A Cruise to Die For (An Alix London Mystery) (25 page)

Gaby took a bite, chewed it slowly and appreciatively, and continued. Panos had returned ten minutes later, still angry but with a satisfied look on his face. He’d finally given Donny his walking papers, he told her, and the hell with whatever Donny’s ogre of a mother, who was Panos’s domineering, Medusa-like Aunt Polyphema, happened to think about it. When they arrived in Corfu tomorrow morning, Donny would be put off the ship and forbidden ever to come anywhere near it again. Out of the goodness of his heart (“I’m quoting,” Gaby said), Panos would give him two hundred euros to get back home to Karavostassis.

“Well, I guess it’s all for the best,” Alix said. “I’m sorry to miss that ride in the
Hermes
, though.”

“Why do you have to miss the ride? Somebody’s going to be going. You can go with whoever it is. If they’re taking the speedboat, it’ll be Yiorgos. He’s the only other one who drives it.”

Alix brightened. “The security guy? Do you think he’d take me?” The stalwart Yiorgos Christos, she was pretty sure, wasn’t going to be the fountainhead of information that Donny might have been, but that didn’t mean she had to pass up the ride. Besides, she’d been more or less relieved of information-gathering duty by Ted, hadn’t she?

Gaby laughed and got out her cell phone. “Yiorgos, you’re going out for supplies this morning? In the
Hermes
? Alix London would like to ride with you. That’s all right, isn’t it? Yes, I’ll do that.” She put the phone away. “He’s in the process of getting the boat now. Better go and wait for him on
the swim platform. And Alix?” she said as Alix fought her way out of the sling chair, “don’t take everything I said too seriously. I just need to vent from time to time, and you happened to be here for one of my better venting sessions. I’ve got a pretty good life, and I know it. The truth is, I’m really a pretty happy person.”

Alix didn’t believe it for a minute. “Gaby,” she said on a sudden urge, “did you know my father spent eight years in prison?”

“Yes, I did,” she said with a smile. “We have a lot in common, don’t we? There’s nothing that can beat that look on someone’s face, is there, when they hear your name, and their eyes squish up, and you see the little wheels going around in their head,
chunka chunka
, and they’re thinking, ‘Don’t tell me she’s the daughter of that…’ ” She finished with that warm, liquid laugh of hers.

Alix smiled in response. Two of a kind, all right. “Well, at least they never think you’re boring,” she said lightly. “I’d better get going, Gaby. See you later.”

When she got to the stern, Alix saw how it was that the swim platform could possibly be on the main deck, which was so far above the water. The stern of the
Artemis
was another of its design features that had been revolutionary when it was built, but was now commonplace on luxury yachts. The rear of the third deck, the open main deck, didn’t end sharply at a more or less vertical transom, but descended at a long, shallow angle, with curving, symmetrical steps on either side, down to an eight-foot-wide shelf on the second deck—the water-level deck—that ran the width of the ship. There were a few padded wicker deck chairs and a couple of cocktail tables on it lined up facing rearward, toward the sea. From the shelf projected a foldaway diving board in the center and two removable pool ladders at the sides for climbing back out of the water.

Alix regretted that she hadn’t gotten up even earlier for a solitary sunrise dip. If there was another chance for one she’d take it. The best she
could do at the moment was to sit on the edge and dangle her rubber-sandaled feet for a quick dip in the cool, velvety sea. Delicious, but she’d barely gotten her toes wet when the
Hermes
came sliding around the starboard side, its gentle
putt-putt-putt-putt
sounding more like a neighbor’s idling lawn mower than a fearsomely powerful cigarette boat. And, in fact, it didn’t look like her idea of a cigarette boat: Where was the spear-point bow, the gleaming, bullet-shaped hull? This little stub-nosed craft seemed more like the kind of weekender you saw by the dozens at any marina, and at first she was disappointed.

