She looked at me expectantly.
What? Oh, of course. She’d heard about Big Dom. I sighed and took a deep breath.
“Yes, I found him. Keith Morgan gave me a ride to Liza’s spa on the island last night. We noticed the body and tried to save Dom, but it was too late.”
She continued to stare.
“I am not having an affair with Keith and there was no black thong near the body,” I spat out, and felt deflated. As though I’d just been through a grueling interrogation session in some downtown precinct room with a detective in shirtsleeves asking tough questions, smoke rings floating through the air.
She watched me, hawklike, and apparently decided I was telling the truth.
“Let me know when you hear from Spiro.” She turned and left the room.
FIVE
I reopened the e-mail. The sender’s name was hidden, just as before, and while I’m fairly proficient with the computer and handle much of my day-to-day business that way, figuring out who the sender was would be beyond me. I saved it in a new folder and looked at the white envelope again. It had apparently been hand-delivered, probably this morning while I was over at Liza’s. Seemed like overkill in light of the e-mail with the same message.
I went back out to the kitchen and asked Dolly whether she had seen who delivered the envelope.
“Nope,” she said, the rhinestone butterfly fluttering in her hair as she expertly peeled one long, shiny red ribbon from an apple and plopped the denuded fruit into a pot of lemon juice and water to keep it from browning. “It was under the door when I got here this morning. I put it on your desk.”
“Did you and Russ come in together this morning?”
“No, we drove separate.” Of course, she’d been hoping to get to leave early so they’d each brought their own cars. “He came in after me.”
Dead end.
“Thanks, Dolly. Let me know if any more deliveries come in.”
I had just returned the envelope to my desk and locked it in the top drawer when Dolly buzzed me on the intercom. “Georgie, there’s somebody here to see you. I wish he was here to see me,” she said. I could almost see her waggling her eyebrows.
Coast Guard guy, I thought.
“Ask him if he wants a drink, and send him to my office, please.”
“Coffee, tea, or me?” I heard before she took her finger off the intercom button.
A couple of minutes later a tall figure filled the doorframe. “I decided on the coffee,” the voice from the phone call drawled. “I’m Captain Jack Conway from the Coast Guard station. You must be Georgie?”
He was wearing tan khakis that could have used a hot iron, a brown leather belt, and a faded Ralph Lauren polo shirt in a pinkish shade that on most men would have been an unfortunate fashion choice, but he carried it off. He offered a large, strong hand and I took it. A little tingle ran up my arm. “Captain Jack? Really?”
“Really. I’m hoping for a promotion soon, for many reasons.” He was about my age, with some rather cute crinkles around a pair of intensely blue eyes.
“I can imagine. Uh, can I have my hand back?”
“For now.” The little crinkles appeared again, and he dropped my hand.
A charmer, and damned good-looking. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with the events of the last day and a half, I might have enjoyed this little repartee more, but I had no patience for it now. “Captain, my staff will be arriving soon and we’ll be opening for lunch, so if we could make this quick?”
“Call me Jack.”
“All right, Jack, what is it you’d like to know? As I said, I only got a very brief glimpse of Big Dom, and I don’t know what I could tell you.”
“You were out for a ride with Keith Morgan last night.”
“Yes, the water taxi didn’t show up and he offered me a ride to Valentine Island, where I spent the night at the spa.”
“So you got in the boat and drove toward the spa. Did you make any stops?”
“No.”
“Meet anyone along the way?”
I thought. “I don’t remember any other passenger boats on the water, though there might have been one or two. There was a laker off in the distance, too far away for me to read the name.”
“Who saw the body first?”
“I did. I pointed it out and Keith pulled the boat over toward the cave. I stayed in the boat while he waded out to him. Keith rolled him over to see if there was any chance to save Dom, but he was already dead.”
“Did you notice anything about the body?”
“I could see it was Big Dom. He was wearing a black suit and a lot of gold rings and chains.”
“Could you see his face?”
“I tried not to look.” I thought for a moment. “His face was all discolored.” I shuddered. “And he’d hit his head on something.”
“Was there anything near the body, anything floating?”
Had news of the black thong reached the Coast Guard station too? “No, I don’t remember anything like that.” I held my breath.
No trace of amusement crossed his face. My breath came out in a whoosh.
“Then what happened?”
“I called nine-one-one. Rick and Tim from the village police came and sent us away. Keith took me to the spa. I spent the evening there, and returned this morning.”
He studied me for a moment. “I think that’s all I need for now. If you think of anything more, give me a call.”
He rose and handed me an official-looking card. “Good-bye, Georgie. I wish we could have met under nicer circumstances.” He took my hand again and looked down at me.
I felt strangely uncomfortable, yet as though I’d known this man a long time. Weird. “I’ll call if I remember anything more.”
He left by the kitchen door, and I admired the view of his khakis from the back. Hopefully Dolly let him go without too much of a fuss.
