Her Boyfriend's Bones Page 10

  “Why would they? They’ve made their point. The young lady will wait here with Alcina until you return. Alcina, give the girl a breakfast. Whatever she wants.”

  Alcina twiddled with her cross and sulked.

  “All right, then,” said Zenia. “You, Dinah, get in.”

  Dinah couldn’t resist. She slipped into the passenger seat and ordered K.D. to stay put. “Don’t go anywhere until I get back unless trouble comes calling. Then run to the tavarna and stick close to whoever’s there.” She skewed her eyes from K.D. to Alcina and back to K.D. “And don’t smoke. Anything at all.”

  “The wireless signal is lame,” said K.D., holding up her phone. “Are there, like dead zones in the house?”

  “What is it you want? Speak up.”

  “The Wi-Fi signal is weak.” K.D. walked around to the side of the car and cupped her hands close to Zenia’s ear. “Wi-Fi!”

  “Alcina knows where the games are kept. There used to be a tavli board and maybe a checkerboard. Alcina will play with you.” Zenia depressed the clutch, shifted into reverse, punched the gas pedal, and the Isotta surged backward with startling power.

  Automatically, Dinah reached for the seat belt, but there wasn’t one. “Some car you’ve got here. What year is it?”

  “Nineteen thirty. It belonged to Marilita, a gift from some Italian film star.”

  They thudded down the rocky lane to the parking lot at a modest speed, but when they reached the curvy, asphalt road leading down the mountain, the Isotta romped forward as if it had a mind of its own. At the bottom of the hill, Zenia fumbled her foot onto the brake and they careened onto the coast road a scant foot ahead of a speeding truck.

  Dinah tucked her flyaway hair behind her ears with one hand and hung onto the seat for dear life with the other. She couldn’t imagine how Zenia had gotten a driver’s license. “What was the point?” she shouted.

  “What?”

  “The vandals. What point did they make?”

  “The ignorant fools think I cast the evil eye. That is how they get back at me.”

  Dinah covered the mati on her wrist and wondered if some of the rumors about Zenia enlarged on the facts. “Alcina blames Thor for having Yannis arrested for Fathi’s murder and she thinks his Iraqi friends are trying to get back at Yannis.”

  “Alcina didn’t want the house to be let. She resents Ramberg and she would defend that drunken husband of hers if he shot the Pope. Lucky for him, the man he killed was unimportant.”

  Then again, cat killing couldn’t be ruled out. With Zenia, there was no point mouthing platitudes about the value of human life. “You seem pretty sure that Yannis was the murderer.”

  “Isn’t Ramberg?”

  Dinah didn’t know if she’d been set up for the question, but she ignored it. “Yesterday I met a man who calls himself Brother Constantine. He hinted that something you’d done didn’t go down well with the villagers. Was it the fact that you’d leased Marilita’s house to a policeman?”

  “The villagers are wary. They do clandestine business.”

  “Constantine looks as if he lives in a cave. How would he have heard about your tenant’s profession?”

  “He probably paid someone for the information.”

  “He has money?”

  “I should think so. His monastery traded a worthless lake for a tract of expensive government-owned land. They sold it and netted millions of euros, which the financial authorities haven’t been able to find. Constantine is in hiding until the next government comes into power and his crimes are forgotten. He has given the villagers a new hobby, searching for his buried treasure.”

  “If everyone knows he’s here, how is he able to hide?”

  She looked at Dinah as if she were thick. “He passes out little envelopes.”

  “Envelopes with cash inside? You mean he bribes the villagers not to tell the police where he is?”

  “The police wouldn’t arrest him. He gives them money, too.”

  She made bribery sound as natural and blameless as breathing. Dinah could just imagine what a straight arrow like Thor would make of the local mores.

  Abruptly, she swerved onto a wooded side road, nearly losing control and slamming Dinah’s sore hip against the door.

  “Slow down, Zenia.”

  “What?”

