by Gigi Pandian
“Do you suppose your author was looking for a looted treasure when he disappeared?”
“His disappearance in Southeast Asia.” I thought again of that missing chunk of time when Rick claimed he had amnesia. He’d done so much research for Empire of Glass. When Marc was killed seven years ago and only incomplete details were reported, Rick could have realized more about the sculpture than the family. The theft details hadn’t been reported, but the timing was too much of a coincidence. He was already interested in this crime. Had Becca met him then, when she was still only a kid? Becca was smart. I didn’t yet know how, but she’d put it all together.
Sébastien shone his light onto the photograph. “They’ve had no answers. Only mysterious deaths, fear of a ghost, and the seemingly impossible theft of a valuable antiquity—”
“Which their ancestors stole.”
“You see! Exactly why they didn’t come to you directly. Becca is an impressionable young college student who’s had no closure after losing her father, so she deserves some sympathy. But it stops there. I’ll feel no additional sympathy for someone who’s doing this to you. She’s using her mother’s surname?”
“I presume so. She’s not using Durant. I would have put it together if it was.”
“What else do you know about her?”
“Well, she tried to scare me off after asking for my help—” I gasped. “No.”
“What are you thinking?”
“That she could have killed her accomplice.”
Sébastien blinked at me. “You believe she killed Rick Coronado?”
As he repeated my idea back at me, I heard how thin it sounded. I didn’t quite believe it myself. “I don’t know what to think. But Rick told me something more was going on than I realized when he was on his way to San Francisco. Becca was in San Francisco.”
“Along with millions of other people.”
I scowled at him.
“Merde.” Sébastien looked at his watch. “More time has passed than I thought. We shouldn’t risk staying too much longer. I’ll put the sheets back where we found them. Starting with the other rooms. As soon as I’m done, we should leave this house.”
Ten minutes later, we were safely back across the street.
“What’s your next move?” Sébastien asked.
“We confront Becca.”
Chapter 27
It was after two a.m. when I called Becca. Five p.m. in California.
It took her four rings to answer. “Dr. Jones?” A yawn. “Um, I’m on Christmas break.”
Not only had she yawned, but her voice was groggy. I was right.
“I know. And you’re in France.”
She had no reply to that.
After Sébastien and I had slipped out of the house and made sure we’d left nothing behind at the apartment across the street, we’d returned to our original apartment where I looked up more of Becca’s online presence. Unlike most people her age, she didn’t have much of a digital footprint. At least not a public one. One social media account was private, and she didn’t use any others I could find. Which made sense, because she’d been planning this for a long time. She could have deleted her accounts.
“I know you’re in France, Becca,” I said. “Visiting the French side of your family. I know it was you. It was you who set up Rick Coronado.”
“How did you—? No, it doesn’t matter. We knew you’d put it all together eventually.”
My mouth went dry. I was right. It wasn’t a coincidence. I hadn’t thought it was, but to hear her say the words. “Is that why you killed him?”
“What?” The tiredness was gone from her voice. “Rick is dead?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
“He was fine when he came to see me a few days ago in San Francisco!”
I stared at my phone. It was resting on the table so we could both listen. “Rick came to see you in San Francisco?”
I scrunched my eyes shut, disgusted with my egotistical stupidity. When Rick said he was coming to San Francisco, I’d assumed it was all about me. But I was far from his first priority. He’d gone there to see his partner—Becca. I thought he was coming in response to my ultimatum phone call, but he’d said more was going on than I realized.
Becca didn’t answer right away. But she hadn’t hung up. She was flustered. She hadn’t planned on this. “You’re manipulating me.” Her voice shook. “To get back at me.”
Sébastien scribbled a note and handed it to me. She didn’t kill him. She’s never going to believe you. She needs external validation.
I nodded and spoke again to Becca. “Look at the news on the man pulled out of the Bay.”
More silence on the other end of the line, but again the connection hadn’t dropped. I hoped she was looking it up.
“No, no, no!” The words came a minute later, and not directly into the receiver. She must have been looking it up on her phone. “This can’t be happening. You did this!”
“He didn’t show up when he was supposed to meet me,” I said. “He was already dead.”
“He’d changed his mind about seeing you. I convinced him—” She stopped short.
“What did you convince him?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters. A man has been murdered. We need to meet.”
“Not likely. It’s not a crime to talk to an author about my family’s tragedy.”
“Would you like me to tell the police you were the last person to see Rick Coronado alive?”
“Is he there with you? Telling you what to say?”
Sébastien and I exchanged a glance. “Um, didn’t you look up and see that he’s dead?”
She gasped. “He’s dead too? What the—”
“Aren’t we talking about Rick Coronado? Who are you talking about?”
Silence.
“Becca?” My heart raced. Who was she talking about?
“You really don’t know, do you?” She laughed bitterly.
“Don’t know what?”
“I’ll meet you. But somewhere public.”
“Fine.” I’d planned on suggesting a public meeting spot, and I’d already thought of the spot that would give me strength for whatever followed. I swallowed hard. Who did she think was here with me? “Tomorrow at noon. Meet me at the glass pyramid in front of the Louvre.”
