Death of an Aegean Queen (31 page)

No one I recognized was on the Poseidon deck when I walked out, although I had rather expected to find Marco or Luc Girard. Did we say we’d meet on the Poseidon deck or the promenade? I couldn’t remember. I nudged myself a space at the rail and looked to the north as the volcano that was Santorini rose from somewhere beyond the horizon. The morning sun bounced off tiny white cubes, probably houses in the town of Fira, along a section of its summit. I knew from my reading that Santorini was a crescent-shaped island, its hollow center a huge caldera out of which ashes and rock had been blasted in 1450
b.c
., blowing most of the island into the stratosphere. Since then, a smaller island or two, still-active volcanoes, had popped up in the middle of the caldera. The tsunami spawned by the 1450
b.c.
eruption had wiped out Minoan civilization on Crete, not to mention what the explosion did to life on Santorini.

A man standing beside me at the rail told me that, like the harbor in Patmos, our ship wouldn’t be able to dock, so they’d send tenders out to pick us up and take us to shore. If these tenders were the same size as the ones we’d had in Patmos, they’d be capable of taking one or two hundred people at a time.

I dug in my pocket for my lip balm and felt the photo of George. Was the photo of George and Kathryn, the embarkation photo, back on display in the photo shop? The last time I’d seen it was when Kathryn and I had given it to Demopoulos, Chief Letsos’s young assistant. He’d shown it around in an effort to locate the missing man. I decided to pop back around to the photo shop and compare that picture to the one my son had sent me. The photo shop was one deck down, between the main desk and the show lounge.

As I walked in, I stopped and did a double-take. The panels of pictures had multiplied by a factor of ten, until now there was barely room to walk between them. They were arranged like a maze with sections of Mykonos shots, formal night shots, dance floor shots, bingo shots, casino shots, and embarkation shots. Those last were the ones I wanted. It still took a few minutes to locate the one of George and Kathryn because it had been posted on a board full of formal night shots. I pulled the photo from my pocket and studied them both. The past decade had put more than ten years on George’s face.

In the embarkation photo, he stood beside Kathryn, one hand around her waist, the other holding a black carry-on. He was smiling broadly, his prominent front teeth glistening in the camera’s flash. I recalled how George had lisped and wondered if it was because of those teeth. They may have been temporary caps, which would explain his enunciation problems. His black goatee covered his chin to where his mustache met it at the corners of his mouth. The rest of his jaw line was bare except for a small white patch in front of his left ear. I looked closely at his ear. Was that a hole? Did George have pierced ears? He didn’t seem like the type. At any rate, there was no stud or ring in it in this picture.

I moseyed around, finding my own embarkation picture, and Marco’s, and Lettie and Ollie’s. I looked a couple of shades lighter in the photo than I did now. I searched up and down the board until I found Nigel Endicott’s embarkation picture. This would, I realized, be the shirt all the hoopla was about. The infamous “brightly colored shirt” that had now disappeared off the face of the earth, or at least off the ship, and it was indeed a brightly colored shirt, with large flowers of yellow and red.

This was the man Lettie had called the “wrong-way man.” I remembered seeing him dodging down the gangway against the flow of foot traffic. Why had he been going down? One of us had suggested he might have been seeing someone off, but Ollie said only ticketed passengers were allowed through security in the terminal building below. I recalled that he’d come back aboard toting a backpack a few minutes later.

I studied Endicott’s face. His hair, in spite of the gel he used to make it stick up at odd angles, looked very sparse. Salt and pepper, more gray at the temples than on top. Sturdy but stylish black-rimmed glasses and, as always, one gold earring. But wait. On his jaw line, in front of his left ear, was a smallish white something. A bit of paper? It was too irregular to be a Band-Aid. Where had I just seen that?

I flew back to George Gaskill’s photo. Oh, my God! It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. Back to Nigel’s picture and back to George again. Then I recalled the round, flesh-colored bandage on George’s jaw line at dinner that first night. Kathryn told us George had cut himself shaving. But does a man with a goatee and mustache use a straight razor? Doesn’t he usually use an electric and move it in little circles along the sides? It looked as if Nigel Endicott had cut himself and stuck a piece of tissue on his face to stop the bleeding. So had George Gaskill. In the same spot. Coincidence? No.

Nigel Endicott was George Gaskill.

I found a wall to lean against before my legs collapsed under me. I let myself slither to the floor, not caring who saw me or what they thought. George Gaskill wasn’t dead. Kathryn hadn’t flown to the arms of another man, only to the arms of her husband. Who killed Nikos Papadakos? As the photographer, he, more than anyone else, would have had occasion to notice what I just had. I began to see a motive for murdering the jolly man everyone liked.

I have to find Marco. I have to find Bondurant. Officer Villas. Chief Letsos. Anybody who can nab Nigel Endicott before he jumps ship
.

With my head still swimming in confusion, I slithered back up the wall. Would it be smarter to have Marco, Bondurant—whoever—paged, or go and find them myself? The main desk was only a few yards away. But no. If they did a page that went out all over the ship, it might alert Endicott something was up. I’d try the security office first, even if it meant having to explain myself to the emotionally challenged Chief Letsos.

I didn’t get the chance. Sophie Antonakos, her arm sling flapping like a sail in a stiff wind, rounded the corner from the direction of the show lounge. She skidded sideways on the slick floor and stumbled forward, barely managing to keep her feet under her until I grabbed her good arm and held her steady.

“The krater is gone! The krater is gone!”

Chapter Twenty-six

Luckily, Sophie and I were only a few yards from the security office but, unluckily, when we knocked on the door, we got no response. “Forget it, Dotsy. We can’t wait for someone to show up. Come. I want to show you.”

