by Alex A King
“No. No sharing. The goat is mine. If that strigla wants a goat she can buy her own goat.” The newspaper covered his face again. I’d been dismissed.
A strigla is a woman of the broom-riding, cauldron-owning variety.
Well, that was less than successful. If there was a way out of this goat thing, I couldn’t see it. This was my least favorite part of my job—dealing with personal problems. Finding tangible objects was so much easier.
Time to bring up the other elephant in the room.
“The police don’t know yet.”
“Know what?” he said behind the paper.
“About your wife and Kyrios Wilson.”
“So what if they do? He had a heart attack. I am only surprised that he did not die on top of my wife. That would have been very funny. I can see her face now, screaming when she realized what was happening.”
“Why did you marry her in the first place?”
“Because I mistook her for a woman.”
Ouch. “When the police discover they were having an affair, you’ll be the top suspect.”
“For a heart attack? I do not think so.”
“They’ve changed their minds. There was evidence that he was maybe murdered.”
He went pale. Being locked up for smacking his wife was one thing, but murder was a whole different kettle of fish. Greek prisons aren’t for men who want to sit in a chair and read newspapers. For one thing, newspapers are toilet paper—when inmates can get them. And rumor is it’s standing room only in places like Korydallos, where rat is on the menu—if you’re fast and lucky.
“But I did not do it!”
“I know that. You know that.”
“You have to help me,” he said.
“If you want help then I need information. What else do you know about Roger Wilson?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. The same as everyone else on this island. A strange xenos who never tried to be one of us. He hid himself away with his little jars and my wife.”
“You know about the jars?”
“Two or three times they were delivered to my house by accident. The first time I opened the box and saw the jar. Strange, I thought, but what do I know? Women love to collect things, then then complain when they have to clean them. Men are smarter. If we buy nothing we dust nothing.”
“What did Kyria Fasoula say when you opened the box?”
“Nothing. She told me it had been delivered to the wrong house and that she felt it was her duty to take it to that malaka’s house.” He looked at me. “Are you going to tell the police about the affair?”
“No. They’ll find out soon enough. Can you think of anything else I’ve missed? A rumor? Anything?”
He went tst. “But if you help me, maybe we can come to some arrangement about the goat, eh?”
Chapter Fourteen
What did I have? Let’s see. A big fat nothing except a ghost and these loukoumades. Loukoumades are delicious but they’re terrible at solving crimes.
“Help me, Obi Wan Kenobe,” I said to nobody in particular.
My phone rang.
“Did you find out if Sir Teddy Duckworth is a lying criminal malakas or just a regular lying malakas yet?” Angela wanted to know.
“Working on it.”
I wasn’t working on it. What I was doing was moping about the Roger Wilson situation. Something about the whole thing stunk like most of the island’s elderly population in July. They were folks who didn’t believe in things like antiperspirant and regular baths. Too much water made a person weak and sick.
“Work faster,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, my brain elsewhere.
Angela seized on that. It was a rare moment of awareness for the woman. Normally she was the sun and the rest of us revolved around her. “What is wrong?”
“Did you know Roger Wilson at all?”
“English? Pasty? Much older than me and much poorer? No. Why?”
“No real reason. It’s just a work thing.”
“He was a little malakas,” she said in a bitter tone she usually reserved for her latest male fail.
“Why do you say that?”
“He elbowed me in the vizi once in the street and did not even apologize.”
Elbowing Angela in the boob with no forthcoming apology. Lovely guy, that Roger Wilson. “What happened?”
“Nothing. I insulted him in three languages and five religions, and he did nothing. He was too busy talking to himself. Then he ran down an alley and the next thing I knew it was in the paper that he was dead.”
My Spidey senses perked up. “When was this?”
“The other day. He was running like he was being chased by zombies.” She paused. “It was very strange. He was carrying a bottle of salt and it was spilling all over the place. Who does that? Does he not know that in the old days you could buy a good slave for that much salt? Who cares about him, anyway? I do not want to die without at least one more husband, but first I want to go to England to teach that Duckworth malakas a lesson. Now go work your magic and find out if I can trust that lying skeelos not to sell me to a Turkish harem.”
I’d exhausted my sources, so I bounced Angela’s request over to Sam, who loved the challenge of digging up dirtbags. That left me free, so I took off toward Roger Wilson’s house, where I sat and ate my loukoumades under the shade of a fig tree. The sea breeze blasted cold air up my butt so I moved into what was left of the day’s sun. That wasn’t much better, but I really wanted the loukoumades.
While I was sitting there, Leo’s police car crunched up the dirt and gravel road. He angled out of the vehicle and loped over.
“Good?” He was talking about the fried, doughy balls.
“They’re better when they’re hot.”
“They were hot when I bought them. You could see if Kyrios Wilson has a microwave.”
“He doesn’t,” I said.
“I should have known you’d already scoped out his place.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Trying to find more evidence of that murder you keep talking about—something besides the salt. Did you know he was having an affair with Kyria Fasoula?”
There was no point lying. “Yes. Everybody knew.”
