Death of an Aegean Queen

by Maria Hudgins

  Ollie drifted to the bar, ordered a beer, and struck up a conversation with two men who soon introduced themselves.

  “Malcolm Stone, London,” said the gray-haired one with black eyebrows, extending his right hand to Ollie.

  “Willem Leclercq, Antwerp,” said the other. Younger, probably in his early thirties, he was dressed casually in a knit shirt and jeans. He greeted Ollie with an intense stare from his pale blue eyes.

  The three men exchanged small talk while they scanned the action at the blackjack table. Stone and Leclercq told Ollie they were on a reconnaissance/buying trip for a wealthy client of Leclercq’s, a client who wished to remain anonymous and for whom Leclercq was designing and furnishing “one helluva house,” the Belgian said, in a French-sounding accent.

  He explained further. “I have asked Malcolm to come with me on this trip because he’s an antiques appraiser in London. An expert in classical Greek and Mediterranean artifacts.”

  “I take it your client wants his helluva house furnished with real antiques,” Ollie said.

  “No fakes.”

  “Not for this bloke.”

  The two men mentioned they had a suite on the Apollo deck, where it was quiet and the air was clean. Ollie, Leclercq suggested, might like to join them there for a few hands of poker.

  “I’m here with a friend.” Ollie indicated the blackjack table with a jerk of his head. “I’ll check with him.”

  Ollie lumbered across the room and delivered the invitation. George Gaskill raked his chips off the table and all four men bought a supply of chips from the cashier after mutually agreeing that a pot with dollars, pounds, and Euros would exceed their combined mathematical skill. Before they left the casino, George phoned his stateroom and got no answer. “Kathryn may have gone to the show after all,” he said.

  Stone and Leclercq led them up one deck to a suite Ollie imagined might be the largest and most luxurious on the ship. Two bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchenette surrounded a large living room with a conversation area, a round dining table with four chairs, a fully stocked bar, and a wall of glass doors opening onto a softly lit balcony.

  “Being American, I suppose you blokes are familiar with Texas Hold 'em poker,” Malcolm Stone said, slapping a new deck of cards on the round table.

  Ollie gave a little start at the sound of that down-home phrase rendered in a British accent. “Absolutely! Gaskill? Okay with you? Leclercq?”

  “Belgium is not on Mars,” Leclercq answered. “Isn’t it called world-class poker?” On hands and knees, he dragged a white dealer button out from under the table and handed it to Stone. “We have television in Antwerp.”

  Malcolm Stone slipped off his tie and dinner jacket and tossed his cuff links onto the glass-topped coffee table. Ollie and George followed suit, making themselves comfortable, while Leclercq pulled a beer from the small refrigerator under the bar.

  “Who wants beer?” Leclercq asked.

  “I’ll take one,” Ollie said. “Do I see a Heineken in there? That’ll work.”

  “Not for me. I’ll have a gin and tonic,” said Stone, rolling up his starched sleeves. “Can’t abide this American custom of serving beer ice-cold. Gaskill?”

  “Thank you. I’ll have a gin and tonic, too.”

  While Stone assembled the drinks, the other three chose places at the round table. Leclercq took the chair nearest the bar, George to his right, and Ollie opposite Leclercq, with his back to the balcony doors. Stone brought George his drink and took the empty seat to Leclercq’s left.

  Stone dealt the first hand. No limit, Texas Hold ’em. A type of poker in which each player makes his best five-card hand from the two in his hand and the five cards, which, interspersed with several rounds of betting, are dealt, face up, in the center of the table. Of the four players, only George needed a refresher course in how the betting went. Stone explained it.

  The play moved along pleasantly enough, with no one winning or losing a substantial sum, until George looked at his watch and, his S’s whistling through his front teeth, said, “Uh-oh. Kathryn’s going to kill me. She doesn’t know where I am and if she checks the casino she’ll be out of luck.”

  Ollie leaned back in his chair and stretched. “Lettie won’t be looking for me. She’ll be in bed already, with that God-awful green goo she slaps all over her face every night.”

