Artifact (4 page)

“Your friend wasn’t a maharaja, was he?” Lane asked.

A day ago I would have thought it was a joke if someone had asked me if I was friends with a maharaja. I wasn’t laughing now.

“It’s the real deal, then?”

“It certainly is.”

The chair squeaked beneath me as I took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling.

“He was English,” I said. “Killed in a car wreck in Scotland. I don’t know how he got the bracelet, except that I’m sure it wasn’t a family heirloom. I don’t know anything else. I had to start somewhere, so here I am.”

I wasn’t lying. Not really. Concealing certain facts isn’t quite the same thing.

“I don’t know any more off the top of my head,” Lane said.

“But I thought…” I trailed off as a sickening sensation washed over me. “From what you said before, I thought you knew more.”

What I really thought was that there was no way I would have shown him the bracelet if I thought he didn’t have anything else he could tell me.

My mouth went dry. What had I done?
Someone now knew I had the bracelet.
That was exactly what I had wanted to avoid. Why hadn’t I listened to Sanjay?

“Don’t worry,” I said, trying to appear casual even as I found it difficult to speak. “You’ve been a tremendous help already. I owe you one. Let me know if you ever want a free dinner at the Tandoori Palace restaurant in the city.” I covered the bracelet and stood up.

“Wait a sec,” he said, scrambling to his feet as well. “I can still help fill in the missing pieces. I just have to look up a few things.”

We stood close to each other in the cramped space in front of the desk. I had to arch my neck to look him in the eye.

“That’s really okay,” I said. “With what you’ve told me, I can take it from here.”

“But you won’t know what to look for.”

“I know how to do archival research,” I said. “I’m a historian.”

That threw him off.

“Oh,” he said after a beat. “You mean you’re a history major in one of Michael’s classes.”

“I have a doctorate,” I said, more icily than I intended. Since I’ve only been teaching for a year, I get mistaken for a coed more often than I’d like.

“You’re a
professor
?”

“A damn good one.”

“Dr. Jones,” he said thoughtfully.

“Yeah.” I sighed.

“At least you’re not an archaeologist,” he said, smiling.

I reached for the doorknob.

“Wait.” Lane reached out a long arm in a gesture to stop me. “As a historian, you know how research works. You know how much easier it is to dig into something if you already know some facts about what you’re looking for.”

I lowered my hand from the doorknob.

“In your field,” Lane said, “what’s your expertise?”

“The early foundations of British India. The British East India Company in its various incarnations. You know, trading power, military power, its dissolution when rule was assumed directly from the British Crown.”

“So I bet you could tell me all about pirates on the high seas, but you couldn’t even identify this piece as a bracelet.”

“If you have further tips, don’t hold back.”

“You know the intangible nature of doing research like this. Even if I could tell you more about where to look, that narrows things down from a thousand haystacks to maybe a hundred. With my background, it would be easier for me to find something. I wouldn’t mind doing a bit more research.”

Whatever historical origins Lane might be able to find, I needed them to lead to the more recent origins of where Rupert had gotten his hands on it. And now that Lane had told me of a larger treasure somewhere out there, I had a feeling I needed to work quickly. The idea of extra help was tempting.

“I know a few things I can check out right away,” he added.

“Why are you so interested in helping me?”

“Can’t you tell? This is a really big deal in Indian art history. Something like this could make my career. I can help you, so I’d like to be a part of it.”

I stood there feeling helpless and indecisive, two emotions I rarely encounter. What was I doing? I scribbled my cell phone number and email address on a piece of paper.

“Call me as soon as you find anything,” I said.

We headed out of the building together. Lane said he would get started at the university’s library right away. As we passed Michael’s office, I stuck my head inside to thank him for putting me in touch with Lane, then hurried back to my car, anxious to get the bracelet out of my hands. A safe deposit box seemed the safest place. The fact that I didn’t have a safe deposit box wasn’t going to stop me. I drove straight to my bank and opened one.

Feeling much better without the priceless artifact on my person, I whipped the car around a sputtering VW Beetle and headed to my own university’s library.

Lane was right that he was much more likely to come across relevant information. That didn’t mean I couldn’t try. I’d go crazy if I sat at home waiting. I was thinking about Rupert too much already. In those spare moments when I didn’t have something else to focus on, I wondered what could have been.

I hadn’t thought too much about Rupert in the past year. I’m good at staying busy and pushing inconvenient thoughts from my mind. Rupert’s mysterious death was stirring up feelings I hadn’t realized were so close to the surface. Feelings that I wasn’t even certain I had. God, I needed somebody else’s history to throw myself into. I sped through Golden Gate Park and floored the car toward the library.

The librarian I often worked with was on vacation, so I got some assistance from a new librarian before settling into a corner table with a heap of references for Mughal art and jewelry. I sighed as I looked at the long list, then got down to work.

Several hours into my research, my stomach was growling, I was dying of thirst, and I still hadn’t managed to find a single thing I thought might be helpful. My least favorite thing about libraries is their policy on no food or drink.

