Royal Ghouls

by Alex A King

  Milos and Petra appeared at her elbow, grinning. Their hair was wild, their faces were sticky.

  “Candy?” I asked Toula in English.

  “More like Sandy.”

  Sandy is Toula’s best friend, even after all these years away from the United States. They’re a continent apart but their friendship is stretchy.

  “Let me guess. She sent a care package.”

  “I don’t know why she didn’t just fill the box with high fructose corn syrup.” She gave me a desperate look, like she was on the lam and needed a fake ID and new face to go with it. “The kids got to the box before I did. There was no time to hide it.”

  I winced. “How much did they eat?”

  “All of it. All. Of. It. I was in the bathroom watching Outlander on my phone. I didn’t hear a thing. They were so quiet.”

  No wonder my niece and nephew were practically levitating. All that sugar, and now Toula wanted to pass their sugar high to me.

  “No problem,” I said. One of Toula’s favorite hobbies was bossing me around, but she was still my sister, and she was always there when I needed her.

  The munchkins shot past my legs and pressed their sugar against my sofa. Patra, the six-year-old sat up and looked at us.

  “A whale’s poutsa is bigger than your apartment,” she said. “That’s what Mama told us.”

  “I did not,” Toula said.

  Milos was on his sister’s side. “Yes, you did.”

  “What’s a poutsa?” Patra asked.

  “More trouble than it’s worth,” Toula said.

  The ghosts, and Kyria Eva’s apparition, were happily watching my family sitcom unfold.

  “This is better than television,” one of the bikini girl said.

  Kyrios Harry had put on a smirk for the occasion. “Even your sister and her family are a disaster.”

  It takes a special kind of person to block out the dead while socializing with the living, and I am not that kind of person. I scratched the side of my nose with my raised middle finger, hoping Toula wouldn’t catch me and that Kyrios Harry and his companions would get the message.

  “A whale’s everything is bigger than my apartment, but that’s okay,” I told my nephew and niece. “As long as I don’t buy a pet whale, I’m safe.”

  Patra giggled. She smeared a hand across her sticky face. Oh boy.

  “Go,” I told Toula, before I changed my mind. “I’ll get them cleaned up and then take them to repent their sins.”

  “What are sins?” Patra wanted to know.

  “Things like opening packages addressed to your mother,” I told her.

  The tiny girl nodded solemnly. “Then we definitely did sins.”

  “I would have opened the box, too,” I said in a loud whisper.

  “Allie!” Toula barked. But she looked less bedraggled and stressed already. “I’ll leave you the van. I can walk home.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “You’re in your pajamas. Besides, the walk will do them good. They can burn off some of that sugar.”

  “Are we there yet?”

  “No.”

  “How about now?”

  “No.”

  “Now?”

  Milos and Patra giggled. “Why do you keep asking that?” Milos asked.

  I sighed like the walk was killing me. They giggled again. “Because usually I ride all over Merope. All this walking is hard work.”

  It wasn’t really. Riding kept me at a decent level of fitness. I could eat cake without crying to the therapist I didn’t have. But the kids were getting a kick out of my dramatic complaining, so I hammed it up and added some dawdling to the mix.

  We came to the main road. Vasilis Moustakas waved the moment he spotted me with the kids. “I had sex with your yiayia,” he called out.

  The kids couldn’t see him or hear him but I covered their ears anyway.

  Patra looked up at me. “What are you doing, Thea Allie?”

  “I need new ears. I’m trying to figure out if yours will fit.”

  God’s house. That’s what a church is supposed to be. The way Kyria Sofia swanned around Ayios Konstantinos, you’d think it was her house. She was currently dishing out orders to the church’s caretaker, Kyria Aspasia. Kyria Aspasia had a humped spine, eighty years in her past, and one eye. She was using the latter to look for dirt that wasn’t there. I knew where the dirt was: all over the priest’s sister.

