Her Boyfriend's Bones Read online

  “You should take your young friend and go to Athens tomorrow. It is not wise for you meddle in police matters. We will continue to search for Inspector Ramberg and when he is found, you will be informed.”

  She thanked him for the sunglasses and the coffee and he saw himself out. She lingered at the table. Everybody on Samos seemed to be running some scam or other. Even Mentor, if what Brakus said was true. She hated to think that Greece’s cultural heritage was being looted by a professor of classical studies, no less. But then, she didn’t have children to feed. She didn’t care what the citizenry did to make ends meet, so long as they had no part in Thor’s disappearance. Papas warning not to meddle scared her, but she had a gun of her own behind the chickpea flour in the cupboard and she would not be bullied into leaving Samos.

  His remark about her inferior status rankled. She might not be Thor’s wife or his sister, but she had a right to know if he was alive. If she showed up at the Norwegian embassy in Athens and threatened to sic her U.S. senator friends on them, perhaps somebody would deign to tell her the truth. She polished off the last of her coffee and spat a mouthful of sludge into her napkin. She felt fluttery from the caffeine and the tension. She walked out onto the veranda for a dose of fresh air.

  The cicadas and tree frogs were shrilling and the smell of thyme enveloped her.

  “Isn’t it just the most gorgeous night?” K.D. lay across one of the new chairs with her legs dangling over the arm. “Just look at those stars. It’s better than the Fernbank Planetarium.”

  “I don’t feel like talking right now, K.D.”

  “I found something that might change your mind.” She swung her long legs around, bounced out of the chair and strode across the veranda. “Looky here.” She handed Dinah a laminated card, about the size of a credit card, with the photo of a black-haired man next to the multi-color holograph of an eagle and lots of greenish-brown curlicues. The name on the card was Mohammed Al Masri and the place of issue was Bundesrepublik Duetschland.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “Trooper Papas had a stack of fifty of these thingummies in his glove compartment. I took one out of the middle of the stack. They didn’t look kosher for a Greek cop. What d’ya think?”

  Dinah turned the card over. The back showed the Brandenburg Gate and gave the man’s eye color, height, weight, and place of residence—Berlin. This must be the same kind of identity card that Fathi had, a card that would allow him to move about the continent at will. “Did you notice any of the other names?”

  “There were a lot of Abdullahs and Mohammeds.”

  Day 4

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Dinah woke up at nine and hugged the empty pillow beside her. She breathed in the ferny scent of Fitjar soap, the Norwegian brand that Thor liked, and brooded. Love was such a hackneyed little verb with an infinite variety of meanings and applications. She loved her brother, she loved mythology and folktales and tomato sandwiches and fried okra and fountains, almost everything French, and the music of John Barry and George Gershwin. She sprinkled the word like confetti and yet she’d never told Thor that she loved him. Did she, or did the fact that he’d been spirited away in such a shocking way make her think that she did, or should, or might someday?

  She had lain awake rehashing the interlocking mysteries until three. Murder, betrayal, vandals, a bloody shoe, an anonymous wolf, a missing lover, an unknown ally, and a cop with a deck of German identity cards. The potter’s wheel in her head kept spinning, but no unifying theory took shape. The one thing she’d decided, and this was instinctive and absolute and contrary to all efforts to convince her otherwise: Thor had not gone missing of his own volition.

  Sunshine flooded the room with a cheery warmth, as if Apollo were mocking her, and the smell of cinnamon made her mouth water. She didn’t think that baking breakfast treats was in Alcina’s repertoire. K.D. must be showing off an unexpected skill. If her knack for pastry was half as impressive as her knack for larceny, she’d be a shoo-in for a job in a prison kitchen somewhere.

