Death on the Aegean Queen

by Maria Hudgins

  “I’m looking for a friend of mine. She’s short with dark hair and she’s wearing an orange shirt. I thought she came in here.”

  “She’s gone to the Archaeology Museum. The one near the cable car.”

  I could only stare at her.

  The woman laughed and dodged around me to the sink. “She was here a minute ago, when I came in. She was on the phone, and I heard her say, ‘How am I supposed to find the Archaeology Museum?’ and ‘Across from the cable car exit?’ Whoever was on the other end apparently explained how to find it and she dashed out.”

  “Thank you so much,” I said. “I don’t know how anybody ever finds anything in this place. So confusing.” Back in the hallway, I slipped down to the other end and opened the door onto the alley. It wasn’t locked, so Kathryn could have gone out this way instead of returning to her table. I knew she hadn’t gone out the front door and now, it would seem, she had seen us, called Endicott, and split.

  Back at our table, I caught Brittany trying to make a phone call. She looked up, saw me, and meekly closed the little device. Obviously, she’d been trying to call Segal. I chided myself for not warning Ollie and Lettie of that possibility before I went to the ladies’ room. When I explained what I’d learned in the bathroom, Ollie cancelled his sandwich order and paid for the drinks. Meanwhile, I grabbed Brittany by the wrist, gave her my most intimidating motherly glare, and said, “The Archaeology Museum by the cable car station. We need to get there fast, and you’d better lead us straight to it. No detours, no phone calls. Do you think you can handle that?”

  * * * * *

  Dashing out of the cable car station, Luc Girard and Marco heard Villas call to them from somewhere above their heads. They spied him, standing at the rail of a hotel terrace on top of a cliff north of the cable, from which vantage point he commanded a wide view. They located a winding stairway that led up to the terrace and joined the frustrated policeman from Mykonos now charged with the responsibility of following two men who, unfortunately, had run off in different directions. Of the three, only Girard was familiar with the layout of the town. Villas pointed out the directions he thought his quarry had fled—Segal to the east, roughly the direction of main square, Endicott to the north. “I don’t know why either man ran. Why did Endicott run away? He’s used to being followed. And why did the other man run? He doesn’t even know who I am.”

  “Segal is probably headed for the bus station or the taxi stand,” Girard said. “I don’t know where Endicott is, but since you’re supposed to be following him, I’d suggest you go north. Marco and I will try to find Segal. I know the layout of the town and Marco knows what Segal looks like.”

  Villas said, “You can’t miss him even if you don’t know his face. He’s carrying a huge black case.”

  “Let us exchange our phone numbers,” Marco suggested. Until then, Marco and Girard had had no reason to get each other’s numbers, or Villas’s. All three men added two new numbers to their respective phones. “Yes. Why did Segal run? How could he have found out we were after him?”

  * * * * *

  The Archaeology Museum charged a three euro admission, which Ollie had to pay for all four of us. Inside, we split up. It would be easy for us to check out the whole place, I thought, because it was a small building. I described Kathryn and Nigel to the woman at the front desk and learned the woman with the orange shirt had, indeed, come in a few minutes earlier. A man, not unlike my description of Nigel, had come in earlier but he might or might not have left already. She couldn’t remember.

  Taking my captive, Brittany, along with me, I made a sort of counter-clockwise circuit of the rooms while Ollie went the other way and Lettie stayed near the front door. There was no way Kathryn Gaskill could escape me now. But I ran into Ollie before I ran into Kathryn.

  “Where can she be? She can’t possibly have left,” I said. “I know! The bathroom.” I located the ladies’ room, positive for the second time in less than a half-hour that I was about to face Kathryn Gaskill in the loo, but the loo was vacant. I moped back out, shaking my head.

  Ollie said, “I’ll bet she’s in the men’s room,” and turned, heading for the door with the masculine icon. He walked in but held the door open while he checked around. Turning back to Brittany and me, he raised one finger to his lips and motioned for us to follow him in.

  A urinal along one wall, a stall beside it, and a sink beside that. It appeared the room was empty, but Ollie pointed to the gap between the stall and the floor. I saw two feet wearing men’s shoes, but rather than toes pointing toward the door, they were pointed in the opposite direction.

  Ollie craned his neck to peer over the top of the door and said, “Mr. Endicott, I presume. And Mrs. Gaskill! Fancy meeting you here.”

  Nigel and Kathryn tried to bolt but, as soon as they saw Brittany and me, they were drawn up short. Ollie had both of them firmly by the collar.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  To the east the land beneath the town of Fira rose, then crested at a broad, paved road running north–south and roughly dividing the tourist part of town from the part where the real people lived. Marco followed Luc Girard up dozens of steps. They stopped to catch their breath when they reached the top. Down the road to the right, they could see a white sugar-cube building with a sign on top that said TAXI in English, with the Greek equivalent in smaller letters.

  “The bus station is beyond the taxi place,” said Luc. From where they stood, the tops of two buses could be seen above the roof of the TAXI. “There is a bus that runs south, to the airport and to Akrotiri, every hour during the day. If Segal has taken a taxi, he may have already left, but if he’s waiting for a bus, we may still catch him.”

