Queens Ransom (Sofie Metropolis) (2 page)

And just as she’d made me attend the funeral, she was now forcing me to go to the
saranta
, where I’d have to eat more bland food and make more casual small talk.

That is, if anyone else showed up.

Thalia gave a long sigh.

I slid a glance her way. ‘What?’

She looked at me. ‘Do you remember what we were doing a year ago this exact same time?’

‘I don’t know? Starving?’

She gave me a virtual swat. ‘We were in the final stages of planning your wedding.’

The car tires slid on a patch of black ice. At least I decided that was going to be my story if I got into an accident as a result of Thalia’s casual words.

My wedding . . .

Seemed strange somehow that weeks had passed since I last thought about that time, seeing as it had occupied so much of my existence after my wedding day disaster . . . and since I still had the wedding gifts stacked, unwrapped, against my bedroom wall.

Hard to believe that if things had gone as planned, I’d be Mrs Thomas-the-Toad Chalikis right now. Without, of course, ‘the Toad’ part. I might even be pregnant, with nothing more pressing on my hands than cooking dinner for my husband and knitting baby booties.

I think I threw up a little in my mouth.

Oh, not because of the idea itself. But because of the reason I wasn’t married and pregnant. Namely because on the day of my wedding, I found myself staring at the bare white bottom of my groom-to-be where he was wedged between my maid of honor’s open thighs.

I’d lost what had been two very important people in my life that day. But since then I’d gained a very interesting career, a mutt-from-hell sidekick and adopted an extended family that might not want any booties I’d care to knit, but I wouldn’t care if I found any of them playing the tube-snake boogie with anyone either.

My mother, however, didn’t feel the same way. She’d made it very clear that Thomas’ activities rated little more than a passing glance and that his punishment should have been my making the rest of his life miserable.

What she left out of that equation in her bid for little Greek grandchildren to drape in gold and feed
koulourakia
to is my own happiness.

I scratched my head, searching for something, anything that might derail my mother’s speeding train of thought before someone got hurt.

‘Do you remember?’

‘Oh, look!
Pappou
hung the
karavi
. . .’

We were passing my grandfather’s café, which just happened to be catty corner to my father’s steakhouse, the Greek stand-off continuing away from the dining-room table.
Karavi
was Greek for boat, and most Greek men decorated boats with lights, instead of Christmas trees . . . while the women starved their offspring.

‘We went to your first dress fitting . . .’

Damn it all to hell.

My mother gasped.

Which meant I’d said the words aloud. A week before Christmas. During advent. On my way to a
saranta
.

I bit down hard on my bottom lip and mumbled something I hoped sounded like an apology.

Then I said, ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer we didn’t refer to that time. Ever.’

I felt Thalia’s hand on my arm. ‘I understand,
koukla mou
. You’re not ready yet.’

Yet?

Oh, no. No way was I going to ask. Lord only knew what she’d come back with.

‘Then there’s poor Dino . . .’ she said on a long-suffering sigh.

OK, maybe we should have stuck with my ex, Thomas-the-Toad . . .

As far as men went, Dino Antonopoulos had probably come the closest to making me forget about my ex. Well, him and Jake Porter.

But we weren’t talking about sexy Australians, we were talking hunky Greeks.

It just then occurred to me that both men currently in my life were foreigners.

Of course, Dino wasn’t currently in my life, so to speak. To do that, he’d actually have to be in the country. And he wasn’t. For reasons I was still trying to ferret out, he’d been deported back to Greece. Poof! Just like that. One minute he was sitting across a dinner table from me at Stamatis on Broadway making me itch by asking how many children I wanted; the next his bakery was abandoned and his next-door neighbor told me he’d been deported.

It hadn’t taken long for the news to blow up my mother’s calling tree. And the best I could figure it, this was the first time any of us heard of a Greek being so summarily deported. Usually there was paperwork, hearings and stays until the matter could be worked out. A process that took months, if not years.

Yet three weeks ago Dino had disappeared without so much as a warning.

‘Any progress finding out what happened?’ Thalia asked.

‘I visited the INS agent this afternoon. They’re swamped, but promised to get back to me soon.’ Actually, they were no longer called the IN.S. Rather, a few years back the Immigration and Naturalization Service changed their name to USCIS, or United States Citizenship and Immigration Service. But the last time I’d said CIS, my mother had thought I was referring to a television show.