  Leclercq laughed. “Last hand, then?” It was Gaskill’s turn to deal. He dealt two cards (called hole cards, because they’re seen only by the holder) to each man. At this point, a fly buzzing around the table could have seen:

  Gaskill with 8♠, 9♠.

  Leclercq with 10♣, 10♦.

  Stone with K♠, A♠.

  Ollie with A♣, A♥.

  Ollie and Leclercq were each looking at a pair before the first round of betting. In the majority of hands played so far, a pair, especially a pair of aces like Ollie’s, would have had a good chance of winning regardless of what cards were subsequently dealt. But for the first round of betting, Leclercq and Stone, the first two players to the left of the dealer, were in the blind positions, required to ante a standard starter for the pot. Ollie, keeping a perfectly straight face, placed a small bet of 10, and Leclercq raised it by 10 and called. The others matched his bet. This put a total of about eighty dollars’ worth of chips in the pot. The exact value of the chips could only be determined by using the currency conversion rates and none of the players, at this point in the evening, were at all prone to do the math.

  Gaskill discarded the top card, as the dealer was required to do, and slapped the next three cards down, face up, in the middle of the table: 7♠, 10♠, A♦.

  Leclercq bet 50. The other three matched it and called.

  Gaskill revealed the fourth card: J♠.

  Leclercq checked, that is, bet no additional chips. Stone bet an additional 300, precipitating coughs and sputters from the other three, but they all matched his bet and stayed in the game.

  Gaskill flipped the fifth and final card onto the table: 10♥.

  A perfectly ordinary card but in this case it gave Ollie a full house, Stone, a flush, and Leclercq, four 10’s. Gaskill already had a straight flush before the last card was played, so all four went flat out to win this last hand, betting madly with all the chips they had.

  With about $9,000 worth of chips on the table, George Gaskill and his straight flush scooped up the whole pot.

  Chapter Three

  When the lights in the show lounge went up, I looked across the room and noticed Luc Girard had apparently slipped out. Marco rose and helped me with my chair. “I was planning to ask your famous archaeologist for his autograph, Dotsy, but he appears to have left.”

  “It’s okay. If he’s here for the whole cruise, I’ll have other chances to meet him,” I said.

  Still la-la-ing the folk dance music as she pushed through the lounge doors, Lettie tried to link arms with Kathryn and me, to start an impromptu, slightly tipsy, Greek circle dance, but she slipped backward off the top step of the staircase. Kathryn and I tightened our grips and saved her a nasty fall. I felt grateful and somewhat guilty for feeling I’d been saved from making a spectacle of myself.

  The grand staircase, dazzling with chandeliers and polished brass rails, peeled off left and right at each landing then reemerged into a flight of double-wide central steps leading up or down to the next level. One could go all the way from the top to the bottom of the ship on this stairway, or one could take the elevator running parallel to it, a few yards aft of the stairs. Lettie left us on the next lower level, the Ares deck, assuring us she had her room card and knew her room number. She kissed us all good night and la-la-ed her way, fingers snapping and feet kicking, through the swinging doors that led to a long hall and her stateroom.

  The Ares deck was what some call a promenade deck. With teak planks running completely around the ship on this level only, it was the place for joggers and strollers to get their exercise and, lined with deck chairs, it also attracted
writers, readers, loungers, and nappers.

  Marco, Kathryn, and I continued down one more level to the Athena deck. “Which room is yours, Dotsy?” Kathryn asked. “Ours is number three seventy-eight.”

  “Number three sixty-five,” I said. “Like the days in a year.”

  “Good way to remember it.”

  Marco stopped with me at my door while Kathryn walked on by. An awkward moment. Did he expect me to invite him in? I hoped not. It had been two years since we’d seen each other and he felt rather like a stranger to me.

  But Marco, bless his little Latin heart, made a better suggestion. “I noticed a nice walking place up on the deck where Lettie’s room is. Would you like to take a walk with me?”

  We hiked back up the stairs and out through a set of double doors to the wooden rail on the starboard side of the ship. The breeze from the movement of the ship blowing my hair across my face, I looked over the side and down, way down, to the water. The lights from portholes below us reflected off the black surface, reminding me we were at sea. If there was a moon out tonight, it was on the other side of the ship.

