Stolen Ghouls

by Alex A King

  His wife took umbrage with that, and she took it with epic levels of eye rolling. “Decades, he says. That is because he is older than this dirt.” She stomped one black slipper on the porch.

  “You are almost as old as I am,” Kyrios Fasoulas said without looking at her.

  “Where? In your dreams?”

  This train had jumped the rails and was barreling towards my last nerve.

  “Goat,” I reminded them.

  “My goat,” Kyrios Fasoulas said, stabbing his chest with one finger.

  His wife wasn’t about to let that go. “Hercules is my goat.”

  His eyebrows arched. He peered at her over the tops of smudge-covered reading spectacles. “Your goat, eh? Did you buy it with all the no-money you make?”

  A ball of yarn sailed across the porch, nailing him on the ear. Kyrios Fasoulas picked up the yarn, hurled it back.

  Wow. Hard to believe these two lovebirds weren’t going to make it. Finding an amicable solution was going to be tough and probably impossible until one of them keeled over, granting the other custody of the ruminant by default.

  “Here’s an idea,” I said. “What about one of you giving up the goat in exchange for something else?”

  Laughter. Howling laughter. Side-splitting, tear-streaming peals of mirth. Apparently I was a comedian. Who knew?

  “He gets nothing,” Kyria Fasoula told me. “Nothing except his old Greek underpants. Those he can keep. The Virgin Mary knows I cannot stand to wash them one more time. I do not know what he does in his underpants. It looks like a yiftes nest in there.”

  Yiftes is one of several derogatory words for the Romany people who dwell in Greece. Merope doesn’t have a Romany population, and Kyria Fasoula to my knowledge had never left the island, so she probably didn’t know Romany people don’t live in nests.

  “I told you I was molting,” Kyrios Fasoulas said.

  No amount of therapy could banish that mental image. “So who paid for the goat?”

  “I did,” the husband said.

  The wife gave me a pointed look. “But I got him a discount.”

  “You nagged the poor man to death. He gave me the goat for next to nothing so you would skasmos.”

  “Po-po … he was dying anyway.”

  These two needed an intervention before they whipped out boxing gloves. “And who feeds and cares for the goat?”

  Something seemed to occur to Kyria Fasoula. She flicked her gaze to me, onyx eyes hard, cold, suspicious. “Why are you here? We did not ask you to find anything for us.”

  “Your children asked me to mediate and find a solution to this goat situation.”

  “Those kolopetha! Do you know how long I was in labor with them, eh?” Must have been one of those rhetorical questions, because she kept talking without expecting an answer. “Days! I spent hours pushing them out into the world. My mouni will never be the same.”

  Her husband nodded. Finally they agreed on something. “It used to be like a narrow pipe. Now it is only good for bowling watermelons.”

  “Says the man with a green bean where his poutsa should be,” Kyria Fasoula said. “Those children break my heart.” She clutched her chest. “They never come to see their mother.”

  “They were here yesterday,” her husband muttered.

  “They almost never come to see their mother,” she said. “What if I died? Would they bother to come to the funeral, to mourn, to wear the black?”

  “I have a good idea,” Kyrios Fasoulas said. “Die and we will see if they come.”

  Kyria Fasoula set aside her crochet and rose from the chair with the grace of a one-legged pigeon. At the corner of the house-shaped hovel, a garden hose was coiled in loose loops. For some reason nobody understands, Greeks spend scads of time sweeping and hosing their yards. Their parents did it. Their grandparents did it. And their great-grandparents before that. When ol’ Xerxes rocked up with his Persian army they probably wondered why Leonidas stopped to hose the Thermopylae pass before the killing could start.

  Kyria Fasoula picked up the squirty end of the hose and twisted the faucet from off to on. Water shot out of the nozzle.

  “You want to hear my solution?” she said.

  I did. I really did. That would save me time and trouble. But life experience and the mostly sensible head on my shoulders noticed the dangerous glint in her eyes. My feet began backing me up, past the Hercules the goat and toward my bicycle, propped up at the edge of the road.

