Death of an Aegean Queen (26 page)

Sophie followed a minute later, sans baby. “Are you all right, Dotsy?”

“I’m fine, but I want one of those black bowls on the floor in there. You have to help me get one.”

“Are you crazy?”

“They’ve been painted black so they can be smuggled out of the country, Sophie. I saw a photo just like them in the LAMBDA book.”

“Oh, Dotsy. They’re probably just cheap bowls.”

“I don’t think so. Please. Go in and offer her money. Here.” I dug in my purse and pulled out a wad of Euros. “Give her whatever it takes.”

Sophie spun around and threw her hands up. “This is silly. Okay, how much should I offer her?”

“A hundred Euros.”

“She’d laugh at me. They probably cost less than five.”

“Do whatever you have to.”

With a loud sigh, Sophie slipped back inside and said, “
Na sas rotiso kati
?” I saw her shuffle her feet self-consciously as she listened to the old woman’s answer. A few minutes later, she emerged with a black bowl and handed it to me. “That sweet old woman is now certain all tourists are crazy. I paid her ten Euros for a two-Euro bowl.”

“You’re a good girl, Sophie.”

We arrived outside the church when the service was ending and watched as the mourners left. No surprises, really. Nigel Endicott, Malcolm Stone, Willem Leclercq, Brittany Benson—none of them were there. Bondurant, Officer Villas, and Captain Tzedakis were the only people I recognized, and I already knew they were here. The hired cars were waiting for us, now heading the opposite direction. We located our cab and hopped in. We were at the back end of the line again but our driver, rather than wait his turn to move out, shoved the car into reverse and drove around behind the church and out of the village by a different route.

I looked at the black bowl on my lap. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Sophie’s grin. “Laugh all you want. You and Dr. Girard will thank me when you see I’ve rescued a priceless antiquity.”

“Are you still going to buy me lunch? I’m hungry.” Sophie grabbed the bowl and turned it over, examining the bottom.

“Sure. Do you know a good place to eat in Iráklion?”

The cab was sweltering and the sun beat in on my side of the back seat. I rolled my window down and watched the barren hills roll by. We weren’t returning by the route we’d come, but we were going downhill, so I figured it had to be all right. Sophie told me about the work she was doing for Dr. Girard and her tone of voice confirmed my belief that a fondness was growing between them.

“I love the work,” she told me, “even though it means working full time as a dancer and working with Dr. Girard in my free time.”

I looked out the back window. A silver car, a lot like one we’d passed back in the village, was behind us. Sophie turned as well, and looked back. “Are we going the right way?” I said.

Our driver swerved left onto a smaller side road and a big puff of dust flew into my face. I rolled up my window and leaned forward to ask the man if he knew what he was doing. I smelled—GOATS.

* * * * *

“Excuse me,” I said, tapping him on the shoulder. “Aren’t we going the wrong way?”

Sophie leaned sideways and looked across the seat back. She was in a better position than I was to see his profile. I could see only the back of a greasy head and, in the rearview mirror, his eyes. Sophie turned to me and mouthed something that looked like, “Oh, shit.”

We careened around a hairpin turn and the car speeded up, hitting a boulder on the side of the road that nearly turned us over. The road descended more steeply on the other side of the turn. Like a sidewinder rattlesnake, our cab slid and slipped down the hill and from the window on my side I saw that the goat man, our driver, was heading for a grove of trees. Once inside the grove, both we and the car would be hidden from view in all directions. My door was on the downhill side. I had to risk it. The lock button on my door was up. Unlocked.

I grabbed Sophie’s wrist, popped my door open, and rolled out, pulling Sophie along with me. We both hit the ground hard. My left side landed on a thorny bush, my left leg twisted up under me. Sophie, I think, must have fallen flat on her back because I heard a pained “Uunh.”

Without a word, we both scrambled to our hands and knees. Stumbling and crawling, we struggled toward a large boulder some twenty yards away. I heard the crunch of tires on gravel behind and above us. Then shouts.

Then the crack of gunfire.

I heard the ping of a bullet that grazed the boulder Sophie and I were headed for. Sophie had fallen. I heard her say, “Go on, Dotsy. Save yourself.”

I slid an arm around her and pulled. Pulled her toward the boulder, inch by inch. Sophie regained her footing, sort of, and we stumbled on.

More shouts. Another shot. Thuds. I hit the dirt and flattened myself out against the ground, waiting for the next shot, which I fully expected to enter my left temple at any second. Two arms lifted and turned me over, pulled me up, and held me tightly. I smelled a clean, soap smell. Clean? Not goat?

I drew back and looked up. It was Marco.

Chapter Twenty-three

“I thought you were in Italy.”

“I came back.” Marco stood up rather abruptly and I fell back, my elbows scraping against the ground. “Excuse me. I have to see about this man who was shooting at you and make sure he does not escape.”

To Marco’s retreating back, I said, “Find out who he is.”

I sat up and looked around. Sophie lay face down, a few feet downhill from me, her arms and shirt streaked with blood. My heart thudded in my chest. As I scooted over toward her, she raised her head and looked around. “Oh, thank God, Sophie, I thought you were a goner.”