  “I’m turned around,” I said, running my hands along the polished wooden rail. “Are we going north, south, east, or west?”

  “We are going to Mykonos. It is east of Athens.”

  “So right now, we’re looking—what—southward?”

  Marco placed his hand on top of one of mine and glanced toward me, studying my face. I felt my own hand tense up. As if he had read my mind through the palm of his hand, he slowly withdrew it and laced his fingers together, his forearms against the railing.

  He cleared his throat self-consciously and said, “You will like Mykonos.”

  “You’ve been there, have you?”

  “I was there once. It attracts artists, writers, and jet-setters because it is very pretty. Windmills. Little streets and churches with blue or red domes. Many fishermen.”

  “Ah. Then Ollie will like it. He loves anything to do with fishing.”

  “They have a very strange pelican there. I hope we will get to see it. Big bird.” Marco folded his arms into bird wings.

  “What’s strange about it?”

  “I think there are several of them, actually. They are white, but their faces are pink and yellow and blue. You will have to see them for yourself.”

  After a few more minutes in the warm night air, Marco walked me back to my room, smiled, and ruffled my hair. “Goodnight, Dotsy,”

  Marco Quattrocchi is a class act, I thought.

  * * * * *

  “Dotsy! I can’t find my husband! Is he with you?”

  It had been a long time since I’d been rousted out of bed with such a question. It took me a minute to remember I was on a ship in the Aegean Sea. I rolled myself up to a sitting position, swung my legs off the side of my little bed, and shook my head, feeling the thud of a slight hangover at the base of my skull. I searched the vicinity for something that would give me a clue about what time it was.

  Giving it up as a lost cause in the dark and having no memory of where any light switches were, I stumbled to the door and opened it a crack.

  “I’m so, so sorry to wake you up at this hour, Dotsy, but I can’t find George anywhere.” Kathryn Gaskill appeared to be fully dressed and desperate. Rubbing a bit more sleep out of my eyes, I looked at her again. She was dressed in cropped pants and cotton shirt, but wore no makeup and her hair was uncombed.

  I waved her into my room and flipped a light switch I found near the door. She didn’t want to sit down, but I plopped myself on the side of my bed and yawned. “He and Ollie Osgood were going to the casino, weren’t they?”

  “Yes, but that was about nine o’clock. It’s after three now, and neither he nor Ollie is in the casino. I’ve already been up there and checked.” Kathryn’s tiny voice sounded strained.

  “Is the casino still open?”

  “I think it stays open all night. I asked a dealer and the bartender and the girl at the place where they change the money. The dealer remembered him and he remembered Ollie, too, because he’s so big, you know. He said George played blackjack at his table for a while, but he and the big man left a long time ago! About ten o’clock, he thought.”

  “Have you checked with Ollie?”

  “I don’t know what room they’re in. I remembered your room number because you said it was the number of days in a year.”

  “I’ve written their room number down somewhere.” I stumbled around, fumbled through my evening purse, and finally found the number on a note pad beside my phone.

  I called their room and Lettie answered in a sleepy sort of croak. Ollie didn’t know where George was. In the background, I heard Ollie’s gravelly voice saying, “He went back to his room. Same time I did.”

  Lettie and I put Ollie and Kathryn on the phone so they could communicate directly. Kathryn pumped him for more information but it appeared that he wasn’t much help. She hung up and said, “They went up to some guys’ room and played poker for a couple of hours. A couple of guys they met in the casino. But Ollie says they left about midnight. He says he got back to his own room at twelve-fifteen.”

  “And George was on his way back to your room then?”

  “Oh, golly! Where can he be? George isn’t a big drinker. He wouldn’t have gone to the bar, I’m sure.”

  “There’s a disco lounge on one of the upper decks, I heard. We could check there. If you’ll give me a minute to dress, I’ll go with you.” I could think of little I’d like to do less than get dressed and go hiking around the ship, but Kathryn was clearly in need of a companion. I pulled on a pair of Bermuda shorts and a big shirt while Kathryn stood near the door, her hands clasped prayerfully in front of her face.