The ‘overburdened/get back to you soon’ response was essentially the same one I’d been getting since I contacted him the day Dino went missing.

Maybe I should go above him, ask for his supervisor’s name.

Surely there were other resources I could tap into.

A mirror-shattering shriek nearly popped my eardrums. I realized it was my mom’s. And I was unfamiliar with it solely because I rarely – if ever – heard it.

I slammed on the brakes, believing whatever she was reacting to had to do with my not paying attention to the road and my imminent slamming into something I shouldn’t.

But when the car lurched to a stop, I discovered I was nowhere near hitting anything.

‘What? What?’ I asked, my palms slick on the wheel.

She pointed to the old Cadillac in front of us. ‘Bodies. Quick! Call the police!’

I squinted through the dirty, half snow-covered windshield at the bodies in question. Sure enough, that’s exactly what they were. But they weren’t human. They appeared to be some sort of life-sized stuffed dolls that had been slammed in the trunk . . . accidentally or on purpose. Judging by the smart-ass bumper stickers – the most obnoxious being ‘Honk if You’re Feeling Horny’ – the neat way both the bodies were arranged, and my mother’s response, I was guessing the latter.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

I began to honk the horn to tell the double-parker to get out of the middle of the road, no matter the bumper sticker, when my door was wretched open and I was unceremoniously yanked out.

Two

OK, so this was new.

In my career as PI over the past seven months, my own client had tried to kill me, I’d been fitted with a pair of cement overshoes and nearly shoved off Hellgate Bridge, become acquainted with a mammoth wood chipper with my name apparently written all over it, and had risked being turned into a creature of the night.

But never had I been pulled out of my car in the middle of driving it.

Not while stopped either, for that matter.

Since I’d been in neutral with the brakes on, Lucille merely coughed and died when I was removed. I watched as the car that had caused me to stop pulled away, the fake bodies bouncing against the bumper as the driver negotiated the snow ruts.

‘Hey, hey, hey!’ I shouted, trying but failing to reach my Glock.

The guy who had both my arms held behind my back was big and reeked of garlic. At least that ruled him out as a vampire. I ousted the ridiculous thought and tried to concentrate on the situation instead.

‘OK, buster, I don’t know what’s going on, but if you want a girl’s attention, a simple rap on the window might be a good idea?’

‘Let her go!’ My mother had gotten out of the car.

‘Get back in and lock the doors!’ I told her.

‘Sofie, what’s happening? Who are these people?’

‘Mom, I want you to drive home.’

‘I can’t drive a stick!’

Shit.

Only I could be having an argument with my mother in the middle of the street while being taken captive by some beastly stranger.

‘Go!’ I told her. ‘Now!’

My assailant released his grip enough for me to reach my Glock and elbow my way out of his hold. I turned and held the gun on him. He must have been at least six foot six and weighed three of me. And he wasn’t amused.

Uh oh.

‘Mr Abramopoulos would like to see you,’ he said simply.

I blinked at him. ‘What? Abramopoulos? As in George Abramopoulos?’

His casual mention of a name that practically every New Yorker knew was just enough to give him an edge so when he twisted my gun out of my hands, I was a second behind in stopping him.

A car pulled up in the opposite direction and I was rudely shoved into the back of it.

Great.

Well, at least I was familiar with Mr Abramopoulos. Being Greek – much less a New Yorker – it would have been some crime, I’m sure, had I not been. He was the Greek Donald Trump without the hype. A regular Aristotle Onassis without the ships. Just yesterday my mother and I were ogling a picture of him in one of the supermarket rags with whatever arm candy he’d been spotted with at the time.

‘Why can’t you find a man like him?’ my mother had wanted to know.

‘What? As old as my father with a nose you can see coming a block before him?’

As the car door was slammed shut, all I could hope as I checked for a way out was that the Greek Tycoon was a lot nicer than his employees.

He
was
nicer.

Well, that kind of shiny, ‘don’t mess with me, I won’t mess with you’ kind of nice, anyway.

At least he wasn’t trying to push or pull me somewhere I didn’t want to go and wasn’t trying to take my gun.

