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

by Gigi Pandian

  “You can’t expect to control people like this,” I said, hoping my voice wasn’t shaking.

  Becca shook her head sadly. She’d experienced far more than she should have for a twenty-year-old. “Both of us are victims. I see that now. I’m sorry now that I had to bring you into this, but it was the only way.”

  “How did you find Lane?” I asked. I could have feigned ignorance, but I wanted answers. I knew in my heart that Lane was Tristan Rubens. I didn’t believe the fictional facts, but I knew there were many grains of truth in this story. I needed answers.

  “The most horrible thing about it is why I recognized him.” Becca laughed and a tear escaped and rolled down her pale cheek. “The man I thought was my father’s old friend from university. The man who was really Lancelot Caravaggio Peters. I should have known he was younger than my father, but when I was thirteen, adults simply seemed like adults. When I saw them talking, I didn’t know what they were planning, but I thought he was the most handsome man I’d ever seen. I had the biggest crush on him. That’s why I knew every aspect of his face. That’s why I was able to recognize him when his photo was posted by the press the summer before last, even though he’d done something different to himself—or rather, I now know that he was in disguise back when I first saw him. He’s hot, so there was a meme about him for a heartbeat. Everyone else forgot about him a couple of days later when a football player proposed to his girlfriend on live television. Except me.”

  “He didn’t kill your father, Becca.”

  “He might be a changed man since you’ve known him. But that doesn’t forgive what he did. He took my father away from me. He ruined my life.”

  The look of rage and indignation on my own face must have been apparent even from yards away, because Sébastien, who’d been keeping his distance, walked directly toward us. When he was a few feet away, his shoe hit a slippery piece of ice. He faltered and stumbled.

  “Seb—”

  “Mesdemoiselles!” He caught our arms and righted himself. “Je suis desolé.”

  “Are you all right?” I asked in English.

  He gave me a sharp look before turning a kindly one toward Becca. “Je ne comprends pas.”

  Becca answered in French. I didn’t catch most of what they said, since I spoke probably twenty words of French at most, but it was obvious she was concerned for the frail elderly man who’d stumbled. What was he up to?

  Becca’s face turned cold when she glanced my way. She switched to English. “This gentleman needs assistance getting back to the metro safely. Since you and I are done, and the remaining members of my family need me, I’m going to escort him. Don’t worry. I won’t ever take another of your classes. Don’t you dare give me a failing grade as retaliation for telling the truth, though.”

  “Your faked historical document will do that all on your own.”

  She gave me a saccharine smile. “An irrelevant old letter that didn’t make it into my final paper, which you’d know if you were doing your job and grading papers instead of traipsing around the world. I’m sorry my new friend here doesn’t speak any English to witness your defeat. Even though Rick won’t be here to see his manuscript published, I’ll make sure a ghostwriter finishes it. I’ll have to wait a little longer to see justice, but I’ve already waited for seven years.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Who else did you tell? And why did you try to scare me off?” She had to have been involved with the threatening note or its disappearance.

  She linked her arm through the crook of Sébastien’s elbow. “Goodbye, Dr. Jones. I’ll be seeing you again across a courtroom. If you decide to stick with him, that is. I won’t blame you if you don’t.”

  Sébastien shook my hand as he murmured his thanks in French. More importantly, as he did so he used sleight-of-hand to slip a note into my gloved hand.

  Chapter 29

  I was stress-eating bonbons in my apartment rental when Sébastien arrived.

  “She didn’t kill the author,” he said.

  “Judas.”

  “You don’t believe it either.”

  I pushed aside the half-empty box. “No. She might have left the threatening letter but then thought better of it. But I don’t think Becca killed Rick. From the facts I know, it doesn’t add up.”

  “Yes. And she was far too caring. My stumble was inconvenient timing for her, yet she reacted compassionately. And yes, let me stop you before you interrupt. I know anyone is capable of murder under the right circumstances, so I can’t rule it out 100 percent, but she’s intelligent. It doesn’t strike me she was boxed in enough that she’d react by killing someone. She wants justice for her father above all else.”

  “Which she planned so meticulously that the plan fell apart when the smallest thing went wrong. She’s a mastermind who’s been planning her perfect revenge for years.”

  Sébastien eyed the number of bonbons I’d eaten by myself. “There’s no need for that. I don’t believe Lane is a killer either.”

  “Obviously. But the meticulous research Rick always does…”

  “You believe Lane is the Tristan character.”

  “There are things you don’t know about Lane, even though you’re one of the few people who know some of his past life.”

  “I know the important things. That he’s a good man. That he loves you more than anything. That he’s been trying to atone for his past sins for a long time.”

  “Two summers ago when I met him, he told me about his past. He told me there was a job that went very wrong five years before—making it seven years ago now—which is why he got out of his old life. He never told me the details.”

  “Perhaps it’s time you asked him.”

  I told Sébastien I needed space to call Lane and speak in private, so he left for his apartment rental. I hated lying to Sébastien, but I had too many feelings to work through. I knew it would be worse to talk to Lane before I was ready.

