Pirate Vishnu (A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery) (20 page)

We made better time than expected, arriving in Trivandrum a little after one o’clock in the morning.

Lane dropped me off at my hotel so I could get a few hours of sleep before going to see Joseph. He said he’d do the same and come back to pick me up.

I walked up the drive of the hotel. I don’t know what it is with me and hotel lobbies, but a familiar face was waiting for me when I walked through the glass doors.

A man was having an animated discussion in English with the clerk at the front desk. I knew that voice.

“Sanjay?” I said.

He turned from the clerk to face me. A travel bag sat on the floor next to his feet. He wore a jacket in spite of the warm night air. He must have just arrived on one of the flights that arrive in the middle of the night.

“You’re alive,” he whispered. A smile lit up his face, but it didn’t hide his pallor.

Something was wrong. Not just the strain of a long flight.

Sanjay took two steps toward me before staggering. The flap of his jacket opened up. That’s when I saw it. The front of his shirt was drenched with a thick, dark red liquid. He took one more step forward before his legs gave out. Sanjay collapsed at my feet in a pool of blood.

Chapter 33

San Francisco, 1905

The knock at the door was timid. Anand opened it to find Li’s sister Mai standing there. She looked stunning in a modern crimson dress. She had become a beautiful woman in her seventeenth year.

“My brother says you have not been to The Siren’s Anchor lately. Is it because of what happened to your friend Samuel?”

“I hope Li told you that Samuel is unharmed,” Anand said. “It was only a trick.”

“Yes,” Mai said. “Li did not wish me to worry. I knew Samuel had been working as a spiritualist, but never thought it could be so dangerous.”

“Samuel has gone to find his fortune in the Colorado silver mines,” Anand said. He suspected his friend had departed in part because of unrequited feelings toward Mai, but he kept that to himself. “And I have been contemplating returning to India. It was not prudent for me to remain there at the time, but I have now seen much of the world. This is a strange but marvelous country, but I think it may be time for me to go home.”

“You’re leaving us?”

“Is there anything keeping me here?”

“I enjoyed our walk the other day.” She blushed. “It is a lovely afternoon. Perhaps it would help calm your worries to walk with me? You could tell me of your home.”

“You wish to hear of the Kingdom of Travancore?”

“I have never been outside of San Francisco,” Mai said. “I would like that very much.”

Anand took Mai’s arm. She was stronger than she looked. He liked that. He liked her. Yet it was with trepidation that he took her arm. He knew how fragile life was. His own death, he could tolerate. But truly caring for another, in the way he could imagine caring for Mai? That was enough to frighten even Anand Selvam Paravar.

Chapter 34

Hospitals can be stressful under any circumstances, but it’s especially true when it’s in a foreign country. Almost everyone involved understood English, but that didn’t help much since I had no idea what had happened to Sanjay.

Sanjay was still unconscious when the doctor cleaned and bandaged his wound. After clearing away the blood, they determined it was a knife wound. It wasn’t deep enough to have hurt any internal organs.

Thank God. I don’t know what I would have done without Sanjay. He was the most solid thing in my life.

The strange thing, they said, was the amount of blood. The knife wound didn’t seem  serious enough to merit that amount of blood. They asked if Sanjay was a hemophiliac, which I knew he wasn’t. He’d had several injuries from his magic act, but none of them were life threatening like they would have been to a hemophiliac.
Then why was there so much blood?

I paced the crowded hallway in a daze, waiting for him to wake up. I walked down the hall to a waiting room where a colorful musical flickered on a small television screen. Even if I’d spoken the language of the film, I doubt anything could have held my attention.

After what seemed the length of at least five Bollywood films—but was in reality somewhere around an hour—the doctor finally came to get me and led me back to Sanjay’s room.

I sat at the edge of Sanjay’s cot, all too aware of the cloth bandage that covered his midsection.

“You’re wearing pink,” was the first thing out of Sanjay’s mouth as he took my hand in his.

“Your blood was all over me. In the confusion I left my backpack at the hotel. I had  to buy a new blouse from one of the vendors outside. This country is worse than Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley—it’s impossible to find anything without color.”

“It looks good on you.” Sanjay squeezed my hand and attempted a smile. His lips were dry and his thick hair was a mess. “It’s been a year since I’ve seen you wear color, after the airline lost your luggage and you had to improvise.”

“How could I forget?” I said, looking Sanjay over with relief. “Something looks different about you,” I added.

“Besides the blood loss, you mean?”

“I know what it is. You don’t have your hat. Did the nurses take it?”

“I didn’t bring it to India. Didn’t want to deal with airport security taking it apart. You know how many illusions are in that bowler hat?”

