Stolen Ghouls

by Alex A King

  “He said I could take what I want and burn the rest. Since arson isn’t my thing, I figured I’d throw a garage sale.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t throw a garage sale?”

  “Promise me you will leave everything as it is for now.”

  “You’re not at all forthcoming. I like that about you.”

  He smiled. I didn’t realize he could. “Go. Things can wait. People cannot.”

  On the way to the hospital, I reran the mental video of the morning’s events. I paused at the moment when the Man in Black lifted me off the floor. Swearing on my life would be overkill, but I was fairly certain that during the moments between my head being used as a piñata and my recovery, someone had helped themselves to Wilson’s empty cardboard box. Weird, but maybe someone really wanted that box for a shipping emergency. Who would steal an empty box?

  I put the box thief’s name on my list—Box Thief, of course—and jotted down a related question: Who stole the box’s contents?

  Thirty minutes later my bladder was empty but I felt like I needed to go—and now.

  “Blame the contrast dye,” the technician told me. “Most people who have a CAT scan suddenly want to ouro.”

  I didn’t wet myself, so things were looking good. Hopefully the doctor would be able to scratch brain damage off the list

  “Can you check my back while you’re at it?”

  “For what?”

  “Signs of an impending hump.”

  He chuckled. “You won’t have to worry about humps until you’re as old as Kyria Aspasia.”

  Yikes.

  “You have a hard head like you grandmother,” the doctor said when he checked out the results. “Try not to get hit in the head again, eh? Probably you should learn to duck.”

  “Yiayia got hit in the head?”

  Doctor Pappadopoulos chuckled. “All the time. She would play hide the meatball with the wrong man, and sometimes with the wrong woman, then—bam!—she would show up here for a sticky plaster and vinegar.”

  Greek folk medicine is twenty-five percent vinegar, twenty-five percent rubbing alcohol, twenty-five percent warmer clothing because if you do not dress warmly you will catch your death, and twenty-five percent eating more because you are too skinny.

  “Thanks—I think.”

  According to everyone, including my grandmother herself, she was the island motorcycle. Sooner or later everyone took a ride, and she was a zippier ride than the village bicycle. That didn’t mean I wanted to hear about that part of my grandmother’s history. I liked to pretend my family had all arrived in the world the way the Greek gods intended, springing from our forebears’ foreheads, no nookie involved.

  On that Much Too Much Information note, I gathered my things and fled the room, promising to wear more clothes now that the weather was turning cool.

  The Greek language is filled with colorful and physics-defying expressions. Greeks eat wood when they’re on the wrong end of a spanking. Things don’t go haywire for Greeks, they turn into a whore’s fencepost. But sometimes I drew on the earlier half of my life—like right now. Since I was already at the hospital, I decided to kill two birds with one stone, even though I had no stones and as far as I could smell there were no birds around. I couldn’t say that for most places on Merope. Fowl tended to come and go as they pleased, health codes be damned.

  The scan was the first bird. The second bird was Kyria Fasoula, who was somewhere in this hospital. I located one of several staff members whose hobbies involved local gossip and being helpful, and before I knew it I had the injured woman’s room number.

  Pappas was stationed outside her room in last night’s clothes and this morning’s stubble, with only a cart of bedpans nearby for company. Before he spotted me, I pivoted and bought coffee and a kourlouri—a soft round pretzel dipped in sesame seeds—and carried it back to the tired cop.

  “Marry me,” he said.

  “Can’t. I have to floss my cat.”

  “Is that a sex thing?”

  I snorted and nodded to the private room’s door. “Can I see her?”

  He bit into the koulouri. “Go ahead,” he said, sesame seeds and dough mushing around his words.

  Kyria Fasoula was in battered but not broken condition. A quick glance at her chart—the Merope hospital kicked it old school—told me the damage was all surface and that she wasn’t in any immediate danger, provided she stayed away from swinging fists.

