by Alex A King
“Nothing yet.”
“What is his financial situation? Is he a bum? I hope he is not a bum. Does he look like he kakas in bushes?”
“No, he looks like he uses a regular bathroom.”
I kept going.
Here was something interesting. A news story about this particular Sir Teddy Duckworth, who was area famous for his real estate interests.
I sat back, satisfied. “He wasn’t lying about the castle.”
Angela gasped. “A castle! Neither of my husbands gave me a castle. I can overlook the strange name for a man with his own castle.”
“You could build your own.” It wasn’t like she didn’t have the money. Angela owned a sizable chunk of Greece.
“Now I do not need to,” she said casually. “If Teddy has a castle I can have his.”
“Sir.”
“I cannot call him that ridiculous name. He will have to change it. Tell me more about this castle.”
While Angela was mentally acquiring real estate, I decided to give her the reality check, which was hefty.
“The good news is that he has more than one castle.”
“He must be very rich,” she said with a touch of awe. Boy was she about to be surprised.
“What did he tell you he did?”
“Construction. I assume he owns construction in England if he has more than one castle.”
The construction part was true. Technically ol’ Sir Teddy wasn’t a liar. Possibly he hadn’t even bent and stretched the truth at all. I knew for a fact that Angela had a knack for hearing what she wanted to hear and filtering out the rest.
“I’m emailing you something.”
“What is it?”
I cut, pasted, and shot an email across cyberspace.
“You’ll see. Check your email. Did you get it?”
There was a long pause. A pause jam-packed with goodies like disappointment and disbelief. The string of curse words was right there, coiled up on the tip of Angela’s tongue, each word filthier than the last. Angela was richer than Midas now, but she’d started life digging in the dirt along with Merope’s regular citizens.
“Do you see his castles?” I asked her.
In a flat voice: “I see castles.”
“He didn’t lie,” I said in Sir Teddy’s defense.
Sir Teddy Duckworth was a miniature model enthusiast. He had a thing for castles in particular. His home--not a castle--was filled with castles the size of snow-globes. I had to hand it to the man, his work was exceptional. He’d really nailed Windsor Castle.
“That is not the castle I was expecting,” Angela said.
“He’s attractive enough, at least.”
“If you like men who do not live in castles.”
I liked men who didn’t live in castles just fine. I really liked the one who lived upstairs, directly above me, in fact. Detective Leo Samaras was my neighbor, so if the dark middle of the night ever came where I had to perform the walk of shame, I wouldn’t have far to skulk.
Too bad Leo used to date my sister. My brain wasn’t over that hump yet, although Leo had already made the leap. Was Toula over it yet? Hard to say. The only thing more tightly buttoned that my sister’s neckline was her mouth. Toula is a good person; I just wish I wasn’t her favorite project.
Angela ended the call, muttering about castles and liars and a sale at her favorite store in Athens. She’d be fine. Angela always managed to land in the upright and seated position in her private plane. On some level it felt like it was my job to make sure she landed that way with her purse intact.
My inbox was often an interesting place and today was no exception. Someone on the island was hunting for old editions of a Greek teen magazine no longer in circulation. Within minutes I’d located and purchased the magazines and secured delivery for next week. A more delicate and complex problem came next.
Kyria and Kyrios Fasoulas. The married couple hated each others guts, publicly and unabashedly, so divorce was imminent and had been for years. Lately the animosity had ratcheted up another notch, and now there was an innocent party caught up in the skirmish: Hercules, their goat. Neither wanted to relinquish custody of the poor animal. Their children begged me to find a compromise. Normally a lawyer was the right woman or man for this kind of job, but here on Merope lawyers were regarded with more suspicion than funky smelling meat. (Besides being a great name for a band, funky smelling meat wasn’t a dealbreaker around here. If God hadn’t meant for Merope’s citizens to eat expired meat, He wouldn’t have invented herbs and spices.) Locals liked to solve their own problems without getting anything annoying like the law involved. In their minds, lawyers were only after one thing: money. So they turned right around and paid me to find solutions to their squabbles.
