Death on the Aegean Queen

by Maria Hudgins

  “Special Agent Bondurant, the man from the FBI grabbed Brittany Benson as soon as she finished her performance last night,” he said.

  “Were you with him when he did?”

  “No, I was in the bar. Waiting for you.”

  Oops. I asked for that.

  “Brittany says she went straight to her room after their show the night Gaskill was killed. Sophie, her roommate, was with her the whole time. They talked for a while and went to sleep. Sophie backs her up on this.”

  “I guess that’s that.” I tasted my coffee and added a blip of cream. “Wait a minute. I saw Brittany at three a.m! On the promenade deck, you know, the one running all the way around.”

  “You need to tell this to Bondurant. Was she alone?”

  “No, she was with Sophie. I know it was Sophie, because I recognized her as the girl who had fallen on her face when she ran on stage.”

  “Did you talk to them?”

  “No. I should’ve asked them if they’d seen anyone, but I suppose I was too preoccupied with finding George myself.”

  Marco and I decided to meet again when the boat dropped anchor in Patmos harbor, and then we left the restaurant in search of Bondurant. We found him in Security Chief Letsos’s office, poring over the contents of a three-ring notebook.

  Marco introduced me to the FBI special agent and I told him my story. He dropped his notebook on the floor and listened, his legs stretched out casually and crossed at the ankles.

  Bondurant heard me out, then asked, “What were they wearing? Were they still in costume?”

  I had to really think about it. I wished Lettie had been with me because, with her near-photographic memory, she could have described everything they had on, right down to their shoes. “No, they weren’t. They were wearing bathrobes.”

  “Bathrobes?”

  “Yes. It didn’t strike me as odd at the time. All I was thinking about was finding George Gaskill.”

  “Were they wearing shoes?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Did they see you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Bondurant turned to Marco and said, “We took that sample of hair to Kathryn Gaskill a few minutes ago. She positively identified it as her husband’s hairpiece.”

  “Dio! Per carita.”

  “Mrs. Gaskill went berserk when we showed it to her.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “On his way down to Davy Jones’ locker, George Gaskill left something behind. His hairpiece was waterproof because it had so much oil in it. It floated.” The FBI man grinned the tiniest bit.

  * * * * *

  Bondurant walked me to the door but indicated he wanted Marco to stay, so I took the LAMBDA book and went back to Lettie’s room. She proudly showed me two thin, bumpy boards, each about a half-inch thick, which I soon recognized as vacuum bags containing hundreds of squashed sponges. She had managed to convert them from the approximate volume of a steamer trunk, to the size and shape of two cafeteria trays.

  “Ollie is really upset, Dotsy. Bondurant called him back to the office this morning and he’s been gone for more than an hour. He wants to go home, but they won’t let him go!”

  “I was in the office with Bondurant myself a few minutes ago. They found George Gaskill’s toupee floating on the sea.”

  “Was Ollie there?”

  “No.”

  Lettie’s face went blank. “How long were you in there?”

  “Fifteen minutes?”

  “So where’s Ollie? He’s had time to get back.” Lettie bit her lower lip and glanced out their porthole window. “I have to go look for him. When he left the room, Dotsy, the last thing he said was, ‘If it’s more of the same, like yesterday, don’t wait for me to come back. I’m gonna jump ship and join George Gaskill.’ ”

  “You know Ollie wouldn’t kill himself. Really!”

  “Are you sure? Or are you going to help me find him?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Lettie and I checked the Ares deck, the one I called the promenade deck, first. Ollie and Lettie’s room was on this deck and, like all the other outside rooms, had a small, round porthole window instead of a large rectangular one like mine. I imagined this was to afford the rooms’ occupants more privacy because a steady stream of walkers and joggers flowed past these windows. My window, on the other hand, was flush with the outside of the ship and looked out onto nothing but blue sea and sky.

  “If Ollie is walking around on this deck, I think I’d have spotted him walking past,” Lettie said. “Our curtain is open.”

  “Since we’re already here, let’s check it.”

  We made the circuit going in opposite directions, as Kathryn and I had done at three a.m. yesterday morning. No Ollie. We descended one floor and checked the little stern deck from which George Gaskill had disappeared. At the bank of elevators, I studied the deck diagrams posted on the wall.

  “There are two levels below this one, but they have no outdoor decks. Just rooms, engines, and stuff. The next deck above yours, Lettie, is the Dionysus Deck where the whole thing is open to everybody. Dining room, main desk, show lounge. Above that is the Poseidon deck with the pool, casino, bar, etcetera. The Ares deck is nothing but rooms, and the Zeus deck is on top. I was up there earlier.”

  “Let’s go up one floor.”

