Pirate Vishnu (A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery) (18 page)

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 bridge. 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.

I reached the part of the waterfront where Chinese fishing nets lined the northern coast of the old fort town. The nets were mammoth contraptions, at least fifty feet across and twenty-five feet high. Wooden arms radiated from a cantilever, with large stones suspended by ropes to act as counterweights to pull in the nets. I could see the giant nets clearly as the sun set over the water, though the water itself was dark.

Based on the location of the X on the waterfront—or rather, my memory of where that X was—it would be west of the nets where I’d begun my walk, but still along the water. The X had been drawn over water. A hundred years of shallow water with rocky sand… It was too much to hope for.

A bigger problem was that I didn’t know what I was looking for, and without the map, I was lost. Kochi was small, but not small enough. I’d rushed off impetuously, without thinking it through. Could Lane have been right about me? No, that wasn’t it. He didn’t fully understand what Anand had meant to my family—to my mom. Though I did have a choice, it wasn’t the clear-cut one that Lane made it out to be.

I glanced around uneasily, feeling the darkness descend. Now that Naveen had Anand’s letters, did he know more than I did?

I checked myself into a cheap hotel that had once been a royal residence. From the crumbling paint I could tell it had seen better days, so it was perfect for my budget.

In the morning, I was far from refreshed and ready for the start of a new day. The bed must have been left over from the colonial era just like the building. I woke up with a stiff neck, mad at Naveen and even madder at Lane. I hadn’t brought my running shoes with me to Kochi, so I couldn’t even go running to clear my head before the day heated up.

When I grabbed my backpack and unlatched the oversized wooden door of my hotel room, I realized I should have looked through the cut-out peep hole first. There was someone waiting for me in the hallway.

“Truce?” he said.

I regarded him for a moment as I caught my breath.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Lane continued. “And I didn’t mean for anything that happened yesterday to happen.”

“What I said…” I began, “I shouldn’t have said it. I didn’t mean it.”

“I know,” he said, but he didn’t look like he believed it.

“You’re not mad?”

“Let’s just get you through this, okay?”

Lane had abandoned his local attire and was wearing his usual horn-rimmed glasses, tan cargo pants, and a white cotton dress shirt. Wearing a white dress and tan sandals, I matched him. We might have looked like a cute couple if we weren’t the exact opposite.

I couldn’t get a firm grasp on any of the conflicting emotions clouding my thoughts. It was clear Lane hadn’t forgiven me, but he’d stayed when he said he wouldn’t. He wasn’t making things easier for either of us. I didn’t know if I wanted to walk past him and go off on my own, or if I wanted to see if we could start from scratch.

“How did you find me?”

“You’re still being a terrible spy,” he said. “If Naveen is looking for you, it wouldn’t be difficult for him to find you either.”

“If you’re right about him,” I said, “he already has the letters, which means he doesn’t need me.”

“Maybe.”

“You look well-rested for someone who spent the night in this hallway.”

“I rented a room. But just in case I didn’t catch you, I paid the front desk night clerk to wake me up if you left. The security guard, too.”

I couldn’t help laughing at the absurdity of the situation. As I did so, I realized for the first time that maybe Lane was right about my motives. I was scared of Naveen and confused about Lane, but that didn’t stop me from being filled with excitement as I closed in on answers about Uncle Anand and his treasure. I didn’t want to be anywhere but where I was.

“Does this mean you’re delirious from the heat?” Lane said.

“I accept your truce,” I said. “I’m looking for two locations on the map. I don’t have enough information to find the X that possibly marks the treasure, but there’s something significant about the
MP Craft Emporium
and
The Anchored Enchantress.
If you want to help, let’s get going.”

That morning, we stayed busy making inquiries about the two locations at a few of the local historical sites—to no avail. When monsoon rains broke, we took a lunch break. At a family restaurant with a large covered patio, I ordered a spicy dish of fish stewed in coconut milk. I was glad for the force of the downpour, because it made it easy to sit back and watch the rain instead of feeling like we needed to talk about anything I wasn’t ready for.

Once the rains cleared, we tried a different tactic. We hired an auto-rickshaw to drive us around the small peninsula in hopes of seeing something that fit.

