Feta Attraction

by Susannah Hardy

  “Inky, we have to get back to the restaurant. We can’t go on foot. Do you know how to drive a boat?”

  He looked at me as though I had two heads. “Are you kidding? Of course I know how to drive a boat. I’ve lived my entire life on the river.”

  I had lived my entire life on the river, and I had never driven a boat until a few hours ago. “I think we should take one of these boats, preferably one that isn’t broken, and go around to the docks by the boat tour office. But we won’t get out there. We’ll go a little bit farther up the shore and go ashore over by the Taj Mahal Motel. Then we can sneak through the back alley and go in the side door. If the cops are watching anywhere, they’ll be watching the front and back entrances.” I only hoped that was true.

  “What about Spiro?” he demanded. “You said we were going to get him back tonight.”

  “I’m working on it.” I had no idea what I would do once I got back to the restaurant, but I knew I couldn’t stay here.

  Inky took the little flashlight I offered and examined the boats tied up at the docks. “This one looks like our best bet. It’s small and won’t make a lot of engine noise, and we won’t need the deep water at the docks to land it.”

  “Is there a key?” I could not imagine that Keith would leave the keys in the ignition when the front of this boathouse was open to the water and anyone could walk in. Like me.

  “Honey, I don’t need a key. I’m a Bassport boy, remember?” Oh right, his childhood training had apparently included petty crime, or at least he had learned the skills for it. “Let’s see here.” He opened the engine hatch and shined the flashlight inside. “Oh, this will be easy. A piece of baklava, as my Greek god would say.” I felt a little twinge of nostalgia. I’d called Spiro that a long, long time ago. I didn’t miss the man, but I missed the feeling.

  “What are you doing? Don’t you have to crack open the steering column or something?” I’d seen that on TV and in movies.

  “No! That’s why this is so easy. See, in a car, the key also unlocks the steering column. On a boat the key just activates an electrical switch. So all I have to do is disconnect these wires back here and splice into them. Any Bassport kid can do this by the time he’s ten.”

  I was intrigued by this mechanical skill Inky possessed. He was going to be a valuable addition to the family. Now I wouldn’t have to rely on Russ all the time when stuff broke around the house. “See if you can find me a pair of wire strippers, will you?”

  Wire strippers? I did not have the foggiest idea what wire strippers were. “Uh,” I faltered. “What do they look like?”

  “They’re like a pair of flat pliers—oh, never mind,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a shiny red Swiss Army Knife and fiddled with something in the engine compartment. In less than a minute the engine turned over. “Okay, grab a couple of life jackets and let’s get this show on the road.”

  We found vests and put them on. I climbed into the boat and took a seat. Inky sat in the captain’s chair and put the engine into reverse, backing us expertly out of the boathouse. He turned us around and we headed out to the main channel. Despite my newfound skill with watercraft, I was happy to leave this particular trip to someone with more experience. It was one thing for me to wreck Liza’s boat, but it would be quite another to damage one belonging to one of Keith’s clients. I felt incredibly guilty at having borrowed this one, but I saw no alternative.

  We ran at a slow speed so as to keep the noise down, with just the smallest possible light illuminating the black water ahead of us. It was close to dawn.

  We passed the docks, scaring a seagull from its roost atop the giant paddle wheel affixed to the back of the Lady Liberty II tour boat. Inky cut the engine. We drifted into the shore near the Taj Mahal Motel and Inky stepped out into the cold water, rope in hand. He found a small upright post to serve as a cleat and tied off the boat. Then he came back and offered me a hand. Mechanically inclined and a gentleman too. I moved to the front of the boat and stepped over, a bit awkwardly, onto dry land.

  Seeing no observers, we made our way the short distance to the motel. We cut under the motel’s carport and past the pink-painted office, keeping close to the unlit back of the building. From the end unit it was only a few yards to the Bonaparte House. I glanced involuntarily up at the windows, looking for any signs of activity, human or supernatural, but everything looked normal. We arrived at the emergency exit, which fronted on a strip of lawn facing the adjacent ice cream shop. If we ever had an evacuation-worthy emergency, there would be quite a traffic jam in this narrow alley.

