Death of an Aegean Queen

by Maria Hudgins

  “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?”

  “Right. But I don’t know if they were ticked off about it or anything. Ollie left before I had a chance to ask him.”

  I ordered a fruit plate, an omelet, and a basket of bread, then brought Lettie up to date on the scene at the stern deck and the discovery of the suicide note, which neither Kathryn nor I had yet seen. I told her about Marco’s fight with Chief Letsos, which was funny, now, looking back on it.

  “It’s still possible George is somewhere on the ship, isn’t it?”

  “Possible,” I said, “but looking less and less likely, especially since they found the note signed ‘George.’ I tasted the honeydew melon on my fruit plate. “This fruit is fabulous, Lettie. I think it must be the hot Greek sun that does it.”

  I heard a distant fluttering sound. Lettie was discussing eggs with the waiter so I tuned her out and concentrated on the noise. I tried to decide if it was coming from inside or outside the room or if it was all my imagination.

  It was real and it came from outside, growing louder into a whump-whump-whump. The diners on the other side of the room turned toward the windows, and one man pointed toward an object in the sky. The morning sun glinted off something silver. Lettie and I jumped up and dashed over, trying to get a better look over the heads of the people who had quickly crowded along the row of windows.

  It was a helicopter. At first I couldn’t tell if it was a military or a rescue-type chopper or what, but not far behind it, speeding across the water toward our ship, came a small power boat with, it looked like, three men aboard. On its side was the word ΜΥΚΟΝΟΣ and something else in Greek I couldn’t read. The little boat careened around the left side of our ship and out of sight. The racket from the helicopter’s rotors rattled the silverware and vibrated the water glasses as it banked right and disappeared overhead.

  “I’ll bet the authorities have been called in to help find George,” I said.

  “Can a helicopter land on this ship?”

  “I don’t know, Lettie. I forgot to ask them if they have a helipad.”

  As we returned to our table, I spotted Ollie coming toward us. His shirt was buttoned wrong. One buttonhole off, from top to bottom. He pulled out a chair, our waiter placed a menu in front of him, and Lettie reached over and grabbed the top of his shirt. She intended to fix his button problem but Ollie swatted her hands away. “Leave it, Lettie. We’re in a restaurant, for God’s sake.”

  He studied the menu for a minute, and gave his order to the waiter. He ran one beefy hand over his bald head down to the back of his neck, squeezed his neck muscles, and sighed loudly. “Great vacation, eh? Lose all your money to some guy you may never see again and first thing next morning, get accused of killing him!”

  “Oh, but surely they didn’t—”

  “Yes, they did! The last time I saw the little wimp he was heading down to his room with a pocketful of money. And that’s the truth!”

  “How much money did you lose, dear?” Lettie asked softly.

  Ollie averted his eyes and looked toward the floor. “About two thousand.”

  “Ollie, no! Now we have no money for the rest of our trip!”

  “We still have our cash. I got the poker chips with a credit card.”

  I said, “George traded in his chips and took it away in cash? That was dumb. How much did he leave with?”

  “About nine thousand dollars. He insisted on cash. Just about cleaned them out of American money.” Ollie snapped his napkin open and laid it across one knee. “At first the security guys seemed to think I killed him because I was pissed off about losing, and then, when they found out we’d gone back to the casino together and he’d taken his winnings in cash, they figured I’d killed him and taken the money. I told them, I said, ‘Search me, search my room, search anything you like. Show me where I hid the nine thou!’” Ollie pressed all ten fingertips against his wonky-buttoned shirt.

  “Well, of course. If you had the money, they ought to be able to find it,” I said. “It would probably be in your room.”

  “If somebody did do him in and rob him, they don’t need to look any farther than the casino for the culprit. There weren’t more than three or four people in there when George left with his money, and they all saw the stack of hundred-dollar bills the cashier counted out.” Ollie flipped his fork, tines down, on the linen cloth and pressed the back of it with his forefinger. Pressed it so hard I feared it was jamming holes into the surface beneath.

  “Did you mention this to the security men?” Lettie laid one hand on Ollie’s as if to soothe it and save the poor fork and table from further damage.

  “They found a suicide note. Did they tell you?” I asked.

  It was clear to me, Ollie had not been told about the note. The waiter brought his food, and Ollie stared at the plate as if he didn’t recognize what it was. He tilted his head and looked at me. “A suicide note? From George Gaskill?”

  “Appare
ntly so.”

  He stared at his omelet another moment. “It’s beginning to make sense, now. The officer left me for a bit and when he came back, his tone had changed. He started asking me about George’s state of mind, like he’d forgotten about the money.”

