The Glass Thief (A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery Book 6) Read online

  Fifteen videos later, I hadn’t found anything remotely relevant, but I could tell you all about the stock answers Rick had on standby for generic interview questions.

  I was falling into the same trap my students did. As I always told them, general internet searches were ranked not for accuracy, but for things like popularity, size of the site, and good keywords a web developer had entered on the back end.

  I didn’t want pop culture interviews with Rick. I needed details about his research. Though he did in-depth historical research, he wasn’t taken seriously by the academic community of historians. I wouldn’t find any interviews in academic journals. But what about student projects or amateur historians?

  I went back to Rick’s website and found an archived list of his past events. On the extensive tour for his last book, only months before his disappearance, he’d done events at several bookstores in college towns.

  Bingo.

  The sound quality of this college video channel was so bad I nearly gave up on the video—until I heard the next question.

  “You’re known for doing immersive historical research,” she said. The interviewer’s voice and expression were serious, but I caught the edges of her lips tick upward as she asked her question. “Have you ever found a treasure yourself?”

  They were perched on high stools, two fake plants behind them. A second camera cut to a close-up of Rick’s face.

  Rick chuckled. Well-rehearsed, yet still charming. “Not yet. But for my next book…Well, I can’t spoil it.” He gave a shy grin. Was he flirting with her?

  “Our audience would love a hint.”

  He stroked his chin. Another rehearsed move. “I can tell you this much. Sometimes we take the things right in front of us for granted. I really shouldn’t say more.” He paused. The view was still from the close-up camera. A few strands of gray hair on his temples shone in the harsh artificial light. Fine lines crinkled around his eyes.

  I held my breath. He was dying to say more.

  “I really shouldn’t…” he repeated, looking at the interviewer. All she had to do was prompt him.

  A faint clunk sounded before the interviewer spoke again.

  “Ouch, all right,” she whispered, still off camera, before her voice returned to normal volume. “We’d love to hear more.”

  “I’ve noticed something,” Rick said, “that nobody else has. Not for more than a hundred years. This time, Gabriela Glass will prove herself worthy in the real world.”

  The interviewer’s face betrayed her. She thought he was joking with her. But she was wrong.

  I confirmed the number of views for this video with terrible production values. Seventeen. Nobody had put this together with his disappearance, because they hadn’t seen it.

  The treasure. The story. This wasn’t fiction. It was what Rick Coronado was after seven years ago when he’d failed. And now, he was asking for my help to find the Serpent King.

  Chapter 13

  I must have fallen asleep at some point, but when sunlight hit my eyes, it felt like I hadn’t slept at all. I was hoping a message from Rick would be waiting for me in the morning. There was, but it wasn’t what I expected.

  Is that your only feedback for now? Do your friends think you’re right?

  “Do my friends think I’m right?” I shouted at the leaking ceiling. “Why can’t you answer a question like a normal person?”

  I pulled my fuzzy warm sweater on and called Abby Wu. She didn’t answer. Of course. It was Saturday, and I had her work number. I found her email on the publisher’s website. My fridge was empty as usual, so I slipped on a hooded jacket to shield me from the rain and went in search of sustenance and warm coffee. By the time I’d returned, Abby had sent a brief reply saying she’d call me shortly.

  “Can’t you get him to tell us what’s going on?” I asked. “Gabriela Glass needs a historian, and I swear it seems like he’s asking for my help with a real mystery.”

  “I see why Rick likes you. You think outside the box. But I think you’re reading more into this than is there. He has a quirky sense of humor.”

  “But the last line of the chapter. It has to be him asking for my help to find this Serpent King statue.”

  “Wait—what?”

  My breath caught. “The Serpent King? You mean it’s real?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “But your voice—”

  “I’m annoyed. He’s being derivative. Reusing one of his old plots. You remember Empire of Glass, set in Cambodia?”

  “Of course.”

  “You know cobras are a recurring motif in his books, that Gabriela is an excellent snake-handler, and the series has a recurring character named Snake. I’m surprised he has that huge dog instead of a snake for a pet. A gold statue called the Snake King is a McGuffin Gabriela wastes her time searching for, not the main treasure, in Empire of Glass.”

  I frowned. “I think I’d remember that.” Gabriela had traveled to the real temples of Angkor Wat and Banteay Chhmar, Angkorian era temples with concentric blocks of courtyards with ornate carved structures inside, and Rick had invented a fictional version of the temple of Preah Vihear for Gabriela to discover. A naga king was mentioned as part of Cambodia’s legendary origin, but there was no snake sculpture.

  “Hmm. You might be right. If he listened to my editorial feedback, which he only does half the time, that would have been cut. But it doesn’t make sense. He wouldn’t reuse an old idea. At least the old Rick wouldn’t have done so. I was hoping he was writing something fresh.” She sighed.

  “This one is set in France, and the Serpent King was stolen from Munnar in India before being stolen from the French family who’d looted it.” As I spoke the words out loud, I was again struck by the fact that the location made no sense. The French had colonized parts of India, but not the tea plantations of Munnar. Rick should have known that, just as he should have known the game of strategy he referenced was already obsolete when Algernon Delacroix was in India.

