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

by Gigi Pandian

  “Seriously?” The man who’d introduced him to his old life of crime.

  “When one is in dire straights, calling one’s mentor is a perfectly natural reaction.”

  “That only applies when your mentor isn’t an international jewel thief. In your case this sounds more like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

  “John got out of the game before I did.”

  “For a similar reason?”

  “No. A far better one. A woman. His wife, Vicky.”

  “She’s not in the same business, is she?”

  “No. She’s an art historian at a museum. She terrifies me. Because she can see through anyone.” He smiled. “You two are a lot alike.”

  “Did John help you figure things out?”

  “Vicky did. She wrote me a letter of recommendation that got me into my graduate school program.” Lane blinked at me. “Hang on. I’ve been so absorbed in what happened seven years ago, I haven’t thought about this week. It’s still fall semester. It’s not just the police you’re fleeing. Finals—”

  “Ended at the end of last week. I have a ton of grading to do by a little under two weeks from now, which I can do. And you’re supposed to be visiting your mother for Christmas.”

  “My mother is the least of our problems. I’ll make it up to her.”

  “So what happened after you disappeared? Did the police try to find you or the man you’d impersonated?”

  “The police were mostly convinced at the time it was death by misadventure, with two drunk friends acting stupidly. They hadn’t yet discovered the other missing piece of the mystery, because the family never asked them to look into it. The missing piece I hadn’t fully comprehended at the time because I’d been so focused on Marc. The sculpture was gone. The one we’d set out to steal. Marc certainly hadn’t taken it, and I hadn’t either.

  “But it was impossible for it to have gotten out of the house. The snow had stopped earlier that night. The only footprints before emergency services arrived to help Marc were my own and Marc’s, walking up to the house. Nobody else had entered the house after us, or left before us. I searched the house. There were no secret passageways.”

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “Sébastien and I have been busy.”

  “You’ve—?” He swallowed hard.

  “Don’t get off track yet. Finish the story. I wasn’t far enough into Rick’s manuscript to know how the seemingly impossible murder got resolved. What was the answer? How did it happen?”

  “I’m afraid that’s the end of the story.” Lane went back to twirling the pencil between his fingers. “Gabriela Glass’s interview with Tristen Rubens never happened, and the university friend was never involved.” Lane snapped the pencil in half. “To this day, I still don’t know the answer.”

  I stared at him. Gabriela Glass believed the thief was lying. That was how she explained the impossible crime. I had no such luxury. I knew Lane wasn’t lying. That meant what he’d witnessed was truly impossible.

  Chapter 33

  In the morning, we regrouped with Sébastien at the apartment across from the mansion. We took two metro lines and two cabs to get there, just in case whoever had broken into my apartment attempted to follow us.

  I wondered at the futility of the exercise, since we were across the street from the lion’s den. Then again, I knew we weren’t yet done with that haunted house.

  We discussed what we’d each been up to. Sébastien said he’d been thinking about Becca’s story and saw some major gaps. “We don’t know how much the charming girl hounded him,” Sébastien said, “but…”

  “I know,” I agreed. “It was certainly convenient for her to convince Rick of her plan. It was too easy.”

  “The lure of the treasure he’d been after for seven years,” Lane said.

  “That’s it,” I said. “I don’t mean you’re right. I mean that’s the problem. If we’re all so convinced that’s what he was after when he disappeared for six weeks, how did he know about the Durant family treasure in the first place? Didn’t the family cover up the theft of their statue, which according to Rick’s novel was a bigger deal than the family expected?”

  “I can’t help,” Lane said. “At that point I was running from my old life. I’m not sure how things were handled then.”

  “The theft wasn’t reported in the press,” I said. “Tamarind and I looked. It was only the suspicious death in the news, and gossip about the wealthy family in other media.”

  Thinking of Tamarind made me think about my students.

  “I need to check on something,” I said. “You two keep talking. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  I felt guilty that I’d been ignoring my job. Wesley needed to know the letter was fake. And I’d tell Naveen it was my fault if his project for Research Methods had shoddy research. I logged in and checked the electronic submissions of my student’s papers. Becca had told me the truth: she’d left the fake letter out of her paper. I doubted she’d had the courtesy to tell Wesley not to use it in his own research.

  I emailed Wesley to tell him the letter was a fake and that I’d put in a word with Naveen. It was eight a.m. in Paris, so eleven p.m. in San Francisco. I didn’t know if I should get my hopes up that he’d reply right away.

  My email inbox was overflowing, so I skimmed it for important messages. Probably best not to ignore a message from the dean of faculty. Especially when he’d emailed me twice. One was an alert that I’d missed a voicemail message from him at my university extension, the other was a “per my message” email.

  I winced. I hadn’t thought to check my university number since I’d left. One of the simultaneous up- and downsides of being an academic is that it’s far from nine-to-five hours. I called in and listened to my messages. Two students asking for extensions, and the dean’s voicemail message, with an unexpected question.

