Death of an Aegean Queen (5 page)

“We’ve been planning this vacation for years,” she finally said. “George has had such a horrible time at work. He’s not meant to be a salesman. Certainly not a car salesman. He used to be a teacher when we lived in Pennsylvania. He taught social studies for years, and then they made him the principal of the whole high school. I was so proud of him, but really, he should have stayed in the classroom. He’s not a natural-born administrator. So many conflicts. Discipline problems, irate parents, school board members analyzing your every move.”

“I can imagine. I teach in a junior college and I see a certain amount of that, too. Not discipline problems generally, but, yes, all the rest of it.”

“Let’s go out there again, Dotsy. I have to know what’s going on.”

I convinced Kathryn to wait for me in her room while I dashed down to my own for a minute. Closing her door behind me, I turned to my left and spied Marco, rushing down the hall toward me.

“I need a what-do-you-call-it, cotton on a stick,” he said. “A cotton swab. Do you have one? And a plastic bag I can seal up?”

“I have both.” Leading the way to my room, I shoved my key card into the little slot, got the green light, and ushered Marco in.

“Your room is exactly like mine,” he said.

I pulled out my top dressing table drawer and located my cotton swabs and a small locking plastic bag. I must admit I pride myself on traveling light and still having everything one could possibly need. I’m waiting for someone to ask me for the moleskin I saw on some packing list or other and have carried on every trip I’ve taken in the last ten years. I’m not sure what it’s for, but I have some. I also have an emergency clothesline but I’ve never seen a shower curtain rod that wasn’t handier. I like to collect things in tiny travel sizes so my luggage remains quite small, even though I have everything including a currency converter, Greek-English phrase book, and tide tables for the whole Mediterranean Sea, including the Aegean branch.

“What do you think has happened, Marco?”

“I cannot say for sure, but it certainly looks as if someone has been attacked and thrown overboard. I can see what looks like heel drag-marks in the blood. You know? As if someone has been dragged through the blood.” He demonstrated with his hands. “Maybe pulled by his armpits from the place of attack over to the rail.”

“The blood. Is it still liquid?”

“Yes, and that’s strange. The blood should dry quickly in this air. With the breeze from the ship’s movement and all. Even though we are over water, still, the Mediterranean air is very dry. The blood has not been there long.”

I gulped. Marco, I knew, was an expert in crime scene analysis. None better.

“Can I come out with you?” I asked. “Can Kathryn?”

He ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled loudly. “If you promise to stay at the door. Do not come out into the middle of the deck or approach the rail. Do you think Kathryn can follow this rule, also?”

“I’ll make sure she does.”

Marco tucked the cotton swab inside the plastic bag and waited for me to fetch Kathryn from her room. We trekked back to the stern deck in single file because the hall was too narrow for three to walk abreast. When Marco opened the door to what I had begun to think of as the crime scene, I glimpsed a lightening sky. But before I could take in the breaking dawn, Marco let go of the door handle and took a flying leap at a man on the left side of the deck.

“
Ma è pazzo
?” Marco shouted, then roared an unintelligible jumble of Italian as he tackled a man who was holding a water hose. He wrapped the hose around the man’s neck and shoved him up against the wall with a great splat. Within five seconds his prey, a poor, baffled cabin steward, was pinned to the wall with Marco’s forearm across his chest.

Another man, not Demopoulos, yelled something and barreled across the deck toward them, yanking a walkie-talkie off his belt as he ran. This was a dark, bearded man, a good bit older than Demopoulos.

“He’s a policeman!” It was the shortest, most succinct statement I could think of to get the message across quickly. The message that Marco was one of the good guys.

“What in the hell? You told him to wash the deck? Destroy the evidence?
Si è pevuto il cervello
?” Marco waved his arms wildly.

“We’ve taken pictures.”

“Sure. All taken in the dark! You must wait until the sun comes up.”

“We used a flash, of course,” the man growled. “When the sun comes up, our passengers will start coming out here. We can’t let them see this.”

The new man, who I thought might be the Chief Letsos young Demopoulos had mentioned, yelled right in Marco’s face. His spit sprayed out and glistened in the rosy pre-dawn light. Marco did not back off one millimeter but stood nose-to-nose, his chin rigidly set. Like an umpire and a first-base coach, all they needed was some caps to throw down and stomp on. Meanwhile, the cabin steward backed off and began coiling the hose into a stowage chamber within the bulkhead.

The argument between the two men degenerated into an olio of Greek and Italian. I turned to Kathryn and said, “We’d better leave.”

As I grabbed the handle on the heavy exterior door, the morning light bounced off something white, stuck behind a wall-mounted life ring. I pointed toward it.

“I wonder if they’ve noticed that,” Kathryn said. “We should tell them, Dotsy. It might be something important.”

“Later. They aren’t going to hear us now, anyway.”

But Marco turned toward us, and I pointed to the orange life ring. He nodded slightly and returned to his argument.

Back in the hall, I said to Kathryn, “It’s nearly six. I’m going back to my room for a shower, then I’ll call Lettie and Ollie about breakfast. Would you like to go with us?”

