Her Boyfriend's Bones Page 13

  “Stay out of his way, K.D. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  The mechanic was tightening the lugs on the last tire. Dinah counted out a wad of euros, roughly the amount Mentor had said it would cost.

  “Efkharistó,” she said, thrusting the money into his hand. “Thanks very much.”

  She gave a second’s thought to calling Papas, decided he couldn’t help, and hopped in the Picanto. Stoked on adrenalin and suspicion, she barreled up the road without regard to the town ordinance or the safety of its inhabitants. She took the corner past the taverna too fast, hit a pothole and bonked her head against the roof. The pain slowed her down and reminded her that she hadn’t the foggiest idea what she would say to Yannis. She bumped down the lane to Marilita’s house, rubbing her head and racking her brain.

  She parked beside the veranda. Before she cut the engine, K.D. flew out the door.

  “I told him you wanted to talk to him and he’d better not run or you’d have him arrested again.”

  Well, that should set the tone for a productive dialogue, thought Dinah. She got out of the car and tried to rally her courage. This was the man who, regardless of a lack of evidence, may have gunned a man down in cold blood. He could be armed to the teeth right now.

  He shambled out the door wearing the same ratty straw hat he’d worn when Fathi confronted him.

  She squared her shoulders and stepped up to meet him with a bravado she didn’t feel. Up close, she saw that his eyes were a disconcerting Celtic blue, not unlike Alcina’s glass mati. They regarded Dinah with undisguised animosity.

  “How did you hear about what happened to Mr. Ramberg’s car, Yannis?”

  “Dhen katalamváno.”

  “In English, please. I know you understand.”

  He snorted. “I understand you have no power. You have no right.”

  “I do have power. I know American senators, important people who can pull all kinds of strings with the Greek officials. They’ll make sure you tell the truth or send you to prison until you do.”

  A piercing yip made Dinah jump. She looked up and saw Alcina hovering in the doorway.

  Yannis muttered something in Greek to her and turned back to Dinah. “He missed the curve. It has happened on that road before.”

  “Did you see it? Were you there?”

  “No.”

  She didn’t believe him. “This is the second violent incident connected to you. If you’re innocent, you need to cooperate. If you weren’t at Pegasus Point, who told you about the car?”

  “The monk.”

  “Brother Constantine? How did he know it was Inspector Ramberg’s car?”

  “The police. They are everywhere in the lagkadi.”

  Dinah supposed that Yannis had called or visited Constantine to inquire about his little envelope and the brother had filled him in. She probed deeper. “What did you and Fathi argue about?”

  “Yannis didn’t kill him,” cried Alcina.

  He raised a hand to shush her. “He tried to sell me stolen kombolói. Worry beads. Coral and silver. I told him to go to hell.”

  “If you didn’t shoot him, who did?”

  “I wasn’t there. I didn’t take the gun.”

  Her phone rang and her stomach knotted. She glanced at K.D., walked to the edge of the veranda, and answered.

  Sergeant Papas said, “He’s not in the lagkadi.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Very sure. We have combed the area.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Either he was not in the car when it crashed or if he escaped, he was able to leave the scene.”

  She said, “He’s been kidnapped.”

  “It is possible.” Papas put a good deal of reluctance into the admission.

  “It’s got to be what happened.” Thinking that one’s lover has been kidnapped shouldn’t boost one’s spirits, but considering the alternative, it boosted hers. People who are kidnapped have value. They aren’t killed until and unless the kidnappers’ demands aren’t met. “Can you trace him through his cell phone?”

  “If it is turned on.”

  “He keeps it on all the time. Maybe the kidnappers don’t know about cell phones.”

  “It is possible.” His voice carried an unmistakable note of what planet do you live on?

  She had to acknowledge that he was probably right on that point. “Will you contact the Norwegian Embassy and notify them that one of their citizens has been kidnapped?”

  “I will ask my superior to make the call and report the Inspector missing.”