  My gaze fell on her clothes, neatly folded and stacked on top of an institutional bedside table. Getting booped on the head had rattled things loose, and I suddenly remembered what Kyrios Fasoulas said about his wife skulking back from Wilson’s house when she was attacked. As Roger Wilson’s bed buddy she likely had access to his house. A lover would be thoughtful enough to bring a package inside and close the door in the way out. Maybe the curiosity overwhelmed her and she ripped the box open. Greek curiosity was a force of nature.

  One of my hands felt around inside her handbag, which was slouched against the pile of clothing.

  She opened one eye as wide as the swelling would allow. “What are you doing?”

  “I dropped a contact lens.”

  “In my bag?”

  “They can really bounce.”

  My fingers touched something cool and hard. They closed around the object, pulled it out. Well, well, well, one of Roger Wilson’s pink jars.

  “Steal something, did you?”

  Her chin jutted out. “I stole nothing.”

  “Kyrios Wilson has hundreds of jars like this one, so it’s not a stretch for me to believe you took this from his place.”

  “Had. He is dead.” She tried spitting the words out but only managed to drool.

  Pappas came in, the stump of a koulouri in one hand, coffee in the other.

  “What are you doing?” he asked me.

  “Have you heard the good news about my lord and savior, Tupperware?”

  “I said you could see her, not talk to her.”

  “She talked first!”

  He looked at Kyria Fasoula, who shrugged. The last bite of koulouri went into his mouth as he tried to figure out what to do with this information.

  While he did that, I inspected the jar in my hand. It was pink like the others, with the same flat cork lid. Heavier than it looked. Substantial. Pretty. Wilson didn’t strike me as a man who liked to collect pretty things, but here we were. I yanked the lid out and peeked inside. Empty.

  Outside the room, something rattled. My head jerked up.

  A bedpan zipped past the door.

  My eye twitched as the metal pan collided with a hard surface. Pappas rocketed into the corridor, just in time for a second bedpan to whizz past his head. He dodged a stretcher rolling toward him at the speed of fast-moving donkey.

  “Earthquake!” he announced.

  Nope. Not an earthquake. That didn’t stop everyone running for doorways and desks, despite the fact that all Greece construction was required to be earthquake proof, given the volatility of the region. The tornado-maker was back and it was throwing a tantrum.

  Chairs rolled. Charts cartwheeled. Writing utensils danced in the air before stabbing the curtains. Something jolted my arm. The jar flew out of my hand and sailed toward the window. It bounced off the glass. I leaped across the room, skidding into the wall. The jar landed neatly in my hand. Heart pounding, I stuck it in my bag for safekeeping.

  Kyria Fasoula was wide-eyed and pale. Or she would have been if her face didn’t look like a side of raw gyro meat. “It is going to kill me.”

  “No, it’s following me around like a puppy,” I assured her. “One of those puppies that chews things like garbage and upholstery.”

  She gaped at me, eyes wild.

  Salt shaker in hand, I shook a salt circle around her bed. “You should be good until someone sweeps the room.”

  The raging in the corridor stopped. Everything that was airborne fell out of the air, hitting the floor with a vari
ety of clangs and pings. Pappas did the good cop routine, making sure everyone was safe.

  No casualties. Frayed nerves and quaking knees, mostly. The invisible presence shaking things up wasn’t out to hurt people—not most people—but it was awfully interested in me.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Now go away.”

  “Not so fast.” While Pappas was busy running around like a chicken with a severed head, I seized the edge of a chair and sat. “Do you know who did this to you?”

  She closed her eyes. Swallowed. Turned her head toward the wall the way my elementary school friend Natalie’s dog did when it was in the tub. “No. It was dark. I saw nothing.”

  “And the jar? I’ve seen Kyrios Wilson’s house. I know he collects them.”

  “I wanted a keepsake, you understand?”

  “Because you were sleeping with him?”

  She gave me a look. The look said she was sorry he was dead but she wasn’t a bit sorry about the affair.

  Pappas swung back in. He wasn’t alone: Leo was with him.

  Ruh-roh.