It was three o’clock before I got another break. The place was packed with tourists for lunch, most of whom wanted to know what the ghost hunters had found. Two ladies wearing a lot of twinkly beads and long swingy skirts claimed to be “sensitive” and asked, after a couple of tours around the three dining rooms and the restrooms, whether they could go upstairs and attempt to connect with the spirits inhabiting the house. I respectfully declined. I completed the work schedules for the following week, finalized the menus for Pirate Days, called in the payroll, and had enough other work to do that I was able to put the strange notes out of my mind for a while at least.
I e-mailed Cal in Greece that I loved her and to be careful, and to please check in with me by e-mail or phone every day. She’d roll her eyes at that, but she’d comply. I didn’t necessarily believe that anybody could get to her over there, but some caution on her part couldn’t hurt.
I grabbed a glass of ice water from the kitchen and headed upstairs.
I looked into Spiro’s room. Still no sign of him. I opened my door. The ghost hunters must have been conscientious there as well, because I didn’t notice anything amiss. I opened my closet door and was relieved to see that they had apparently not delved too far back into that terrestrial black hole—the Shaun Cassidy record was as I had left it, covered with an old quilt and guarded by more than a few oversized dust bunnies. My small bag remained on the floor near the bathroom where I had dropped it unceremoniously this morning. Unpacking would have to wait for later.
I went into the bathroom and washed my face with warm water and ran a brush through my hair. When I came back out, I sucked in a breath. Sophie was sitting in my armchair.
“Sophie, you gave me a start,” I said. Despite her claims of constant pain and infirmity, she could move like a cat when she wanted to.
“There is still no word from Spiro.”
“No.” There was no word directly from Spiro—only from his kidnapper. Maybe.
Is it kidnapping if the victim is a grown man? I wondered.
“It is time to start looking for him.”
“I’ve already started, Sophie.”
“He is not answering his cell phone.” Because it was sitting on my desk under a pile of papers where I had left it. I needed to look at that ASAP, but had gotten sidetracked with the Coast Guard guy and the influx of customers.
“Georgie, I’m worried.”
“I know. Me too.” He was a pain in the ass and not any kind of husband to me, but he was a good father to Cal and I did love him. As a friend. A friend I liked to annoy every once in a while just for the heck of it, but a friend nonetheless.
“Please try to find him.” Her eyes were imploring and looked straight into mine.
“Sophie, is he in some kind of trouble that you know about?” I had the feeling she was not telling me something.
She hesitated, apparently trying to decide how much, if anything, to reveal. “There is money missing from our accounts.”
She and Spiro had both names on their local accounts, but to my knowledge they didn’t keep huge amounts in them, preferring instead to keep most of their assets in cash to avoid paying taxes.
“How much money are we talking about?”
“Twenty-three thousand dollars.” It was probably more, but still, that was a substantial sum she was admitting to.
“When was the money withdrawn?”
“I don’t know. I need you to find out.”
“Have you looked at the bank statement?”
“I call the accountant, but he said he didn’t have it. He looked on last month’s paper and the money was there.”
“That means he withdrew it sometime in the last couple of weeks. I’ll check online for you tonight.”
“Thank you, Georgie. You are a good girl.” Spiro and Cal were her reason for living. I hoped I rated in there somewhere too.
“I’ll find him.” I had no idea how to go about doing that. The smartest thing, of course, would be to take my suspicions to the police. First, though, I needed to look at that phone. If there was nothing more sinister than Spiro off on a shopping spree, I did not want to get the authorities involved. Under the best of circumstances, living in a village like Bonaparte Bay was like living in a fishbowl. I wouldn’t subject Sophie to the resultant gossip if I could help it.
We descended the stairs and she headed for the kitchen. I went into my office and shuffled the papers around.
I opened up all the desk drawers, a rising sense of foreboding speeding up my movements. I got down on my hands and knees and looked under the desk, then pawed through the trash can. I felt around in my purse, and in every pocket. Spiro’s cell phone was gone.
SIX
I left Sophie supervising Russ and Dolly in the kitchen and took a walk down Theresa Street toward the docks. Midge was setting out racks of bright-colored clothes in front of the T-Shirt Emporium. She called out to me, but I merely waved and smiled as I went by. I did not want to be answering any questions about anything.
Before I left I put in a phone call to the state police. The dispatcher said that someone would call me back when the cruisers came back in from their rounds. Standard operating procedure in a village this size. My thoughts returned to the missing cell phone. There had been exactly five people in the Bonaparte House this morning, including me. I could think of no reason Sophie, Dolly, or Russ would snoop in my office. As far as I knew, I was the only one who’d seen the phone, so how would they know what to look for even if they did snoop? That left the Coast Guard guy. What had he called himself? Captain Jack. While he was charming me and I’d been staring at his broad chest and wondering what kind of six-pack he had under that shirt, could he have somehow found and pocketed the phone?
I passed the Sailor’s Rest. A sign on the front door indicated that the restaurant was “Closed for Remodeling.”
