by Leta Serafim
“Did you know Petros Athanassiou, the boy who was killed?”
“No, but I know his grandmother. She’s one of the most devout women in the parish. His mother had gone to Athens to live before I got here, but I heard a lot of rumors about her.” The priest wiggled his heavy body like a belly dancer, making it clear what the nature of those rumors had been.
“Were she and Petros in touch?”
The priest nodded. “He was always writing her, begging her to come home. His grandmother discussed it with me. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want her back.”
“How about Manos Kleftis? You know him?”
“Her lover?” His tone was contemptuous. Respectable women didn’t have lovers. Lovers were for sluts and whores. “No, I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure.”
After leaving the priest, Papa Michalis and Marina Papoulis worked their way through the neighborhood. Most of the residents were from Pakistan and did not speak Greek, but the one or two who did volunteered that everyone would be glad when Petros’ mother and her ‘man’ left. He apparently frightened them, though exactly why was hard to determine, given the language difference. A dog whose barking he’d objected to had disappeared. A man who’d argued with him over a parking place, his apothiki—storage space—had caught fire. That sort of thing. A group of ragged children were playing in a weed-strewn field, kicking a soccer ball around and yelling. Any one of them could have taken the dog, the priest decided. It probably meant nothing.
“When did Manos Kleftis come here?” Marina asked a man who was selling foreign newspapers at the kiosk by the church.
The Pakistani hesitated, worried. “Why you ask?”
“Petros Athanassiou,” the priest said.
“Yes, the dead boy,” the man said. “Sad.” Not looking up, he continued to sort the magazines and put them out on the rack at the front of his stand. “Mr. Manos, he came a month ago.”
“Has anyone visited him here?”
“A man. Foreign, not Greek.”
“What kind of foreign man?”
“I don’t know. I only saw from far away. Mr. Manos, he wasn’t home. Man, he went away.”
“What did he look like?”
He waved his hand above his head. “Like cartoon.”
* * *
“Cartoon? What do you suppose he meant by that?” Patronas asked when they reported back to him.
“Probably one of the archeologists. McLean maybe.” Marina Papoulis was silent for a moment, lost in thought. “They still would have needed someone else, someone who knew Chios.”
She turned and looked at him, her face serious. “I think they’ve been playing ‘papas’ with us,” she said, referring to the famous Greek con game. A card shark would deal out three cards, one of which was always a king, and begin moving them around. He’d take bets as to which card was the king. No matter how many times someone played, they would never find the king. The card shark always won.
Chapter 26
Then came a flood of evils.
—Greek proverb
Marina Papoulis looked at her computer screen again, then printed out the pages and put them in the envelope with the rest. Yesterday, after she and Papa Michalis had returned home, they’d gone over everything again. She’d read her notes back to him and he’d added his own thoughts. Poor Father. He’d dozed off at one point and cried out in his sleep. “Father, wake up,” she’d said, shaking him gently by the shoulder. “You’re having a nightmare.” He told her he’d been dreaming of the assault at Profitis Ilias, remembering the terrifying feeling of weightlessness as he plummeted to the ground.
At the travel agency that morning it had been quiet, and she’d used the time to type up her notes. She’d included her interpretation of what the Pakistani had told them. She’d even put in how the Englishman had threatened the priest. The pages she’d printed off the Internet were last. She turned off her computer and pushed her chair back. Tomorrow was August Fifteenth, a national holiday, and there would be feasting, followed by a festival with a live band and dancing in the streets. She needed to get home and start preparing the food. She was planning a surprise for Patronas, but it could wait. She’d drop it off on her way home from liturgy tomorrow.
* * *
Patronas had wanted to get to Profitis Ilias early, to explore the hole when the sun was high in the sky, but a fatal traffic accident near the harbor had taken precedence. A young tourist from Germany on a rented motorbike had been run off the road and killed by a hit and run driver. The Coast Guard had legal jurisdiction over the harbor and surrounding area, and it had taken hours to establish who would supervise the case. He and his men had gathered testimonies from eyewitnesses. Fortunately, a cruise boat had just docked and there had been a lot of people in the street. By five p.m. they had cleared the case and made an arrest: an eighteen-year-old Romanian laborer who’d been driving a truck for the first time. Concentrating on maneuvering the truck, he hadn’t seen the motorbike and panicked when he heard the crash. He was deeply sorry, he told Patronas in broken Greek. He hadn’t meant for it to happen.
After making the arrest, Patronas had summoned a high school teacher he knew who spoke German and returned to the station to call the girl’s parents and make arrangements.
The sun was down by the time he and Tembelos finally reached Profitis Ilias, the courtyard full of shadows. The hole beneath the well was even darker than Patronas remembered it.
“Do we have to do this tonight?” Tembelos asked. He was on his hands and knees with his head stuck in the hole, peering down into the dank space. “I can’t see a thing.”
Patronas cursed. Although they’d removed two more of the metal panels in an effort to see better, it had made no difference. The gloom under the well was all encompassing. He moved his police flashlight back and forth, trying to see what lay below. He could make out a battered stone staircase built into the wall closest to him, but that was it. Neither he nor Tembelos had acknowledged the presence of the staircase or made any move to see where it led.
