Her Boyfriend's Bones Read online

  Egan shot her a look. “Is there some innuendo in that warning?”

  “Not really. The wolf seems to be a popular figure of speech in Greece.” She pushed K.D. ahead of her and started for the door. Hand on the knob, she turned back. “Egan, do you know the name Galen Stavros?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell. Is he in the theater or the film industry?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Then I’ve probably never met the fellow.”

  Dinah lofted a last look over her shoulder at Zenia. For all of her meanness and perversity, she looked small and frail and defenseless.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  As the Picanto spiraled down the mountain toward the coast road, Dinah searched for the moon, but Artemis was a truant. A haze dimmed the stars and the lineless road was black as widow’s weeds. Her eyes felt sandy and irritated from too many unprotected hours in the sun and the dark of night brought no relief. “Did you copy it down exactly?” she asked K.D.

  “I think so. The handwriting would have been hard to make out even if it weren’t in Greek, but I have mad skills. I copied the Desiderata in Arabic script in my calligraphy class.”

  “And you put the original letter back in the book?”

  “Page ninety-six, just like you said.”

  Dinah didn’t like to admit that she was finding K.D.’s mad skills useful. “You were in the bathroom an awfully long time.”

  “What? You think I do Robitussin or something? That sucks.”

  “That drink you concocted from Zenia’s liquor cabinet is what sucks. It tasted a lot worse than cough syrup and your sneakiness about the alcohol doesn’t inspire confidence.”

  “Well, you can relax about the pharma-fun in Zenia’s medicine chest. All that’s there is a bottle of mouthwash and a bottle of pills. Probably for her blood pressure.”

  “So you did look.”

  “I checked it out, okay? I checked out the bedrooms, too. But the really interesting thing I found was in the console in the living room.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, it’s probably nothing.”

  Dinah took her eyes off the road. K.D. was admiring her fingernails, smug as a cat.

  “Don’t act so pleased with yourself. What did you find?”

  “I lied when I told Zenia I hadn’t opened that scrapbook. I paged through it before she walked in on me with the gun.”

  “Did you see any other letters or anything from Nasos Lykos?”

  “No. There were a few scraps of writing, but they were all in Greek.”

  “Did you copy down any of those?”

  “I didn’t have a chance.”

  “Were there photographs?”

  “Tons. Most were glam shots of old movie stars that had been cut out of fan magazines. Well, I guess they weren’t so old when the pictures were taken. There were a couple of Paul Newman and Marlon Brando when they were young and hot, and there were quite a few of Marilita. She looked bangable.”

  “Slutty, you mean?”

  “That, but she was kind of like, I don’t know. Like the pouty lips and the cleavage was an inside joke or something. Like she was looking past the camera and the droolers to somebody she really cared about. Maybe the lover who looked like the Spanish knight.” K.D. might have an overly romantic sensibility, but even when she seemed not to be paying attention, she didn’t miss much.

  Dinah couldn’t see Zenia poring over movie mags, much less scissoring out glam shots. “It seems way out of character for Zenia to have those kinds of magazines and mind-boggling that she would paste pictures of the sexpot sister she hates in a scrapbook.”

  “I don’t think it’s Zenia’s scrapbook,” said K.D. “It seemed more like the pictures a kid would collect. There are photos of a girl, twelve or thirteen, playing with a camera like she’s some kind of paparazzi.”

  “Alcina?”

  “For sure, but she must have been way immature for her age. The heads and arms and legs had been cut off of some pictures and their outfits glued next to pictures of Marilita and Marilyn Monroe. Like paper dolls. I saw something else that was pret-ty amazing.” K.D. twisted the rearview mirror around, turned on the overhead light, and tweaked her eyelashes.

  “Can the suspense. Just tell me.”

  She twisted the mirror back into place. “In one of the photos, Alcina is pointing the camera at Marilita. In another, she’s zeroing in on a woman with bird eyes and penciled eyebrows, Zenia for sure, and the dude in the bathing suit whose picture is by the front door. I’m thinking she took the picture of Marilita and her boyfriend on the beach the day of the murders.”