“I couldn’t eat a thing.”

“You don’t have to eat. The company might do you good.” I promised to call her before I went to breakfast and left her at the door to her room.

From invisible, overhead speakers in the hall came the announcement, in English: “Will George Gaskill please call or come to the main desk?”

The announcement was repeated twice more.

Chapter Five

My eyes burned. I’d slept no more than three hours last night but now was no time to take a nap. Until they found George Gaskill or discovered what had happened to him, I felt as if I should be “on call.” I picked up the flyer someone had pushed under my door. Aptly named the “Oracle,” it described the coming day’s events. Three columns on a single sheet. Front and back.

After a shower and breakfast, I hoped I could slip back here for a nap. No, that wouldn’t work because the ship was scheduled to dock in Mykonos at nine, and I was so looking forward to seeing the island. We’d be there until four p.m. but I had a week’s worth of things I wanted to see.

So I could take my nap at four. Then my gaze fell on an item in the second column: World-renowned archaeologist, Luc Girard, will speak on “Links between Cycladic and Minoan Civilizations” in the ship’s library at five o’clock. All interested passengers are invited to attend and to meet Dr. Girard.

I couldn’t bear to miss hearing Luc Girard.
I’ll take my nap at six. Maybe. Oh, forget it. By then it’ll be time to change for cocktails and dinner. I’ll try for a normal night’s sleep tonight.

I laid out a flowered shirt and yellow shorts, then slipped into the shower. The cruise line’s little courtesy bottle of shower gel was made in England, I noticed. Wisteria-scented. Lovely. I took my time, luxuriating in the tiny shower, because it was too early to wake Lettie and Ollie and ask them about breakfast. I dried, powdered myself up, and slipped into the terry bathrobe the ship provided for all guests.

My phone rang. I dashed out of the steamy bathroom, stubbed my toe on the side of the dressing table, and answered the phone with “Ow!”

It was Marco. “The note you pointed to, Dotsy. It is a suicide note.”

“From who?”

“From George. George Gaskill, I suppose, but it is just signed ‘George.’”

“Wait a minute! Are you telling me George Gaskill killed himself? How? By jumping? Then why is the blood there? What about the drag marks?”

“I know. It does not make any sense. Letsos, the chief of security . . .”

And under his breath I’m pretty sure he added “the idiot.”

“. . . thinks George went out to the deck, slashed his wrists, got tired of waiting to die, and speeded up the process by jumping overboard.”

“And dragged himself to the rail by his own armpits?”

“I know. It is ridiculous.”

“Does Kathryn know about the note?”

“Not yet. Letsos is looking for a plastic security bag to put it in. It must be dusted for fingerprints. If I had not stopped him, he would have handled it with his bare hands and got his own prints all over it.”

“You know, Marco, shipboard security is not used to investigating crimes. They’re mainly here for our safety, checking boarding passes and such. They’ve probably never dealt with anything worse than a belligerent drunk.”

“That is why I have to watch their every step.”

“What does the note say?”

“I only glanced at it, but it is very short. It is to his wife and it says something like ‘I am sorry.’”

“Don’t keep Kathryn in the dark too long, Marco. Show her the note soon as you can.”

Marco promised he would and hung up.

I couldn’t tell Kathryn about the note. It wasn’t my place. So I dressed, blow-dried my hair, and did my makeup as slowly as possible, killing time until it was late enough to call Lettie and Ollie.

I needn’t have waited. Lettie was up, dressed, and Ollie was already out when I called. We decided to meet in the big dining room, although the info packet said breakfast was also served around the pool on the Poseidon deck and at a couple of other locations. You could show up at your leisure since no seating times were assigned for breakfast. I called Kathryn as I had promised, but she said she didn’t want to go with us.

* * * * *

The smell of coffee greeted me in the dining room. When the white-jacketed waiter had seated me and poured me a cup, Lettie bustled in, wide-eyed and wound up. She nodded at the waiter’s upraised coffee pot and sat, her hands beating a quick tattoo on the linen tablecloth.

“What’s the latest on George Gaskill? They still haven’t found him?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but jabbered on. “They took Ollie somewhere to question him about last night. He seems to be the last person who saw him.”

“They played poker, you said.” I poured a little cream into my coffee. “In the casino?”

“No, Ollie said they met two guys in the casino. One was from England and the other one was from Belgium. They invited him and George to their room to play Texas Hold’em. It’s a kind of poker, I think. Ollie said their room was really posh with a balcony and a regular living room and two bedrooms and a bar with a refrigerator. They played for a couple of hours, and in the end George won everyone’s money.”

“How much did Ollie lose?”

“He wouldn’t tell me, so it was probably a bundle.”

“You’re a lot more casual about it than I would be. Must be nice to be rolling in money.”

“We’re not rolling in money, Dotsy! It’s just that Ollie needs this vacation so badly, and it’s taken me so long to talk him into it. I don’t want anything to spoil it.” Lettie jammed her clenched fists into her lap.

“And these other guys. They also lost money to George?”