  “Aliki Callas,” Kyria Sofia cried out, rushing to greet me. She air-kissed me on both cheeks, and now I knew what it was like to be kissed by a spider. “Twice in one day. Have you come to pray for your immortal soul?” Her gaze skated sideways as my niece and nephew zipped past her and plonked themselves down on the ground alongside Kyria Aspasia.

  “I saw you in that movie,” Milos said to the hunched over woman.

  “A scary movie,” said his sister, wide-eyed. They were both looking at that hump like it was its own entity. “There was a big church, a mean man, and real pretty girl.”

  “And talking gargoyles,” Milos said. “They were funny.”

  Beside me, Kyria Sofia gasped like she didn’t have a hard drive full of animal porn.

  I raised my eyebrows in their direction. “Milos, Patra. Be polite.”

  The old caretaker was unfazed. “My hump is full of secrets,” she said slyly.

  Those wide eyes widened, until their faces were mostly eyeballs. “What secrets?” Milos asked.

  “If I tell you they would not be secrets.” Kyria Aspasia kept sweeping. “You can only see them if you have one eye, like me.”

  “I want to have one eye when I grow up,” Patra said.

  My nephew had other ideas. “If you want, I can poke your eye out now. Which one do you want to keep?”

  The old woman nudged his foot with her broom. “You cannot see my hump’s secrets if someone pokes out your eye on purpose. You must lose the eye in battle.”

  “A battle with what?” Milos asked.

  Kyria Aspasia had the situation under control, which left me free to deal with the priest’s sister.

  “I just have some questions,” I asked Kyria Sofia.

  Kyria Prim and Not-Even-Remotely Proper touched the ladybug brooch at her throat. “For me?”

  The way to the vault inside Kyria Sofia’s head was through her ego, and I was not above stroking it a little. Flattery won’t get you everywhere in life, but it opens a lot of closed doors.

  “You know everyone on Merope, and you know everything there is to know. People trust you and they like you.” The way they trust and like snakes.

  “That is true,” she said without a trace of irony. “How can I help you, my girl?”

  “You mentioned Harry Vasilikos used to come to Merope often.”

  “That was a long time ago. Why do you want to know?”

  The lie came easily enough. As far as lies went, it was benign. “A client of mine is writing a book about Greek millionaires, including Harry Vasilikos.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Is this client from Merope?”

  “I can’t say. It’s confidential.”

  She fiddled with the ladybug. “I understand.” Her face said she did not understand any such thing and she thought I was rotten for keeping secrets from her. “There was a picture of us together in the newspaper. Did you see it?”

  There was a picture of Kyria Sofia and every notable person to ever stop foot on Merope in the paper, sooner or later. In the USA, they would call her a star-fucker or an attention-whore. I didn’t mention that “a long time” ago I was just a kid in another country, therefore I didn’t see that particular issue of the Merope Fores, but I did make a polite noise and tell her I wished I had seen it.

  She took that as a sign of encouragement. “Today is a lucky one because I have it right here. Let me find it for you.” She whipped out her fancy phone and swiped until she and Harry Vasilikos were on the screen, arms around each other, both grinning. They were both younger, and Harry was still alive.

&nbs
p; “In those days he used to have the most wonderful dog,” she said. “A big German shepherd. That dog would do anything for a treat.”

  My eye twitched. “Was Kyrios Vasilikos well-liked?”

  “Of course. He was rich.”

  “Did he have other friends on Merope? Colleagues? Acquaintances?”

  “Let me think.” She looped her arm through mine and casually steered me toward the large and ostentatious candle holder. It was filled with sand to hold the thin beeswax candles upright while they burned. People lit them for the dead, and sometimes for those they wished were dead. Greek people are simpler and more complicated than most.

  We weren’t here for the candles though. The parts of Kyria Sofia that were not motivated by prestige or cute animals were motivated by cold, hard cash. Or soft, floppy checks—cheques if you’re British. Next to the candle holder stood a gilt table, and upon it a large wooden box with a brass latch and matching padlock. The wood was something dark and expensive, polished to a mirror-like shine. In the top was a slot. A giant piggy bank. Kyria Sofia was only too happy to help … for a price.

