[JJ06] Quicksand (25 page)
CHAPTER 49
It was time to go home. Home to a plagiarism scandal and a job I no longer had after resigning.
Since Lane and I didn’t think it prudent to tell of our involvement in the theft at the Louvre or tell any details about North that would incriminate Lane, I wouldn’t be able to explain how North forged the documents that showed me to be a plagiarist. With that door closed, I had to figure out what else I could do with my life. Besides being a historian, the only other things I knew how to do well were play the tabla and waitress. Perhaps I could get a job as a waitress at the Tandoori Palace during the lunch hour and play tabla in the evenings. I sighed and took a sip of tepid tea.
As I stood in Sébastien’s kitchen, drinking tea prepared by Jeeves and looking at a framed poster of The Sultan’s Elephant from The Clever Mechanicals exhibition, I contemplated my options. Sébastien was busy chopping shallots as part of a feast he was preparing to celebrate everything we’d accomplished. I was staying at his magical house for a last night in France before flying back to San Francisco.
My phone rang, showing a familiar number. Someone was calling from the university. Tamarind was the most likely person to be calling me, but she would have called from her cell phone, not a university phone. I stepped out of the kitchen to answer the call.
“Jaya!” The dean. I scrunched my eyes shut.
“Listen,” he continued. “About this call you made—I know all about what was behind it.”
“Um—”
“How a rival was trying to sabotage you by accusing you of plagiarism.”
“A rival?”
“I understand why you acted hastily and tried to resign. You didn’t want to cause a scandal for the university.”
“Wait, what do you mean
tried to
resign?”
“I can’t take a decision you made for the greater good of the university as final, can I?”
“But you received proof of plagiarism.”
Démon, the opinionated rabbit, narrowed his eyes at me as I raised my voice.
“I did indeed,” the dean said. “I needed an extra dose of acid reflux medicine that night, I can tell you. It was such a relief to learn the proof had been faked.”
“How did you find out it was a sham?” I stepped around the bunny, who was sniffing my heel with interest.
“Naveen Krishnan.”
“Naveen?”
“He didn’t believe it when he saw it. He knows you, and said you’d never stoop to plagiarism. He dug a little deeper. Discovered the documents were faked.”
I didn’t think he had it in him, but Naveen came through for me. He was a pompous jerk, but he had scruples. He wanted to beat me, but he wanted to do it fairly.
After catching up with the dean for a few more minutes, I hung up, knowing that my job was waiting for me at home.
The bigger question was what else I had waiting for me at home. With the threat of North gone, Lane could return to California—if he wanted to.
Lane said he had a couple of things to take care of in France before meeting me there. He wasn’t sure how quickly he could be there, but he promised he’d come.
I didn’t turn down the first class ticket he bought me to fly nonstop from Paris to San Francisco. But again, I couldn’t quite enjoy the luxury around me. What would I find back home?
CHAPTER 5
0
After my flight landed at SFO, I caught a cab to my house, where I was looking forward to sleeping for several days. When I reached the foot of the stairs leading up to my attic apartment, someone was waiting for me. For a split second, I thought it might have been Miles. Nobody else I knew in San Francisco would wait on my stairs like that.
But it wasn’t Miles. Lane Peters sat on the steps, reading a paperback novel, a duffel bag at his feet.
“I don’t have anywhere to stay right now,” he said, standing up. “I thought maybe...”
“Yes,” I said. “Most definitely, yes.”
“We can pick up where we left off.”
“At long last,” I said, “with some privacy.”
Lane and I dropped our bags on the landing outside my door while I fished for my keys. I was
finally
going to have some time alone with Lane that didn’t involve the stress of a master criminal coercing our actions. I figured we could put our feet up, order takeout, and possibly do other things we hadn’t yet had the opportunity to do…
“Do you hear that?” I asked.
“The music?” Lane said. “Isn’t it coming from Nadia’s place downstairs? It was playing when I arrived a few minutes ago.”
“Weird,” I said. “I didn’t know she had any bhangra music.”
I turned my key and pushed open the door.
“Surprise!” a group of people shouted over the music.
I stumbled backward, indeed surprised. Lane caught me. He laughed and kissed the top of my head.
Tamarind, Nadia, and Sanjay were there. Even Naveen was at my apartment. The even bigger surprise was that he was dressed casually. Well, casually for Naveen. He wore a crisply pressed dress shirt tucked into jeans.
Sanjay and Tamarind hugged me, Naveen shook my hand and congratulated me, and Nadia raised a glass my way.
“You must be Lane Peters,” Sanjay said, sticking out his hand for Lane to shake.
“Sanjay Rai,” Lane said, shaking his outstretched hand. “It’s good to officially meet you. Really good.”
As I extricated myself from a second hug from Tamarind, a knock at the door sounded.
“You invited someone else?” I asked.
“Just us,” Tamarind said. “This party isn’t rowdy enough for someone to have called the cops. That reminds me, I’d better turn the music up.”
I opened the door to find Miles. His hands were especially ink-stained today.
“Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t know you had people over.”
“You want to come in? It’s sort of a welcome home party.”
“I don’t want to intrude. I was just wondering if I left a book of poetry over here the other day.”