Merope is home to twenty thousand people, most of whom I know by sight if not by name. The Fasoulas family owned a parcel of land about the size of a postage stamp, not far from Roger Wilson’s place on the western edge of the island. I figured I’d ride over there to check out the goat in question, hear their arguments, and then afterward I’d swing by the Wilson house for no reason other than I was curious about where Roger Wilson’s ghost had scooted off to. Something told me the recently deceased Englishman knew more than he let one about who had clobbered me with the stockpot, and now that the pain was easing off I wanted to know, too—mostly for preventative reasons. There was no guarantee he’d be haunting his own home, but it was as good a place to start as any.
My stomach rumbled. I spent a couple of minutes staring into my cupboards, wishing I’d had the time and opportunity to acquire some of the Cake Emporium’s confections. In the end I settled on a thin slab of bread and a chunk of kasseri cheese—a Greek villager’s favorite snack. Small neighborhood bakeries nestle in narrow streets all over Greece and its islands. Before dawn, they fire up their wood burning ovens and spill hot, steaming loaves into the arms of hungry Greeks until lunchtime, the country’s main meal. My stomach growled thinking about the crackle of the crust, the softness of the crumb. As for the cheese, feta gets all the overseas attention, but in truth kasseri is the country’s best cheese. Smooth, mild, buttery, with a hint of sweetness. Feta’s sharp bite can be hit or miss, but kasseri never disappoints.
A cool breeze snaked around my ankles. I looked down to see Dead Cat rubbing his marmalade flank against my shins, the marble floor visible through his body. Dead Cat is the most opaque ghost I’ve ever seen, and when he’s lying on my chest during the night I’d swear he has heft. He was part of my inheritance from Olga Marouli. The enormous orange cat has a vicious underbite and fangs that look like they could sever an artery with one chomp. If he was a human he’d be a pirate—the “arrr, matey, have ye seen my parrot, you scurvy dog?” kind—and he is mine now, apparently. To be honest, the company is nice. He doesn’t eat and he doesn’t kick kitty litter all over the apartment, which makes him the perfect pet. One of these days I’d get around to giving him a real name but for now he is simply Dead Cat.
The huge marmalade feline leaped from the floor to the counter, where his nose began to twitch.
“Not sharing my food,” I told him.
He reared up, plonked his paws on my shoulder. He sniffed at the spot where I’d almost become one with the copper pot.
“I was going to be an adventurer like you until I took a stockpot to the head.”
He gave me a withering look before bounding away, headed to the living room where I’d placed a cardboard box in the corner for him. Even in death, cats love boxes.
“Back later,” I told my cat. Still munching on my bread and cheese, I jogged downstairs, confident that my sister would call within the next five minutes to scold me for eating while running.
My phone chirped.
“Do I have to tell you it’s not safe to eat and run?”
Toula. Always, predictably, Toula.
“I’m not eating,” I said through the crumbs.
“Kyria Irini saw you.”
N
o point asking which one. Throw a pebble and you’d hit a Kyria Irini with a big mouth.
“Tell her to mind her own business.”
My sister sighed like I was smushing her heart to smithereens. “You know I can’t do that.”
We both laughed because she was right. Reprimanding the gossips would only lead to more gossip.
In the background something broke. Toula’s eye-roll came across loud and clear. “Want a pair of wild beasts?”
“Thanks,” I said, “but I’m trying to quit.”
The truth was I adored my niece and nephew; and who knew, maybe one day I’d have my own destruction crew. Although, as my very Greek parents liked to remind me, my eggs weren’t getting any fresher. Fortunately they were on a world cruise and wouldn’t be back until they’d snooped on every continent.
Toula ended the call with vague threats involving “talking later” and “getting together for lunch”.
