The Glass Thief (A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery Book 6)

by Gigi Pandian

  The snow had stopped falling, and the sun shone brightly on the horizon. I donned my running shoes and jogged the mile to the mansion. I remembered the exact address, as I’d looked it up to give it to Sébastien the night before. But I didn’t need it. I knew I’d found the right place as soon as I rounded the corner on the block.

  I stopped running in front of the house and pretended to stretch. Technically, I really was stretching. I simply didn’t need to at this point in a run.

  The house had been radically modern when it was built over a hundred years ago, and it retained that same radical feel. Rick’s description had captured the spirit of the serpents that slithered up the iron balustrade. Neither his words nor the old photographs could do justice to the fierce faces carved intricately into the design. But Rick had come close.

  Dammit, why had he felt the need to see me in person? Why couldn’t he have stayed safely at home? Wasn’t he supposed to be a recluse?

  I reached out and touched the cold head of the wrought-iron snake. A light covering of snow had fallen across the railings leading up the house. I flinched. I could have sworn I heard a hiss. I knew it was my imagination, but it felt real.

  A moment later, I saw why. My stealthy accomplice had arrived. Sébastien stood leaning against his Porsche Panamera. His wild white hair stuck out from under a black beret; he pulled off the look as if he’d invented it.

  He gave me a hearty hug, and I was happy at the strength of his arms. He’d lost too much weight after catching pneumonia.

  “I had foresight,” he said. “I brought my four-seater, so whatever is in store for us we can take my car. Where’s Lane? Oh dear…”

  “He tried to get to me through you too?” Now that was getting to be too much.

  “No. I haven’t spoken to Lane. Your face. Don’t forget Christo and I had a mentalism act. Your poker face is half decent, but you show your emotions when it comes to love.”

  “Speaking of which, I believe I see some of that on your face as well. You’re seeing someone.” I put my right hand to my temple. “A younger man.”

  “Ha! All men are younger than me.”

  “Fitz is… seventy-nine?” I lifted my left hand to my other temple, trying to look as if I was deep in concentration reading his mind. “He was bored in retirement, so he began doing some work at the Machines de L’ile.” I laughed at the look of horror on Sébastien’s face. “Don’t worry. I haven’t debunked your magician brethren’s life’s work. Sanjay told me.”

  “I take back what I said about your poker face. You’re frighteningly good. Now, are you going to tell me why you’re in Paris on your own, standing in the snow in front of an old mansion that looks as if it would be perfect for one of my magic acts?”

  Chapter 22

  I hefted a birdcage covered with a silky black cloth up the steps to the apartment. “New pets you couldn’t leave alone?”

  “All will become apparent,” he said enigmatically.

  Sébastien had brought a small overnight bag of worn leather that looked simultaneously in pristine condition and hundreds of years old, and two oddly shaped containers he said he’d explain later.

  “Did you bring Démon so he could bite holes in another pair of my shoes?” I asked.

  “I’m sure he misses you too.”

  Démon was Sébastien’s demonic bunny. A real rabbit, not an automata like Sébastien’s butler Jeeves. Also unlike Jeeves, who didn’t do much beyond fetching tea, I swear that creature was at least as smart as a dog. And he loved chomping on my shoes.

  “Démon?” I said hesitantly to the bird cage. The sound of cooing was my answer. Bunnies didn’t coo.

  “You hinted you’d need to get inside that mansion you just showed me,” Sébastien said. “I didn’t think you’d have a key, so I brought some options.”

  Options. Right.

  I told Sébastien about the strange tale from Rick Coronado and his death on his way to see me. I ended with the reason why I’d come to the mansion: the impossible double murder (of the same man) and the disappearance of a valuable sculpture even though the snow outside the mansion hadn’t been touched. I assumed those elements would appeal to his curiosity, but it was something unexpected he latched onto.

  “A death threat?” he repeated. “You received a death threat and decided to step into the lion’s den?”

  “It wasn’t a death threat. Just a threat to forget about whatever Rick was trying to tell me. And the dead snake wasn’t even real. It was plastic.”

  “But the person who wrote the note has killed a man, Jaya. Possibly two, if the author was killed by the same person who killed Marc. Therefore it’s a death threat.”

  “It’s a good thing I have you to look after me then.” I kissed his cheek and took his mug to refresh it with more tea.

  “And it’s a good thing I’m an agreeable old man. I know there’s no stopping you, so I might as well help.”

  “Back to our plans for getting inside the house.”

  “To reenact what happened?” Sébastien asked. “How very Belgian of you.”

  “English, if you want to get pedantic,” I said. “It was Agatha Christie who invented Poirot.”

  “If you’re going to ignore my fatherly advice and refuse to go home, at least let’s stop discussing fictional detectives and get back to what we know.”

  “I don’t think we can exactly reenact the crime, since we don’t have enough facts. I want to see what’s real and what’s fiction. Enough of it is real to have gotten people killed. What’s really in that house?”

  “You’re frightened.”

  I glared at Sébastien. “I’m not scared. I’m frustrated. None of this speculation matters if we can’t find a way into the house.”