  “I said…” Dinah flinched as the Isotta’s tires skidded on a patch of loose gravel. Zenia grappled with the steering wheel. Dinah reached for the wheel, but missed and the fishtailing motion of the car threw her into the door again. She pitched back across the seat and grabbed the wheel, torquing it hard to the left to keep the car from plummeting into a ditch. “Slow down!”

  “I’ve driven this road thousands of times.” Her tone was truculent, but she lightened her foot on the accelerator and the Isotta wallowed into the middle of the road.

  They continued climbing up the twisty mountain road, a corniche scarcely wide enough for one car. As they gained elevation, the cliff walls appeared craggier and more perpendicular on this side of the gorge. Dinah looked across to the overlook that she and K.D. had tried and failed to reach. From wall to wall, the canyon floor couldn’t be much more than a mile. A pair of hawks patrolled the airspace in between.

  At the culmination of the Isotta’s elongated bonnet, a winged hood ornament soared into the blue yonder. Nike, the goddess of speed and victory, Dinah supposed. The Greek gods seemed to have a plan for her life today and there wasn’t much she could do about it. She anchored her posterior to the slippery seat as firmly as she could and wondered how much a taxi back to the village would cost.

  “Where is your house? How far?”

  “Near the summit. Kanaris is three kilometers as the crow flies, fifteen by road. The gorge is more useful than a moat. My husband did not care for the society of the villagers.”

  No kidding. If Zenia’s toxic personality didn’t deter visitors from dropping in for tea, nine miles over this hair-raiser of a road would do the trick.

  “Do you live alone?”

  “Not much choice since my sister killed my husband.”

  “The colonel Marilita shot was your husband?”

  “That’s right.” She exhibited no emotion. She rolled on like an armored tank. “I have a house guest at present, someone I want you to meet. He’s a film director. He and I are going to make a film together about ‘The Regime of the Colonels.’”

  Dinah was still coming to grips with the revelation about her husband. “Is that what the military junta was called?”

  “I call it the last legitimate government of Greece.” She sniffed. “Your boyfriend was asking questions about the junta last night. Foolish. The house splattered with filth and him asking about the junta.”

  “What did he want to know?”

  “Whether there were armories on Samos.”

  “Were there?”

  “I wouldn’t know. My husband never discussed military matters with me.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Given Zenia’s penchant for costumery and theatrics, Dinah had prepared herself for an architectural wallop. But it was the setting rather than the architecture that imparted the drama. The house had been built atop a massive, smooth-shouldered boulder. She had to look closely to see where nature stopped and the stone façade of the house began. Two sets of narrow, curving steps had been hewn out of the boulder on either shoulder and converged at a weathered, unpainted pine door. The house blended into the surrounding environment without calling attention to itself.

  Zenia turned into a drive that circled around behind the house. She took a remote control from a side pocket, opened an inconspicuous garage door into what appeared to be a dimly lit cave, and drove the Isotta inside. “There’s an underground passage into the house,” she said. “Follow me.”

  Dinah followed her through an arched stone
doorway through a tunnel that seemed to have been bored through the boulder upon which the house rested. Niches had been cut into the walls to display a collection of urns and sculptures. The only figure Dinah recognized was Asclepius with his distinctive rod entwined with serpents.

  Zenia noticed her interest. “You know Asclepius?”

  “He was the Greek god of medicine. His rod has become the symbol of medicine.”

  “He was the son of Apollo.” She walked back and glowered at the statue as if it had made an obscene gesture. Her eyes fairly glittered with fury. “His mother was burned alive for adultery.”

  Why, Dinah wondered, would she own a statue she so obviously detested?

  Zenia turned on her heels and steamed on. At the end of the tunnel, a short stairway led to a large, cheerful room with sun streaming in from two skylights. The first thing Dinah looked for was the front door by which Thor must have entered, and the photographs that had so puzzled him.

  “Dearest Zenia, you are back.” A slight, haughty looking man with a high forehead and slicked-back gray hair roved into the room carrying a teacup. He wore a buttoned-up brown hunting jacket, too heavy for the season, over a buff colored T-shirt from which his long neck protruded like a wrinkled parsnip.