I barely slept at all that night. At a few minutes before noon the next day, I stood in front of the towering glass pyramid that served as the entrance to the Louvre Museum. A light snow dusted the ground and the hundreds of glass panels that formed the pyramid.
Becca Courtland appeared in a baby blue coat, matching hat, and fluffy cream-colored gloves and scarf. It was probably my imagination that the crowd parted for her as she approached.
A crowd of tourists might not matter to a murderer, but it couldn’t hurt. I stood by myself, but my phone was on in my coat pocket, both recording and on the line with Sébastien, who was several yards away in the courtyard that was crowded even in the cold, taking photos and generally acting like a tourist.
As Becca reached me, my initial impression of her perfectly put together appearance didn’t hold up. Her eyes were bloodshot, and concealer hadn’t disguised the dark circles. She looked around nervously.
“I didn’t call the police,” I assured her. I was so far from having pieced together what was going on, I wouldn’t have known what to tell them.
“Funny.” She rubbed her gloved hands together and pulled her coat more tightly around her. “Of course you wouldn’t dare call the police. Where is he hiding?”
“You think I faked that news that Rick Coronado is dead?”
“If you still want to play this game, fine.” Her eyes darted around the courtyard. Had she spotted Sébastien casually watching us? “What do you think you know?”<
br />
“No. That’s not how this is going to work. You’ve already shown how manipulative you can be. I’m not giving you more ammunition.”
“I want this all to come out. That’s the whole point! Just because I’m agreeing to tell you what I’ve done, this doesn’t mean you’ve won.”
“Fine. I’m listening.” My toes were just about frozen, but I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Courtland is my mother’s maiden name. She’s American. My dad is French—was French. It’s not fair I have to talk about him in the past tense. My father was Marc Durant. And he shouldn’t be dead.”
“I’m sorry.” I really was sorry. I knew what it was like to lose a parent.
She narrowed her eyes. “Spare me your sympathy. We’re both here because we want answers. I’ll tell you what I know, and then you’ll do the same. The truth.”
“The truth.”
Becca looked at the pyramid. “Did you know that Rick wanted to call one of his novels The Pyramid Thief? It’s a great title, isn’t it? But Fox & Sons wouldn’t go along with it, since it didn’t have Glass in the title.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t know that.”
Becca looked back at me, almost as if she’d forgotten I was there. “When I read about you and Rick being fans of each other, that’s when I had the idea. The press never paid any attention to my family’s story. There was no demand for justice for Marc Durant. Everyone forgot about him. But if a famous author were to take up the cause, and to tell the true story through fiction, revealing a killer that even the police had overlooked? That’s something else altogether. Something people wouldn’t be able to ignore.
“I was able to convince Rick to write my family’s story as a manuscript because it would be a win-win situation. He was interested in the lost naga statue that had been stolen from my family when my father was killed, and I wanted justice for my father’s murder.
“Rick had declared his writer’s block and fear of travel, so his career was effectively over. But I had a story I knew he’d be interested in, because he’d been interested in it seven years before. I had details known only to my family, so I could give him the whole story for a Gabriela Glass thriller.”
“You had the plot,” I said, “and he could write it.”
“He was hooked before I told him what I wanted to do.”
“You found out about his time in Cambodia when he went missing. His searching for the treasure that goes with the naga statue. The one you’ve taken up the search for.”
“Treasure? You think I care about that? I want justice for my father. Rick is the one who wanted the treasure.”
“But the treasure is real.”
“A family ‘treasure’ was stolen,” Becca said. “A stupid old statue of a creepy snake. But to Rick, a small theft like that wasn’t enough for Gabriela Glass. He needed to make up more to the treasure, so he took family gossip someone made up about one of our ancestors and a jewel-encrusted prince and princess, and made it into a big deal in the book. He said even though I couldn’t find it online that didn’t mean it wasn’t real. Whatever. I didn’t care, as long as the story would still solve the crime of proving who killed my father.”
“A jewel-encrusted prince and princess?” I repeated.
“Aren’t you listening? It wasn’t real. Don’t you think they would have displayed it with their other treasures if it was?”
“Rick thought it was still in Cambodia. I think that’s where he went when he disappeared—”
“Forget about the treasure,” Becca said. “I should have realized he’d kill again if provoked.” A tear rolled down her pale cheek. “I was naive, I admit.”
“You know who killed Rick Coronado?”
“I’m not surprised he didn’t tell you he killed Rick. But I was sure he’d have to tell you about his earlier crime when you showed him the manuscript pages. Maybe not the murder itself, but the theft. I believed you were smart enough to put two and two together.”
My mind reeled. “Rick’s notes. His insistence that I show the pages to those in my inner circle. He didn’t want feedback. He wanted me to show it to someone so I’d see their reaction.”
“Ding ding ding. Give Dr. Jones a prize.”
“Tamarind and Miles read the pages, but Tamarind is a she so that’s not who you’re talking about. And there’s no way Miles had anything to do with a murder.”
