Royal Ghouls

by Alex A King

  I stood at the gate and called out to Kyrios and Kyria Petsinis.

  Before long, a woman shuffled out in black slippers and a black housecoat, deep grooves in her face, worn down by rivers of grief. White hair floated around her head. There was a comb stuck it in but she didn’t seem to know or care.

  “What do you want? Money? Go away.”

  “Kyria Petsini?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  I introduced myself, offered her my condolences, wished her a long life.

  “I want to die,” she said. She pulled a potato peeler out of her pocket. “Kill me. My husband won’t do it.”

  “Because I want to die, too.”

  Kyrios Petsinis joined us at the gate, a long stick of wire of a man, bent at the back. His hair was black. His mustache was epic in size and scope.

  “I’m not here to kill either of you,” I said.

  “Too bad,” Kyria Petsini said. “Go away.”

  “Go away,” her husband said. They shuffled back to the house, broken.

  “We spoke the other day,” I called out. “I came here from Merope.”

  They stopped. Turned around.

  Kyrios Petsinis made a face. “The one who asked about our daughter Maria, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hung up on you.”

  “It’s important.”

  Kyrios Petsinis spend several long, silent moments weighing the situation. “Do you know our daughter Maria? Have you seen her? Do you know where she is? Or are you just here for the money? Most of the time they come for the money.”

  If I told them I could see the dead, they’d mistake me for a liar or worse.

  (What’s worse than a liar? Fake mediums and okra, alone or in the same dish.)

  “I’m a private investigator, of sorts. I’d like to talk to you about the other Maria, too. Your granddaughter.”

  Kyrios Petsinis eyed me. “The other day you mentioned our daughter. You said nothing about our granddaughter. Which one is it?”

  “Both. I believe your daughter died on Merope, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that your granddaughter also ended up there.”

  The grieving grandmother shot me a dirty look, speckled with hatred. Who could blame her? She had already lost so much. “The police said Maria was killed before the yacht crashed. We have already told them everything we know. What can a private investigator do for us? Nothing. And you are wrong about our daughter Maria. She is still alive.” She pressed a fist to her chest. “I feel it in here. A mother knows.”

  They left me standing at the gate.

  I stood there for a long time, hoping they’d change their minds.

  They didn’t. The person who changed their mind was me. I had traveled all this way for nothing. Where was the next stone for me to overturn? What I needed was a picture of their granddaughter Maria and maybe some context about who she was and how she’d lived. Something I could sink my teeth into and shake until I discovered a motive. Who was the village’s biggest gossip, and where could I find her?

  Beaten but not defeated, I turned around and trotted down the steep road, avoiding cracks and potholes.

  “Psst!”

  My head swiveled on its stalk, until I was looking at a large woman with the backend of a poodle mounted to her head. Curls bobbed around her shoulders as she beckoned to me with one finger.

  “Me?”

  “No, the idiot behind you.”

  “I heard that,” came another voice, this time from my other side. The speaker was a whippet thin woman sweeping her concrete yard with one hand and tapping on a cell phone with the other.

  “You were supposed to hear it,” the sausage-curled woman told her. “You, girl, come here.” I peered over her gate. She waved her hand at me. “No, no, come in.”

  I opened the gate and stepped up onto the patio. The sausage-curled woman beamed at me. She had a soft face, a wide mouth, and squinty eyes that said she saw most things and talked about everything. She looked me up and down.

  “You were talking to Yiorgos and Maria about Maria and Maria.”

  I chose my words carefully and limited them to two. “I was.”

  “And they sent you away?”

  Two more words., equally careful. “They did.”

  Her expression was as sly as a fox’s. “You want coffee and maybe a little sweet?”

  “I like coffee and sweets,” the woman across the street called out. “Hold still. I want to put you both on my Instagram.”

  The bigger woman shook her fist. “Take your pornography and stick it up your kolos.”

  The neighbor held up her phone. “I think there is a website for that, too.”