“Except me.”
I shrugged. “You’re from Merope but you went away for a long time, and when you came back you brought a badge. People aren’t going to automatically tell you things. They’re naturally suspicious of badges and the laws that go with them.”
“You could have said something.”
“Kyrios Fasoulas didn’t kill Wilson and he didn’t hit his wife. There. Now I’ve said something.”
“You already told me that.” The edge of his lip took a hike. It wasn’t a full smile but it did things to me in certain places—certain places in my pants. “So what are you doing here now?”
“Waiting for inspiration to strike.”
“Inspiration?”
“This would be so much easier if you believed in ghosts and that my ability to see them is a real thing and not a mental disorder.”
“I never said you were crazy.”
“People with mental disorders aren’t crazy, but thanks.”
He blew out a sigh. “Want to come in with me? You talk, I’ll listen. And after that you can let me buy you dinner.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Fine. You can buy me dinner.”
His grin was charming and disarming—almost.
“We’ll see.”
“Good enough.”
Wilson’s door was in its previously unlocked state. Leo went in first to secure the area, which was a great idea given that this was the scene of my most recent head injury. As far as I could tell nothing had changed. Leo wandered through the place, looking through drawers, taking pictures, making notes.
“Someone had a thing for containers,” he said when he got to the spare room.
“Himalayan salt jars.”
“Salt jars.
I didn’t know those were a thing.”
“Apparently they exist and they’re expensive.”
He wandered back to the kitchen and peered into the garbage can, where I’d dumped the fragments of the broken jar a couple of days earlier. He pulled a glove over his hand, picked up the pieces, dropped them into a bag.
“My fingerprints might be on those,” I said. “I swept them up.”
“Why?”
“I’m Greek and it was a mess that needed cleaning.”
“I guess Wilson dropped one of his precious jars before he was killed.” He went back to the spare room, paying particular attention to the floor. “Was it the only one broken?”
I nodded.
“Any broken pieces outside the room?”
“None. It was confined to this room. No signs of a struggle or fight. He just dropped his jar.”
“Then fled the house without locking the door and died in an empty storefront.”
He was right. The door had been left unlocked. Not unusual for Greek villagers but definitely odd for someone raised in the UK.
No—not just unlocked. Open.
The flywheels in my brain whirred. “It’s empty to you.”
“Can we just agree to disagree?”
“No, because you’re wrong.”
He tweaked my nose. Tweaked it. The jerk. “You’re adorable when you get passionate.”
“Not passionate, just angry.”
Then it hit me. Everything. What had happened to the jar. Why Wilson fled to the Cake Emporium. Why he’d died. Who had done the killing and why.
I just wasn’t sure how.
In his haste to flee his attacker, Roger Wilson had elbowed Angela and sought refuge in the Cake Emporium. Angela never saw anyone in pursuit, but that didn’t mean the Englishman wasn’t being chased.
I shouldered past Leo and went back to the spare room. Using my handy salt shaker, I shook a protective circle on the floor.
“What are you doing?” Leo wanted to know.
“Testing a theory.”
“Care to share?”
“Only if it works.” I grabbed him by the arm, yanked him into the salt circle. Then I selected a random jar from the shelf. “What ever you do, don’t step outside the salt circle until I tell you, okay?”
“What?”
“Just do it, okay?”
“Okay.”
One … two … three …
I took a deep breath then uncorked the pink jar and tossed it out of the circle like a hand grenade.
Nothing happened, and a lot of it.
Then some more nothing.
I’d really expected so much more than nothing. Boy was I disappointed. So much for my grand theory.
“I don’t understand,” Leo said. He was wearing a frown that matched mine.
“Me either. I was so sure it would work.”
“What would?”
Before I could explain, the Himalayan salt jar exploded. Shards shot across the room in every direction. Tiny pink pebbles bounced across the floor, making tiny pinging noises. Wilson didn’t own much but what he did own took flight, whizzing though the air. A chair met a window. The window lost.
“That,” I said.
“What is going on?” Leo wanted to know.
“Poltergeist.”
“Is that a joke?”
“I wish.”
He looked at me, kilometers beyond confused.
“Wilson doesn’t collect little pink jars,” I explained. “He collects ghosts, and he traps them in those jars. The jars aren’t the collection—they’re incidental. Teeny tiny jails.”
“Let’s say that’s true, can’t they get out? Ghosts can float through walls, yes? In movies they can.”
Unbelievable. Even now, with bric-a-brac and furniture hurtling past his face, he couldn’t commit to the idea that ghosts were real. “They’re made of salt. The whole jar is salt. It would have been like being confined inside an electrified cage. Think the velociraptor enclosure in Jurassic Park.”
As Wilson’s things flew around the room, Leo took stock of the spare room with its hundreds of jars. “Are you saying every one of them contains a ghost?”
“I think so. It explains the salt in Kyrios Wilson’s system, too. He pickled himself on purpose, hoping the poltergeist wouldn’t get him if he was brined. Remember the bottle of salt you found outside the Cake Emporium after the brick incident?”
