Feta Attraction

by Susannah Hardy

  Hank. Somehow I knew it would be Hank. Maybe because he was the only person I’d ever met here at Sunshine Acres. His red plaid flannel shirt was untucked over a white T-shirt, ratty at the neck where it could be seen under his ridiculously long beard. A packet of cigarettes bulged from the shirt pocket, a Native American logo showing through a hole in the threadbare fabric. Must be he bought his cigarettes at a discount from the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation to the northeast. A greasy John Deere ball cap, grubby faded blue jeans hanging loose in the butt, and scuffed work boots completed the ensemble.

  “What the . . . ?” He didn’t complete the sentence. Inky got up, rubbing his head, then launched himself over the boxes at Hank, catching him square in the chest with his shoulder. Hank went down, cursing. The dog came running, but Inky had enough momentum going to propel him out the door and past the dog. I snapped out of my stupor and jumped over Hank. He was lying on the floor moaning, but as I flew over him he managed to reach up and grab my leg. I went sprawling on top of him and heard the breath go out of his bony chest in a whoosh. I recovered and sprang up, none too gracefully, and slammed the door. Inky flew over to me with a chair, jamming it under the doorknob. There was a lock on the door but we didn’t have a key. I felt a little twinge of guilt and hoped Hank hadn’t broken a hip or anything even though he was involved in criminal activity and was probably holding Spiro here somewhere. His breath came in ragged wheezes, muffled by the door. His footsteps approached and the knob rattled as he tried it. He pounded on the heavy old wood, and I hoped it would hold. The dog barked like crazy and scratched at the door.

  Inky and I ran past the table. I grabbed the sheaf of papers. Too bad the computer wasn’t a laptop, or I would have taken that as well. We ran for the door. This one had a lock on the inside, which I set before we exited. Inside the store, I tested the lock; then Inky and I dragged over a crate full of maple syrup jugs and stuffed that under the doorknob for good measure.

  I peeked out the exterior door. The coast seemed to be clear, so we ventured out into the cool night air. I took a moment to align the edges of the stack of papers I had lifted and stuffed them into the front of my fleece jacket. I tucked the bottom of the fleece into the front of my jeans and zipped it all the way up to secure the papers. Not too stylish, but it should keep this evidence contained until I could deliver it to the police.

  We hightailed it back down the driveway, again keeping close to the trees. We jogged the quarter mile back to the side road where we’d left my car, then climbed in. My breath came hard and fast, and my side continued to ache. I vowed again to start exercising once my life returned to normal. Inky had not even broken a sweat. He was clearly in much better shape than I. He set something down with a dull thud between his feet.

  “What the heck is that?”

  “Pancakes for breakfast! Wanna come over in the morning?”

  It was already morning. I looked down and could just make out the outline of a gallon jug of maple syrup.

  “I couldn’t resist,” he said with a grin.

  Whatever. I’d always hated it when Cal said that to me, and here I was thinking it. Whatever.

  “We’d better get out of here.” I turned the key in the ignition and the engine started up. I did a U-turn and went as fast as I dared on the gravel road back out to the two-lane highway.

  “Have you got any cigarette papers?”

  “Huh?”

  “Have you got any cigarette papers?” he repeated.

  “Uh, no, Inky. Fresh out.”

  “That’s a shame. ’Cause look what else I picked up while we were there!” He held up one of the plastic bags that had fallen out of the broken box. “This looks like some decent stuff.”

  “Crap! Inky, is that drugs? In my car?”

  “Well, yeah. I was going to test it out tonight, then offer you some with the pancakes tomorrow,” he said defensively.

  Like I didn’t have enough trouble already. “Just keep the bag out of sight, okay?”

  “Duh! I am aware that this stuff is illegal, you know.”

  I was glad to hear that, at least. We had almost reached the village limits when a blue flashing light appeared in my rearview mirror. Damn! I was moving along, but I didn’t think I had been going more than a few miles an hour over the speed limit. I pulled over and took a deep breath to compose myself. “Inky, put that bag somewhere out of sight. Now.” He shoved it into the glove compartment. I was about to tell him to move it, but the cop was already striding toward the car. I certainly didn’t want the cop to see Inky fumbling around in there. “Let me do the talking,” I hissed.