  The sun was low in the sky. I bought myself a bottle of wine at the market below the apartment. A delicious Bordeaux that I planned to finish on my own, along with the box of bonbons, and then I’d be ready to call Lane.

  Lane. There was zero chance he was a murderer. But why hadn’t he told me about this mess that had made him decide to turn his life around? He had told me it was so disturbing he upended his entire life because of it. And even if only half of what Rick had written based on Becca’s facts was true, Lane didn’t come off in the most flattering light.

  I understood the impulse to hide from our embarrassing oversights. I was no better myself. I clenched the stem of the wine glass. Becca had faked the San Francisco gold rush letter so she would have an excuse to spend more time with me. She’d set up the timing perfectly, orchestrating Wesley’s forced “discovery” for the same afternoon as the first Rick Coronado chapters that arrived with his demand for an immediate answer that night—and late enough in the day that she’d be able to innocently show up at the Tandoori Palace the night Lane was supposed to meet me there.

  I was still mad at Lane, but at the same time, I loved him and trusted him more than anyone I’d ever known. I looked at myself in the small mirror with fleur-de-lis flowers on the edges. The independence in my eyes gave me away to myself. I was reacting more to my fear of losing that independence than to the ruby bracelet and gemstone.

  The only men I had ever lived with were my father and brother. Neither relationship had gone especially well. My dad brought my older brother Mahilan and me to California after our mom died in Goa, where my parents had met when my American dad went to India as a young man to find himself. After arriving in Berkeley when I was eight and Mahilan was ten, we weren’t given the most stable of childhoods. Our dad self-medicated his grief with relatively harmless drugs and vastly mediocre music. Our house smelled like pot and was filled with the discordant notes of the music students my dad took in to pay the bill
s. He taught sitar, an incredibly difficult instrument to learn.

  Our doors were always open to neighbors in need, but those in need were often ourselves. We didn’t have much money, so our frequent “potluck” dinners meant that friends would bring food and my dad would play music. We were evicted several times before a small inheritance helped my dad buy a tiny house. We always stayed close to Berkeley because of the strong social network there. My dad’s long line of female friends babysat me, and my wardrobe was made up mostly of thrift store selections of my dad and his friends, which meant I wore a lot of tie-dye. Even though the sixties had ended decades before. Was it any wonder my brother went to law school and I got my PhD?

  I left home after finishing high school. I traveled around the United States making a living as a waitress for several years before starting college. I needed to understand more of the real world. Waitressing is the hardest job I’d ever had, far more difficult than being a professor. Academia was challenging for sure, but in a different way. And academia was what I thought I’d always wanted. I certainly paid my dues. I lived with Mahilan, sleeping on his couch, while I was finishing my dissertation.

  I’d always wanted the life of a mild-mannered academic. Yet here I was in a hastily-rented apartment in Paris. I’d been manipulated by one of my college students and one of my favorite authors. The college student wanted revenge against the former thief I loved, the author wanted to get his hands on a treasure from Cambodia that had probably been stolen by French colonialists. And that treasure potentially led to a larger treasure, which somebody had killed for—more than once.

  I looked back in the little fleur-de-lis mirror and tossed back the last of the wine. When I caught another glimpse of myself, I could have sworn it was Gabriela Glass looking at me from behind the glass.

  Clearly I was far too drunk to call Lane. The alcohol and chocolate left me with a strange combination of nervous energy and lethargic bloat. I donned my running shoes.

  I wasn’t reckless. I took my passport and a few essentials in my messenger bag, keeping it light and tightening the strap across my chest. I left my headphones in the bag rather than on my ears, skipping bhangra beats in favor of listening to the world around me. I had enough sense to know I needed to stay alert. I didn’t think the killer was interested in me at the moment, but I was in an unfamiliar city and the alcohol was far from wearing off.

  I ran along the edges of the serpentine Seine River, thinking that even though I wasn’t following a recommended guidebook loop, if I followed the river, how lost could I possibly get?

  Paris at Christmas time was like stepping into a romantic movie. Or it would have been if I hadn’t been tipsy, alone, and ridiculously confused about Lancelot Caravaggio Peters. Christmas trees filled public squares and could be glimpsed through lighted windows of apartments. Trees that had lost their leaves for winter were brought to life with glowing, festive lights strung through their branches. The scents of cozy, wood-burning fires and chocolate filled the air.

  I was exhausted, half-drunk, and freezing cold from sweating on a cold night when I got back to the apartment. As I started up the narrow stairs, a pounding headache began to take hold.

  I was in bad enough shape that I didn’t fully register something was wrong as I rounded the winding steps to the fifth floor of the apartment building. But part of my brain knew. As I looked at the door of the apartment, pulled almost, but not completely shut, I knew the door had been forced.

  And that someone was behind me.

  Before I could reach out and touch the doorknob, hands wrapped around my arms and pulled me backward.

  Chapter 30

  I spun around and faced my attacker, who wasn’t my attacker at all. Just the way Gabriela had been so wrong in a scene of Empire of Glass.

  “My savior,” I said, then burst out laughing.