  My hand reached for the window in an attempt to raise the sash from outside so we could crawl in. Inky waved his hand at me and pointed to a rock to the left of the flat, irregular-sided slab of reddish sandstone that served as a stoop. He bent down and turned over the rock, producing a key, with which he swiftly and silently opened the door. Once inside, he turned to me and whispered, “Spiro put this there for me.” Didn’t take a genius to realize he’d used it more than once.

  I decided not to comment. “Come with me,” I said, my voice low.

  “Can I get something to eat?” he whined. “I’m starving!”

  I was hungry too. “Sorry, but that would mean turning on a light in the kitchen. If that cop is watching the parking lot waiting for us to try to come in that way, we’ll be seen through the door.”

  I could feel his pout in the dark. “What are we going to do, then?”

  “Come on.” I led him past the restrooms and through the front dining room. The sun had not yet breached the horizon, but the sky was lightening in preparation, and the room was dimly lit. Napoleon gazed down at us, incarcerated in his heavy gilt frame.

  “That picture gives me the creeps,” Inky said.

  Funny, it had never bothered me, but I took another look and could see the faint menace in the hard thin line of that mouth. A frisson went through me and I shuddered.

  We passed my office and headed toward the kitchen. I felt bad to be leading Inky toward the makings of a nice sandwich and a cup of tea without delivering, but it couldn’t be helped. I opened a door and switched on the light.

  “What are you doing?” he cried.

  The sudden illumination after so long in the dark made me squint. “Don’t worry,” I said as we descended the unpainted wooden stairs down into the damp cool of the basement. “There are no outside windows or doors down here, so we’re safe to turn on the light. The walls are solid rock, eighteen inches thick, so sound is not going to carry outside. Remember, this house was built for Napoleon to hide out from the monarchists and the revolutionaries, and as far as I know it’s solid as a fortress.”

  “Well, okay, then. Anything to eat down here?” He looked around at the boxes of canned goods and pasta and extra china and glassware we stored in a rough semicircle around the outer walls. His gaze landed on a door. “What’s in there?”

  “Oh, that’s where we store the expensive wine.” He made a beeline for the door and flung it open.

  “Ooh, I wondered where Spiro was coming up with this stuff. This is a good one!” He held up a bottle of expensive French champagne. “Let’s have a glass!”

  The idea was tempting, even at five o’clock in the morning, but I needed to keep a clear head, and so did Inky. “Let’s wait until we find Spiro, okay?”

  His face fell, but then brightened. “A welcome-home party! That is such a good idea! We can make some horse doovers to go with it.” I thought he was making a joke, but he did grow up in Bassport and I couldn’t be sure. “How are we going to find him?”

  No clue. He handed me the bottle and I replaced it on the shelves in the large closet. I felt a little draft of air as I did so. Air? How could there be a draft of air when there were no openings to the outside? We’d never had problems with water seeping in. As far as I knew every stone in the rough-cut foundation was s
ealed with mortar. I had made sure the cellar door was closed behind Inky.

  The air seemed to be moving inside the wine closet. “Inky, come here, will you?”

  He had been foraging among the boxes looking for something edible, but returned to the closet. “Yikes, it’s cold. Do you have some kind of cooling system to maintain the temperature for the vino?”

  Nope. Even on the hottest day of summer it was fifty-three degrees down here.

  “Look around in here and see if you can find the source of that draft.”

  There was a gap of about two feet between the freestanding shelving and the cold stone walls. I examined them without success. After a minute or two, Inky said from his side of the closet, “Well, here’s where it’s coming from. There’s a door back here behind these boxes of French wine.”

  A door? I had lived in this house for twenty years and been down here countless times, and I had never known there was a door in the wine closet.

  “Where does it go?” Inky asked.

  “Beats me.”

  “I’m going to open it. I can’t resist!”

