Death of an Aegean Queen

by Maria Hudgins

  Then she made me a more reasonable offer. For a few dollars (added to my bill) I could send one email to one address. If I got a reply, it would cost me a few dollars more. I sat down with pencil and paper to compose my message to Charlie.

  Meanwhile a large woman with an American accent barged in and asked about using a computer. She looked like the woman who’d been batting her eyelashes at Marco last evening in the lounge. The attendant explained things to her, reciting the same spiel she’d given me.

  “Why is it so slow?” the American woman groused. “Don’t you have cable?”

  “Oh yes, madam,” the attendant answered with a straight face. “But it’s a very long cable. Goes all the way back to Athens. It’s elastic.”

  The woman stomped out, and I sent my message to Charlie’s email box at work:

  Hi Charlie,

  We’re having a great time, but I have something I want you to do for me. Find out all you can about a man named George Gaskill. He was principal of a school in Pennsylvania about ten years ago. I know it’s not much to go on, but you could maybe pretend you’re thinking about hiring him. If you find the right George Gaskill, they’ll tell you not to hire him because he’s a registered sex offender, but go on anyway and find out all you can.

  Also, find out about a former student, Brittany Benson, who attended the school at which Gaskill was principal and who was complainant in a court case charging him with sexual abuse. I’m not making this up! I know students’ records are sealed and employees’ records are confidential, but I’ll bet you can find a way. You could check court records, news coverage, and stuff like that.

  Also, Brittany Benson was a cheerleader and George Gaskill now lives in Elkhart, Indiana, and he works at a used-car place. This is important, Charlie, otherwise I wouldn’t ask.

  Love, Mom

  * * * * *

  I left the Internet café and took the stairs down to the Osgoods’ room. Lettie was there but Ollie, she told me, had been called to the security office by Special Agent Bondurant.

  “Marco called a while ago,” Lettie added, “looking for you. He said to tell you to come to his room.”

  I noticed Lettie had pulled out one of the dresser drawers and one of the sofa cushions. Both were on the bed now, the squarish cushion crammed inside the drawer. As she was talking, she yanked two huge mesh bags full of sponges out of the closet, an avalanche of shoes following in their wake.

  “I’m afraid to ask,” I said.

  “I’ve figured out how to get these silly things back home without going over on the number of bags they allow you to take on the plane. Watch.” Lettie held up a couple of large space-saver bags. “I brought these in case we needed more room in our luggage, and guess what? We do.”

  She stuffed one bag with sponges and ran her fingers across the open end. “These have a special seal so you can squeeze air out but it can’t go back in. Sponges are mostly air, so . . .” She put the full bag on the bed, put the drawer with the cushion inside on top of it, and sat on the cushion. Sat hard and bounced a few times. Air hissed out from under the drawer. When she stood up and lifted the drawer, I saw the vacuum bag was flatter, but not by much.

  “They’re too stiff, Lettie. A sponge has to be wet to be squishable.”

  “But I can’t take wet sponges on the plane. Oh, hell.” She stood, staring at the problem with her left fist poised thoughtfully under her chin, then snapped her fingers and took one sponge into the bathroom.

  I heard water running.

  “Ta da! Look.” Lettie returned, holding out two fists. “Pick a hand.”

  They looked the same. I felt ridiculous but I pointed to a random hand.

  She opened both of them anyway, and a sponge ballooned out of her right hand. The left one, of course, was empty. “They don’t have to be really wet. Just damp. See?” She snapped the sponge downward so if there had been any extra water in it a spray would’ve streaked across the carpet. “I wet it and wrung it out in a towel. When they’re damp, you can squeeze them down to nothing.”

  “So what are you going to do? Wet all of them?”

  “Yep. And wrap them all in big towels and get as much water out as possible, then I can squash them really flat!”

  “I’d better go see Marco,” I said.

  * * * * *

  Marco opened the door and, without a word, turned and walked back into his bathroom. I closed the door and stood awkwardly in the middle of his bedroom, enjoying the man-smell of aftershave and soap. Except for the brush and towel on his bed, his room was neat. I’d wondered if Marco was a neat freak or a slob, and here was my answer. Neat. On his desk lay a small, clear tube with cotton stuffed into the open end. Without touching it, I bent over and looked closely. The cotton swab I’d given him yesterday lay inside the tube, the cotton on one end stained a dark red-brown.

  “Is this a sample of the blood from that pool on the deck?” I called out, loudly enough that he could hear me over the noise of water running in the sink.

  “Yes. Do not touch it.”

  “Why did you put cotton in one end?”

  No answer. I was getting the silent treatment. I looked at the tube again and recognized it as a complimentary shampoo vial. I had two in my room, one with shampoo, one with conditioner. Police, I knew, had special containers for storing collected samples but obviously Marco hadn’t brought any with him so he’d improvised.

  He emerged from the bathroom swiping his face with a hand towel and shot me a cold look. “I put the cotton in to keep dust out. I did not want to put the cap back on because the tube is not sterile and sealing it with moisture inside would make the bacteria grow.”

  “Marco, I’m sorry I didn’t go to the bar last night. Did you get my message?”

  “Yes. It is okay.” But his voice was still cold. “Have you had breakfast yet?”

  I said I had, but I’d sit with him and have a second cup of coffee while he ate. I stopped off at my room on our way to the stairs and picked up the LAMBDA book Dr. Girard had let me borrow. At the showcase on the stairway landing, we paused to look at the Cycladic fertility figure and I flipped through the book. “They’re all so similar, these little marble women,” I said. “But I don’t see anything in the book that looks exactly like this one.”

  “That is good.”

  While Marco waited for his breakfast to be brought to the table, he studied the LAMBDA book. Whether because he was interested in the stolen Greek antiquities or because he didn’t want to talk to me, I couldn’t say. His croissant and fruit arrived and he finally looked at me and smiled. My heart did a little bounce.

  “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 droppe
d 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.”

  Ollie 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?”