  “Could you scan the pages so I can read them?” Abby asked. “I know they’re not ready for me yet, and I’ll do my best not to take my red pen to them. But I might be able to help figure out what he’s doing.”

  “I’ve already taken photos of the pages. I’ll send them over.”

  “And on my end I’ll see if I can get a better answer from Rick. Hang on a minute.”

  I nearly choked on my coffee when I heard her gasp.

  I held my breath. If this had been one of Rick’s thrillers, this would be when the person helping me was conveniently dispatched by the bad guys. But there were no bad guys here…Or were there?

  “Abby?” I squeaked. “Are you all right?”

  “Damn him,” she muttered. Her voice was hollow, as if it was in the distance. “I can’t believe he’d—”

  “Abby?”

  “Sorry, let me get you off speaker phone. Can you hear me better now?”

  “Yes. What’s going on?”

  “Rick got right back to me. Do you know what he said? That would be giving you a spoiler. I’m his editor! I’m supposed to get the spoilers! Look, I should call him. He can’t do this to us.”

  “He really hasn’t told you anything else about this book?”

  “No. And I can’t do anything about it because my bosses are thrilled. It doesn’t matter to them that he’s hit on me so many times over the years, and it doesn’t matter to them what he’s writing, as long as he’s writing. F&S has the right of first refusal for any new Rick Coronado novels—”

  “The right of what?”

  “Sorry. Industry-speak. If Rick writes another novel, Fox & Sons has the right to make an offer on the book. Rick can’t shop it to any other publishers. He’s a big enough star at this point that his agent should be asking for a six or seven-figure advance for any new novel. Instead, he’s
just writing the book before negotiating.”

  “Do you think he’s all right?”

  “Do you mean is he mentally stable? He never has been, in my opinion. Not clinically. I’m not worried about him harming himself or anything like that. But he’s temperamental like an artist. Look, I should really go call him—”

  “If he’s set on keeping this to himself, he won’t talk.”

  “Oh, I’ll get him to talk to me.” Her voice shook. “He and I grew up together, in a sense. I’ve been his editor for twenty-five years, since I was an Assistant Editor and he was finding his legs with his third Gabriela Glass novel.”

  “And he never told you what happened for those six weeks when he disappeared?”

  She was silent for so long I wondered if she’d hung up on me. But I didn’t think so. I waited. It was like when I wanted my students to ask questions but nobody would speak up. You waited them out.

  “He never spoke of that missing period of time. Not to any of us.” Her voice was different now. As if she was questioning what she thought she knew about this man she thought she knew well. I knew the feeling.

  “What about a girlfriend he might have confided in?”

  “There was a new one every few months. They threw themselves at him, but none of them lasted. He always said he was waiting for his true love. And obviously he wouldn’t have confided in Vincent.”

  “He doesn’t trust his brother?”

  “Vincent would have tried to convince him to televise his exploits for a reality TV show. That man tries to monetize everything. So no, there was nobody he’d confide in.”

  “I read that some of his doctors weren’t convinced he had amnesia.”

  “Be careful about believing everything you read. One doctor doubted it, and he spoke to the press. I believed Rick. And since we’d grown up in this business together and all…We told each other things we didn’t tell other people.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “I’m the one who kept him from killing off Gabriela more than once—he said he wanted to write a series with a male hero, a more realistic character than Gabriela. Sure, she can speak two dozen languages, survive without her own food and water for weeks in the jungle, and kill a cobra with her bare hands. But that’s what readers want. At least that’s what they expect from a Rick Coronado novel. He wasn’t writing War and Peace.”

  “But the missing six weeks? Abby?”

  “The bastard,” she muttered. “I sat with him in the hospital and he swore to me he couldn’t remember. But what if he did?”

  “And he wants my help to do what he couldn’t.”

  “Be careful, dear. He’s a master at his craft. With Rick, nothing is what it seems.”

  Chapter 14

  I turned up the volume on my headphones and ran through the rain listening to bhangra beats. I did a five-mile loop through Golden Gate Park.

  Sanjay jokes that I’m a terrible Indian, and I can’t say he’s wrong. I can’t explain what Ayurveda is except to say I know my eating habits would horrify a practitioner, I don’t know how to wear a sari, and I’ve never made it through an entire yoga class (and no, I don’t wish to discuss the circumstances under which I was kicked out for disturbing the tranquility). But playing the tabla and going running are the two activities where I achieve close to a meditative state. As I was on mile four on the home stretch of the winding path, I knew what I had to do.

  At the edge of the park, on the cusp between the protected greenery and the concrete consumerism of Haight Street, I paused to stretch and let my breath return to normal. I lifted my face to the sky to let the cool rain wash over me, receiving more than one judgmental glance from pedestrians carrying large umbrellas.

  I brushed wet hair from my eyes and made a phone call.

  “I’m out,” I said, then hung up after I’d spoken those two words into Rick’s voicemail.

