Pirate Vishnu (A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery) (26 page)

“Probably nerves,” Tamarind said. “You’ve been on the run.”

“Inspector Valdez told me Connor had an alibi.”

“He probably got someone else’s opinion,” Tamarind said. “Aren’t eyewitness accounts unreliable?”

That was it. I knew what I was missing. I knew what we were
all
missing.

Naveen had done
both
of the translations. That meant I hadn’t gotten an objective second opinion about the translations.

Since the writing on the map was in Tamil script, I couldn’t easily use an online translator. However, there was a different angle I hadn’t thought to pursue. I could look for alternative meanings of the already-translated English words. I opened my laptop and searched for several meanings of
The Anchored Enchantress
before I found what I was after.

The literal translation of the Tamil could have been the Anchor of Mohini, a female incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu—often thought of as a femme fatale. An enchantress.
A Siren.

The great Naveen Krishnan had gotten the translation wrong.

The Anchored Enchantress
was supposed to be
The Siren’s Anchor
.

I had seen that name before, when looking at a map of San Francisco from a century ago.
The Siren’s Anchor
was a saloon from the days of the Barbary Coast.

Chapter 51

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you had a copy of the map!” Tamarind said.

“Steven’s daughter-in-law Christine found a copy in his possessions. She thought I’d want it so she gave it to me.”

“Shut. Up. And you just cracked it.”

I spread out the map. “The X is where the treasure should be found, so what’s the significance of this saloon in the Barbary Coast?”

“Don’t you know your San Francisco history?” Tamarind asked. “Much of the coastline was filled in with landfill.”

“I do know something about San Francisco history, you know,” I said. “But why would that matter to Anand’s map? The land was
already
filled in when he got here.”

“It matters because of the name of the saloon you mentioned,” Tamarind said. “Most of the Financial District is built on top of land that’s mixed up with sunken ships that sailed into the bay during the Gold Rush and never left. But there are a few buildings still made out of the tops of some of those ships. There’s at least one of those old ship saloons that survived the earthquake and that still exists.”

“Really?”

“
The Old Ship Saloon
is the favorite pub of one of my ex-boyfriends.” Tamarind paused and rolled her eyes. “He thinks he’s so edgy, but really you’re more likely to find a banker hanging out there than a beat poet. I’d bet you a round of drinks that
The Siren’s Anchor
was a ship before it was a saloon.”

“A ship…”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. Are you all right, Jaya?”

I smoothed out the wrinkled copy of the map. “The X,” I said, feeling my body begin to buzz with excitement. “The X is at the edge of the water. What if it didn’t mean something was buried on land? What if it meant something actually in the water?
What if it meant the location of a ship?
”

“Are you sure you can tell where the X is meant to point to?” Tamarind asked, picking up the map and squinting at it. “This is a pretty faded photocopy.”

I snatched the wrinkled paper back from her. The map was still quite visible through my folds and the photocopied coffee stain. The stain…

“Oh no…” I said. My throat tightened. How had I not made the connection before?

“I knew it,” Tamarind said. “You folded it beyond recognition. You should really be more careful—”

“Not that.
The coffee stain
. This stain was from when Sanjay put his coffee mug down on the original map at my apartment.”

“It’s still legible,” Tamarind said. “I was just giving you a hard time.”

“That’s not it,” I said. “The stain
wasn’t there
when Steven showed it to me. That means he couldn’t have made a copy of the map with the stain on it. This
isn’t
one of his original copies, like Christine said it was. She lied to me. She’s been lying to me this whole time. It wasn’t Connor. It’s his wife
Christine
.”

Chapter 52

San Francisco, April 10, 1906

“You poisoned me?” Anand staggered back from the bar, knocking over his bar stool.

“I have the antidote,” Samuel said. “But you must tell me where you have hidden the Heart of India. The poison takes several hours to kill. You can take me to the treasure and save yourself.”

Anand laughed. “You do not know me as well as I thought. You have killed me, my brother.” He stood up to leave the saloon.

Samuel grabbed Anand by his shirt collar.

“Don’t you dare walk away from me to be a damn martyr,” Samuel said.

Anand stared Samuel down for several seconds.

“I wasted six months of my life to get Mrs. Lancaster her treasure,” Samuel said. “I was ill for months with malaria and dysentery. You’re not taking this away from me! I earned it.”

“What’s going on?” Faye called out from behind the bar. “You know the rules. If you’re going to be rough, take it outside.”

In the time Samuel took to glance at Faye, Anand had his chance. He pulled out of Samuel’s grasp and swung at his old friend. The punch hit Samuel firmly in the jaw.

“Anand!” Faye yelled over the rising din of the saloon’s customers.

Samuel swung back. Anand ducked, and Samuel’s punch landed on the ship’s wheel mounted on the wall. He cried out in pain and gripped his broken hand. Anand ran at Samuel. The Irishman dropped his hand and spun Anand around as the two men collided. With a shove, he sent Anand toward the wall -- and right into the fishing spear.

The men of the saloon who’d been cheering fell silent.

The spear poked out through where it had pierced Anand’s white shirt. Blood spread across his stomach.

“No!” Samuel cried out as Faye began to shriek.

Samuel stood stock-still in shock. Three men rushed to Anand. They lifted him gingerly off of the mounted spear. Anand stumbled as he winced in pain, but did not fall.

“Run and get a doctor,” Faye said to one of the men, an urgency in her voice that Anand had never before heard.

“Do not bother, Faye,” Anand said. “This is not a wound a man can recover from.”

Chapter 53

Tamarind wasn’t happy that she had to stay at work while I left to figure out what I was going to do with the two realizations I’d made. Christine had lied about the map, and the Heart of India might be in a ship once docked along the treacherous coast of San Francisco.
What had happened to that ship?

