Stolen Ghouls

by Alex A King

  “Him or her?”

  “Her. They say she likes more than one flavor of salami.”

  Someone was obsessed with cured meats. “Any idea who the other party was?”

  Her face fell. “I was hoping you would know. But I bet it was someone with fresher sausage than her husband.”

  “You need more protein in your diet.”

  On that helpful note, I dashed toward home on my bicycle.

  Dead Cat was waiting outside my second floor apartment, the transparent tip of his tail flicking. Not a happy boy.

  “Is there a problem besides your attitude?”

  He meowed once, and then charged through the locked slab of wood, possibly on his way to a slaughter.

  I listened at the door. The TV was on and someone was watching sitcoms. The canned laughter was a giveaway.

  Ghosts again?

  No. They couldn’t work the remote—not unless they were long dead and had gained the ability to manipulate matter. There were levels of dead. Level up, get new ghost skills.

  I swiveled and knocked on Lydia’s door. Heels clicked on the marble floor. The door flew open, revealing more of my neighbor than I wanted to see. Straps of black leather strategically covered her private parts, which were bordering on public. There was a skirt, I think, but on closer inspection may have been a wide belt.

  “I have a date,” she explained. “He likes leather.”

  “Then you should put more of it on.”

  As soon as the words popped out of my mouth I groaned. That was pure Toula—not me.

  Lydia grinned a red, glossy grin. “Yes, Mama.”

  Her actual mother worshiped at the shrine of Valium, so I was an upgrade.

  “I’m sure your date will love what there is of it.” I swung back to my apartment. “Did you hear or see anyone going into my place?”

  “Like a burglar?”

  “Like anyone.”

  She tilted her chin up-down. “I had music on.”

  Opening doors hadn’t gone well for me lately. There always seemed to be bodies or ghosts on the other side—sometimes both.

  “I’m going in. If you hear screaming, call the police and an ambulance.”

  “For you or for them?”

  “Ha-ha,” I said weakly.

  As quietly as humanly possible, I stuck my key in the door. Before I could turn the lock, the wooden slab opened and a hand reached out, seized my belt, and hauled me inside. The door slammed behind us.

  My eyes dropped. And dropped. And dropped some more. Then they rolled up to the ceiling because today was the day the universe chose to test me. Standing in my apartment—my apartment—was Jimmy Kontos, Leo’s cousin and star of Tiny Men, Big Tools. For some inexplicable reason he was wearing Shrek pajamas and fuzzy bunny slippers.

  “I have two questions for you,” I said. “Why are you in my apartment? And Shrek pajamas? Were they out of Superman?”

  “That’s three questions, vlakas, and have you seen Shrek? It’s a classic.”

  He had a point. Shrek is a modern classic. “It’s not nearly as good as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” I said, deadpan.

  “Take a deep breath with that big nose of yours.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  I inhaled through my nose. “I don’t smell anything.”

  “Not even the blood of an Englishman?”

  My foot shot out and nailed one of his fuzzy bunnies.

  “Ay-yi-yi!” He hopped around on one fluffy foot. “What do you want?”

  The last of my goodwill toward mankind vanished. “This is my apartment, what do you think I want?”

  “Not food, I hope, because you’re all out.”

  “It’s funny …”

  He eyed me suspiciously. “What is?”

  “I don’t remember the farm house or the tornado, and yet somehow I wound up in Munchkinland.”

  “Get out. Now!” His arm shot out. The finger on the end had the nerve to point at the door.

  “This is my place! Technically you’re trespassing! There are laws against that sort of thing.”

  “I don’t think we have those here,” he said. “Anyway, forget it. I’m not going anywhere. What if Lydia sees me in my pajamas?”

  Considering Lydia’s current attire I didn’t think she’d look down on Shrek pajamas, although she would definitely look down on Jimmy, seeing as how the guy was one-point-two meters tall—four-foot nothing to Americans.

