Pirate Vishnu (A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery)

by Pandian, Gigi

  Sanjay was meticulous on stage. I’d never guessed the secrets of his big tricks, and God knows I’d seen them often enough. Playing sitar was how he unwound. It served the same purpose for him that the tabla did for me.

  Unfortunately, Sanjay was one of the world’s most mediocre sitar players. But he loved it, and he was the one who got us this gig. Raj had always booked professional musicians to play during busy Friday and Saturday nights, so he liked the idea of having additional weeknight entertainment without the stiff bill. Raj was a smart man; my microphone was the only one with the volume turned up. The rhythmic drumming of the tabla stands on its own, so diners enjoying Chef Juan’s tandoori oven specialties on a Wednesday or Thursday night were serenaded by tabla ragas with the faint sounds of a sitar in the background.

  Raj would be livid if I wasn’t there when Sanjay began to play. I told myself he would be equally unhappy if I was so distracted that I screwed up the music. Besides, if traffic wasn’t too bad, I’d still have time to make it to Berkeley and back before I was due at the restaurant.

  Any illusion I had about being on time faded as I approached the bridge. It was the start of evening rush hour, and traffic was crawling. How did people commute like this every day? I lived and worked in San Francisco, so the most difficult part of my commute was parking.

  Traffic started to flow once lanes had merged onto the bridge, and it didn’t take long to get to Berkeley.

  Lane’s apartment was a freestanding in-law unit behind a cute bungalow. Small magnolia trees led the way to the unit. I rang the doorbell and followed up with a knock on the door. No answer.

  I peeked in the front window through an opening in the curtains. I hadn’t been to his apartment before, since we’d agreed not to see each other yet, but from the glimpse I caught of the living room, I immediately felt at home. Though the unit was tiny, Lane had made it his own. A bronze-colored reading light was positioned next to an Eames chair. A stack of books was piled high on an antique trunk that served as a coffee table. From where I stood, I couldn’t see if there was any other furniture on the other side of the room. The sliver of wall I could see was covered in framed reproductions of South Asian paintings. I could see why he was an art historian. He had a great eye. I didn’t know enough about art to recognize any of the pieces, but each one was stunning.

  The bark of a dog from a nearby house startled me and reminded me I was prying. As I walked back to my car, I felt closer to Lane than ever. He was exactly the man I thought he was. And it made sense that he wasn’t at home. It was late afternoon, so he could still be on campus, hopefully in his graduate student office.

  There’s not great parking in downtown Berkeley, but once you’ve lived here a while, you learn the tricks, such as which main drags have nearby residential side streets with just enough space between their driveways for a small car. I squeezed into a spot on a street lined with student apartments.

  I felt my palms grow sweaty as I walked through the building on my way to Lane’s office. His door was slightly ajar, and it opened wider as I knocked.

  It had only been a little over a week since I’d seen him, and it felt simultaneously like it had been ages and that I’d never left his side.

  Lane looked the same as he had that last time I’d seen him. Dark blond, wavy hair falling over his face, tortoiseshell glasses hiding his prominent features, which I had learned was a purposeful decision made not for style but to hide his appearance. His tall figure was dressed casually in jeans and an untucked dress shirt. The sight of him still made my stomach do a little lurch. All right. A big lurch.

  When our eyes met, I could tell he felt the same. His eyes lit up and his lips formed a smile as he spotted me. But the expression only lasted a second. It was quickly replaced with something I couldn’t gauge. It was as if he’d put on a mask.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” he said. “We agreed—”

  “I know there were a few news stories,” I said, stepping into the cramped office, “but I haven’t had any reporters contact me in days.”

  Lane’s fingers tensed around a book he was holding. I noticed, then, that he was putting books into a box on his desk.

  “Cleaning up,” he said, setting the book into the box. He was always good at reading my expression. “You shouldn’t have come.”

  “I’ll hide under the desk if the paparazzi catch up to me,” I joked. Lane didn’t laugh. He didn’t make a move from where he stood behind his desk either. I hadn’t exactly expected him to rush around the desk and sweep me up in his arms. Okay, maybe I thought it was a possibility.

  “Jones,” he said, unable to hide the tenderness in his voice when he called me that. “We need to talk.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” I said, wondering how the simple use of a name could affect me so much. “I’ve missed you, and I—”

  “That’s what we need to talk about.”

  “Do you want to come to dinner at the restaurant tonight?” I asked. “While I drive, I can tell you about the crazy thing that happened to me.”

  Lane’s shoulders tensed. “Is everything all right?”

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “You’re okay?” he asked. His eyes searched mine, full of concern.

  “Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You said something crazy had happened.”

  I pulled the Tamil treasure map from my bag and held it up for him to see. “An amateur treasure hunter found me.”

  Instead of relaxing, Lane’s body tensed even more. His jaw was set so firmly that I wouldn’t have been surprised if it snapped. “Who?” he asked.

  This wasn’t at all how I thought the conversation would go. And why had he asked like he might already know the answer?

