Feta Attraction (6 page)

“I suppose that would be all right, but it might be a waste of your time. All I saw was Big Dom floating there on the water. I don't know any more than that.”

“Please, ma'am, I just need to ask you a few questions.”

“Can you come by in a half hour or so and make it short? I'm sorry, but I have an enormous number of things to do.”

“I'll be there soon, and I'll keep it brief.” He hung up.

Coast Guard? Why would the Coast Guard be calling me about this? Wouldn't the state troopers be investigating Big Dom's death? Well, maybe he'd tell me when he got here.

I reached for the letter again, a knot forming in my gut. A little bell dinged, signifying that I had a new e-mail. I set the cell phone on the desk, then turned to my laptop and double-clicked on the mail icon. The screen flashed up large, angry-looking letters:

BRING IT TO ME AND I WON'T HERT HIM. WAIT FOR INSTRUCTIONS.

This was starting to feel less and less like a joke.

“Georgie? Are you in here?” a voice warbled from the doorway. “Are you all right, dear? You're white as a sheet.”

I closed my laptop quickly and turned toward the voice. “Nothing to worry about, Sophie. I just banged my knee on the desk and it hurts.”

“Would you like for me to get you ice?”

“No, no, I'll be fine.” I took a deep breath and attempted to compose myself. Sophie was sharp and perceptive, sometimes eerily so. I didn't want to alarm her until I had more information.

“Have you heard from Spiro? He still no answer his phone.”

“Uh, he's just gone off again. You know he likes to do that.” Sophie frowned. “I imagine we'll hear something today.” Was my nose growing? I hated to lie to her but what was there to tell? I had nothing.

She looked at me expectantly.

What?
Oh, of course. She'd heard about Big Dom. I sighed and took a deep breath.

“Yes, I found him. Keith Morgan gave me a ride to Liza's spa on the island last night. We noticed the body and tried to save Dom, but it was too late.”

She continued to stare.

“I am not having an affair with Keith and there was no black thong near the body,” I spat out, and felt deflated. As though I'd just been through a grueling interrogation session in some downtown precinct room with a detective in shirtsleeves asking tough questions, smoke rings floating through the air.

She watched me, hawklike, and apparently decided I was telling the truth.

“Let me know when you hear from Spiro.” She turned and left the room.

FIVE

I reopened the e-mail. The sender's name was hidden, just as before, and while I'm fairly proficient with the computer and handle much of my day-to-day business that way, figuring out who the sender was would be beyond me. I saved it in a new folder and looked at the white envelope again. It had apparently been hand-delivered, probably this morning while I was over at Liza's. Seemed like overkill in light of the e-mail with the same message.

I went back out to the kitchen and asked Dolly whether she had seen who delivered the envelope.

“Nope,” she said, the rhinestone butterfly fluttering in her hair as she expertly peeled one long, shiny red ribbon from an apple and plopped the denuded fruit into a pot of lemon juice and water to keep it from browning. “It was under the door when I got here this morning. I put it on your desk.”

“Did you and Russ come in together this morning?”

“No, we drove separate.” Of course, she'd been hoping to get to leave early so they'd each brought their own cars. “He came in after me.”

Dead end.

“Thanks, Dolly. Let me know if any more deliveries come in.”

I had just returned the envelope to my desk and locked it in the top drawer when Dolly buzzed me on the intercom. “Georgie, there's somebody here to see you. I wish he was here to see me,” she said. I could almost see her waggling her eyebrows.

Coast Guard guy,
I thought.

“Ask him if he wants a drink, and send him to my office, please.”

“Coffee, tea, or me?” I heard before she took her finger off the intercom button.

A couple of minutes later a tall figure filled the doorframe. “I decided on the coffee,” the voice from the phone call drawled. “I'm Captain Jack Conway from the Coast Guard station. You must be Georgie?”

He was wearing tan khakis that could have used a hot iron, a brown leather belt, and a faded Ralph Lauren polo shirt in a pinkish shade that on most men would have been an unfortunate fashion choice, but he carried it off. He offered a large, strong hand and I took it. A little tingle ran up my arm. “Captain Jack? Really?”

“Really. I'm hoping for a promotion soon, for many reasons.” He was about my age, with some rather cute crinkles around a pair of intensely blue eyes.

“I can imagine. Uh, can I have my hand back?”

“For now.” The little crinkles appeared again, and he dropped my hand.

A charmer, and damned good-looking. If I hadn't been so preoccupied with the events of the last day and a half, I might have enjoyed this little repartee more, but I had no patience for it now. “Captain, my staff will be arriving soon and we'll be opening for lunch, so if we could make this quick?”

“Call me Jack.”

“All right, Jack, what is it you'd like to know? As I said, I only got a very brief glimpse of Big Dom, and I don't know what I could tell you.”

“You were out for a ride with Keith Morgan last night.”

“Yes, the water taxi didn't show up and he offered me a ride to Valentine Island, where I spent the night at the spa.”

“So you got in the boat and drove toward the spa. Did you make any stops?”

“No.”

“Meet anyone along the way?”

I thought. “I don't remember any other passenger boats on the water, though there might have been one or two. There was a laker off in the distance, too far away for me to read the name.”

“Who saw the body first?”