  I was curious myself. There wasn’t room for two of us to stand abreast behind the shelves, so I stood behind him on my tiptoes as he opened the door, which was built into an interior wall, not the stone foundation. A blast of air hit us, momentarily stopping my breath. “Check it out!” Inky exclaimed. “It’s a staircase.”

  He turned ninety degrees so I could see around him and up the dark passage. I shook my head. Had I been plucked out of my life and set down in a Nancy Drew novel? I thought I knew everything about this house, and here was a secret staircase leading to . . . I had no damn clue.

  “You don’t know where this goes, do you? We’re gonna see, right? I don’t think I could stand not knowing.”

  Me either. “Do you see a light switch anywhere?”

  He ran his hands up and down on both sides of the stairway walls, finding nothing. I pulled the LED flashlight out of my pocket and shined it on the walls. I moved the beam up and illuminated an old-fashioned beaded metal chain with a little bell-like cap affixed to the end. He pulled the chain and the passageway lit up with a click.

  Cobwebs lined the juncture of the narrow walls and the low ceiling. The stairway itself was dusty in the corners of the risers, but the treads were bare. Somebody had been up here recently.

  “Did you hear that?” Inky whispered.

  “What?” I aligned my right ear with the stairwell and listened.

  “There it is again!” This time there was no mistake. A muffled moan floated down from the top of the stairs.

  “The ghost,” I whispered.

  “Ghost? Are you telling me those ghost hunters found something? I was meaning to ask you about that.”

  My flight of fancy crash-landed back on terra firma. “They found something, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a ghost. Come on.”

  I pushed past him and led the way up the stairs, each tread sounding a distinctive creak. At the top of the stairs I took a deep breath and opened the door.

  My little light preceded me as I entered a long, narrow, triangular room, facing a very acute angle where two walls met. I fumbled unsuccessfully on the wall for a light switch, then shined the beam up again to find another pull chain. I gave it a yank and a dim light filled the room.

  Motionless, on the bare floor, was the prone form of a man.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Oh, my God!” Inky rushed past me and knelt over the body. Spiro. His olive skin had taken on the bloodless, greenish pallor of a mushroom and his classically beautiful face was as still as an ancient Greek statue. My heart sank. Inky put his ear to Spiro’s chest and breathed a sigh of relief. “He’s alive!”

  His arms were bound behind him, and his ankles were also tied together. Inky pulled out his pocketknife and set to work on the ropes. Spiro made some soft, incoherent noises, but seemed unaware of our presence. Inky gingerly pulled back one of his eyelids. “Drugged,” he pronounced.

  “Where are we?” I tried to orient myself in the house. We were on the second floor, but there was no stairway opening into any of the bedrooms corresponding to this room. I thought about the weird triangular shape of this space and I understood. The bedrooms were all regular rectangles. The house, though, was octagonal. That meant that each of the bedrooms had a space just like this on the other side of the wall. I doubted I would find three more secret stairways, but the configuration offered some interesting possibilities as far as additional closet space.

  This explained why I was hearing ghostly noises from Spiro’s room and from Sophie’s room, but hadn’t been able to locate the source. Poor Spiro had been up here for days. No way of telling whether he’d been fed, but several empty water bottles and some bent straws littered the floor, so it looked as though he’d at least had some water. I did not know, and didn’t want to know, how he had relieved himself. My missing bottle of Ouzo, now empty, lay on its side in one corner. Looked like somebody had been having a few shots while he kept Spiro sedated.

  “Who did this to you?” Inky spoke softly to him, but Spiro didn’t answer. Inky looked at me. “We have to get him out of here.”

  “Let’s get him to his room and then call the EMTs.” Inky nodded and hoisted him up in a fireman’s carry. Inky was made of some strong stuff. He turned and faced the top of the stairs, then sucked in a breath.

  I whipped around to see what had startled him and felt my heart jump into my throat. A figure stood in the doorway, brandishing a gun.