  “Worst enemy?” I asked the sausage-curled woman.

  “Elektra is my best friend.” She raised her voice. “Come over later and maybe I will let you lick the plates.”

  Elektra showed her appreciation with a raised middle finger.

  The big woman laughed. “Come, come. I am Kyria Dora.” She steered me indoors and sat me in a room filled with knick knacks and doodads and a million photographs, while I waited for her to return with the promised coffee and sweets. One of the faces in the photographs was familiar. I knew it from a television show I didn’t watch and magazines I didn’t buy.

  “That is my daughter,” Kyria Dora said when she came back and noticed me inspecting her family photos.

  “Effie Makri from Greece’s Top Hoplite is your daughter?”

  Her face lit up. She had a lot of face. “Do you watch the show?”

  Diplomacy time. “Everyone watches Greece’s Top Hoplite.” Everyone except me.

  She doled out coffee, cold water, and a crystal dish topped with a mound of sour cherry preserves, while she chatted non-stop about her famous daughter. My stomach’s cheering drowned out most of the sound. Restocking my pantry would be my top priority when I got home. Kyria Eva had cleaned me out.

  Kyria Dora sat across from me. “So, are you going to tell me why were you talking to Yiorgos and Maria about Maria and Maria?”

  I didn’t know Kyria Dora but I knew people just like her. They had different names and faces but they were driven by the same thing: a fresh, exciting story. Information was currency—the grimier the gossip, the higher the denomination. But the thing about the Kyria Doras of the world was that information traveled down a two-way street. So I told her who I was and why I’d come to Agria to speak with her neighbors.

  When I was done, she stared at me. “You do not know.”

  “Know what?”

  “It was not just their Maria who died on that yacht. It was all of them.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Cousins?”

  Kyria Dora’s curls bobbed. “Cousins.”

  Face-palm. Of course.

  Multiple Marias. Almost impossible to tell apart. They looked the same because they were the same—almost. Greek naming conventions meant they’d each inherited their first name from the same grandmother. The multiple Maria situation was as Greek as Greek gets.

  “Their great-grandmothers,” Kyria Dora said, “were also named Maria. Great-grandmothers, grandmothers, daughters, granddaughters, a whole family line of Marias. The girls were cousins but not all first cousins, and now they are dead. Po-po, what a tragedy.” She crossed herself.

  In Greece a cousin’s cousin’s cousin is still a cousin. Sometimes a non-cousin is also a cousin. Don’t get me started on the twisted mess of aunts and uncles.

  “That poor family,” I said.

  Kyria Dora’s curls bobbed some more. “All those dead girls, and after their daughter Maria went missing, too. Po-po … Some families have bad luck.” She asked her next question in a casual tone. “What do you know about Maria? She has been missing for twenty years now. Do you want to know what I think? I think she is dead. Yiorgos and Maria though, they believe she is still alive. What do you think.”

  “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “I believe in everythi
ng, except Macedonians who are not Greek Macedonians. I am the person people come to when they want to remove the vaskania, so I believe in many strange things.”

  Vaskania or the mati, also known as the evil eye. Every village has a Kyria Dora, an older woman with the power to vanquish the evil eye. The ritual involves a bowl of water, olive oil, and prayer.

  I told her about Maria, Harry Vasilikos, the Marias, and their annoying and persistent ghosts. I had nothing to lose. Nobody here knew me except this woman, and she was nodding like she believed me.

  “Salt. Of course. There are many things that do not like salt, like my doctor. He is always saying, ‘Kyria Dora, stop drowning all your food in salt, otherwise your body will be pickled when you die,’ and ‘Kyria Dora, lose fifty kilos or fifteen years, your choice,’ and, ‘Kyria Dora, vinegar cannot heal bones so do not rub it on your neighbor’s son when he falls out of a tree and lands on his back.’ What does he know? He is a child. Just because he went to a fancy medical school does not mean he knows anything about medicine.”