“I have an idea,” Sanjay said. Though he usually hated to be distracted while  working on a new illusion, he seemed glad to see me when I showed up.

“You going to share?”

“You’re not going to like it.” Sanjay twirled his hat in his hands.

“I don’t like much of anything right now.”

“I know a magician—he’s not a
friend
, exactly. I don’t like his methods. He is a crap mentalist, so he uses this drug, kind of like a truth serum, to control people on stage.”

“Does it work?”

“It does put people into a suggestible state, and they don’t remember what happened afterward either. It’s an aid to hypnosis.”

“You think it’ll work?”

“This is me you’re talking to, Jaya. But what I don’t have figured out is how we’ll get Christine in a position where we can get her to meet with us so I can give it to her.”

“I can answer that,” I said. “She wants the Heart of India—andI have a suspicion where the treasure is now.”

Christine jumped at the chance to meet us at Lands End the following morning. I didn’t tell her we’d figured out she was the bad guy. I told her the map had led me to the treasure, and that since she’d given it to me I wanted her to be there.

Sanjay had met with his friend and gotten some of the drug the night before, along with champagne and plastic champagne glasses for our excursion. The plan was for Sanjay to pour champagne for us to toast the discovery. With Sanjay’s sleight of hand, he’d get the drug into Christine’s drink.

He picked me up that morning. He was dressed strangely, in a trench coat rather than one of his usual stylish jackets. I supposed he was playing the role of detective or P.I. today. His bowler hat looked appropriate with the 1930s coat.

The fog rolled in across the water as we waited for Christine at the plaque with the information about the ships that had sunk in the rocky waters off the coast. When I had first visited Lands End, I’d noticed the commemorative plaque listing of sunken ships—including one ship that had never been identified. If I was right, this would explain
why
.

Christine arrived wearing a thick, white wrap in lieu of a coat. She wore matching white shoes that didn’t seem to have accumulated any dust on them in the half-mile walk from the car. 

“I was so sorry to hear the police mistakenly thought you had anything to do with my father-in-law’s death,” she said. “I can’t believe I was so wrong about Connor… But it’s best to honor his father’s legacy by finding his treasure.”

“Hear, hear,” said Sanjay, popping the cork on the bottle. The sound of fog horns drowned out the sound of the pop. He set the glasses down on a concrete bench at the overlook, pouring the bubbly liquid halfway. I didn’t notice him put anything into any of the glasses before he scooted one toward Christine. She swung her wrap over her shoulders against the wind, then picked up the glass.

“I’m so glad the map came in handy,” she said, raising her glass and taking a sip. “Where is the treasure?”

“I should back up a little bit first,” I said. “I’m not sure how much you know about the treasure map of your father-in-law’s.”

“Not much,” Christine said. “I knew he was behaving strangely, obsessed with something, but I didn’t know much about it. Only Connor did.”

“Steven came to see me because my Uncle Anand was the one who drew the treasure map that ended up in Steven’s grandmother’s possessions,” I said. “He knew I was a historian and that I might know where the letters Anand wrote to my grandfather were kept. He hadn’t been able to decipher the map, so he thought there must have been a clue.”

“How interesting,” Christine said. “
Was there
a clue?”

“There was. But the biggest clue wasn’t in the letters themselves.” I glanced at Sanjay. The plan was for me to keep Christine talking until the drug took over.

“The letters did say what to look for on the map,” I continued, “but the biggest clue was that the map itself wasn’t what it seemed.”

“It wasn’t?”

“I don’t know how closely you studied it,” I said, “but it looks like a map of San Francisco.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Yes and no. The city of Kochi, in India, was a major trading center for centuries. It has a nearly identical orientation to San Francisco. Anand worked there as a boat builder before living in San Francisco. Are you feeling all right?”

“Oh yes, just a bit cold.” Christine wrapped her shawl more tightly around her.

“Certain locations drawn on the map were meant to be the Kochi that Anand knew, and certain locations were meant to be San Francisco. Anand’s accomplice stole a treasure in India that was crafted at a location marked on the map with the notation “lost,” and Anand had hidden the treasure in San Francisco where he marked “found” on the map.

“Buried here at Lands End?” Christine asked.

“Not exactly buried,” I said. “
Sunken
.”

I pointed to the plaque commemorating the ships that had sunk off the coast. My research had confirmed that
The Siren’s Anchor
was an older ship that had been buried along the eastern coast of San Francisco during the Gold Rush and been turned into a saloon. And as I had seen on my earlier walk at Lands End, there was an unidentified ship of unknown origins that sank the day of the Great Earthquake.

“The treasure was never found,” I said, “because it sank along with the ship it was hidden within on April 18, 1906.”

“The Heart of India is right here?” Christine ran to the edge of the lookout.

“You know what the treasure is?”

“What?” Christine turned. “Oh, you said… No, Connor’s father must have said.”

“Lands End.” Sanjay giggled, pointing at Christine. “The end of the land. Bye, bye land.” He swayed back and forth, putting his face in his hands.

Oh no
...This wasn’t happening.

Sanjay had drunk from the wrong glass. He was the one who was drugged. Not Christine.

“Sanjay,” I said sharply, taking his trench coat by the lapels and shaking him. “You’re in control.”

Sanjay opened his fingers and peeked through his hands.

“I’m in control?” he said.

“Yes. You—”

Sanjay dropped his hands and wrapped them around me. He lifted me off the ground and brought his mouth down on mine. His arms were strong from the strength training he did for his more complex illusions. He held me in place without effort. I was so surprised that I didn’t resist. His lips caressed mine in a rhythmic motion that was much more skilled than his sitar playing. 

And damn if Tamarind wasn’t right—my thighs did feel like they were on fire.