An Aegean April

by Jeffrey Siger

  “Remind me to take you up on that the next time your mother wants me to go clothes shopping with her.”

  “You love my mother.”

  “Of course I do, but I don’t even go clothes shopping with my mother.”

  Andreas propped himself up on one elbow. “Imagine how you’re going to feel when Sofia is old enough to say she doesn’t to want to go clothes shopping with you.”

  “That will never happen.”

  Andreas smiled.

  “Okay, wise guy, I get it. You think you’re going to get to use our three-month-old daughter as an ongoing lesson plan for me. Think again.”

  He rocked his head from side to side. “Well, I guess you could say it offers a symmetry of sorts…like how, whenever a certain five-year-old does something his mommy doesn’t like, she says, ‘He’s just like his daddy.’”

  Lila cocked her head at him. “Bastard,” and poked him in the stomach.

  “Such language. What kind of example is that for our daughter?” He shut his eyes, waiting for Lila to swat him with a pillow.

  Nothing happened.

  He opened his eyes and saw Lila staring at the ceiling. “What’s up?”

  “You made a good point.”

  “What was that?”

  “Asking me what kind of example I’m setting for our daughter.”

  “I was only kidding. You’re a terrific, loving mother.”

  She fixed her eyes on his. “But I once was a terrific, highly sought-after professional fund raiser. Now, I’m dying eggs, watching afternoon TV, and organizing play dates.”

  Andreas sat up, but didn’t say a word.

  “I feel like a Stepford Wife.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Oh, but I am. I’m not serving as the sort of role model I want to be for Sofia. Or for Tassaki.”

  Andreas bit at his lower lip. “Is it something I’ve done?”

  She sat up and patted his cheek. “No, my husband, this is not about you. It’s all about me.”

  Andreas raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, so what do you have in mind?”

  Lila shrugged. “I don’t know yet, but I’ve got to get back into the adult world. Not today, not tomorrow, but sooner rather than later.”

  Andreas’ phone rang on the bedside table.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t turn that off.”

  “I thought it was on vibrate.” Andreas swung his legs out of bed and reached for his mobile.

  “That was you, my love, not your phone.”

  “Glad your sense of humor’s back.”

  She scrunched up her nose and headed toward the bathroom. “It’s what gets me through the days.”

  The phone rang again.

  He didn’t recognize the number. “Hello, Kaldis here.”

  “Hi, it’s me, calling about the information you wanted on that hit and run.”

  It took Andreas a moment to recognize the voice of the Lesvos police commander. He spoke like someone concerned about his conversation being overheard.

  “Do you have it?”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “When can I get it?” said Andreas.

  “There are complications that make that difficult.”

  “What sort of complications?”

  “Let’s just say it confirms your suspicions but compromises a second innocent.”

  Your daughter. “I understand.”

  “How many are involved?” said Andreas.

  “I don’t know yet, but you know what they say about a fish.”

  “Yeah.” It rots from the head.

  “Gotta run.”

  The phone went dead.

  Andreas sat on the edge of the bed staring at the bathroom door. He wanted to continue the conversation with Lila, but sensed it best to let her decide when to raise it again. With the subject on her mind, he knew that one way or another she’d come up with a solution. Then she’d run it past him. That was the way she did things, and he was fine with that. She wasn’t the sort that let things fester unaddressed.

  His thoughts shifted back to his phone call with the commander. The Volandes murder had been far too intricately orchestrated to be spontaneous. Even though the Turkish police likely haven’t yet tied what happened last night back to the Volandes killing, by now they should be all over that Malik guy for anything he knew about his employee’s beheading. They must be, what with the Turkish media reporting that their police had made the connection between the flunky’s death last night and the slaughter earlier that evening of the Greek family in the café.

  Unless that Malik character’s protected.

  Whether or not he is, Andreas doubted the Turkish police would pass along any information to the Greek police that might harm Turkish tourism. Then again, since a Greek mother, father, and baby were murdered in Turkey, they’d expect intense Greek police interest, even if they weren’t likely to share anything meaningful until after they knew how it played out.

  The more he thought about it, the more Andreas realized his only shot at identifying the likely killer anytime soon was through the CCTV recording.

  But how to get it out of Turkey?

  l l l l l

  The police commander slid the cell phone back into his desk drawer. He rarely used it, and no one knew the number. Still, there was a risk. There was always a risk with something this big. If his daughter weren’t involved, he would never have called Kaldis. But she was involved, albeit innocently, in something dark and nasty, and if the shit hit the fan, they both might need Kaldis as an ally.

  He sighed. With Aleka being set up so masterfully, he wondered what they had in store for him. Strategists of the sort behind Volandes’ assassination didn’t go after the child of a powerful man unless they’d planned something for the father as well. Then again, getting her to sign the notes could have been her asshole boss acting on his own, thinking he’d found a way to cover his tracks should the overall plan blow up.

  She’d shared the contents of the folder she’d taken from her boss’ desk. The signed notes inside left no question that Ali was the killer. If anything went awry with that unjust accusation, then Aleka’s signature would have her taking the heat.