  She turned around. Yannis had vanished, but Alcina was still loitering and listening. She lowered her voice. “Did you find beads on Fathi’s body, Sergeant? Coral and silver Kombolói?”

  “Only his wallet with two hundred euros.”

  “Could you tell if anything had been taken?”

  “There was no appearance of robbery.”

  She said, “He wasn’t a refugee. He had an identity card that permitted him to travel anywhere in Europe.”

  Papas had nothing to add. He cut her off with a crisp, “I will keep you informed.”

  “Thank you.” She ended the call, feeling marginalized, alone, and alien. She didn’t know if or when Norway would send in the cavalry. She didn’t trust Papas or the local police who took bribes. She didn’t trust Egan or Yannis or Brakus or the villagers who also took bribes. Mentor seemed honest enough, but what could he do? What could she do?

  What was it Yannis had said? I didn’t take the gun. Was that what Fathi was trying to sell? An American gun?

  “Now you know how it feels,” said Alcina. “This is what happens. You have someone and then the astrapi. In a flash of lightning, everything changes and you are alone.”

  Dinah didn’t need any truisms about lightning strikes. She experienced her first when she was ten and the knowledge that life was uncertain had been etched indelibly on her consciousness. But Thor was missing, not dead, and what she needed was a Greek she could trust, someone who could help her set the wheels in motion for an intensive, organized, island-wide search for him. She knew only one person who fit the bill. Zenia was too old to be involved in gunrunning, she had friends in high places, and she wanted something, however crazy, that Dinah was uniquely constituted to give her.

  “What are you going to do?” asked K.D., sounding worried.

  “Take a shower,” said Dinah, dabbing at her skinned palms and scraping the dirt from under her broken nails. “After that, I’ll do what everybody in the Balkans does. Trade favors.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dinah spent a long time in the shower. The steaming spray pelted against her face and washed away the tears. This was her catharsis. Catharsis was the word coined by Aristotle to refer to the purging of pent-up emotions, of which she had a superfluity. They ranged from stubborn hope to forlorn despair and back again like a mad pendulum. She had to make up her mind—hope and action or despair and tears. If she were going to be of any use to Thor, she would have to foreclose the possibility that he was dead and emerge from this room dry eyed and determined and cynical. In a place with so many secrets, cynicism would be an asset.

  “…in there?”

  She shut off the water. Before she did anything, she should send K.D. home. It was the height of irresponsibility to let her stay on in the circumstances.

  “Dinah, are you in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “That man who bumped into you is downstairs.”

  “Brother Constantine?”

  “No, the one in the fisherman’s cap. Stavros. He says he’d like to speak with you. He came to offer his condolences about Thor. He brought a bouquet of flowers.”

  Dinah stepped out of the shower and massaged her temples. How had he found out about Thor? The admonition about Greeks bea
ring gifts leapt to mind. His visit was most likely prompted by morbid curiosity, but he’d acted weird at the Marc Antony. He had seemed to be staring at her, but had she misinterpreted the object of his interest? He might have been staring at Thor, stalking him and waiting for the chance to jump him.

  “Hello? Dinah? What do you want me to tell him?”

  She cleared her throat and blew her nose. “Put the flowers in a vase and tell him I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

  She toweled off and opened the bathroom window to clear the fog. She had paid no attention to his business card except for his name and an Athens address. Thor had been in Athens for a week before she arrived. What if this Stavros person had followed him to Samos? What if he had come here today to issue a ransom demand?

  N.C.I.S. hadn’t returned her call. Maybe her message had been dropped in somebody’s inbox and wouldn’t be read or acted on for days. Norwegians were uncompromising about their summer holiday, the fellesferie. They deserted their posts in droves, regardless how essential their jobs, and practically the whole country shut down. The fellesferie was usually not until July, but the N.C.I.S. slackers had obviously deserted their posts and the kidnapping of their agent had been left for her to contend with.