  “Chill out, babe. It’s just a cop.”

  But it wasn’t just a cop. A face appeared in my window. A large, clean-shaven face under the brim of a big gray State Trooper’s hat. The same State Trooper who had visited me in my office not long ago. What were the odds?

  I rolled down the window. “Well, hello! Detective . . . Hawthorne, isn’t it?” I tried to sound cheerful and innocent but probably failed miserably.

  “Well, well, well. Mrs. Nik,” he said.

  “Just Georgie, remember?” I put on what I hoped was a winning smile.

  “Well, then, Georgie.” His voice was sonorous and sexy here in the night air and Inky leaned over to get a better look at him. “Do you know why I stopped you?”

  I hated that question, especially when it was delivered in that cop tone of voice. It made me want to slap him but that didn’t seem wise. “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “You’ve got a taillight out.”

  This was news to me. I’d have to send Russ out for a bulb tomorrow. “I didn’t realize it was out, but I’ll get that fixed right away.” I hoped that would be enough to satisfy him. It wasn’t.

  “What are you doing out this time of night?”

  Inky leaned over even farther, invading my personal space to a slightly annoying degree. “Hello, Officer,” he purred. “I’m Inky. From the tattoo shop in town?” I groaned inwardly. This was going to be a disaster. “My friend Georgie and I went to dinner at this fabulous Chinese restaurant up in Prescott.”

  The Trooper shined his light into the car and square into Inky’s face. He didn’t even flinch. “Where did you cross the Canadian border?”

  “The Burg, of course.”

  “And this was at what time?”

  My smile tightened.

  “Oh, about, oh, what time was it, Georgie?”

  I shrugged, unable to speak.

  “Oh, right, it was about nine o’clock or so, wasn’t it? Just after I closed up the shop.”

  I nodded stupidly, too dumbfounded to contribute any weft to the warp in the coverlet of lies being woven here.

  “Let me get this straight. You drove all the way to Ogdensburg at nine o’clock at night, then went over the bridge, cleared Customs, and went to Prescott for some Chinese food?” His skepticism was frightening. Couldn’t two friends go get some Kung Pao chicken without being suspected of something? My nervousness was replaced by something approaching affront.

  “You’ve obviously never had the food at Lucky Ling’s Buffet. When the craving for that General Tso’s chicken hits, you just gotta go!” Inky smiled broadly.

  “You know, Georgie,” Trooper Hawthorne turned the light back onto me, but was kind enough to point it down at my boobs rather than into my eyes, a bit longer than necessary, “I’d still like to talk to you about that little matter we were discussing the other day.”

  “She’s available! For anything,” Inky said, and I just knew he was winking. If there hadn’t been a State Trooper bulking up my driver’s side window, I would have elbowed him to shut up. Hard.

  “Stay here. I’ll be right back.” I watched him in the side mirror without turning my head as he strode back to his unmarked cruiser.

  Great, just great! “Couldn’t you have co
me up with a better story than that?” I asked. Actually, the story about going out to dinner wasn’t bad. We could have been at any restaurant and said we’d paid cash, and Detective Hawthorne might not have bothered to check it out. Crossing into Canada was another matter, though. One simple inquiry to the Border Patrol and that story was sunk.

  “It was the best I could do on short notice,” he fired back at me. “And I could see you were starting to go catatonic. Somebody had to step in. And besides”—he poked at me with one of his long slender fingers—“I was hungry and thinking about Chinese food! I was at the shop all day and only had a protein bar for dinner in between tats. It’s been a stressful night, you know!”

  That was an understatement. It had been a stressful several days, and the lack of sleep was starting to affect me. Come to think of it, I was ready to gnaw off my own arm if I thought it would taste good. I’d have to eat something when I got back to the restaurant. If I got back to the restaurant.