  Bastards.

  Definitely, her boss was involved, but that opportunistic bottom-feeder wouldn’t be at the top of the food chain on this one. There had to be someone else. The prosecutor? Hard to say. For sure he was an ambitious egomaniac, the type who, once having formed an opinion, refused to change it. But that didn’t make him corrupt. Only easily manipulated. A trait the commander had used more than once to his advantage.

  Aleka had rejected returning the report, saying it would make her party to ruining an innocent man’s life. He couldn’t disagree, yet the alternative raised serious threats to her own future, depending on her boss’ reaction to the missing notes.

  Assuming the forensic supervisor had another copy, but not one bearing Aleka’s original signature, he’d likely ask her to sign the copy rather than forge her signature, sign the notes himself, or leave them unsigned. If he asked her to sign, she could insist on reading them, and object to signing them as written. Her boss could hardly blame her for that.

  But if he suspected she’d taken the original, or word got back to him that Aleka had been bitching about what he’d done to her, he might panic and tell someone up the chain that they had a problem.

  The commander hoped his daughter would keep her anger in check, and her mouth shut.

  He shook his head. Too many maybes. And too many of them put his daughter at risk.

  Perhaps she should leave the island for a while.

  Good luck getting her to do that.

  Chapter Eight

  Evening church services in Athens on Holy Saturday generally started at ten, but midnight was the
high point of the service. By midnight, Saint Dionysios on Skoufa Street in Kolonaki would be packed. That was Lila’s parents’ church, and in the years since Andreas’ marriage, the entire family would gather there for services, including Andreas’ mother and his sister’s family. Only little Sofia missed the ceremony. She stayed at home with the nurse. Most Athenians who could afford it, tried to get out of Athens for Easter, many returning to their ancestral villages or summer homes, but for Andreas and Lila, staying in Athens meant keeping all sides of their family together in one place, and in doing so, they had established their own tradition.

  At precisely midnight, church bells rang out across Greece and even total strangers exchanged the traditional Christos Anesti and Alithos Anesti greetings that Christ had risen, kissed each other, and lit each other’s candles with fire flown into Greece each Easter from the Holy Flame of Christ’s tomb in Jerusalem.

  Most skipped out of church at that point rather than sit through the additional hours of services. They’d make their way home or to their favorite restaurants. For Andreas and his family, it meant another family tradition, one that had them all strolling to a restaurant in the National Gardens close by Andreas and Lila’s home.

  There, they’d challenge each other and friends with the customary smacking of dyed-red eggs, promising good luck to the winner, devour the traditional mayiritsa soup to break the fast, consume all sorts of salads, and drink lots of wine.

  Lila sent Tassaki home with Marietta around one-thirty, and called it quits herself a half-hour later, saying she had too much left to do to prepare for the day’s Easter dinner, the big feast of the week. Andreas rose to leave, but Lila told him to stay, so he did, until three.

  After seeing his mother and sister’s family into taxis, he walked home. He hadn’t checked his phone in hours. He pulled it out. Only Easter wishes. No bad news.

  A true Easter miracle.

  l l l l l

  Dana McLaughlin’s Easter holiday escape to 24/7 Mykonos was turning out far differently than she’d imagined. Her new friend Philipos insisted she join his family for Saturday evening church services, and after, for dinner at his son’s restaurant, a cozy, garden-like bistro tucked away close by their church.

  Philipos and his family had welcomed a foreign stranger into their midst, and a seemingly troubled one at that. This sort of village hospitality and generosity of spirit still surprised her, even though she’d seen the same shown by islanders to refugees on Lesvos, all without any expectation of compensation or public accolades for their efforts.

  People simply did what they instinctively knew to be the right thing: going out to sea to search for lives to save; waiting on the beach to help bring to shore the panicked, traumatized, and wounded clinging to criminally overloaded boats; struggling to give solace to those who lost a loved one on the crossing; and feeding the hungry, clothing the needy, and caring for the sick who remained penned up until the world decided what to do with them.

  She rolled over in bed and looked up at the ceiling. The unselfish doing God’s work in ungodly times, she thought.

  Sure, there were opportunists; tragedy drew them like flies. Scum robbing bodies washed up on shore, sex traffickers preying on the dreams and fears of unaccompanied children, criminals using the cover of crisis to plunder a community, and profiteers garnering outrageous sums for food, water, or things as simple as a cell phone battery charge. But the good far outnumbered the bad, and to the extent evil thrived, it was not the islanders Dana faulted, but those governments and their agents who publicly pledged to help, yet, once away from the cameras and microphones, dedicated themselves to keeping refugees far away from their nations’ borders.

  That’s why Mihalis died. His death was a message to anyone who dared tamper with the status quo, including Dana. Of course, her death wouldn’t warrant more than a passing mention in the news, and within a week, no one would care beyond her parents.

