by Rick Copp
The tourists began fanning out and pointing at several well-preserved mosaics that had been excavated since the archaeological dig of Delos began in the late 1800s. That’s when I noticed that all of the camera-toting travelers in the tour group were Greek, which just raised more questions.
Uli noticed them too, and raised an eyebrow.
I suspected Delphina and her friends were here to help. “They’re probably fans. I can’t go anywhere without getting recognized.”
Uli seemed to buy it, but then the unthinkable happened. The head on top of the Academy Award sagged to one side before rolling off entirely and bouncing off a rock. There was a stunned silence.
Uli’s face flushed with anger; his mouth was open, but no words came out. He was about to blow with more fury than Mount St. Helens. We were done for.
What happened next unfolded so fast I didn’t even have time to react. The tourists that had surreptitiously wandered up to us split apart, drawing guns from their camera bags. They screamed in Greek. I had no idea what they were saying, but Uli’s men instantly raised their hands in the air and lowered themselves to the ground. I felt like I was caught up in some Greek version of Cops, except I wasn’t wearing a wife beater. Liam, Laurette, and I immediately followed suit and kissed the gravel. Uli, defiant to the end, stood his ground as the gun-slinging Greeks closed in on us.
The shortest one, an olive-skinned badass with a goatee and shaved head that made up for his height, bellowed in English, “Hellenic Police, Mr. Karydes. I suggest you cooperate and lie down on the ground. Otherwise, I’ll have my men help you.”
Uli stared the officer down before quietly lowering himself to the dirt, spreading out on his belly.
Delphina threw off her yellow floppy hat and rushed over to us. “Laurette, Jarrod, you can get up. It’s safe now.”
Laurette stood up and threw her arms around Delphina. “Thank you so much. You promised to take care of things and none of us would be hurt, and you came through.”
I was flabbergasted. Our hotel receptionist was some kind of cop? This was insane.
Laurette hustled over to Liam, who still was facedown on the ground, and smiled at the officer who was standing over him. “He’s with us.”
The officer stepped aside, allowing Liam to climb to his feet.
I turned to Laurette for an explanation as the group of Greek officers began handcuffing Uli and his men.
“Remember last night when Delphina offered us help if we needed it?” she said breathlessly, still reeling from all the drama. “Well, this morning, before you called me to come here, I got so worried I went to her.”
“She woke me up again,” Delphina said with a smile.
“It turns out Delphina’s brother is a special guard with the Hellenic Police, which is a branch of the Ministry of Public Order in Athens,” she said, pointing to the bossy short one overseeing the other men, who were busy securing the prisoners.
I had heard of the Ministry of Public Order. They were the ones who did such an impressive job of security at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
“My father was a special guard; my grandfather was also, as well as my great-grandfather. I would be one too if they allowed women to join,” she said. “My brother was here with some of his buddies partying on Mykonos all week. So when I called and told him what was going on, he offered to bring along his friends and help out. The Hellenic Police have been keeping tabs on Karydes for years, trying to bust up his smuggling and extortion operations. He’s very clever, and it’s been a frustrating task for the government to try and find enough evidence for an arrest.”
“If he has an Achilles’ heel, then it’s his obsession with his TV and movie collection,” I said. “Seems he’d do anything to add another priceless piece like Claire Richards’s Academy Award.”
“Even kidnapping,” Delphina said. “Karydes has reached a point where he believes a crime like that is not a big deal if it gets him what he wants. He’s been so successful keeping the Greek authorities at bay for so many years that he started to feel he was above the law. When Laurette came to me and explained everything, I knew we had him.”
“What about Charlie?” I said.
Delphina smiled and pointed to a helicopter off in the distance that was fast approaching Delos. “My cousin owns a chopper. He gives island-hopping tours three times daily. It was a slow day today, so I sent him over to Karydes’s place to see if he could find your friend. He called me on my cell about twenty minutes ago and said he found a man locked up in one of the guesthouses on the back end of Karydes’s property.”