  Not that Dinah wasn’t glad that she’d filched that card. It gave the potter’s wheel a wicked spin. The fact that the cards had been issued by Germany argued against a Greek police sergeant having a stack of fifty in his car for any legitimate reason. Was he stealing or forging them and retailing them to illegal immigrants? That must be the business he and Brakus had going and now that she thought about it, it explained why Brakus was so nervous when he saw Fathi lying dead in the lane. He knew he’d sold him a bogus card and he was afraid it could be traced back to him. When he phoned to report the murder, he must have made damn sure that Papas would be the responding officer. Thor had looked at the card, but obviously not carefully because he thought Fathi was in Greece legally.

  A devil’s advocate for Papas would argue that the cards were, in fact, authentic. Stolen, perhaps, and Papas was on his way to surrender them to the proper authorities when K.D. boosted that sample. If the cards were forgeries, he might have confiscated them from the forgers or intercepted them at the post office. Dinah bridled her tendency to jump to conclusions, but fifty German ID cards with Arab names in a Greek cop’s glove box did not add up to a favorable defense.

  The smell of cinnamon was irresistible. She showered and dressed and followed her nose to the kitchen. Alcina sat at the end of the table unbraiding a fat, gooey bun and dropping ropes of dough into her upturned mouth.

  Dinah took out a plate and helped herself to a bun from a baking tray on the stove. “Did you bake these?”

  “Katarina,” said Alcina, her mouth full. “They are nostimmos, better than baklava.”

  “Where is Katarina?”

  “Gone for a walk.”

  “Did she say where?”

  “To the village.”

  “Did she say what for?”

  “For the beauty.”

  Dinah’s nervous circuitry could handle only so much. A breaker had tripped and she had no capacity to worry about K.D.’s antics. She put on a pot of Starbucks to brew and looked out the open window. Roses bloomed and birds chirruped and the Aegean sparkled in the sunshine, but the beauty was wasted on her. All she could think about was Thor. She should have been more observant, more sensitive to those fjord-like, Norwegian depths. If he were here this morning…but he wasn’t. The old adage was true. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

  She sat down and tried again to jimmy a little information out of Alcina. “I know I’ve asked you before, Alcina, but please. Try to remember the last time you saw Thor.”

  “Yesterday morning.”

  Her prompt cooperation astonished. “Did you speak with him? Did he say anything at all?”

  “Not to me.”

  “Was someone else here?”

  “Just Ramberg, talking here in the kitchen.”

  “You didn’t hear any other voices?”

  “Just his.”

  A phone call, thought Dinah. “Did he call anyone by name? Did you pick up any words?”

  “Grouch.” Her bosom heaved with indignation.

  Dinah didn’t think that Thor would complain about Alcina to anyone other than her. Maybe he had been talking to his ally. She took a bite of her cinnamon bun. It really was delicious. She made a mental note to ask K.D. for the recipe on the off chance that someday there would come a morning when she’d feel happy enough to bake pastries.

  The coffee pot burped. She got up, poured herself a cup, and changed the subject. “Tell me about your friend Stavros.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “He seems fond of you. Do you see him often?”

  “He went away when I was young.”

  “Has he been back to visit you?”

  “Okhi.”

  “No? Not ever?”

  “He writes letters.” She took a second bun and licked the icing off the corner.


  Getting information out of Alcina was like tapping a sugar maple on a cold day. The desired product didn’t flow. She wished she could see one of his letters to see if the handwriting looked anything like Nasos’ scrawl. She remembered that the words were large and loopy and slanted to the right. She shouldn’t have bothered to have it copied. She should have snitched the original. “Do you still have Mr. Stavros’ letters? Or some of them?”

  “Some.”

  Dinah perked up. “What does he talk about in the letters?”

  “He says nice things about my mother. He told me not to let anyone tell me she was a bad person.”

  “Do you remember her friend Nasos?”

  “He gave me presents.” She tilted her head back and lowered a braid of the cinnamon bun into her mouth like a rope down a well. A dollop of white icing dribbled down her chin and her eyes shone with an expression akin to ecstasy. Dinah watched, transfixed. The woman seesawed between extremes, one day bawling her eyes out and the next exulting in epicurean rapture. How much was owing to bipolar syndrome and how much to put-on was debatable. In some ways, she seemed childlike and coy, but Dinah sensed an underlying guile.

