Her Boyfriend's Bones Page 17

  “If I make you rich, Savas, you must share the gravy.”

  “No one gets rich in Greece, but I will put extra saltsa on your meat. Irene has made a pork roast tonight.”

  “Exochos!” Mentor laughed and kissed Irene Brakus on both cheeks.

  Brakus demeanor stiffened noticeably. “Will you drink wine, Mentor?”

  “Nè, málista.” He saw Dinah and waved, but his smile faded. “I will sit with Dinah Pelerin for a few minutes.”

  “I’ll bring another glass,” said Brakus. He gave Irene a sidelong glare and went into the kitchen.

  Mentor set his violin case in an empty chair and sat down across from Dinah. “I am sorry about your friend. Is there any news?”

  “If there were, everyone on the island would know it.”

  “It is hard to keep secrets of any kind in Kanaris.”

  “Of any kind? I was hoping I could trust you, Mentor. Don’t start out by telling me a lie.”

  “All right. Kanaris does keep some secrets. Most of them stem from pride, people covering their embarrassment at having to skimp and barter to get by.”

  “Is there anyone who would kill to keep his secret?”

  “I know no one so vicious as that.”

  Brakus returned with a glass for Mentor. “What will you eat, Mentor?”

  “I must have some of Irene’s roast, but later. In the kitchen, after I have finished my concert.”

  “Later, then.”

  When he was out of sight, Dinah pulled the copy of Nasos’ letter out of her purse and handed it to Mentor. “Would you translate this for me?”

  He knitted his brow, held the letter close to the candle, and read.

  The wolf is old and his fur white, but his memory is long. I thought it purgatory enough that you should live for so many years with the stain of your sin. But you have no remorse. You have only hubris and now you have awakened the wolf. He is at the door. It is time for you to pay.

  He said, “This is a threat against an old person by an old person.”

  “It seems so.”

  “Who wrote it? To whom?”

  It had occurred to her that Galen Stavros might be Nasos. But now, looking at Mentor, she vacillated. He had been away from Samos for many years. Come to think of it, so had Egan. Zenia hadn’t seen him in forty years. A man’s face could change a lot in forty years.

  “If you will not tell me who wrote this, will you tell me where you found it?”

  She fixed her eyes on his. “Someone named Nasos Lykos sent it to Zenia Stephanadis.”

  “But Nasos Lykos died many years ago. Marilita killed him.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “It is the received wisdom, even though it seemed a lunatic idea at the time. Someone killed him. He has been dead for forty years.”

  She studied his eyes. “Why do people in Kanaris make so many allusions to the wolf?”

  “The wolf is a common motif in many Greek sayings. One of the cult names of Apollo was Lukeios, from the word lykos. It means wolf.”

  The young woman who’d followed Mrs. Brakus out of the kitchen brought Dinah’s noodles to the table and untied her apron. “Mpampas, let us begin. The food is all prepared and I want to dance.”

  “Dinah, allow me to introduce my daughter, Jacey.”

  Jacey smiled. She was a lithe, attractive woman with the same parenthetical laugh lines from mouth to eyes as her father. “I am happy to meet you.”

  Mentor said, “Jacey has a degree from the music conservatory, but there is no work and no students can afford to take lessons. She and her husband are looking at the possibility of emigrating to Australia, but for now she is helping Irene at the taverna. We are hoping her husband can find work on Samos. I don’t know if I could live without my family.”

  “We will all be fine, mpampas. And tonight we will dance.” Jacey nudged his arm affectionately. “Dance with me, Dinah. Come, I will show you how.”

  “Not tonight, thanks. I’d rather watch you.”

  Mentor opened his violin case and stood. “We must talk more, Dinah. Come to my house tomorrow morning.”

  Father and daughter went out to the courtyard and the music began. Dinah put the letter back in her purse and picked at her noodles. As the music built, she asked herself whether she was conflating the uncertain fate of Nasos with Thor’s disappearance and whether her desire to keep Nasos among the living had more to do with the hope of finding Thor alive than it did with real possibility.