  “That?” Sébastien’s eyes twinkled. “That I’ve already figured out.”

  “You just got here!”

  “It took me all of five minutes to work out the details,” Sébastien said. “Why do you think I wished to see the house first?”

  “I know we have to wait a couple more days until the anniversary when the household is out—”

  “Do we?” Sébastien sighed. “For a brilliant historian, you can overlook the most obvious facts.”

  “What am I missing?”

  He chuckled, then a sadness swept over his face. “Do you really think that parents who had their son die in their home would choose to remain there? Especially if they had the means to go anywhere they wished?”

  I should have thought of it.

  “Alors,” Sébastien said, “while you were fixing tea, it was an easy search to find that the parents of Marc Durant moved to their country chateau in the year following the death of their son. He was already divorced from his wife Gail, and she didn’t take the house. The Paris mansion hasn’t changed hands, so I expect it has been sitting empty since then.”

  “The curtains were drawn,” I said, thinking back on what we’d seen from the outside, “but the house and garden had been kept up.”

  “Again, money buys many things. Including the security system that I’m certain is in place to prevent burglars or squatters.”

  He showed me the mechanical birds in the trunk I’d lugged up the steps. They were similar to the ones at his house in Nantes that he used as his doorbell, but something about their construction was different.

  “These little fellows will do the work, and my living friends will be the misdirection.”

  Sébastien explained his plan. It didn’t matter what type of security system it was, only that the “birds” needed to set it off and peck through the wires so that the security company would investigate and determine it wasn’t worth fixing in the dead of night. If there were security cameras, they would see the mechanical birds, which looked quite realistic from afar. And the living birds would be present when the disturbance was investigated.
Neither people nor valuables were in the house, so one night of having no electricity would be the logical result. We hoped.

  “Why do we need to wait until nighttime, then?” I asked. “It might be marginally easier to hide outside, but wouldn’t it look more natural/less suspicious if someone spotted us during the day?”

  “Hiding in plain sight, you mean? Yes, that can help in some contexts, but here we need human nature.”

  It clicked. “The employees of the security company,” I said. “When it’s freezing and late at night…”

  “Exactement. They will not wish to stay outside and fix the system for an empty house with no people making them do so.”

  “Won’t they realize birds wouldn’t be there that late at night?”

  “Only if there’s an ornithologist who’s called out. Otherwise it’s not the first thing you’d think of when you think you are seeing real birds. That’s a risk I’m willing to take. Especially when it helps mitigate another risk we haven’t spoken of.”

  “The fact that someone killed Rick Coronado and tried to scare me off. We need to be on guard for that person. I wish…”

  “You wish he was here with you.”

  “I hate how you read minds, you know.”

  He laughed. “A curse and a gift.” When he continued, his voice was softer. “You love him, Jaya. Why are you fighting it?”

  “You know how the two of us met?”

  “In the Highlands of Scotland. If I wasn’t a Frenchman down to my bones, I’d concede that was a romantic place to meet.”

  “I didn’t meet him there, but that’s where I got to know him.”

  “When you were searching for the Rajasthan Rubies.”

  “Which we found, but…” Sébastien knew the partial story of Lane’s past. Not everything, but enough to know there were very good reasons Lane didn’t wish to catch the attention of the police. In multiple countries. “What I’m going to tell you, you can’t tell anyone, even Sanjay.”

  “I’m a magician. I know how to keep secrets.”

  “He kept two of the ruby artifacts.”

  Sébastien waited. “Is that all?”

  “Is that all? He wants me to have them, but those pieces of jewelry and gemstones belong in a museum.”

  “And are they? I mean the rest of the hoard.”

  “It’s still tied up in court, as Scotland and India argue over it. And I know, I know, the people who technically own things aren’t necessarily the people who deserve it. But that’s not the point. Do I deserve it either? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is that what this is about?”

  “What?”

  “Whether you deserve the ruby?”

  “I don’t need to be psychoanalyzed, Freud.”

  “Ha. He was still alive when I was born, you know. That was a long time ago. Living a long life gives one perspective. And a more nuanced position on right and wrong. As it applies to the law. My very nature was once illegal. And still is in some countries. Laws themselves can be immoral. Practical in most cases, but far from morals to live by.”

  “It’s not that I think it’s wrong that he broke the law when he stole the rubies for me.”

  “It isn’t?”

  I buried my face in my hands. “Not exactly.” It wasn’t a single instance of breaking the law—it wasn’t any of them. Lane’s foray into crime began when he went to college in England. There he met a man who showed him how easy it could be for someone with Lane’s talents to take advantage of corrupt wealthy people. So Lane had become a thief. He followed his morals, meaning he never stole from anyone who he believed didn’t deserve it and couldn’t afford the loss, and he never used a weapon. Lane had never hurt anyone.

  But the case of the rubies was different. In this case, he’d taken something for me. A choice had been made for me.

  “Why can’t there be a simple answer?” I whispered.

  “Life, my dear, is rarely simple. That’s who he is, Jaya. You knew that going in.” He paused and waited for me to look up. “Let me tell you a story about Christo. We were together for nearly fifty years before he died. Do you know how we first met?”

