Her Boyfriend's Bones Read online

  “The evil eye. The baskania.” He flicked a lighter and lit the little votive candle on their table. “Zenia Stephanadis is not well liked. Some say an enemy has cast the evil eye upon her. Others say she has cast the evil eye upon her neighbors. Idle minds, eh? The devil’s workshop. But as the priest says, demons have no more power than we give them.”

  Dinah opened her mouth to inquire further about this superstition, but her thoughts were blasted out of her head by the scream of a jet so close overhead that its belly must surely have grazed the roof. The table trembled. She jumped up and knocked over her wine. “Are we under attack?”

  Brakus’ face flushed and he shook his fist at the sky. “Tourkos.”

  Several customers who’d been eating inside in the dining room rushed outside, adding their angry shouts to the din. “Sto diaolo! Damn you and your whore mothers!”

  “Trelos diabolos!”

  Brakus returned his attention to Dinah and Thor, mopping up the spilled wine with their white cloth napkins. “I am sorry. Did it spill on your clothes?”

  “No. No damage except to my eardrums.”

  “The Turks are a bane. I will bring you more napkins and more wine. On the house, as you Americans say.” He held the saturated napkins out in front of him as if they were dripping blood and stomped off into the kitchen.

  Dinah blew out a breath of relief and sat down again. The sound of the jet still roared in her ears. “That pilot cut his distance awfully close. If he crashed, the entire village would go up in a ball of fire. I can understand everyone’s fury.”

  Thor said, “From what I understand, flyovers of Turkish F-16s occur fairly often. The Greeks buzz the Turkish coast in retaliation. Once in a while, there’s a mock aerial dogfight. The dispute over who owns the Aegean and the air space above it keeps things lively.”

  Brakus dashed back and presented them with fresh napkins and a fresh carafe. He babbled another apology and bustled off to the next table.

  A stooped figure plodded toward the taverna headed in the direction of Marilita’s house. He wore a broad-brimmed straw hat, a sweat-stained work shirt over baggy jeans, and carried a magnum-sized wine bottle in each hand. Dinah watched his slow progress. Twenty yards away, the old man paused and lifted his head. He pushed the brim of the hat up with his forearm, wiped the sweat out of his eyes with his sleeve, and squinted toward the taverna as if it were a mirage he couldn’t possibly reach. She said, “I’ve seen that man working in the vineyard.”

  “He’s the groundskeeper, Alcina’s husband. Zenia employs them both. They live in that old farmhouse where the coast road turns uphill to the village.”

  “He looks as old as dirt. Do you think we should go and give him a hand?”

  “I don’t think he speaks English. I said hello to him last evening when I went out for a run and he gave me a blank stare.”

  “Yannis!” A swarthy man wearing aviator glasses who’d been drinking alone at a table at the far end of the courtyard shouted. “Yannis Thoma!” He left his drink and ran down the middle of the street where he confronted the old man angrily in Greek.

  Thor tensed. “Is he threatening him?”

  Dinah wasn’t sure. Yannis didn’t act cowed. He tilted his head back and eyed the younger man with blatant contempt. The two argued for a minute, their voices loud and accusing. Yannis said something incomprehensible and spat in the street. The man in the aviators threw his arms over his head, as if in frustration, and backed away. Yannis glared at him for a moment and plodded on toward the taverna. The other man followed, gesticulating and calling out what sounded like insults. Yannis ignored him. The two walked past the taverna, Yannis in front, stooped and silent, the younger man still arguing but keeping his distance. The sun glinted off his mirrored lenses.

  Thor’s eyebrows spiked up. “It’s going to take this Norseman some time to get used to life among the Greeks. It seems they all chew the scenery.”

  “Don’t be silly. Greece is the birthplace of Socrates and logical thinking, although I do admit that Samos seems to foster a climate of high drama.” She thought about the Norwegian propensity to coolness and restraint. Thor was probably in the throes of culture shock. She said, “You’re not used to the more demonstrative nature of Southerners.”

  He smiled. “You mean hot-blooded Southerners like you?”