  “I should tell you something,” said Brakus, stopping by the table again. “I do not like to speak ill of my neighbors, but what you asked has made me think. Mentor Rodino has what you said...”

  “Opa! Opa!” The music ended and the crowd applauded and shouted.

  “He has an illegal sideline,” said Brakus.

  “What?”

  “Stolen antiquities. He hides them in his kalivis.”

  “But I looked inside his kalivi. There were no antiquities, only a cooler and a jug of wine.”

  “No one knows how a teacher can be rich with his pension cut to the bone, but he is. He supports his daughter and her husband. All he does is make wine and play music and yet he has bought three kalivis in the last five years. Trust me, he would not want the police to look inside.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  A police car pulled up in front of the Marc Antony, lights flashing. The music stopped in mid-tune. Dinah watched as Sergeant Papas got out and walked across the courtyard. She swallowed hard. He said something to Brakus and Brakus pointed her out in the dining room. She felt as if Papas were walking in slow motion. She searched his face for portents, but his expression was deadpan. She held herself in. Even if the worst had happened, she willed herself not to cry in public.

  “May I drive you to your house?”

  “Have you found him?”

  “No. But I have news.”

  She let out a breath and stood up. “What?”

  “Nothing worse than what we know already.”

  She walked out ahead of him, nerves taut as Mentor’s bow strings. If Papas didn’t know anything more, why was he here? Had Brakus called and warned him that she was asking questions about the integrity of the police? He opened the front passenger door for her and she slid in. He stood outside the car for a minute outside her range of vision. Her thoughts went into overdrive. He might be Thor’s betrayer, or his undercover ally, or an ordinary cop trying to deal with a missing person case that had ramifications he didn’t understand. Whatever he had to tell her, the personal visit and the flashing lights added a worrisome significance.

  He got in, turned off the lights, and drove down the lane to Marilita’s house.

  “What is this about, Sergeant?”

  “I would rather speak when we get to the house.”

  She tried to anticipate him, but could read nothing in his stern profile. With every bump and cobble, the tension built. The car bucked into Marilita’s drive and he shut off the engine and pulled up the brake. “May we go inside to talk?”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll make coffee.”

  As they crossed the veranda, the mulberry branches swayed and jittered in the wind, creating a shadow show on the side of the house. She saw that Zenia had sent new outdoor furniture and the birdcage had been rehung. She couldn’t tell if it contained replacement parakeets.

  K.D. met them at the door, an expectant look on her face. “Did you find him?”

  “Not yet,” said Dinah. “Is Alcina in her room?”

  “She went down to the farmhouse with Yannis.”

  “Sergeant Papas wants to speak to me alone. Would you mind waiting in your room?”

  “Not at all. I’ll leave you grown-ups to do the heavy brain work in private.” She smiled and sallied up the stairs.

  The jab wasn�
��t lost on Dinah, but she couldn’t be sidetracked. She led Papas down the hall to the kitchen and flipped the light switch. “Sit down, Sergeant. I don’t have anything to offer you except coffee.” She took a bag of Starbucks out of the cabinet. She’d bought it in the Athens airport after seeing TV footage of protesters firebombing a Starbucks store in the heart of the city. “Are you politically averse to American coffee?”

  “No, but if you like, I will make Greek coffee.”

  Dinah had tasted Greek coffee, which had the taste and consistency of coal tar. She said, “I don’t think we have any.”

  “There is always Greek coffee in a Greek house.” He opened a canister on the counter and sniffed. “Ah. This is Greek coffee.” He looked around. “And here is the briki.” He picked up a small metal pot with a handle, measured two cups of water into it, added two spoons of sugar and two heaping spoons of coffee.

  Dinah couldn’t understand what he was waiting for. “Sergeant, if you’ve got something to tell me, don’t leave me on pins and needles.”

  “We have found a phone.”

  She sat down. “Under the car?”