“You probably could have used it to defend yourself,” I said. “What on earth happened?”

Sanjay’s smile faded. “A package.”

“A package?”

Sanjay let go of my hand and sat up on the cot.

“I got home to my loft, the day after you left,” he said. “Outside my door, a large package was waiting for me. I didn’t remember ordering anything online, but with everything going on, I thought maybe I’d forgotten something I ordered for an illusion. I didn’t open it right away. I made some dinner first.”

“Sanjay,” I cut in.

“What? I was famished. I ate. Speaking of which, I’m pretty famished now. I haven’t had a chance to eat since I arrived. I was too worried about you. Can’t we get out of here and get some food?”

“The doctor is waiting for some test results,” I said. “You lost a lot of blood. You’re not going anywhere until then.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Sanjay said. “How did I lose so much blood?”

“You’re going to finish telling me what happened, so we can figure that out. But you don’t have to tell me in
quite
so much detail.”

“Can’t you go get me some food? I don’t know Trivandrum, so I don’t know the best places to eat. If we were in Delhi—”

“Sanjay. Nobody tried to stab
me
, so you’re the one who tells your story first. Now.”

“It wasn’t a person who stabbed me,” Sanjay said.

“What? How did you get stabbed, if not by a person?”

“When I looked at the box,” Sanjay said, “I saw that it had been hand delivered, not mailed. I was curious. I opened the top of the box and saw the lid of a serving tray. Weird, right? Turns out it was spring-loaded. That’s when a knife popped out of the box and slashed my stomach.”

“A booby trap?”

“Sort of,” Sanjay said, shifting uncomfortably. “The weird thing, though, is that it didn’t seem bad at all. I didn’t think I needed to go to the doctor. It wasn’t much worse than cutting a finger while cooking. And it wasn’t nearly as serious as some of the injuries I’ve gotten when practicing a new illusion. I thought it must have been my magician friend Tempest playing a practical joke. She’s got a wacky sense of humor.”

“You’ve got some great friends, Sanjay.”

Sanjay had told me something more important than he’d realized. If someone had put the box at Sanjay’s door yesterday, it couldn’t have been Naveen.

“I bandaged it up with a couple of Band-Aids,” Sanjay said, squirming in his bed. “That was really all it needed. Only after I was on the plane did I realize something was wrong.”

“Why were you getting on a plane to fly to India anyway?”

“I—”

The elderly doctor who’d attended to Sanjay stepped back into the room.

“Rat poison,” the doctor said. “Your cut was full of rat poison. Helpful in killing rats, yes, but a dangerous substance. When it comes in contact with an open wound, the blood does not stop flowing as it should. A small cut creates much blood. You would not have noticed at first.”

“So it’s not serious?” I asked.

“Correct,” the doctor said. “No reason for losing consciousness.”

“There was so much blood!” Sanjay insisted.

“He fainted,” the doctor said.

Sanjay never ceased to amaze me. The man could escape from the most dangerous situations he created on the stage, but he fainted because of a little blood.

“He’ll be fine?” I asked.

“Very much so. Rest here one more day, you will be right as rain. In the future, you should be more careful when working with rat poison, young man.”

Once the doctor was gone, I turned back to Sanjay.

“Maybe the police can get fingerprints off of it,” I suggested.

“Well...”

“You didn’t save the evidence? Sanjay, what were you thinking?”

“I told you I thought it was a friend playing a practical joke! Why would I leave a bloody knife in my loft? That’s gross. I washed everything. Of course in hindsight now that I know it wasn’t one of my friends, I would have done things differently.”

“The only person I can think it might have been is here in India,” I said. “So it can’t have been Naveen.”

“Wait,” Sanjay said. “You need to tell me what’s going on.”  He tried to cross his arms over his chest, but groaned as his forearms brushed against his abdomen. “You’re the one who took off in search of a treasure without thinking of telling me until you were on the other side of the world.”

“You still never told me why
you’re
here in India now.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“Because I didn’t check in with you constantly? Really—”

“Or at least that you were in trouble. You don’t have your cell phone, so I left half a dozen urgent messages for you at your hotel.”

“I left there.”

“You didn’t check out!” Sanjay said. “I asked the front desk. Repeatedly.”

“I was coming back, as you can see.”

“You could have
told
me. There’s a murderer running around.”

“Why were you trying to reach me in the first place?”

“Oh,” Sanjay said, blinking in surprise. “I didn’t tell you?”

“You mean before you collapsed on the hotel floor in a pool of blood and gave me a heart attack? No, you didn’t.”

“You were that worried about me?” he asked.

“Don’t ask such a stupid question.”

