Free The Goddess Legacy by Russell Blake Page B

ears. I interpreted that to mean he was afraid somebody would steal his find or beat him to the treasure.”
    “Do you remember the area of India he showed you?” Drake asked.
    “It was big – like about a hundred-mile square shot from Google Earth. Someplace in Kashmir.”
    “You can’t be more specific?” Allie asked.
    “I wasn’t trying to memorize it.”
    “Any landmarks? Lake? Big mountain shaped like a goat head or something?” Drake asked.
    “Not that I remember.”
    Allie tilted her head and studied Spencer as though she’d had an idea. “I wonder if there are any scissors in this dump?”
    “Why?” Spencer asked.
    “Because they’d work better than a knife.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “We need to alter your appearance. Best way is a haircut and some dye. And maybe some makeup to darken your complexion.”
    Drake joined Allie on the sofa. “We can see if Roland will take us to a market.”
    “I really don’t want to cut all this off,” Spencer protested.
    “You were on TV. It’s got to go,” Allie said. “You stand out like a sore thumb.”
    “I can wear a hat.”
    “Then you’ll look like a white guy with a hat,” Drake reasoned. “She’s right.”
    When they emerged from the houseboat, Roland was standing on the bow, smoking one of his endless string of cigarettes, looking like he hadn’t slept all night but wearing a different shirt. Allie told him what they wanted, and he nodded glumly, his expression that of a man who’d just drunk vinegar.
    “I know a place,” he said, and flicked his smoke into the river.
    An older green sedan was parked at the bank, the battered SUV nowhere to be seen. The Frenchman offered no explanation for its absence or the different car, and merely climbed behind the wheel while Drake and Allie slid into the rear seat.
    Daylight had done little to improve their impression of the river, and when they bounced onto pavement from the dirt track that led to the water, Allie’s eyes widened at the sight of the buildings nearby.
    “Yikes,” she said, and Drake nodded. The dwellings were little more than ten-by-ten cinder-block boxes painted garish hues. Half-naked toddlers played at the edge of the street as vehicles roared by, barely missing them as they honked their way into town. The sense of despair in the faces of the pedestrians trudging along the shoulder was palpable, the poverty borne like an unshakable burden by a population that would live and die in misery.
    “How long have you lived in India, Roland?” Allie tried, and was rewarded with a scowl and a flash of dark eyes in the rearview mirror.
    “Too long,” he said, and spit out his open window.
    “I don’t suppose the air works,” Drake said.
    Roland didn’t say anything more, which Drake took as a no.
    The market turned out to be a medium-sized grocery store with a passable pharmacy section, and a helpful clerk assisted them with selecting hair dye. Allie stopped and picked out several containers of makeup, scissors, and three bags of fruit and a package of unleavened bread, as well as a jar of instant coffee that looked like it had been manufactured when Gandhi was still alive.
    Back at the houseboat, Spencer sat unhappily while Allie clipped his hair to within an inch of his scalp, and then mixed a batch of ebony dye and slathered it on before pulling a plastic sack over his head.
    “How long will this take?” he asked.
    “I think it says twenty minutes,” Allie said.
    “Think?”
    “I don’t speak Hindi, but that seems about right.”
    “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said.
    “No idea. This is a first for me.”
    He scowled. “I thought women knew about stuff like this.”
    “Yet another incorrect generalization about my gender, you misogynist. Believe it or not, they don’t teach cosmetology as part of the archeology curriculum.”
    “That’s not what I meant.”
    She gave him her best stink eye. “Uh-huh.”
    When the dye was rinsed off and