“We’re looking for two things,” I said from the narrow backseat. “The
MP Craft Emporium
and
The Anchored Enchantress
.”

The driver wasn’t familiar with either one, but he was happy to drive us through the narrow streets in the vicinity of the two areas where I remembered the notations on the map. The streets began to blur together. Every few blocks, he asked if he could take us to some shops. I knew he’d get a commission if he took us to the specific stores he had arrangements with.

“I take Mr. and Mrs. to great shop. You like silk? Great deal on carpets?”

“I’ll give you twice your commission,” Lane said, leaning forward in the rickshaw, “if you stop circling the same streets with your friends’ shops.”

The driver was happy to oblige.

I was hoping I’d know what I was looking for when I saw it, but the longer we circled the streets, the less sure I became. “Maybe we should try this on foot?” I suggested after we’d spent hours searching in vain. “I’m starving. Why don’t we stop for dinner?”

The driver dropped us off in front of a café in the neighborhood that I thought was our best bet. Lane added a hefty tip to his payment before stepping out of the rickshaw. I climbed out after him, bumping into him where he stood frozen in place.

“We have company,” Lane said, pointing across the street.

Naveen Krishnan was in Kochi.

Chapter 28

“What are you doing, Jones?” Lane said, trailing after me.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m going to talk to Naveen.” I kept walking. “Naveen can’t do anything to us here in the crowded street.”

We dodged traffic to make our way across the dusty, crowded street. This central part of town with traders and retail shops was much busier than the coastal region I’d explored the night before and the historic areas we’d visited that morning.

Instead of looking surprised to see me, Naveen hailed me in greeting. He wore a white muslin suit and a broad-rimmed hat.

“Nice to see you keeping up,” he said to me. “And you must be the art historian.”

“How did—” I began.

“You think you’re the only one who can do their homework?” Naveen answered.

“What are you doing here, Naveen?” I asked. Lane remained uncharacteristically mute.

“I have just as much right to be here as you do,” Naveen said.

“You think you have the right to murder someone?” Lane said. He took a few steps to the side. Did he think Naveen was going to try something?

“Nice try, but I didn’t kill anyone,” Naveen said calmly. “Don’t worry. I don’t think Jaya here has the guts to kill anyone, either.”

I wasn’t sure if I should take that as a compliment or not.

“Steven’s son is crazy,” Naveen said. “I wouldn’t put it past him to have killed his father. Connor doesn’t care about the treasure, though. He won’t bother me when I find it.”

“You admit Steven came to see you to translate the map,” I said.

We all dodged out of the way as a family of three on a bicycle came precariously close.

“Of course,” Naveen said, dusting off his slacks. “There’s no crime in that. There’s also no crime in beating you to the treasure.”

“What did Steven tell you about the treasure?” I asked. And why wasn’t Lane questioning him along with me?

Naveen answered with a thin smile.

“He didn’t tell you enough to find anything,” I said. “I knew it. You didn’t make the Kochi connection until I naively told you about the Chinese fishing nets. Then you bribed the archivist at the University of Kerala when you realized what I was on to.”

Naveen’s smile faltered at that. “I figured it out,” he said, his smile returning. “I’m not saying anything else.”

“I’m the one you stole the information from to get here!” I said, feeling terribly petty, but this was
Naveen Krishnan
. There was no way I was going to let him best me.

“All’s fair in love and academic war.” He tipped his hat and walked off.

“You were right,” I said to Lane after Naveen’s figure had disappeared down a narrow side street. “I wouldn’t put it past him to kill for this treasure. Not for the wealth, but for the academic glory.” I shivered in spite of the sticky heat.

“Hmm,” Lane said.

“You could have helped me out with him,” I said. “I thought that’s what you were here for. Maybe he knows where the shop we’re looking for is. He must have made a copy of the map.”

“I was doing something more important,” Lane said.

“Which is?”

Lane pointed to a faded wall a few buildings past where we stood. “I was making sure he didn’t turn around and see that.”

A modern sign with a new name hung above the bright blue door that was the shop’s main entrance, but the weather-worn wall had once borne the words
Marikayaer Paravar Craft Emporium.