“I did. I pointed it out and Keith pulled the boat over toward the cave. I stayed in the boat while he waded out to him. Keith rolled him over to see if there was any chance to save Dom, but he was already dead.”

“Did you notice anything about the body?”

“I could see it was Big Dom. He was wearing a black suit and a lot of gold rings and chains.”

“Could you see his face?”

“I tried not to look.” I thought for a moment. “His face was all discolored.” I shuddered. “And he'd hit his head on something.”

“Was there anything near the body, anything floating?”

Had news of the black thong reached the Coast Guard station too? “No, I don't remember anything like that.” I held my breath.

No trace of amusement crossed his face. My breath came out in a whoosh.

“Then what happened?”

“I called nine-one-one. Rick and Tim from the village police came and sent us away. Keith took me to the spa. I spent the evening there, and returned this morning.”

He studied me for a moment. “I think that's all I need for now. If you think of anything more, give me a call.”

He rose and handed me an official-looking card. “Good-bye, Georgie. I wish we could have met under nicer circumstances.” He took my hand again and looked down at me.

I felt strangely uncomfortable, yet as though I'd known this man a long time. Weird. “I'll call if I remember anything more.”

He left by the kitchen door, and I admired the view of his khakis from the back. Hopefully Dolly let him go without too much of a fuss.

It was three o'clock before I got another break. The place was packed with tourists for lunch, most of whom wanted to know what the ghost hunters had found. Two ladies wearing a lot of twinkly beads and long swingy skirts claimed to be “sensitive” and asked, after a couple of tours around the three dining rooms and the restrooms, whether they could go upstairs and attempt to connect with the spirits inhabiting the house. I respectfully declined. I completed the work schedules for the following week, finalized the menus for Pirate Days, called in the payroll, and had enough other work to do that I was able to put the strange notes out of my mind for a while at least.

I e-mailed Cal in Greece that I loved her and to be careful, and to please check in with me by e-mail or phone every day. She'd roll her eyes at that, but she'd comply. I didn't necessarily believe that anybody could get to her over there, but some caution on her part couldn't hurt.

I grabbed a glass of ice water from the kitchen and headed upstairs.

I looked into Spiro's room. Still no sign of him. I opened my door. The ghost hunters must have been conscientious there as well, because I didn't notice anything amiss. I opened my closet door and was relieved to see that they had apparently not delved too far back into that terrestrial black hole—the Shaun Cassidy record was as I had left it, covered with an old quilt and guarded by more than a few oversized dust bunnies. My small bag remained on the floor near the bathroom where I had dropped it unceremoniously this morning. Unpacking would have to wait for later.

I went into the bathroom and washed my face with warm water and ran a brush through my hair. When I came back out, I sucked in a breath. Sophie was sitting in my armchair.

“Sophie, you gave me a start,” I said. Despite her claims of constant pain and infirmity, she could move like a cat when she wanted to.

“There is still no word from Spiro.”

“No.” There was no word directly from Spiro—only from his kidnapper. Maybe.
Is it kidnapping if the victim is a grown man?
I wondered.

“It is time to start looking for him.”

“I've already started, Sophie.”

“He is not answering his cell phone.” Because it was sitting on my desk under a pile of papers where I had left it. I needed to look at that ASAP, but had gotten sidetracked with the Coast Guard guy and the influx of customers.

“Georgie, I'm worried.”

“I know. Me too.” He was a pain in the ass and not any kind of husband to me, but he was a good father to Cal and I did love him. As a friend. A friend I liked to annoy every once in a while just for the heck of it, but a friend nonetheless.

“Please try to find him.” Her eyes were imploring and looked straight into mine.

“Sophie, is he in some kind of trouble that you know about?” I had the feeling she was not telling me something.

She hesitated, apparently trying to decide how much, if anything, to reveal. “There is money missing from our accounts.”

She and Spiro had both names on their local accounts, but to my knowledge they didn't keep huge amounts in them, preferring instead to keep most of their assets in cash to avoid paying taxes.

“How much money are we talking about?”

“Twenty-three thousand dollars.” It was probably more, but still, that was a substantial sum she was admitting to.

“When was the money withdrawn?”

“I don't know. I need you to find out.”

“Have you looked at the bank statement?”

“I call the accountant, but he said he didn't have it. He looked on last month's paper and the money was there.”

“That means he withdrew it sometime in the last couple of weeks. I'll check online for you tonight.”

“Thank you, Georgie. You are a good girl.” Spiro and Cal were her reason for living. I hoped I rated in there somewhere too.

“I'll find him.” I had no idea how to go about doing that. The smartest thing, of course, would be to take my suspicions to the police. First, though, I needed to look at that phone. If there was nothing more sinister than Spiro off on a shopping spree, I did not want to get the authorities involved. Under the best of circumstances, living in a village like Bonaparte Bay was like living in a fishbowl. I wouldn't subject Sophie to the resultant gossip if I could help it.

We descended the stairs and she headed for the kitchen. I went into my office and shuffled the papers around.

I opened up all the desk drawers, a rising sense of foreboding speeding up my movements. I got down on my hands and knees and looked under the desk, then pawed through the trash can. I felt around in my purse, and in every pocket. Spiro's cell phone was gone.