  “Not me. I’ve had too many scenery chewers and hotheads in my life. I’m entering my Calm and Reflective Period.”

  The jet made another screaming pass across the roof and streaked across the Aegean.

  “Not too calm,” said Thor, rubbing his ears. He angled his chair to the west and rested an arm on her shoulder. “But that’s an amazing sunset to reflect on.”

  They drank another glass of wine and the tensions of the day slowly dissipated. The codger who’d stared at her so intently paid his tab, adjusted the visor on his fisherman’s cap low over his face, and cleared out. Dinah watched Apollo drive his fiery chariot into the Aegean and her thoughts drifted back through the centuries. What a weird and wonderful array of gods the Greeks had invented for themselves. The most wonderful of them all was Phoebus Apollo—god of light, god of healing, god of truth. He’d given Cassandra of Troy the gift of prophecy and when she rejected his love, he rigged it so that no one would believe anything she said. It struck Dinah as mean spirited and petty for a god of such sterling qualities, but the Greeks had an ironic attitude toward their deities. They invested them with the same moral weaknesses and emotional flaws as human beings. Even the god of light had a dark side.

  Thor touched her hand. “Would you like more wine or would you rather walk?”

  “Walk.”

  “Me, too.” He laid a few bills on the table and they ducked out without Brakus noticing.

  The way back to Marilita’s house wound past whitewashed stone houses, the weathered wood of their windows and doors painted in shades of blue and aqua, still visible in the soft twilight. The air was laden with the scents of honeysuckle and pine, birds sang, and purple bougainvillea rambled over the walls in profusion. From the eaves of a low, tiled roof, a ginger cat with big yellow eyes watched them stroll past from its perch atop a rock wall. They held hands and Dinah leaned her head on Thor’s shoulder. No cars were permitted in the narrow alleys of the village and they ambled down the middle of the lane.

  Thor pulled her close and kissed her hair. “Happy?”

  “Mmm.” She was, but there was no sense tempting the gods by saying so out loud. Affairs of the heart were fraught with perils enough, and to date, her affairs had come with a higher-than-normal incidence of peril. It wouldn’t do to let herself get too carried away this early in the game. She and Thor had talked on the phone and e-mailed almost daily since their fling in Norway, but all told, they had spent a grand total of three weeks and three days in actual physical proximity. How their personalities would mesh in close quarters over the course of the next three months remained to be seen.

  He said, “Even after your dig starts, Samos is close enough that you could come back on week-ends.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You suppose? Why so noncommittal?”

  “I don’t know. Just cautious, I guess.”

  He laughed. “You’re the least cautious person I’ve ever met, man or woman.”

  “That’s not true. Sometimes my reflexes get ahead of my reasoning, but I’m working on…” She stopped cold. “What’s that?”

  But it was all too obvious what it was—the man who’d argued with Yannis lay sprawled face-up in the lane with a bloody, gaping hole in his chest.

  Chapter Four

  Dinah froze. “Is he dead?”

  Thor felt for a pulse. “Yes, but his skin is warm. Whoever shot him must have done it when the jet flew over the second time.”

  “What do you mean whoever? It must have been that Yannis guy. Call the police.”


  “Do you know the emergency police number?”

  “No. Don’t you?”

  “Go back to the taverna and ask Brakus to call. I’ll stay with him.”

  Dinah stood rooted, paralyzed by fear. “It’s too dangerous. Yannis could be hiding behind a tree. He might shoot you.”

  “We can’t be sure he was the shooter and if he was, he has no reason to shoot me. Go. Hurry.”

  “Whoever it was, he might shoot me.”

  Thor hiked an eyebrow. “We can’t leave the body to the vultures and wild jackals.”

  “There are jackals?”

  “Some.”

