Death of an Aegean Queen (16 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Chief Letsos, FBI Special Agent Bondurant, Marco, and Villas, the policeman from Mykonos, were in Letsos’s office once again, each sitting in the same place as last night but this time Marco had been awarded a chair. Young Demopoulos, who was scheduled for night duty, wasn’t there.

“Update on the George Gaskill affair.” Bondurant started without referring to the notes on his lap. “We have a report from Pennsylvania on him. He’s a registered sex offender and the young lady he was convicted of abusing just happens to be a member of the crew on this very ship. The odds that this is a coincidence are vanishingly small.

“He was employed at a used-car dealership in Elkhart, Indiana. Wife works at a department store. No children. Gaskill was definitely not Employee of the Month. According to the manager, he hadn’t sold a car in ages.

“Health problems.” Bondurant went on in his staccato fashion. “Heart bypass surgery scheduled for July. He’d already been granted leave from work for the operation.”

At this point, Bondurant referred to a page of his notes. “Brittany Benson. Sixteen at the time Gaskill was convicted of abusing her. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After high school she worked as a flight attendant for Delta Airlines for two years, then quit. Moved to Miami and worked in a bar. Shared an apartment with a Peter Davis. Moved to Lima, Peru. We have an address for her in Lima, but our men are still checking on whether she was living alone or if she had a roommate. Started work for this cruise line two years ago. Gives her current address as 1253 rue de Lausanne, Geneva, Switzerland.”

“Busy young lady,” Letsos said, then turned to Villas. “What have you got for us today?”

Villas, his elbows on his knees, read from his notepad. “We have a list of everyone who went ashore in Mykonos yesterday. Both passengers and crew. We’ve created a database of their identity cards. This includes their photo, country of origin, passport number, and cabin number.

“We have identified and talked to the owner of the shop where the knife that was used to kill Papadakos was sold. He is certain it is the same knife that was purchased by a man shortly after this ship docked. He remembers the man spoke English, was neither tall nor short. He wore sunglasses and a tourist-type shirt. Flowers or leaves or something all over it.”

“Does he recall the color of the shirt?”

“Unfortunately, he is color-blind, he told us.”

“Anything else?” Marco asked. “Did the man who bought the knife speak English with an American accent, or what?”

“I don’t know, but if the shop owner is like me, all accents sound the same in English. I faxed the photos of all the men in our database to the Mykonos police station, and the shop owner is coming in to study them and, hopefully, recognize one.”

Marco cleared his throat. “May I make a suggestion?”

Chief Letsos tapped a pencil against the edge of his desk and paused a second before saying, “Go ahead.”

“There is a woman on the ship—Lettie Osgood—who was on the scene yesterday and who walked up and down the streets on both ends of that alley yesterday, moments after the murder. In fact it was she who first recognized that it was Papadakos. This woman has an unusually good, what they call photographic, memory. If you will talk to her, she will probably be able to tell you everyone who was in the area.”

“Osgood?” Letsos frowned and leaned so far forward his wheeled chair zipped backward. He caught himself by grabbing the lip of the desk as his chair hurtled out from under him. He pulled the chair forward by its arms and reseated himself. “Is this the wife of our prime suspect in the murder of George Gaskill?”

“Well, yes.”

“Can we expect her to tell us the truth?”

“You will have to ask her.”

Letsos tossed the pencil he’d been playing with across his desk. It bounced off the phone. “Yes. Well, our best bet is still the shop owner who sold that knife. Hopefully he’ll recognize either the man or his shirt.”

“Do not forget the identification photos were taken at boarding time. Our man was probably not wearing the same clothes again yesterday.” Marco leaned back and slung one arm over the back of his chair.

“Good point, Captain Quattrocchi,” said Bondurant.

Villas nodded and wrote something on his notepad.

Letsos glowered.

* * * * *

Marco slipped out of the security office and tracked Lettie down. Returning, he tapped on the door and ushered Lettie inside, where he found Letsos, Villas, and Bondurant, still sitting in the same chairs as when he had left them. He introduced Lettie to the men and waved her into the lone empty chair, retreating, himself, to the wall opposite Letsos’s desk.

“I’ll tell you all I can remember,” Lettie said. “Where do you want me to start?”

“The alley where Papadakos was found joins two streets filled with shops,” Officer Villas said. “Both of these streets lead up and through Little Venice and down to a plaza on the waterfront.”

“That’s right.”

“Tell us about everything you saw in the area. Start with the first time you were there.”

“The first time was when I walked up from the waterfront because I was tired of listening to my husband trying to talk to Greek fishermen who didn’t speak English. I went into a shop called, well, I don’t know what it would be in English but in Greek, it said . . .” Lettie grabbed a notepad off Letsos’s desk and wrote ηλιος, held the paper up, and turned it around for all the men to see.

“I know the place,” Villas said.

“It was two fifty-five when I walked in. I looked at my watch. Inside the store, I saw four people from the ship. A man, a woman, and two children. The man was wearing a tan-and-green shirt and black shorts. White gym shoes, no socks. Reddish hair. The woman wore a red-and-gray striped sundress with spaghetti straps and a straw hat. Straw sandals. The children, now . . .”

Marco leaned over and touched Lettie on the arm, but Villas looked up from his frenzied note-taking and shook his head at Marco. Lettie stopped talking.

