Pirate Vishnu (A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery)

by Pandian, Gigi

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you,” I said, “but I thought you should know.”

  “Yes,” he said slowly. He resumed absentmindedly wiping the spilt coffee on the table. It wasn’t the kind of place where a doting waiter would appear to help. Joseph looked up, his large brown eyes meeting mine. “He was murdered over the letters? You are sure of this?”

  “Unfortunately,” I said, “I am.”

  The old archivist looked more frail than he had an hour ago as we walked out of the coffee house. He assured me he’d be fine, and I caught an auto-rickshaw back to my hotel.

  In the hotel lobby, I walked past an Anglo man dressed in local attire. He sat alone, reading an English-language Indian newspaper. I could only see an obscured view of his head, and in spite of the fact that he wasn’t wearing glasses, he reminded me very much of Lane Peters. I was about to kick myself for continuing to think about him, when the man turned his head.

  It wasn’t my imagination. It was Lane.

  I don’t remember walking over to him, but I found myself standing right in front of him. He smelled of aftershave and sandalwood. I felt a comforting familiarity in his presence, the force of which took me by surprise.

  “For someone who says they want nothing to do with me,” I said, “you’ve got a really strange way of showing it.”

  “I had to come,” he said. He stood up and tossed the newspaper aside.

  I felt my stomach do a little flip, only to be followed by a sinking feeling when I heard what he had to say next.

  “I didn’t want to,” he said. “But Naveen Krishnan is in India. He killed Steven Healy. Now he’s after the treasure.”

  Chapter 26

  “You’d better start at the beginning,” I said.

  If Naveen was in India, did that mean it hadn’t been my imagination at the university? Why couldn’t I know people who didn’t have their passports at the ready? Both Naveen and Lane did research in India, so of course they would have long-term visas.

  “Not here,” Lane said.

  “Where, then?”

  “My room is more private.”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. There were a lot of things I might have wanted to do in a hotel room with Lane, but talking about a murderer wasn’t one of them.

  “You okay?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. He was far too observant for his own good.

  “Fine,” I said as he led the way. “Just fine. Um, what are you wearing?”

  “I thought that would be obvious.” He couldn’t help smiling.

  He was wearing a white dress shirt and a white lungi cloth that looked like a long skirt. With his fair coloring he would never pass as an Indian He was dressed more like an American in India for enlightenment, like what my father had done over thirty years ago. As part of his past life as a thief, Lane was good at disguising himself. He wasn’t hiding his identity in his current disguise, but he was blending in as a certain type of person.

  Lane unlocked the door of his hotel room. As soon as he closed it behind us, he tilted my head up and kissed me. It wasn’t a casual kiss to say hello. He brought his mouth down on mine with such force that he pushed me against the wall.

  I didn’t resist the kiss. I pulled him closer to me, and he responded in kind. His lips were urgent and his breath spicy.

  All thoughts of treasures and murders slipped away, and all I could think about was how much I’d missed him.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered in my ear as his lips moved from my lips to my neck.

  “For what?” I whispered back. I pulled him back to my lips, but he resisted.

  He let go of me and stepped back.

  “Sorry,” he repeated. “I hadn’t meant to do that. Forget I did that.”

  He ran his hand through his hair and turned toward the window. The hotel room faced a wall covered with colorful advertisements for Malayalam and Tamil movies. By the look of the graphics, most of the films were tragic romances.

  “You need to tell me why you’re here,” I said, my heart still racing from the kiss I wasn’t likely to forget, “and what you meant about Naveen.”

  “Your colleague Naveen is on the same treasure hunt you’re on,” Lane said, turning back to me but keeping his distance. “He killed Steven Healy and now you’re the one in danger.”

  “You came all the way to India because you thought I was in danger from Naveen? The Naveen who freaks out if he spills a drop of tea on one of his suits?”

  “It’s him, Jones. I couldn’t reach you, so I had to come warn you.”

  I found myself temporarily speechless. Lane hated flying. He’d endured the slog of two long flights across the world because he believed I was in danger.

  “Are you okay?” Lane asked.

  “That,” I said, “has got to be the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me. Twisted and incredibly screwed up, but also horribly romantic.”

  Lane’s lips twitched and he began to laugh. I had missed that. This time when he swept me up in his arms, he didn’t kiss me. Instead, he held me in his arms so tightly that I wasn’t sure he’d ever let go.

  “I’m happy to see you,” I said when he finally pulled away, “but there’s no way Naveen killed Steven. Naveen didn’t know about the map until I showed it to him. I grant you he’s a devious bastard. If he’s here in India, it’s because he’s trying to hone in on the discovery after I inadvertently handed him the information. That makes him a jerk. Not a killer.”

  “You’re forgetting something,” Lane said.

  “What?”

  “Somebody,” Lane said, “had already translated the map.”

  I stared at Lane, letting the idea sink in. “You think Naveen was the one who translated it in the first place?”