  Lane sniffed my breath. “You’re drunk.”

  I held up my index finger and thumb with a small space between them. “Just a little.”

  “That,” Lane Peters said, “was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever known you to do.” He pulled me back, away from the door that had been forced. “At least you have your purse with you. Stay here while I check inside.”

  “It’s not a purse,” I mumbled to the empty hallway. “It’s a messenger bag.”

  He was back minutes later, shaking his head. “Whoever was here is gone.” He crouched down and examined the door more closely. “Sloppy break-in. Not professional.”

  “Should I be relieved?”

  “Not yet. Do you know who’s been following you?”

  “Besides you?”

  That almost got a smile. “Yes, besides me.”

  “Gabriela Glass?” I pushed past Lane and stepped into the tiny apartment. “She wanted to meet me.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I have no idea how to—”

  “You’re Tristan!” My head was spinning, and only partly from alcohol and adrenaline. “And you’re here. In Paris.”

  “I thought both of those points were rather obvious by now. Tamarind was worried about you. She told me what was going on and where you’d gone. Let’s get you some coffee and figure this out. It’s not safe to stay here. Come on. We’re going to—”

  I stopped his words with my lips. I didn’t care what he was doing there. I just needed to feel his touch. His arms wrapped around me and his hands caressed the small of my back before abruptly pulling away.

  He held me at arm’s length. “There’s no time for that.”

  “You said whoever was here is gone.”

  “And you’re drunk. I’ll gladly accept the turn of events if you’re no longer upset with me. But first, we need to sober you up and figure out what’s going on.”

  “On no,” I said, stumbling backwards and falling into the fleur-de-lis pillows on the couch. “You’re here where it happened—”

  He misinterpreted my reaction. “I saw the door had been forced. That’s why I grabbed you, to stop you from going in. Jones, you can’t think I’d—”

  “I’m not afraid of you, I’m afraid for you.” I grasped the starchy edges of the couch cushions, willing the sinking feeling to stop. “You’re being framed.”

  Becca…Rick…Gabriela…Tristan…the haunted mansion…the ghost covering up the murder of Luc—no, his real name was Marc…the vanishing sculpture…My mind wouldn’t focus.

  Lane pulled me up from the couch and wrapped his arms around me. I listened to his heartbeat with my head resting on his chest. His heart was beating too quickly. He wasn’t as calm as he was pretending to be.

  “I’ll figure it out,” he murmured into my hair. “This isn’t your mess. You shouldn’t feel—”

  “Stop being stupid.” I held onto him more tightly. “Whatever is going on, you’re not on your own.”

  I had to save Lane. I wouldn’t let a killer get away with letting Lane take the fall. Did he really think I’d let someone I loved—

  “Sébastien!” I cried, pushing Lane away and scrambling for my phone. If I’d put my dear friend in danger yet again, I’d never forgive myself.

  Lane swore. “You’ve involved Sébastien?”

  “You didn’t know?” I stared at Lane while the phone rang. “Come on,” I whispered to myself. “Pick up.”

  “Jaya?” The sound of Sébastien’s voice. “What’s happened?”

  I was so relieved I didn’t care that Lane was glaring at me. Sébastien assured me he was safe, having met up for dinner with old friends after he’d left me. I was thankful he was better at answering his cell phone than I was.

  “We’re going to my place,” Lane said. “Now.”

  Lane’s “place” was a safe house I’d visited after our Louvre escapade. Two separate keys unlocked a narrow door that led to a studio apartment smaller than 200 square feet, which was a generous estimate. The largest
piece of furniture was a couch that doubled as a bed, followed by a wooden table with two small chairs. I hadn’t remembered how small it was because the thing that had always struck me about it was how he’d filled the space. There used to be times when he’d need to hide out there laying low for more than a few days, so nearly every inch of wall space was put to use: a combination of bookshelves crammed with well-loved books on philosophy, art history, and fiction, and reproductions of artwork from around the world. And inside a pewter frame, a photograph of me.

  Lane steered me toward the bathroom. “A cold shower will do you a world of good. You’ll thank me later.”

  I didn’t thank him. But at least freshly brewed coffee was waiting for me when I stepped out of the bathroom wearing one of Lane’s dress shirts, which nearly reached my knees.

  “The intruder didn’t bug your luggage,” he said, tossing my bag of clothes to me. “You can have your clothes back.”

  “In a minute.” I dropped the bag at my bare feet and accepted the coffee. “My head is clearer now. Which for some reason is making things make less sense than they did before. You followed me to Paris—”

  “Which I had to learn about from Tamarind.” Color rose in his cheeks, and he couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice as he continued. “She told me about Rick Coronado’s murder, the letter in your office, and she showed me the chapters. You should have—”

  “You should have told me some things too.”

  “I know. Those chapters…I need to tell you about them—”

  “They’re your story. I know. And Tamarind doesn’t know everything.” I rummaged through my bag until I found the papers I was after. “There’s one more chapter.”

  Lane read the pages in silence, spinning a pencil between his fingers, while I finished a second cup of strong coffee with plenty of sugar.