  “What kind of presents did Nasos give you?”

  “A Pentax ES Two. I still have it, but it’s hard to buy film.”

  Dinah didn’t want to evoke painful memories and set off the waterworks, but she felt compelled to ask her about the day of the murders. “Were you with your mother and Nasos the day of the shooting? Did you take their picture on the beach?”

  “Zenia says I wasn’t there. She says I dreamed it after seeing a horror film at the sinema.”

  “But you think you were there?”

  “I was. We went on a picnic to Megalo Seitani. Nasos was teaching me how to swim. Three masked men with guns came and then Brakus took me away.”

  “Brakus?” She must mean Brakus Senior. “Do you mean Aries Brakus? Did he come to the beach with a gun?”

  “No. One of the bandits walked me back to the road and called him to come. When he got there, the man told him to take me and leave.” She licked her fingers, wiped them off on a kitchen towel, and stood up. “Yannis doesn’t think it was a dream. Neither does Galen.”

  Dinah wasn’t sure what to think, but Alcina’s “dream” certainly reshuffled the possibilities. She wondered what Thor had seen at Megalo Seitani all these years later. “What do you remember about the men with guns? What did the bandits say to Colonel Hero and Nasos?”

  “I don’t know. But my mother didn’t shoot anybody. She was a great heroine, an iroida. An ieromartyras, like the paper says. Galen says her justice will come.”

  “Did you talk with her after that day? Or did Galen?”

  “No-oh-ayee!” Her voice piped out of control and tears started down her cheeks.

  Dinah couldn’t quite believe those tears. Crying on cue must be second nature to the daughter and niece of actresses. “Did Marilita speak at her trial? Did you testify?”

  From her violent head-shaking, Dinah presumed not. Alcina was one of those people whose testimony would be easy to discount. Even if she were entirely credible, a story of masked men attacking a party of picnickers would have been a hard sell, although Dinah found it easier to picture masked men as the perpetrators than a bikini-clad actress. But why would they spare Brakus Senior and Alcina?

  Alcina continued to bawl and Dinah could think of no words of comfort. She tried to tune her out and construct a plausible bridge between then and now. The more she dug into the past, the more certain she became that the past held the key to the present.

  “What an awesomely divine morning,” said K.D., pirouetting into the room with an expansive wave of her arms. She halted in mid-stride and pulled off her red, heart-shaped glasses. “Whoa! What’s the matter with Alcina? Is she stoned?”

  Suspicion rippled through Dinah’s veins like ice water. She pushed away the last bite of her cinnamon bun and glared.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Dinah eagle-eyed the cinnamon buns and found no suspicious specks of marijuana. “Lucky for you,” she said to K.D. “Has Alcina shown you her stash?”

  “I’ve seen where she keeps it, if that’s what you mean. But you needn’t worry. I don’t smoke dope.”

  “I’m glad to hear there’s one vice you leave alone.” Dinah rationalized the hypocrisy of what she was about to say. “Alcina likes you. This afternoon, after she’s had a few hits of her tranquilizer, I’d like you to wangle your way into her room, get her to show you Stavros’ letters, and when she’s not looking, slip one of them into your beach bag.”

  K.D. blew a mare’s tail of cigarette smoke out the side of her mouth and regarded Dinah with a sardonic little smirk.

  “What’s that look about?”

  “Oh, nothing. I was just remembering that sermon about how you wouldn’t do anything to contribute to the delinquency of a minor.”

  Dinah eyed the cigarette, but fought down her craving. “Your delinquency was in full flower before you left home. Anyhow, I just want to look at the letters. As soon as I get them translated, you can return them.” She rinsed the plates and cups, placed them in the dishwasher, and unplugged the coffee pot. “I wish I’d copped the original of Nasos’ letter to Zenia. I’d like to compare Stavros’ handwriting.”