But the more of it that came into view, the more impressed she was. She realized now that she’d never seen anything like it. It was both lower slung and more massive than she’d thought at first, and its bulk gave it an aura of power that the skinnier cigarette boats didn’t have; at the same time, there was something about it that made her think of some sinewy beast—a leopard, a cheetah—relaxed for the moment but full of impending menace and latent speed. It was like some improbable prop for a sci-fi movie. Indeed, it was the kind of machine in which you might expect to find James Bond at the wheel.

Instead, of course, it was Yiorgos, looking more than ever like Özbek, the Turkish Giant, in a bursting white T-shirt that outlined every swelling muscle like a diagram in an anatomy book. He was an amiable, welcoming giant, though, reaching out one bulging-biceped arm to help her hop aboard. He gestured her into the front passenger seat and slowly started up. There were other yachts, small and large, anchored nearby, so the lazy
putt-putt
-ing continued as he wove through them. The windshield had been folded down, so the movement created a pleasant breeze on her face. She ran her hand along the smooth ebony of the instrument console and over the convex faces of the dials.

“This looks so familiar.…”

“You have been in such a boat before?” Yiorgos asked.

“No, or at least I don’t think so. I must have seen a picture of it.”

“Ever drive a Lancia?”

“The car, you mean? Yes, a Lancia Delta S4. Why?”

Yiorgos threw back his head and laughed, the deep, rolling
har, har, har
that would have been expected from him. “You don’t mean the S4, I think. I think maybe you mean the nice little Delta hatchback. The Delta S4 is a famous racing car,
har, har, har
.”

“That’s the one I mean,” Alix said, and then, just for the fun of rubbing it in, “the 1800-cubic-centimeter, 560-horsepower, turbocharged model that won at San Remo, Monte Carlo, Lombard—”

Yiorgos’s mouth was open. His eyebrows had lifted halfway to his hairline, and it took him a moment to find words. “You are kidding me. You are… you are a
race car driver
?”

“No,” she said, laughing, “but I did drive an S4. More than once. On the Amalfi Coast.”

It had been when she was in Italy studying with Fabrizio Santullo, she explained. Santullo, a stern critic and a demanding, no-excuses teacher in the workshop, had been a kindly man once he got out of it, and after a while he had fallen into the habit of inviting her to his summer house in Ravello for the weekend. His son Gian-Carlo had raced as an amateur for a few years and had been pleased when she’d expressed interest in the amazing collection of six racing cars that he maintained. He had given her a few lessons in several of them, including the Lancia S4 and the even more spectacular Lamborghini Gallardo LP 560. She had spent many wonderful hours cruising down the glorious Amalfi coastline just after sunup, before the traffic began to build.

Yiorgos gave her a lustrous smile. “Ah, so romantic: the Amalfi Coast at dawn, the Lamborghinis, the Lancias, the handsome Gian-Carlo.”

Alix smiled thinking of the balding, rotund, five-foot-five, forty-nine-year-old, contentedly married father of five they were talking about. “Oh, yes, very romantic,” she said. “But why are we talking about this? Why did you ask?”

“Because
this
is a Lancia,” he said, patting the console. “That is why the controls, the…” He couldn’t come up with the word for
dials
, so he
made a spinning motion with his finger. “… Why they look to you familiar.”

“Lancia makes boats? I thought they only made cars.”

“Only this one, and only for two years they made it. A wonderful boat, it can skim over the water like a jet plane, but it was too much money for people to buy.”

They had reached open water now, but rather than speed up, Yiorgos slowed to a full stop, so they remained there, bobbing and gently
putt-putt
ing. “Would you like to have the wheel?”

“
Really
?”

“If you can drive the S4, you can drive this. It is the same thing, almost.”

“I’d love to—thank you!”

They switched seats. Excitedly, Alix scanned the panel. “I don’t know what some of the dials mean.”

“I will watch the dials.”

She put her hand on the double-levered throttle. “And this is new to me. This is the same as a gear shift lever?”

“Sure. You want to go forward, you push forward this part, that’s all.”

“And what else do I do?”

He shrugged. “Nothing else. You turn the wheel like a car to go where you want to go.”

“And where do we want to go?”