  “Right.” She took a last look at the hole in the dead man’s chest and started back to the taverna in a trot. The thick fringe of trees on either side of the lane felt sinister and the stench of death fouled the air. The pleasant ambience of the island had been shattered by a gunshot she hadn’t heard. Unlike Thor, she had no doubt who had fired it. She remembered the look of cold contempt in Yannis’ eyes, as if the man standing in front of him were subhuman. It was creepy enough that the house she’d been sleeping in had once belonged to a murderess. Now the groundskeeper had done murder. The place positively reeked of blood. Even if Yannis was captured and taken away to a prison on the opposite end of the island, she didn’t think she could go to sleep with Alcina slinking about the house and fondling her evil eye fetish.

  A twig snapped in the woods somewhere to her right. She broke into a sprint and didn’t stop until she tore into the taverna, frightened and winded.

  Brakus’ English seemed to have deserted him. It took a maddeningly long time for him to comprehend that a man had been murdered less than a mile from his terrace. It took an even longer time for him to explain the situation in Greek to the police in Samos Town. And when she asked him for a clean tablecloth to cover the dead man until the police arrived, his eyes bulged in perplexity, as if she’d asked him to hand over all the cash in the till. At long last, he produced a cloth and a couple of flashlights, instructed a waiter to direct the police to the scene of the crime, and trailed her out the door.

  Dusk had begun to settle over the lane, leaching the blues from the doors and the purple from the bougainvillea. A fitful breeze rustled in the branches of the pines. Dinah walked fast. She hadn’t liked leaving Thor alone and the more she thought about it, the more anxious she became. Of course, Yannis had no reason to harm him, but by definition, murderers were not reasonable people. He could have returned, found Thor standing over the body of his victim, and loosed off another lethal round. There was no jet to cover the noise this time, but he could have a silencer. Thor had only assumed that the gunshot coincided with the jet thundering overhead.

  She looked back every few seconds. Brakus stumped along behind as if his legs were made out of wood. He was a ball of fire when it came to waiting tables, but out here he hobbled along like a balky mule. Past her limit of patience, she began to jog. And then run. And then race. Her thoughts raced ahead of her feet. Kanaris was tiny and most tourists returned to their hotels in the larger towns at the end of the day. Was the dead man a resident? Maybe he was a neighbor or a relative of Yannis. Or of Brakus. Good grief. Was that why he seemed so shocked and bumbling?

  Yannis had been toting a heavy wine bottle in each hand and it didn’t seem likely that he would have been carrying a gun in the belt of his jeans. It probably belonged to the younger man. He’d been angry, clearly frustrated. She pictured him whipping out his weapon and pointing it at Yannis. Yannis could have lashed out at him with one of the bottles, knocked the gun out of his hand, grabbed it before his assailant could recover, and shot him in self-defense. Perhaps he had gone home to tell Alcina and call the police himself. She wondered how long it would be before the police could get here from Samos Town. She was trying to decide if the dead man bore any familial resemblance to either Yannis or Brakus when she spotted Thor. He stood with his back to her and held his phone to his ear.

  “You’re okay!”

  He spun around and stuffed the phone in his pocket.

  She bent over, hands on her knees, breathing hard. “Did you call Alcina and warn her?”

  “She didn’t answer. Did Brakus telephone the police?”

  “Yes. He’s poking along behind me.”

  “It’s getting dark. I hope he brought a torch.”

  “He has two.” She looked behind her. “If he ever gets here.”

  A circle of light bobbed along the lane and Brakus shuffled along behind it as if he were wearing bedroom slippers. Thor went to meet him and took the other flashlight. In a minute, Thor’s cone of light landed on the dead man’s face and Brakus uttered an exclamation.

  “Do you know him?” Thor asked.

  Brakus crossed himself. “It’s the Iraqi.”

  “Does he live on the island?” asked Thor.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him.”

  “How do you know he’s an Iraqi?” Thor’s tone was skeptical.

  “It’s what I’ve heard. Here. Cover him up.” He tossed the red-checked tablecloth to Thor and looked away.

  Dinah had the impression that it was fear rather than squeamishness that made him so nervous.

  Thor unfurled the cloth and draped it over the body. It covered the face and torso, but not the legs.

  “Had he eaten in your place before this evening?” Thor seemed to have no concept of what it meant to be on sabbatical. He was back in policeman mode full-throttle.