Speaking of which, I felt naked without mine, since the gorilla who’d taken it from me still had it.

I didn’t know much about George Abramopoulos outside what appeared on page six . . . which I’d thought was a lot until I stood shaking his hand with nothing to say. I eyed the very Greek, fifty-something man who knew his way around a good tailor and hair stylist. I knew the real-estate bust had forced him into some level of bankruptcy last year. And that he and his much younger ex-wife had been embroiled in a nasty divorce and custody battle. Both pieces of information rated as gossip and as such were unrepeatable in the presence of the man himself. Especially since I hadn’t really followed the stories beyond the headlines.

What should I say? Perhaps: ‘Congratulations on emerging from Chapter Thirteen.’ Or: ‘How’s your little girl? Is she looking forward to Christmas break?’ Or: ‘Pretty picture of you and your eye candy
du jour
in the paper the other day.’ But I didn’t know if Thirteen was the bankruptcy for which he’d filed, and couldn’t remember for sure if the child involved in the custody fight had been a girl, much less whether he’d ultimately retained custody of her . . . and I didn’t think it was a good idea for me to mention anything about the eye candy.

Damn. They should have taken Thalia hostage with me. She’d know every detail of all three stories and would have also known exactly the thing to say.

Whether it would have been the right thing was another matter entirely, since my mother was known to speak her mind without thought to the consequences.

‘Glad you could make it, Miss Metropolis. Pleasure to meet you.’

I noticed his manicure was better than mine as we shook hands. I resisted the urge to chew on a hangnail when we finished. ‘A phone call would have been preferable over a snatch and grab.’

His laugh was friendly enough, but his dark eyes sharpened. ‘I’m not familiar with the details surrounding our meeting, but my apologies if my men were a little . . . forward. This matter is pressing, as you’ll see.’

I noticed he distanced himself from the incident even as he stressed the importance of my being there.

‘You’re creating quite a name for yourself, Miss Metropolis. I’ve been reading of your successes these past few months.’

My successes?

‘Your involvement in that bloodletting serial killer case was of particular interest.’

‘Ah.’

I squinted at him, wondering if he’d tried the highly questionable and illegal blood-replacement therapy that promised to keep you young forever; a highly experimental treatment that had ultimately led to the death of those who could supply the ever-growing demand.

I was guessing yes.

‘I’m hoping you’ll consider using your skills now to help me out,’ he said.

I couldn’t imagine how I might be of assistance to him, but admit I was intrigued. No matter the motivation, it wasn’t every day that a Greek of his caliber noticed a Greek of mine.

He said, ‘You don’t mind if I pass you on to my head of security to fill you in on what I’m interested in hiring you for?’

I didn’t mind that; what I minded was that because of his thugs I’d likely have to pay a hundred and fifty to get Lucille out of the tow yard.

Without my realizing it, he’d led me to a connecting door and was ushering me through it into a reception area. Smooth. He said something about letting him know if I had any problems, then closed the door – which I heard lock – telling me he was the last person who wanted to hear from me if I encountered problems.

I looked down at my jeans, simple black cotton blouse, brown suede boots and matching jacket and frowned. Not exactly Prada. I glanced around the room. It was the first time I’d been in it. I’d been nearly carried in via a back entrance and private elevator that directly accessed Abramopoulos’ gargantuan office. I did know I was on the fortieth floor of a midtown Manhattan building. One of at least a dozen of Abramopoulos’ buildings.

I also knew I wasn’t the only not wearing Prada.

In the reception area I counted at least a dozen others, most of whom were eyeing me with the same intensity with which I stared at them. Had they all been grabbed the same way I had? I recognized a couple of them as fellow PIs.

One in particular stood out. He was one of those guys you couldn’t quite pin an age on, somewhere between thirty-five and fifty-five who always looked sweaty. He was short, pudgy, with a bad comb-over and an out-of-date, smudged pair of glasses that made his small eyes look even smaller. He wore a forest-green blazer over a wrinkled striped shirt, but I was betting his favorite was a ratty plaid one.

I wasn’t sure why he popped out from the others. Had I seen him somewhere before? Maybe with my uncle, Spyros, the real private detective in the family and my mentor? Or could it be the way he was staring at me, as if he wished he could vaporize me on the spot?