  Russ Riley pointed the gun at Inky’s chest. “Put him down. Now.”

  “Russ, what the hell are you doing?” I was too shocked to be frightened. Russ? I’d known him since he was a kindergartner, gave him a job every year, and looked the other way when he stole from me. Now he had turned on me and my family?

  “Shut up, Georgie.” He grinned his crooked jack-o’-lantern grin, which I’d always thought was cute in a redneck sort of way. Now it just looked evil. His smile looked different for another reason as well. Was he missing a couple more teeth? “I always wanted to say that! Now put him down, or I’ll shoot all three of you.” He gestured with the deer rifle and Inky obeyed, laying the still-unconscious Spiro gently on the floor. “Now put your hands up. Both of you.” A hideously mottled green-and-purple bruise covered the left side of his face, and he had quite a shiner.

  We complied. “You, Snakeman.” He pointed a finger at Inky. “You are going to stay here, and you are going to keep your mouth shut.” Inky pursed his lips and didn’t say a word, but cut his eyes to me.

  “You, boss, are going to get them valuables for me. Now.”

  “Russ, I am telling you the absolute truth when I say I don’t know where the valuables are. Or what they are.”

  “There’s money in this house. I’ve heard it all my life and I’ve looked for it all my life. You got it hid somewhere, and you are going to take me to it. Now.”

  So he was the one who’d been snooping around and had ransacked the bedrooms. Ewww. His sausage-like fingers, the ones with the homemade tattoos spelling out “H-E-L-L” and “Y-E-S,” had been through my underwear drawer. I was going to throw out everything and buy new stuff posthaste.

  He poked me with the barrel of the gun. “Watch it,” I said, my temper flaring. Shooting a deer was very different from shooting a human, and I didn’t think he had it in him. A sudden vision of Big Dom’s corpse floating on the river came to mind. Had Russ killed Big Dom? It was possible. But he couldn’t be working alone. Unless I’d grossly underestimated him all these years, he was simply too . . . simple to be a criminal mastermind. He was working for Jack Conway. I’d bet on it.

  I moved toward the top of the stairs, Russ prodding me along with the gun. I looked back at Inky, who nodded at me. Russ locked the door behind us when we reached the bottom.

  “Go on upstairs to the
kitchen,” he ordered. “Unless it’s down here somewhere.”

  “Uh, no, it’s not down here. So,” I said conversationally, trying to buy some time, for what I wasn’t yet sure, “how come you have Spiro tied up?”

  “I don’t. Well, I do. But it wasn’t my idea. Wish it was. I’m getting paid, a helluva lot more than I get paid for being a dishwasher.” I should hope so, if he was taking this kind of risk. Kidnapping was a felony and he was facing serious prison time when this was over.

  “Who’s paying you?”

  “Nice try. But guess what? I ain’t telling. Now, where is it?”

  “Uh, okay. I do know where it is.”

  “I thought so. Now, get it, so I can give it to the guy paying me and I can get my cut. Then I’m blowing this town. I’m going to Florida. And I’m stayin’ there. Girls in bikinis on the beach. And no more damned snow to shovel.”

  “Do you even know who is paying you?”

  “Well,” he hesitated. “No, I don’t. But as soon as I get this thing I’m gonna take it to him. Then I’ll find out.”

  “How much have you gotten paid already?”

  “None of your damn business. But a lot,” he said. Now I knew where the money had come from to build that gargantuan garage and to buy that giant gold necklace Dolly had been sporting.

  “Look, Russ,” I said. “I’ve been up all night, and I’m hungry and thirsty. How about I make us an egg sandwich and then I’ll go get it? It’s outside,” I added, “and it’s going to take some work to dig it up.”

  He considered. “You got bacon to go on that? And American cheese? Extra American cheese. And make sure I got ketchup on the side. And a Coke to go with it.” He sat down in Sophie’s armchair by the cash register, still pointing the gun at me as I gathered ingredients from the cooler. “Start cookin’. And don’t try nothin’ funny.”