  The conversation threatened to be long, winding, and headed in the wrong direction. I threw in a detour that would get her back on the right path.

  “What’s the problem with salt?”

  She sipped her coffee before continuing. “Salt is a purifier and the preserver of life. It is everywhere in the Bible. It keeps away ghosts, demons, and tsiganes if you fling it in their eyes.”

  Tsiganes. A derogatory term for the Romany people living in Greece. Merope didn’t have Romanies, but on the mainland they were known for going door-to-door, begging for money. Back in America, the only people who came banging on my parents’ door were people who wanted us to find Jesus; Jesus was apparently in their church’s garden, sharing fruit with leopards, dinosaurs, and people wearing togas and polo shirts, although not always at the same time.

  Kyria Dora had moved on from minerals. “That is a very good story you have told me, so now I will tell you about Yiorgos and Maria’s daughter Maria. She was a good girl. People were surprised when she became pregnant with Maria, and without a wedding ring, too. Nobody knows who the father was—maybe not even Maria.” Her tiny eyes twinkled, the old witch. “She worked hard to provide for her daughter and be a mother and father to the child. She went back to school in Athens to study and make something of herself.” She stopped, eyed me, waited for me to correct her.

  “No,” I said. “Maria didn’t go back to school. Not that I know of, anyway. She joined the workforce.”

  She clapped once, delighted. “I knew it. Her parents told everybody she was in school, but I did not believe it. What was she?” She leaned closer. “Was she a putana? One of those women who takes her clothes off and does a little tsifteteli for men? You can tell me.”

  “She was a stewardess on a yacht.”

  Kyria Dora’s face fell, but not too much. “What is a stewardess? Is that like a putana?”

  “It’s more like a manager, who also does cleaning.”

  She made a disappointed noise and settled back in her chair. “That does not sound very glamorous or scandalous to me. Whatever she was, and wherever she went, one day she did not come home. Maria was a tiny little doll when it happened. A beautiful child. She always vowed to find her Mama. She used to say, ‘Kyria Dora, one day Mama and I will be together again.’ I hear things. Sometimes people tell me those things, and sometimes people say things when I happen to be under their window listening or standing at their door with a glass.” She waved her hand like the eavesdropping was smoke. “Maria and her cousins were close all their lives. They promised when the time came they would help Maria search for her missing mother. And then one day, a month ago, the Marias all left. I know this because her grandmother was crying about how Maria should have just cut off her head and fed it to the chickens because that would be less painful than her leaving.”

  “Were the Marias all from Agria?”

  “No. They were living all over the country. Children do that. They smash their mothers’ hearts with an axe, and then they never call, never write, never come home unless you fake chest pains.”

  I hide a smile behind the demitasse coffee cup. My grandmother also suffered from those same chest pains, until she was forced to upgrade to—as she called it—mouni cancer. My parents packed us up and came hurtling across the Atlantic, and then Yiayia conveniently downgraded her vaginal cancer to something sexually transmitted and easily cured with antibiotics.

  “What did she look like, Yiorgos and Maria’s granddaughter?”

  “I do not have a picture …” Her eyes lit up. “But I know somebody who does.” She got up and stuck her head out the window. Her dress hiked up several centimeters, revealing the tops of black knee-high stockings. “Re, Elektra? Bring your pornography device over here!”

  Kyria Elektra bustled in a moment later, phone in hand. “You want me to Tweet something for you?”

  “Look at your photos. Where is Maria Petsini?”

  “Which one?”

  “Yiorgos and Maria’s granddaughter. Hurry up.”

  “I am looking, I am looking.” Kyria Dora’s friend and neighbor swiped. She held up her phone. A familiar face beamed at me from between a picture of bubbling pastitsio and a purple bathroom. Now, at least, I knew which Maria was which. She was standing between her grandparents, fully clothed and minus the face-concealing sunglasses.