  “Dear God. If Alcina was an eyewitness, no wonder she’s traumatized.” Dinah’s first impulse was to race back to the house and question her, but asking her to relive that day in memory could unhinge a woman who teetered permanently on the brink of hysteria. “Could you tell where they were taken? Indoors or out?”

  “Out. There were trees and water in the background.”

  They reached the coast road and Dinah turned back toward Kanaris. The Aegean was black and foreboding tonight, or maybe her mood made everything appear that way. Across the strait, the lights of Kusadasi twinkled like fragments of crystal. She wished she had a crystal ball. Did the key to finding Thor lie in the past, or was she chasing figments? “Damn it, I wish Alcina weren’t so emotionally combustible and I could ask her without sending her into conniptions.”

  “She’ll talk to me,” said K.D. “The two of us sort of bonded this morning over our off-the-chain parents.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She was like, ‘my mother was executed by a firing squad,’ and I’m like, ‘my father blew his brains out before they could take him to trial.’ And she goes, ‘my mother didn’t do what they said she did.’ And I’m like, ‘how do you know that?’”

  “And?”

  “She said it was bandits.”

  “Bandits.” Dinah let it simmer for a minute. “Bandits killed the other people?”

  “That’s what she said. They wore black ski masks and carried rifles.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? Before I talked with Stavros and Zenia?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t believe her. I mean, she had a hissy fit when she saw one of my sandals lying sole-up on the floor. She went all over the room spitting and said I should touch this bat bone she carries around for good luck. Serious ick. I was like, no way and she got all fussed. She can sound pretty batty when she gets cranked up.”

  Dinah was on board with that assessment, although bandits made far more sense than an actress in a bikini running amok with the Colonel’s gun. But what could bandits hope to steal from a party of picnickers? Their cooler of beer? Nasos was rich, but he wouldn’t have much cash on him at the beach. Ditto, the ladies. That left the Colonel. What if he had access to, or knowledge about, the junta’s weapons? The bandits’ object could have been to force him to reveal their location and after he did, they killed him and Mrs. Lykos and, probably, Nasos. But why didn’t they kill Marilita and Alcina? And why, if they had scored a load of valuable weapons, hadn’t they sold them before now?

  K.D. said, “With an evil old skank like Zenia in the family tree, it’s not surprising that Alcina’s freaky. Those posters in Zenia’s bedroom grossed me out. The dagger dripping blood wasn’t too griz, but the severed head? Ugh! How can she sleep at night?”

  Dinah had missed the severed head. It must have been the head of Medusa or else Pentheus, the king of Thebes. She had read the story of Pentheus just recently. Dionysus sent him to spy on a ladies-only drinking party, but the ladies spotted him ogling them from behind a tree and his own mother lopped off his head, not realizing until she sobered up that she’d killed her son. It was the same with Oedipus. He didn’t realize he had killed his father and married his mother. As i
n so many Greek tragedies, the characters’ crimes derived not from any willful disobedience to the gods, but from a simple misunderstanding of the facts. What was it that she misunderstood?

  K.D. steepled her fingers under her chin. “How’s this for a plot? Alcina doesn’t want her mother to marry Nasos because he’s taking up all of her time and attention. So she’s playing with her camera and shooting pictures, but then she puts down the camera and asks the Colonel to let her see what it’s like to look through a gun sight. Maybe he’s one of those men who likes to show off his expertise. Daddy was like that, if you remember. So anyway, the Colonel gives her the gun. Alcina turns it on him and shoots everyone but her mother and when the police come, Marilita does the noble thing and says she did it. Alcina didn’t count on her being executed and ever since, she’s been racked by guilt and collecting bat bones and evil eye charms and religious stuff she thinks will keep her from going to hell.”

  “A child would have had trouble holding a gun steady,” said Dinah, “let alone hitting anyone. Almost any adult could have knocked it out of her hands before she did any harm. And what reason would she have had to kill Nasos’ mother or the Colonel?”