My heart pounded as the helicopter landed on a flat bed of rock well south of where we were to protect the surrounding artifacts. The passenger door flew open, and Charlie, weary, dirt smudged, and bruised, climbed out and crouched down to avoid the whirling blades of the chopper above him as he staggered forward.
I choked up as I ran toward him, my arms outstretched, bursting with relief that he was alive and well. I practically knocked him over as I grabbed him in a bear hug. He winced from the pressure I was inadvertently applying to his bullet wounds, and I quickly loosened my grip.
“Hey, babe, what took you so long?” he said with a warm smile.
Chapter 32
As Delphina’s brother and his pals carted off Uli and his band of thugs and began making excited calls to the home office in Athens about their big capture, Delphina’s cousin with the helicopter offered three of us a ride back by air. I suggested Delphina, Liam, and Charlie go with him. Laurette and I could just take one of the ferryboats back. I wanted Charlie checked out by a doctor as soon as possible to make sure he was okay.
“I’m a little tired, but I’m fine,” Charlie said. “We’ve been apart long enough, Jarrod. I’m going back on the boat with you.”
Laurette was more than happy to go back to Mykonos on the chopper. It would give her an opportunity to squeeze in next to the strapping Liam, who was happy to have the Oscar back, one of the few remaining connections to his dear late lover.
Charlie and I clasped hands and made our way toward the dock, where a large number of tourists were already lining up to board the boat back to Mykonos port.
I had so many questions for Charlie, but I didn’t want to overwhelm him so soon after our joyous reunion. He knew me well enough to know it was in his best interest to tell me everything now. Otherwise, it would be an impossibly long cruise back to Mykonos.
“After you stormed out of the room that night, Akshay called and asked me to meet him down at the bar. I was just pissed enough at you to take him up on it. Besides, I didn’t want to sit around the room stewing all night, so I went down for a cocktail. Apparently, Uli’s guys were staking him out and saw us drinking together. They caught Akshay trying to make a pass by pawing my knee under the table.”
My back stiffened, but Charlie smiled and massaged the knots with his hands. “I pulled away, don’t worry, and told him I wasn’t interested. But it was too late. The guys had already reported back to Uli that Akshay had a boyfriend. On my way back up to the room, they got on the elevator with me and chloroformed me with a rag. That’s the last thing I remember. Next thing I knew, I was on a private plane with a massive headache. And I wound up here. I didn’t know what the hell was going on.”
We waited in line to board the boat, and I noticed the middle-aged Little Rock couple from the Music Café where Laurette and I first met Uli standing in line ahead of us. They were straining their ears trying to eavesdrop on our spicy conversation.
“That entire first night I was held captive at the compound, I tried convincing Karydes his guys had made a colossal mistake, that I barely knew Akshay and I had no knowledge of what kind of schemes he was involved in. Of course he assumed I was just trying to save my own ass, hoping he’d let me go. But I finally started to get through to him, and after he did a little checking on his own, he realized I was telling the truth. And that you were my boyfriend. At that point, it dawned on me that I might have
been stupid. He could’ve just driven me out to sea on his boat and dumped me into the ocean. Luckily for me, Uli Karydes may be a lot of things, but he’s no killer.”
“So Akshay agreed to make the trade anyway?”
“He at least had a shred of decency. He felt responsible for my predicament, so he agreed to swap the Oscar for my immediate release.”
“And the e-mail you sent me?”
“That was Uli covering all his bases. He didn’t want you snooping around, so he sat me down at the computer and forced me to write it. When word got back from his guys that you were undeterred in finding out what happened to me, he made me call you. I figured my one shot was sending you a message that something was wrong, which was why I got Snickers’s gender wrong. I knew you’d pick up on that, and it would just fire you up to keep searching for me. I knew in my heart you’d never give up, babe.”