  “Because you were both stage magicians.”

  “He wasn’t when we met. He was an actor. He loved the spotlight. I didn’t. I wanted to perform magic, and I loved seeing the audience react in the moment, but I hated the fame he thrived on. We were a grand success once we started working together. Too much so. He knew I hated it. I never asked him to change his true nature for me, and when he saw I was trying to change mine for him, he put a stop to it. He saw what I needed and we found our balance. I became a magic builder, creating new magic tricks and acts, and I mentored young magicians. He went back to the stage. He didn’t need magic; he needed the venue of the theater. I didn’t want him to change his true nature.” He clasped his hands together. “Enough sentimentality! How did your Rick Coronado get involved?”

  “Because of the vanishing statue.”

  “Then let’s get to work making it reappear.”

  Chapter 23

  “Your role,” I said to Sébastien, “will be getting us into the mansion later tonight.”

  He wriggled his white eyebrows. “And looking for trickery inside. I assume a killer will have taken whatever contraption was used, but there is always evidence left behind.”

  “We’ve got time before it’ll be late enough to break into the house, so we can look into the vanishing statue itself.”

  “The vanishing statue.” Sébastien mulled over the words. “I take it the name in the Coronado manuscript, the Serpent King, isn’t real?”

  “Not that I can find, but I could use your help with the French.”

  “I hate to disappoint you, but the French word for serpent is—”

  “Serpent. I know. That’s not what I meant. I need help with the Durant family history that’s publicly available. They were a prominent family in France, and the mysterious deaths were reported in English-language papers, but nothing else. I want to know more about the man who looted the treasure in the first place. Aristide Durant.”

  We had a full day before we could break into the Durant mansion, and we made good use of it.

  I was hoping to visit the Labrouste Reading Room of the Bibliothèque Nationale, the National Library of France, after seeing photos of the inspiring room with ornate domes stretching high above massive pillars. It reminded me of the British Library’s reading rooms in London, where I’d spent countless hours researching original historical documents. But like the British Library’s reading rooms, you needed to arrange for a Reader Pass. Sébastien had a better, albeit less atmospheric, idea.

  “We’re in the modern age,” he said. “Now that we know what we’re looking for, we can find much of the history of the Durant Tea Company online.”

  “In French.”

  Sébastien grinned. “That’s what I’m here for. Though it’s a shame you won’t get to see Labrouste’s creation today. He was a magician, you know.”

  “The librarian the reading room was named after?”

  “Henri Labrouste was the architect. Decades before anyone else put pneumatic tubes into practice, he built a complex system of air-pressured tubes to deliver research materials to library researchers. Along with Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, the French clockmaker turned magician, Labrouste’s creations were part of the inspiration for my mechanical doorbell in Nantes.”

  “You’re not doing a good job convincing me we shouldn’t go to the library.”

  “Ha. Once you’ve solved this mystery, I’ll help you apply for a Reader Pass.”

  I didn’t get to spend the day in a historical building with dramatic vaulted ceilings, but Sébastien knew me well. After two errands to prepare for the evening, he insisted we do our research not in the apartment but at a café overlooking the Seine River.
“Better for the mind not to be in a cramped space,” said the man whose magic studio was a sprawling barn at least ten times as large as my apartment.

  We sat at a small table on the sidewalk, a heat lamp above us and cappuccinos to warm our hands, as Sébastien translated the French sources. The art nouveau mansion was only a small indication of their lavish lifestyle. While in Cambodia, Aristide Durant had built a grand house and filled it with furniture made by French artisans who were bringing French culture to the country. He even employed a French cook. Which seemed to me would defeat the purpose of traveling across the world, especially under the conditions a nineteenth-century traveler would endure.

  “Aristide lived in Cambodia for longer than he intended,” Sébastien said. “When he fell ill, he tried to return to France, but there was a problem with his ship. He was forced to remain in Cambodia, where he died.”

  “Wait,” I interrupted. “That can’t be right. He died in Cambodia? Then how did his sculpture get to France?”

  “His possessions were returned to his family.” Sébastien paused to read more. “Some of them, at least.”

  “You’re suggesting Cambodian officials simply let him take the valuable sculpture he’d looted?”

  “It was easier for Europeans to take works of art out of poorer countries in the past than it is now. You’re the historian, Jaya. You know this.”

  “I know it still took effort. Bribery, at the least. Which would be much more difficult if Aristide was dead.”

  Sébastien stroked the white stubble on his chin. “Perhaps a fellow explorer who saw to it his wishes were honored. Many of my countrymen went to Cambodia. I presume they stuck together and looked out for each other—”

  I gasped. “Or not. Someone could have taken the prince and princess.”

  Sébastien shook his head. “Why not take the whole thing? I’m inclined to think Aristide made multiple trips. Records from the time are sure to be incomplete.”

  “Maybe,” I murmured. But something wasn’t fitting together. “This is all speculation. We don’t have enough information yet. There are too many unanswered questions to know how he got his treasure out of Cambodia.”