Death of an Aegean Queen (21 page)

The curator gave me some literature and photos I knew I could make use of in my classes back home. She took us into a little back room and dug through a pile of books and periodicals, leaving Girard and me with nothing to do but watch.

“She’s looking for some publications on the theft of antiquities in this part of the Mediterranean—the Dodecanese and Turkey. I told her about our little problem on the ship.”

Without turning from her search, she said, “We have been fortunate at this museum, probably because of our location inside the fort, but the Archaeological Museum down the street has lost quite a number of items to thieves. Gold, mostly. Small and easy to get away with, you know.” She yanked a dusty softcover book out of the stack and handed it to Luc Girard, then pulled out several more publications and gave them to me. They were in Greek.

Girard flipped through the book she’d handed him. “May we take these on loan for a few weeks? They’ll be safe in our ship’s library and I can bring them back the next time we dock here.”

The curator nodded assent and told me, “You may keep the things I gave you. I have copies.”

I thanked her and bade goodbye to Girard, who was leaving the Palace immediately. I intended to get my money’s worth from my ticket and there were many rooms I hadn’t yet seen. The fortress consisted of two, in places three, floors of chambers in a square around the Central Courtyard. Some of these chambers held furnishings like statues and thrones, some were empty, and most had tile mosaics from the island of Kos imbedded in the floor.

I had ambled through perhaps twenty rooms, some of them twice, when I realized I was lost. I’d met only a few other visitors on my ramblings and in this part of the Palace I seemed to be alone in a section of the second floor that consisted of six rooms with doors that led from one to the other but nowhere else. None led out. I made the circuit three times before I stopped, my heart pounding, and gathered my thoughts. Find a window, I told myself. If you can see outside, you can get your bearings. Walking clockwise through three rooms, none of which had a window, I stepped through a fourth door and stopped dead in my tracks.

In the next room, Brittany Benson stood near the window I’d been hoping to find and she was talking to a man in a tweed jacket. “Hi there,” I said, but they both slipped through another door as I said it, leaving me to wonder if they’d heard me, if I should follow them, or what. I stepped to the window where they’d stood a moment earlier, and caught a pungent whiff of—goats. Brittany’s companion had left an aroma in his wake that was thick enough to put out a fire. I was sure it was the same man I’d seen at the scarf shop and he was following me. Recalling Brittany’s cell phone conversation I’d overheard last night on the promenade deck, I wondered if this man had been given my description and told to follow me. Why? What did he plan to do to me?

The window looked out onto the Central Courtyard, and, although the thickness of the wall kept me from seeing more than a thin vertical strip of it, it seemed the door on my left could start me on a clockwise path to the exit. It looked as if I had one more wing to go before I reached the big twin towers that flanked the ticket office. If I stuck doggedly to a clockwise path, I reasoned, sooner or later I’d find a way out.

Before opening the door, I steeled myself for another encounter with Brittany and friend, but there was no one in the next room. As I closed the door, I thought I heard voices behind me, perhaps someone entering the room I’d left. I kept walking. Straight, then right, then straight again, through four more rooms, all of which had windows telling me I was on the right track.

Then I came upon one of the strangest puzzles I’d ever encountered. The next room was long and rectangular and on the far end stood a large sign with an arrow. EXIT. I’d have kissed the sign, but I couldn’t reach it because the floor between the sign and me was covered, patchwork style, with wonderful late Hellenistic mosaics, perhaps thirty of them. They were separated from each other by borders consisting of a single row of plain tiles. I read the sign, printed in three languages, at the entrance to the room. DO NOT STEP ON THE MOSAICS.

I certainly didn’t want to step on the mosaics, committed as I am to preserving antiquities, but how could I get from here to the other side without doing so? Only one way I could think of. I slipped my purse over my head so it hung diagonally across my chest and spread my arms wide, like a tight-rope walker.

Putting one foot carefully in front of the other, I picked my way between the nearest two mosaics, turned sharply at the corner of the one on my right, and minced along another border. Occasionally, I stopped and planned the next few legs of my journey, careful to stay away from the walls because there’d not be enough room to keep my balance. It took me a few minutes, but I did it.

I reached the EXIT sign, resisted the urge to kiss it, and wished a security camera had been watching me. I’d love to know if I’d met their expectations. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Brittany Benson and the goat man, arms extended, teetering along the same path I’d taken and a good three minutes behind me. I had plenty of time to make my getaway.

Chapter Nineteen

Back on the ship, I headed for the middle of the Hera deck for a mid-afternoon snack. I hadn’t eaten lunch and, being diabetic, I have to guard against hypoglycemia. Here, they served drinks and simple food like gyros, burgers, and pizza practically all the time. I grabbed a slice of pizza and a glass of mango juice and looked around for a table. A bingo game was in progress on the port side so I headed for the starboard.

Kathryn Gaskill, sitting at a table by herself, waved me over to join her. A cell phone and a cup of tea on the table in front of her, she marked her place in her notepad and closed it as I put my food down. “The purser very kindly gave me a cell phone to use so I can call anywhere in the world. It’s set up for easy international dialing, and the bill, he told me, would be paid by the cruise line, no matter how much calling I do.”

“Nice of them.”

“Not really. A small price to pay for keeping me happy, and they’re trying to accommodate me in any way they can so I won’t sue them.”

“Sue them?”

“I’m not planning to sue them, of course. What happened to George, as far as I know, was not due to any negligence on their part but if they failed to offer me anything I need I could make trouble for them later.” Kathryn flipped through a couple of pages on her notepad.

I bit into my pizza. “What else have they offered you?”