  Dana shut her eyes. She’d promised Philipos to be at his home for Easter dinner. She didn’t want to go, given her own moody ways, but that was precisely why she had to go. She needed to get out of this funk.

  “Funk it all,” she yelled. “Funk every mother-funking one of you,” banging her fists on the mattress.

  She opened her eyes and waited for her breathing to slow.

  Izmir raced through her mind. Everything had to tie back into Izmir. She just knew it. But how could she prove anything? Who could she turn to for help? There was no one to trust. That cop Kaldis had promised to help, but he didn’t seem to care about Ali spending Easter in jail.

  Whatever Kaldis’ motives, she couldn’t depend on him. She was back to where she couldn’t depend on anyone anymore but herself.

  But to do what? Find answers on her own? And answers to what? And once she had them, what would she do with them?

  She squeezed the pillow beneath her head, trying to see a solution. Then it came to her.

  She’d take what she found to the press. Not just any press—too many journalists were in bed with the politicians, pushing their patrons’ agendas. She’d take it to the international media. That was the only way. Embarrass governments into action through the press.

  She shook her head and laughed, I must be mad.

  She sat up and swung her legs onto the floor. I don’t even know where to begin.

  She looked at the time on her phone.

  I guess with Easter dinner.

  l l l l l

  Andreas felt uneasy about roasting a lamb on their apartment’s terrace, even though he’d used the rear terrace facing away from the National Gardens and Acropolis. It violated a strict apartment building rule against any sort of cooking on any terrace. But on this day, the building’s management benignly neglected enforcing that rule as a practical accommodation to the Greek national tradition of roasting lambs on Easter Sunday—provided they used electricity, not fire. Besides, virtually all the other residents in the building were away for the holiday, and Lila had invited those who weren’t, to join them. Still, Andreas expected a knock on his front door at any moment, along with a lecture on how things just weren’t done that way “in this neighborhood.”

  He stood on the terrace, drinking wine with Tassos, every so often tending to the slowly turning lamb by slicing off a piece to share with his buddy––just to make sure it was cooking properly.

  Andreas’ wife, mother, sister, mother- and father-in-law, and Maggie stayed inside with the grandchildren and a dozen other guests, enjoying a more formal sort of eating and drinking.

  “I don’t know about you,” said Andreas, “but if I eat too much lamb it upsets my stomach.”

  “That’s why you drink the wine,” said Tassos. “So you forget all about what it does to your stomach.”

  “The key is moderation,” said Andreas.

  “That’s a key for a lock I do not possess.”

  Andreas stared at Tassos’ stomach. “I can see.”

  Tassos flashed him an open palm, the Greek equivalent of the middle finger. “So where’s Petros? I thought he and Sappho would be here.”

  Andreas gestured no. “Our former team member is now a restaurateur. They opened a place together on Santorini, and Easter is a very busy time for them.”

  “He didn’t know how easy he had it as a cop.”

  “Yeah, easy.” Andreas sliced another bit off the lamb and held it out for Tassos.

  “Anything new on the Volandes case?” said Tassos, taking the piece of lamb with his fingers.

  Andreas gestured no. “On Tuesday I’ll see if I can figure out a way to get the Turkish police to turn over a CCTV recording that might help us.”

  “Good luck with that,” said Tassos. “I’ve a sense that who-ever organized Volandes’ assassination has a lot of political cover over there.”

  “For sure. Here, too.” Andreas told him of his cryptic conver
sation with the Mytilini police commander. “This is getting way too Machiavellian.”

  “He was Italian,” said Tassos.

  “Would you prefer if I’d said Thucydides?”

  Maggie slid open the terrace door, and stuck her head through the doorway. “How much longer until it’s ready?”

  “This is art, my dear. You can’t rush it,” said Tassos.

  “It’ll be soon,” said Andreas. “Let’s close the door before the smoke and smell off the lamb get inside the apartment.”

  Maggie stepped outside and slid the door closed behind her. “I need an ETA, guys, so we can get the rest of the food ready to go.”

  “Twenty minutes,” said Andreas.

  “By then we’ll have figured out the world’s greatest mystery,” said Tassos.

  “And what would that be?” she said. “How to have any lamb left for the hungry horde inside once you two are finished ‘testing’ it?”

  “Close,” said Andreas. “How to get the Turks to turn over a CCTV recording of a crime scene.”

  “What scene?”

  “We’ll get into all that on Tuesday. For now, let’s just concentrate on our cooking.”

  “Hey, you’re the one wearing the apron, not me.”

  Tassos laughed and pointed his drink at Andreas. “Sexist.”

  Andreas shook his head. “I meant I don’t feel like talking about the Volandes case anymore today.”

  “There’s a CCTV of his murder?” said Maggie.

  “We wish.” Andreas studied the lamb. “We think it’s our killer who got caught on a CCTV recording of the café scene where that Greek family got wiped out on the Turkish coast the night after Volandes’ murder.”

  “The recording’s all you want?”

  Andreas turned his head to stare at Maggie. “Why do I sense you’re about to make me feel like an idiot?”