  I had so many questions, so I picked one as I followed him back to my couch. He did a little jump and landed butt-first on the plump cushion. After retrieving the remote, he wiggled until he’d made a nest in the pillows.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Leo tossed me out. Said he had a hot date.”

  So I was a hot date, eh? Despite my unwanted guest, I couldn’t help smiling.

  “And you got in here … how?”

  “You left the door unlocked.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did too.”

  “Not.”

  “If that’s true then how did I get in here?”

  “Looking at you, I’d guess you shimmied through a drainpipe like a common rat. You’re about the right size.”

  He pitched a pillow at me. One of my own pillows.

  Dead Cat hopped up onto the couch. He sniffed Jimmy then turned until his hindquarters were lined up with Jimmy’s shoulder.

  “No,” I groaned. “Not on my couch.”

  Dead Cat didn’t care. Living cats have zero craps to give. Dead cats multiply their zero craps by a factor of ten.

  Jimmy misunderstood. “Why do you care about the couch? It’s cheap and lumpy. Are you too stingy to spend money on a good one? Business not going well?”

  Dead Cat sprayed the little guy, maintaining eye contact with me the whole time. Jimmy jumped up, glancing around.

  “What was that?”

  I feigned ignorance. “What was what?”

  “Did you spray me?”

  I showed him both hands. They were empty, of course. “With what? An invisible water gun?”

  “I know you did something.” He touched his eye. “I’m watching you.”

  “So watch me then.” I dropped my bag on the end of my desk and lifted the lid of my laptop. Whether Kyria Fasoula was having an affair or not I didn’t care, but I did want to find something that would resolve the goat problem. Both husband and wife appeared to want the goat out of spite, not genuine affection or financial necessity, so convincing one of them would be tricky.

  Merope’s citizens got a kick out of delivering the hottest, freshest gossip, and they especially loved to be the first to get to me with a new story. I filed away snippets in a database in the event that I’d need them. There was no telling when one tiny aside would be the key to discovering a coveted item or information. I entered Stephanie’s tidbit about the affair in the space dedicated to Kyrios and Kyria Fasoulas, along with details about their volatile goat custody battle. As far as I could see there was no obvious way to get one of them to part with the ruminant. Using the affair against Kyria Fasoula was dirty and I wouldn’t stoop to that level. Something legitimate was the way to go.

  Where to find it?

  Jimmy launched another pillow at me. “So when do I get that date with your neighbor?”

  “When you find a pair of balls and ask her out,” I said without looking up.

  There was a small whoof as he flopped back into the remaining pillows.“That’s never going to happen.”

  “Then you’ll never get a date with her.”

  “You’re so negative,” he said. “I bet you hate puppies.”

  “Nobody hates puppies.”

  “You do, I can tell.”

  I logged into an external database, hunting for a bargaining chip. Kyrios Fasoulas owned the land, which he had inherited from his family. Kyria Fasoula came into the marriage with little more than the clothes on her back. Her contribution to the f
amily coffers was measured in child-rearing, cleaning, and maintaining her husband’s inherited strip of land while he headed out to sea each morning to catch fish. They had no debt, no major assets beyond the house and land. It was a clean, careful life. Until the pending separation and Hercules the goat.

  “You could ask her out for me.”

  “No.”

  “Come on. You know you want to.”

  “Still no.”

  “I could pay you, like with the flowers.”

  A couple of days ago, Jimmy paid me to have flowers delivered to Lydia. Of course when the time came for him to step forward and admit he was her secret admirer he’d choked. End result: Lydia mistook an old flame for the sender. Unfortunately, he had turned out to be a bit of a murderer.

  Probably Jimmy would choke this time, too.

  “Come on. You’re Jimmy Kontos, you’re kind of a movie star for people with certain fetishes and a few minutes to kill before the wife and kids get home.”

  “Now you’re being prejudiced again. Most of my viewers are women of a certain age and situation in life.”

  “What situation is that? Prison?”

  Bam! Right in the face with death rays.