  In our process of, er, what I meant to say is that an accusation has been made against Naveen Veeran. We are investigating, but as it overlaps with your area of expertise, I thought you might be able to shed light on this without our having to make a broader, more embarrassing enquiry. A graduate student who works with a different advisor recently published a paper, and a chapter of Naveen’s newest in-progress book is quite similar. I’ll email you the details.

  Tenure applications were generally confidential. I expected that was why he’d stumbled over his initial words, not knowing Naveen had told me he’d applied for tenure. It was that same moral code that made me skeptical of the accusation. But if the student had published his paper first…

  I opened the aforementioned email and found the student paper and the book chapter. I knew immediately what I was looking at. When Naveen and I had started at the university at the same time, in the glow of securing such great first jobs out of graduate school, we’d been more collegial than we were now. We’d critiqued each other’s work. And I recognized the content of the chapter. It was Naveen’s work from more than two years ago, long before the student’s paper was published.

  This was the kind of thing that could sink Naveen’s application. He’d eventually be able to prove he hadn’t plagiarized the student’s work, but without quick validation, the seed would be planted in people’s minds that maybe he couldn’t be trusted. And tenure was voted on by a committee of humans with the same biases as the rest of us.

  I closed my eyes. There was no question that I had to speak up on Naveen’s behalf.

  By the time I’d replied to the dean to assure him I’d seen Naveen’s draft work two years before, and it was the student who’d gotten hold of the work to pass it off as his own, Wesley had emailed me back.

  Jaya, thanks for the warning, but I already authenticated the letter. It’s real, dated to more than 100 years ago, and the paper is French!

  —W

 
Wait…what? He’d even attached the authentication. From a reputable person I knew. That wasn’t possible. A second email popped up while I was still processing the first.

  Thanks for thinking of me, though. Your encouragement is why I didn’t drop out last year. I was in your Intro to History class, and your lectures rocked. And now you’re helping me with a project for another prof’s class. I didn’t know teachers could be so cool.

  I didn’t know how to react to either email.

  This kind of authentication was expensive. Wesley was a charming kid who must have learned how to be resourceful to survive without money.

  But that meant I’d jumped to the conclusion that if Becca planted the letter that the letter itself was a fake. But if it was a real historical letter, simply put somewhere it didn’t belong, that meant the information in the letter was real as well.

  I looked up the photo of the letter I’d taken on my phone. It was in French, so I entered the words into a translator as we’d done before.

  Son,

  My ship sank at port. Most of my possessions are buried at sea with the ship. But your inheritance is hidden safely. As for the fragile pieces, I will need to go back for them. I hope to return home soon.

  No name had been signed. But if facts were telling me what I thought they did, that the letter was real, written in French over 100 years ago on French paper, and it was something Becca had obtained from her own family’s archives.

  Becca was smart enough to know I’d spot an obvious fake. But if she used a real one that was simply unrelated, she could get the attention she wanted at the time she wanted it.

  My heart thudded. The letter in Becca’s possession was referencing not a San Francisco treasure, but this one. It was telling us the naga statue was indeed only one piece of a treasure. “Fragile pieces.” This was our link to the prince and princess.

  Everything else had been at least partly manipulation, impossible to tell fact from fiction. Lane filled in the blanks about what he’d seen seven years ago, but he knew nothing about the statue and where it might lead. He hadn’t even known it was Cambodian. But this letter filled in one of the key missing pieces.

  “You guys,” I called from the kitchen. “You guys!”

  They were at my side in seconds.

  I showed them the image of the letter that Becca had put in a San Francisco Gold Rush era book for Wesley to find. “This letter is what Becca used to get me to pay attention to her. She lied about what it really was, so I thought it was completely faked, but my student Wesley had it authenticated.”

  Lane took my phone and read the words in French. My stomach gave a little lurch, and I wasn’t sure if it was more from the realization that we had confirmation of our theory, or the sound of Lane’s voice.

  “If I’m right,” I said, “this shows that Becca’s ancestor knew of something bigger in Cambodia. The treasure that the naga statue was guarding. Rick had learned from Becca about a jewel-encrusted prince and princess. It’s real.”

  “Let me see that,” Sébastien said, squinting at the phone. He made his own translation, but the words were very similar to the translation we’d gotten from the Internet on my phone. Close enough that the meaning was the same.

  “Your inheritance is hidden safely. As for the fragile pieces, I will need to go back for them,” I read aloud.

  I closed my eyes and thought back to The Glass Thief.

  “What are you thinking, Jones?” Lane asked.

  “Gabriela mentioned markings on the base of the Serpent King statue. I didn’t think it was relevant since we’ve already discovered where it was pointing us. But Rick drew attention to the fact that the markings weren’t damage, but purposeful markings.”

  “Gabriela was right,” Lane said. “That’s not how sandstone breaks down. If there are really markings on the base of the naga statue, they could be a map. A perfect place for it, since stone markings have conveyed information for thousands of years. The author of the letter says he had to go back for the most valuable pieces.”