  I knew it was the right thing to do, but I wished I hadn’t been put in the position that made it necessary. Now I knew it was better not to get to know your heroes personally. It was a good thing Egyptologist Amelia Peabody had lived a century before me, so I could imagine she was as incredible and brilliant as she was in her memoirs and the biographies written about her.

  My phone rang as I trudged up the outer stairs leading to my apartment. I didn’t know the number, but it was a New York City area code.

  “Jaya.”

  I knew that voice. Deep and charming, even with a single world.

  “Rick?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Too late.” I wished Tamarind had been there to witness it.

  “There’s more going on here than you realize.”

  I almost laughed. The words sounded like something Gabriela would say. But something in the worried tone of his voice told me he wasn’t joking.

  “I understand that the Serpent King is real.” I unlocked my door and kicked it shut behind me. “If you want to salvage any chance of getting my help—”

  “I’m coming to San Francisco.”

  “Stop right there. I’m not waiting for you to come to San Francisco.” I’m fairly certain I was shouting now. “You need to tell me now. We can video chat if talking by phone isn’t enough.”

  “That’s not why.” There was a break in his words and a muffled sound. “I’ll be there soon. In the meantime, don’t do anything else.”

  “But—”

  “Tomorrow—no, Sunday is too soon. First I need to…Make it Monday. Monday at dawn. Under the clocktower at the Ferry Building. I’ll call if anything changes.”

  The line went dead.

  Monday at dawn? Under the clocktower? Rick had been reading too many of his own novels.

  In the meantime, don’t do anything else? Not likely.

  Tamarind was working that day, so once I arrived on campus she took a break to join me in the secret courtyard. The spot wasn’t technically a secret, but you had to walk through a back hallway to get there, and it was mainly used by the library’s staff on their breaks. A picnic table and benches were bolted into place on the square concrete tiles, and my favorite part was that it was encased by plants in oversize rectangular planter boxes with a mural of San Francisco painted along the outward-facing surface.

  I groaned when I saw her hair.

  “You don’t like it?” Her short hair was now emerald green. “It’s in honor of Gabriela.”

  “That’s why I groaned.” I told her about my revelation that the manuscript was fact rather than fiction, Rick’s cryptic text asking what my friends thought of my theory, my conversation with the reclusive author, and how he wanted to meet at dawn under the Ferry Building clocktower.

  “Shut. Up. Rick Coronado has truly lost it and thinks he’s in one of his books?”

  “I believe him.”

  “And you’ve lost your mind too?”

  “Help me think through the research to see where to go next. If we come up with nothing, I’ll happily go back to my office and prepare for the last week of the semester.”

  “Well, at least I’m honored that you came to me instead of staying in bed all day with Lane on this gorgeous Saturday. No…You two had a fight?”

  “How is it possible my face is that obvious?”

  “Oh, fine. I was going to drag out the gag, but that’s cruel. Your face doesn’t betray you. He did. He came around the library as soon as it opened, hoping to catch you. He thought we might have gotten coffee together before my shift. So why didn’t you seek my advice this morning?”

  “I’ve been busy. I was up half the night—”

  “Rebound already? I did not expect that from you, Jaya Jones.”

  I glared at her. “I was doing research into Rick Coronado. Which is what convinced me he’s onto something real.”

  “Okay. I’ll help. But what gives with L
ane?”

  “We’re not talking about my love life while there’s a ticking clock.”

  She whipped her head around and shifted into a guarded stance. The soles of her purple combat boots had done some damage in their heyday. “Is there? A ticking clock, I mean.”

  “I have no idea. But I plan to find out. What with Rick’s secret messages…”

  “OMG you just did that thing with your face, like you figured it out!”

  I reached into my messenger bag and pulled out the handwritten letter with the snake he’d sketched.

  “This snake,” I murmured. “It’s a cobra. A serpent.”

  “Tomato, to-mah-toe.”

  This was a pretty simple drawing, but its hooded head was clearly meant to be a cobra, so I’d taken it to be a doodle related to Gabriela. Could there be more to the sketch than was visible to the naked eye? I grabbed my phone and texted Sanjay.

  “Well done,” Tamarind said. “Half a day for a rebound ain’t bad.”

  My glare deepened into a scowl. “We need his help.”

  “We do? Because we’re helpless women?” She crossed her arms and returned my scowl.

  “We need Sanjay because we’re not magicians.”

  “Touché.”

  While I waited for Sanjay to be free after a rehearsal, I got to work at the library. I was on my own, as Tamarind got pulled into doing her job. Fair enough.

  “Why do students only realize they need a librarian’s help when it’s the last week of the semester? I’ll come find you when I’m done pointing the next generation in the right direction. So it’ll be a while.”

  Historical research has been made easier in recent years through the digitizing of archives and newspapers. It’s a development that allows people who otherwise wouldn’t have the means or access to discover history, but it also comes with pitfalls. The old dearth of information has given way to a flood of data. Finding the relevant pieces in the glut of noise can be a challenge. I didn’t have a name. I didn’t know which facts Rick had changed, so I began where Rick began the story. With the first ghostly death. I pulled up newspaper archives from Paris in 1950.