  “Egan. This is the Pelerin woman I told you about, the inamorata of the man who leased Marilita’s house. Dinah Pelerin, this is Egan Vercuni, the film director.”

  He accorded her a supercilious smile. “Enchanté.”

  Zenia said, “Egan and I hadn’t seen each other in forty years until I invited him to Samos three months ago to consult with me about making a motion picture together. He is staying here as my house guest while we collaborate on the enterprise.”

  “I am but a humble servant. Zenia is the boss.”

  Zenia’s penciled brows crawled toward the edge of her cap. “That is because I’m paying for it. Will you take tea, Dinah?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Tell her about our project, Egan. I’ll go and freshen the pot.”

  “Delighted.” He bade Dinah to sit.

  She chose a straight-backed chair across from the sofa. He set his teacup on the low table, arranged the cushions just so, and ensconced himself like a pasha. “Do you have any background in the performing arts, Miss Pelerin?”

  “I’m afraid not.” She tried not to let her eyes stray to the framed photographs.

  “None at all? Perhaps a school play?”

  “I was Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit in my high school senior play.”

  “Only the Coward?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pity.”

  In less than a minute, she had developed a major antipathy to the man. “Zenia says that you’re calling your movie ‘The Regime of the Colonels.’ Is it based on her husband’s life?”

  “The Regime of the Colonels was the name for the junta of the late sixties. Zenia’s husband, Phaedon, was a distinguished military officer. He helped to implement the Prometheus Plan.”

  “What was that?”

  “A very efficient method of rounding up the anarchists and leftists.”

  Dinah couldn’t tell if he was being ironic or politically provocative or just plain affected. Either way, he was a pill. “Were there very many anarchists?”

  “Quite a large number, theoretically. NATO devised the Prometheus Plan in the event of a communist uprising and our military leaders were quick to see that, indeed, communists had infiltrated the universities, the bureaucracy, the government, even the military. The situation required drastic action.”

  Dinah concluded that he was being ironic in a way that he wouldn’t be if Zenia were still in the room. Whatever this Prometheus Plan had meant back in the sixties, the Prometheus of Greek mythology was, as best she could recall, a Titan who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mankind. For his generosity, Zeus had him chained to a rock where a giant eagle ripped out his liver. His fury unsated, Zeus caused a new liver to grow back every day and sent the eagle back to rip it out again every night. She was loath to ask if Colonel Phaedon’s method of dealing with the communists entailed anything that grisly. “What was Phaedon’s last name?”

  “Hero.”

  “That was his real name?”

  “And a most fitting one. After the coup, he was one of the brave officers who occupied the parliament and the government ministries.”

  “I assume Zenia chose to keep her name for professional reasons.”

  “Yes, and she didn’t shorten it to please the philistines, as Marilita did.”

  “Marilita was herself a philistine,” said Zenia as she pushed a teacart into the room. “She was indifferent to the refinements of good breeding and she was attracted to the same ilk.” She parked the cart in front of the sofa, poured two cups of tea, handed one to Dinah, and sank onto the sofa beside Egan. “What do you think of my find, Egan? Will she do?”

  Dinah was instantly on guard. “Do what?”

  Egan made a moue of acquiescent distaste. “Zenia wants you to participate in our film.”

  “Me?” Dinah set her cup and saucer on a glass shelf beside the chair.

  “That’s right. What did you call it, Egan?”

  “A docudrama.”

  Zenia sniffed. “I envision a powerful statement, one that the intelligentsia will call an epic. Governor Rigas is an old friend of mine. He has granted us permission to film whenever and wherever on the island. No restrictions. Egan is bringing in a crew from Athens. You will play the young Marilita. You have a boldness about you that puts me in mind of her.”

  “After the disparaging things you’ve said about your sister, not to mention the fact that she murdered your husband, you can hardly expect me to thank you for the comparison.”

