Death on the Aegean Queen

by Maria Hudgins

  Luc and Marco both pulled phones out of their pockets.

  “Good. Let’s input each other’s numbers and get moving.”

  I looked around and realized we were the last folks left on the boat.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  David Bondurant groaned when he saw the line for the cable cars. It snaked along the shoreline from the entrance at the ticket booth all the way back to the dock. What he couldn’t see was that, inside the building at the base of the cable, the line continued, winding through a labyrinth of halls. Another hundred or so folks inched along inside, sweltering in the heat from the tropical sun beating down on the roof and the sweat of a hundred bodies, a hundred pairs of lungs sucking out whatever oxygen remained. Marco and Luc had quickly disappeared into the entrance and beyond his line of sight. Dotsy and Sophie had taken their place at the end of the line, as he told them to do.

  The foot path snaked up the cliff to the right of the cable. From his vantage point Bondurant could see some stretches of the path but not others. Donkeys wound their doleful way both up and down, outnumbering the humans who plodded along on foot. People walking down seemed to be evenly divided between those walking alone and those who were riding or leading a riderless donkey down to pick up another tourist. In places the path switched back and disappeared behind jutting rocks.

  Bondurant flipped open his phone and punched Villas’s number on his speed dial.

  “Bondurant here. I’m at the ferry dock. Where are you?”

  Villas answered in his heavily accented English, “I’m in a cable car halfway up the mountain. It took me nearly an hour to get through the line, and now the damn thing has stopped.”

  From where Bondurant stood, he could see six cable cars, like pearls on a string, partway up the mountain and another cluster of six on the descending part of the loop. “Where’s Endicott?”

  “He’s two cars ahead of me.”

  “Look. We’ve got a situation here. We’re chasing two folks who’re trying to abscond with stolen artifacts from the ship. Nothing to do with the murders, we think, but we need your help. Have you seen Brittany Benson? She’d be carrying a very large potted plant. And a man dressed in black—blond hair—carrying a huge black case?”

  “Yes, I have. Miss Benson and her plant were on the tender with me coming over . . .”

  There was a pause. Bondurant said, “What’s that? Hello?”

  “Sorry. We started moving again and it surprised me. The man with the suitcase. He’s about four cars ahead of me.”

  “Right now? He’s on his way up right now?”

  “Yes, and we’ll all be there in about one minute.”

  “Listen carefully, Villas. Here’s what I want you to do.”

  * * * * *

  Marco and Luc, both dripping with sweat, bullied their way past two hundred people and to the front of the line. There, Marco turned and shouted to the sea of scowling faces behind them. “We are sorry! We are policemen and we are trying to catch someones. Thank you for your patience!”

  His cell phone jangled. “Pronto. Quattrocchi.”

  “How’s it going, Captain?” Bondurant said.

  “We are at the top of the line. We will be on the next cars going up.”

  “Did you pass Miss Benson on your way?”

  “No.”

  “Anyone else you recognized?”

  “No. No one.”

  “Our man with the box, and Endicott and Villas as well, are on the lift now.”

  “Are they all in the same car?”

  “No, three different cars. Now, look. When you and Girard get off up top, find Villas. Try to cover the area between the lift and the city square as well as between the lift and the donkey path.”

  “Right.”

  * * * * *

  I could hardly stand the thought of waiting in the interminable line at the back of which Sophie and I found ourselves. The sun beat down and the line was barely moving. Yanking off her sling, Sophie tried to blow air into her arm cast. We’d both worn shorts and our four legs, with their antiseptic-gold and bruise-purple splotches, were attracting stares and comments. For the first time since breakfast, I thought about my cracked collar bone and how much it hurt. I had intended to wear the clavicle brace today, but I hadn’t had a chance to go back to my room after breakfast. Sophie squinted up the hill toward the donkey path as if she was getting ready to suggest going that route. If she did, I had news for her. My aging legs would not make that trip and the last time I tried to climb a cliff like it, I’d had a panic attack. I’d scooted on my butt down a half-mile of trail, clinging to every sapling along the way.

  “Dotsy, look! It’s Brittany!”

  It took a minute to see where she pointed, but she was right. On the trail above us, a white donkey trotted along, a girl with tousled auburn curls and a large potted plant on his back. We’ll never catch her, I thought. Sophie, however, had already taken off toward the path.

  At the foot of the path, a row of donkeys awaiting riders stood tethered to a rail. The path itself, I noted, was divided into broad, flat steps made of cemented cobblestones speckled with donkey poop. Hundreds and hundreds of piles of donkey poop. There was a retaining wall along the outside side of the trail but it wasn’t nearly high enough to assuage my acrophobia. I had no choice, though, did I? I looked around and couldn’t see Sophie anywhere.

  “How much for a donkey?” I asked a man, and then realized I had no money with me. I’d have to walk, but I knew I’d never catch her that way. I considered stealing the one at the end of the row. The one that looked like Eeyore.

  Like an angel, Sophie reappeared behind me. “I paid the man for two donkeys, Dotsy. Let’s go.” She had a bit of trouble swinging with only one arm into the saddle, but when she looked fairly settled, I put the reins in her good hand.