Across the street, the coffee shop was hopping. Merope’s Best serves Merope’s worst coffee. Their specialty is fancy coffee with Italian names and mystery ingredients. You can have any kind of beans you like as long as you want them scorched and possibly soaked in pesticides that cause cancer and birth defects. The older generations avoid the wannabe Starbucks, getting the good stuff from the island’s myriad other kafeneios. Merope’s Best does brisk business anyway, hawking their swill to tourists and Merope’s younger people. It’s the caffeine-ish source closest to my apartment, so most mornings I desperately throw my money at the baristas and beg them to poison me.
My aching head decided that now was a good time to take my life into my own hands, even though the day was sliding into afternoon territory. That’s how I found myself jumping into line behind a short string of alive and texting teenagers. In my life it was important to make the distinction. Merope’s Best was home to several ghosts, but as far as I could tell none of them had died because of the coffee. Yet.
“Do your worst,” I told the barista who looked like ennui was his first name. He wore guyliner and a T-shirt that said he’d had it up to here with midgets. The shirt came with a white line slashed across the stomach and English text. Did he understand his own fashion choice, or did he mistake the line and accompanying words for Must be This Tall to Ride?
“Single or a double?”
“Do you want me to die?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I didn’t take it personally. “I like your shirt.”
“Thanks. Some nanos came in earlier and threatened to sue me.”
That answered the translation question.
Nanos is the Greek pejorative for little people. There is only one dwarf on Merope and he lives directly above me, on Leo’s couch. The foul tempered munchkin is Leo’s cousin.
The poster child for apathy slid my coffee across the counter, took my money, and sighed as I moved aside and the next customer took my place.
Outside, something caught my eye.
A paper coffee cup hovering in the air.
Weird.
Not the weirdest thing I’d ever seen but definitely out of the ordinary. Normally hovering objects came with ghosts attached, and those ghosts had been around the block a few thousand times to get that far.
I gave it the side-eye as I passed by and crossed the street to retrieve my bicycle from the apartment building’s lobby. When I emerged, the cup was in the air, waiting.
“Mr. Wilson?”
It couldn’t be Roger Wilson because the Englishman had been dead all of a few hours and couldn’t possibly have developed the skill set in time. But he’d vanished unexpectedly earlier so my curiosity was running on the high side.
The paper cup swayed in front of me. Coffee sloshed over the rolled lip.
My eyes narrowed. “Don’t even think about it.”
The cup rose higher, higher, until it was bobbing above my head.
“Do it, and as soon as I figure out who or what you are, I swear I will desecrate your grave.”
SPLASH!
Coffee poured through my hair, down my face, and soaked into my shirt. The cup bounced off my head and hit the ground. Whatever had been steering the cup was a litterbug as well as a jerk.
My phone jangled. “Come,” I said, using the standard Greek phone greeting. Saturated, I stooped down to pick up the cup and pitched it into the garbage can outside Merope’s Best.
The line crackled. “I need a small favor if you’re in the position to give one,” Betty said.
“Anything for you,” I said. “I tried to get in touch earlier …”
“We’re just in a spot of trouble. It’s taking longer than I thought to get out of it.”
“Can I help?”
“You could be a luv and go to the shop this afternoon. There’s an important customer coming to pick up an order, and it’s vital someone be there to give it to him. As a thank you, help yourself to any of the goodies that strikes your fancy.”
She had me at free cake.
“What’s the order?”
No reply. Betty was gone again.
“I’m not done with you,” I told the thin air.
Chapter Four
I had time to kill before taking care of the Cake Emporium’s VIP customer, so I showered quickly, changed clothes, and rode to the Fasoulas family’s property to sort out the goat situation.
Kyria and Kyrios Fasoulas lived on a parched piece of land surrounded by a sparse forest of olive trees. Out on this slice of Merope’s rim, houses were few—and also barely houses.
