Death on the Aegean Queen

by Maria Hudgins

  “Well, maybe not. But Ollie said, ‘How many of these guys are ever going to go to Greece themselves? Most of them have never seen a real sponge.’”

  “You can buy them at home, you know.”

  “Don’t tell Ollie. Just tell me how I’m going to pack these things up.”

  Lettie and I headed for the door while Marco paid the bill. I glanced over my shoulder in time to catch the grins on the faces of the other patrons and resisted the temptation to say, where Marco could hear me, “Don’t stare. It’s bad manners.” We wound our way through several narrow streets and alleys in a roughly downhill manner. The aromas and sounds coming from the open shop doors we passed were a sensual smorgasbord. I tried to make mental notes to write in my trip journal later.

  “The harbor is at the end of this next street, I think.”

  “Wait a minute. I have to dump the rocks out of my sandals,” I said, vowing to wear closed-toed shoes at our next island. As I held onto Marco’s arm and lifted my left foot to shake it, I heard noises. A scream. Shuffling. A loudly barked order. Someone yelled, in English, “Get back! Get back!”

  Marco left me leaning on thin air and ran to the nearest alley, one that ran downhill and to the right. He stopped.

  “Oh Dio!”

  Lettie and I hurried along to join him. The alley opened out to bright sky at the other end, but I could go no farther than the entrance because Marco stopped me with his outstretched arm. He didn’t stop Lettie, who, being a bit shy of five foot one, ducked under his arm.

  Afternoon sun poured into the far end of the alley, highlighting red-streaked walls, red puddles on the cobblestones. It must have been a horrible battle. From a dark mound at the base of one wall, a bare arm stretched out and up at an awkward angle. Beyond the mound, one face, then two, then another, peeped around the corner and vanished when a voice warned, “Get back!” or something like it in Greek.

  Lettie, standing between us and the dark mound, hunched over suddenly, her shoulders tight. I thought she was going to throw up. Instead, she turned and called back, “Marco! Come here!”

  “No! This does not concern us. You come here!”

  Lettie didn’t budge.

  “This is an island problem. A Mykonos problem. We will stay out of it!”

  She turned back to the dark mound, inching closer, bending forward. I wanted to run to her, to stop her before she touched the body. You can never tell what Lettie is going to do. But she raised one hand to her mouth, studied the lump for a second, then said, “Yes, it does concern us, Marco. It’s our photographer!”

  “I have to go and get her, Dotsy,” Marco said, folding both my hands in his and pushing me firmly back and out of the alley. He slipped up behind Lettie, put an arm around her shoulders, and led her back to me. Her face was pale. She walked unsteadily, leaning on Marco, staring blankly toward her own feet.

  Marco handed her off to me. “Take her away and get her some fresh air. I will stay here and try to help. And will you make certain someone has told the police?”

  That last order was unnecessary because, as he said it, three policemen in summer shirts with emblems on their sleeves appeared at the far end of the alley. I walked Lettie down the street listening to her halting description of the photographer’s bloody remains. I looked for familiar faces. Anyone I recognized from the ship. It seemed to me, if I found myself in a police interview later, they might want to know who else was in the vicinity.

  Luc Girard, the archaeologist, was at the bottom of the steep slope, walking toward us, and Sophie Antonakos was a few yards ahead of us, going down. She slipped on a cobble and a brush flipped out of her open purse as she twisted to right herself. Girard picked it up for her, but Sophie, stooping at the same time, cracked heads with him. He smiled sheepishly, handed her the brush, and rubbed his forehead as he passed us.

  Where our street opened out onto a plaza fronting the harbor, Brittany Benson sat on a block of stone, surrounded by several packages. Sophie ran up to her, twittering, “Oh, no! I ran into Dr. Girard. I really ran into him! I was so embarrassed.”

  Ollie rounded the corner of the next street over—logically the one that would intersect the alley we’d just left but who could tell in this rabbit warren—and headed toward the water. I called out to him. He turned, waved, and then ran toward us.

  “What’s wrong with Lettie?” he asked, gathering her into his arms.

  As I explained, Ollie held Lettie at arms’ length, studied her face, pulled her close, and kissed the top of her head. I noticed Ollie was toting another mesh bag of sponges, as large as the one Lettie had. Snuggled together with both bags, they looked more like a foursome. Ollie suggested we’d better head back to the ship right away.

  We had to pass the other end of the alley as we climbed back over the hill and as we did so I paused, standing on tiptoes to see over the heads of what was now a crowd. A police officer stood, feet wide apart, barring rubber-neckers from the alley. I heard Marco’s voice, somewhat damped by the alley walls, shouting, “Stay back!”

  Chapter Seven

  Back on the ship, I knocked on Kathryn Gaskill’s door but got no response. Thinking she might not be dressed or might not feel like opening the door, I retraced my steps three doors down, slipped into my own room, and dialed her number. No answer. Maybe she’s talking with the investigators, I thought. I didn’t even consider the possibility that there was good news. That they’d found George. Somehow the hallway around their door had taken on a sort of pall, which, it seemed, would neutralize laughter and suck it into the walls. Maybe she’s getting a bit of fresh air, I thought. I walked back to my room and checked the floor inside my door for a note slipped under. It occurred to me that I didn’t know Kathryn well enough to know if she was the note-leaving sort or not.

