Pirate Vishnu (A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery)

by Pandian, Gigi

  Even if my research paper was safe, there was something I had no chance of recovering. I’d backed up the treasure map with a photo—but hadn’t counted on my phone being stolen. I swore.

  I wasn’t sure which loss I was more upset about at that moment. My paper on the British East India Company and the Battle of Plassey was so close to being done. The paper had been accepted by a prestigious academic journal, but they’d requested revisions that they were waiting for. The last handwritten notes I’d taken were tucked into my bag as well. I knew I could recreate the work, but it would take time, which I didn’t have. The editors were waiting, and the semester would be starting soon. I’d worked hard to get here, and I needed this paper to have a shot at tenure against Naveen. I couldn’t afford to have my work set back.

  I wasn’t usually such a negative person, but I couldn’t think of a single thing that was going right at the moment. First Lane, now all of this. My stomach rumbled again. I’d never gotten that snack, so now on top of everything else, I was starving. I hated being hungry.

  While I waited to talk to someone, I came up with a silver lining, albeit a small one. I’d left my pirate discovery research at the library. Whoever now had the map didn’t also have more information about Anand. As far as I knew, I was the only one who’d made the connection that Uncle Anand was Pirate Vishnu.

  The police officer who took my statement gave me some antiseptic and gauze for the concrete scrape on the ball of my hand and elbow. He looked all of twenty-two years old, but was a nice guy.

  “A treasure map?” he said. “Really? You want me to write that in the list of items stolen?”

  I guess I had my answer about whether I should have gone to the police with what I knew about Steven Healy.

  Since the mugger had also gotten my phone, the policeman let me use a phone at the station to cancel my credit cards, ATM card, and phone. I even got in a call to Tamarind at the library to tell her why I hadn’t returned.

  I kept my keys in my jeans pocket—otherwise they always find their way to the very bottom of my bag—so at least I had my car and house keys. My injured elbow stiffened as I fished my keys out of my pocket on the way to my car. The pain from my hand and elbow was fully kicking in now that my adrenaline had worn off. I’d broken my arm the previous year, and even though it healed cleanly, it made me nervous when I got an arm injury.

  I knew I should have gone home, taken some painkillers, and put ice on my elbow. But there was no way I was going home yet.

  On the ground floor of the history department building, I was too anxious to wait for the elevator. I ran past the group of faculty chatting in the hallway and bounded up the stairs, praying that I’d remembered to back up my files the previous afternoon. I did most of my work on my laptop, since I could bring it with me between home, office, and the library, so I rarely used the office computer provided by the university. But the desktop computer was networked, so I’d be able to see if I’d dropped my files into the remote backup after my day of work before Steven Healy had interrupted me.

  I was only a little bit out of breath when I reached my floor. I burst through the stairwell door near my office. A petite woman around my age gave a start as I did so. She jumped up from where she was crouched in front of my office door. It looked like she’d been about to slip a folded piece of paper underneath it.

  “Can I help you?” I asked. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. I didn’t think I knew her, but…

  “This is your office?” she asked. Her eyes were red and her eye makeup smeared.

  “That’s right.”

  “I needed to see you,” she said. She clutched the folded note tightly in her hand. “I’m Christine Healy.”

  That’s why I recognized her. She was Steven Healy’s daughter-in-law. She looked nothing like the perfectly made-up woman photographed in the news the previous year. Her rich brown hair was pulled back into a messy pony tail, and she hadn’t made any attempt to fix her running makeup.

  “I tried calling first,” she said, “but I couldn’t reach you, and it’s important I talk with you.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said. Why did Christine Healy need to see me? I hoped it wasn’t to retrieve the map.

  She acknowledged it with a small nod.

  “I was going to return his map—” I began.

  “No, no,” Christine said, waving off the suggestion. “We don’t care about that. You can keep his awful map. God knows it’s brought us enough grief already.”

  “Well, about that—”

  “It’s my husband, Connor,” she said, urgency in her polished voice. “He knows his father went to see you right before he was killed. There’s something you need to understand about Connor. He’s not a bad man. But he’s… unstable.”

  “You think he killed his own father?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you go to the police with this—”

  “No, it’s not that,” she said, reaching out to grip my uninjured hand. “I worry about what he’ll do if this miserable treasure becomes a story in the news. I’m trying to keep Connor away from the newspapers by keeping them out of the house, but he can read whatever he wants online…”

  “What is it you wanted to see me about?” I asked, confused by her rambling. “If it’s not about getting the map back—”

  “Oh, I suppose it is about the map, in a way,” Christine said, keeping a cold hand firmly grasped around mine. “I know you’re a historian, good at looking into things like the map Steven brought to you. I only hope that whatever you do with the map, you won’t make a big deal about it to those media vultures. We had some trouble with them in the past… I don’t know if Connor could handle it if this attention carries on much longer.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me going to the press,” I said. “I was trying to tell you a moment ago—the map was stolen.”