The Fasoulas house had seen a lot of earthquakes and hadn’t been able to stand up to all of them. Built before the law requiring all new construction to be earthquake-proof went into effect, the stone walls tilted in every direction except straight. The faded orange tiles that formed the roof were cracked and crumbling. A crooked front porch had been divided into two separate camps. On one side, Kyria Fasoula—not a typo; most Greek women lose the s on the end of their last name—was rocking back and forth in her chair, crochet hook working furiously to make flowers out of yarn so white it appeared to glow. The stone faced woman wore a bob that made her head look like a flowerpot, and a black house dress with buttons running from a mid-calf hem to a high neckline, the regulation color for widows and other people whose family members had recently passed. (Widows are bound to wear black for life as a sign of respect to the dead and capitulation to the village gossips reporting on their every move. Failure to do so results in virulent gossip and a life of constant side-eyes.) On the opposite end sat her estranged husband. Most of him was hidden behind today’s copy of the Merope Fores—Merope Times—the island’s own daily newspaper. The paper is run by the Bakas family. Their family tree is a stick. Their gene pool is a cracked patch of dirt in August. Their physiology makes the Habsburg jaw seem modest. Compared to the Bakas family, The X-Files’ Peacock family’s genome appears downright diverse. Without thinking about it I began to hum Johnny Mathis’ Wonderful, Wonderful.
Today’s front page featured a picture of the Cake Emporium’s patched window. The headline bemoaned Vandals, Young People, and Tourists—the unholy trinity of whodunit. (Roger Wilson’s death was most likely a footnote on account of his English blood and consequently lowly status.)
Located somewhere between her fifth and sixth decades, Kyria Fasoula wasn’t an old woman. On the other hand, the ravines and ditches in her husband’s skin signaled that on the morning his wife was born the second thing he did in the morning was shave. He was a gourd of a man, left to dehydrate in the sun for decades. His stark white hair was a toilet seat around a mahogany tanned bald spot at the back of his head.
If local gossip was true—and it often was—the Fasoulas marriage was never a love match. The two families put their heads together and decided to unload their fifth daughter on someone who could afford to feed her. Although they’re dwindling, arranged marriages are still a thing in Greece, especially in areas where there’s a deficit of education and an overab
undance of controlling parents.
Hercules, the goat at the center of this custody battle, was a black beast straight out of the Billy Goats Gruff, and he was currently trying to decide if I was a bridge troll that needed butting. He zeroed in on my bicycle’s basket and chomped down on the wire. When that didn’t work out the way he expected, he helped himself to a tissue sticking out of my pocket and swallowed it in one gulp.
I waved to couple on the porch, wished them a good morning, and told them who I was. In Greece it’s customary to announce lineage; family baggage demands to be hauled everywhere.
Kyria Fasoula stuck her nose in the air, inhaling through a sizable beak. “I smell coffee.”
“That’s just me. I collided with a coffee cup earlier.” A floating coffee cup, carried by a hand I couldn’t see.
“And how is your grandmother?” Kyria Fasoula asked me.
“Still dead,” I told her, which was true. “Did someone in your family pass? I hadn’t heard. Na zeises.” May you live. The polite thing to say when someone dies. If you don’t say it you’re publicly admitting you wouldn’t mind so much if they dropped dead, too.
“My husband.”
The newspaper twitched. The husband in question was very much alive and not a ghost. “I refuse to die before that old booboona.”
A booboona is a dummy. An idiot. A moron. Also apparently it was his wife.
“I hear you’re having a goat problem,” I said.
The husband snorted. “Goat problem. Xa!”
Xa is Ha. The Greek alphabet is missing a couple of letters, so sometimes they’re forced to compensate.
“There is no goat problem,” he went on. “What I have, like all Greek men—except sisters, who make love the way Ancient Greeks and the gods intended—is a woman problem.”
A sister is a sister. A sister is also a gay man.
“The only goat problem I have is this one.” Kyria Fasoula stabbed the air with her crochet hook, the pointy bit aimed in her husband’s direction.
“You see what I have to put up with?” He dropped the paper and showed me two upturned palms. “Decades of malakies.”