  I renewed my lipstick, brushed my hair, and scanned the deck plans in my brochure to locate the library. Luc Girard’s lecture was to be held there at five o’clock and it was already four-fifty. The library, according to the brochure, was on the starboard side of the Ares deck, one deck up, so I took the stairs. The library’s entrance was by way of an exterior door off the promenade. Through a round porthole window in the varnished teak door, I saw no lights inside, but there was a note taped to the brass porthole fittings: La conférence de Dr Girard sera tenue à 18h00, pas 17h00.

  And below this: “Dr. Girard’s lecture will be at 6:00 p.m., not 5:00.”

  I ran into Ollie and Lettie on my way back to the stairs and they suggested a drink in the lounge on the Poseidon Deck. Up two more levels. It was a large, well-upholstered room with U-shaped sofas and lots of throw pillows. Lettie and I sat facing the windows on one arm of a U and Ollie, opposite us, occupied a section of sofa normally sufficient for two people.

  “You’ve changed clothes, Ollie,” I said.

  “I’ve been handling fish all afternoon. Lettie made me take a shower.”

  “I asked him if he needed a sponge for his bath. We have plenty.” Lettie stuck her foot around the coffee table and gave Ollie’s tent-pole leg a light kick.

  Ollie cleared his throat and paused a moment. “Lettie tells me the man you found in the alley was our ship’s photographer.”

  “It was,” Lettie said.

  “I don’t think I’d have recognized him,” he said. “Who looks at a photographer when he’s taking your picture? He’s always got that light shining straight in your eyes.”

  “But you can count on Lettie to recognize anyone she’s ever seen before.”

  “Of course I recognized him. We’d just passed him on the dock. He had a cute sort of round face and he was wearing a blue-and-white striped shirt.” Lettie paused and studied her hands for a moment. “The shirt wasn’t blue and white when I saw him later. It was red.” Her voice faltered. “So much blood. You wouldn’t think a person could have so much blood in him.”

  “Did you see a knife?” I asked. We hadn’t discussed this at all on our walk back to the ship. We hadn’t waited fo
r a bus to tote us across the hill, and the three of us had made the whole trek in silence.

  “No.”

  “Did you see any cuts on his arms? I mean, if there were cuts, it would indicate he’d fought his attacker.”

  “Oh yes. His arms were all cut up. His chest, his arms, his neck. All cut up.”

  “It must have been a battle.”

  “A lop-sided battle,” said Ollie. “Apparently only one of them had a weapon.”

  “I sure hope they find the weapon. The knife or whatever it was.”

  We talked about it at length, but all we knew was based on the one brief look Lettie had, and that wasn’t nearly enough. The waiter brought our drinks. The lounge was starting to fill up as people returned to the ship. We were already a half-hour past the time we were supposed to have left the dock. A man came over and asked us if he could take the empty chair at the open end of our seating nook, but before he could take it, a hand grabbed his shoulder.

  Marco stood behind him. “Sorry, but I need this chair,” he said. The man bowed politely and left.

  “What a day, eh?” Marco pushed the chair close to my end of the sofa and sat. He smelled of sweat. “Li mortacci . . .” He squinted, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Tell us,” I said, and the three of us stared at him.

  “His name was Nikos Papadakos and he was from Crete. His family, his wife and children, still live in Crete. He had worked on this ship for two seasons. Everyone liked him.”

  “Not everyone,” Lettie muttered.

  Marco gave Lettie a sidelong glance. “Everyone they’ve talked to so far. A lot of people from the ship were down in the area near the waterfront when it happened. The police grabbed everyone they could find and talked to them. At first, their chief wanted to hold up the ship’s leaving until they could sort everything out, but the ship security and the FBI men came down and talked to him. They pointed out that the people on the ship are as good as in jail when it comes to escaping.”

  “Absolutely,” Ollie said. “Much easier to escape from an island with a dozen marinas than from a ship.”

  “Have they found a weapon? What was it? A knife?” I asked.

  “Almost certainly a knife, and no, they have not found it.”

  “Do you think our photographer had a weapon, too? Lettie says he was all cut up.”

  “It is hard to say. He has lots of defensive wounds all over, but if Papadakos had a weapon, the killer must have taken it with him.”

  Ollie leaned back and threw one arm across a cushion. “Are they letting you work the investigation with them?”

  “No, no, no. I am just a passenger. I am not part of the investigation. They let me help them in the alley because I made myself useful. I am good at crowd control.” Marco grinned a little. “All I have told you, I learned by listening to them. When they were talking to people from the ship, they were mostly using English. When they talked to each other in Greek, I did not understand everything they said.”

  “And nobody heard anything?” I said. “I find it hard to believe a vicious attack like that could take place in a little alley, so many people within earshot, and nobody heard a thing!”

  “I agree. I think when they have a chance to talk to everyone, they will find someone who does remember something.”