“They offered to fly me home immediately, but I don’t want to go. With the investigation going on here, why would I want to be anywhere else? We have no children to rush home to.” She turned the notepad toward me. “I’ve called all these people today. George’s sister and brother, my own family, our pastor, the car dealership where George worked—now, that ticked me off.”

I raised an eyebrow and trapped a large gush of tomato sauce with my napkin.

“The owner of the dealership says he’s halting all fringe benefits immediately. Is that legal? We have medical and dental insurance through them. What am I going to do about that? I can’t afford an individual policy.” Kathryn tapped the table with her forefinger. “And they’d better come through with the sick leave and vacation pay George had built up. They’re supposed to be paying him right up through the surgery he had scheduled after this trip.”

“I think you’d better talk to a lawyer as soon as you get home.”

“I will. I may have to sell the house, Dotsy. I don’t think I can afford it on what I make, but where can I find a place I can afford? Everything’s so expensive these days.”

“Didn’t George have life insurance?”

“Yes, but what if they make me wait seven years before they pay out? That’s what Mr. Bondurant told me. He said without a body, a person isn’t declared dead until they’ve been missing for seven years.”

“In a case like this, I think they could declare him dead immediately. I mean, look at the circumstances. In fact, I read about a case recently not all that different from this one. A woman—she was apparently three sheets to the wind—fell off a cruise boat and drowned. She was declared dead shortly thereafter even though they never recovered the body.”

“Oh, I do hope that’s the case.” Kathryn nodded toward a table near the bingo game. “There are the Zieglers, the mother and daughter who were at our dinner table last night. Have you talked to them much?”

“No,” I said, opting not to mention the older woman’s obvious flirtation with Marco.

“The daughter, Heather. How does she strike you?”

“She strikes me as being firmly under her mother’s thumb. Ernestine, the mother, told us Heather hadn’t been allowed to go to a college away from home. I can’t imagine any of my five children accepting that. They all went away to college when the time came, and if I’d told any of them they couldn’t, they’d’ve gone bananas. I mean, if Chet and I had said we couldn’t afford to send them away it would’ve been one thing, but if we’d said you simply can’t go, can’t leave home because we won’t let you, any of the five, I’m sure, would have left anyway, even if they had to pay their own way.”

“But Heather stayed home and she still lives at home. Heather wears no makeup and her mother wears tons of makeup.” Kathryn took a sip of her tea. “And she steals.”

“Steals? Ernestine?”

“No, Heather. Did you notice the silverware on their side of the table last night? The waiter did. He didn’t say anything but he looked all around, under the table, and everywhere for the silver that was mysteriously missing. I saw Heather slip a fork into her handbag under the table.”

I glanced toward the table where Ernestine and Heather sat, Ernestine scanning the room while Heather stared blankly at her own glass. “Repressed, I’d say. Heather may be asserting herself in the only way she’s allowed to do. Surreptitiously.”

“Excuse me. Mrs. Gaskill?”

“Oh, Mr. Bondurant, isn’t it?”

I turned and found the handsome FBI Agent Bondurant standing behind me. He nodded to me and, to Kathryn, said, “I wonder if you’d mind coming with me to the security office.”

Kathryn seemed to freeze. She looked at me, then back at Bondurant. “Sure. You mean now?”

“Yes, now.” He looked at me again. “You’re Mrs. Lamb, aren’t you? You were with us the other morning when we . . .”

“That’s right. Captain Quattrocchi asked me to be there when you, after you found the note.”

“Perhaps you’d better come with us again.”

Kathryn slid her chair back with a skittering screech against the deck and wobbled as she stood up, but she said nothing. Bondurant escorted us to an elevator and pushed the button for the Dionysus deck. He made no eye contact with either of us, holding the door open for us to exit, pointing toward the security office as the elevator door closed behind us. As she stepped onto the carpet, Kathryn stumbled slightly and looked at me—a helpless, vulnerable look.

I put my arm around Kathryn. Her bra, I noticed, was cutting into her fleshy back, creating sizeable rolling hills at the top and the bottom of the elastic back.

“I’m afraid they’ve found something I don’t want to see!” she whispered to me as Bondurant ushered us into the security office. Chief Letsos was inside, sitting behind the room’s only desk. Kathryn and I took chairs on the other side.

“I suppose we’ll need to take it out of the bag,” said Bondurant.

“She’ll need gloves.” Letsos reached for a box of latex gloves on the floor behind him and handed two of them to Kathryn. He looked toward Bondurant as he jerked his head slightly in my direction.

“She won’t need them,” the FBI agent said. To me, he said, “You won’t need to handle this so you don’t need gloves. You’re here for moral support.”

The suspense was killing me. Kathryn pulled on the stretchy gloves with difficulty, first getting the thumb of one on the wrong side. Letsos got up and walked to his filing cabinet, pulled out a plastic bag, cut it open, and laid a gold watch on the desk in front of Kathryn.

“It’s George’s watch,” she whispered. “Look.” She picked up the watch and turned it over. “Look at the inscription on the back. ‘To Mr. Gaskill, our mentor and friend. From the Junior Class of ’95.’” She turned to me, her eyes glistening with tears. “George was Junior Class sponsor that year. The class officers thought enough of him to hold a car wash and a bake sale, plus they all kicked in their own money, to buy him this watch.” She turned it face up and touched the crystal with her gloved thumb. “I was there the night they presented it to him. They even wrote a song about him, “We Love You, Gaskill,” it was. A lot like the song from
Bye, Bye, Birdie
, the musical.” She glanced at Bondurant and added, “You’re too young to remember.”