  “This is a good place to think,” she said.

  I could take a hint, especially when she was rubbing my face in it. Out of my purse came a twenty-euro note, in blues and featuring stained glass windows. I folded it in half and pushed it through the slot.

  Kyria Sofia made a soft, satisfied sound. “You are too generous.”

  “If you like I can swap it for a ten.”

  She patted my arm. “Twenty will be fine. Now that I think about it, Harry was good friends with Angela Zouboulaki and her first husband.” Her eyes sparkled almost as much as the church’s gold accents. “I bet she even met his dog.”

  After the church, Sam still wasn’t done digging up the goods on Johnny Margas, so I took the kids to the playground next to Ayios Konstatinos.

  Toula called. “Are they still alive?”

  I played dumb. “Who?”

  Tense silence.

  “Relax,” I said. “We’re at the playground.”

  “Which playground?”

  “The one by the church. Why?

  Relieved sigh. “Have they killed anyone yet?”

  “No, but they asked Kyria Aspasia about her hump.”

  “Did she tell them it was filled with secrets?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because her hump is filled with secrets.”

  Something moved out of the corner of my eye. A yacht was coming in to port. I grabbed the small pair of binoculars I kept in my bag for snooping emergencies. Nice boat. Big, but not Royal Pain big. I watched it slow down and angle its large body until it was snugged up to the dock. On the deck, a man was waiting. Blue blazer. Gold buttons. White pants. Silly hat. What was it with these old guys and their nautical uniforms? Didn’t they know you could wear regular clothes on a yacht? Women did it all the time.

  The man’s sagging face was instantly recognizable, even with an extra twenty years etched on his skin.

  I pulled out my phone and made a call. “Angela? Here’s Johnny.”

  Chapter Eight

  “What,” Angela said, “are these?”

  Milos and Patra were bouncing around behind me, pretending to be My Little Ponies. Patra was Pinkie Pie, and Milos was some pony called Dog Fart. I didn’t think Dog Fart was a real pony name, but you never know with kids’ shows these days. Maybe they were aggressively and openly chasing the brony market now.

  “They’re my sister’s.”

  “And you want to bring them into my house?”

  Angela does not live in a house. Mansion is the correct word. A hulking white structure with an ocean view, although technically, the Aegean Sea is a sea. The word is right there in the name. Even more technically, the Aegean Sea is an embayment of the Mediterranean Sea (also not an ocean), so there is no ocean involved in Angela’s view whatsoever. Everything about the property is white or chrome. The mansion. The geometric fountains. The smooth, concrete grounds. Everything inside the house, except a single painting in one of her living rooms. Angela lives in a laboratory designed by an obsessive compulsive Scandinavian. Warmth visits Angela’s house to die. This was exactly where you wanted to be during August.

  “We can talk out here,” I assured her.

  She visibly relaxed. As always, Angela was freshly coiffed, her face recently dipped in a bucket of no-makeup makeup. Her age is a secret. But I caught a glimpse of her real face once, between Botox shots and chemical peels, and I’d guessed she was in her sixth decade. She’s slim and dresses well. Today she was in dove gray slacks and a turtleneck sweater that looked like it was made from some kind of soft, rare animal fleece. Angela is plain but she uses her money to paint a prettier portrait over the canvas.

  “You said Johnny is here. Did you see him? Is he handsome or is he a lying poutsokleftis?”

  I didn’t know if Johnny was a dick thief or not and told her so. “How old did he say he was?”

  “Forty-five. Why?”

  I shoved my hands into my pockets and looked back to make sure the kids weren’t choking each other. They were both alive. Good.

  “He’s older.”

  Her voice turned to steel that had spent several winters in Antarctica with the penguins. “How much older?”

  “About twenty years.”

  “A good sixty-five or a bad sixty-five?”

  “Have you ever left a leather bag out in the rain then tried to blow it dry with a hairdryer?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever left vegetables too long in the back of the refrigerator?”