  “He came in a few times. He never ate. He drank ouzo and occupied a table for four. Tonight, he didn’t pay.” Brakus sounded indignant. He looked back at the corpse as if deliberating whether it would be appropriate to remove the wallet and take what was owed him.

  Thor offered him no encouragement. “Do you know his name?”

  “Fathi.”

  “He called the older man Yannis Thoma. Is Thoma his last name?”

  “Yes. Yannis Thoma has lived in Kanaris all his life.”

  “Tell me about him. Does he have a criminal record?”

  “Criminal…?” Brakus seemed flustered by the question. “With communists, you can never be sure.”

  “Any history of mental illness?”

  “When the wolf gets old, he becomes the clown of dogs.”

  Dinah had heard the expression “It’s Greek to me” all her life, but it irked her to be baffled by a Greek speaking English. Was Brakus likening Yannis to a wolf and, if so, what did he mean by it? Maybe he was implying that the Iraqi had ridiculed Yannis and that’s why Yannis shot him. She asked for a clarification. “What were Yannis and the Iraqi quarreling about, Mr. Brakus?”

  “I have a business to run. I cannot pay attention to quarrels in the street.” He tapped his watch. “Stay here if you wish, although I do not think it’s required. I must go back to the taverna to work.” He glanced at the Iraqi once more and made a hasty sign of the cross. “I will tell the police where you are staying in case you decide to go home.”

  Dinah watched as he stumped back toward the taverna. “If you ask me, that man’s reaction is peculiar in the extreme.”

  “Murder isn’t an everyday occurrence in a small village.”

  “It sure makes an unholy mess of the one day when it does happen.” She walked a little way away from the dead man and plunked herself down on a fallen log. This was not the romantic Greek interlude she’d bargained on. She would have been more than willing to leave Thor to wait for the police, but she couldn’t go back to the house until she knew that Yannis had been apprehended. Even then, she didn’t think she’d feel safe. When she collected K.D. at the airport tomorrow, she would take her to a hotel in the nearby village of Pythagório to rest overnight and after she put her on a plane back to Athens the next morning, she would hop aboard the next flight to Istanbul or Antalya. If Thor wanted to romance her, he co
uld rent a house on the Turkish Riviera. It would be just as beautiful and probably a lot cheaper.

  Night had come on and her thin blouse gave no protection from the chill. She hugged herself and shivered. “The police aren’t exactly Johnny-on-the-spot.”

  “It’s a twenty-five kilometer drive.”

  “Fifteen miles isn’t far. You’d think a report of murder would cause them to switch on their sirens and step on the gas.”

  He sat down on the log next to her. “I’m sorry things have taken such an ugly turn.”

  “It’s not your fault. Maybe Alcina has cursed us with the kako mati. Or maybe I’m the jinx. Wherever I go, I seem to bring bad juju. Tomorrow after I’ve sweet-talked K.D. into going back to Atlanta, I think I’ll pack up and haul my rotten luck to Istanbul.”

  “You’re too tough-minded to be thrown by something like this, kjære.”

  She mulled the ambiguous implications of that remark. Even coming from a Viking, “Tough-minded” was a strange compliment. Maybe she was and maybe she wasn’t. But she would have appreciated a little more coddling in the circumstances. “You overestimate the thickness of my hide.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her. “I know how upsetting this is, but bad things can happen anywhere. I’ve been looking forward to our time together. You hated the cold and I went to a lot of trouble to find a place with all the things you like—sunshine, great hiking, ancient ruins. You haven’t seen the Temple of Hera yet. I shouldn’t have spooked you with all that talk about Marilita. Try to put these sad things out of your mind and let’s concentrate on exploring the island. And exploring one another.” He kissed her in a particularly persuasive way. “Will you stay?”

  Put like that, she could hardly say no, although she didn’t see how sunshine and hiking could restore the feeling of romance after this horror. At the moment, all she could concentrate on was keeping the lamb chops down. Against her will, it seemed, her eyes gravitated back to the body. “He survived the carnage of Iraq to die on Samos. It seems unfair.”