Her Boyfriend's Bones Page 12

  She drew in a ragged breath and watched him trek off into the abyss with the other two men.

  The sour-mouthed EMT thumbed his nose at Egan and shouted after Papas. There was a curt exchange, after which the EMT climbed behind the wheel of the ambulance.

  “What did they say?” Dinah asked Egan.

  “The ambulance driver says he can’t wait. They must be on call for other emergencies.”

  “But it’ll take time to get another ambulance back up here. Thor may need help right away.”

  “Samos has limited resources,” said Egan.

  The nice EMT threw Dinah an apologetic look and swung up into the passenger seat. After a number of short forward and backward lunges, the ambulance took off back down the mountain.

  Dinah tried to pull herself together. Zenia had said that Thor asked her about the junta last night. She turned to Egan. “Was Thor at Zenia’s house last night?”

  “No. I believe she did have one phone call.”

  “What about this morning? Did he come by before I got there?”

  “If he drove past, he didn’t stop in.”

  “And you didn’t hear screeching brakes or the sound of the impact?”

  “No, nothing. Of course, Zenia wouldn’t hear Götterdämmerung.”

  Dinah had the sense that Zenia cultivated the myth of deafness as part of her dramatic persona. She heard more than she let on. “Is there a Norwegian Embassy in Greece?”

  “Yes, but aren’t you being premature?”

  “In what way?”

  “I should give more thought to the Sergeant’s hypothesis if I were you. Policemen engage in all manner of covert operations. This is probably a ruse of some sort. Your inspector is probably lying doggo with a telephoto lens, spying on the gang that he’s investigating.”

  She gave Egan a leery look. “What makes you think he’s investigating a gang? How do you know he’s investigating anyone?”

  “Isn’t he? Zenia led me to believe that the policeman who’d let Marilita’s house was here to make inquiries and everyone had better be on guard.”

  “On guard against what?”

  “Discovery, I should say. The people of Kanaris have always had a predilection to illicit pursuits and the poor economy has worsened everyone’s finances. I thought he was probably investigating illegal drugs or money laundering or some such.” He ran a finger around the inside of his collar and flexed his wrinkly neck. “I’ve already phoned Zenia with the news about Ramberg, by the way. Poor old puss. She sounded quite distressed.” He went back to the cliff edge to watch the police searching down below.

  Dinah grabbed her purse out of his car, pulled out her phone, and dialed Thor’s number. He had his phone with him all the time. If he was anywhere near the Peugeot, the searchers would hear it ring and move in the direction of the sound. Or if he had it turned off, they could use GPS tracking to locate him. But the phone didn’t ring. She didn’t even get his voice mail.

  She called K.D., who picked up on the first ring. “Has Thor called? Has he been there?”

  “No, but I’m super glad you called. I’ve been thinking about our problem and the answer is so totally simple. I should have remembered. An attorney that Daddy used to work with lives in Athens, Alex Drake. He has a daughter my age and I’m sure he’d love to have me stay…”

  “Shut up, will you?”

  “Well, snap. You sound kind of lathery.”

  She told K.D. about Thor’s car at the bottom of the gorge.

  “Oh. My. God.”

  “He wasn’t inside,” said Dinah.

  “You think he may still be alive then?”

  “I don’t know. I hope.”

  “I’ll wait here, Dinah. If I hear anything or if anyone calls, I’ll let you know right away.”

  Dinah joined Egan at the railing. She tried to think logically. Either Thor had somehow been able to scrabble out of the wreckage and was lying hurt somewhere, or Papas and Egan were right and he had faked the crash. She would like to believe that Thor had disappeared for some cloak-and-dagger reason, but her intuition…no, her common sense told her that he hadn’t. If he wanted to disappear, it would be supremely stupid to cause a flaming crash guaranteed to draw police and spectators for miles around.