  His eyebrows shot up when he spotted me perched on the chair.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Head injury,” I said. “I came for a scan and I guess I wandered into this room.” My expression turned vague, distant. “Where am I? Who are you?”

  “Convenient.” Being a badass went with his job description, but Leo couldn’t stop the smile from twitching his lips.

  “Okay, you got me. Kyria Fasoula’s children want her and their father to come to a custody arrangement.”

  His forehead sprouted fault lines. “Aren’t they adults?”

  “A custody arrangement for their goat.”

  “Hercules is mine,” Kyria Fasoula said as emphatically as a person with a fat lip could.

  “Hercules is the goat,” I said in case anyone was confused.

  Leo raised his eyebrows at me. “Your life is a roller skate.”

  Another fun Greek expression that meant my life was a train wreck.

  “Not all the time. Just since you showed up again, actually.”

  “I suppose Kyrios Fasoulas won’t budge either?”

  “Nobody wants to give up the goat.”

  “Pappas,” Leo said.

  Pappas had been staring out the window. At the sound of Leo’s voice he jumped into action and held the door open.

  Oh. It was for me. I was supposed to do the leaving. A real bummer because I had a list of questions a kilometer long for Kyria Fasoula. I suddenly remembered Leo’s stint as a babysitter. “Did Toula pick up Milos and Patra?”

  “Just after midnight.” He grinned. “Your niece kept asking Jimmy if he wanted to phone home.”

  Chapter Nine

  On the way home, I swung by the main road, hoping to catch a glimpse of Kyrios Moustakas and his walker. The old man was still missing, which worried me, despite Kyria Aspasia’s sworn oath that she’d seen him this morning, dangling member and all. There were other ghosts on the island I could talk to, but I tried not to interact too often, in case they decided to amp up contact. I had a limited amount of sanity, and not a ton of desire to listen to the dead yap.

  What I was hoping for was information about the invisible whatever-it-was following me around the island, performing annoying and inconvenient deeds. With Vasilis Moustakas gone, Betty was my best hope. Betty knew things—mystical things.

  I swung by the Cake Emporium. The Closed sign told me I was out of luck.

  I projected Betty’s name as hard as I could in my head and willed my phone to ring.

  Yoohoo, Betty?

  Cheerio? Pip-pip?

  Was that English enough?

  My phone didn’t ring. And it didn’t ring for the five minutes I stood around waiting.

  Betty and her unusual store were relatively new additions in my life, but I knew this wasn’t like her. There was trouble in River City. It didn’t rhyme with T and start with P but it definitely started with some letter in the Greek alphabet.

  I called Sam Washington, my friend and former boss, and told him I needed an address or at least a phone number for the Honeychurches.

  “Woman, Jesus Christ worked miracles, but even he needed water before he could make wine.”

  I grinned into my phone. “Are you saying you can’t do it?”

  Sam snorted. “I’m saying if you want wine, give me water.”

  I gave him everything I had: Betty’s name and the Cake Emporium’s address—which wasn’t so much an address as it was a series of directions, including third alley on the left, past the one-eyed cat, and ignore the spitting senior citizen who thinks he’s a llama.

  “I’ll see what I can do with this.”

  “I believe in you,” I said, which was the truth. In front of the keyboard, Sam is a magician. Sam wound up on Merope while searching for a missing person. He fell in love with the island and decided to stay. It happens.

  “Yeah, you better.”

  As soon as I was done with Sam, my phone rang. I answered in case it was Betty. Nope. Leo.

  “What are you doing?” he wanted to know.

  “About what?”

  “Pappas said you talked to Kyria Fasoula before I showed up at the hospital.”

  Oh. That. “I’m investigating a murder. What are you doing?”

  “Investigating an assault.”

  “Any suspects?”

  “She won’t say but we’re looking at the husband.”

  “It wasn’t Kyrios Fasoulas.”

  “You sound sure,” he said.

  “Because I am.”

  “You know something I don’t?”

  “Maybe. Tell me what you know and I’ll tell you whether I know it or not.”

  “I’m the police. I have ways of making you talk.” His voice came out honey-dipped. I might have shivered—in a good way.