  I glanced in the mirror again. The detective was out of his car and moving toward us. He was illuminated from behind by the flashing of his Kojak light, and his jaw had a set to it that did not seem, um, happy.

  “Inky, hold on.” I’d made a sudden, stupid decision, but I was committed now. There was no way I could allow that Trooper to search this car and find that bag of dope. No. Way. In. Hell. I jammed the accelerator to the floor and peeled out. Inky flew to one side, then righted himself. In the rearview mirror I could see the Trooper pulling out his radio and running back to his cruiser. Good luck trying to call for backup, I thought. Detective Hawthorne was almost certainly the only Trooper around for miles. And the Bay’s police department would all be sleeping, whether an officer was on duty or not.

  I hung a quick right under the arch emblazoned “Welcome to Bonaparte Bay, Gateway to the 1000 Islands” in glowing pink neon. Inky squealed with delight. The Trooper’s siren wailed in the distance, getting closer. I turned down a side street, then down another, and pulled over. “Get out, and put that bag inside your jacket,” I ordered.

  “Get out?”

  “Just do it!” The sheaf of papers from Sunshine Acres was still in the front of my fleece and I resecured the load. “Follow me, and move!” Like he couldn’t run circles around me.

  We hightailed it through the night and didn’t stop until we arrived, panting, at the door to Keith’s boat shop. This would be the test of whether Keith was appropriate boyfriend material. I was going to have to trust him. And he was going to have to trust me.

  “Keep an eye out for that cop,” I ordered again.

  “You betcha!” How could he be so darn cheerful? I was now in as much trouble as I’d ever been in my life, and Inky sounded as though he’d just won a trip to Dollywood. My knuckles rapped softly on the door. I didn’t hold out much hope for Keith hearing me, since the door was at the bottom of a stairwell and it was three o’clock in the morning. He’d almost certainly be asleep. I tried the knob. The door was locked, as expected.

  We circled around to the dock and went inside the open boathouse. A half dozen boats in various states of repair were tied up to the cleats on the dock. If worse came to worst, we could hide out belowdecks in one of these. There was an empty slip at one end of the dock. I walked to the interior door, which I knew also opened into Keith’s apartment. Locked. Damn! I knocked again, not wanting to make any superfluous noise in case the Trooper had tracked us down, but there was no answer. The intercom next to the door made a god-awful buzz as I pressed the button, reverberating around the building and no doubt out over the water. Inky was examining the racks of hand tools on the wall. He did not seem the type to enjoy woodworking, but I didn’t know anything about him.

  “Inky, can I borrow your phone? I need to check my phone messages at the Bonaparte House.”

  He handed me the device, an expensive iPhone that I was unfamiliar with. “Er, you’ll have to show me how to use it too,” I admitted.

  “Here, the Bonaparte House is on speed dial.” He deftly pressed some buttons and I connected to the restaurant’s voice mail system. There was a call from Sophie, demanding to know why I hadn’t called her.

  Beep. “Georgie, I’m sorry I was so nasty to you earlier tonight,” Keith’s voice said. “What you do is your business. When can I see you again? I’m willing to challenge whoever you were with to a duel if necessary. I’m off to Syracuse to pick up some specialty wood, but I’ll be back tomorrow. Call me, okay? I miss you.” My heart gave a little tug.

  Beep. “Georgie!” It was Liza. “Would you like to explain, dearest friend, why you haven’t called me tonight to let me know you’re all right? Also why the Morristown Police Department, all one of them, called about a certain boat registered to me that was found drifting up the St. Lawrence? They have your purse and cell phone, by the way. I don’t care about the boat. I own a castle and have scads of money and I can buy a new boat if necessary. I cannot buy a new friend. Well, I suppose it would be easy to buy some new friends, but I cannot buy a new you. If you don’t call me by morning, I am going to have to have Chief Moriarty start dragging the river. Call me!”

  Aw, that was so sweet. She was worried about me. I could not ask for a better bestie.

