “Exactly that. This is a disaster. He’s supposed to give the keynote lecture, but he’s gone.”

  “Do you mean he’s late arriving? I heard that the storm is causing flight delays.”

  “No, it’s not that. We had a preconference meeting today. He was there this morning but missed the afternoon half of the meeting.”

  “He’s a grown man. Why are you so worried?”

  “He was afraid,” Stefano said, his dark eyes filled with intensity, “that something would happen to him.”

  “Because of that Dutch East India Company discovery he made on his last trip to India?”

  “Of course. Milton was paranoid about another historian getting an advance look at his findings. He told me last night that he was certain someone had searched his briefcase. He wa
s quite shaken. And now he’s gone.”

  Milton York was a historian who focused his research on Indian colonialism, the same subject Stefano had spent his long career researching, and the research area I was focusing on at the start of my career. Milton claimed to have discovered a diary that would change some widely held assumptions about why the Dutch lost their stronghold in India. He found the diary in Pulicat, India, amongst the records of a Dutch East India Company cemetery. If his findings were accurate, the life’s work of many historians would be called into question. Stefano and I were concerned most specifically with the British Empire’s impact on India, so Milton’s research didn’t affect either of us as directly as it did others, but it was still a big deal.

  “So you think someone killed him,” I said slowly, “to steal his briefcase?”

  “Ada-kadavulae, Jaya.” Stefano gaped at me.

  “What?” I left India at age seven and my Tamil is rusty, but I was fairly confident he hadn’t said anything worse than My God, Jaya.

  “I had no idea you had such a brutal imagination.”

  “You’re the one who said—”

  “I’m not afraid he’s dead,” Stefano said. “I’m afraid he got cold feet and left before presenting his controversial findings.”

  “Oh.”

  Stefano adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses and appraised me. “It all makes sense now.”

  “What does?” I looked down at my black slacks, black cashmere sweater, black heels, and pseudo-briefcase. Was I underdressed for a professional conference of historians?

  “Your draft dissertation chapters are the least dry chapters I’ve read in decades. The way you get inside the minds of the figures in the British East India Company you write about, it’s like you’re writing narrative nonfiction that’s being adapted as a screenplay for a big-budget movie.”