  An attendant already had my donkey untethered and ready. I mounted, nudged the little animal with my foot, and together we took off up the side of the caldera. I passed Sophie almost immediately. She didn’t look as if she knew much about riding, but I, having grown up on farmland in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, was in my element. This animal and I understood each other. If only we weren’t clopping up the side of a sheer cliff. I steered my steed to the inside of the trail and he responded by scraping my right leg against the red pumice rock. As pain shot up through my leg, my right arm caught the full impact of the next protruding boulder.

  I couldn’t tell how far ahead Brittany was, because, as we rounded a sharp bend, we found ourselves at the back of a four-donkey caravan. I kicked my long-eared friend out into the passing lane, although the path, no more than ten feet wide, scarcely allowed room for two donkeys with riders to pass. My little guy loved it. It was as if he said to himself, “Finally! A rider who knows what she’s doing, and she wants me to haul ass! Watch this.” We passed the whole line in a flash, taking the next stretch at a virtual gallop.

  I forced myself not to think about the hundreds of feet of open air between me and the sea below, or to think about our chances of slipping on a pile of donkey poop and my donkey’s hooves flying out from under him. The woman on the last donkey we had to pass was Kathryn Gaskill. I turned abruptly and looked over my shoulder. I’d certainly have missed seeing her if I hadn’t been determinedly not looking out to sea. Kathryn was talking on her cell phone as her donkey plodded upward.

  Before rounding the next bend, a hairpin turn, I looked up and saw Brittany some twenty feet above me. Unfortunately, she also saw me, removing all hope I might sneak up on her. She nudged her donkey to hurry. I looked down the path behind me and caught a glimpse of Sophie, some thirty yards back and weaving dangerously in her saddle.

  “Go!” I kicked my donkey into high gear and we flew around the hairpin turn so quickly I had Brittany’s donkey by the reins before he even had a chance to respond to his rider’s command. “I need that krater, Brittany.”

  She tried to jump off the right side of her donkey because I was clos
e on its left but there wasn’t room. She’d have hit the caldera wall. Sliding off the rear end, she hit the ground hard, wobbled, and the krater in her arms swayed forward. The tips of the snake plant’s tall spikes grazed my cheek. I hopped off and tried to grab both her and the krater, desperate to stabilize the careening spikes, but to no avail. The krater, snake plant and all, flew out of her hands and over the side of the retaining wall. I felt sick. After all this, the krater was gone, smashed to bits, and it was my fault. If I hadn’t forced her off her donkey, it wouldn’t have happened.

  “Efharistό!”

  I jerked around and looked downward in the nick of time to witness Sophie Fumblefingers, Sophie Stumblebunny, her feet firmly set in the stirrups, rise off her saddle and pluck the flying krater from the air with one hand. The snake plant flopped out and onto the path, but the krater snuggled against her chest, encircled by the arc of her one good arm.

  Brittany, having no choice but to continue on to the top, remounted and left. I didn’t need to escort her, only keep an eye on her. I waited until a very shaken and shaking Sophie rounded the bend and caught up with me. I took the krater from her and congratulated her on the most spectacular catch I’d ever seen.

  Rounding the next-to-last turn before reaching the top, I looked up ahead and saw Brittany. She was on her cell phone. “Oh, no,” I said to Sophie. “She’s telling her boyfriend we’re onto them.”

  * * * * *

  Villas hopped out of his cable car as soon as its automatic door swung open. All the cars in the six-car cluster opened simultaneously, and all their passengers stepped out onto stairs leading up and out into the town. Since both Segal and Endicott were in cars ahead of his, he expected to simply follow them out but, from there, they’d probably head off in different directions and he’d have a decision to make.

  But as soon as Segal and his big suitcase hit the stairs, he bolted, taking the stairs two at a time. When Endicott stepped out, he glanced briefly down toward the car on the end, and then took off, pushing the other off-loading passengers aside as he flew up the stairs and around a corner.

  * * * * *

  “Brittany, we have a bunch of men out looking for your boyfriend,” I said, “so why don’t you make things easier for both of you? Tell me where he is, and we can wrap this thing up.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  We found a taverna with outdoor seating near the top of the donkey path, where it widened out into a small plaza. I set the krater under one of its tables so Sophie could guard it with her legs while she sat and ordered a drink. Meanwhile, keeping Brittany with me, I turned in the three donkeys. “Your boyfriend, Rob Segal. We know he’s here on the island and he has the amphora from the ship with him.”

  “Oh, that’s right. You know all about my love life from snooping through my room, don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t have known what your boyfriend looked like, though. For that, we needed Captain Quattrocchi of the Italian Carabinieri, who spotted him and recognized him as an international antiquities smuggler. Small world, isn’t it?” I patted my dear little donkey friend on the neck and thanked him for his help.

  “Hey, maybe he’s the one who planted George Gaskill’s watch in my room. Or could that have been you?” Brittany’s cute little turned-up nose turned up a bit higher.

  “Not me.”