  “If we believe this to be a real map on a real sculpture,” Sébastien said, “we need that map.”

  “And we need to find it tonight,” I said.

  “Tonight?” Lane repeated.

  “Gabriela Glass was scheduled to meet a historian in Cambodia this weekend.”

  Sébastien laughed. “Surely you can’t think…” His expression turned serious. “You really think someone will be waiting in Cambodia for you?”

  “With Rick dead?” I shook my head. “I don’t know. But someone knew that Rick Coronado had put the pieces together. They killed Rick and broke into my office to scare me off. They’re following in Gabriela’s footsteps too.”

  Sébastien frowned. “This should make you less interested in traveling to Cambodia. Not more.”

  I took Lane’s hand in mine. “I’m not risking your freedom. I don’t care about a looted treasure.” I paused as I felt their skeptical gazes boring into me. “All right. I care. But not a fraction of the amount that I care about making sure Lane’s life isn’t ruined because of what happened in that mansion seven years ago. The killer is after the treasure, so we follow the killer to catch them. I’m not going to sit around and wait for them to follow through on whatever their plan is. We can’t ignore anything.”

  Lane squeezed my hand. Before he could do anything else, Sébastien cleared his throat.

  “Back to this map, then,” Sébastien said.

  Lane let go of my hand. “There aren’t generally photographs of the base and back of sculptures. And the family wasn’t forthcoming with details about it. All we have are regular photos of the expensive artwork in the library. I don’t think we’ll find a photo of the base of the sculpture.”

  I thought back to the haunted mansion across the street, with its scent of pine needles from a long-ago tragic Christmas. “We need to figure out what happened to that sculpture after it disappeared.”

  “Well then,” Sébastien said. “Let’s find that sculpture. The secret to where it went is in that mansion. Lane, are you up for setting foot inside that house again?”

  Chapter 34

  Sébastien wanted to play the part of a frail old man to check if the house security was still off by knocking on the front door and pretending to have the wrong address if his forced attempt inside tripped an alarm.

  “Too risky,” Lane said. “A good Samaritan might try to help the confused old man. That won’t get us inside unobserved.”

  “And your karma of crying wolf is going to catch up with you one of these days,” I said. “How am I supposed to know if you really need help?”

  Sébastien took my hands in his. “Your concern is touching, but unnecessary. I have outlived Christo and far too many of my friends. No, no. I know you will say I have a new beau, you two, Sanjay, many friends, and my menagerie of illusions that is still growing. But I do not fear death. When it’s my time, it’s my time. Until then, I plan to enjoy this world and its mysteries. Including this one. It must be a magic trick of some kind, as nothing truly impossible happened. There was no ghost. Of this I am certain.”

  “You have a better plan to get us inside?” I asked Lane. I couldn’t let myself get sentimental

  “The simplest plans are usually the best. You already went to the effort of disabling the alarm. All we need to do is test it without drawing attention to ourselves. Sébastien’s plan was almost right. He should go to the back door as if he belongs. If no alarm is triggered and nobody shows up within fifteen minutes, Jaya and I follow in construction worker attire.”

  “He’s good,” Sébastien said.

  An hour later, we were all inside. As we entered the grand foyer with the staircase, Lane stumbled backward and crashed into a covered side hutch. The remaining contents rattled. It was daytime and a bit warmer than when Sébastien and I had visited, so it wasn’t
ghostly breath that had startled him.

  He was looking up at the one thing that dominated this space more than the central staircase: the painting of Aristide Durant, who had built this mansion a hundred years before. Or, if the legend was to be believed, that now held the visage—and spirit—of the first man who’d been pushed to his death here. Aristide’s grandson Beaumont.

  Lane was eyeing the painting as if he’d seen a ghost. I agreed that the portrait of an angry man looming over us was dispiriting, but Lane didn’t usually overreact.

  The oversize painting that hung high on the wall overlooking the stairs hadn’t been removed with most of the other paintings, nor had it been covered with a sheet. Above us, the chandelier near the stained-glass skylight hadn’t been covered either. Both were high enough that it wouldn’t have been easy to reach them. It was another indication the occupants had departed quickly and not overseen the house being closed up.

  Lane inched up the first few steps, getting a closer look at the eerie portrait. The man had sunken eyes and pallid skin and was seated in a stiff position. The orientation of the artist wasn’t head-on, but captured from the viewpoint of someone in a lower, subservient position. A background of dark gray conveyed power but not warmth. Even as the sunlight shifted and the daytime sun cast red and blue light onto the wall next to the portrait, the mood of the room didn’t improve.

  Lane stopped and shook his head.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “The portrait…It changed again. That’s not one of Marc’s ancestors. The man in the portrait is now Marc himself.”

  “It can’t be,” Sébastien said. “Surely you’re mistaken. Family members resemble each other.”

  “You’re sure that’s your friend?” I asked.