  “Kyria Fasoula wasn’t home when she was attacked. She was walking home from Kyrios Wilson’s place,” I said, revealing an incomplete set of my cards. He was persuasive with his big shoulders and his everything else, but one of us was investigating a murder and it wasn’t him.

  “Any idea why?”

  “They were neighbors. Maybe he borrowed a cup of sugar. Maybe since he was dead she went to get it back before the locusts swarmed.”

  “That’s a terrible theory.”

  “Not on Merope it’s not. People here thrive on pettiness. It makes them happy.”

  “You still haven’t told me anything.”

  “Neither have you.”

  Laughter coated his voice. “I’m the police. I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  “And I’m a small-time local businesswoman working on a murder case the police are too busy and important to investigate.”

  At a narrow point on the road, I stopped to let a gaggle of widows past, greeting them individually. They beamed. Some of the smiles even had teeth in them. As they passed, the smiles switched off and the chatter resumed. My name was bandied from mouth to mouth. Now that I was on the other side of thirty they were sure I was going to die without a husband. This from a bunch of husbandless widows.

  I pushed off again.

  “How is the murder investigation going?” Leo said in my ear.

  “I’m at the part where I have no idea whodunit.”

  “Whodunit?”

  “English expression.” I translated for him.

  “That’s because it was a heart attack.”

  “Murder,” I said. “Definitely murder.”

  “Because his ghost told you. I have my own theory. Would you like to hear it?”

  “Only if it’s good.”

  “My theories are all good,” he said. “They gave me a badge that says so.”

  I snorted. “Go ahead.”

  “Maybe your ghost assaulted Kyria Fasoula for stealing that cup of sugar.”

  “Ghosts can’t assault people, especially not Kyrios Wilson.”

  “Why not?”

&nb
sp; “He’s too new, and besides, I never met a ghost that could give someone a black …” My words trailed off. Dots tried to connect. Mostly they failed.

  “What?”

  “There’s something else weird going on.”

  “The earthquake at the hospital wasn’t an earthquake.”

  “What was it then?”

  “I don’t know, but if you ask the island’s seismologists I bet you ten euros they’ll tell you there was no quake this morning—especially not one that was limited to the corridor outside Kyria Fasoula’s hospital room.”

  Although I couldn’t see him, I could hear him banging his head on the wall. The wall was winning. “So you’re asking me to believe that something that may or may not be a ghost was at that hospital, imitating an earthquake?”

  A ghost I would have seen. Instead, there had been nothing.

  “It wasn’t a ghost, and I’m not asking you to do anything.”

  Phone to my ear, I wheeled my bicycle past Kyrios Yiannis the dead gardener, parked it in the lobby, jogged upstairs to my apartment while Leo quietly stewed. No infestations—Jimmy or ghosts—but the place still reeked of coffee and garbage. I threw the windows wide, okay with freezing off balls I didn’t have, under the circumstances.

  Leo blew out a long, exasperated sigh. “I have to go, but let’s talk later.”

  My inner realist stepped up to the plate. “We can talk but I don’t know if it will help. We’ll never be on the same page about the ghost thing. I like you a lot, don’t get me wrong, and I think you are seriously hot—”

  “You think I’m hot?” His voice had a grin in it.

  Despite myself, I grinned. The man was contagious. “That’s not the point. I’ve been seeing ghosts since I was a little girl and that doesn’t look like it’s going to change any time soon. So you should probably find a nice normal woman to date.”

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  “I kind of thought that was a lot of words—for me.”

  There was a short pause—the pregnant and way overdue kind. “We’re not done with this argument. But right now I have to go.”

  Yeah, I thought I as he ended the call, we’re done.

  While I waited for Sam to get back to me with Betty’s contact information, I squared away a handful of other clients who wanted normal things, like nostalgic items from their youth and sports memorabilia. I secured their prizes, let the clients know their coveted purchases were on their way, and went to refill my coffee cup—with the homemade stuff. I tried not to suffer over at Merope’s Best more than once a day.