Tembelos withdrew his head. “Easy to miss a step in the dark, hurt ourselves, if we do this now.”
Patronas let himself be persuaded. Truth was, he could use a break. He’d been up since four a.m. working on the hit-and-run, and he was worn out. He and his men had been occupying Profitis Ilias for weeks now. Aside from the assault on Evangelos Demos, he had seen no trace of the killer. Whoever the man was, he was clever. He wouldn’t be waiting for them tonight at the bottom of the hole.
Clicking off his flashlight, he stood up and dusted himself off. “Okay, Giorgos. We’re done here.”
Before they left Profitis Ilias, Patronas made sure the gate to the tunnel was bolted and that the lights were turned on in the courtyard and all the rooms. He ordered Tembelos to bring the police scanner up from his car and set it near the well. If the murderer was in the vicinity, he wanted him to think the police were still here, occupying the monastery.
“Turn it on high,” he told him. “Make it loud.”
When he’d finished, Patronas locked the metal doors behind them with the key Papa Michalis had given him and started down the path to the parking lot.
“Leave your police cruiser where it is,” he told Tembelos when they got to the lot. “I’ll give you a ride home in my Citroen.”
After he backed out of the parking lot, he returned to barricade the entrance and string crime scene tape across the gravel path. It wasn’t only the killer he wanted to keep away. He wanted to make sure Spiros Korres or his son weren’t up here looking for buried treasure while he was away.
“How about I take the day off tomorrow?” Tembelos said as they drove out. “It’s August Fifteenth. I’m entitled.”
“Sure,” Patronas said. “I’ll stop by here at some point, keep watch on the place. We can explore the hole after the holiday.”
* * *
The next morning Patronas drove to Profitis Ilias. All appeared to be as he’d left it.
Both entrances were locked and he could hear the police scanner, faint above the wind. He left and returned to the center of town.
Strings of colored flags decorated the campanile of the cathedral, and a makeshift amusement park had been set up in a vacant lot next door. Patronas could hear the whine of the merry-go-round and children laughing.
He stopped by the police station, hoping to take advantage of the holiday and call England while the place was quiet. “I’ll take the rest of the day off,” he told himself. “The investigation’s stalled. One day more or less won’t make any difference.”
The operator told him the museum where Devon McLean worked was being renovated and would be closed until September first. No one was available in the Archeology Department, either. She suggested he call back after August eighteenth, when the Director of the Institute of Archeology would return, having completed his summer studies in Sicily.
Patronas hung up the phone. Vrasta. Another day, then.
The files on Eleni Argentis and Petros Athanassiou were spread out on his desk. He’d set out a photo of Dimitra when he’d first taken over as Chief Officer. That was fifteen years ago. The photo had faded into nothingness and was now yellow and overexposed, sort of like their relationship. He had no desire to go home. Somehow the feast days hadn’t been the same since his mother died. Oh, Dimitra did her best, but as they were both only children, it was often just the two of them and sometimes her mother, which was no cause for celebration. Maybe they could go to Pyrgi tonight and dance in the square. It had been a long time since he’d done that. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d danced in Pyrgi.
* * *
Marina Papoulis turned onto the rutted lane that led to Profitis Ilias. Both sides of the road belonged to Spiro Korres. Most of his acreage lay fallow now, the red soil dry in the heat of summer. It was so quiet she could hear the cicadas buzzing in the cypress trees that marked the end of his property. She veered too far to the right, and the car scraped the prickly pears on the side of the road. Their thorns sounded like nails as they raked the fender. Eventually, the road leveled out and continued on. A crow was calling from one of the trees. The cawing echoed over the rocks. No one she knew lived out here.
Two plastic cones blocked the entrance to the parking lot. She got out of her car, moved them and drove in. She parked the car next to the police cruiser and rolled down the windows. The air was hot and still. There was another car parked there. She wondered who it belonged to. Stepping over the police tape, she started to climb up the path, thinking it would be a long trek in her straight skirt and new shoes. But it took her less than fifteen minutes to reach the monastery.
She was surprised to find no one there and the doors locked. “Chief Officer?” she yelled, banging on the door. “Yiannis?”
She walked around the monastery and tried the gate in the back. It, too, was locked. Puzzled, she called and called. She thought she heard something, a radio perhaps, and called again. “Yiannis, are you here?” But it was only dead leaves dragging across the stones in the wind. She walked down to the dig site but found no one there, either. It was getting hot. She thought she saw a man in the distance and waved to him. The sun was high in the sky. She’d have to leave soon.
She heard a faint tinkling in the distance and made her way toward it. A herd of goats stood together on a distant slope near where she’d seen the man.
“Chief Officer,” she yelled. “Yiannis?” There was no answer.
Hearing a noise, she ventured closer and called out again, more hesitant this time. “Yiannis?”
Chapter 27
What the wind gathers, the devil scatters.