  “You never know. Maybe her father was a born killer like mine. Maybe she’s got badness in her blood.”

  Dinah felt a tug of sympathy. Over the years, she had come to terms with her own father’s bad acts. She’d like to help K.D. do the same, but there was no way to distill twenty years of attitudinal evolution into a pithy maxim. She said, “It’s all right to love someone who’s done bad things, K.D. I loved my father. You loved yours. That doesn’t mean we replicate their moral failings. Our conscience is our own.”

  “Jeez, you don’t have to preach.”

  I’ll get back to her, thought Dinah. She said, “I don’t think Alcina murdered anyone, although if she was there when it happened, she knows who did.”

  “Maybe we could find somebody to hypnotize her,” suggested K.D.

  “Not practical.”

  “I’ll bet Mr. Stavros could persuade her to talk if you trusted him.”

  “But I don’t.”

  “Then who will you get to translate the letter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We could bring up a Greek dictionary on the Net and do it ourselves.”

  “There could be hidden meanings. Nuances a dictionary might not give.”

  “You don’t even trust the dictionary?”

  “You’ve made your point, K.D. But all of the Greeks I’ve met have been metaphorical to a fault. I wouldn’t want to miss some esoteric idiom a dictionary wouldn’t show.” She considered driving into Karlovassi and showing the letter to a young person, someone who’d never heard of Nasos Lykos or the Stephanadis sisters. But she had to trust somebody sometime. Maybe it was time she rolled the dice. She decided to park K.D. at the house and spend the rest of the evening at the Marc Antony listening to gypsy music. Until the morning, she was in limbo. All she could do was hitch her hopes to Thor’s self-assayed strength. I know how to hang on one minute longer.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The courtyard tables at the taverna were filling up early tonight. The little votive candles glimmered pleasantly and a hum of conviviality belied the very idea of trouble. Dinah looked around for Mentor, but she didn’t see him or recognize any of the other patrons. They seemed to recognize her. An awkward hush fell as she walked past the grape arbor. She supposed they’d heard about Thor and congregated at the local watering hole to gossip about it.

  Brakus’ wife hurried out the door carrying a tray loaded with mezés and Brakus filed out behind her with a carafe in each hand. He saw Dinah and his brow furrowed. He delivered the carafes to nearby tables, said something to the occupants in Greek, and stepped up to greet her. “I am sorry to learn about Inspector Ramberg. It is unbelievable.”

  She nodded, glancing around at the audience of attentive listeners.

  He dropped his voice. “Have you come for dinner?”

  “If you have a table.”

  “Yes, yes. Come.” He led her to a table inside. She took the chair facing the courtyard and he unrolled her napkin and dropped it onto her lap. “The police say that he has disappeared. Have you heard from him?”

  “No.”

  “It is the kako mati. Murder, vandalism, and my dumpster upended. That is where the bandalos got their ammunition. I showed the police. One bag of garbage taken away and another spilled on the ground. But the police said they threw eggs. An expensive waste.” He paused, as if he sensed there might have been a gaffe in there somewhere, but he couldn’t quite pin it down. He shook his head and kept going. “What did Zenia Stephanadis have to say for herself?”

  Again she had the feeling that her every move was being watched and reported and the Kanaris grapevine seemed to sprout directly from Brakus’ mouth. “She was extremely helpful. She telephoned her friend Governor Rigas even though he’s on vacation in Malta and he promised to send additional police from other areas in the region. They should begin arriving tomorrow.”

  “Is that so?” His eyes widened, whether because he was titillated by the gossip or alarmed by the prospect of more policemen. “You must have wine. Tonight the wine is free for you and everything on the chalkboard is fresh. I will be back to take your order.”

  “Thank you. Perhaps when you aren’t so busy, you could stop by the table and we could share a glass of wine and talk.”

  “Nè, nè, nè. Yes, I will do that.” He skipped a look over her head and bustled off toward the terrace.