  Swabbing her nicks and cuts with iodine and wincing, she ran through her mental archive of friends and relations. Her brother Lucien had scads of money, but she didn’t know where he was offhand and there was nobody else she could rely on for a large sum on short notice. In a crunch, she could raid Uncle Cleon’s bank account in Panama and figure out how to recoup K.D.’s inheritance later. The key was to keep the kidnapper happy until a rescue could be mounted. She ran a comb through her wet hair, dressed, and jogged downstairs barefoot. She felt each step pounding her sore hip to a pulp.

  Galen Stavros stood up when she entered the room. His leathery skin bespoke long years in the sun, but his eyes retained a youthful alertness. A thick red scar trenched across his scalp and parted his white hair from just below the crown to his left ear.

  “I was wounded in a student protest.”

  Dinah felt her cheeks grow hot.

  “Don’t be embarrassed. Everyone stares. It’s why I wear a cap.” His face was intensely earnest. He held out his hand to her. It was soft and smooth, not calloused or rough as a fisherman’s or a laborer’s would be. “I came to offer my help.”

  “How did you hear about Inspector Ramberg’s misfortune?”

  “One of the policemen who conducted the search ate lunch in the taverna today. He described the scene.”

  “Sergeant Papas?”

  “I didn’t hear the name.”

  K.D. swanned into the room carrying a vase filled with peonies and purple asphodel. “Thank you for the flowers, Mr. Stavros. They smell divine.”

  The crying must have plugged Dinah’s sinuses. She couldn’t smell anything but the pail of bleach Alcina had left beside the front door and a whiff of falsity emanating from the gentleman with the smooth hands. She said, “Please sit down, Mr. Stavros.”

  “Thank you.” He settled in the corner of the sofa with his hat on his lap and swung one leg across the other.

  K.D. set the flowers on the table under the painting of the Spanish knight and planted herself on the sofa next to him. “Mr. Stavros was telling me that peonies get their name from the Greek god of healing. How did you pronounce him, Mr. Stavros?”

  “Paieon. He was a student of Asclepius. Homer called Paieon a deliverer from evil and calamity.”

  “The perfect flower to bring to a calamity,” said Dinah. “K.D., I’d like to speak with the gentleman alone if you don’t mind.”

  “Why, that wouldn’t be polite, now would it, Mr. Stavros?”

  Stavros had the grace not to respond.

  Dinah skimmed K.D. a black look and sat down across the room. She didn’t have the energy to strangle her and she had no inclination to be polite to Stavros. If he had something to say to her about Thor, it was on him to say it.

  He said, “Marilita was a dear friend. I came often to this house.”

  Dinah couldn’t put her finger on what it was about him that kindled her suspicion. He seemed almost too sincere. “You must have been staggered when she committed the murders.”

  “She was a kind woman.”

  “I take it you’re one of the people who doesn’t believe she did it.”

  “That’s right.”

  “If Marilita didn’t shoot those people, she must have told the police who did.”

  “I’m sure she did.”

  His hand stole to his scar. Dinah didn’t know if the gesture implied that Marilita had been tortured or that he had. The peonies aside, he was remarkably uncommunicative for a man who’d come to offer his help. She said, “Did you see Inspector Ramberg last night or this morning?”

  “No.” His eyes roamed about the room as if analyzing and recording every chink in the wall. Either he was remembering the times he spent in the house with Marilita or casing the place. His eyes came back to Dinah. “Did the inspector indicate that he knew who was behind the vandalism?”

  “No. Alcina thinks it was friends of the murdered Iraqi. Did you know him?”

  K.D. interrupted. “Do you think the police will find new evidence that clears Marilita some day, Mr. Stavros?”

  “It is possible. An investigative reporter in Athens is trying to rehabilitate her reputation.” The corners of his mouth lifted ever so slightly, like the archaic smile on a Greek statue. “The mills of the gods are late to grind, but they grind small.”

  Dinah eyed him askance. Had he really known Marilita or was he the reporter foraging for grist for his newspaper?