—Greek proverb
Dimitra had been at work in the garden. The honeysuckle was tied up with string alongside the house, and the roses were freshly watered, the path swept. He’d forgotten she’d invited his cousin to celebrate with them and was pleasantly surprised to see him standing on the front steps.
“The prodigal returns,” his cousin said, clapping him on the back.
His cousin had brought a spring lamb with him, and the two of them spent the afternoon rigging up the spit and grilling it over an open fire. They passed a bottle of ouzo back and forth as they worked, laughing and eating snippets of meat.
That night the three of them went to Pyrgi to hear the music. The medieval town was decorated with lights and Patronas could hear the band warming up. The village was a special place, its walls covered by intricate black and white designs: triangles and circles, chevrons and flowers. The designs gave the village a playful, jaunty air that Patronas liked, a kind of fairytale atmosphere. The tables in the square had been removed, and people were forming circles and starting to dance. He grabbed Dimitra’s hand and they joined the long line, dancing the Kalamatiano, a popular Greek dance. Children were forming their own lines and imitating the grown-ups. The noise was earsplitting—the amplified music, the crowd, the screaming of the dancers as they whirled around on the cobbled pavement.
It was so noisy that Patronas didn’t hear his phone ringing until they returned to the car. Patronas answered, wondering who was calling at this hour. He looked at his watch—close to three a.m.
It was the dispatcher at the police station. “Chief Officer, you better get in here,” the man said.
“Why? What’s happened?”
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “Just come,” the man said.
When Patronas reached the station, he was surprised to see his entire staff assembled outside his office. Tembelos was out of breath, his face flushed. “I just heard,” he said.
“What’s going on?” Patronas studied the faces of his staff. No one would meet his eye. “What the hell is going on?”
It was Evangelos Demos who finally told him. “It’s Marina Papoulis. She never came home.”
Something stirred deep inside him. “What do you mean?”
“Her husband called. They’ve been waiting for her for hours.”
“Is Margarita there? The other children?”
“As far as I know.”
Patronas quickly called Marina’s house and spoke to her husband.
“She was in a big hurry when she left,” the man told him. “She said she had information for you and that she had to find you.”
“So she went to the station?”
“Or your house. All I know is, she was determined to find you.”
“Are there any relatives she might have visited on the way?”
“I’ve checked and they all say no. I called everyone I could think of, Chief Officer.” The man sounded close to tears. “No one’s seen her.”
* * *
“Dimitra!” Patronas screamed.
She was upstairs, hanging up her clothes. He could hear her humming one of the songs they’d danced to in Pyrgi. He stood watching her from the door of the bedroom. “Why didn’t you tell me Marina Papoulis was here today?”
“I don’t know. It slipped my mind.” She resumed her singing, dancing around in her slip, happy from their evening out.
“When was she here?”
“After I got back from church, early afternoon.” Her eyes clouded, the joy slowly leaving her face. “It’s not enough that she talks to you at the laiki; now she’s got to come here in her car, looking for you.”
She padded down the stairs in her slippers and opened a cupboard in the kitchen. Pulling out a china dish, she set it down on the table. He recognized the pattern as Marina’s. “Seems you were asking for svingis.” Dimitra spoke as if from far away.
“What happened when she dropped them off?”
“I told her I’d be sure you got them and thanked her in an appropriate manner.”
“What else did she tell you?”
“Something about the investigation. She had some papers for you. I told her to leave them here. But she said ‘no’; she needed to explain them to you.”
“Where did you tell her I was?” he asked, his voice tight.
“Profitis Ilias.” Unconcerned, she studied the donuts for a moment, then picked one up and began to eat it.
“My God, Dimitra, what have you done?” They’d discussed it. She had to have known how dangerous it was.
She turned and looked at him, a little defiant. “I told her you were up at Profitis Ilias. Just like I said.” Her face was greasy and she had a ring of sugar around her mouth.
“You bitch!” He knocked the donut out of her hand. “You saw your chance and you took it.”
She made a move toward him, but he pushed her back. “Get away!” he yelled. “You stay away from me!”
He thought about what she’d done as he ran to his car. In the past, Dimitra’s meanness had been small-minded, directed largely at those who were defenseless, people no one on Chios would defend … an unwed mother, someone’s homosexual son. It was well-hidden. Like the tentacles of a sea anemone, it only appeared occasionally, uncoiling and stinging the unwary victim, poisoning them with invective, a stream of malicious and hurtful words. She’d moved beyond that now. This time it wasn’t tentacles she’d displayed. It was claws.
Chapter 28
He who lives on hope, dies of hunger.
—Greek proverb
While Giorgos Tembelos and the others searched the area around Marina Papoulis’ house, Patronas raced to Profitis Ilias. She’d be all right. She’d have seen the barricade and turned back. She’d probably had car trouble. Yes, that was why she hadn’t made it home. Swerving in and out of traffic, he drove like the car was on fire, passing on the right side, honking continually.
It was nearly five a.m. when he turned onto the dirt road that traversed the Korres’ farm. Instead of driving in the direction of the monastery as he usually did, he drove toward the house. “Open up, Spiros,” he yelled, banging on the door with his fist.