“I remember it. Tamarind borrowed it. She’s here. Come on in.” I closed the door behind Miles as the music went up several decibels. “Hey, Tamarind? Do you have that poetry book you borrowed?”
But the normally uninhibited Tamarind was speechless. Staring at Miles, her lips parted and a blush formed on her cheeks.
I looked from her to Miles. A shy smile formed on his face as he looked at Tamarind. Well, well, well…
“Champagne, anyone?” Sanjay said, raising his voice above the music as he popped a cork and carefully poured the champagne over a pyramid of glasses stacked on a silver platter.
“Showoff,” I said.
“Hey, I’m celebrating, too. I got my new traveling illusion to work right. Hey, why don’t we play some live music? I’ve got my sitar in my truck.”
“Looks like time alone will have to wait, Jones,” Lane whispered in my ear.
Author’s Note
On May 3, 1998, I was a 22-year-old recent college graduate backpacking through Europe. I was visiting the Louvre on a crowded Sunday afternoon—at the same time an enterprising thief brazenly stole the Corot painting Le Chemin de Sevres.
The art heist in
Quicksand
is completely fictional, but the response of journalists and the authorities is based on my experience trapped inside the Louvre. What I found most fascinating about the ordeal was the fact that what the press reported was far from the truth. Though the museum was locked down as soon as the theft was discovered, there were far too many museum visitors to search each of us thoroughly. It didn’t happen. And as I write this sixteen years after the theft, the painting has never been found.
On that day so many years ago, I didn’t yet know I would become a mystery novelist. But once I began writing the Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery Series, I knew I would one day write about that experience.
A few additional notes on fact versus fiction in
Quicksand
:
As with all of my treasure hunt mysteries, the historical context is completely true, but the specific treasure itself is fictional.
The history of Mont Saint-Michel over the centuries is factual. Sadly, it’s also true that many of the Mont’s historical records were destroyed. At the start of the French Revolution, the monks moved many of their illuminated manuscripts to the town of Avranches, where the books remained safe. Historical documents were transported to a different town, Saint-Lô, where they were destroyed during WWII shortly before the war ended. Through this destruction, most of the architectural records of the Mont were lost. But some of the history can be found in the stones themselves. “Jobbers marks” are real, and a carving of 11th century stonemasons exists in the cloisters. That particular carving was spared defacing by the revolutionaries, and barebones information about these men was discovered in a manuscript and is therefore able to be recounted by the Mont’s wonderful tour guides. The secret rooms in QUICKSAND are fictional—as far as I know. But because so much of the architectural history is merely speculation, it’s entirely possible there are some secret rooms that have been forgotten.
Tipu Sultan and Robert Clive are real historical figures, but the lowly East India Company men in
Quicksand
are fictional.
As described in the book, Tipu Sultan, aka the Tiger of Mysore (1750-1799), was a grand figure in the south Indian kingdom of Mysore. A poet and scholar in addition to a soldier, Tipu formed alliances with the French against the English, and led armies into battle to protect his homeland. He adopted the tiger as his personal emblem, and collected and commissioned a treasure trove of tigers. Tipu’s Tiger is a real automaton that you can visit at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Any additional automatons he may have created are the products of my imagination. He died in battle, defending Mysore, when he was forty-eight.
Robert Clive, aka Clive of India (1725-1774), is one of the most celebrated figures of the British East India Company, because his military prowess enabled Britain to secure a stronghold in India. He acquired a vast array of treasures in India, the origins of which are debated. Some of his gold sank on the Doddington, and many of his treasures have been auctioned off by his descendants. It’s generally believed that he committed suicide, possibly with an overdose of opium, when he was forty-nine.
The present-day characters in
Quicksand
are fictional—though the rabbit Démon is based on a pet I once had.
Les Machines de L’Île is a real amusement park in Nantes, France. It’s every bit as magical as I describe it. The Grand Elephant roams the park and is a wondrous sight for children of all ages. The park’s official materials describe it as a combination of Jules Verne’s “imagined worlds,” Leonardo da Vinci’s mechanical universe, and Nantes’ industrial history. If you ever find yourself in France, I highly recommend detours to both Mont Saint-Michel and Nantes.
About the Author
USA Today
bestselling author Gigi Pandian is the child of cultural anthropologists from New Mexico and the southern tip of India. After being dragged around the world during her childhood, she tried to escape her fate when she left a PhD program for art school. But adventurous academic characters wouldn’t stay out of her head. Thus was born the Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery Series. The first book in the series,
Artifact
, was awarded a Malice Domestic Grant and named a “Best of 2012″ debut novel by
Suspense Magazine
. Gigi’s short fiction has been short-listed for Agatha and Macavity awards. Find her online at www.gigipandian.com.
In Case You Missed the 1
st
Book in the Series
ARTIFACT
Gigi Pandian
A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery (#1)
Historian Jaya Jones discovers the secrets of a lost Indian treasure may be hidden in a Scottish legend from the days of the British Raj. But she’s not the only one on the trail…
From San Francisco to London to the Highlands of Scotland, Jaya must evade a shadowy stalker as she follows hints from the hastily scrawled note of her dead lover to a remote archaeological dig. Helping her decipher the cryptic clues are her magician best friend, a devastatingly handsome art historian with something to hide, and a charming archaeologist running for his life.
Read all about it and/or grab the book from Amazon