Feta Attraction (22 page)

“You know something,” he spat back out at me. “I quit.” Fine by me. I wouldn't have to sign off on his unemployment in November.

“Give her what she wants. Now. And watch your mouth.” Dolly put out her hand, palm up, and Russ reluctantly offered up the key. She handed it to me. “Sorry, Georgie, about this dumbass boy of mine.” She gave him a slap on the side of the head.

“Thanks, Dolly.” I raced back to the wine cellar and up the narrow stairs to the triangle room.

“Inky, that was brilliant! How did you think to call Dolly?”

“I had her in my phone book because she came in for a tat a few months ago—you know, the butterfly on her ass?” Well, I didn't know, and didn't want to know any more about that. “And I always keep the numbers for my local customers handy so I can make follow-up calls later, you know, see if they're healing all right, or if they're ready for another one.”

“Has Spiro come to yet?”

“No,” he said sadly. “He must have had a pretty good dose of whatever he's on; plus he's weak from lack of food.”

“Let's get him to his room and lay him down where he'll be comfortable.” Inky nodded. I steeled myself for the physical exertion ahead. We were going to have to carry his limp body down these back stairs, then up to the main floor through the cellar, then through the hallway and up and around the circular staircase. It would have to be done, though. There was nowhere downstairs to put him. “I'm ready.”

Inky picked Spiro up under the arms. His unconscious head lolled to one side. I went for his feet, bracing myself against the wall. It moved. Huh? I pushed back again and the wall moved again. “Inky, did you see that?” I looked toward the sharp corner opposite the door. A gap had appeared. Inky set Spiro down again and we both walked toward the corner. Inky pushed on the wall and the corner separated farther.

“Check this out! We only have to move him a few feet. There's his bedroom right there.” I peered through the opening at the pale blue walls and antiseptic cleanliness of Spiro's room.

“The walls must have some kind of pivot points back here.” He pointed behind us. “In this position, they can only be moved from this space. If you push on the walls from the bedroom side, nothing will happen because they have a common point, here in the corner.”

I sort of understood. As long as the bedroom was a perfect rectangle, the walls wouldn't move from that side. They could open out from the triangle room, but not in from the bedroom.

We both gave the wall another shove and made an opening large enough to bring Spiro through. Inky picked him up in the fireman's carry again, and I went ahead and pulled down the comforter. Inky laid him down and we covered him up. “I'll stay with him till he wakes up. If it looks like he needs an ambulance sooner, I'll call.”

“That might not be too long. Russ was no doubt here to give him another dose as well as to bother me, so he must be close to coming around.”

“What are we going to do about Russ?”

I'd been wondering the same thing. “Somebody's been paying him to kidnap Spiro and to look around this house for whatever's hidden here. Or whatever somebody thinks is hidden here. He doesn't know who it is. I'm tempted to lock him up in that room after I ask him a few more questions.”

“Not a bad plan. We definitely need to find out if he knows anything else, and I'm just itching to give him a piece of my mind too. But if we lock him up over there, he's gonna make a hell of a noise, and that's going to disturb Spiro. Plus, he's healthy. He could push the walls open after we close them, unless there's some sort of locking mechanism.” He stroked his chin, where a light stubble had appeared since I'd first seen him hours ago. “We could leave him to Dolly.”

“She's tough and smart, no question, but he's bigger than she is. I'm going to have to think about this.” It was just a matter of time before the police got involved, and rightly so. But there was one piece of this puzzle missing, and for the sake of my family, I was going to find out for sure who that piece was.

Back downstairs in the kitchen I found Brenda helping herself to coffee. Had she made a pot on her own? She stirred in several spoonfuls of sugar as she listened to Dolly going to work on Russ, who had started to squirm.

“Dolly.” She didn't even notice me, just kept on him. “Dolly,” I repeated, a bit louder this time. I tapped her shoulder and she turned to me.

“What?!” she snapped, then apologized.

“No problem. I just need to talk to Russ for a minute.”

She moved aside and I took her place in front of him. I could see the gun leaning up against the prep counter within arm's reach, so I moved to block it from his easy access.

