Death of an Aegean Queen (22 page)

“I remember,” I said.

“Where did you find this?” Kathryn asked.

“In the room of a member of our staff,” Letsos said. “Someone I believe you already know, Brittany Benson. The room is also shared by another one of our dancers named Sophie Antonakos, but the watch was found on the floor of Miss Benson’s closet.”

I heard nothing more after that. In my mind, I saw the floor of Brittany Benson’s closet and the two cardboard cartons. The cartons, I knew, contained valuable artifacts—or fakes—but I couldn’t say anything without confessing to snooping through her things. That would implicate Sophie, my enabler, and open up the whole issue of the stolen antiquities. Bondurant and Letsos already knew about it, because Luc Girard told them. They may also have known that Girard and Sophie were researching the display items on the ship, trying to find out where they came from. But Kathryn knew nothing about it, so I decided I’d better keep my mouth shut. I was, quite frankly, relieved to be able to justify, to myself, saying nothing. I needed to think this through before I went any further.

Kathryn slid the watch across the desk toward Letsos. “I guess that tells us who killed George. But why did she keep the watch? That was stupid.”

“Perpetrators often like to take a souvenir,” Letsos said, with an air of authority.

FBI Agent David Bondurant flashed him a look that said,
Shut up, you fool
.

* * * * *

I walked Kathryn back to her room and asked her if she wanted me to come in, but she said she needed some time alone. That made sense to me, so I trekked down to Marco’s room and pecked on the door on the off-chance he might be there and his leaving merely a bad dream. Then I stopped by my own room, freshened up, and decided to call on Lettie and Ollie.

As I turned the corner leading to their hall, I caught the backside of Brittany Benson rounding the next corner down. I recognized the yellow jumpsuit I’d played “Spy vs Spy” with in the Palace of the Grand Masters. Lettie opened her door within a few seconds of my knock.

“You just missed Brittany Benson. She’s getting to be a regular in our room.”

“Why did she stop by again?”

“Well, more of that compadre stuff, you know. She says she and Ollie have to stick together because they’re both being accused of a murder they had nothing to do with.”

Ollie, lying on top of the bedspread, was reading a very large book, titled
Fishes of the Mediterranean Sea
. “Hi Dotsy. Marco’s cut out on us, huh?” He rolled his oversized frame into a half-upright position, resting on one elbow.

I didn’t feel like answering him.

Lettie said, “Brittany told us why Bondurant was following Nigel Endicott this morning. Do you remember?”

“Yes. Nigel told us he was going to the Turkish bath, and you noticed Bondurant waited for him and then followed when he left. Why?”

“Because!” Lettie put the back of one hand up to her mouth as if she was whispering a secret, but continued on in a loud voice. “They think Endicott killed Mr. Papadakos! They showed a bunch of pictures to this man who owns the shop in Mykonos where they think the murder weapon, the knife, was bought. The man said he can’t be sure but, of all the photos, Nigel Endicott’s looks the most like the man he thinks bought the knife.”

“They’re looking for the shirt,” Ollie butted in.

“Right. The shirt. The shop owner remembers a brightly colored shirt, and Bondurant wants to have a good look at the one Endicott wore when he got off the ship in Mykonos. I told Ollie about the backpack Endicott told us was for the towel and stuff he was taking to the harem.”

“Hammam.” I corrected her.

“Whatever. I wonder if it really was towels or if he was sneaking off the ship with the . . .” Lettie waved her fingers in front of my face in what I think was supposed to be a scary manner. “Bloood-staaained shirt!”

“That sounds like a bit of a stretch to me.”

“But possible.”

“Possible. But the thing I came by to tell you is, they’ve found George Gaskill’s watch on the bottom of Brittany Benson’s closet.” I waited for that to sink in. “Kathryn and I were taken to the security office a few minutes ago and she positively identified the watch as George’s. There’s a personal inscription on the back.”

Ollie sat up with a jerk and planted both feet on the floor. Lettie stood there, mouth open. Ollie said, “Oh, my God. The little fox!”

“She has the best motive of all,” Lettie said. “Revenge.”

“They’ve already questioned Brittany. She told them she was with her roommate, Sophie, from the time she finished her last performance until the next morning, and Sophie backed her up.” I realized I was sorting out my own thoughts as I was talking. “I told Bondurant I’d seen both of them on the deck at three a.m., soon after George was killed.”

“So Brittany and Sophie are in it together?” Lettie sat beside Ollie on the edge of the bed and stretched an arm around his shoulders. “That makes sense. Two young women could do it more easily than one. One could have distracted him, lured him out to that little deck. And the other could have slipped up behind him with a knife.”

“They could’ve been pretty sure the stern deck would be deserted at that time in the morning.” Ollie added.

Lettie frowned. “But would the time work out? You left George a bit after midnight. He was on his way back to his room then, and the murder didn’t take place until . . .”

“That’s just it,” I said. “We don’t know when it took place. We only know it was after midnight and before four.”

“Right. And I don’t know whether he was on his way back to his own room or not,” Ollie said, folding Lettie’s free hand in his. “I assumed he was. He could have been heading for a secret meeting with Brittany.”

“Or Sophie.”

I threw both hands up. “Wait a minute. Now we’re going too far. I don’t know Sophie Antonakos very well, I admit, but she strikes me as an honest girl. She has an innocence about her.”