  Christine gasped. She let go of my hand and took a few steps back. “What do you mean it was stolen? He just gave it to you.”

  I held up my bandaged hand. “I was mugged.”

  “Oh, no,” Christine said. She stumbled backward until the hallway wall stopped her.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “No. I mean yes.” She shook her head and tried to smile as she forced a little laugh. “I’m on edge from everything that’s happened to our family, that’s all. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  Without a backward glance at me, Christine Healy ran down the hallway and out of sight.

  What was that about? She was frightened, but of what?

  I told myself my brain would be more functional when I was safely back at home with ice on my aching elbow.

  Slipping into my office, I turned on my computer and tapped my foot anxiously. It wasn’t a slow machine, but every second felt like minutes.

  I groaned as I checked my files. I’d made my last backup two days before.

  I closed my eyes and thought back to the knock on my door that had started this mess. I remembered that I’d closed my laptop after hitting “save,” and then promptly forgotten all about my own work. I hadn’t followed my usual routine since the moment Steven Healy walked through my door.

  As I headed for home, my emotions turned from pity to anger. I swung by a cell phone store, but without a credit card they told me they couldn’t give me a new phone. I could have gotten a prepaid one with a new number, but how would anyone reach me? I couldn’t call them either, since I didn’t know their phone numbers. That’s what phones were for. I drove the rest of the way home and walked warily up the stairs to my apartment.

  I wish I could have said I knew something was amiss as soon as I stepped through the door. But honestly, I was exhausted. I doubt I would have noticed if a pack of monkeys was raging a war in the corner of the apartment.

  I kicked off my shoe
s and walked to the kitchen to get some ice for my elbow. The only thing I needed to do was clear my overstimulated mind of everything that was going on around me. Well, taking some painkillers and eating would have been nice, too, but both meant venturing back out into the world, which I was in no mood to do. It was only a little over an hour before I had to be at the Tandoori Palace. Juan would feed me something delicious to cheer me up. I opened the freezer door and let the cold air wash over me.

  It wasn’t until I heard the voice from only a few feet away that I realized I wasn’t alone in my apartment.

  Chapter 15

  San Francisco, 1903

  The scream sounded almost inhuman. But the voices laughing were very human.

  “What was that?” Anand asked as he pulled his coat on outside the doors of The Siren’s Anchor. In the month since Anand had met Li, the two had become good friends, frequently visiting the welcoming saloon.

  “It’s best not to concern yourself with other peoples’ business,” Li said.

  Another scream sounded. It was definitely human. A child. Anand ran down the dark alley without thinking.

  “What are you doing?” Li shouted behind him. He swore something in Chinese that Anand didn’t understand, but Anand heard his footsteps following.

  The Chinese boy couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. He lay sprawled on the ground, leaning on his elbow as he tried to push himself up. Blood flowed from his mouth and nose. One of his arms fell at an unnatural angle.

  Four grown men stood above the boy. One of them held a metal bar in his hand. They looked up as Anand’s feet came to a stop on the gravelly back street. Li followed seconds later, bumping into Anand in the poor light.

  The man with the metal bar squinted at Anand and Li. The other men looked to their leader. The boy on the ground whimpered.

  “This doesn’t concern you,” the man said in a slow, measured voice, with the hint of an accent Anand did not recognize.

  “He’s only a boy,” Anand said, thinking of his own brother, Vishwan.

  “The boy is a thief. You and your chink friend have five seconds to turn around before you’ll be very sorry.”

  “I am never sorry,” Anand said. “I have already died, and here I am. I have no fear of death. But I am guessing you do. I am going to give you and your friends those five seconds to leave, or it is you who will be very sorry.”

  Li gasped, as did two of the leader’s men. The mouth of the man with the metal bar hung open, but he didn’t make a sound.

  “One,” Anand said. “Two.”

  The smallest of the four men ran away.

  “Stop!” the leader shouted after him. He turned his gaze to Anand. “Nobody tells me what to do.” He lifted the weapon over his head.

  Anand pushed Li out of the way, and ran past the man to help the boy off the ground. But the other two men began to move. One of them grabbed Anand’s arms while the other one punched him in the stomach. He knew pain was meaningless, but it still hurt like hell. He would have fallen to the ground had it not been for the man holding his arms.

  Li tackled the man with the weapon, wrapping his arms around the man’s mid-section from behind, but the man was twice his size. Li was but a minor annoyance as the man stepped toward Anand, dragging Li with him.

  “This doesn’t look like a fair fight,” said a new voice. It was the voice of an Irishman. He stood on the other side of the alley. Anand looked up and caught a glimpse of the newcomer just as a punch hit the side of his face. Pain seared from his jaw. He tried to focus his vision.

  “Jesus Christ,” the leader said. “What the hell is this? A party?”