“A goner? No, I’m still here, I think.” She sat up, groaned, and plucked a triangular black shard out of her right arm. “I broke your priceless antiquity, though.” She examined the broken edge of the shard and said, “Plaster. What did I tell you?”

Even I could see the white interior was nothing but plaster, painted black. We checked ourselves for injuries. Sophie had numerous cuts, and a right arm she thought might be broken. It was numb, she said, and it did have a funny angle to it.

I had too many cuts and scrapes to count, especially on my left side, but everything seemed to move properly. Except my neck. It only wanted to turn right. I had left my newly purchased scarf, which was probably meant to be a tablecloth, around my shoulders and I found it now, a couple of yards uphill and ensnared in a thorny bush. I retrieved it and made a sling for Sophie’s arm with it.

“Who is that man?” Sophie asked, so casually it made me laugh. She had no idea what was going on. But then neither did I.

“I don’t know who he is, but he’s the same man who was following me in Rhodes yesterday. I realized he wasn’t our driver when I leaned forward to talk to him and smelled goats.”

“Goats?”

“Yes. I smelled that same smell at a shop in Rhodes, thought nothing about it at the time, of course. But when I saw Brittany in the Palace of the Grand Masters a little while later and smelled goats again, I realized they were together and they were following me. I still have no idea why.”

“That’s your friend from Italy, isn’t it? The man who saved us?”

“Right. Marco Quattrocchi. He’s with the Italian Carabinieri.”

“I know. He and Dr. Girard have been comparing notes. Why is he here?”

I looked up the hill and saw Marco now had the goat man firmly in hand, up against the car, and was tying him up with a necktie or something. Behind the cab we’d been riding in, which was now angled precariously on the verge of a steep drop, sat a silver Mercedes, obviously the car I’d seen behind us a few minutes ago.

Sophie and I struggled to our feet and picked our way gingerly up the hill, Sophie wincing as she cradled her right arm with her left. I got a sharp pain in my collar bone region when I tried to turn my neck again.

Marco jerked his prisoner around to face us. “Do either of you ladies know this man?”

“I know he was following me yesterday in Rhodes, but I don’t know why,” I said.

“I need to take him to the jail in Iráklion but I also need to take you two back to the ship. I do not think you will want to ride in the same car with this man because he smells like goats.”

“It’s okay. I just want to get back to the ship.”

“Me too,” Sophie said.

Sophie and I climbed into the back seat of the silver Mercedes and Marco tucked us in carefully, adjusting the position of Sophie’s arm before he closed our door. He threw his prisoner into the front seat, and slipped behind the wheel himself. Turning to me, he said, “Put this on the floor and try not to kick it.” He handed me the gun, still warm from having been fired.

On the way back to town, I filled Marco in on what we’d been doing in the little village while we were not attending the funeral of Nikos Papadakos. I explained all I knew about the events in Rhodes yesterday, but didn’t say anything about George Gaskill’s watch, the accusations and the counter-accusations that had kept us busy on board the ship since he’d left. There’d be time for that later. Our would-be assassin, his hands tied behind his back, stared glumly out the side window.

“I rented this nice car to impress you, Dotsy. Are you impressed? I went to the ship this morning and Dr. Girard told me where the two of you had gone. He said you had gone to the funeral and he told me how to find the village. So I thought I would pick you up in this nice car, like a knight on a white horse, you know?”

“I’m impressed.” I tried to give him a playful punch across the back of the seat, but was stopped by another stabbing pain in my collar bone. “Anytime you save my life, Marco, I’ll be impressed. You could have ridden up on a donkey and I’d have been impressed.”

“Thank you for saving my life, sir,” said Sophie.

* * * * *

Marco helped us into the lobby of the hospital in Iráklion, keeping one eye on the prisoner in the car as he did so. “I am sorry to leave you here, but . . “

“We’ll be fine, Marco. Take Goatman to the police station before he figures out how to escape.”

Sophie took care of the red tape at the admissions desk, spending far more time dealing with my American insurance than with her own. If I’d been alone, I couldn’t have done it. As it was, I’d have to pay them for my treatment today and settle up with my insurance company when I got home. I nearly cried when they took Sophie away to x-ray her arm. This was all my fault. If I hadn’t practically forced her to go with me, she’d have spent a happy day in the ship’s library, sorting things for Dr. Girard, and none of this would have happened.

Eventually a nurse led me to another room, helped me take off my clothes and don a hospital gown. After they’d x-rayed me front, back, and sideways, they parked me in an alcohol-scented hallway between an old man and a whimpering child on his mother’s lap, neither of whom seemed to care about my lack of clothing. A half-hour later a nurse who spoke broken English came around and led me into a little examination room. Under her arm, she held a large envelope. She asked me questions about how this all happened.

“I fell down a hill about ten miles south of town.” That’s all she needed to know.

She poked around, made me lift my arms and turn my head as far as I could. Left, right, up, down. Noting my scrapes and cuts were still bloody and dirty, she went to work with a towel and antiseptic until most of my left arm and leg were painted mustard yellow. She pulled my x-rays out of the envelope and stuck them up on a light box. She touched the ghostlike shadow of what was obviously my collar bone. “See the little black line here? And the point here? It is what we are calling a . . .”