“Who's been paying you?”

“I said I don't know.”

“How are you communicating with him?”

“He sends me e-mails.”

“What have you been drugging Spiro with?” I might need this information if he didn't come out of it soon.

“Beats me. The guy left a bunch of pills in my mailbox and I been crushing them up and putting them in the water I give him.”

“Where's Spiro's Mercedes?”

“In my garage.” He looked up at me spitefully. “It might have a few scratches on it. I been driving it after-hours.” It probably reeked of cigarettes too. I could see a pack of Chiefs in his shirt pocket, so he'd gone back to smoking. Spiro would be trading in that car sooner than he'd planned.

“Where's his cell phone?” Jack Conway had said he didn't have it, not that I believed him.

“In the car.” His tone implied that the rest of that sentence was, “stupid.” I restrained myself from slapping him. “Hope he had unlimited minutes.”

I turned. “Dolly, is Harold working today?”

“Naw, it's his day off.”

“Russ has been storing Spiro's car in his garage. Do you think Harold could drive it over here; then you could give him a ride back home? I'll pay you,” I added.

“Sure. He was coming into town today anyway.”

“Brenda, what have you got planned?”

“Well, today's the day the pirates come in on the tall ships, remember?” No, I had forgotten that. “So it's one of my biggest days for collecting returnables. But I don't start until late afternoon.”

“How'd you like a job?”

*   *   *

Fifteen minutes later, with Dolly's blessing (“It'll teach him a lesson, the goofy bastard”), we had herded Russ at gunpoint up into the cupola. We tied him up to Basil's old flowered armchair and told him to keep it quiet. I locked him in and installed Brenda outside the door with the rifle. I didn't want him running off and e-mailing the mastermind, putting us all in more danger.

“Don't shoot unless you absolutely have to.” She nodded, serious. “I'll bring you up something to drink in a few minutes.”

Back in the kitchen, Dolly was prepping for the day as if nothing had happened. We opened for breakfast on the weekends, and Dolly cooked the breakfast orders. She was cracking eggs and mixing them up in a pitcher so they'd be ready to pour onto the griddle when a scrambled egg order came in. I was not doing any more business with Sunshine Acres, not that Hank would probably want my business anyway after Inky's and my little nighttime escapade. So we were going to have to make do with what we had until I could get another supply of perishables in from Watertown. I thought if I begged and pleaded and paid a premium, I could get them delivered before eleven.

Sophie came in looking fresh as a daisy. “You look very bad,” she scolded me.

“Spiro is home.” Her face lit up and she headed for the hallway. I put out a hand to stop her.

“He's not feeling too well. And he's sleeping right now.”

“I will leave him to rest, then,” she declared. “I'll go see him later.”

“Yes, that would be best.”

“And then I'm going to wring his neck until he tells me where my money is!”

I went into my office and checked my e-mail. There was the one I'd been expecting, the one from the unknown sender. The instructions were to bring it (still no clue what “it” was) to Riverfront Park at eleven this morning. I was to wait at the picnic table closest to the soda machines, and someone would contact me for the handoff. I was done with this business. Spiro was back, a bit worse for the wear, and as soon as he woke up I planned to pry the whole story out of him. The kidnapper, however, probably didn't know that I had both his leverage and his henchman, so I had no intention of wasting any more time trying to figure out what the treasure was. I'd go down to the police station and turn myself in, and make a complaint against Jack Conway this afternoon. First I would try to keep my restaurant running for the next couple of hours.

I considered trying to grab a quick nap, but decided against it. I was already up and oddly alert, so I decided to leave well enough alone. My backup supplier in Watertown agreed to get me enough vegetables and dairy for the weekend. I sent off an e-mail to Cal and told her that her father was a little under the weather but that he would call her soon. I reiterated my admonition about being careful. The reservations for the evening meal were processed in record time. Upstairs, Brenda seemed to be enjoying herself. I handed her a trashy celebrity gossip magazine and a bottle of water and reminded her to stay alert in case Russ tried to make a break for it. He was being relatively quiet, but that might have had something to do with the gag we'd tied around his mouth.