I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I decided to call it a day. I drove home with vigorous bhangra beats blasting on my speakers and a Big Gulp balanced between my knees. As I pulled into a parking space only a block from my apartment, my thoughts turned back to Lane. I hoped he’d been more successful than I had. I needed something—anything—that would point me in the direction of the ruby bracelet’s modern history.

Nadia stood on the porch in front of the house, an icepack held to her head.

“Jaya!” Nadia called out when she saw me. “You have been robbed!”

Nadia held the icepack to the back of her head with one hand and a shot of vodka in the other.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I asked, pointing at the vodka. “You might have a concussion.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You want to hear what happened with the burglar, yes?”

I shut my mouth. I needed to know if the unthinkable had happened. If Rupert’s troubles had followed the bracelet across the Atlantic.

“I heard a crash from your apartment,” she said. “I was worried, so I went upstairs to check. A strong man knocked me down.”

Nadia paused to drink the shot of vodka. She shook her head as she placed the empty shot glass on the railing of the porch. “He was too fast for me to see his face. I only have a sense of his build.”

“You sure you don’t want me to take you to the hospital?”

“People in this country are soft. There is no problem with my head. Only with your door. We will get you a new one. Let us go upstairs to see if I was fast enough or if he has stolen anything.”

On the walk upstairs, I found myself hoping something was missing. That would mean it was a random burglary. Otherwise it would mean Rupert’s murder was jumping into my life 5,000 miles away and Nadia was lucky to only have a bump on the head.

It
could
have been coincidental timing, after all. The Haight-Ashbury area was the home of free love in the ‘60s, and while the liveliness of the neighborhood has endured, it’s not known for its safety. I would have been happy to find a few of my belongings missing if it meant this was a random breakin that had nothing to do with the ruby bracelet.

The digital camera I’d used that morning was in plain sight on the kitchen table, next to the music player I used when I went running. This wasn’t looking like the standard burglary I was hoping for. But I was relieved to see my tabla case. I would have been devastated to lose those drums.

My body tensed as I spotted the one object that was out of place. Aside from the door, there was only one thing leaving evidence of the burglar’s presence. My jewelry box from Goa had been smashed. The contents were spilled across the bed.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and closed my eyes. My body shook as I took a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm myself. A jewelry box was exactly where someone looking for the ruby bracelet could have expected I would put a piece of jewelry I now had in my possession.

“What is missing?” Nadia asked.

“Nothing.”

“Good. Then we do not call the police.”

“Shouldn’t we still—”

“The lurking fellow!” Nadia exclaimed, making a hand gesture that caused the icepack to fly out of her hand and hit the wall. “Why did I not think of it? Poets do this kind of thing for the love of a woman.” She pointed a finger at me. “You should have gotten a restraining order.”

The idea of
Miles
breaking into my apartment hadn’t occurred to me. I considered the idea, but it was hard to believe the pacifist would knock down a retiree.

“Miles couldn’t have done this,” I said. “He’s more likely to harm himself than anyone else. Like accidentally stepping in front of a car or walking into a tree while writing in his notebook.”

“I will interrogate him the next time he comes back.”

“Nadia,” I began, but she had already scooped up the ice pack and was headed out the door.

Instead of following her, I contemplated whether or not I should call the police. Nothing had been stolen, and Nadia didn’t want to tell them about her injury.

I fell back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling for guidance. As the bedsprings jostled underneath me, I realized one more important thing I hadn’t checked on. I rolled over and poked my head under the bed, looking for the packaging in which the bracelet had been sent. It was still there.

In my relief, something clicked in my mind. I had ignored a crucial piece of information.
The return address
. Rupert had written an address not for a private residence, but for the Fog & Thistle Inn.

My cell phone rang, causing me to drop the package. Lane’s voice greeted me.

“I’m done following up on those leads,” he said. “I’ve found some things at the library I thought you’d like to hear about.”

An idea I didn’t like flashed into my mind. “Where are you?” I asked.

“Right outside Doe. Why?”

The caller ID on my phone gave a Berkeley area code. But if Lane was calling from his cell phone, he wasn’t necessarily at the library like he said. He could be in San Francisco half a block away.

“How long would it take you to get to San Francisco?” I asked.

“Don’t you want to hear—”

“It would be easier if we talked in person,” I said. “Don’t you think?”

I gave him directions to my place. Of course I was curious to hear what he’d found. But there was something I was even more curious about. Since Nadia had gotten a sense of the build of the attempted robber, it wouldn’t hurt to have her take a look at Lane. The graduate student had been awfully interested in the ruby bracelet.

To avoid either screaming or pacing a hole through my floor while I waited for Lane, I looked up the Fog & Thistle Inn, which turned out to be a small pub with a few rooms for rent in the lower Highlands of Scotland. It didn’t have its own website, but was listed on a local tourism page and on a blog of an avid hiker. It wasn’t too far from the famous Dunnottar Castle ruins.