  “Steven Healy,” I said. “A retired lawyer. He came to see me this afternoon. Said he found this in his grandmother’s possessions that she left him. He said—”

  “Oh,” Lane said, his shoulders relaxing. “Then it wasn’t… Never mind.”

  “What’s going on with you, Lane? I thought you’d want to know—”

  “You thought wrong.”

  I stared at him, confusion replaced by anger. “I get it that the media attention we got wasn’t the best—”

  “When we were in Scotland,” Lane said, “it wasn’t real life. Now that I’m back, I’ve realized that.”

  “Life is always complicated,” I said, trying not to shout. “If you’re trying to break up with me, that’s a pretty lame excuse.”

  Lane glared at me but didn’t speak for a few moments. Finally he shook his head and looked away. “You don’t understand.”

  “Then why don’t you explain it to me?”

  Lane crossed his arms and looked up to the low ceiling of the cramped office. “I’m really busy,” he said. “I’m sorry you thought things would work out differently.” He looked down from the ceiling, but busied himself with the box in front of him, refusing to look at me.

  Only when it became clear I wasn’t leaving did he meet my gaze. A flash of tenderness crossed his face, but he shook it off so quickly that I thought I had imagined it.

  “I’m sorry, Jaya,” he said, while my head spun with confusion at the disjuncture between his actions and his words. “We’re done.”

  Chapter 4

  I made my way back to my car, blinking back tears and hating myself for letting them form in the first place. I paused at a street corner off Telegraph Avenue, trying to remember where I’d parked.

  “You okay?” asked a gaunt homeless man sitting on the sidewalk. He held a cardboard sign asking for spare change in exchange for art. Half a dozen beautiful postcard-size line drawings of Berkeley street scenes were spread out next to him.

  “Only if you can tell me that everything that happened today has been
a dream,” I said, “and I’m about to wake up.”

  “I hear ya, sister. That’s been my day every day for the last six years.”

  I took one of his drawings of Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza and bought him a sandwich from a nearby café before returning to my car. I fumbled with my keys as I tried to open the door of my roadster, dropping them in the gutter. Once I managed to get the door open, I sat in the driver’s seat before starting the car. My hands shook on the steering wheel. I hated that Lane had that much of an effect on me. I hated that anyone had that much of an effect on me.

  My stomach rumbled. I should have gotten myself a bag of chips at the café. I’d be fed at the restaurant, but I had no idea how long it would take me to get there. I needed to pull myself together for the drive back to San Francisco. I squeezed the steering wheel. It was as good a stand-in for Lane’s neck as I was going to get.

  My hands had stopped shaking, but I was still angry and unfocused. I had planned on looking up someone to contact at the University of Kerala that evening, but I couldn’t imagine being in shape to send a coherent introductory email any time that night, so I did the next best thing. I pulled out my phone to text my friend Tamarind, a librarian at my university’s library.

  Tamarind Ortega was amazing. She helped me with a research project shortly after I started my teaching job the previous year, and became one of my few good friends. She’d be able to maneuver the University of Kerala’s website and find a librarian to contact about Anand’s letters. I sent her a text message asking if she could help, then immediately followed up with a second message explaining why I needed to get started that night.

  There was nothing else to do. I was as calm as I was going to get. I started the car and headed to the Tandoori Palace.

  I wasn’t as late as I feared I might be. By the time I pulled into a parking spot a block away from the restaurant, I was only five minutes late for our first scheduled set. I hoisted my tabla case out of the trunk and hurried down Lincoln, the road that runs along the south side of Golden Gate Park. Taking my phone out to make sure the sound was off, I saw that Tamarind had already texted me back: I’m on it!

  “Jaya!” Raj called out as I stepped through the back entrance. “You like to give an old man a heart attack!” He mopped his bald head with a handkerchief, even though there wasn’t a drop of sweat anywhere on his head.

  Sanjay stepped up behind Raj, putting one hand on the restaurateur’s shoulder and flipping his bowler hat onto his head with the other. I swear that hat was his security blanket. A security blanket he could pull a rabbit out of. Sanjay shunned the traditional magician’s top hat, but I never saw him without his bowler.

  “I told him I could cover for you,” Sanjay said, “but he was worried.”

  Raj gave me a conspiratorial grin. “You are so small, Jaya. I hate to think of you at an unknown location after dark.”

  He thought nothing of the sort. Both Raj and Sanjay knew I could take care of myself. In one of my father’s rare moments of clarity, once he saw I wasn’t going to make it to five feet tall, he insisted on enrolling me in every martial arts class he could find.

  “What’s the matter?” Sanjay asked, offering me his elbow. He knew better than to offer to carry my tabla case.

  “Nothing,” I said with a shake of my head. I wasn’t ready to talk about everything that had happened that day.

  I left my shoes at the edge of the small stage. Tucking my feet under me on the carpeted stage floor, I focused my attention on the two goatskin drums that make up the tabla. I ran my fingertips around the rim of the taut material as Sanjay got situated with his sitar. In spite of his graceful movements as a magician, the long-necked sitar was an unwieldy instrument in his hands.