  * * * * *

  I was on my second cup of coffee when Marco breezed in and sat at our table. He appeared to have tidied himself up a bit since the last time I’d seen him, at six a.m., unshaven, uncombed, and wearing yesterday’s shirt. He smelled of soap, now, and sported a fresh cotton shirt.

  “We need you downstairs, Dotsy,” he said, waving away the waiter holding the coffee pot. “They are ready to show Kathryn the suicide note, and I told them she might need a little—how do you say—”

  “Moral support?”

  “Yes. They have brought a nurse into the room to care for her, but Kathryn is not paying any attention to her. She said, ‘I am not sick. I do not need a nurse.’”

  As I pushed my chair back and fumbled around for my purse, Lettie said, “What’s up with the helicopter and boat that came roaring up a few minutes ago?”

  “Ah, yes. The boat brought police out from Mykonos, and the helicopter is from the FBI office at the U.S. Embassy in Athens. They need to plan their actions together, you see. The ship will dock in Mykonos in about an hour, and the passenger who is missing is a U.S. citizen. So the investigation, whether it turns out to be suicide, murder, accident, or whatever, will involve all of these.”

  “Oh dear,” I said. “I never dreamed it would be so complicated.”

  Marco, his hand at the back of my waist, ushered me out of the restaurant and down a short hall to a bank of elevators I hadn’t seen before. So far, I’d only used the ones at the bow of the ship. These four were fronted by ornate brass doors reminding me of Ghiberti’s Baptistry doors in Florence, but their panels depicted flowers instead of biblical scenes. The doors of one elevator slid open to reveal a dazzling rosewood-and-etched-glass-paneled car. Marco pushed a button on the panel inside, and the car dropped so suddenly my stomach did a little flip. He leaned back against a brass handrail that looked as if it had been polished within the last hour. I studied his face for a split second before he turned his gaze to me, forcing me to avert my own eyes to the row of winking lights beside the buttons. He was a handsome man, with his salt-and-pepper hair and his dark chocolate eyes. Noble nose. Pleasantly crooked teeth. I think slightly irregular teeth give a man’s face character. My mind flashed back, unbidden, to that night on the roof of the hotel in Florence when Marco had kissed me. Now I felt myself gathering inward, like a bat hanging upside down in a clammy cave wraps itself in its leathery wings. For protection. His beard had felt soft, I remembered. Today, his beardless face looked a little better to me than it had yesterday. I might be getting used to it.

  We exited the elevator on the Athena deck, and Marco corrected me when I turned left into the hall. “This way,” he said, and headed right. Left, I then realized, would have taken me back to the stern deck. I glanced in that direction and saw the yellow caution tape that now criss-crossed the door. Beyond it, I knew, was the bloody deck.

  Our timing was good, because Chief Letsos and a tall man in a light gray suit were already knocking at the Gaskills’ door, a hundred feet ahead of us. Marco mumbled in my ear, “They have given permission for you to be with Kathryn when they show her the note, but they may ask me to leave because I have no official reason to be there. If they do, I will leave. I will not make a fuss.”

  “They should be glad for your help,” I said.

  “If I had not been here this morning, Dotsy—if you had not called me when you did—they would have ruined the whole case already.” Marco’s words trailed off at the end as Kathryn’s door opened. A white-uniformed nurse admitted us, and we all introduced ourselves to each other in funereal tones. Marco introduced me to the captain of the ship, Constantinos Tzedakis, a short but commanding sort of man with gray hair and beard, white uniform, and lots of hardware on his shirt, who bowed stiffly and took my hand. Seven people now crowded the little room.

  Kathryn Gaskill sat, looking terribly small and vulnerable, in a russet-upholstered armchair. I tripped over and sat near her on the foot of the bed. The nurse moved back, ceding the guardian angel position to me. Kathryn looked at me, confusion in her eyes.

  “Why are you here, Dotsy?”

  “Marco asked me to come down. They have something to show you, Kathryn.”

  Kathryn’s mouth opened and quivered a bit as Chief Letsos stepped forward and held out the small white sheet of paper now encased in a clear plastic sleeve.

  “We found this on the deck, Mrs. Gaskill.”

  Kathryn took the sheet and read it. Her eyebrows knitted and she said, “What’s this?”

  “It’s a note, Kathryn. They think it’s from your husband.” I reached out and touched the arm of her chair.