  “Wait,” I said. “Didn’t I see some deck plans of the ship in the booklet they gave us when we boarded? Let’s take it with us.” I found my envelope full of shipboard information under my bed and pulled out the booklet I wanted. The first diagram showed the disco bar on the Zeus deck at the very top of the ship.

  “Before we hike up there, Kathryn, I think we should try the promenade deck first. He might simply be getting a little fresh air.”

  “For three hours? Well, at least it’s a place to start.”

  We climbed up one flight and out the same doors Marco and I had used earlier in the evening. The deck was deserted now except for two women at the rail about forty yards to my left.

  “If he’s out here, we’ll miss him completely if we walk around the ship together and he’s walking the same direction we are,” I said, imagining us and George Gaskill, like carousel horses on opposite sides, circling eternally and never meeting each other. “You go that way,” I said, pointing to the right as I pivoted to my left. I passed the two women. One, I recognized from the show as the dancer who had spent much of her performance on the wrong foot, circling the wrong way, and a half-beat behind the music. Poor thing. I glanced back again and realized the second woman was also from the dance troupe. One of the better coordinated ones.

  On the other side, the port side, Kathryn and I met, having now covered the whole circuit. Except for the two of us, this whole stretch was deserted. One of the portholes on this side, I reasoned, must be Lettie and Ollie’s window, but all of them were dark. We decided to make double sure by continuing around in the directions we were already heading. As I rounded the aft end of the ship, I paused. The deep burble of the engine vibrated the deck under my feet, the twin propellers churning the water below into an iridescent ribbon-like trail behind us. I felt a bit queasy, looking down.

  Kathryn and I met up again at the same place we’d parted and decided to go straight to the shipboard security office, wherever that was. It stood to reason it would be in the vicinity of the purser’s office and the main desk, which were on the next deck up. We passed through the side doors and along a corridor until we found the grand staircase Lettie had nearly tumbled down earlier. Up one deck and around to our left, we walked past the pho
to shop where the embarkation pictures they had taken of each group as they boarded were displayed on felt-covered panels. Beyond the photo shop was the main desk where we found a grizzled, gray-haired attendant playing a hand-held video game. We explained our situation in slow, deliberate English.

  “One minute, please.” The man punched a button on the desk phone and paused, then began talking in Greek to whomever had answered.

  “Kathryn, I’m going to call Marco. I hate to wake him up, but he’ll know what to do. He’s a policeman.” I looked around for another phone. Marco’s room number was 373. I remembered it was four doors down from my own and on the same side of the hall.

  “I have talked to security,” the attendant told us as he hung up the phone. “They want you to wait right here. They will be here in a minute.”

  Kathryn pointed to a phone on a low table in the center of the arc of counters that included the main desk and land excursion sales cubicles. I took a deep breath and punched in Marco’s room number. Four rings, no answer.

  Kathryn nudged me and pointed toward a baby-faced young man approaching us. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt with a security patch on one sleeve and a gold nameplate that read, “Demopoulos.” I assumed it was his last name.

  I hung up the phone and listened as Kathryn explained her plight to the security kid. He paid close attention but didn’t appear to be all that shocked. It dawned on me this might be a fairly common occurrence on a cruise ship, and the lost spouse would frequently turn out to have been indulging in a little tête a tête in the wrong room.

  Kathryn launched into a description of George and what he was wearing the last time she saw him, but Demopoulos stopped her with an upraised finger. “I have better idea,” he said, taking her by the arm. “The photo shop has already posted the embarkation pictures. The shop is locked but I have a key. There should be a photo of your husband that will help us find him much more easily.”

  He unlocked and slid open the glass door of the shop and let us walk around among the panels displaying hundreds of photos, all taken in the same spot at the bottom of the gangway the day before. I couldn’t figure out how they were posted: alphabetically, in order of arrival, or what. We wandered around until we finally found it. George and Kathryn Gaskill, embarking on their dream vacation, hand luggage in hand, arms around each other’s waists.