  On the Dionysus and Poseidon decks, Lettie and I split up again, Lettie taking the stern, me, the bow. On the Zeus deck, Lettie headed for the stern, and soon shouted back to me, “I found him!”

  Ollie was standing at the rail near the table where Kathryn Gaskill and Nigel Endicott had been sitting earlier. He barely turned his head when Lettie came up beside him. I was debating whether I should join them or not, when Lettie turned to me, shook her head, and I beat a retreat around the bubble-top gymnasium.

  Standing now in the middle of the top deck, I had the gym on my left, the observation bar on my right, the sea beyond the rails behind and in front of me. In the distance an island I assumed was Patmos peaked over the horizon.

  A young couple emerged from the gym and walked across to the bar, tried the door, opened it, and walked in. The bar was now open. It was too early for a drink, I thought, but while Lettie and Ollie talked I could get a Coke and check out the view from the bar’s big windows. I went in.

  Inside the door I found a Plexiglas case containing a large black-figure amphora, or jug. The amphora had two vertical handles attached to opposite sides near the neck, a base so small it made the vessel look quite unstable, and a red-orange panel on the front that framed the helmeted figure of the goddess Athena standing between two columns. Beneath Athena’s feet was an inscription in ancient Greek.

  An engraved plaque near the foot of the amphora identified it as a “Panathenaic amphora. Early 6th Century b.c. The inscription reads: I am one of the prizes from Athens.” This information was repeated on the plaque in four other languages. The games in Athens, I knew, were similar to those in Olympia, Greece, but started a century or two later than the Olympics. This would have been one of the jugs, filled with olive oil from the sacred grove of Athena, that were awarded to winning athletes.

  I thumbed through the LAMBDA book until I found the photo of the Panathenaic amphora I had noticed earlier. It was identified by a number assigned to it by the museum from which it had been stolen. It was 265 centimeters tall and it showed five black-figure sprinters in the area where, on the amphora in front of me, I saw a figure of Athena. All the sprinters, painted in silhouette, had one leg and the opposite arm raised, like a chorus line of Rockettes.

  Two hundred and sixty-five centimeters. That would be about three feet. The amphora in the case was about three feet tall as well. I wondered why this one depicted Athena rather than athletes.

  “There you are,” Lettie said. She and Ollie had sneaked up behind me.

  “Check this out, Ollie,” I said. “This is a prize for an athlete from the sixth century b.c.”

  Oll
ie laid a meaty hand on my shoulder. “I’m going to get myself a very large drink. If you want me, I’ll be in the bar.”

  “I hope he doesn’t drink too much. He’s depressed enough to drink himself blotto.” Lettie peeked around the corner at Ollie’s retreating figure.

  “I thought Ollie loved anything to do with Olympics.” I remembered the time I called Lettie and she’d whispered to me she had to switch phones because Ollie demanded absolute quiet when he was watching the Olympics on TV.

  “That shows you how stressed he is. He’d rather have a drink than see an Olympic prize.”

  I gave Lettie a short lecture about the amphora, on which I had been an authority for about four minutes. She took the LAMBDA book from me and turned the photo toward the light.

  “Everything in this book has been stolen? Golly.”

  I peeked around the back side of the amphora and saw the sprinters. Just like the ones in the photo, each had one leg and one arm up, the other leg straight and extended back. I couldn’t tell how many figures there were because the piece was too close to the back wall of the display case.

  “Lettie, look. This jug has sprinters on it like the one in the book. Why didn’t they turn this side to the front? It’s more interesting than the other side.”

  Lettie stepped around beside me, looking at the amphora, then the photo, then the amphora again. “This is the same one.”

  “Very similar, yes. But they must have made one of these for every contest.”

  “No. It’s the same one, Dotsy. Look. Look right above the second runner from this end. In the black part. Do you see where the black has flaked off in the shape of a V? And about a half-inch down, there are three sort of pock-marks going downhill.”

  “Okay.” I looked and saw the blemishes she was talking about.

  “Now look at the picture.”

  The amphora in the photo had identical damage. In the black area above the second sprinter from the left there was a V-shaped spot of exposed clay with three dots below it. Going downhill.

  “It’s stolen! I have to tell Dr. Girard.”

  * * * * *

  I found Luc Girard in the library with Sophie Antonakos. He’d already put her to work. Surrounded by a dozen or more relics and a ruler, she seemed to be measuring and recording data in a notebook while Dr. Girard sat hunched over a box full of sand. A glue pot stood beside the box and shards of pottery poked up, willy-nilly, out of the sand. He was gluing the broken lekythos back together and I didn’t wonder that he hadn’t entrusted that job to Sophie Stumblebunny.

  “What would you say if I told you item number two-nine-four-three is upstairs in the observation bar?”