“Go on, Mrs. Osgood.”

“Well, next I went to the bar up the street to see my friend Dotsy, and Marco here. I didn’t know there were two pelicans following me, but maybe they smelled fish or something on the sponges. I had a big bag of sponges with me.”

“Stop.” Letsos held up one hand like a traffic cop. “How did you know they were in the bar?”

“When Ollie and I went down to the waterfront to begin with, I saw Dotsy and Marco walking in. That was at two-twenty.”

“You forgot to tell us about that, didn’t you?” Letsos leaned back, tilting his head accusingly. “You forgot to mention you and Mr. Osgood were, in fact, on that street earlier.”

“But it was a long time earlier! More than an hour before we found the body.”

Letsos held up both hands and shook his head.

Lettie, her feet not quite touching the floor, wiggled in her chair, jammed both hands, palms downward, under her thighs, and sighed. “When I came out of the shop, at three-ten, I saw Brittany Benson walking down toward the plaza. She was wearing a white tank top, pink Capri pants, and straw espadrilles with red leather ties. There was no body in the alley at that time, because I looked when I went past. There was only a large tabby cat sitting on a box. A blue box.”

Twenty minutes and ten pages of notes later, Villas flexed his writing hand and thanked Lettie for her help. Bondurant appeared to have slipped into an altered state. Letsos had executed an elaborate doodle on his green blotter. Marco’s mouth quivered in a barely suppressed grin.

Thanks to Lettie, they now knew Dr. Luc Girard, Sophie Antonakos, Brittany Benson, Willem Leclercq, a family of four from the ship, Dotsy, Marco, Ollie, and herself were all in the area at or around the time of the murder. On her way up the other street as she, Ollie, and Dotsy returned to the ship, they had walked past the crowd gathered at the entrance to the alley and Lettie required another ten minutes to enumerate the gawkers and what each of them was wearing.

“Thank you very much, Mrs. Osgood,” Villas said. “I may need to talk to you again, but you have been most helpful.”

Chapter Sixteen

The ship declared the evening Formal Night. Why all cruises do that, I don’t quite understand. I think it’s a holdover from the glory days of the
Titanic
when scions of American industry rubbed elbows with British lords and dukes in the first-class dining hall while lesser folk ate in second-class, and refugees from the famine in Ireland stuck it out in steerage. But I went along with it and wore my size eight black dress with my Swarovski crystal necklace.

Two women from America sat with us at dinner. I’d seen them several times already, one being the squash-shaped woman I’d seen flirting with Marco the night before, and again that morning, barging out of the Internet café, incensed the ship had no high-speed cable connection. Ernestine Ziegler introduced herself and her daughter, Heather, adding that they were both nurses. Ernestine worked in med/surg at a large Chicago hospital, she told us, and Heather was a pediatric nurse for a private practitioner. Ollie was unable to attend due to his excesses earlier in the day, but Lettie was there. Kathryn Gaskill also ate with us, and that made Marco the lone man at a table with five women.

Marco, incidentally, looked good enough to eat in a charcoal suit, obviously hand-tailored, a light gray shirt, and diagonally striped tie. Italians do know how to dress.

I found myself musing at the relationship between the Zieglers, mother and daughter. Ernestine dominated the dinner conversation but Heather spoke only when spoken to. Ernestine’s round face, framed by an extra chin and hair that reminded me of a doll I’d once had—the one I’d tried to give a permanent using glue and bobby pins—was accented by too-red lipstick, too-small glasses, and too-thin hoop earrings.

Heather Ziegler reminded me of Robert Burns’s description of a mouse: “Wee sleeket, cow’rin beastie.” She was twenty-five years old, unmarried, and lived with her mother, who, having expunged all traces of her second husband after he joined a doomsday cult, had resumed use of her first husband’s (Heather’s father’s) name. Marco and Lettie listened in silence while I, with perverse glee, dug into the Ziegler family history. Heather, I discovered, had not been allowed to go away to college because her mother wouldn’t let her. She had taken her nursing degree from a nearby community college.

Not only did Marco look irresistible tonight, he turned out to be a good dancer, too. After dinner we went dancing in the mid-section of the Hera deck where a five-piece band cranked out tunes from the forties and fifties. Both Lettie and Kathryn declined our invitation to join us, but as a waiter seated us at a small table near the dance floor, a martini-swilling Ernestine burbled coquettishly at Marco from a nearby table. I quickly shoved one of the two empty chairs at our table away, ostensibly for more leg room, but actually to make it difficult for her and Heather to join us without moving furniture.

After placing our drink order, Marco led me to the dance floor. The band played “Perfidia.” He swirled me into the center of the floor with an easy grace that left no doubt about who was leading. I tried to recall the last time I’d danced with a man. It might have been with Chet, in fact. My ex-husband. It would have been more than three years ago at a Christmas party where the girl/woman with whom my husband was destined to run off had stood icily by, waiting for her chance to cut in. I shivered at the memory.

“You are the prettiest woman here, Dotsy.”

“Oh, shucks. You’re not so bad yourself.”

“You do not like me without a beard, do you?”

“Of course I like you, with or without a beard. How silly.”

“You are very . . .”

“Very what? I’m having a lovely time, Marco. Don’t try to analyze me, okay?” I looked at him, smiled, and winked in a way I hoped would convey simple fun.