Down the starboard hall and around the corner we came to the entrance to the show lounge where Sophie and Brittany’s dance ensemble performed. The display case opposite the door wasn’t empty and open, as I was expecting, but was neatly closed as if nothing was wrong. The object on display was no longer the red-figure ceramic krater with dancing wood nymphs and satyrs. Instead, I found myself staring at a black glazed earthenware pot much like one I could buy at my local garden center back home for $39.95.

I stood, staring dumbly, until Sophie pointed toward an area near the show lounge doors where a small pile of dirt lay on the carpet. “See? They took the potted plant that was there, and put the pot in the case. I guess they threw the plant away.”

On the other side of the doors sat a similar pot with a large snake plant, its robust spikes thrusting some four feet above the rim of the pot. “I suppose it was another snake plant they threw away,” I mumbled, as if the sort of plant tossed out made any difference.

“This krater was the one Luc and I discovered had been stolen from a private collection. It was sold at auction by Sotheby’s in 1998 for eleven thousand dollars.”

I noted Sophie’s use of her mentor’s first name, but said nothing about it. “Is that legal? Selling it at auction?”

“Anything with provenance documenting that it was excavated before the 1970s is exempt from the laws against buying or selling antiquities. This krater’s documentation goes back to the early 1900s. So, it was legal to buy it at auction.” Sophie looked at me, her brown eyes flashing. “But it was not legal to steal it!”

“We need help. Let’s go back to the main desk.” We dashed down the port hallway to the big counter that curved around the foyer across from the security office. Having already decided an all-call wasn’t a good idea, I snagged the girl at the phone bank and said, “Call Captain Quattrocchi in room 371 and call Dr. Girard in . . . Sophie, do you know Luc’s room number?”

Sophie blushed, then stammered, “I . . . I don’t know the number, but it’s on the hall with the ship’s officers’ rooms. On the Apollo deck.”

I relayed this to the desk clerk. This was no time for a lengthy explanation of how she knew where Luc’s room was. I was delighted to know she did, but I didn’t want to talk about it now. “When you locate either of them, tell them to meet Miss Antonakos and Mrs. Lamb right here, in front of this desk. It’s urgent.”

“Why here?” Sophie asked.

“Because it’s an easy spot to find.” I turned back to the attendant. “Also try to find Agent Bondurant, the FBI man. I haven’t the vaguest idea where he is, but if you see anyone going into the security office, tell them to wait for us.” From the main desk, the door of the security office was clearly visible.

“If Dr. Girard isn’t in his room, try the kitchen. He might be there.” Sophie turned to me. “He likes to have his morning coffee with the chef. They’re both French, you know.” Throughout this whole thing, Sophie had been waving her broken, cast-clad arm like a cricket bat. I unfurled the sling that had been flapping uselessly around her neck and slipped her arm back in it, giving her a stern, motherly look. “Oh, no!” she said. “What about the amphora on the top deck? Do you suppose it’s been stolen, too?”

“Let’s go check,” I said. We made a dash for the elevator. It took a maddeningly long time for one to come. The lights on the panels beside each of the four elevators indicated they were all stopping on Athena deck, which meant folks were heading for the disembarkation point, probably lining up to catch a tender boat to shore. Had we dropped anchor yet? I hadn’t felt the thunks from the ship’s engine that normally accompanied a stop. Once inside the elevator, I punched the button for the Zeus deck. I couldn’t imagine the amphora had been stolen. It was so large, over three feet tall, a thief would have a devil of a time sneaking it away, and to walk off the ship with it? Impossible.

I debated whether to tell Sophie what I’d just discovered about George Gaskill/Nigel Endicott. It was, after all, more important than our current quest for stolen artifacts. Smuggling and theft are bad but murder is worse. I decided not to mention it yet. There’d be time for that later and now was the time to find out what had been stolen and what hadn’t. “Sophie, why do you suppose these things, the bracelet and the krater, were stolen at this particular time? They’ve been in these display cases for years, haven’t they?”

“I think it’s because they know we’re onto them. They sold their illegal artifacts to whoever decorates and buys the furnishings for the ship, never thinking someone would go around with a LAMBD
A
book and compare. In fact, the LAMBDA book probably hadn’t been published at the time the sales were made.”

“And they didn’t count on a woman like Lettie Osgood, with her amazing powers of observation, noticing that three little spots of missing glaze were identical on both the amphora and the photo.”

When the elevator stopped, Sophie and I flew across the open deck to the Zeus bar, threw open the door, and skidded to a stop in front of the tall display case.

It was empty except for a sign in big red letters standing where the amphora had been: THIS ITEM HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY REMOVED FOR RESTORATION.

Sophie seemed to shrink several sizes as she looked. She buried her face in her hand and walked around in useless little circles, moaning something in Greek that sounded like “den catalafa.” Was there any point in checking the bull’s head in the display case downstairs? Three out of the four were missing so it was a safe bet the head was gone, too.

I dashed through to the bar. The bartender wasn’t on duty yet, and the only person I could find was a little man mopping the floor. With sign language, I persuaded him to drop his mop and come out to the entryway where he looked at the empty case and scratched his head. Sophie talked to him in Greek for a minute and then turned to me. “He says he never looks at that case. He only does floors. Let’s go.”

When we got back to the main desk, Agent Bondurant and Luc Girard were waiting for us. They said they hadn’t seen Marco. Sophie and I blurted out our stories in two simultaneous avalanches until I caught the bewildered look on Bondurant’s face and shut up. I decided to let Sophie go first, and then I’d tell them about George/Nigel after they’d had a chance to absorb the facts about the thefts.