  Zenia’s mouth squinched into a smeary magenta smile. “There were facets of Marilita’s character that were laudable. One of them was her refusal to be slighted. As you have just demonstrated, you won’t be slighted either.” She took a sip of tea, leaving a lipstick smudge on the cup. “My sister and I were poles apart philosophically and politically. Our father was a royalist and a distinguished member of the Greek government-in-exile during the Second World War. He died in the Civil War that followed, fighting the communists alongside your American CIA Captain Giorgos Stephanadis. There he is now. You’ve put your tea on his ashes.”

  Dinah recoiled. The glass shelf was supported by three slim, cylindrical brass tubes. “Are those cannon shells?”

  Egan nodded. “Howitzer, 105 millimeter. Zenia, didn’t you say that Giorgos recovered the casings after they had been fired into a nest of communists?”

  “That’s right. It was one of his most successful sorties. My father’s ashes are in the first casing, Phaedon’s are in the second. When I die, my remains will be placed in the third and entombed in the family mausoleum at Kanaris.”

  Apparently, Marilita had been banned from the sanctity of the mausoleum and consigned to a grave in the village cemetery. Zenia’s outburst at her memorial exhumation was more understandable now. To have a loved one murdered would be anguishing enough. But to know that the loved one was murdered by your own sister—a person who shared your upbringing and your DNA, a person connected to you in such a primal way—that would embitter anyone.

  Zenia cinched her lips and seemed to contemplate. “Marilita never took pride in her father’s sacrifice. She had no sense of class or order.”

  “Now, Zenia, you must admit that she was gifted in her own way and very alluring. Nasos Lykos was something of a rake, but a marvelous fellow, clever as they come and rich as Croesus. And she did change after she fell in love with him.”

  “For the worse. Everyone knows that he and his mother were leftist sympathizers.”

  Egan tugged his jacket closer around him. “When I saw Marilita in Rome with him the year before the tragedy, she seemed dis
interested in politics and her work on the set was more disciplined. In spite of his amours, Nasos had rather a mellowing effect on her and he gave no indication that he was a leftie.”

  “He would have been imprisoned if he did. His family’s money insulated him. I daresay he and his mother donated thousands to the anarcho-communists. They drew Marilita into their cabal. Phaedon found out about them and Marilita killed him.”

  Dinah couldn’t see the logic. “If Nasos and his mother were her coconspirators, why would she kill them?”

  Zenia gave this incongruity the back of her hand. “Nasos was a womanizer. If Marilita hadn’t killed him, another woman would have done it.” She focused her compelling, squid-ink eyes on Dinah. “I’ve asked Egan to make this film about my family while I’m still alive and able to help craft it. I’ll be the producer and director and I will have final approval of the script. We haven’t got a big budget and the rights to use clips from Marilita’s studio films would cost too much. I will speak some of the…what did you call them, Egan?”

  “Voice overs.”

  “Louder.”

  “Voice overs.”

  “Yes, yes.” She poured herself another cup of tea and cocked her head at Dinah. “You won’t have to speak. All you have to do is vamp and strike an attitude. None of the women in the Samian theater company can capture Marilita’s recklessness or impetuous nature. You’ve got the right coloring and her same rebellious eyes. You’re the best we can do.”

  Being compared to Marilita because of her coloring was one thing. Being compared because of a perceived similarity of character was downright chilling. Still, Dinah couldn’t help being fascinated. “I thought you didn’t like film.”

  “I don’t. This is an exception. All this drivel about Marilita being a martyr to the cause of democracy, I won’t have it. She was depraved. I have given Phaedon’s journals and papers to Egan to sort through. He has been a family friend for half a century. I trust him to tell the truth and preserve Phaedon’s reputation.”

  And destroy any vestige of Marilita’s, Dinah guessed. Egan was probably stringing Zenia along in order to bilk her out of a ton of money and the film would never be completed. But on the off chance that it was, Dinah predicted that the intelligentsia would label it fascist propaganda, whether or not of the epic sort. “I wish I could help you, Zenia, but I plan to leave Samos today.”