  “What about Brittany? We know they were not together when he came up in the cable car. I think they will have to find each other before either of them goes anywhere. They may be planning to meet at the bus station.”

  “Good point. Let’s go.”

  “Wait!” Marco threw up both hands, like a traffic cop. “What will we do with him, or them, when we find them?”

  “Arrest them.”

  “We cannot do that. First of all, we do not have a warrant. Second, I do not have any authority in Santorini and neither do you. You are an archaeologist. Third, we do not have any handcuffs.”

  “I see,” said Luc, stroking his goatee. “We could ask the local police to help us. Their station is somewhere nearby, I believe.”

  “The Fira police cannot arrest them. There is no warrant, no extradition papers, and they have not violated any local laws. They have stolen artifacts off a cruise ship that is owned by people from God knows where.”

  “Call Bondurant. Ask him what he suggests.”

  Marco called the number Bondurant had given him. “I am hearing the engaged signal. He is talking to someone.” He rang off, stuffed his hands in his shorts pockets, and rocked back on his heels. “Come.” He headed down the road toward the bus station but stopped well shy of it. There was no indoor waiting room here, only a small information kiosk and a few trees under which passengers could wait. There, on a bench beside the kiosk, sat a blond man. Beside him lay a big black case.

  Marco grabbed Luc by the arm. “Wait a minute. I have an idea.”

  * * * * *

  Officer Villas was on the phone with Bondurant.

  “I was looking for Endicott in the north part of town when he passed me going south. He hasn’t spotted me yet, but he sort of sneaked around past the cable car entrance and now he’s gone into the Archaeology Museum.”

  “Very good. I suggest you stay with him now. Try to find out why he bolted like that. I’m on my way up the hill right now, so if you hear from Girard or Quattrocchi, tell them to call me.”

  “Right, sir.”

  “Seen Brittany Benson yet?”

  “No, I haven’t. Oh, there is an admission charge for the museum. I hope I have enough money to get in.”

  “Flash your badge, man!” Bondurant said with
a deep sigh.

  * * * * *

  Luc walked casually up to the bench where Rob Segal sat and said, “Going to the airport?”

  Rather than giving an answer, Segal looked up at him and squinted into the sun as if to say, “What’s it to you?”

  “I ask that because it’s where I need to go and I just heard the next bus will not run. It’ll be an hour before the next one.”

  Segal exhaled loudly. “Well, that’s fine!” His accent was American. “I have a five o’clock flight and it’s—what?—two-thirty already.”

  Luc pushed at the black case with his foot. “The last time I saw a man traveling with a suitcase that big, it turned out he had a mummy in it. You have a mummy in there?”

  Segal shifted the case away from Luc’s foot and glared at him. “No.”

  Luc bent as if he were preparing to sit on the case.

  Segal shifted his body and patted the bench beside him. “Have a seat.”

  “Well, I think I’m going to take a cab to the airport. Costs more than the bus, but I hate the thought of waiting here for another hour.” He turned toward the road behind him. “I don’t know why they’ve canceled the bus, but I’d bet it has something to do with the smuggler they’re after.”

  Segal’s pale face flushed crimson. “What smuggler?”

  “No idea. I walked by the police station on my way over here and there were a half-dozen cops out front. I heard them say something about a man trying to smuggle a pot out of the country.” He waited for that to sink in. “Interested in sharing a ride to the airport?”

  “Right. I don’t feel like waiting here any longer, either. Not with a five o’clock flight.” Segal grabbed the case and headed toward the taxi stand.

  On the opposite side of the road, a man in a black cap stood behind a cab. He was reading a newspaper. He looked up as Segal and Girard crossed the bus station parking area and shouted, “Taxi? You want to go to airport? Ten euros, I take you to airport!”

  “Right.”

  The man in the black cap popped open the trunk by using the remote on his key ring, and grabbed Segal’s case. At the same time, he opened one of the back doors and said, “Hop in.”

  Segal climbed into the back seat, which was separated from the front by a Plexiglas partition, and Girard, rather than climbing in behind him, slammed the door. The man in the black hat clicked all the doors locked, removed his hat, and peeked into the back seat at a dumbfounded Rob Segal.

  “Thank you for the amphora, Mister Segal,” Marco said. “And the next time you want to take a taxi, remember. Real cab drivers do not wear shorts.”

  * * * * *

  The tender took a silent bunch back to the ship. Rob Segal and Brittany announced they were clamming up until they spoke to their lawyer, and the only thing Bondurant got out of them was the key to the black case. Ollie and Lettie, beyond their part in the museum caper, still didn’t know what was going on. Villas followed Endicott around the boat because, in spite of everything, he still had no probable cause to handcuff or arrest him. Marco and I walked out on the stern deck and watched Santorini shrink toward the horizon.

  “I didn’t get to see Akrotiri today and yesterday I didn’t get to see the Palace of Knossos. I’m going to have to do this cruise again sometime.”