  “Don’t you watch crime shows on TV? Only an expert can match handwriting.”

  “Without looking at the writing side by side, I don’t expect a match. I just want to know if they’re similar.”

  “They won’t be because nobody writes letters by hand anymore. Galen probably printed them off his computer.”

  “If you can get hold of one of them, we’ll know, won’t we?”

  “Are you going to tell me what it is that you suspect or treat me like a dorkbrain?”

  K.D. had many shortcomings, but dorkiness wasn’t one of them. At this point, Dinah couldn’t see a reason to keep her in the dark and it would be helpful to have a sounding board. “I don’t believe Nasos Lykos died on that beach with his mother and the Colonel. I think he’s come back to Samos, either to avenge Marilita and his mother or because he knows something about the missing weapons Thor was investigating.”

  “You think Nasos is Galen?”

  “Conceivably. He’s been away a long time, but then so has Egan. Mentor, too, although he claims to have been here since his wife died five years ago.”

  “You think Nasos, whichever one he is, had something to do with Thor’s disappearance?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to work out. If Alcina is to be believed, three masked men with guns crashed Marilita’s picnic.”

  “Bandits, like she told me.”

  “I don’t think they were bandits in the ordinary sense. Zenia insists that Alcina was dreaming, but I’m inclined to believe the dream was real and for some reason, Zenia doesn’t want to believe it.”

  “Or doesn’t want anybody else to believe it.”

  Dinah was beginning to enjoy K.D.’s astringent observations. Zenia hadn’t been at the scene of the crime and yet she sat like a spider in the center of the web. What terrible sin was Nasos accusing her of and why had he waited until now to come back? She said, “It’s possible that Nasos was in cahoots with the gunmen and they let him get away. But surely he wouldn’t have stood by while they killed his own mother.”

  “Maybe his mother killed his father,” said K.D. She fiddled with her cigarette, shaping the ash on the side of a seashell ashtray. “Orestes and his sister Electra murdered their mother Clytemnestra because she murdered their father.”

  “When did you become such an authority on Greek myths?”

  “I borrowed your mythology book this morning.”

  “You sneaked into my room?”

  “With Thor not here, I didn’t think it was like, a forbidden zone. You were
zonked and I needed something to read while the cinnamon buns were baking.”

  Dinah took the cigarette out of her hand, ground it out in the ashtray, and tossed the ashtray in the trash. Before she left the house, she would have to remember to count her money and make sure that her bank card was where she’d put it. “In the photograph, Nasos’ mother looked like a pleasant, respectable woman. I’m sure she didn’t kill Nasos’ father or anyone else.”

  “It was just a brain wave.” K.D. flopped onto the bed on her back and scrutinized her fingernails. “So what do you suppose the bandits wanted?”

  “I think they were after information that only the Colonel had. They forced it out of him and then they killed him. They killed Nasos’ mother and they must have thought they’d killed Nasos, too. But either he played possum or he fell or dived into the ocean and saved himself.”

  “But why,” asked K.D., “didn’t they kill Marilita? They’d already killed one woman.”

  “I don’t know. I can understand they might have shrunk from killing a child, but why didn’t they kill Aries Brakus? Was he a co-conspirator?”

  “Not necessarily,” said K.D. “They needed somebody to take Alcina away and they knew he couldn’t identify them because they wore masks.”

  “But why didn’t he stay and help them fight off the bandits? Egan told me that Brakus had been in the army under the Colonel’s command. He was a friend, or at least a comrade in arms at one time, and he was smitten with Marilita.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know what they planned to do.”

  “That’s possible. But when the shooting was over, he knew that Marilita was innocent.” Dinah tried to glean some logic from the various players’ actions and inactions, but if there was a link that made sense, it eluded her. She decided to relegate the mysteries of the past to her subconscious to marinate and concentrate on the present. “I’m going out for a while. I want you to stick to Alcina like a cocklebur. See if you can induce her to say anything else about her mother or Nasos or Galen Stavros.”