  “My point is, you’re confident enough to use tools naked on camera—”

  “Power tools.”

  “—so asking out a woman should be easy.”

  “This isn’t just any woman. Lydia is a goddess among women.”

  I stifled an eye-roll. “She has two arms and two legs, like every other women who hasn’t been in an unfortunate accident.”

  He flopped back on my couch with a pillow over his face. All my self control went into not giving it a good, hard press until his bunny slippers quit kicking.

  My gaze skipped to the clock. Technically it was dinner time somewhere, and Leo had tossed his cousin out to get ready for a date. Which meant the wine and I needed to get ready for our short jaunt up the stairs to the third floor.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Shower.”

  “What about Lydia?”

  “What about her?”

  He sat up. His fuzzy bunny slippers didn’t reach the ground. “My idea to pay you to ask her out for me. What do you say? You didn’t say no.”

  “I didn’t say yes either. I find things. I’m not a pimp.” I squinted at him. “Haven’t we had this conversation before?”

  “Maybe, but I don’t really listen when you speak. You get boring fast, did you know that?”

  There are days when I try to be a mature adult, although my sister would be surprised to hear that piece of news. Today wasn’t one of those days. One of the best things about Greek culture is how it embodies an array of hand gestures for when someone is annoying the stuffing out of you. I selected one from the pile—a groin-chopping gesture that invited him to chew on a piece of anatomy I didn’t possess.

  “Parta,” I said. Take it.

  “I bet your neighbor would never do that.”

  My neighbor was currently dressed in several straps of strategically placed leather, and I was willing to bet Jimmy’s life that Lydia’s main food group was protein. But I didn’t say that because Jimmy really seemed to like her, even though they’d never had more than one conversation.

  “Every Greek woman does that sooner or later,” I said.

  I showered, dried my hair, and contemplated my options as far as clothing went. My wardrobe was mostly limited to comfortable separates for things like stakeouts and bicycle rides. Heavy on jeans, pants, sweaters. For summer, shorts. Light on sexy ensembles for ensnaring cops. Since losing Andreas I’d dated nobody until Leo came along and messed up my plans to die old and alone, with or without cats and a soap opera addiction.

  In the end I decided on a black V-neck sweater and clean jeans tucked into knee-high boots with a wicked high heel. My hair stayed down and my makeup was this side of non-existent. Leo knew what I looked like; the makeup wouldn’t fool him. Besides, this was a non-dinner thing. Informal. Casual. And hopefully this time we’d be audience-free.

  Somewhere along the way Leo had picked up a pair of succubi who liked to ooh and ahh over his muscles. As far as I knew they were mostly harmless; contrary to pop culture belief, succubi were collectors of attractive men. They didn’t do anything except gloat about their collections the way geeks did when comparing Star Wars memorabilia. The problem was that I could see them—at least the pair who’d attached themselves to Leo. In the beginning they’d pretended to be ghosts, and did their best—pretty good performances actually—to convince me Leo was a serial killer so I’d buzz off and leave him to them. Now that the jig was up, they were mostly an annoying pair of bubbleheads who happened to be demons.

  Jimmy looked me up and down before zeroing in on my face. “Are you going out in public like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Put some makeup on, would you. You look like a corpse.”

  “I was going for the natural look.”

  “If God had intended for people to go barefaced He wouldn’t have invented makeup, would He?”

  “That was the Egyptians.”

  My tone was pure sarcasm but my confidence had the jiggle of rizogalo—rice pudding. I ducked into the bathroom for a lipstick upgrade, and then slipped out the door before Jimmy slapped me with another critique.

  “Hey, you headed to a giants’ conference?”

  Damn it. This close to success.

  “Dwarf-tossing tournament,” I said.

  The pillow hit the door.