  “Just evening the score,” the newcomer said. He took what looked like a step backward, but Anand saw what he was doing. His foot connected with a pile of dirt. He kicked up the dirt into a cloud of dust. The Irishman ran forward through the distracting dust cloud.

  A smile crossed Anand’s face right before another punch landed on his jaw.

  Anand woke up choking. The sound of rain beat down, but Anand didn’t feel the rain on his body. He lay on a soft surface. Pain pulsed through his head and midsection. For a moment, he was fifteen years old again, unsure of his surroundings but sure he was close to death. But this time was different. His unconscious sleep had not shown him a peaceful light. Only darkness punctuated by the taste of dirt and blood.

  Now he tasted whisky on his tongue.

  “I told you it would work,” an Irish voice said.

  “Anand,” Li said. “Can you hear us?”

  “Nobody’s dead,” the Irishman said. “So you can open your eyes and stop faking it.”

  Anand opened his eyes to glare at the Irishman. His expression softened when he saw the badly swollen eye that dominated the man’s face.

  “This is Samuel,” Li said. “He was a boxer in Ireland before catching a steamer out this way for the Alaska Gold Rush in ’99.”

  “I thought that ended in ’98,” Anand said, pushing himself into an upright position. Until he spoke, he hadn’t realized how parched he was. He wondered if his own face looked as bad as Samuel’s.

  “The news didn’t reach me until I was already in San Francisco,” Samuel said, handing Anand a half-empty bottle of whisky.

  Anand took a drink to moisten his throat. Looking around, he saw he was in a boarding house room, but not his own.

  “And now you patrol the streets of San Francisco doing good deeds?” Anand said.

  “I like fair fights. This one was not.”

  “How long have I been unconscious?”

  “Only an hour.”

  “Where are we?”

  “My place,” Samuel said. “It’s right around the corner from the alley. Your friend helped me carry you here. Nothing is broken, so your friend didn’t want to take you to a doctor.”

  Anand nodded. Pain shot through his jaw from the movement. He raised his hand to his face and felt a solid bump. But Samuel was right. Nothing appeared to be broken.

  “What about the boy?” Anand asked.

  “Ran off home,” Li said. “He whispered something to you before he ran away, but I think you were already unconscious.”

  “Yes,” Anand said, nodding more carefully this time.

  “You saved his life, my friend,” Li said. “Don’t make a habit of it.”

  Chapter 16

  “I thought you were dead,” said the intruder in my apartment.

  I whirled around.

  “You ever hear of checking the messages on your phone?” he continued.

  Sanjay sat on the couch with his cell phone in one hand and a splayed pack of cards in the other.

  “People have been murdered around you,” Sanjay continued. “It’s not nice to leave me hanging like that.”

  “You know I hate it when you do that,” I said. “Would it really be too much to ask that you don’t break into my apartment whenever you feel like it?”

  “I was worried. You didn’t answer your phone or return my calls. What happened to your arm?” Sanjay’s eyes focused on the gauze bandage wrapped around my palm.

  “I was mugged earlier. That’s why I don’t have my phone.”

  Sanjay jumped up, spilling the deck of cards onto the floor. “That’s why I scared you! Jaya, I’m so sor—”

  “Forget it,” I said. “I’m fine. And you didn’t scare me. You just disturbed me.” I turned away from Sanjay, grabbing a handful of ice and wrapping it in a kitchen towel.

  “Please tell me this was a random mugging,” Sanjay said, “that you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “He got the map. Along with my phone that had the picture of the map.”

  Sanjay breathed deeply. “You aren’t badly hurt?” he asked, watching me as I leaned against
the kitchen counter and rested the ice on my elbow.

  “Superficial.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then I can still be pissed at you.”

  “For what?”

  “You fought back, didn’t you? Because you knew you’d lose your only copy of the map. That’s why you got hurt.”

  “He got my laptop, too.”

  “You’re going to get much more seriously hurt one of these days.”

  “Thanks, dad.”

  Sanjay’s olive skin flushed. “This is serious.”

  “I know.” The ice wasn’t helping, so I tossed it into the sink and went to the kitchen junk drawer. I took out a map of San Francisco and opened it up on my small round dining table. I instinctively reached for my bag before remembering it was gone. Sanjay didn’t speak and I rummaged through more drawers to find a red marker. I drew an X on the location that had been marked on the original hand-drawn map. I wrote Lost and Found where they had been marked before. I wouldn’t have a chance to check the translations now. I circled the few buildings I remembered being drawn on Anand’s map.

  “What are you doing?” Sanjay asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “You can’t be serious about recreating the map. You’re going after the treasure? Weren’t you listening when I told you earlier about the new information about Steven Healy? That’s why you got mugged. This is dangerous. Not a retired man’s hobby like we thought, but something big. Something that could get you killed.”