I descended to the second floor and gave two other bottles to Inky, who had set up camp in the side chair and was watching
Jerry Springer
on the flat-screen TV with the volume turned low. “It's research,” he informed me. A lot of tattoos were showcased on that program, and he was always looking for new ideas. He'd called in one of his artists from the shop near Fort Drum to watch his store downtown so as not to miss out on any of the drunk pirate business that would be coming in this afternoon and evening. Spiro had still not awakened, but was breathing deeply and evenly and seemed healthy enough.

I went to my room and ran a comb through my hair, then splashed some water on my face. I applied a light sunscreen, then put on some lip balm with a hint of color and a swipe of eye shadow and mascara. Looking decent—or as decent as possible after my all-nighter—would give me courage for my upcoming encounter. I dug out a spare purse and dropped in a few essentials. Still no wallet or cell, though. Those would have to be retrieved from the police station later on.

Back in the kitchen, Sophie stared at my shoulder bag. “Where you going?” she demanded. “Today going to be very, very busy.” A look of rapture crossed her face as she contemplated the day's potential take. “I need you here.”

“Sophie, I'm going out to”—I paused—“run some errands. I'll be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, you and Dolly can handle things back here, and you can have Lizzie manage the dining room. I think we ought to make her dining room manager anyway.”

She snorted. “Lizzie! What about Spiro? You said he was back?” she asked suspiciously.

“He is back, and he's sleeping. I want you to stay downstairs and leave him alone.”

She snorted again and turned back to her breakfast.

I exited through the kitchen door and made my way through the short maze of streets to where I'd left my car on Vincent Street. No one seemed to be watching, so I darted over to my little blue baby and slipped inside. I drove it over to the Bonaparte House lot and left it there. If the police did show up, Sophie could truthfully say that she didn't know where I was.

On foot, I made my way up Theresa Street and up past the tattoo shop and the Windlass Guest House to Riverfront Park. There were already crowds of people milling around, waiting for the ships to arrive. I found an empty seat at one of the picnic tables at the covered pavilion and fished around in the bottom of the large purse I'd brought, coming up with enough change to buy a Diet Coke. I fed my coins into the machine and pressed the button for the lime variety. The machine vended out a cold bottle, the condensation which formed confirming that it was already a hot day, and it was going to get hotter and muggier. I sat back down and waited.

A pair of young children dressed in their adorable beads and pirate hats, curly mustaches drawn on their little faces with their mom's eyebrow pencils, ran around excitedly, fencing with their plastic swords. I felt a twinge of nostalgia as I remembered bringing Cal here when she was little. I think I still had the black skull-and-crossbones bandannas we had tied pirate-wise around our heads. The atmosphere was palpable with fun and excitement, the unmistakable air of a tourist town where people come to get away from their normal lives, where cares and troubles are left behind for a few days. It felt good to be a part of that in some small way, providing meals that tasted great and didn't have to be cooked or cleaned up after by the consumer.
A vacation,
I mused.
A vacation would be so nice
. Of course, most people would consider spending a few months on a Greek island every winter a pretty nice vacation. But I was thinking about doing some real traveling after we closed up this season. With e-mail and the Internet and cell phones, I could leave all the after-season paperwork and closing up to the accountant.

Where would I like to go
, I wondered. Maybe California. Well, maybe not. I might run into my mother. Not that I'd recognize her after so many years. How about Hawaii? Or Peru? Or Copenhagen? Cal would be in school, so she wouldn't be able to come with me, but maybe I could convince Liza to take a month off for a girlfriends' tour. Or, I allowed myself to fantasize a bit, maybe Keith could come with me. I blushed and sipped the cold soda, bringing myself back to the present.

My watch read a quarter to eleven. No one around me seemed to be my contact. Captain Jack would not show up to do this job himself. He'd send somebody else. The entire park was filling up with pirates of varying ages, sizes, and degrees of costuming. Nearly everyone had a bandanna tied around his or her head, and lots of brightly colored plastic beads around their necks. Two of my evening waitresses were hanging out over in the far corner of the pavilion, but I didn't think they noticed me.
They'd better be sober when they get to work tonight,
I thought.