  “He’s a linguistic wunderkind,” Lane said. “When I looked him up I saw that he’d won some big award last year, before you two were hired as faculty.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “He’d be the natural person for Steven to go to when he needed to translate the map.”

  I groaned. “I had the sense Steven was lying to me when he told me the map was already translated when he found it. That explains why Naveen was so surprised that I’d bring him the map! I thought he reacted oddly when I showed it to him. And that also explains why he was so insistent that the translations were perfect.”

  “I wasn’t making up my suspicions about him,” Lane said. “He already knew Steven Healy.”

  “Back up. Tell me why you suspect him.” Something else dawned on me. “And how did you find me to warn me?”

  “You registered under your own name, so it only took a few calls to figure it out.”

  “Guess I’d make a terrible spy.”

  “That’s not such a bad thing, you know.” A smile crept onto his face.

  “And Naveen?”

  “He’s working with an archivist at the University of Kerala, after the same letters you are.”

  “You mean Naveen is the person who stole the letters?”

  Lane’s smile disappeared. “The letters have been stolen?”

  “That’s why I’m back at the hotel already. Otherwise I’d still be there looking at them.”

  “Damn,” Lane said. “Maybe Naveen bribed the archivist.”

  It made sense. Bribery was common in India, and wasn’t thought of in the same morally corrupt way that it was at home.

  “How did Naveen know where the letters were?” I asked. “I didn’t tell him.”

  “You clued him in that you were on to something,” Lane said. “It was Naveen who I saw outside your apartment, not your friend Sanjay. I’d gone to your place to see you, to make sure you were all right. This was the day before yesterday, in the morning after Inspector Valdez contacted me, befo
re I caught up with you at Lands End—”

  “It was the morning before that when Sanjay was at my house,” I said, thinking over the confusion when Lane first told me he saw an Indian guy outside my house. “Naveen showed up a few minutes after I’d talked to him, while I was at the library doing research. I thought it was a little weird that he came to find me to essentially tell me nothing new, but at the time I chalked it up to Naveen’s big ego that he wanted to tell me again that he was right.”

  Lane nodded. “The strange thing about him the first time I saw him was that he was looking around like he was trying to find a way into your apartment.”

  “You didn’t call the police?” I asked. “Never mind. I forget who I’m talking to.”

  “He didn’t behave like a burglar, so I didn’t know what was going on. Then I saw him again when I saw you later that day—”

  “You were following me again?”

  “You were the last person to see a man who was murdered, Jones. And don’t you dare say that’s romantic.”

  “I won’t say it out loud, then,” I said. It was reassuring to have Lane there, on my side. I was beginning to feel optimistic again. “I suppose I should get you up to speed.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.”

  I told him what I’d learned about the treasure’s historic significance to India and the pirate stories I found at the library. I ended with my discovery that the map was of Kochi, not San Francisco, so the missing treasure was somewhere in Kochi.

  “Clever,” Lane said. “You and that uncle of yours are both very clever. But you still don’t know what the treasure is?”

  “I can’t figure it out,” I said. “If we had those missing letters, maybe they would tell us.”

  “You just told me a murderer stole the letters. You can’t be serious about going after them.”

  “You really think Naveen could have killed someone? I can’t see it.”

  “Believing the best about people is a luxury you can’t afford right now,” Lane said. “Just because you know him doesn’t mean he wouldn’t kill someone. You need to get out of his way.”

  “I can’t get out of the way. The only chance I’ve got at going back to the normal life I want is to solve this.”

  “Are you listening to yourself?” Lane stared at me for a moment before beginning to pace. He kept his distance from me in the small room. “You don’t have to be involved.”

  “The police can’t—”

  “The police are good at doing their jobs, Jaya. You’re kidding yourself if you think you’d be arrested for a murder you didn’t commit, so don’t use that as an excuse.”

  “It’s not only that,” I insisted. “Anand’s treasure is out there—his secrets are out there. You understand what this means to me. How could I live with myself if I don’t figure this out? I don’t have a choice.”

  “No, you do have a choice.” Lane shook his head. “The misdeeds of a long-dead ancestor of yours don’t matter. Not really. If you really wanted that nice safe life you claim to want, you’d be at home rewriting your research paper and getting ready for the semester. But you’re not.”

  “You don’t know me at all,” I said, feeling my voice shake as I spoke. “Not the way I thought you did.”

  “I’m not wrong about this,” he said. “I’m not wrong about you. You’re here because you like the danger and excitement.”

  I had been confused about Lane, then comforted by his presence, but those feelings were gone now, replaced with white-hot anger.

  “I can’t believe I thought you knew me,” I said, “and that I thought I knew you. I never should have rescued you that night in the Scottish jail. I should have told them what you really were.”

  I regretted the words as soon as they came out of my mouth, but it was too late to take them back.

  Lane stopped his anxious pacing. He stood still, his body rigid.

  “You want to be on your own?” he said. “Fine. You’re on your own.”

  Chapter 27

  I wasted several hours being upset about things that had nothing to do with the reason I was in India. How could Lane think I wanted to be here? He was projecting his own desires on me. He was the one who was used to having a life full of danger and excitement. He probably missed it, now that he’d gone straight. That’s why he’d jumped on a plane to India, not because he cared about me.