  “Maybe another time,” I said.

  “How about never?” she said. “Never works better for me.”

  On that note, she aimed the nozzle at me, unleashing a narrow, hard ribbon of water. A gasp popped out of my mouth as I rocketed back to my bicycle. On the porch, her husband laughed.

  It didn’t last.

  As I rode away, I heard his yelp, then a torrent of insults involving the Virgin Mary, a donkey, and a horn. The beloved trio of Greek swear words.

  The afternoon was warmish with a stiff sea breeze blowing on the sun’s half-assed effort. I peddled harder to undo the damage done by the hose. Roger Wilson lived--or had lived--close by, so I took the narrow dirt road away from the Fasoulas hovel, down to his property. In life he had scored relative privacy, the road to his place meandering through a patch of parched wilderness. Sinister olive trees mingled with sprawling figs. There’s something about olive trees. At night they look like they’re on their way to a knife fight. During the day they act like they’re hiding a dead body beneath their roots. At ground level, huddling in patches of shade, stinging nettles waited for the local cheesemakers and chefs to show up with gloves and knives. Not only do nettles product decent rennet, they’re also delicious in pie with feta. They show up to the plate defanged.

  The Wilson house was as waterfront as waterfront gets without being a houseboat. Its front windows looked down on the sea from a high rock ledge. At its back, more olive trees, gnarled and heavy with nearly ripe fruit. The house itself was white with peeling blue shutters, a stereotypical Greek island home like most of Merope’s construction. One floor. Shallow front porch, its once sturdy concrete crumbling. Wrought iron fence, painted a blue that matched the shutters. Door wide open.

  Merope is the kind of place a person can leave doors unlocked, confident that they will return to discover everything in its original position. In contrast, Roger Wilson had hailed from England, where an unlocked door or window was an invitation for light-fingered folks to help themselves. I got it. After spending my childhood in the United States, locking doors was a habit I couldn’t break. Not that I wanted to. Erring on the side of caution doesn’t hurt when it comes to home security. I don’t have a lot, but what I do have I need.

  So the open door seemed … off.

  I leaned my bicycle against the fence. “Yia sou?”

  Like ‘aloha’, ‘yia sou’ works for arrivals and departures.

  The house’s owner was dead but my manners were still intact. Around here I never knew when someone might be listening, eager to report me to the social police for failing to be polite. Social homicide could happen in the wag of a tongue, and I really couldn’t afford to die. Being wired into the island grapevine was one of the pillars my business was built upon.

  Nobody answered.

  Nothing moved.

  “Mr. Wilson? Are you here? It’s Allie Callas. We talked earlier, remember?”

  Wind tiptoed between the olives and figs. I shivered. Being on the wrong end of a garden hose will do that.

  Surely it couldn’t hurt to knock on the open front door. Dead or not, Roger Wilson’s ghost could be home, and he’d been raised on English customs, not Greek. The English, like Americans, were bigger fans of the “knock on my door and maybe I’ll answer if I can be bothered” approach, rather than the Greek “stand outside the yard and yell” approach to visitors.

  The gate whined as I slipped through. I approached the front porch. On the mat, a package waited. Brown box. About the size used for shi
pping small goods like mugs. The shipping label said the package’s point of origin was London, England, one week ago. I remembered what Constable Pappas had said about the regular package deliveries to the Wilson house and his speculation that Roger Wilson was some kind of collector. Tampering with mail was illegal, but there was no law against photographing the shipping label, just in case. In case of what I didn’t know, but a man was dead, possibly murdered, and even a non-clue could be a clue.

  “Mr. Wilson? Are you here? You’ve got mail, looks like. A package. Want me to open it for you?”

  As a ghost he could theoretically peek inside the box, but tearing the tape was impossible at this stage of his development.

  Silence.

  Nothing except the crash of water striking rock as the high tide pounded the island.

  I walked around the house.

  A house. Not fancy, despite the view of forever from the front yard. On that lackluster note, I shut the gate behind me, straddled my bicycle, and pointed the front wheel toward the main village.