  If somebody wanted to kill him and make it look like an accident, they’d leave his body in the car. But if they just wanted him temporarily out of the way so he didn’t interfere with their plans, he might have been dragged off and locked up in somebody’s wine cellar. Killing an international cop would cause more trouble than it was worth. Whatever the situation, the people he was working for needed to know that he’d gone missing.

  She Googled the National Criminal Investigative Service of Norway. N.C.I.S. Incredibly, a telephone number popped up. She moved out of range of Egan’s ears and dialed it. Not knowing which person or office to communicate her concerns to, she left an urgent message with the receptionist that one of their agents was missing on the island of Samos in suspicious circumstances and she requested that someone in authority return her call ASAP. She repeated her cell phone number twice, very clearly, and hung up. It crossed her mind that this phone call could end Thor’s career if N.C.I.S. was finicky about their agents confiding in their girlfriends, but she couldn’t think about that now.

  She scrolled through the list of embassies in Athens, but stopped. Interpol. Thor had said that N.C.I.S. coordinated with Interpol. They probably had dozens of agents operating in Greece. She Googled Interpol for a contact number and found this: When to contact Interpol. Never. Interpol does not provide investigative services directly to individuals. However, it never hurts to ask local law enforcement of member countries if they are coordinating with Interpol.

  Egan turned back from the railing. “The search could go on for hours. I need to be getting on. Where shall I drop you?”

  “I’m not leaving until they find him.”

  “As you wish. But if I were you, I would take care to have independent transportation available in the event you decide to remain on the island. Zenia and I have work to do on the film. We can’t be counted on to provide you taxi service.”

  ***

  Egan snailed along as if he were leading a funeral procession. Dinah fidgeted and pressed her feet against the floorboard as if she could impel the Hyundai forward. She felt stymied and feverish. The air conditioning gave her goose bumps. Thor would have loved it.

  Where was he? If he had faked the crash, for whatever reason, he would have left her a letter. Even if he believed she was breaking off the affair, he would have left her a letter. She hadn’t looked inside the Picanto. He could have taken her keys before she woke up this morning, placed a letter in the car where it wouldn’t be seen by Alcina, and returned the key. Maybe he was delivering a letter when the tire slashers showed up. They might have stabbed him, stuffed him in the trunk of his own car, driven it up here, and sent it hurtling off into the gorge. She shivered. The trunk had been mashed flat.

  A sheep pounced out of the trees into the middle of the road. Egan braked hard and they watched as one by one, a whole raucous, baa-ing flock bowled down a steep dirt path and bunched in front of the car like a rockslide.

  Dinah ducked her head and looked up through the dust cloud to her left. “Where are they coming from?”

  “From overgrazed pastures to new.” Egan pulled up the emergency brake. “Rather quaint. One forgets how pastoral parts of the island still are.”

  A young man with long, curly hair bopped out of the woods, rotating his shoulders and wagging his head to whatever music his iPod was channeling into his ears. When he saw the car, his face broke into an ebullient smile and he plucked the buds out of his ears. “Kaliméra!”

  Dinah rolled down her window, stuck her head out, and returned his good day. “Kaliméra. Can you herd them to the side of the road, paraka
ló? We’re in a dreadful hurry.”

  He frowned and shook his head.

  “Tell him in Greek, Egan.”

  “I don’t see why you’re in such a hurry. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “Just tell him.”

  Egan harrumphed and spouted a stream of Greek at the boy.

  “Nè, málista.” The boy smiled and prodded the nearest sheep in the rear with his staff. A few more deft prods and he had maneuvered the flock onto the verge where they trotted along like a line of obedient, but noisy school children. The boy refitted the ear buds in his ears and resumed his head-wagging dance-walk.

  Egan released the brake and rolled on. “Not my nostalgic image of the humble shepherd, but with fifty percent unemployment among Greek youth, it’s good to see that at least one has a paying job.”

  Dinah leaned out the window and called out behind her. “Efkharistó.”

  The boy waved and smiled.

  She fished Papas’ number out of her pocket and punched the numbers into her phone.

  “Yia’sas.”