  Sophie dropped her pencil and Girard’s head popped up from his work. His mouth opened but nothing came out. I handed him the LAMBDA book and pointed to the photo of the Panathenaic amphora. He dashed out the library door, taking the book with him.

  Sophie looked at me. “What do you mean? How did you find it?”

  “It wasn’t hard. It’s on display in the big showcase right inside the door of the Zeus deck bar. Haven’t you ever been up there?”

  “A few times, yes. Do you mean the big amphora from the Athens games?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I don’t know where the people who furnished the ship got the things they have on display, but I have wondered where they came from. They all appear to be real. Not—how do you say—reproductions.”

  “Who would know where they got them?”

  “I don’t know.” Sophie studied her feet for a few seconds. “Maybe the purser? He might have a record of the purchases.”

  “Good idea. What about the captain?”

  “Captain Tzedakis? He might. He probably knows the owners of the cruise line.” Sophie agreed to ask around about who was in charge of purchasing what.

  “Another thing, Sophie. About your roommate, Brittany.”

  Sophie’s eyes widened as if she was surprised I remembered her roommate’s name.

  “A man I met yesterday saw Brittany with what he said was a ‘to-die-for’ antique krater. She had picked it up at a shop in Mykonos Town but when he tried to buy it from her, she wouldn’t even talk about making a deal. Not that she should, of course, but I wonder. She said it was for a friend of hers. Do you know anything about it? She turned down an offer of nine hundred Euros.”

  “I think it was probably for her boyfriend, Rob. She talks about him all the time. He’s rich, I think.”

  “Where does this Rob live?”

  “In Switzerland. Geneva.”

  “Did you see the krater yourself? She must have brought it back with her yesterday unless she had it shipped.”

  “It would make no sense to pick it up and then ship it,” Sophie said. “If he wanted it shipped, why not have the shop do it?”

  Sophie, I decided, was a sharp cookie.

  She stared at her feet for another moment, then said, “Brittany and I each have our own closet and we both stow things under our beds. She could have brought it back to our room.”

  “Could you look?”

  “Go through her belongings? No!” Her back went rigid. “I’d be very angry if she went through my things!”

  I sat quietly, letting the importance of what we might be talking about—the theft of priceless antiquities—sink in. “Well then, could I come to your room sometime and visit you?”

  “Certainly. Any time.” Sophie, I thought, understood.

  A perspiring and disheveled Luc Girard burst through the library door. “Merde! I don’t believe it!”

  “Whom should we tell? The captain?”

  Girard ran a hand through his hair. His eyes darted left, right, left, and he covered his mouth with both hands. “Didn’t you tell me you know of a Carabinieri captain on the ship? I think I should talk to him before we tell anyone else.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Marco and I climbed aboard the launch and found a spot on the bow so we could see Patmos as we approached it. I turned and shot a photo of our ship after we had put a bit of distance between it and ourselves. The launch, zipping across the water, blew a warm, sensuous breeze through my hair.

  Marco slipped an arm around my waist. He lightly kissed my temple and I turned to receive the kiss on the lips I knew waited for my lips. I felt a knot form in my stomach as he kissed me again.

  “At last,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for that kiss for two years.”

  The demons within me banged against my ribcage and I turned my face toward Patmos. Marco was threatening to make me deal with how screwed up I was. My divorce from the swamp rat some five years ago had left me with a bucket-load of problems and it didn’t take a psychiatrist to tell me what they were. Teaching ancient and medieval history at a local community college had helped mend parts of my shattered self-image, but to trust again? To let myself be vulnerable? I couldn’t do it yet.

  I felt Marco’s arm stiffen and drop away.

  “Did Luc Girard find you?” I asked.

  “Luc? You are on a first-name basis with him already, eh? Yes, he found me. We went up to the top deck together. It is the stolen amphora, all right. We think they may have been aware of the photograph being circulated. The one in the LAMBDA book. So they deliberately put the display case close to the wall and turned the amphora so the side shown in the photographs would be hidden.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Me? Nothing, for now. We are going to talk about it later.”

  I turned and looked at him.

  “Girard needs to proceed carefully,” Marco said, staring across the water toward the approaching island. “The cruise line is his employer, after all.”

  “You mean he wants you to do nothing so he won’t risk losing his job?”

  “I mean we must proceed carefully.”

  “I think we should check up on every item in the display cases all over the ship. They may all be stolen!” I may have said this a little too loudly, because
I sensed heads had turned toward us. I looked to my left and saw Brittany Benson and Willem Leclercq standing together and no more than ten feet from Marco and me.

  Ollie and Lettie were the first people off the boat when we docked. Ollie was drunk. Marco and I watched as Lettie guided her voluminous husband around vendors’ stalls and darting children to an olive tree. She propped him up against the tree and glanced around, an anguished expression on her face.