Pirate Vishnu (A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery) (12 page)

A knock on my door startled me from the memory. I reached for the doorknob without looking through the peep hole, figuring Sanjay had forgotten something.

Instead, an unsmiling man with an unruly head of black hair stood in my doorway. Maybe Sanjay was right and I was in over my head. I was about to slam the door and hope for the best when the dark-haired man held up a badge in his hand.

“Inspector Valdez,” he said. “Homicide.”

I didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.

“You Jaya Jones?”

“That’s me.”

“You want to tell us why a murder victim gave you a handwritten receipt for a valuable object hours before he was killed?”

Chapter 17

“You’re talking about Steven Healy,” I said to the detective standing in my doorway.

He nodded but didn’t speak. Was he waiting for me to say something else? He watched me for a few seconds.

“May I come in?” he asked after I didn’t continue.

I stepped aside.

Valdez took his time stepping inside. He walked slowly, looking around as he did so. Had I just given him permission to search my apartment by letting him in?

He could have been anywhere between forty and sixty. His tan face had the weathered look of either a long life or a hard one. His black hair showed only the faintest touches of gray. A close-cropped beard covered his face.

“What’s your connection to Steven Healy?” he asked.

“I’m a history professor,” I said. “He came to see me for help with some historical research. That’s why he looked me up and left an old historical document with me, so I could conduct further research.”

The inspector nodded but didn’t speak.

To fill the awkward silence, I had the urge to keep talking. But I didn’t.

“You know him for long?” he asked once it was clear I wasn’t going to say anything else.

“I met him for the first time yesterday.”

“I tried to reach you at your office,” Valdez said, “as well as on your phone. You’re a tough woman to find. This apartment of yours doesn’t exist.”

“My phone was stolen when I was mugged earlier today,” I said, hoping television shows were right that homicide detectives didn’t care about illegal apartment dwellings.

His face registered surprise.

“You didn’t know I was mugged today?” I asked.

He frowned as he pulled a phone out of his scruffy jacket pocket and scrolled through his messages. His clothes and the stance of his body said to the world that he wasn’t really trying. But his eyes told another story.

“Where was this?” he asked, looking up from the phone.

“Outside my university library,” I said. “A few hours ago. Midafternoon today. The mugger stole the map Steven Healy gave to me yesterday.”

“You gave a description of your attacker?”

“I couldn’t see his face. He had a stocking over it.”

“What else was stolen?”

“He also got my laptop and phone.”

“The receipt we found said the map he loaned you was valuable.”

“Maybe. I was helping him figure that out.”

“You two were close?” Valdez asked. He scratched his beard and glanced around my apartment, seemingly uninterested in the conversation. I had a feeling he wanted me to think he wasn’t nearly as sharp as his observations indicated.

“I told you, I only met him yesterday.”

“Oh, right.” He looked back at me. “You mentioned that.”

“Look, Detective—”

“It’s Inspector,” Valdez said.

“He needed help with some historical research.” I paused. I knew I should tell him everything and let the police take care of it, but I didn’t know how to convince him that a treasure map from a century ago had the relevance to today that I knew it had.

“You were going to say something else,” Valdez said.

“He thought,” I said, “that the map led to a treasure. That’s why someone must have stolen the map.”

“A treasure? What kind of treasure?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

Valdez scratched his beard again. “Didn’t that seem odd to you?”

“Of course it seemed
odd
,” I said. “This whole thing is odd.”

“What seems strangest to me,” Valdez said, “is that a man who had lost everything would loan out something so valuable.”

“I didn’t know that about him when he came to see me.”

“Why did he come to you?” Valdez asked. “I know, I know, you’re a historian. I get it. But there are a lot of you guys around. Wouldn’t he have gone to someone with more experience?”

“You mean someone older?” I said. “He thinks—thought—an ancestor of mine was the one who drew the map.”

“His son and a good friend of his say this was something big he was looking into. Did he have a partner?”

“The mugger?”

“Or maybe you,” Valdez suggested.

I stared at him. I suddenly felt my heart beating in my throat. “You don’t think that I had anything to do with—”  

“You say this mysterious treasure is what got Steven Healy killed, and that he just handed a valuable treasure map over to you. Seems awfully strange for someone he’d only met a few hours beforehand, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not really.” Was my voice shaking? But surely anyone who’d been accused of something would be nervous. “He couldn’t find the treasure without help, and he thought I could help.”

“Exactly. He needed a partner.”

“But I just met him,” I stammered. “Surely you can check phone records or something.”

“This mugger,” Valdez said, “he took your whole purse? Including your wallet, like any mugger would take?”

“Wait, now you
don’t
think it’s connected?”

“This can be a dangerous city. You’re a petite young woman. Easy prey.”