  These boots weren’t made for jogging, so I took the stairs at a normal pace, praying I wouldn’t trip and roll to the bottom. I didn’t want to be remembered as the woman who didn’t know how to use stairs. Leo’s apartment was directly above mine. In the beginning I’d mistaken him for a hump-happy playboy with a revolving bedroom door. Wrong. His door and my door were twins—no revolving. As for the playboy thing, the man liked to workout. Upstairs. Above my head. I didn’t always jump to conclusions, but when I did it was always about men and sex.

  Tonight I knocked on the door of 302.

  Footsteps crossed the marble. Then Leo opened the door wearing a smile. Maybe he was wearing clothes but it was hard to concentrate on anything except the dazzling smile that went all the way up to his eyes.

  Aww. He was genuinely happy to see me. The butterflies in my stomach took another hit of the crack pipe.

  I feebly held up the wine bottles. “I bought wine,” I said in case the wine bottles in my hand didn’t give it away.

  “I bought dinner.” He opened the door wider. “I like your boots.”

  My gaze broke away from his and slid down his body, barely processing the black T-shirt and faded jeans that were doing him all kinds of favors—not that he needed them. I stopped at his feet, which were also in boots. Nobody in Greece went barefoot, even in their own homes. What if someone was spying on them—entirely possible—and spotted their naked feet? The rumor mill would go wild. Bare feet meant you had less money than Greece’s government, so people would rather go naked than barefoot.

  “I like your boots, too.”

  His smile evolved into a wide, warm grin. “Come in.”

  Wine in hand, I stepped past him. His place was mine but with more exercise equipment.

  “Your cousin is infesting my apartment.”

  “Jimmy?”

  “Unless you have another cousin.”

  We both laughed because Greeks had all the cousins. A fifth cousin removed twelve times and run over by a bus was still a cousin.

  “Jimmy is the only one on Merope right now.”

  I set the wine bottles on his kitchen table. “So are you going to tell me about Roger Wilson?”

  “How about we eat first?”

  “How about you tell me while we eat? I can handle a little murder with my food.”

  He handed me a bottle opener and two wine glasses, then got to work emptying containers onto plates. True to our earlier discussion
we weren’t having dinner; more like drinks and mezedes—appetizers. Enough mezedes for an army. The mouthwatering aroma and the absence of bugs told me we weren’t dining on “food” from Crusty Dimitri’s tonight. Crusty Dimitri’s only stays in business because the owner’s brother is the island’s health inspector. Otherwise the whole building would have been condemned and razed years ago.

  “Looks good,” I said.

  “Taverna, Taverna, Taverna doesn’t deliver but they’ll box everything up to-go if you ask nicely and slip them an extra twenty. Last time you missed out.”

  Last time at Taverna, Taverna, Taverna, his succubi showed up and bled invisible-to-Leo blood all over the food. I’d lost my appetite for dinner and the date quickly after that—although the date ended sooner than Leo realized; I shimmied out the bathroom window and was home before the waiter told him I’d fled the scene.

  I poured wine and carried the glasses and bottle to the table. Leo followed with plates of mezedes. Lucky me, he had managed to pick my favorites. Triangular parcels of tiropita—cheese pie; thick slabs of spanakopita—spinach and cheese pie; hortopita—greens and cheese pie. Basically a bunch of pie. The pie hadn’t come alone. We had tiny meatballs, zucchini balls, bites of sausage, and dolmades—rice wrapped in grapevine leaves. Leo had acquired a crusty loaf of bread, too, and got busy sawing off generous slices. He carried the breadbasket in with dishes of tzatziki and olive oil for dipping.

  “Kyrios Wilson wasn’t murdered,” he said as we sat.

  “Huh.” I sipped the wine and then forked a few bite-sizes bits of everything onto my plate. “You could have told me that over the phone.”

  He raised his eyebrows. Below, his eyes sparkled with mischief and something else. That something else caused a commotion in my underwear.

  “I like watching you eat,” he said.

  “Then you’d better prepare yourself because I like eating.”

  He grinned. It vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Too bad because I liked his happy face. “Panos said it was a myocardial infarction—a regular heart attack. Textbook.”