  Marco slid one arm around my waist and squeezed. He kissed my temple, then turned his face back to the sea. “I wish we had a few more days together. Could you fly with me to Florence tomorrow? I could show you places the tourists do not know about.”

  I paused a moment. I had to be sure I really meant the offer that was on the tip of my tongue. “Why don’t you wait a couple of days before you fly back? Lettie and Ollie and I are staying in Athens until Thursday. We have rooms at the Grande Bretagne.”

  “I am impressed.”

  “They’ll treat you like a king.”

  “I will call the caserma and ask if they can manage without me until Thursday.”

  I turned away from the rail and kissed him. “Do you believe me now? That Nigel Endicott is George Gaskill, reincarnated?” I could hardly believe it, but Marco didn’t answer me. What will it take to convince these blockheads? “Come on, Marco! We found him in a bathroom stall with Kathryn! Kathryn was crouched on the rim of the potty in a fetal position and he was holding her to keep her from falling off. If that wasn’t a husband and wife trying to avoid discovery, then it had to be a brand-new widow having a pretty bizarre rendezvous with a man she met four days ago. Which of those is more believable?”

  Marco raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

  “Even if you believe Kathryn has flown straight into the arms of a new lover, the bathroom stall thing still makes no sense. If they were that hot to be together, why didn’t they stay on the boat where they have two lovely rooms? Or wait until they got back this afternoon?” I realized I was shouting and lowered my voice. “And, Marco, they were both fully dressed.”

  “There are still so many things that cannot be explained by saying, ‘George Gaskill did not die. He turned himself into Nigel Endicott.’ What about the blood? I am sure the DNA test will tell us the blood was George Gaskill’s, so what do you think he did? Go out on the deck, cut himself, smear the blood around to make it look like a fight, and then calmly walk back inside and turn himself into Nigel Endicott? Dotsy, there was at least a half-liter of blood. If he had cut himself that badly, he would have had to get medical attention, or he would have bled to death. That blood was not from a little cut!”

  A half-liter of blood. That part of Marco’s tirade echoed through my head and I did a rough metric-to-English conversion. That would be about a pint of blood. A pint of blood. Give a pint of blood. Help to save a life.

  “That’s it! What if George had a pint—I mean a half-liter— of his own blood with him? Wasn’t he scheduled for surgery right after this vacation? Heart surgery? People sometimes stockpile their own blood before surgery, for safety reasons. If he did that, who’s to say he didn’t bring a bag of his own blood with him? Oh dear. Would they let you bring blood on a plane?”

  “If you had authorization from a doctor, they would,” Marco said. “Va bene, you may have an idea here.”

  “The EDTA your people found in the blood sample you gave them. Mightn’t they use that to keep the blood from clotting in the bag? Didn’t Mrs. Ziegler say it was a blood thinner?”

  “You are too smart to be a woman.” Marco hugged me, and I elected to let the sexist comment slide. “If Bondurant will fingerprint Nigel Endicott when we get back to the ship, he could fax the prints to the FBI and they can easily compare them to the prints of George Gaskill. The Pennsylvania police have Gaskill in their files. We might know the answer as early as tomorrow.”

  It felt as if the clouds of confusion were beginning to dissipate. The engines under our feet shifted to a low rumble as we pulled up alongside the Aegean Queen. Folks lined up at the rail of the promenade deck waved down to us, and I felt the general movement of the passengers around me toward the ramp.

  “Luc Girard said he wished he had a video of the two of you trapping Rob Segal in the back of a cab.”

  “I must admit, I made a very good cab driver.”

  “I wish I had a video of Sophie catching the krater with one hand. She’d be drafted by the Steelers, immediately.”

  “What do you mean? Sophie would never steal.”

  When would I learn to avoid references to American sports when talking to Marco? Maybe I should have said “The Saints.” No, that wouldn’t do either.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Back aboard ship, I snatched the photos of George and Nigel off the displays in the photo shop and dashed across to the security office. Bondurant answered my knock on the door. He and Chief Letsos were in conference, but I barged past Bondurant and plunked the pictures down on Letsos’s desk.

  “Look. Here’s what I was telling you about. See the white, sort of triangular, piece of something in front of George Gaskill’s ear? Now look
at Nigel Endicott.” I pointed to the second photo. “Identical piece of whatever, isn’t it? Put this together with the fact that we found Kathryn Gaskill and Nigel together in a men’s room stall on Santorini, and think about it.”

  Both men looked at the photos, and then Letsos picked up the one of George and looked at it closely. Bondurant did likewise with Nigel’s. They exchanged photos and studied some more. Bondurant mumbled something I didn’t catch. He dragged two passports across the desk and opened both of them to the first page.

  “As a matter of fact, we were discussing these before you came in, so, you see, I did take your idea seriously.” Bondurant looked sideways at me. “Look at this. George Gaskill’s passport. He immigrated into Athens, Greece, on June fifteenth.” I looked at the passport closely, as if I’d never seen it before. “And please note that this is the only stamp in the book. It’s a recently issued passport.” Bondurant flipped forward several pages and back to the photo page, handed it to me, then picked up the second passport.