Would the Rest open again at all this summer now that Big Dom was dead? Sophie would certainly be happy if it didn’t. I wouldn’t put it past her to put her own sign underneath the “Closed” sign that read, “Try the Bonaparte House!” with an arrow pointing up the street. I did feel some sympathy for the staff, who wouldn’t be able to get in enough weeks to receive their winter unemployment checks if the place didn’t reopen. Big Dom hadn’t been married—at least there was no wife in town—but he might have had some grown kids. Hopefully the heirs would get the place up and running again as soon as possible, or do the right thing by the employees. I supposed we might take a couple on at the Bonaparte House, but we certainly couldn’t accommodate everyone.
I continued on down past the Express-o Bean and debated stopping in for a cappuccino, but decided against it. I crossed Theresa Street at the Thompson Street intersection (virtually no traffic at this time of the morning) and walked the few yards to the Tat-L-Tails Tattoo Salon.
The door was open and I walked in to the music of some tuned door chimes. Jim Morrison stared down at me, shirtless, druggy, and sexy, from a poster on the wall to my left. Tie-dyed T-shirts and leather vests hung on a rack underneath. The other wall was covered with pictures of diverse tattooed body parts, designs that could be chosen or samples of Inky’s work, and a framed New York State tattooing license issued to Ignatius LaFontaine. The front display case was filled with bongs and pipes and clips and rings and chains of varying size and some other hardware whose use I could not identify, nor did I want to. I was bent over, examining one particularly baffling item through the glass, when someone came through a set of swinging saloon-style doors.
“Can I help you?” a voice said.
I stood up and just missed banging my head on the counter. The air was thick with the scent of some kind of heady incense, or possibly something less legal. It was making me a bit dizzy. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Georgie, from the Bonaparte House.” I held out my hand.
He took my hand with his own exceptionally colorful one and looked at me, his big brown eyes wary. “I know who you are.”
“You’re Inky, right?”
“Yes.” He was covered from the neck down in tattoos, thankfully none on his face, although some sort of tentacle did reach up behind one ear, winding its way into the black stubble of his shaved head. It was fascinating, and I found myself wondering what sort of creature was on the other end.
“Inky, have you heard from Spiro in the last couple of days? He hasn’t come home and I’m worried about him.”
He tensed up, causing the little silver rings in his eyebrows to clink together. “Spiro who? Why should I know?”
“Inky, I know that you two are seeing each other. I don’t mind, honestly. It’s fine.” Mostly fine.
He visibly relaxed, letting out a sigh. “I’ve been so worried too! I haven’t heard from him in days!” he said animatedly, the words coming so quickly there was a time delay while my brain caught up to my ears. “He calls me every day at least twice whether we see each other or not!”
“How long have you been seeing him?”
“Oh, a couple of months.”
A couple of months? The gossip machine in this town works overtime and I was just hearing about this now? I needed to start paying more attention to what was going on around me.
“He came in for a tat in June and it was just lust at first sight.”
Good Lord. Spiro had gotten himself inked? Last I knew, he had a debilitating fear of needles. I couldn’t help myself. “What kind of tattoo did he get?”
“We decided on a small tiger’s head for his first tat, since he was kind of nervous about the whole needle-slash-permanency thing, and he’s such a passionate pussycat, you know? I did a nice job, if I do say so myself. You haven’t seen it?”
“Errr, no.”
“Oh, right. Well, I guess maybe you wouldn’t since it’s on his—”
“Stop!” I wanted to cover my ears and sing “La-la-l
a” till he had finished speaking. This was too, too much information.
I framed my next words carefully. “You two are so close, I bet you talk about everything?”
“Oh, yes, everything.”
“So, what’s going on with him?”
“Well, he’s been very excited lately, and I don’t mean just by me!” He winked and I nodded, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. Inky seemed like a nice guy and I could feel myself warming up to him. He was quite good-looking, with tanned skin—at least, the part that wasn’t inked looked tan—and a buff physique. He wasn’t the intense type I would have expected Spiro to take up with. But really. What did I know?
“What had him so excited?”
“He’d found it. I mean, I never saw it but he said he knew where it was, and it was going to make him super rich. I’ve heard stories since I was a kid about some kind of treasure in that house, and now it’s true!”
Here was this story again. If there was something valuable in that house, it would have been found by now. It was just a legend. Still, I had to ask. “What did he find, Inky?”
“That’s just it—I don’t know and it’s killing me! Spiro promised to tell me what it was as soon as he cleared up some business. We were planning to go away in October for a long weekend to this adorable bed-and-breakfast I know in Vermont, and he invited me to come to Greece this winter. I’m hoping he might propose. Unless I propose myself . . .”
Hmmm, I could think of one rather large impediment to their getting married. Namely me. And was he planning to keep Inky at the house in Greece? We’d all be one big happy family, wouldn’t we? Maybe we could get our own reality show. “Did he say where he’d found it?”
“No, just that it was in the house somewhere. ‘Hidden in plain sight,’ was what he said.”
That wasn’t much help. “What was the business he had to take care of?”
“Oh, I don’t know. But it did seem to be bothering him, if you want to know the truth.”
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