Death of an Aegean Queen (37 page)

“Really, Ollie,” I said. “Do you think you’ll need all those sponges?”

There was a knock at the door. It was Luc and Sophie. “Dotsy, Sophie and I want to thank you for introducing us to each other. It’s hard to believe we’ve been on the same boat for weeks and it took a total stranger to bring us together.” He had his arm around her waist. “And I’m grateful to both you and Mrs. Osgood for discovering the stolen artifacts that had been right under my nose all along.”

“Are they all recovered?”

“All but the bracelet. We found the bull head wrapped in a towel inside the amphora.”

Another knock at the door, this time it was Dimitris Villas. He was in uniform now—badge, holster, revolver, and all. The sight of the gun startled me a bit, since police in these islands didn’t normally walk around armed. In fact, the only gun I’d seen recently was the one Goatman fired at me.

Villas must have noticed the look on my face because he patted the gun and said, “I have to escort Mr. Gaskill to Mykonos. With a murder charge waiting for him, we can’t be too sure what he might try between here and there. Can’t be too careful, you know.”

Sophie shivered. “That looks like the gun that nearly killed Dotsy and me two days ago.”

“No, that gun was a pistol,” I said, bending over to get a better look at the holstered weapon. “This is a revolver.”

Villas took the gun out and showed Sophie the rotating cylinder.

“May I see?” Sophie took the gun from Villas’s hand. Villas looked edgy. I felt certain he wasn’t supposed to let anyone handle his gun, and he seemed to be forming a diplomatic way of asking her to give it back.

Luc made a little motion toward her as if he, too, didn’t like the idea of the one-armed Sophie Fumblefingers with a gun.

It was too late. The gun bobbled in her hand, she clutched, and it went off. The bullet pierced a closet door.

The shot was followed by a strange rumbling noise. The closet door banged open and out flew bushels and bushels of damp sponges. The bullet, having ruptured all the vacuum bags, released the little puffballs from their confinement, hurling them outward toward all of us at warp speed. Ducking and weaving, we all screamed, Sophie dropped the gun, and Luc pulled it out from beneath the sponges that now covered the entire floor. He handed it back to Villas.

“Awfully sorry about that,” he said.

“Don’t be too sorry, Dr. Girard,” Lettie said. “I think we just discovered where Brittany hid the bracelet!”

I recalled Brittany Benson had made two strange and rather unnecessary visits to the Osgoods’ room a few days ago. We all watched as Lettie climbed over the sponges on the bed and plucked the gold serpent bracelet, circa third century
b.c.
, off the telephone.

About the Author

Maria Hudgins is a former science teacher and a graduate of the University of Tennessee. She lives in Hampton, Virginia, and travels as much as her budget will allow. This is the third book in her series of Dotsy Lamb Travel Mysteries.