“Not those two,” Becca growled.
“None of my inner circle had anything to do with France—” I gasped. Did she think Sanjay was involved? Sanjay, who’d introduced me to Sébastien. I couldn’t speak. She couldn’t mean Sanjay.
The impossible crime element of the earlier theft had the trappings of stage magic. Sanjay was a busy guy and didn’t read much fiction, so I hadn’t shown him the manuscript. God, had he gotten himself into something bad when Sébastien was mentoring him?
“Your boyfriend Lane Peters,” Becca said. “He’s the man who killed my father.”
Chapter 28
Lane Peters. My Lane Peters?
I focused on the details of Becca’s face as I took in her accusation, from the firm set of her jaw, visible above the scarf that had fallen, up to the anger in her eyes.
She was dead serious. As I watched her breath turn to mist in the frigid air, I knew she was telling the truth. Her truth. I didn’t believe for a single moment that Lane was a murderer, but that the manuscript was meant to tell his story, as Becca understood it.
I understood something too. It was the story Lane had hinted at since I’d known him. The reason he quit his old life.
Like an ostrich sticking its head into the sand, I had assumed the tragedy that made Lane quit his old life was something like nearly getting caught and a friend of his winding up in jail. But being involved in a murder? I hadn’t pressed for details when he told me about it two summers ago when we first met. The memory had still seemed too raw.
I groaned. “The name. Tristan Rubens. The name of a Knight of the Round Table and a Baroque painter. Just like Lane’s given name, Lancelot Caravaggio.”
“Rick was giving you a big hint.”
And I’d missed it. I’d let my ego take over, wanting to believe Rick was enlisting my help as a historian who’d found other lost treasures.
There was no question. Becca wasn’t lying about that. Tristan was meant to be Lane.
“There’s no way Lane Peters is a killer,” I said. “That’s more ridiculous than a ghost killing anyone.”
“I was so sure he’d confess everything to you after he saw the writing on the wall that exposed what he’d done. I guess he’s not sticking around after all. No matter. The actions of a thief might not merit an international man-hunt, but a murderer? His time is coming.” She smiled maliciously.
“Lane has told me all about his past,” I said as carefully as I could. Now that I knew this was all a trap, I was aware she might be recording the conversation.
“But not what happened to my father. You must have shown him the pages! I was so angry he stood you up that night at the restaurant. I’d planned the timing so carefully! Rick’s demand for an answer that night, and making sure the package wouldn’t arrive until the end of the day, so you’d be sure to talk it over with your boyfriend. You showed him the pages. That’s why he killed Rick—”
“He didn’t kill Rick. He didn’t kill anyone. Lane never saw the chapters from The Glass Thief.”
“You’re lying,” she said through gritted teeth “I waited for as long as I could for Lane to show up at the restaurant that night. I’d so wanted to see his reaction when he realized he was about to be discovered. It was a risk, of course, that he’d disappear and the authorities wouldn’t catch him. But I didn’t think he would. Because of you. Either way, I’d get to see him destroy himself. Give up his freedom, or give up the love of his life. Probably both, since th
e novel was going to be a sensation. True crime novels are all the rage. Rick’s book was going to be huge. Everyone was going to learn about Lancelot Caravaggio Peters, the murderer who ruined my life. And I’d get to watch his downfall from the start. But because of stupid Wesley…” she trailed off.
“What does Wesley have to do with this?”
She glared at me. “He’s more polite than I thought. He didn’t want to take credit for finding the letter in my book that afternoon, and didn’t want us to linger any longer at the table that night. He said we’d be rude, since so many people were waiting for a table.”
“The letter?” I repeated. No…
More pieces clicked into place. The timing was even more specific than I thought. Becca and Wesley “found” the letter the same day Rick Coronado’s first manuscript pages arrived. That was the plausible reason for Becca to be at the restaurant when she thought Lane and I would both see the opening of Rick’s novel.
Becca had orchestrated the whole set-up perfectly. But perfectly on paper doesn’t translate to real life. She could fake a historical letter and have a friend “accidentally” find it that afternoon where she’d left it in plain sight, but she couldn’t control the people around her as much as she’d anticipated when she dreamed up her revenge. Wesley had taken the bait of the letter, but he was a decent guy who acted respectfully at the Tandoori Palace. And Lane was supposed to meet me at the restaurant that night, but had canceled because, as I later learned, he was busy filling out paperwork to buy the house.
It was my own biases that had fooled me. In a highly publicized case, I’d discovered a treasure my great grand uncle Anand had saved here in San Francisco, shortly after the Great Earthquake of 1906. The discovery involved the sunken ships underneath San Francisco. I was primed to respond to a similar discovery. A discovery that Becca and Wesley brought me, leading me to spend more time with them.
Becca had been unable to get close enough to me at a large university, so she faked and planted a historical document in the book Wesley found. She was smart and knew finding it herself would have been too obvious. She didn’t want to show her hand. She needed a fellow student to find it. Her family had money, so she could have easily created a document that looked superficially aged. I should have seen it myself, only she knew exactly how to play on my weaknesses.