  “I never touch the refrigerator. That is what servants are for.”

  Sometimes Angela did not live on the same planet as regular people.

  I opened my bag, ripped a piece of paper out my notepad, scrunched it between my hands until it was a wrinkled mess, then offered it to her.

  She arched a thin eyebrow. “What is that?”

  “Johnny Margas’s face.”

  Blood vacating her complexion, she braced herself against the doorframe with one hand and clutched her chest with the other. “Allie, tell me, what am I going to do?”

  “You could try not answering the door.”

  “I never answer my own door.”

  “Tell your butler not to open the door.”

  Tears burst out of her like an Alien through a chest. Her makeup was unaffected by the sudden deluge. “Why does this always happen to me?” she wailed. “Why do men always turn out to be hideous, deformed monsters or cheating malakes? What is wrong with them?”

  I grabbed a tissue out of my bag and delicately dabbed around her eyes. This wasn’t the first time I’d had to mop up her tears. One more time and I would be able to list it as a skill on my resume—if I ever needed a resume.

  “I wouldn’t called Johnny deformed, just older than forty-five.”

  “Sixty-five! That is twenty years older than me!”

  Not on any of the world’s numeral systems. “I'm sure there’s a decent man out there for you. One your own age.” Cough, cough. “Just be patient.”

  She sniffled. “You have to do something.”

  Uh-oh. “What kind of something?”

  “Get rid of him.”

  An image popped into my head: me whacking Johnny over the head with a skillet and shoving him off a cliff, while Angela cheered.

  “You know I’m not an assassin, right?”

  Her tears dried up. “I thought you did everything.”

  “No. I find things, information, and sometimes people.”

  “Oh.” She sounded disappointed for a moment, then she brightened up. “Can you find me an assassin?”

  “Also, no.”

  “Okay. Then you will have to tell him to go away.”

  My eyebrows went for a short hike. “You want me to dump him for you?”

  “Yes. I will pay you. How much do you charge to dump boyfriends who lied about their age?”

 
“I don’t. I find things.”

  She threw out a figure that made my eyebrows hike another inch.

  “Well, I guess now I find things and dump boyfriends who lie about their age,” I said.

  “Good.” She made a little "shoo" gesture. “Do it today. And make sure you take those with you.”

  She meant Pinkie Pie and Dog Fart, who were silently contemplating a fountain that, from this angle, resembled two romantically entwined dogs.

  “That looks like Mama and Baba," Patra said.

  Milos nodded. “Every Saturday night.”

  Dumping men wasn’t my forte. Was there some kind of protocol? Could I text Johnny to deliver the bad news? No, that was cruel. Login to Angela’s social media and unfollow him on everything? No, too millennial.

  “How do you dump men?” I asked Lydia, who was easing through the apartment building’s door in a pair of lethal platform heels and hot pants with camel toe. I knew I was getting older because I wanted to tell her to put on a coat before she got a chill.

  Milos stared at her, mouth open. Now the kid was going to grow up with issues. Probably he’d wind up being shoe fetish serial killer like Jerry Brudos. Thinking about serial killers made me think about Leo, whose car was parked at the curb. Was he killing someone right now? No, I would hear that kind of commotion through the ceiling.

  When Leo first moved in, I had mistaken him for a hump-happy playboy, with a revolving bedroom door. Then I realized the guy worked out at home. Noise definitely traveled, despite decent insulation. If he murdered someone upstairs there would be no missing the flailing and the cries for help.

  Lydia was staring at me with a curious and amused expression. “I didn’t realize you were seeing someone.”

  “It’s not for me.”

  “Friend?”

  “Client.” I didn’t mention the about-to-be-dumped individual was Johnny Margas.

  “I hope they’re paying you well.”

  “Very well, so I need it to be good.”

  Lydia shrugged prettily. “I ghost them.”

  Was this a murder thing? “Ghost them?”

  “When they call, I don’t call back. I vanish …” she performed a move a lot like jazz hands “…like a ghost.”