“There has to be a scientific explanation for this.”
“There is. Ghosts are real.”
“I was thinking wind.”
The broom I’d used two days ago to sweep up the first broken jar cartwheeled through the air. Leo threw us both to the ground. His boot shot out, scuffing the protective circle.
Oh no. Virgin Mary, we were doomed.
“We’re up skata creek without a paddle.”
His forehead crumpled up. Translation failure. “It’s like you’re speaking Chinese.”
Incomprehensible things aren’t all Greek to Greeks—they’re Chinese.
“Things are about to turn into a whore’s fencepost,” I explained.
“What’s going on?”
There was no time to tell him I’d made a rank amateur mistake. Understandable because when it came to poltergeists I was a neophyte. I’d messed up and now there were two poltergeists wafting around Merope, seeking vengeance. I should have put the jar in the circle, not us.
Leo whipped out his service gun.
“Put it away,” I said. “Your guns have no power here. Well, not no power because you could put a pretty decent sized hole in the wall. But bullets won’t stop a poltergeist.”
The gun stayed out. “What will?”
“Salt.”
Without warning, everything quit moving. Wilson’s meagre belongings poised mid-air, as though waiting. The temperature plunged. Goose bumps sprang up all over my body until my arm resembled bubble wrap. I exhaled. Steam billow out of my mouth. Beside me, Leo was puffing out the same dense cloud.
Then the contents of Roger Wilson’s home fell to the ground with an almighty clatter. There was silence, thick and stale and expectant. Something touched my cheek. Cold. Angry—no, furious. It coveted whatever it is poltergeists covet. Vengeance, I decided.
“I didn’t do it,” I whispered.
Frigid, invisible hands grabbed my shoulders, biting into my skin. For something that wasn’t there it had serious heft. One hand let go. The cold reached inside my chest and began to squeeze.
“It wasn’t me,” I wheezed. Black flowers bloomed and swirled in my eyes. I kicked feebly at something I couldn’t touch but could touch me. No fair, I thought. “Roger Wilson is the one you want. He did this to you.”
My heart stopped. I gasped but it was no good—the air had nowhere to go and nothing to do. I sank to the ground like a pants-wetting rag doll.
“Salt,” I mouthed. “Salt.”
“Allie!”
Leo fell to his knees beside me. I was aware of him speaking to someone, then his hands were on my chest. What happened next I couldn’t say, and it didn’t really matter.
In a blinding burst of clarity, I knew one now-pointless thing: this was how Roger Wilson’s heart stopped.
Chapter Fifteen
“My turn,” I croaked. Last time Leo nearly bit the dust, so it was only fair.
Neither Leo or Toula laughed, which left me to do it for them. Then it turned into a hacking cough, and the nurse came racing in so I stopped.
My sister’s eyes were puffy, red. Her whole body was one big frown. “It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little bit funny,” I said.
Leo frowned, “Toula’s right, it’s not funny. Your heart stopped, so I did what I could to get it going while I waited for the paramedics.”
Despite my inappropriately stimulated funny bone, a tear worked it way down my cheek. Toula was there to whisk it away with a tissue. Always competent. Always a mom. “I died?”
“Almost
,” Leo said. “It was close. Too close.” His gaze cut to Toula. “Can I have a moment with Allie?”
She folded her arms, set her body in stone. Leo would need a bulldozer to get my sister to budge. “Anything you have say to her you can say in front of me.”
My eyebrow wanted to rise but couldn’t, under the circumstances.
Then Leo muttered magic words. “It’s police business.”
Toula was not a happy camper. With her lips pressed into a tight white seam and her handbag hitched high under her arm like a third boob, she swept out of the private hospital room.
Leo pulled up a chair. He braced his elbows on the edge of the bed. One of his hands curled around mine, warm, protective, caring.
“I almost lost you,” Leo said in a whisper. “I was there and I couldn’t do anything except keep you going until the paramedics took over. I threw a bunch of salt around like you said, but you kept slipping away.”
“The good news is that I’m terrible at dying. Look: I’m here.” I waved the hand that wasn’t wired into a machine.
“What happened?”
“A poltergeist got me the same way the other one got Roger Wilson. He’d kept the original ghost trapped for so long that when he dropped the jar and it smashed, the ghost came out a furious and transformed poltergeist. I can’t say I blame it. What Roger Wilson did was monstrous. This second spook lashed out at the first warm body it could find: mine.”
He gave me an unsteady smile. “I’m having trouble with this.”
“I know. I’m glad you were there. If you hadn’t been …”
His hand squeezed around mine. “But I was. What happens now? If this thing murdered Roger Wilson, what am I supposed to do? I can’t lock it up.”
“I don’t know. I need answers but I can’t get them until I speak to Roger Wilson again.”
“Where is he?”
Right where I’d left him: in my apartment, surrounded by salt. But I didn’t tell Leo that. He’d been through enough.
“I don’t know.”
I tried to sit up.
Leo surged forward. “Whoa, where are you going?”
“Home? There’s no reason for me to stay.”