I reached up and kissed him full on the mouth, much to the consternation of the conservative red-state couple in front of us who had craned their necks to get a good look at us while we talked.
We boarded the boat, never letting go of each other’s hands, and settled in for the twenty-five minute ride back to Mykonos. As we pulled into the dock, I noticed a small commotion. Laurette, Liam, and Delphina were all there, as well as a few of her brother’s Special Guard buddies and some very uptight-looking, pasty-skinned officials. As passengers disembarked down the plank to the dock, I made eye contact with Laurette, who was looking very worried and uncomfortable. Uli Karydes had been arrested for Charlie’s kidnapping. Liam had Claire’s Oscar back. Charlie was safe. What could be wrong now?
I gripped Charlie’s hand tighter as we ambled up to the assembled group waiting for us. That’s when I saw them. Detective Inspector Sally Bowles and Detective Colin Samms. The two British cops who were so convinced I was hiding something and were trying to pin Claire’s murder on me.
Bowles marched forward like an angry den mother who had accidentally lost one of her charges on her watch. “Skipping the country has done nothing to alleviate the perception of your guilt, Mr. Jarvis.”
“I’m not concerned with perception since I’m innocent,” I said.
Samms scowled. “That’s not what they’re saying back in England.”
Detective Colin Samms unfolded a Fleet Street tabloid for me to see the blaring headline. Former Child Star on the Run after Poisoning Claire Richards!
“Yeah, well, that paper also said Princess Di faked her own death and is now living in a cult of Tibetan monks.”
“Why did you flee the country, Mr. Jarvis?” Bowles said.
“There was a small matter of rescuing my boyfriend from a crazed Greek shipping magnate with an Academy Award fetish.”
“Well, you did yourself no favors back in London. Her majesty’s government has gone to great expense to come here and retrieve you,” Samms said with that intimidating fixed scowl on his face.
“There were no charges against me. I was free to go where I wanted to, and I wanted to come here.”
“You were advised to not leave, and you disobeyed that request,” Bowles said.
“I don’t get what the big deal is,” I said. “You’re acting like I was under arrest when I left London. And we all know that wasn’t the case.”
“Yes, you’re right about that,” Bowles said. “But that was then. This is now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Circumstances have changed,” Bowles said with a smirk. “We now have enough proof to substantiate our suspicions.”
She removed a pair of handcuffs from the belt looping around her business-suit skirt and slapped them on my wrists. “I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Claire Richards.”
I turned to Charlie, who stared at me in disbelief as the elation from our all-too-brief reunion quickly melted away and Inspector Bowles and Detective Samms led me off to a waiting car.
Chapter 33
Upon our return to London, I was escorted directly from Gatwick Airport over to Inspector Bowles’s precinct for further questioning. Charlie was able to accompany us most of the way but was shut out from any further contact with me once Bowles and Samms got me into an interrogation room. The last words I heard from him were, “Don’t worry, babe, I’ll get you out.”
This was insane. I was being tried in the press, and in the court of public opinion, I was already guilty. I knew Liam would stamp out any lingering questions about my sexual involvement with Claire. Not only that, I was in plain view during the entire opening-night performance. I was completely clueless as to what kind of proof they had that would warrant my arrest.
I didn’t have to wait long. Inspector Bowles took a sip of her bottled water and stared at me like a satisfied cat that’s just cornered a frightened mouse. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, eyeing her and the grinning Detective Samms, who was feeling very virile after collaring such a supposedly high-profile killer.
“So are we going to sit here all day, or are you going to tell me what kind of ridiculous evidence you have against me?” I said, trying to maintain my cool although I was ready to burst into tears.
“I was prepared to cross you off our list of suspects, Jarrod, but then you fled the country so abruptly it forced me to revisit you all over again and take a closer look,” Bowles said, never taking her eyes off me.
“I’ve told you twenty times why I left London. Talk to the Ministry of Public Order in Greece. They’ve got my boyfriend’s kidnapper in custody.”