  No message from the kidnapper, but I hadn’t expected one. Jack Conway was most likely still on the island, unless he had come to and called an accomplice to rescue him. Now, that was a scary thought, one that hadn’t occurred to me. If he had somebody working with him, I had absolutely no idea who that might be. Hank from Sunshine Acres seemed to be the most logical choice. We’d slowed Hank down, but he could certainly be out by now. He wouldn’t have had time to escape from his makeshift prison, put a boat in the water, and retrieve Jack. But he might be on his way.

  And now I knew why Keith wasn’t answering our knocks. He wasn’t even here. So much for that idea. Still, this wasn’t a bad place to hide out if necessary.

  “You can check your e-mail too, you know. I can’t go for more than a few hours without checking my e-mail.” Inky brought me out of my thoughts. “Here, let me connect to the Internet.”

  Inky pulled up the touch screen and told me to punch in my username and password. This was so much nicer than my own cell phone. The little machine was not only adorable but useful too. Someday, when I was not so tangled up with kidnappers, extortionists, drug-dealing aged hippies, and men trying to steal my husband, I could shop for a new phone.

  Okay, that last was a little excessive. There would be no stealing necessary. I was ready to set Spiro free, and myself in the process. What I would do with my newfound freedom remained to be seen.

  I scrolled through the spam until I got to a message from Cal. “I’m fine, Aunt Athena is watching me like a hawk! Heading out to work now. Tell Daddy and Yiayia I love them (U2, of course!). Say hi to Russ and Dolly for me too. Bye bye! (Heart, xxxxxooooooxxxxx) Cal.” She used the Greek word for “grandmother” to refer to Sophie. Fluent in both her parents’ languages, Callista could also speak quite good French. I did a quick calculation of the time differential and figured that she had sent it just an hour or so ago. That was a relief.

  I stared at the most recent e-mail, the one I had been avoiding by looking at the older stuff first. I took a deep breath. My apprehension must have showed on my face or else Inky was quite perceptive, because he took my arm and asked with concern, “What is it?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU UP TO? YOU ARE NOT FOLLOWING INSTRUCTOINS. YOU WERE NOT SUPOSED TO BRING ME A TABLE. I’M FEELING GENERUS SO I’M GIVING YOU A REPREEVE. BUT HE IS GOING TO START LOSING BODY PARTS IF YOU DON’T DELIVER THE GOODS BY NOON TOMOROW.

  Best not to tell Inky about the missing body parts. Panic welled up in me. If there’d been anything in my stomach, it would have come up too.

  If this nebulous treasure was not a priceless antique table, what the hell was it? Even if I did manage to f
igure it out, the bonehead had not told me where to bring the thing. My panic was replaced with anger. I was done. Exhausted, hungry, and done. The e-mail had been sent more than an hour ago. Jack Conway wouldn’t have been able to send this message—unless he hadn’t been unconscious for long and had a smartphone like the one I was now using. He hadn’t said anything about having been clocked by Sophie. Maybe he had big clumsy fingers and wasn’t good with the little keyboard, so he had to keep his messages short.

  I had to get back to the Bonaparte House and try to figure this out. Walking through the streets of the Bay to get there was out of the question. There were only about a dozen streets in the whole village and I couldn’t anticipate where Detective Hawthorne might be. Even worse, he might have been able to rouse another Trooper or one of the Bay’s tiny police force to come and join in the search. He would almost certainly have found my car by now. I’d purposely left it unlocked so that he could search the inside, thinking that would buy us some time to get to Keith’s. It was probably illegal for him to do so, but I was counting on the idea that he wouldn’t be able to resist. Not that he’d find anything other than an empty doughnut shop bag and some spare change in the center console.

  Once I got inside the Bonaparte House, I should be okay. I just wouldn’t answer the door. Which I hoped he wouldn’t break down. Without getting a judge out of bed he probably couldn’t get a search warrant before morning, but it was possible. A lump that seemed to be the size of a small eggplant formed in my throat. I was piling one bad decision on top of another and it was only a matter of time before they all came crashing down around me.