  “The mills of the gods,” chimed K.D. “That’s so poetic.”

  “A quote from the Greek philosopher, Sextus Empiricus.” His eyelids twitched. In a younger face, the effect would have seemed flirtatious. “You have an ear for poetry, Katarina.”

  “I’m considering becoming a writer.”

  “Alcina wrote poetry when she was your age. It was of the fantastical sort. Her mother’s execution traumatized her. I think she sought to lose herself in the supernatural.”

  That wasn’t something a stranger would know. It would be an easy detail to make up except for the fact that it sounded so true. He could be both an old acquaintance and a reporter.

  His eyes came to rest on the wall above Dinah’s head. “I was with Marilita the day she bought that painting. It was shamelessly overpriced, but she had to have it. She said the knight reminded her of someone she couldn’t be with. I thought she must have meant Alcina’s father.”

  Dinah turned and looked. It was a face made melancholy by unusually prominent eyes that sagged into soft cheeks. There was an undeniable likeness to Alcina. A high-bridged, patrician nose and somewhat martial set of the jaw redeemed the knight from blandness, but he was no dreamboat. “Have you kept up a friendship with Alcina through the years?”

  “Not as I should have. Even before her mother’s death, she was shy and insecure. Afterward, she turned more inward. If it hadn’t been for Yannis, she would have had no one to cling to. They married when she was very young.”

  “Have you spoken with her recently?”

  “No. I’ve spoken only with Yannis.”

  “If you’re serious about wanting to help, please explain to her that she and Yannis have no reason to blame Inspector Ramberg for their problems. If they know where he is or what’s happened to him, they should tell me at once. And if Yannis had anything to do with his disappearance…”

  “He has given me his word that he knows nothing about the Inspector. Yannis is a good man, salt of the earth.”

  “There is strong circumstantial evidence that he murdered a man.”

  “As you say, the evidence was circumstantial.”

  A fresh apprehension percolated into Din
ah’s thoughts. Stavros had been at the taverna on the evening of the murder and witnessed the altercation between Yannis and Fathi. He left shortly after Fathi passed by. “You were there that day. What did Yannis and the Iraqi argue about?”

  “The Iraqi was selling. Yannis did not wish to buy.”

  “Worry beads?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Yannis steal them? Because the police didn’t find them on Fathi’s body.”

  Stavros’ voice became impatient, as if she had shunted him into a conversation he’d rather not have. “Yannis would do nothing to bring more attention from the police. His pension has been reduced and, like many Greeks, the things he does to get by may not be strictly legal. People can hardly be blamed for improvising.”

  “Or for taking bribes?”

  “I have known Yannis for many years. He is a man of principle. He opposed the junta and its repressive policies when he was young. He is a Christian and a liberal.”

  “If he shares Alcina’s opinion of foreigners, he’s no liberal now.”

  He spread his hands. “With the influx of foreigners and the economic war being waged against us by the Germans and the E.U., many Greeks feel they are losing more than their jobs and their pensions. They are losing their cultural identity. They are afraid for their future as they were when the junta came to power in the sixties. Then, it seemed that our civilization was being degraded by the American culture of anything goes.”

  Dinah bristled. “And so to avoid the degradation of rock and roll, the Greek people resorted to a military dictatorship.”

  “My brother is into scum punk,” said K.D. without looking up. She was hunched over her cell phone, her thumbs moving busily. “Anything would be better.”

  “No,” said Stavros, acknowledging Dinah’s sarcasm with a wintry smile. “The junta was brutal, but your President Nixon supported it and, for a while, it made Greece stable and prosperous. The danger today is that we will remember the prosperity and forget the brutality.”

  “Did you protest the junta?” asked Dinah.

  “Yes. Yannis protested, too. I don’t believe that he has forsaken his ideals. The Greek people invented democracy. We have no desire to relinquish our fate to a new mob of fascists, or to the German bankers, for that matter. But that is a separate crisis.”