My muscles tensed. “I can take care of myself.”

“I can tell. The way you hold yourself. I wouldn’t want to mess with you.”

Damn. He’d elicited the reaction he meant to.

“I’ll bet you have no trouble hitting someone hard enough to do some real damage,” Valdez continued. “As a strong woman who can take care of herself.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“Where were you yesterday evening?”

“You mean, do I have an alibi?”

“Just getting all the facts together.”

“I play music at the Tandoori Palace restaurant,” I said. “I was there last night.”

“No kidding.” He smiled. “My daughter loves that place. You were there all evening after Steven Healy left your office?”

“Oh. I had an errand to run in Berkeley first.”

“You care to elaborate?”

Aside from being suspected of murder, discussing my break-up was the worst thing I could think of telling a homicide inspector. I scribbled Lane’s name and contact information on a piece of notepaper.

“I was with him,” I said.

“Have a good evening, Miss Jones. I’ll be in touch.”

I wasn’t arrested, but I didn’t feel at all at ease after the inspector left.

There was no way I was going to take a nap now. A nervous tingling crept up the back of my neck. Should I have gone with Sanjay as he’d suggested? What if it hadn’t been a police officer who’d been behind the door?

I reached for my phone to call Tamarind, but remembered I didn’t have it anymore and wouldn’t until my new credit card arrived. Without my phone or laptop, I was completely isolated from the world. What did people do before phones?

Not wanting to be alone in my apartment, I went downstairs to see if Nadia was around. She wasn’t.

I admit I felt a bit ridiculous driving back and forth from the university so many times that day, but I didn’t want to be alone at the house.

When I got to the library, I didn’t see Tamarind’s blue hair at the front desk, but I knew she wasn’t due to get off work yet. I found her in the stacks.

“Jaya!” she whispered with more enthusiasm than I thought possible for a whisper. “You are
the man
. Did you really go all Kung Fu on a mugger?”

“Jiu jitsu, actually. But it didn’t work. He got my bag.”

“I’d have been there with you if it hadn’t been for the authoritarian practices of this library,” Tamarind grumbled. “I need to raise the issue at our next staff meeting.”

“It happened so quickly, you wouldn’t have been able to help anyway.”

“Like hell—”

“Tamarind,” I said, “I think it might have been the same guy who killed Steven Healy.”

“Shut. Up.”

“He got
the map
. He’s after Anand’s treasure.”

“Did you tell the police about the connection?”

“I tried, but I don’t think it worked. And what’s up with calling themselves
inspectors
rather than detectives?”

“It’s a San Francisco thing.”

“The police think I might have something to do with it.”

“No way! Because you’re related to a pirate? That’s totally
ancestor profiling
or something. What are you going to do?”

“Find Anand’s treasure before the murderer does?” I said.

“Awesome. I’m in.”

I hesitated. Having someone else back me up made the plan more real. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea.

“What else can I do?” I said, trying to convince myself more than Tamarind. “Sit back and wait for the police to figure out they shouldn’t be focusing on me and should be looking for someone else?”

“Hell no,” Tamarind said. “How can I help?”

“The inspector seemed like a really smart guy. He got me to say things I hadn’t meant to say. But he’s not going to focus on a theft from a hundred years ago, and that’s the key to this.”

“Your personal librarian is at your service.”

“There can’t have been many men with the name Anand Paravar in San Francisco around 1900,” I said. “We can look through records—”

“He was probably the only one,” Tamarind interrupted. “But that won’t help us. Jaya, do you realize that’s the absolute worst time in San Francisco history to find records about the population? The earthquake and fire wiped out City Hall records. It was one of the great equalizers, letting people reinvent themselves—at least the people who survived. Otherwise I would already have looked.”

“There has to be something we can find.”

“There is.” Tamarind paused. “I did some more digging for you this afternoon. I haven’t had this much fun in months. Not since those scientist students found an obscure text about early airplanes and built their own for a fall semester final. You should have seen it—”

“Tamarind.”

“Right. I’m babbling because I haven’t been able to think of the best way to broach the subject. That’s why I didn’t come right out with it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re in a different kind of danger than you think,” Tamarind said slowly. “Before I tell you what I found, tell me one thing about your mugger. Then I’ll know I’m right. Did you get a look at his face?”

“No, he had his face covered.”

“I knew it!” Tamarind said. “I know who’s after you.”

With the information Tamarind gave me, I left for the Tandoori Palace. I hadn’t yet figured out how I was going to play my set that night. The small and large drum that make up the tabla create the instrument’s unique sounds when a musician drums their fingers in different spots while simultaneously running their palm across the drum surface. It’s sort of like a DJ scratching an LP on a turntable. With my palm scratched up by my lunge after the mugger, I’d have to be creative that night.