‘Miss Metropolis? Hi, I’m Elizabeth Winston, Mr Abramopoulos’ private executive assistant. If you’ll follow me? Bruno will see you now.’

I stared at the pretty assistant wearing an expensive purple suit, her short, shiny black hair cut in one of the latest styles I’d never be able to maintain, then looked back at the locked door to Abramopoulos’ office behind me and the cameras perched near the ceiling. I hadn’t even sat down. A couple of snorts and sighs from the others told me they’d been sitting for a while.

What did she mean private? Was there yet another reception area off the main office? A public one with a different assistant and different people waiting to see the big man?

Then I reminded myself of the time. The bright interior lights and business-as-usual atmosphere made it easy to forget that it was well after closing time and dark outside. If the circumstances surrounding the meeting hadn’t already rated a bullet on my bizarre list, the added detail would have landed it there. As it was, it was bumped up.

I absent-mindedly scratched my collarbone just under my jacket as I followed her through another door, distantly wondering if I’d entered some sort of modern day version of
Alice in Wonderland
and if she was the white rabbit.

Inside I went and a man who very much resembled the one who had snatched me from my car got up from behind a desk and crossed to shake my hand. I had to blink a few times to make sure it wasn’t him. First, he was dressed nicer. Second, he wasn’t trying to manhandle me. And he just looked neater somehow. More civilized.

‘Thank you for coming.’

‘Not like I had a choice. You look an awful lot like—’

‘Yeah, I get that a lot.’

‘Hope your manners are better.’

His laugh appeared to catch him off guard. ‘My older brother Boris, I’m afraid. And, yes, my manners are better. Please sit.’

His close scrutiny told me that while his manners might be better and his accent not as pronounced, he wasn’t that far removed from his brother when it came to doing what needed done.

I sat and then listened for the next ten minutes as he quickly explained the case to me. And I sat for two minutes after that digesting what he’d said while he sat with his sledgehammer hands folded on top of his desk.

Abramopoulos’ seven-year-old daughter had been kidnapped. Snatched outside her school yesterday afternoon. There hadn’t been a ransom yet, but they expected one soon. Top of the suspect list was George’s ex-wife.

‘No police, no FBI. Is that clear?’ He pushed a file from a pile toward me.

I raised my brows, taking in everything he’d just told me as I reached for the file. ‘Um, yeah.’

‘You even hear a word I said?’

I squared my shoulders. ‘Of course, I did.’

‘Any questions?’

Questions? Yeah. The first was what in the hell I was doing there.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d come a very long way when it came to private detecting. But this was my biggest case to date, no matter how hush-hush. Well, at least going in. I could only hope it wouldn’t be bigger going out, as some of my other cases had proven to be. Abramopoulos was a high-profile client. Do right by him and the agency stood to gain a huge upsweep in the quality of clientele.

I gave a mental eye roll. With my luck, that would mean snapping cheating spouses outside the Waldorf instead of the Quality Inn Motel.

Speaking of which . . .

‘What’s the pay?’

He told me.

I raised my brows. ‘Nothing unless I get something?’

‘Zero. Zip.’

Hunh.

‘You didn’t think you were going to get a retainer, did you?’

‘Hey, you guys snatched me.’

He smiled and a gold incisor flashed at me.

Ew.

I jabbed a thumb over my shoulder. ‘And the clowns in the waiting room?’

‘Same deal.’

‘All PIs.’

‘Most.’

‘How many?’

‘Every one in Manhattan and at least two boroughs.’

‘Why me?’

His smile widened. ‘Why not you?’

Why not, indeed . . .

‘Any questions regarding the case?’

‘Not yet. But when I have them, should I call you?’

He slid a business card across the desk. ‘Day or night.’

‘And I’ll get you?’

‘You’ll get my voicemail, which is checked every five minutes. So be specific.’

‘And if what I have is important?’

He looked at me for a long moment without saying anything. Then he took the card back, scribbled a number on the back and slid it back.

‘Better make sure it is important.’

‘Or else?’ I took the card.

He smiled again.

Considering how I’d been ‘invited’ for this meeting, I could only imagine the punishment.

Eeek . . .

‘Urgent only. Got ya . . .’ I said under my breath.