  I looked at my watch. “Will you excuse me? I want to catch Luc Girard’s talk in the library and it’s almost time. Will I see you at dinner?” I touched Marco’s shoulder as I stood to leave.

  He jumped up, knocking his own chair over, and bowed slightly. “I will take a shower and change clothes. Shall we meet here and go down to dinner together?”

  Yes. Please take a shower, Marco, is what I thought. “About eight,” is what I said.

  Chapter Eight

  Luc Girard shifted a tall, white-ground jug from the corner of the reading table to a safer spot near the center. The first to arrive for the lecture, I screwed up my courage and introduced myself to the man I had admired on video. He stepped around the table and shook my hand.

  “I’m thrilled to meet you in person, Dr. Girard,” I said, hating the cloying formality in my voice. I told myself to lighten up. “I teach ancient history at a junior college in America and I have discussed your work with my students. You were working, I believe, on an excavation in Crete?”

  “Yes. With Dieter Matt. But no more.” He said it with a finality that told me Dr. Matt and he had had a falling-out. Luc Girard’s face puzzled me. Caramel-colored eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses, a delicate mouth, shaggy hair, and a sparse goatee. He seemed, at once, both formidable and vulnerable.

  I turned my attention to the items on the table. “I see you have both red-figure and black-figure pottery. Which is older?”

  Girard walked back around the table and picked up a brick-red vase with black figures around its middle. “This is older. About 450 b.c.” He pointed to a black vase with red figures. “The idea for reversing the process came later, and the white-ground came still later. He picked up the jug—he called it a lekythos—and showed me the museum identity marks on its base. The red-figure and black-figure vases were reproductions, he told me. He disappeared under the table and popped back up holding my favorite of all prehistoric works, the marble Cycladic figure known as the harp player. A work of art that would hold a place of honor in any exhibition of modern sculpture, but carved more than 4,000 years ago. Clean lines, graceful curves, a mastery of space.

  I gasped. “The Harp Player! Surely you’re not . . .” Then I realized how silly that was. “It’s not the original, is it?”

  “Of course not. The original is in Athens. I like to show people reproductions of the things I talk about, when the genuine article isn’t available. You dig?” He had a French accent but he seemed at ease with English.

  “What about the Cycladic fertility figure in the display case by the stairs?”

  “It is genuine.”

  “How can the ship risk putting such a valuable item on display? In fact, how does the cruise line acquire these things to begin with?”

  Girard gave me a penetrating look and paused a second longer than necessary before answering. “It is curious, isn’t it?” He lowered his head and continued staring at me over the tops of his glasses. “You dig?”

  People were filing in now and rearranging chairs to suit themselves. I gave Dr. Girard one more look, aching to know what he was trying to tell me with his eyes. He turned back to his artifacts and I slipped outside, assuming it would be a few minutes before the lecture started. Did Girard realize how funny that little expression of his, “you dig?” sounded coming from an archaeologist?

  On the promenade outside the library door, I found Sophie Antonakos gazing out to sea with one espadrilled foot on the bottom rail. Déjà vu. Hadn’t I seen her at this same spot about three o’clock this morning? She held her chestnut hair back with one hand. A mass of corkscrew curls blew in the wind. I slipped up beside her.

  “Are you waiting for the lecture, too?” I asked.

  She jumped as if I had surprised her. “Oh! No, I was trying to get up the nerve to apologize. I bumped into Dr. Girard a while ago. It was an accident, but he was so nicely picking up my brush for me when I ruined it all by cracking my head against his.”

  “I’m sure he knew it was an accident.” I saw no need to tell her I’d witnessed the event.

  “You don’t think I should apologize?” Sophie glanced anxiously toward the library door, and I got the feeling she was looking for an excuse to talk to Luc Girard.

  “Are you free for a few minutes? Why don’t we go to the lecture together? If you can’t stay for the whole thing, you can duck out anytime you want.”

  “Oh.” Sophie bit her lower lip. “I am interested in archaeology, actually. Not that I know very much, but I’ve done a lot of reading. I haven’t been to college,” she said.

  Before Sophie could talk herself into more abject unworthiness, I took her by the
elbow and ushered her through the library door. By this time, most of the seats were taken, but I spotted a step stool near the wall-mounted atlas stand and led Sophie to it. We managed to rest one-and-a-half butt cheeks each on the stool.

  Luc Girard began. “The islands we are now in are called the Cyclades, and it is here, in prehistoric times, that some of the finest art the world has yet seen was born.” His lecture had been billed as a comparison of Cycladic and Minoan civilizations, but after a few minutes in which he told us, rather than two separate civilizations, we should think of them as one civilization that evolved into the other, he detoured into a discussion of how to tell genuine antiquities from reproductions.

  I glanced at Sophie several times and what I saw on her face was pure adoration. Almost rapture. Was she that keen on archaeology or did she have a crush on the man? Or both? Luc Girard was a fine-looking man and, although I’m bad at estimating people’s ages, I’d have guessed he was a few years older than Sophie. Late thirties, probably.