Ollie exhaled loudly. “Innocence can be faked. There’s innocence and then there’s good acting.”

I didn’t feel like going any further with this conversation. I’d let Ollie and Lettie hash it over between themselves and I’d think it over alone.

Chapter Twenty

I showered and changed for dinner, without much thought for what I’d wear because it didn’t matter how I looked anymore. Glancing over the evening’s offerings in the “Oracle” bulletin, I found nothing of interest. Maybe I’d go to the library after dinner and read. I hoped Dr. Girard had put the material the museum curator had given him today on the library’s shelves and I wondered what language it was in.

I put on my makeup robotically, but stopped when my blusher brush scratched my cheek. I examined the brush and found the culprit was a clear, slightly concave, disc. Less than half an inch in diameter. It wasn’t particularly brittle because it yielded a bit when I squeezed it. Could it be a contact lens? If so, what was it doing here, in my blusher brush? Only one way to find out, I thought. I filled a glass of water from the bathroom sink and dropped the disc in. I stuck it up high, on top of my TV, so I wouldn’t forget and drink it. Then I remembered I’d plucked the little disc off the sink that morning after we found the pool of blood. It was in the bathroom at the end of the hall, near the door to the stern deck.

Before dinner I took a stroll around the promenade deck. I stopped in at the library but no one was there. The sandbox Dr. Girard used for supporting pottery shards while the glue dried was still under the gooseneck lamp. Sophie’s notebook and a couple of catalogs were stacked neatly on a table, pens laid alongside. I wondered if and when this room was ever locked. It seemed to me they trusted passengers a lot, but then it would hardly be worth it to steal big, heavy things like books and sneak them off the ship in your luggage. Anyone with a mind to steal something could find richer pickings elsewhere. Such as in the dining halls. I remembered what Kathryn had told me about Heather Ziegler. Was Heather really swiping the silver?

I walked around the bow of the ship and down the port side. Most of the round porthole windows on this side had curtains drawn, I assumed, because the late afternoon sun was pouring in. Some of the portholes were open, the breeze rippling the curtains inward. My own window, I had discovered, didn’t open, obviously because my room was on a lower deck and positioned so that, in rough seas, waves could splash in.

I wondered which of these was Lettie and Ollie’s window.
Theirs would be about halfway down
, I thought. Not meaning to spy on anyone, because most of the curtains were drawn anyway, I happened to look through a porthole whose curtain was not drawn and saw Kathryn Gaskill. She stood, facing the window but apparently she didn’t see me. I stopped, turned toward the railing, and a few seconds later, glanced over my shoulder at the window again. The sun bouncing off the water had contracted my pupils so that I now saw nothing through the window, but it must have been slightly open because I heard Kathryn’s voice.

“It had to be done,” I heard her say.

I stepped aside, out of the line of sight through the window, and closed my eyes to give my pupils time to dilate. It occurred to me Kathryn hadn’t seen or at least hadn’t recognized me because the setting sun was in her eyes. Then, as casually as I could, I ambled back past the porthole window, turned, and looked inside.

I saw Kathryn in profile. Her head was down, resting on the chest of the man who held her in his arms. The man holding her was Nigel Endicott.

* * * * *

I was the last to arrive at our dinner table. Lettie, Ollie, and Kathryn were already there, as were Ernestine and Heather Ziegler. I’d intended to tell Lettie and Ollie not to mention anything about George’s watch before they talked to Kathryn because I wasn’t sure we were supposed to be blabbing that around. While I studied the menu and placed my order, I stayed mum, hoping the conversation around me would tell me who’d already said what. Had Kathryn told them George’s watch had been found? Had Lettie mentioned Agent Bondurant following Nigel Endicott? Had either she or Ollie mentioned Brittany Benson’s visits to their room?

“Where is our friend, Captain Quattrocchi?” Ernestine asked me. She virtually salivated when she said the name.

“He was called back to Florence,” I said, handing my menu to the waiter. “About some case he’s working on.”

“Oh, dear me. Is he coming back?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll bet he’s tracking down an international jewel thief!” Ernestine bent forward until her left breast swiped the butter off her roll. Lettie pointed at the problem and Ernestine applied her napkin to the greasy blob. “Or maybe he’s cracking a spy ring! What do you think?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

It was as if we’d all been warned to shut up. Throughout the meal, we talked about families back home, our impressions of Rhodes, other trips we’d taken, but nothing related in any way to the murders, until the dessert plates were cleared and coffee was served. Then Kathryn said, “They found my husband’s watch today. It was in the closet of that bitch, Brittany Benson.”

“Who?” asked Ernestine.

“One of the dancers on this ship who also just happens to be the girl who got my husband fired from his job ten years ago!”

Heather Ziegler’s eyes widened. It was the first expression I’d seen on her face. She’d sat, more or less silent throughout the meal, glancing frequently at the rest of us as if she assessed our alertness and her own chances of successfully filching the salt shaker. What I saw in her countenance now was glee. Excitement. An awakening.

Ollie rose. “Careful now, Kathryn. I know how Brittany feels, being accused of murder. I’m in the same boat she is.” Ollie, I felt, could afford to be magnanimous now that the fire wasn’t so hot under his own feet.

Kathryn spluttered and mumbled something I didn’t catch.