  “It’s Dinah Pelerin. Have you found anything?”

  “A pair of dark glasses, non-prescription.”

  “They’re probably mine. Anything else?”

  “We pried open the trunk.”

  “He wasn’t…?”

  “No. We found a man’s shoe a few meters distant from the car. It was of Norwegian make.”

  “So he must have been thrown from the car. He must be down there somewhere.”

  “It seems so, yes, but...” He faltered.

  “But?”

  “There is blood on the shoe.”

  She swallowed. “A lot?”

  “Yes. We don’t know if it is Inspector Ramberg’s blood or if there was someone else in the car. We don’t know if the scene is real or if it has been,” he hesitated again, “staged. We will keep searching. You may rest assured.”

  Dinah didn’t think that she could rest at all, much less assured. She couldn’t understand why Papas was so doubtful. Why would he think that Thor had staged the scene? The shoe proved that he had been in the car at some point and that he’d been hurt.

  “Did they find him?” asked Egan.

  “Not yet.”

  “Were you and the Inspector engaged to be married?”

  She shook her head. The lump in her throat ached so she couldn’t speak. She didn’t have much faith in the institution of marriage, but she hadn’t ruled it out. Having the option taken away by death filled her with misery. Anger, too. She may have been the architect of some of her disappointments, but this one came courtesy of outside forces. She said, “You speak as if you know Samos well, Mr. Vercuni. Are the police trustworthy? Are they honest?”

  “Honest in what way?”

  “Zenia seems to think they can be bribed.”

  “In the Balkans, the trading of favors is looked upon as a show of good will. Rousfeti is how things get done. It has nothing to do with honesty.”

  Dinah didn’t think of Greece as part of the Balkans, but of course it was the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula. She had been on a dig in the Balkans in 2000 when the ethnic tinderbox that made up the former Yugoslavia had erupted. The Albanians attacked the Serbs, the Macedonians attacked the Albanians, her Bulgarian archaeology professor was caught smuggling weapons to the Kosovo Liberation Army, and everybody assumed that everybody else was lying and taking bribes, which justified their doing the same. She was picking up a similar vibe here. “Do you know Savas Brakus?”

  “I knew his father Aries well. We grew up together, served in the army together.”

  “Along with Phaedon Hero?”

  “Under Phaedon’s command. After Aries left the army, he opened the Marc Antony. Savas took it over when his father began to sugar the lamb and salt the pudding.” Egan chortled. “Poor old Aries. Eventually went stark mad. That must have been twenty years ago. Savas aspired to be a great runner and represent Greece at the Olympics, but his mother couldn’t run the taverna by herself. An eight-hundred-meter man, I think Zenia said he was. Of course, Zenia never cared for Aries or Savas. Agroikos, she called them. What you would call yokels. I haven’t thought about Aries in years. Marilita was his Aphrodite. He worshipped her. Pity he was married and Catholic to the marrow. I think he would have killed for Marilita if she had said the word.”

  “Was there ever any suspicion that she had?”

  “Asked Aries to kill Nasos, you mean? That’s rather farfetched.”

  Dinah kept coming back to Kanaris’ allergy to the police. “Have you ever heard of anyone on Samos whose illicit pursuits included arms dealing?”

  “Gangsters on Samos? There’s one for the books.” His laughed a dry, hacking laugh that made his Adam’s apple bob up and down. “Not likely. Of course, I’ve been away for decades. There’s more economic hardship and less respect for law and order. And of course a lot of foreigners have moved in.”

  “Samos is a stepping stone from Turkey and the Middle East into Europe. With so many foreigners passing through, the island would be a perfect transit point for smugglers, don’t you think?”

  “Samos has its share of minor villains, but no arms smugglers.”

  His neck squirmed inside his starched collar and she could see that the subject bothered him. “Did you know the Iraqi who was murdered?”

  “No. Why would I?”

  “I thought you might have seen him at Zenia’s house. She hires refugees as day laborers, doesn’t she?”