  “That is her,” Kyria Dora crowed. She flicked her hand at her friend in a shooing motion. “You can go now.”

  Kyria Elektra flipped her off and went back her broom and yard.

  “Where did the Marias go when they left?” I asked.

  “To Athens. I heard a rumor that a rich man invited them all to travel on his boat. Of course now we all know that rich man was Harry Vasilikos.” Her eyebrows waggled. To Kyria Dora, travel was a synonym for sex. “Young, beautiful women on a rich man’s yacht? I bet they forgot all about finding poor Maria.”

  I didn’t think they forgot at all. Especially not Maria’s Maria. The young woman had been lugging that loss on both shoulders since she was tiny.

  Cherries went into my mouth. A happy sigh came out. Kyria Dora’s smile covered half her face.

  “Good?”

  “The best.”

  She shrugged. “They are nothing special.”

  As I finished up the cherries—which were amazing and she knew it—I mentally sifted information into piles and drew lines between them.

  “What do you know about Harry Vasilikos?”

  “Harry Vasilikos …” She picked at a hair on her chin. “Very rich. He never married, you know, which is strange for a Greek man. Probably he is a poustis. Everyone seems to be these days. Even my daughter Effie lives with her special friend, who is a woman. It is very fashionable. But we are talking about Harry Vasilikos, yes? Harry has no children. He owns the Royal Pain bread company. You cannot buy his bread here, but you can buy it in Volos.”

  “Isn’t Agria part of Volos?”

  Her smile stiffened. “Is Greece part of Turkey? No. Calling Agria part of Volos is the same thing. Yes, Volos likes to pretend Agria is part of the city, and sometimes we let Volos believe Agria is part of the city so that we can take its money. But they are not the same.” She patted my hand. “You would not know that because you are not from here. Agria does not sell Harry Vasilikos’s bread because his bread is terrible. It comes in slices—slices! How can you rip off chunks of bread if it is already cut into skinny slices? And the flavor … like eating a servieta.”

  She had just compared Royal Pain bread to a sanitary napkin.

  My brain went panning for gold in her words. This information wasn’t new but this time it bore a promising shine. “Kyrios Harry never married? Not even once?” Greek men often went from mama to wife. It was either that or buy new socks when they ran out of clean laundry.

  “Many rich men collect ex wives, but not Harry Vasilikos.”

  “What do they say about that?”

  Exp
lanations weren’t necessary; Kyria Dora knew “they” was every Greek mouth.

  “They say he loved a woman once but that she disappeared. Harry never recovered from the loss. He traveled around Greece on his yacht, searching for women who looked like her. Very romantic, but also a little bit pathetic, yes? Who does that?”

  Her mouth kept moving but I zoned out. Kyrios Harry had combed Greece for women who resembled his lost love.

  Maybe he had found several.

  Merope was lit up like an aging barfly. A surprise was waiting for me when the ferry lowered the gangway.

  Okay, it was Leo, and he was wearing a smile and probably clothes. I only noticed the smile because it was for me. There was no sign of the succubi, but then, like lousy relatives, they only showed up for meals.

  “Did you miss me?” I asked him.

  “No.”

  I laughed. “Liar.”

  Leo’s smile evolved into a delicious wolf-like grin. “Sometimes, but apparently I’m bad at it.” He lifted my bag off my shoulder and slung it over his own.

  “You’re carrying my handbag.”

  He faked a frown. “Do I look pretty?”

  “You’re the prettiest princess on Merope.”

  “I try. How was your trip?”

  Pieces still didn’t fit. Maria’s Maria went to hunt for the mother who’d been missing for twenty years. Her cousins had joined the hunt. Harry Vasilikos had loved somebody and lost her, all those years ago. He was constantly searching for women who resembled his dead sweetheart. Then he met the Marias and they joined him on his yacht.

  The logical part of my brain said Harry’s lost love was Maria Petsini, the woman who kept falling off Merope’s highest point.