  “No. It was found on the road a mile below the lagkadi overlook, crushed by a rock or a boot heel or a passing car. It is being examined by people who can ex—I don’t know the English word.”

  “Extract the data?”

  “Yes.”

  Her pulse quickened. “If someone took his phone, then that proves he was kidnapped.”

  “We have no proof yet that it is his phone. Even if it is, he could have destroyed it himself. Policemen have backup phones, the same as drug dealers.”

  “I know he’s alive, Sergeant. You have checked all the hospitals and clinics, right?”

  “I came to tell you that everything is being done. The Samian police are doing everything the Athens police would do, what any European police force would do. The astynomia of Samos are up to the highest standard.” He turned away and went back to making the coffee.

  She deduced from his defensiveness that Brakus had conveyed her suspicions. She hadn’t told Brakus that she’d seen him with Papas in Pythagório. Maybe if she played it cool and didn’t light into him with accusations, she could extract some data about their connection. “Is there a special technique to making Greek coffee?”

  “Each step is important. You must start with very cold water and it should warm up slowly.”

  Like a good interview, she thought. “I suppose that everyone knows everyone on Samos. You probably know all the residents’ names and the names of their children and their pets.”

  He lit the stove, set the pot on the flame, and began to stir. “A policeman must have, how do you say in English, gnosi?”

  “Knowledge.”

  “Yes, knowledge.” He began to stir the coffee. “I have knowledge of all of the people who live on Samos. What happened to your Norwegian friend was not caused by any Samian.”

  “A stranger then. A refugee?”

  “Yes. We are questioning the usual suspects.”

  She covered her mouth. Did Papas realize he was lifting a line from “Casablanca,” or that it was intended ironically in the movie, or that it had become a standard one-liner? She tried to look simple and credulous. “What do you think happened at Pegasus Point, Sergeant?”

  “Inspector Ramberg must have seen a boat landing, illegals crossing from Turkey. They followed him and, how do you say? They sampotaz his car.”

  “Sabotage.”

  “Yes. The brakes, maybe. Or the steering.”

  She accepted the idea that someone might have tampered with the brakes and she didn’t doubt that illegal immigrants might be involved. But Thor was tracking weapons, not immigrants. Like Brakus, Papas was eager to scapegoat foreigners. “Do you think the Iraqi man who was murdered might have been engaged in weapons smuggling?”

  “No. Fathi wore nice clothes, an expensive watch, Italian eyeglasses. He showed his money too proudly. His death was an attempted robbery.”

  “You’ve changed your opinion then.”

  “It is the best explanation. When the robber heard you and the Inspector coming, he fled into the forest without taking anything.”

  Dinah had the feeling that he had rehearsed the robbery scenario. “Where would an unemployed immigrant like Fathi get two hundred euros?”

  “Robbing another man. Who can say?”

  “How would an Iraqi arriving in Greece from Turkey get a German identity card?”

  He turned back to the coffee pot and his stirring became more vigorous. “I have no knowledge where he entered into Europe or when. He may have arrived first in Germania and migrated to Greece.”

  She said, “An official ID must be like gold to a refugee. If he were stopped at a border for any reason, it would be like a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  “Inspector Ramberg asked us to talk to Fathi’s associates and search his apartment. We, the police, did what he asked. We found no guns. There was no evidence of any wrongdoing.”

  She tried to think of an oblique way to ask her burning question, but she’d run out of patience and subterfuge was getting her nowhere. She said, “I saw you in Pythagório yesterday.”

  He didn’t look around. The spoon clattered against the pot like rapid gunfire.

  “You were with Savas Brakas and a man with a big, black mustache.”

  If he had an innocent explanation, now was the time to give it, but he didn’t say anything.

  Her eyes dilated on the gun strapped to his hip. Tread softly, she told herself, but her tongue had a mind of its own. “Did your friend Brakus call and tell you that I was asking questions about the honesty of the police?”

  Silence.

