Pirate Vishnu (A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery)

by Pandian, Gigi

  “Um, because they had a treasure?” Sanjay looked at me as if I was going crazy.

  “Because they were hiding something,” I said. “Meaning they would also need to disguise the map in some way.”

  I clicked on a map of Kochi, on the northern edge of the old Kingdom of Travancore. I zoomed into Fort Kochi, the central land mass of the port city. It was a perfect fit. I held the screen to Sanjay.

  “Why are you showing me an old map of San Francisco?” he said.

  “This isn’t San Francisco.”

  This was it, I could feel it.

  “This,” I said, “is Kochi. The famous spice trade city on the western coast of southern India.”

  “I know what Kochi is,” Sanjay said. He grabbed the phone.

  “Anand worked there after he left home as a teenager, before he came to America. He built and fixed boats there, just like he did in San Francisco.”

  “It’s the same,” he whispered. “They’re the exact same shape and orientation. The peninsula with similar land masses to the north and the east. Even the same islands in between.”

  “And more than that,” I said. “Chinese fishing nets line the north coast of Fort Kochi. This is what Anand was drawing. The connection he was making. Anand drew this map of Kochi, not San Francisco. Steven said Anand had written to his brother Vishwan about the treasure. He knew his little brother would recognize Kochi if he saw this map.”

  “That is one good trick,” Sanjay said.

  “Since Anand had lived in both port cities, he would have realized that their layouts were eerily similar. If his treasure map had fallen into the wrong hands in San Francisco, nobody would have guessed it was a map of a different city.”

  “And nobody did.”

  “That,” I said, “is why nobody has found Anand’s treasure in over a hundred years. They were looking on the wrong continent.”

  Chapter 21

  “I can’t believe I let someone steal that map!” I paced around the stage at the theater. I was so angry I’d nearly forgotten about my sore hand and elbow. “My memory of it is all screwed up because I’m remembering it as San Francisco. But since it’s Kochi, then the locations take on a whole new meaning. The treasure is in India. The answers we need are in India, too. I need that damn map. ”

  “Let your subconscious work on it,” Sanjay said.

  I stopped pacing and looked at Sanjay standing under the spotlight.

  “That’s not like you.”

  “It is right now,” he said. “If we’re going to pull off this show, we need to get to work.”

  “But—”

  “If you didn’t have to practice, what would you even do?” Sanjay asked.

  He had a point. “Fine,” I said. “Let’s practice.”

  Even though I wasn’t badly hurt, Sanjay insisted we not do any of the physical acts.

  “You remember the words and phrases I taught you for mind reading?” he asked.

  “People didn’t come here for that.”

  “You’re not up for losing your head right now. It’s a physical act, tough to get right while injured.”

  “You’d behead me if I got it wrong?”

  “Of course not. But the audience would see the secret of the illusion if it goes wrong. That’s almost as bad.”

  “Grace will be back before your next season starts up in Napa, right?”

  “She better be,” Sanjay grumbled distractedly as he rooted through a costume trunk. He smiled as he pulled a skimpy red and silver costume out of the trunk.

  “You can’t be serious,” I said. The thought of wearing the shiny costume that had barely more material than a bathing suit was enough to make me forget about my discovery.

  “You’ll look great in it,” Sanjay said. “We want the audience distracted by you. Remember distraction is what we need for the magic to work.”

  “At least there won’t be anyone I know here tonight.”

  Sanjay cleared his throat. “I, uh, may have mentioned it to Nadia.”

  I groaned.

  “I thought it would convince her not to hate me,” Sanjay said. “She likes good causes.”

  We practiced all afternoon. Mind reading takes concentration, so I had to give it my full attention. Of course it wasn’t truly mind reading. But it’s an illusion that takes some practice.

  I remembered most of the key words from when Sanjay had taught me the illusion before, but it took practice to seamlessly pick up on the signal words and give the correct response. My other tasks involved helping Sanjay with a Houdini-like escape, and setting and clearing items from the stage at planned times when he needed a distraction. And damn him, Sanjay managed to convince me to wear the silver costume. It was the best way to be distracting, since my sleight of hand skills were nonexistent.

  Even though Sanjay was right that I needed all the practice I could get, I insisted on taking a short break to pick up my new credit card that was being overnighted to me. After getting caught up talking to Nadia, I barely had time to make it back to the theater. I really needed a new system of getting my mail.

  The Folsom Street Theater was a quirky little theater in an up-and-coming neighborhood that hadn’t yet taken off. The seats looked like originals—classic red velvet upholstered seats a bit smaller than seats made for today’s audiences.

  Two other acts were appearing on the bill. A comedic magician Sanjay knew, and a local singer-songwriter. The lineup didn’t make much sense to me, but when you’re a benefit I guess you use your contacts to get what you can.

  “I told you that you’d look great in the costume,” Sanjay said to me as he straightened his bow tie in the mirror backstage.

  I peeked out at the audience, and sure enough, Nadia was there. I looked down at the skimpy costume. The red and silver sparkles would twinkle in the bright lights for the added distraction Sanjay wanted.