  Kathryn looked up at Letsos, then at me. Her eyes widened and she snorted. “Totally ridiculous! Of course, it’s not from George. My name is misspelled! This says C-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E. My name is K-A-T-H-R-Y-N. Don’t you think George would know that, after seventeen years of marriage?”

  “Uh, oh,” I said. She handed me the sheet and I read:

  Dear Catherine,

  I’m so very sorry but I simply can’t go on. Believe me, it’s better this way.

  Love,

  George

  “Ah ha. I told you. I knew it was a fake!” Marco spun around on one foot and threw both hands toward the ceiling.

  Chief Letsos glowered.

  The FBI man stepped forward and took the note from my hand. “What we have here is, quite likely, the handiwork of a murderer.”

  A hush, so heavy it felt as if it had pushed the air from the room, fell on all of us.

  “This makes it all the more important for us to try to lift a fingerprint off of it,” Marco said, glancing pointedly at Letsos as he said it. What he wanted to say, I knew, was, “And if it weren’t for me, there would be dozens of other prints on top of the murderer’s by now!”

  Chapter Six

  Our ship tied up at a dock in a desolate, treeless part of Mykonos Island from which we were to be taken by one of the waiting buses over a hill and around a bay to Mykonos Town. They wouldn’t let us go ashore until, Marco told me, the various investigators put their ducks in a row and agreed on how to proceed. While we were ashore they would comb the entire ship, bow to stern, bilge to stacks, with the proverbial fine-tooth comb for any trace of George Gaskill. Mykonos police phoned the little island airport, the ferry dock, and the marinas warning them not to let anyone from our ship leave the island. The closed-circuit TV in every room informed us our rooms would be checked while we were ashore.

  They couldn’t force us to go ashore and, based on conversations I overheard in the hall, quite a few guests preferred to stay on board. I imagined some folks were still sleeping off last night’s excesses in the disco, others were here for the cruise and had no interest in the island, and still others were honeymooning. However, when ship security, the FBI, and the Mykonos police came calling, DO NOT DISTURB signs would be disregarded.

  Disembarking was a computerized affair. We had to show them the plastic boarding card they had given to each of us yesterday in Piraeus. The card would then flash our photo, name, stateroom, age, weight, and bra size up on a screen for all to see. To get back on the ship, we had to show the card again. It had made me nervous that they required us to surrender our passports to the purser before we sailed, but Marco explained it was safer than letting us hold onto them. “On a cruise like this,” he told me, “you can be certain at least ten people will lose their passports. Some will drop them overboard accidentally, some will leave theirs on an island and not realize it until the ship has left port, and someone will threaten to sue the cruise line if the ship does not wait for them to go back to shore and search the whole island. It would be chaos.”

  When he put it like that, I could see it was
purely for our own safety. After all, what would a cruise line do with my passport? Sell my picture? Sell my passport number? I’d already surrendered those on several other documents. With our passports all safely tucked away in the ship’s vault, our boarding cards became our passport to everything.

  The line to disembark snaked around from the exit door across the foyer and down one hall. Marco, Ollie, Lettie, and I stood behind two girls I recognized as dancers in last night’s show. They were also, I thought, the same two girls I’d run into on the promenade deck at 3 a.m. The shorter of the two, a perky girl with dark, curly hair, chattered away in Greek-accented English. The other girl answered her in a pure middle-America drawl. Ohio or Pennsylvania, I’d have guessed.

  This second girl was beautiful in the sexy, full-lipped way that men seem to love. Long auburn curls, high cheekbones, and dimples. She turned toward us, looking back over our heads to the line of people behind us. “God, this is taking forever,” she said. “By the time all these people get off, it’ll be time to get back on.”

  “Forgive me,” I said, “but I’ll bet you and I are from the same part of the world. I’m going by your accent, of course. I’m Dotsy Lamb from Staunton, Virginia.”

  “Oh, hi. Brittany Benson,” she answered, her smile broadening as her gaze turned to Marco. “And you’re right. I’m from Pennsylvania originally, but I haven’t been home for years. I work on the ship.”

  “I know. We saw your performance last evening. Lovely.”

  “Oh no,” the smaller girl said, throwing both hands across her face. “You saw me fall onto the stage, didn’t you? I was trying to forget about that.”

  And screwed up the whole circle dance by going the wrong way, I thought, but what I said was, “You fell beautifully.”

  “I’m Sophie Antonakos,” she said, extending her hand. We completed the introductions all around and chatted while the line inched toward the security post. Ollie asked the girls where he might go to see fishermen bringing in their catch, and both agreed he could do that almost anywhere along the shoreline but a little bay south of Mykonos Town, a bay within walking distance, was a good bet.