“Straight ahead, up the coast. Don’t worry, I tell you when we get there.”

“Push the throttle forward…,” she murmured to herself, excited but also a little nervous.

Yiorgos made an encouraging go-ahead gesture. “That’s all. Push, push.”

She pushed.

VrroooOOOO
AAAHHHMMM
!

Off flew her visor. Back jerked her head. For a split second her hair was snapping at her eyes, and then it was streaming out behind her. She was
sure she could feel her cheeks rippling, the way they do in those videos of astronauts hitting six Gs in the training centrifuge. The ride was smooth for a few seconds, but then began bumping wildly, bouncing her in her seat. The bow rose in front of her, higher than she thought possible without upending the boat. She had to peer around the side to see where she was going. All of this in a space of five seconds. She pulled back on the throttle. The boat slowed. The bow flopped back down into the water with a
splat
.

“Wow,” she said, and she knew she was bug-eyed. “Yikes. Oh my God, that is really something.”

Yiorgos was laughing. “Maybe not push so hard next time.”

“You know, I think you might be right,” she said,
easing
the lever forward. This time the buildup was lengthier, but in sixty seconds they were back up at the same earsplitting, kidney-jolting, utterly thrilling speed. Alix simply gave herself up to the sheer joy of it, taking the marvelous craft in grand, sweeping curves so great and exact that she could see their own wake running parallel alongside the boat but going the other way. Lost in sensation, she was unaware of Yiorgos’s trying to get her attention until he tapped her on the shoulder. She’d been laughing without realizing it, but the look on his face put an end to that. She eased back on the throttle.

“What is it?” she asked when the racketing had died down enough for her to be heard. “What’s the matter?”

He put a finger to his lips and she saw that he had his cell phone pressed to his ear. He said a few curt words in Greek, listened for a while, added another brief phrase or two, closed the phone and then opened it a moment later, hit another button, and placed it to his ear again.

“What is it, Yiorgos? Is something wrong?”

He made another shushing gesture and indicated that she should set the boat to idling again. While it
putt-putt-
ed away, he spoke into the phone at some length. His clipped, authoritative sentences didn’t sound to her as if they were part of a two-way conversation. He was issuing orders.

When he was done, he pocketed the phone. “I drive now.”

Once they had exchanged seats and he’d gotten the boat up to a moderate speed, he spoke. “They find Dionysodaurus. Near Agia Pelagia. Other side of Heraklion, a few kilometers.”

She didn’t understand. “Donny isn’t on the yacht? I mean, I know Mr. Papadakis fired him, but I thought he would be getting off in Corfu.”

He glanced at her. “Who tells you this information?”

“Well, people are talking about it,” she said, afraid of causing difficulties for Gaby.

He nodded. “This is true, yes, but Dionysodaurus, he didn’t want to wait until Corfu.”

Donny had not appeared at the early staff breakfast that morning, he told her, and when looked for he couldn’t be found. On a hunch, Yiorgos had checked the “petty cash” box, 3000 euros kept for buying food and supplies at village shops and markets that didn’t take credit cards. All of the paper money, approximately 2,700 euros, was gone. A more thorough search had made it clear that Donny was also gone.

“But the
Artemis
must be two miles from shore,” Alix said. “How could he—oh, of course, he was a swimmer; he told me he’d been, what was it, the swimming champion of the Cyclades. He must have—”

“Of the Cyclades?” Yiorgos snorted. “He was second-place winner of his village, Karavostassis.” He sighed. “Not good enough, it looks like.”

It took a moment for her to grasp his meaning. “He’s
dead
? They found him
dead
?”

They had indeed. When the
Philomena
, an ancient shrimp trawler out of the fishing village of Agia Pelagia, returning at dawn from a nighttime drag, had winched in a heavy, promisingly bulging net and loosened its pursed mouth to let the contents flow into the sluicing box, what slithered down seemed at first to be no more than the beautiful, shining, gray-brown rain of shrimp they’d expected. But as they hosed the creatures down into the refrigerated hold, they found something that no man among them had ever encountered before.