  I was discombobulated more than nervous. I wasn’t accustomed to wearing bright colors and I was only used to being the center of attention when teaching college students subjects I knew intimately. The invisible person tracking down bits of history in libraries all over the world? That was me. Not a colorful stage distraction. Nadia would never let me live it down.

  Sanjay and I began with mind reading to warm up the audience. I stood on the stage blindfolded, while Sanjay went through the audience and held up personal items for them to see, but without speaking the name of the item. I identified a diamond engagement ring, a man’s loafer, a gym membership card, and a child’s doll.

  For our concluding audience member, Sanjay gave me the cues to identify a cell phone with a picture of a married couple on the screen.

  “I see a phone,” I said. “A cell phone. And not only a phone.” I acted as if I was concentrating, pressing my fingers into my temples like I imagined a psychic would. “I see an image on the phone. A happy couple.”

  “Sir,” Sanjay said. “Can you tell the audience what you hold in your hand?”

  “Yes,” said a man’s voice. “I’m holding a phone with a picture of a married couple who were once very happy until two days ago when the woman on stage killed my father.”

  Chapter 22

  I pulled off my blindfold. My eyes watered in the adjustment from darkness to light as I stared into the bright spotlight pointed at Sanjay and a man standing in the aisle at the back of the theater.

  The man standing next to Sanjay looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. He had black hair and Asian features but with piercing blue eyes that glared at me. The woman seated next to him tugged at his arm. His face softened as he turned to look at her. It was Christine Healy. That’s when I realized why the man looked familiar. He was indeed his father’s son.

  Steven Healy’s son carried himself with a different type of assurance tha
n his father. This man wore an untucked dress shirt over skinny jeans, rather than a suit, and his short hair had been styled within an inch of its life with hair gel that shone in the spotlight.

  I have to hand it to Sanjay, the consummate performer. He handled the situation better than I would have thought possible. He signaled the booth above the seats with an unobtrusive gesture, and the spotlight on the audience instantly cut out. Two new spotlights began to swirl around a spot on the stage several feet away from where I stood. Before I noticed that he’d moved, Sanjay appeared on the side of the stage with the spotlights, ushering the musical performer back on stage. His back to the audience, I saw him mouth “Thank you” to the musician before scooping me backstage.

  Less than a minute later, we were in a dressing room with Steven’s son and Christine. Following behind them, Nadia stepped into the room. She was never one to miss a party.

  Christine held his arm, as if her gentle touch could hold him back. Nadia’s eyes narrowed as she looked between us.

  “I’m so sorry,” Christine said. Unlike the last time I’d seen her outside my office, her face was perfectly made up. But circles under her eyes betrayed her fatigue.

  Steven’s son glared at me. Now that I was closer to him, I noticed paint stains on his fingers, and even a spot under his chin. I also smelled alcohol on his breath. I was suddenly very aware that I was wearing a ridiculous slinky magician’s assistant costume. I grabbed a shawl from a costume rack and draped it over me.

  “Forgive us,” she continued. “This is my husband, Connor.”

  “Jaya Anand Jones,” he said. I might have imagined it, but his glassy-eyed glare softened as he looked at me. “You’re not what I expected. Dad said he was going to see a history professor. You know we’re—”

  “We’re so sorry,” Christine cut in.

  “That wasn’t what I was going to say,” Connor said, shaking Christine’s hand off his arm, his attention focused on me. “Did you kill him?”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said, “but I don’t have any idea who could have killed him—”

  “She doesn’t look like she’s lying,” Connor said to his wife. “Is she lying? I thought I’d be able to tell if she was lying.” Christine’s cheeks flushed, and I wondered how often Connor was this drunk.

  “How did you find me here?” I asked.

  Nadia clicked her tongue. “They told me they were friends of yours. I thought I was helping by telling your friends where you would be.”

  “Connor wanted to see you,” Christine said, “because we knew his father was working with you—”

  “She wasn’t working with him,” Sanjay cut in.

  “I never meant for us to disrupt your performance,” Christine said quietly, her eyes focused on the floor.

  “You were the last one who saw him that night,” Connor said, his paint-stained finger pointing at me. “He gave you that map of his that he thought led to some mysterious treasure. You had to have been the one—”

  “This is what the police are for,” Nadia said. She spoke in a calming, maternal voice. “They already spoke with her.”

  “You know about that?” I asked.

  “The inspector came to my front door first.”

  “But they didn’t arrest her,” Connor said. He stumbled forward toward me. “They should have—”

  “One more step,” Nadia said, her maternal voice replaced by one of pure ice, “and I will call the police.”

  “Good,” Connor said. “The police should be working harder on my father’s—”

  A crack sounded from behind us. The greenroom door burst open. A small, dark-haired woman stepped into the room.

  Sanjay’s assistant Grace stepped toward us—a knife in her outstretched hand.

  “Stop threatening Jaya!” she yelled.

  Christine screamed as Connor gasped and Nadia dropped her phone. I didn’t blame them. I’d never seen Grace like that before. At least not when she wasn’t on stage.