  I immersed myself in the music. If I didn’t force myself to focus, I’d be playing as badly as Sanjay, and driving myself crazy thinking about Steven Healy, Uncle Anand, and Lane Peters. Fortunately, focusing completely on what I’m doing was something I excelled at. It doesn’t always make for the most balanced life, but it’s great for situations like this. For the next half hour, I was lost in the music, not lost in my life.

  After we finished our first set, I turned off our mics, took a deep breath, and turned to Sanjay. “We have to talk.”

  Sanjay frowned as I led him toward the room in back of the kitchen. I wasn’t sure why. It’s not like we were dating or anything. And his ego certainly would never allow him to think he’d played a less than stellar set.

  For the first time that evening I didn’t feel completely miserable. Confused, yes. But no longer completely lost. One of the great things about being able to focus so completely is that it lets your subconscious have time to go to work. I was ready to talk to someone. My best friend was in front of me. Sanjay could help me think through what was going on.

  “I’ve got a magic trick for you,” I said. “How is it possible that a boat builder born in India in the late 1800s drew a treasure map of San Francisco with clues written in Tamil, and nobody has managed to decipher the map in over a hundred years?”

  Okay, I wasn’t ready to talk about Lane yet. But Sanjay could help me with the riddle of Uncle Anand and his map.

  Sanjay paused to seriously consider the question. “That’s not a very good riddle, Jaya,” he said. “Tamil writing can easily be translated.”

  “It was.”

  Sanjay stared at me. “We’re talking about a real guy and a real map?”

  “My great-granduncle Anand,” I said. “My mom’s grandfather’s brother.”

  “I thought you didn’t know anything about your mom’s family.”

  “I didn’t know much until an amateur treasure hunter came to see me today,” I said.

  The head chef, Juan, poked his head into the break room and handed us a plate of steaming samosas. “Extra-extra spicy,” he said with a big smile.

  “You’re a lifesaver.” I accepted the plate and took a large bite of fried potato goodness. He wasn’t kidding about the level of spice. My tongue and lips burned as I chewed. It was heavenly.

  Someone called for Juan and he rushed back to the kitchen, leaving the door open. I offered a samosa to Sanjay, knowing he’d decline. Though he refuses to admit it, Sanjay hates spicy food. He shook his head and hopped up on the counter next to the staff lockers.

  “A real treasure map?” he said. “That’s why you looked so upset when you arrived tonight?”

  I had too much nervous energy to sit down. Standing in front of Sanjay with my plate of spicy samosas, I went over the details of Steven Healy’s visit. As I did so, I replayed the key facts in my mind, trying to make sense of them. Steven’s grandparents knowing Uncle Anand, his story about how he found the treasure map in his grandmother’s possessions, and his theory that Anand’s letters would shed light on how to find his missing family treasure. Sanjay’s eyes stayed transfixed on mine as I told the story, and he interrupted only to take the empty plate. He said it looked like I was going to drop it due to my enthusiastic gestures.

  “He told me,” I concluded, “that Uncle Anand stole this treasure from his family.”

  “Wow,” Sanjay said. “That story is really—”

  I didn’t get to hear what Sanjay thought. He broke off at the sound of someone quietly clearing their throat.

  “Grace,” he said, hopping down from the counter. “What are you doing here?”

  Sanjay’s magician’s assistant stood in the doorway of the break room, a look of distress on her face.

  “Your phone was turned off,” Grace said to Sanjay. Her voice was barely above a whisper, and her thin shoulders were slumped in a way that suggested she was trying to make herself invisible.

  That was normal for Grace. She was painfully shy. You’d think a stage magician’s assistant wouldn’t be a good job for her, but it suited her perfectly. The stage
allowed her to become a completely different person. Multiple reviews of their show had called her fearless. While Grace’s tentative words and body language didn’t surprise me, there was something else going on. Something was off. Grace clutched her purse in her hands so tightly that her knuckles were white.

  “I knew you’d be on break around now,” she continued, pulling her eyes from the floor to look up at Sanjay. “I needed to talk to you.”

  “What’s going on?” Sanjay asked.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” she whispered, looking back to the floor.

  “Don’t worry,” Sanjay said, squeezing her shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

  Grace came to life at his touch. Her thin body straightened up and her eyes widened as she looked up at Sanjay. I suspected she was in love with her boss, but Sanjay was clueless.

  “There was a death in my family,” she said.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said at the same time Sanjay murmured something similar. I knew that Grace had a large extended family, many of whom had come to the U.S. from Thailand after having trouble with corrupt authorities. From the pained look on her face, this was someone she must have known well.

  “I need to go out of town for the funeral,” she said.

  “Of course,” Sanjay said. “You didn’t need to come here to tell me that.”

  “The thing is,” she said, “the funeral is the same day as that benefit show we agreed to do.”

  “Don’t worry,” Sanjay said without missing a beat. “Jaya can cover for you.”

  “I can do what?” I said. Grace and I were about the same size, but there was no way I could do the contortions Grace did as Sanjay’s assistant. She’d been a gymnast before being sidelined by an injury as a teenager. There was no way I could come close to replicating what she did.

  Sanjay shot me a sharp look. “I think Grace’s family emergency is kind of important.”