I arrived fifteen minutes early, making Raj smile happily. Juan set a plate of samosas in front of me. “Not spicy tonight,” he said, adding a large scoop of hot mustard sauce on the plate. He’s a man of few words, but he knows the way to a woman’s heart.

I was dipping the last of the fried samosas into the sauce when Sanjay arrived.

“
You
talk to
me
about cutting it close?” I said.

“The Folsom Street Theater isn’t set up for the magic arts.” He sighed and took off his hat. “The lighting hides nothing.”

“You’ve got a coin stuck behind your ear.”

Sanjay grumbled and tucked the coin into his pocket. “You see what they’re driving me to? But never mind. Are you all right? No more muggings?”

“I’m better than all right. Tamarind may have solved part of our mystery. She kept searching through historical records. She found one of Anand’s friends who he was photographed with in 1905. She thinks he might bridge the gap between past and present. You’ll never guess what Anand’s friend did for a living.”

Chapter 18

San Francisco, 1904

The man with the badge didn’t believe him.

“Let’s try this again,” he said, staring down at the handcuffed Anand. “How did the money to pay the workers go missing from the safe?”

“I don’t know anything about missing money,” Anand said.

“The other workers vouch for each other,” the man with the badge said. “You calling them liars?”

Anand braced himself for being punched again. The pain of being hit repeatedly blurred together as the kicks and punches kept coming. It was only after he was close to unconsciousness that the man with the badge believed he hadn’t stolen the money. He uncuffed Anand and helped him up. Unable to stand, Anand fell to the floor.

It was the second time he’d lost consciousness in San Francisco. The doctor said his leg had been broken in the beating and that Anand would have to stay off it for several weeks. That meant he wouldn’t be able to work. He had a small amount of savings, but he sent much of it home. What would he do for money? No matter. He knew he would figure something out. He always did. It wasn’t the lost wages that angered him. It wasn’t his fellow workers that angered him at that moment either. It was the police who wouldn’t believe he was innocent in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.

Li showed up at Anand’s boarding house the next day with a crutch. It was six months after Anand, Li, and Samuel had saved the boy from being beaten. The three friends were now inseparable.

Samuel had been working with Li. Once the swelling around Samuel’s eye and cheek went down, he shaved off his beard. The transformation revealed a handsome man with fair skin and strikingly sharp features. Almost exactly Anand’s height –- a hair under six feet tall -– Samuel’s frame held at least two stones more, all of it muscle. He struck the perfect balance between being gruff and charming, walking that fine line between a fellow you wanted to befriend and a man you were afraid of. It was exactly right for playing tour guide to tourists afraid of Orientals, but who wanted a look at the wild side of life in San Francisco without being shanghaied. Samuel neglected to tell the tourists that a shanghaiing hadn’t been much of a problem in over a dozen years. He paid Li a cut of his earnings for taking the gullible visitors to the opium dens Li had shown him.

The smallest of the friends, Li stood only a few inches over five feet. From behind he was often mistaken for a child, for nobody would have thought a Chinese man would have cut off his queue of long hair worn in homage to the Chinese emperor.

The swath of bound hair was mandated by Chinese law, but having been born in California, Li felt no allegiance to the Chinese emperor. His parents settled in San Francisco after his father spent his youth building the transcontinental railroad. Instead of living in his parents’ home until he was married –- and probably consigned to stay there even then -– Li moved out at sixteen, cutting off his hair the same day to ensure his father would not insist upon his return.

Anand had learned that Li nearly starved to death that first year on his own, shunned by the Chinese community. In spite of being judged the most intelligent pupil in his Chinese school, Li had few worldly skills at the time. That year taught him much.

To Li, the thought of living an obscure, subservient life was much worse than the thought of death. It was no surprise that he and Anand became fast friends.

Samuel was a different story. Anand remained skeptical of Samuel’s motives at the beginning. Drawn from gold rush to gold rush -– or in the latest case, toying with the idea of heading to the Colorado Silver Rush –- Anand was never sure what Samuel was after. It wasn’t simply money. Samuel was a hard worker, and could have been making much more money as a laborer instead of chasing belated mineral rushes or showing wide-eyed men to opium dens. It was almost as if Samuel needed to feel that he was getting away with something. He wasn’t afraid of hard work, but an honest day’s labor was not good enough.

But Samuel had other qualities. He had saved Anand that first night they met, and continued to come through. A few minutes after Li arrived with the crutch for Anand’s leg, Samuel walked into the room with a bottle of whisky.

“This should get you through your nights until you’re on your feet again,” he said, setting the bottle down on the sole dresser in the room. Samuel was a generous friend. “In the meantime, let’s get you out of here for tonight.”

The two helped Anand down the stairs. It was much quicker than when Anand had gone up by himself.