Sanjay smiled. “You’ll never guess what I found.”

“Not the location of Anand’s treasure.”

“That,” Sanjay said, “I would have gotten out of my mouth before passing out. No. But it gets us closer to it. I was at the library—”

“
You
went to the library?”

“Somebody had to pick up the slack. And you’ll be glad I did. Your librarian friend Tamarind found the next missing piece in the history. Anand’s friend Samuel—Spiritualist Samuel who you discovered—went
missing
in 1905.”

“What happened?”

“He was working as a spiritualist, as you know. The disappearance was written up in the papers with a story that he was leading a séance, when something went wrong.”

“What went wrong?”

“He
disappeared
from his spirit cabinet.”

“Isn’t that what illusionists are supposed to do?”

“They’re supposed to reappear, too.”

“And he didn’t?”

“Nope.”

“The trick went wrong, then?”

“Illusion,” Sanjay corrected me automatically. “That’s what the papers reported at the time. Since a body can’t actually disappear, they suspected foul play. There was blood found inside the empty cabinet. The press reported that he was killed and the body was hidden to cover it up.”

“But you don’t think that’s what actually happened.”

“There were gaps in the newspapers.  Tamarind said pre-1906 records are spotty because the earthquake destroyed so much.”

“Then it’s just a hunch the initial newspaper reports were wrong?”

Sanjay smiled and shook his head. “No, I’m sure of it. Samuel didn’t die.”

“They found him alive?”

“No. But I know it wasn’t an accident. He disappeared
on purpose
.”

“How do you know?”

“I found the spirit cabinet.”

Chapter 35

Sanjay was still talking, but I ceased listening. Through the open door, a tall man with wavy blond hair was talking with a nurse.

“I’ll be right back,” I said to Sanjay, my eyes never leaving the door.

Lane stood in the hallway, an agitated expression on his face. He was speaking a mix of English and Malayalam, trying to get information from the nurse. He broke off as soon as he saw me. He wrapped his arms around me in a hug that squeezed the breath out of me.

“Does this mean I’m forgiven for the awful things I said?” I whispered.

“They told me you’d been taken to the hospital,” he said, pulling back.

“Who told you that?”

“When I went back to the hotel, the clerk at the desk said you’d been taken away in an ambulance. But you weren’t registered here at the hospital.”

“That’s because it wasn’t me who was hurt.”

“You’re all right?” He looked me up and down. “Naveen didn’t try anything?”

“This has nothing to do with Naveen. It was a friend of mine admitted to the hospital. He was attacked back in San Francisco. That means Naveen
can’t be
our guy. He was only trying to scoop me with a discovery.”

I rubbed my hands over my face. I was so very tired. When I looked up, Lane was looking over into Sanjay’s room.

“Interesting,” Lane said, shaking his head. “I was so worried about you… But that means the murderer who also attacked you is still in San Francisco.”

“Looks like it.”

“I should go,” Lane said, looking in Sanjay’s direction. “I’m interrupting.”

“You’re not interrupting.”

“Since Naveen can’t be our guy, you’ll be okay here. Especially now that you’ve got your friend with you.”

He started walking down the hallway toward the exit. I jogged after him.

“You’re
leaving
again?”

Lane kept walking through the doors. The motorcycle was parked on the curb right outside the doors. He slipped onto the seat.

“What about Joseph and the missing letters?”

“I suppose if I told you to forget about them, you wouldn’t listen to me?”

“Why would I forget about them? They’re why I came—”

“I don’t want to have this fight with you again. If you’re going to pursue it, that’s your right. Now that I know you’re not in danger from Naveen, you can handle it yourself.”

“You’re really leaving?” 

“I shouldn’t have come in the first place,” he said. “Sorry I bothered you while your friend is in the hospital.”

“You didn’t bother me.”

“No?”

Lane wrapped his fingers around mine. He pulled me forward in a smooth motion. His lips found mine before I realized what was happening. I felt myself lifted onto the seat of the motorbike. His arms wrapped around me as his warm lips explored mine. The movement was intense, almost desperate. I responded on every level. My fingers ran through his hair as his ran through mine. I couldn’t tell if the intense heartbeat I felt was mine or his. I felt as if I was drowning, and I wanted more.

He pulled back slightly, leaving our noses touching. “Jaya Anand Jones,” he whispered. “Victory, Happiness, America. I’m going to miss you, you know.”

“That’s not fair,” I said, feeling the warmth of our breath entwined. “You can’t decide this on your own.”

He smiled that sad smile of his. “You’re right. I have a feeling I won’t be able to stay out of your life. But that’s for another day. Go take care of your friend.”