  She said, “You meet secretly with Mr. Brakus, he gives you a bag of something—and Inspector Ramberg turns up missing. It doesn’t feel right to me.”

  Still without turning, he said, “You are upset and so I understand how you can make an elephant of a fly.”

  “If I’ve misinterpreted the purpose of your meeting, please set me straight.”

  Finally, he turned. “Savas Brakus is my business partner. Nothing to do with Inspector Ramberg. Nothing to do with my job as a police officer. I have children to feed. It is sympliroma.” He managed to inject both defiance and self-righteousness into the speech.

  “What,” she asked, “is sympliroma?”

  He went to the sink, filled two glasses with water, and set them on the table. “I don’t know how you say it in English. To make ends meet. It is what all Greeks must do in this time. The police do not condone what is not legal, but when the law is too harsh or unnecessary…” He gave an almost imperceptible shrug and resumed his rapid-fire stirring at the stove.

  “I have no interest in how you or anyone else pads his income, Sergeant. But I believe that someone disclosed Thor’s undercover mission to people with reason to want him neutralized.”

  “The Widow Stephanadis told everyone on the island that she had let Marilita’s house to an astynomikos.”

  “I’m aware of that. The question is, who would have been the most worried by that?”

  “Samos has many policemen. Another would make no difference.”

  She had expected him to follow Brakus’ lead and point the finger at Mentor. She said, “It obviously made a difference to somebody. I mean to find out who.”

  He didn’t turn around. “It’s important for the sugar to dissolve completely and after it dissolves, you boil it for a few minutes.”

  She didn’t know about the sugar, but her courage was dissolving fast. “Why did you come here tonight, Sergeant? Are you trying to intimidate me, because if that’s your intention, you won’t succeed.”

  He turned around, the briki of hot coffee in one hand, the other resting nonchalantly on the butt of his gun. “I don’t know who would have tried to
kill or kidnap the Inspector, if that is what happened. Here is what I know. Your friend was sent here by his government. Governments have no care for the feelings of people. You are not his wife or his sister, or even the same nationality. Whatever is done, you do not have the, how do you say, status? Yes, the status to be informed.”

  Her certainty skated out from under her. The matter of her unofficial status hadn’t occurred to her. She went to the cabinet, brought out two mugs, and returned to the table.

  Papas poured the coffee and sat down. “The most important thing is the foam.”

  She blew a wisp of steam and took a sip. It was scalding hot and strong enough to strip enamel. She took a cooling gulp of water and tried to reconcile the Thor she thought she knew with Thor, the secret agent man. I love my country and I have my duty…don’t worry. I have an ally on Samos. It crossed her mind that Papas may have come to pass her a message from Thor in a veiled, off-the-record way that circumvented the government ban on informing girlfriends. Was he speaking in code? She tried to elicit a more particular hint. “Did the Inspector say anything of a personal nature to you, Sergeant?”

  “Personal, no. But I have brought your lost eyeglasses.” He pulled her Wayfarers out of his pocket and set them on the table.

  She picked them up, half-expecting a message to be taped to one arm. She looked back at him, imploringly. “Did he not give you a message? Who he trusted? Who he didn’t?”

  “I will tell you what your Inspector said. He didn’t trust the Syrians. Two boats came ashore from Turkey the day he arrived. He said to me, ‘Papas, their revolution has turned them into animals. They are greedy for weapons. I will center my investigation on them.’”

  “Those were his exact words?”

  “Nè, málista. He said, ‘They have destroyed their country. They will destroy yours if you let them.’ And he was right. The fools at the foreign ministry have promised hospitality to twenty thousand of them, converting the hotels of Crete and Rhodes into barracks. Samos is overrun with prosfyges, but the Syrians are the worst.”

  She sighed and crossed Papas off the list of potential allies. If Thor had confided in him at all, which she doubted, he totally misrepresented what Thor had said. The Sergeant sounded like a member of the anti-immigrant party Thor had told her about, Golden Dawn.