“We already did,” Samms said. “We know why you went.”
“But while you were off on your little Greek adventure, we had some very interesting developments in the Claire Richards case,” Bowles said, putting on her reading glasses and picking up a file. She flipped through some pages and pulled out a lone sheet. “I assume you know Susie Chan, the well-respected coroner from America.”
“And my boyfriend’s ex-wife. Yes, I know her,” I said. “I called her to ask for her help when you first began to suspect me. She said she knew a British doctor who might fax her Claire’s autopsy report.”
“Oh, he did indeed. He’s already been reprimanded for breaching the hospital’s confidentiality policy.”
“Susie must have been a blast in bed for him to risk a formal reprimand,” I snorted, but neither of them bothered to respond.
“After studying the report, Ms. Chan found some inconsistencies with the purported cause of death and what was found in the victim’s system. As we already established, Claire Richards did not die of an allergic reaction to peanut oil,” Bowles said.
“I know that already,” I said. “So did Susie find what really did kill her?”
“Ricin,” Bowles said, lowering her glasses to the bridge of her nose as she read from Susie’s fax. “A natural toxin found in castor beans. Very cheap and easy to produce. It can be manufactured as a powder or can easily be turned into an aerosol that can be inhaled.”
“Seems Dr. Chan worked on a case last year in Los Angeles where a trophy wife replaced her cheating husband’s deodorant with a spray bottle full of the stuff. He was dead in less than two hours,” Samms said, taking a long sip of the steaming hot coffee that another officer had brought in to him and Bowles. I wasn’t offered any.
Bowles took off her glasses and stared me down. “It doesn’t take much to kill a man. Just one to ten micrograms of ricin per kilogram of body weight. We had a case here in London back in 1978 where a trace of ricin on the sharpened tip of an umbrella was enough to kill the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov. Happened right on the Waterloo Bridge.”
“It’s also virtually undetectable in an autopsy, unless you know what you’re looking for. Because of Dr. Chan’s history of identifying the poison, the Richards autopsy immediately raised alarm bells,” Samms said.
“Especially since Ms. Richards was taking medicine for her peanut allergy and the doctors determined the oil that was in her make-up wasn’t sufficient enough to cause a serious rea
ction, let alone death,” Bowles said.
“Akshay Kapoor was right,” Samms said. “He did see Ms. Richards’s understudy assist her in applying her make-up on the night of the murder. And Dame Sylvia Horner did, in fact, see her mix a foreign substance into the pancake base. But the girl never intended to kill Ms. Richards. Her goal was to make her sick enough so that she could take her place in the show. She had no idea Ms. Richards’s allergy wasn’t very strong and she was taking medication that would leave her virtually unaffected.”
“That’s all well and good and puts Minx in the clear. Somebody else murdered Claire with the ricin,” I said, sitting up in my chair, itching to take on my accusers. “But that someone is not me. Where on earth would I get my hands on a poison like ricin?”
“It’s everywhere. A big stash was even found in the caves of Afghanistan some years back. They weren’t making stew with it,” Samms said.
“Check my passport,” I said. “I haven’t been to Afghanistan recently.”
“It doesn’t matter how you got it,” Bowles said. “The fact is, we found traces of it on the flowers you gave Ms. Richards that night.”
“What?” I said, my stomach churning.
“That’s right. You delivered flowers to her dressing room. The poison was sprayed on the peach carnation in the bouquet. Ms. Richards came in close contact with that particular flower and breathed in the poison. Unsuspecting, she went onstage to do the show. By the time the curtain came down at the end of the performance, she was dead.”
“Wait just a minute! Did you say a peach carnation?”
“Yes,” Bowles said. “Why?”
“There wasn’t a peach carnation in the bouquet I gave her. She hated them! She made that very clear. I would never risk getting yelled at by making such a stupid mistake. I saw how mad she got at Liam when he tried to give her some.”