  I looked over Brittany’s shoulder and glimpsed Kathryn Gaskill hurrying by, now on foot. There was something odd about the way she hurried by. She had no reason not to say hi to me and she couldn’t have failed to see me standing there. No reason unless she knew I was onto her. But how could she know that? Her walk was a little too casual, though, and her head turned a little too much toward a perfectly ordinary stone wall. She sped up just a tiny bit after she passed me, and I knew. I knew she knew.

  I had to catch her.

  Could I leave Brittany in Sophie’s care? I thought not. Sophie, with only one usable arm, had enough to do guarding the krater. Brittany might even be of some help to me. “Look, Brittany. You and your boyfriend are caught. There’s nothing you can do about that. We’ve got four big, beefy men on his trail, but I need to catch Kathryn Gaskill, who is currently heading down the alley ahead of us, and I need to find the man who’s going by the name of Nigel Endicott. If you help me, I’m pretty sure I can get you off the hook in the Gaskill murder. Are you interested?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ll explain later. Come on.” Kathryn had considerately worn an orange shirt today so tracking her would be easy. If I could keep her from finding out we were following her, I knew she would lead us to Endicott. “Stay back. We don’t want Kathryn to know we’re after her.”

  At the end of the alley, Kathryn turned onto a narrow street lined with shops. I stayed well back, pretending to window-shop whenever Kathryn, about a block ahead of us, did likewise. People walking in both directions, stopping, chatting, kids darting in and out, made for enough confusion between us and Kathryn that I didn’t think she’d spot us unless she was looking for us. She slipped into a jewelry store.

  Brittany and I waited at the window of a leather goods shop for Kathryn to reappear.

  “Now, can you explain what this is all about?” Brittany asked.

  “Let’s just say I’ve reason to believe George Gaskill wasn’t murdered at all, and if he wasn’t murdered, you can’t be charged with murdering him.”

  Kathryn reappeared and crossed to the other side of the street, but she glanced ever so quickly in our direction, then turned, heading up the street away from us. Had she spotted us? Did she know we were behind her when she went into the store? I looked around to make sure Brittany was still with me, and collided with a baby in a stroller. I apologized to the mother, cooed something to the baby, who looked startled but unharmed, and resumed my pursuit.

  In that short time, no more than an instant, Kathryn had disappeared.

  “Where did she go?”

  But Brittany was exchanging admiring glances with a couple of continental-type hunks lounging suavely outside a sweet shop. She shrugged and said, “Who? Oh! I don’t know. I missed it.”

  In this little cliffside town, every street no wider than an alley, every alley running either uphill or down, every slope offset by jutting buildings and overhanging terraces spilling bougainvillea over their sides, a person could get lost in five seconds. My only chance was to keep moving forward and look for orange shirts. We went up a street and down a winding alley, down a spiral stairway, across a tiny plaza, and up another street. At the next intersection, salvation!

  “Dotsy! Yoo-hoo!” Lettie called from up ahead.

  Dragging Brittany by the arm, I ran to Lettie, keeping an eye on Ollie’s bald head sticking up above the crowd. “Kathryn Gaskill. Have you seen her?” I spluttered out between gasps.

  “Hello, Brittany,” Ollie said, smiling. Just like a man, to ignore my desperate plea and smile at the pretty girl.

  Dear, observant Lettie came through for me. “Kathryn? She went that-a-way.” Lettie pointed up a long, winding alley on my right. “She went into the last door up there on the left-hand side.”

  It turned out to be a restaurant. Lettie was certain this was where Kathryn had gone, but I could see a maître d’ lurking, menus in hand, inside the door. This wasn’t the sort of place where they’d let you come in and look around. They’d expect you to eat. “Anybody hungry?” I asked. “I’m about to die of thirst. Who’d like to buy me a drink? I’m temporarily embarrassed by a shortage of funds.” Put that way, they could hardly refuse.

  The maître d’ had no trouble finding us a table for four, as there were few patrons. I looked around for Kathryn but she wasn’t there. There was, however, a table set for one with a small bowl of tsatziki and chips and one glass of water, and it was vacant. A napkin lay across the seat of a chair that had been pulled back recently because it was in the waiter’s way. He pushed the chair forward and laid the napkin on the tabl
ecloth as he walked by.

  He explained the menu to us and took our orders for water, beer, and coffee.

  “Lettie, I think Kathryn’s in the bathroom,” I said. “I’m going to check.” The ladies’ room was down a short hall that also led to the kitchen and to a back entrance. I opened the bathroom door and peeked in. Mirror, sink, towel dispenser, two rather nice marble-slab stalls, a vase of fresh flowers on the vanity. No Kathryn. “Damn!” I said out loud. I looked under the stall doors and saw one pair of feet but they couldn’t have been Kathryn’s because they were shod in red platform wedgies.

  I stood on tiptoes and peered out the window over the towel dispenser. Outside, a tiny alley with garbage cans and a couple of cats. No Kathryn. “Damn, damn, damn!”

  A toilet flushed, the stall door opened, and a delicate little lavender-scented woman stepped out. “Are you looking for someone?” She asked, in a voice I pegged as coming from Boston. “I couldn’t help hearing your damns.”