  The Cake Emporium’s window was still broken. Nobody had swung by to repair the damage yet, and Betty hadn’t given me instructions, so I went ahead and called the local window repairman, who said he could be there a week from today.

  So he wanted to play that game, did he? “How about today?”

  Short pause. Then: “Next week.”

  “Are you busy fixing another window right now?”

  “Yes, that is exactly what I am doing.”

  “Are you lying to me?”

  Silence. I could almost hear him flipping through his book of lies and excuses, hunting for the most convincing story.

  “Maybe,” he said slowly.

  I left the Cake Emporium and stuck my head out of the narrow side street, peering down the larger, bustling main street.The road was lined with shops and tavernas and kafeneios—coffeeshops—painted in vibrant colors that clashed harder than Greeks and Turks. Sure enough, the window repairman was currently swilling coffee and filling out Pro-po forms—a kind of Greek lottery where you choose which sports team will kick the other team’s butt—outside one of the nearest cafes. He was partially hidden by a blue umbrella, but I recognized the back of every lying contractor on the island.

  “Panathanaikos is always a safe bet,” I said into my phone, naming one of Greece’s biggest football teams. In Greece, and much of the world, football is what Americans call soccer.

  Apparently that was hilarious. “Xa-xa-xa! What do you know about football?”

  Then he quit laughing. He turned around, fear smeared across his face.

  I wiggled my fingers in an innocent wave.

  “I will be right there,” he said in a small, defeated voice.

  “I’ll be waiting—and watching.”

  I went back to the Cake Emporium to wait. Betty told me to help myself to the cakes as a thank you for doing her a favor, but I couldn’t bring myself to open the cabinets. So instead I sat in one of the comfortable chairs and checked my email while I waited. Kyrios and Kyria Fasoulas’ kids had heard about my visit—loudly and with venom—and they asked if I’d go back again to try to find a solution. I’d told them I’d do it if someone would kindly hide the hose before my next visit. Between now and my next visit maybe I could do some digging and find something to grease the negotiation. Not dirt—more like encouragement. A quid pro quo for both sides to make one of them give up the goat.

  My phone rang. Leo was on the other end. At the sound of his warm, deep voice my stomach flip-flopped and my mouth curved up into smile.

  “Find any more dead bodies?” he asked.

  “Not since this morning. You?”

  “I’m trying to quit.”

  “Too much paperwork?”

  “It’s so much easier when people die the regular way—in their beds or in hospitals. Which brings me to Kyrios Wilson.”

  “He was murdered, wasn’t he? That’s okay, you can admit that I’m right.”

  “Let’s talk about it over dinner.”

  “So you can watch me do my victory lap?”

  His voice had a smirk in it. “So I can watch you eat.”

  “Dinner never goes well for us.”

  “So let’s call it something else. Come up to my place later and we’ll consume food in the same general area.”

  “Are you hitting on me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Will your cousin be there?”

  “Jimmy? If he doesn’t have plans I’ll stuff him in a cupboard.”

  “As small as he is, a drawer would work.”

  There was a strangulated sound on the other end of the phone I recognized as Leo trying to stifle laughter.

  My smile widened until it hurt. Despite the bumps in our road and the inevitable bridge we could fall off at any moment, I liked the stuffing out of the cop as a human being. It didn’t hurt that he had buns of steel and a face that could launch at least a few dozen yachts.

  While I was busy grinning, the Cake Emporium’s door opened. The bell above the door gave a little tinkle, and then there was a soft whoof as it closed. A man had entered. Short. Mostly bald with a semi circle of hair around the lower half of his head. He was wearing a chiton and flat strappy sandals that went in and out of vogue. Someone was on their way to a costume party. I didn’t recognize the man, which was strange for this time of year. He reached into his chiton and retrieved several thick silver coins, which he placed on the counter. He picked up the box by its Cake Emporium ribbon.

  “Erroso,” he said.

  I blinked. The dual-language Babelfish in my ear failed me.

  “Erroso?” I parroted.