More searching explained what Rupert had been doing there. An archaeological dig for Pictish standing stones was taking place less than a mile from the inn. Professor Malcolm Alpin from the University of St. Andrews had put together a thorough website about the expedition.

He was seeking additional funding for the project, which explained the abundance of information. That was fine with me. It told me what I needed to know. The site included a photograph of a man next to a Pictish standing stone. That man was Knox Bailey, Rupert’s best friend.

Neither Rupert nor Knox had been academically interested in the Picts when I knew them. The Picts were the long-ago barbarian painted people of Scotland, as Professor Malcolm Alpin’s website reminded me in great detail. They left standing stones across Scotland, with carvings in their primitive language. A newly discovered cluster of standing stones in this region of eastern Scotland provided the impetus for this dig.

I was fairly certain the Picts did not possess any hidden treasures that would have attracted Rupert and Knox. And an Indian bracelet had nothing to do with the Picts.
What were they up to?

I slammed the laptop shut and headed down the stairs to see how Nadia was doing. I heard her voice before I rounded the corner of the house.

“Now is not a good time for a visit,” Nadia was saying. “Jaya has been burglarized. No, there is no need to worry for her. She knows jiu-jitsu. You would not think it of someone so small, no?”

Enrolling me in jiu-jitsu classes was one of the rare practical things my dad had ever done. When he realized I wasn’t going to make it to five feet tall, he drove me around in his old VW bus to all the martial arts classes he could find in Berkeley and Oakland. Jiu-jitsu was the one that stuck.

I hurried around the corner of the house. A floppy mess of dark blond hair attached to a long-limbed body stood on the sidewalk in front of the house. It was Lane. His hands were tucked into the pockets of a jacket in the crisp late afternoon air.

“I suppose you’ve already told Lane about my magic messenger bag, too?” I asked as I reached them.

“She mocks me,” Nadia said. “After all I do for her. Does she tell you what a good landlady I am? I saw a magnifying glass in that bag of hers once. A
magnifying glass
! As if she were that Sherlock Holmes.”

“What’s strange about that?” I asked. “Original texts can be hard to decipher. Don’t all historians carry one around with them?”

They didn’t answer.

“Well, they should.”

“I was telling your friend it is a bad time for a visit,” Nadia said.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I asked him to come. Lane is helping me with some research.”

“A house call,” Nadia murmured, shaking Lane’s outstretched hand. “How nice.”

“You didn’t tell me you just had a breakin,” Lane said to me. “We didn’t have to do this right now.”

“I don’t want to dwell on it. I’m glad you got here so quickly.”

“I lucked out catching BART right away.”

Nadia sniffed her right hand with a curious expression on her face. Her eyes lit up. “You have Gauloises cigarettes?” Her eyes crinkled as he nodded. “Could I impose on you?”

“My pleasure,” he said, handing her a cigarette from the pack in his jacket pocket.

“I thought you quit smoking, Nadia,” I said.

“These are too good to pass up.”

“I’ll meet you upstairs in a minute, Lane. My apartment is up the stairs around the side of the house. I need to ask Nadia one more thing about fixing my door.”

“
Spassiba
,” Nadia said as she waved goodbye to Lane.

“
Nyezashto
.”

“I have already called a good locksmith,” Nadia said. “You think I would not act so quickly?”

“That’s not what I wanted to ask you about.”

“But you said—”

I ran to the side of the house to make sure Lane was on his way up to my apartment. Peeking through an opening between the wooden slats of the side gate, I waited until he started up the stairs before returning to Nadia’s side.

“Could he have been the burglar?” I asked Nadia, keeping my voice quiet.

“This man Lane? No. Too tall. But why would your friend—”

“Thanks, Nadia.” I felt my muscles relax. “That’s all I needed to know.”

Nadia inhaled deeply from one of the shortest cigarette butts I have ever seen between someone’s fingers, then stubbed out the remains in the flower pot next to her.

“I will never understand Americans,” she said. She shook her head and went into her house.

Upstairs, Lane hadn’t gone past my doorway. He scanned the studio, running a hand through his hair as he looked over the chaotic space. Maybe I should have done the dishes.

“Do you need help putting things back together?” he asked.

“You don’t like the path of carpet that winds between all the books?” It’s true that I don’t use the most conventional system of organizing an apartment. But I know where every single one of the books is located, as well as the ones in my university office. Being a historian, I have to do much of my research on paper.

I pointed to the broken jewelry box. “That’s the only thing the burglar touched.”

“Did he get it?”

Lane Peters wasn’t slow. I’ll give him that much credit.

“You planning on telling me what’s really going on now?” he asked.

He leaned into the frame of the doorway rather than stepping inside. There was something about him I couldn’t gauge. He slouched almost lazily in the doorway, yet at the same time held himself with an air of confidence. I couldn’t remotely guess his age. Maybe that’s what was jarring about him. He looked both young and old. A worldly air about him balanced out what would otherwise have been a gangly figure.

“If you’re up for a little walk,” I said, grabbing a scarf from the back of my couch, “I know a good place where we can talk.”