  Sanjay reached Grace quickly and took hold of her wrist.

  He moved her hand so the knife hit his arm. Rather than cutting through the fabric, the blade retracted. Sanjay twisted her wrist a little more and the knife clattered to the ground.

  “What the hell?” Connor said, stumbling backward.

  “It’s a fake knife,” Sanjay said. He picked up the knife and demonstrated more slowly how the blade retracted into the hilt.

  “The people in front said someone was threatening Jaya,” Grace said softly to Sanjay. It sounded like she was back to her usual self.

  I couldn’t quite figure Grace out, with her combination of shyness and onstage gusto. She was dyslexic and had dropped out of high school, waitressing until she became Sanjay’s magician’s assistant. He’d noticed the way she held herself as a former gymnast and was impressed by how she mentally kept dozens of orders straight—an instrumental skill for a magician’s assistant. Waitressing was one of the things I did during the four years I took between finishing high school at sixteen and starting college at twenty, so I knew what a difficult job it was. It was tougher than getting a PhD in many ways, but I suspected what I’d achieved through my education was why Sanjay imagined that Grace idolized me.

  “We’re alright, Grace,” I said. “It’s a misunderstanding.”

  “What are you doing here anyway?” Sanjay asked her.

  “I drove all the way back here after the funeral to help,” she said, her voice still barely above a whisper. “I didn’t know if Jaya would be able to pull off the show—” She broke off and looked between us. “I wanted to help. But I guess you didn’t need me.”

  Christine took Connor’s hand again and pulled him to the door. “We should go.”

  “Wait,” I said.

  “Let them go,” Sanjay said. “They should talk to the police. Not to you.”

  Christine led Connor away, passing a stagehand in the doorway.

  “You going to go back on?” the stagehand asked.

  Sanjay gave a curt nod. “Five minutes.”

  “You up for taking over for me?” I asked Grace.

  Her slumped shoulders shot up. “If Sanjay needs me.”

  “He needs you,” I said. “Believe me, he needs you.”

  I went to my campus office to use the computer to pull up a map of Kochi. On the full-size screen, I was even more certain of my conclusions. The two cities and their surrounding bodies of water and land masses were virtually identical. The treasure map was Kochi.

  I knew about the historical significance of the port city, but I hadn’t even given much thought to its modern geography.

  The Portuguese, Dutch, and British all laid claim to the city at one point or another before India’s independence in 1947. The Portuguese constructed a large fort there, which was later destroyed by the Dutch, but the piece of land that made up the center of the city was still known as Fort Kochi. The peninsula continued to be a strategic trading post with a cosmopolitan population.

  I looked up the MP Craft Emporium and The Anchored Enchantress. Both had been a dead end in San Francisco, but not in India. I was onto something with the MP Craft Emporium. There was a whole section of town with craft shops, right where I remembered that building on the map. I couldn’t find the exact name of the store, but a store from over a hundred years ago wouldn’t have an internet presence. The location fit. This was what I was looking for.

  I opened a new tab and looked up flights to south India. There were seats left on a flight to Trivandrum, via Hong Kong, out of SFO the next morning. I impulsively clicked “buy” with my new credit card before I could talk myself out of it. Since I was born in India and had a Person of Indian Origin card, I had a long-term visa. I could travel to India at any time.

  Trivandrum was over a hundred miles fro
m Kochi, but the University of Kerala was located in Trivandrum, so I could stop and see the archived letters first. Even without the treasure map, I hoped Steven was right that one of Anand’s letters to his brother held the missing piece of the puzzle.

  I was finishing filling in the last details to purchase the plane ticket when I was interrupted by someone at my door. Naveen leaned in the door frame and crossed his arms.

  “I thought you’d like to hear the news,” he said.

  “News?”

  “I’ve just signed the contract for a book deal for my work on the historical migration of languages across India.”

  I would scream if Naveen got tenure over me because of this lost paper. Not that I’d give Naveen the satisfaction of seeing that.

  “Congratulations!” I said. “That’s great.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s not great?” I asked in my most innocent voice.

  “Well, yes,” Naveen said stiffly. “It’s quite an accomplishment. I wasn’t sure if you’d see it that way. I know you’re still struggling to publish a paper.”

  I’d co-authored several well-received papers during graduate school, and published a chapter of my dissertation as an article in a magazine that was more general interest than academic.

  This latest paper was the first one I’d authored on my own that had been accepted into a prestigious academic journal. I hadn’t shared the news with anyone yet, since they were waiting on my revisions.

  “A book deal is a great accomplishment,” I said. “Not all of us can be so prolific. Especially when on the verge of a major historical discovery.”

  Naveen frowned. “A discovery?”

  “I wouldn’t want to bore you with the details,” I said. “I know you’ve got a book to write.”

  After Naveen left, I tried calling Joseph Abraham, the archivist at the University of Kerala, one more time before leaving campus. My call went to voicemail again. It was morning in India now, late enough that I was hoping the archivist would have been there. I left a message letting him know I’d be stopping by the following day.