  This seemed to satisfy him. He beamed from ear to ear and strode toward the door. The bell tinkled again, then all was quiet as the door fell back into position. Evidently I hadn’t insulted him, which was nice.

  “Allie?” Leo said.

  My mouth closed. I shook my head. “Still here.”

  “So dinner then?”

  “Yes, but only if you don’t call it dinner and you promise to stuff Jimmy into a drawer.”

  “I promise,” he said solemnly.

  Smiling, I ended the call, just in time to hear a knock on the door. The window repairman was out there, hands cupped to the door, peering in.

  “Why do you care about this window?” he said. “The place is a dump. Even the a drunk tourista would not stop to vomit here.”

  “You don’t see anything?”

  “Just you and this broken window.”

  Chapter Five

  By the time I left the Cake Emporium Betty and Jack Honeychurch had a new window and I had a napoleon frosted with tiny pink and yellow wizards. The voice in my head—my mother’s—didn’t want me to take anything unless I’d paid for it, but my stomach reminded me that the little pastry was payment.

  I left money on the counter anyway.

  On the way back to my apartment I stopped at the More Super Market, which was super in name only. The Triantafillous brothers owned the More Super Market and the nearby—and marginally closer to super—Super Super Market. Super or not, I hadn’t stepped foot in the Super Super Market since the night Andreas, my fiancé, died while I was contemplating bacon at the deli counter.

  A couple of days ago Leo and had I almost died at the More Super Market. After the elderly Triantafillous brothers were arrested for murder and attempted murder, the sun rose and Stephanie Dolas, the world’s least enthusiastic cashier showed up for work and the store opened, just like always. Stephanie is barely out of her teens—a high school dropout. She’s built like a rail and paints her face on using stencils and the rainbow.

  “You’re still working here?” I asked her.

  With the Triantafillous brothers in prison I’d figured their businesses would grind to a halt. Somehow, like the old men themselves, their businesses managed to kick inevitability in the groin and live on.

  “Someone has to,” she said. “And now I can pay myself as
much as I like.”

  “That seems fair,” I said. The Triantafillous brothers were notorious for underpaying and overworking their employees. No one could blame Stephanie from dipping into the till for a legal wage.

  “That is what I said to myself.” A light came on in her eyes. “Is it true that you found a body?”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  She shrugged. “Everywhere.”

  Of course. Nothing traveled faster than hot, fresh gossip. It made light speed look like a real slouch. I went over to look at the wine and picked out a bottle each of retsina and mavrodaphne. One for dinner, one for dessert. I hoped Stephanie would forget about the dead man.

  “Is it true that he died playing with his salami?”

  Nope. She didn’t forget.

  “I didn’t see any salami,” I said. “Just Kyrios Wilson.”

  She took my money, caressing the notes as she pressed them into the cash register. Then she dropped a bag on the counter. Stephanie enjoyed having a job but she didn’t believe in working hard.

  “Not an actual salami,” she explained. “You know—his thing.”

  “I didn’t see any of that salami either.”

  More than one of Merope’s citizens had died during a fit of autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong, but Roger Wilson wasn’t one of them. To me it had looked like he’d died mid-yoga. One of the lying-down poses. Downward corpse or collapsed London Bridge.

  “Are you sure?” Her words were coated with a thin layer of disappointment.

  “Positive. There was no salami involved. Not even a slice of mortadella. Heard any other interesting stories lately?” Sooner or later, at least half the island filtered through the More Super Market, which meant Stephanie overheard lots of things that were none of her business.

  “They say Kyrios and Kyria Fasoulas want to get a divorce.”

  “I know. They’re fighting over their goat.”

  Stephanie’s thick black brows rose. “I heard there was an affair.”

  I’d been hearing the rumors for a while now, because one time Kyria Fasoula talked to a man who wasn’t her husband, and she had the nerve to hold that particular illicit conversation with one of the island’s shadier characters. But it wouldn’t hurt to see if Stephanie possessed more information. Here in the market, she was in a prime position to overhear all kinds of sordid conversations and distort the facts accordingly.