  She looked at her watch. Nine-thirty. Mentor probably wouldn’t arrive for another half hour. She kept a close watch on the courtyard. His daughter and goatskin-playing son-in-law could be one of the couples taking their seats at a long table under the grape arbor. She hoped to catch Mentor before he brought out his violin and the entertainment began.

  The white-socked black cat scampered from the courtyard into the dining room inches ahead of a little girl, maybe three-years-old, with unruly blond curls and a tenacious countenance. Behind her came the mother, smiling indulgently. The cat slunk behind a table leg as the mother tried to outflank it and shoo it toward the girl, but it moved farther under the table. Undeterred, the girl crawled under the table after her prey. The large Greek family through whose legs she grabbed and poked at the cat, laughed indulgently. After a while, the grandfatherly gentleman at the head of the table swept up the cat in one hand and presented it to the girl, who clutched her prize to her chest and beamed. There were no thanks or apologies and clearly none were expected. Mother and child returned to the courtyard with the cat and Dinah wondered if all Greeks spoiled their children so lovingly.

  Mrs. Brakus, even more harried than she’d been the last time Dinah saw her, appeared at her elbow with a notepad and a carafe of red wine.

  “Dorean,” she said. “No charge.” She had dark circles under her eyes and puppet lines around her mouth and chin. With her husband gadding from table to table swapping gossip, she probably had to do more of the work of running this place.

  Dinah thanked her and ordered the homemade noodles with myzithra cheese. As Mrs. Brakus hastened back to the kitchen, her husband returned.

  “It is Katogi Averoff,” he said, tapping the carafe his wife had brought. “Our best bottle. I took the liberty of decanting it.” He poured her a glass.

  “Please pour a glass for yourself and sit down, Mr. Brakus.”

  “Thank you. I know this is a tender time for you. Did the Inspector tell you where he was going this morning?”

  “He went looking for stolen weapons.”

  His eyes bugged as if they might jump out of their sockets. “On Samos?”

  “You make guns on Samos sound stranger than guns on the moon. Why?”

  “We are a quiet island, far from the riots and upheaval in Athens. We are like the moon.
It is bizarre. First the Iraqi and now a policeman has been murdered.”

  The instantaneous assumption of murder stunned her. She found herself rubbing the evil eye fetish Mentor had given her. “I believe he has been kidnapped. Do you have any idea who might have wanted to get him out of the way? Someone with an illegal sideline who didn’t want a foreign policeman nosing around the neighborhood?”

  “Illegal sideline?”

  “I’ve been told that the bad economy has forced some people into shady dealings.”

  “Not Samians. If weapons are stolen, it is al Quaida or the Taliban who steal them. They are here from Iraq and Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan. Some come to escape their wars, but many are parasites and terrorists. They should be deported. All of them.”

  She tasted the Katogi and pondered. Was he flogging the case against foreigners too hard? He hadn’t appeared as if he wanted to deport the Iraqi he was consorting with in Pythagório. “When you identified Fathi’s body, you said it’s the Iraqi. Are you sure you didn’t know him?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know any other Iraqis?”

  “No.”

  She watched his face as he tried to read her mind. “Would any policeman that you know have a reason to harm the Inspector?”

  “A policeman?”

  “Yes. I’ve heard rumors that some can be bought off.”

  “Nè, nè, nè. It is Zenia Stephanadis who has given you this idea. Whenever you hear a slander, it comes from her mouth. She hates us peasants. Did you know that she poisons the village cats?”

  Loud exclamations and laughter erupted from the kitchen and Mrs. Brakus emerged with a transforming smile on her face, followed by a laughing young woman in an apron and, behind her, a grinning Mentor. He was obviously privileged to enter the kitchen through the back door. Other diners shouted greetings and he waved his violin case in the air and said something to the crowd in Greek.

  “Kalispéra, Mentor.” Savas got up and shook his hand. “You bring a smile to Irene’s face when no one else can, and your music brings in the customers.”