  “I’m not the gardener. You’ll have to ask her who she hires to prune the shrubbery.”

  “I intend to. What happened to Thor was no accident and I mean to find out who was behind it.”

  His forehead puckered and his Adam’s apple bobbed, as if he’d just thought of something galvanizing. She could almost hear the cogwheels whirring.

  “What are you thinking, Egan? Do you know something about arms trafficking on Samos? Do you have an idea who it was that ran Thor off the road?”

  He made a series of dry, raspy sounds that she construed as a laugh. “Zot, no. I was thinking what a coincidence this would be if your Inspector Ramberg is never found.”

  She clenched her fists. “What do you mean?”

  “You and Marilita would have more than your rebellious eyes in common. They couldn’t find Nasos’ body either. He fell into the sea after she shot him. The police speculated that the currents carried his body into Turkish waters.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dinah sat on a bench in the Kanaris parking lot staring out at the Aegean and waiting for the mechanic with the new tires. A tide of morbid thoughts swamped her. She thought about Marilita’s boyfriend, perhaps not yet dead of his wounds, swept under the waves and drowned. Egan was a jerk to suggest that Thor wouldn’t be found. It was worse than tactless. It was cruel. But it had deflected her questions about arms traffickers, which may have been what he had in mind.

  So many coincidences. Zenia waited for decades to lease Marilita’s house and then leased it to a policeman. Thor had been engrossed by Marilita’s crime. His car crashed on the road where Zenia and only Zenia lived. And he had called her last night to ask about armories on the island. Dinah believed in coincidences, but they didn’t come in swarms. Those American weapons that Thor was investigating were tied in some way to Marilita or the coterie of people who surrounded her.

  A service truck rumbled up the mountain and nosed into the parking space next to the Picanto. The mechanic didn’t speak English, but he had brought the right sized tires, thanks to Mentor’s earlier explanation, and he set about his job without any social preliminaries. While he jacked up the Picanto, she paced around the parking lot, lobbing an occasional look across the Aegean. The meltemi had come up and the water was rough and choppy. Bad news for anyone sailing against the wind, or swimming again
st the current.

  Heat radiated off the pavement and, with the incessant wind, she began to feel as if she were being baked in a convection oven. Thor would be miserable in this heat. Beyond rational thought, at some elemental level of cognition, she knew that he was alive. If he had been in the car when it crashed, he had obviously escaped the brunt of the impact. He was hurt, but he was strong and resourceful. He could have climbed out of the gorge, been picked up by a passing motorist, and taken to a hospital. Maybe the hospital had called the land line at Marilita’s house and the message hadn’t gotten through. Maybe Alcina wasn’t around to translate for K.D. But if Thor wasn’t in the car when it crashed, where was he and how did his bloody shoe wind up in the gorge?

  The mechanic blotted the sweat off his face with a greasy towel, slung the fourth tire out of the truck, and started to mount it. Dinah took out her phone and called K.D. Suddenly, she wasn’t so gung-ho to hustle her off to Atlanta. In Thor’s absence, she had become by default the closest thing Dinah had to a friend on the island.

  “Dinah!” She sounded breathless.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, but Yannis is here. He knows about Thor’s accident. I heard him say it served him right for mixing in.”

  “I didn’t think Yannis spoke English.”

  “Well, he does. He’s speaking Greek right now with Alcina, but they shift in and out of English.”

  Dinah’s chest tightened. How could Yannis know that something had happened to Thor? Had Papas or one of the other policemen phoned to give him a heads-up or had he been there when the car went over the cliff?

  “I think he’s getting ready to leave again,” said K.D., “but if you want me to, I’ll stall him.”

  “No.” Dinah was still assimilating the fact that he knew what had happened. Had he run Thor off the road to get back at him for having him arrested? She couldn’t think what to do. Did she dare question him face to face? Would he pretend he didn’t understand? Would he turn violent?

  “He’s walking down the hall right now. Should I…?”