  I took the phone off the hook in my hotel room. I told myself it was so I could focus without distractions, but in truth it was more likely I did it because I was afraid Lane would call. I didn’t know what I would say to him if he did. I felt terrible about what I’d said. But he’d hurt me, too.

  I tried to focus on what I should do as I sat in front of the window of my hotel room drinking too much coffee. Instead, the most productive thing I did was doodle on the complementary newspapers that had been left outside my door. At least the view from my window didn’t include romantic Indian movie billboards. I had a view of a modern building that looked like a government office. A man with a bicycle cart had set himself up in front of the building. He was selling a larger variety of bananas than you’d imagine existed if you’d only seen bananas at American and European supermarkets. The fruits covered most of the spectrum of the rainbow, from dark red to muddy green to bright yellow.

  I was hungry, but I didn’t want to leave the hotel until I was sure I wouldn’t run into Lane. He was probably already gone, but I was feeling risk-averse. And if I was avoiding him, that only proved my point. He was way off base with his assessment of me.

  The good thing about wasting time being indecisive was that it allowed me to reread bits and pieces of the information about Kochi that I’d printed out at my office the night I bought my plane ticket. The more I looked at the maps of Kochi, the more I was optimistic that I would be able to find what I was after there. Even without Anand’s letters, Kochi was a small enough area that my recollection of the notations on the map would be useful. Though the peninsula of Kochi has the same geographic orientation as San Francisco, it’s about a seventh the size.

  I put a change of clothes and sandals in my small backpack and caught a cab to the airport.

  King Fisher Airlines—the same company as the beer—deposited me at the Kochi International Airport before nightfall. It was only about 125 miles from Trivandrum to Kochi, but along the roads of the west coast of India the drive would have taken a minimum of four hours—and that wasn’t counting traffic or the time it would have taken to hire a driver.

  The airport was twenty-five miles outside Fort Kochi. Twenty-five miles might not sound like much, but with traffic and road conditions as they were, I knew the journey wouldn’t be as quick as I wanted.

  The driver I hired at the airport careened around two trucks and an auto-rickshaw on the road without a single vehicle honking. I held my breath for a second or two. It would take a few days to get back in the swing of Indian traffic.

  “Do you feel motion sickness, miss?” the driver shouted at me to be heard above the din of the traffic.

  “Nope,” I shouted back, shaking my head.

  “This is good. Long drive. I will drive faster.”

  We made the first leg of the journey in well under an hour, but as we approached the city, rush hour made traffic come to a standstill. It was understandable why entire families of four traveled on the back of one motorcycle—it allowed them to weave through traffic when they would otherwise spend their entire day stuck on the road. Women often rode sidesaddle behind their husbands to accommodate their saris. Little children usually sat in between their parents so there would be less risk of them falling off.

  On the bridge approaching the fort city from the south, we drove through pothole after pothole, with motorcycles, mopeds, bicycles, and auto-rickshaws squeezing between the cars and trucks on the narrow bridg
e. The roads were slick from an earlier downpour, courtesy of the monsoons. It was a perilous enough ride that I was able to focus on the road rather than Lane.

  It was sunset by the time I arrived in Fort Kochi. Shops, including the craft emporium, would be closing, and soon it would be too dark to explore the northwestern coast where the X had appeared on the map. I shouldn’t have wasted so much time earlier that day. Why did Lane have to throw me off balance? There was no way I’d be able to find what I needed in Kochi that night.

  I had the driver drop me off along the western coastline. It took me a few minutes to convince him I’d be fine. He was skeptical that I really wanted to be dropped off alone on a stretch of the beach instead of at a hotel or restaurant. I was tempted by the offer of a restaurant, but I needed to make use of the last light of the day.

  I didn’t waste any time heading for the waterfront walkway. Brightly painted cartoon animal trashcans lined the way, an interesting choice for the breathtaking view out to the Arabian Sea. I was reminded of a carnival in small-town America more than an international, historic city along the coast of south India.

  It might have been a pleasant evening if I had been there under different circumstances. The weather was much less oppressive than it often was in August. The monsoon rains weren’t coming down, and the temperature was kept relatively in check by the clouds. The energy of the city was vibrant, too. The compact city was cosmopolitan without being as crowded as other Indian cities I’d visited. The streets were alive but had a small-town feel.

  I was surprised by just how much Fort Kochi looked like the colonial city it once was. There wasn’t a skyscraper in sight. I passed churches and a Dutch cemetery from the time the Dutch controlled Kochi after wresting power from the Portuguese.

  I walked briskly along the sidewalk promenade of Mahatma Gandhi Beach toward the northern beach with the fishing nets. Since the rain had passed for the moment, people were out walking. Paved paths made it easy to follow the coastline. The waterfront was covered with stones and rocks, not the pristine sands of nearby tourist beaches. This was a city full of history, not a city for tourists in search of hidden beaches.