Feta Attraction (7 page)

SIX

I left Sophie supervising Russ and Dolly in the kitchen and took a walk down Theresa Street toward the docks. Midge was setting out racks of bright-colored clothes in front of the T-Shirt Emporium. She called out to me, but I merely waved and smiled as I went by. I did not want to be answering any questions about anything.

Before I left I put in a phone call to the state police. The dispatcher said that someone would call me back when the cruisers came back in from their rounds. Standard operating procedure in a village this size. My thoughts returned to the missing cell phone. There had been exactly five people in the Bonaparte House this morning, including me. I could think of no reason Sophie, Dolly, or Russ would snoop in my office. As far as I knew, I was the only one who'd seen the phone, so how would they know what to look for even if they did snoop? That left the Coast Guard guy. What had he called himself? Captain Jack. While he was charming me and I'd been staring at his broad chest and wondering what kind of six-pack he had under that shirt, could he have somehow found and pocketed the phone?

I passed the Sailor's Rest. A sign on the front door indicated that the restaurant was “Closed for Remodeling.”

Would the Rest open again at all this summer now that Big Dom was dead? Sophie would certainly be happy if it didn't. I wouldn't put it past her to put her own sign underneath the “Closed” sign that read, “Try the Bonaparte House!” with an arrow pointing up the street. I did feel some sympathy for the staff, who wouldn't be able to get in enough weeks to receive their winter unemployment checks if the place didn't reopen. Big Dom hadn't been married—at least there was no wife in town—but he might have had some grown kids. Hopefully the heirs would get the place up and running again as soon as possible, or do the right thing by the employees. I supposed we might take a couple on at the Bonaparte House, but we certainly couldn't accommodate everyone.

I continued on down past the Express-o Bean and debated stopping in for a cappuccino, but decided against it. I crossed Theresa Street at the Thompson Street intersection (virtually no traffic at this time of the morning) and walked the few yards to the Tat-L-Tails Tattoo Salon.

The door was open and I walked in to the music of some tuned door chimes. Jim Morrison stared down at me, shirtless, druggy, and sexy, from a poster on the wall to my left. Tie-dyed T-shirts and leather vests hung on a rack underneath. The other wall was covered with pictures of diverse tattooed body parts, designs that could be chosen or samples of Inky's work, and a framed New York State tattooing license issued to Ignatius LaFontaine. The front display case was filled with bongs and pipes and clips and rings and chains of varying size and some other hardware whose use I could not identify, nor did I want to. I was bent over, examining one particularly baffling item through the glass, when someone came through a set of swinging saloon-style doors.

“Can I help you?” a voice said.

I stood up and just missed banging my head on the counter. The air was thick with the scent of some kind of heady incense, or possibly something less legal. It was making me a bit dizzy. “Hi,” I said. “I'm Georgie, from the Bonaparte House.” I held out my hand.

He took my hand with his own exceptionally colorful one and looked at me, his big brown eyes wary. “I know who you are.”

“You're Inky, right?”

“Yes.” He was covered from the neck down in tattoos, thankfully none on his face, although some sort of tentacle did reach up behind one ear, winding its way into the black stubble of his shaved head. It was fascinating, and I found myself wondering what sort of creature was on the other end.

“Inky, have you heard from Spiro in the last couple of days? He hasn't come home and I'm worried about him.”

He tensed up, causing the little silver rings in his eyebrows to clink together. “Spiro who? Why should I know?”

“Inky, I know that you two are seeing each other. I don't mind, honestly. It's fine.”
Mostly fine
.

He visibly relaxed, letting out a sigh. “I've been so worried too! I haven't heard from him in days!” he said animatedly, the words coming so quickly there was a time delay while my brain caught up to my ears. “He calls me every day at least twice whether we see each other or not!”

“How long have you been seeing him?”

“Oh, a couple of months.”

A couple of months? The gossip machine in this town works overtime and I was just hearing about this now? I needed to start paying more attention to what was going on around me.

“He came in for a tat in June and it was just lust at first sight.”

Good Lord. Spiro had gotten himself inked? Last I knew, he had a debilitating fear of needles. I couldn't help myself. “What kind of tattoo did he get?”

“We decided on a small tiger's head for his first tat, since he was kind of nervous about the whole needle-slash-permanency thing, and he's such a passionate pussycat, you know? I did a nice job, if I do say so myself. You haven't seen it?”

“Errr, no.”

“Oh, right. Well, I guess maybe you wouldn't since it's on his—”

“Stop!” I wanted to cover my ears and sing “La-la-la” till he had finished speaking. This was too, too much information.

I framed my next words carefully. “You two are so close, I bet you talk about everything?”

“Oh, yes, everything.”

“So, what's going on with him?”

“Well, he's been very excited lately, and I don't mean just by me!” He winked and I nodded, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. Inky seemed like a nice guy and I could feel myself warming up to him. He was quite good-looking, with tanned skin—at least, the part that wasn't inked looked tan—and a buff physique. He wasn't the intense type I would have expected Spiro to take up with. But really. What did I know?

“What had him so excited?”

“He'd found it. I mean, I never saw it but he said he knew where it was, and it was going to make him super rich. I've heard stories since I was a kid about some kind of treasure in that house, and now it's true!”

Here was this story again. If there was something valuable in that house, it would have been found by now. It was just a legend. Still, I had to ask. “What did he find, Inky?”

“That's just it—I don't know and it's killing me! Spiro promised to tell me what it was as soon as he cleared up some business. We were planning to go away in October for a long weekend to this adorable bed-and-breakfast I know in Vermont, and he invited me to come to Greece this winter. I'm hoping he might propose. Unless I propose myself . . .”

Hmmm, I could think of one rather large impediment to their getting married. Namely me. And was he planning to keep Inky at the house in Greece? We'd all be one big happy family, wouldn't we? Maybe we could get our own reality show. “Did he say where he'd found it?”

“No, just that it was in the house somewhere. ‘Hidden in plain sight,' was what he said.”

That wasn't much help. “What was the business he had to take care of?”

“Oh, I don't know. But it did seem to be bothering him, if you want to know the truth.”

“Do you have any idea where he might be? Did he mention going away somewhere?”

“I don't know where he is. I assumed it had something to do with the thing he found. I miss him,” he said.

I fished around in my purse and came up with a business card. I peeled off a sticky mint and an errant hair that had attached themselves to it and handed the card to Inky.

“Call me if you hear anything.”

“I will. Say, I'm not busy. Want a tattoo? I'll give you a discount since we're practically family and all.”

“I'll think about it, Inky.”

“You do that. Bye-bye!” He waved as I exited the store with a merry tinkling of the door chimes.

I retraced my steps toward home. The aroma of the Express-o Bean, though, pulled me in like a tractor beam and I was powerless to resist. “Large cappuccino, extra shot of espresso, shot of vanilla, shot of caramel, extra foam.”

“For here or to go?” The barista was a tiny waif I hadn't seen before, most likely a student from the community college in Canton or Watertown, with blue hair worn super short in back and long over one heavily lined eye.

I considered. “To go.”

“Comin' up,” she said. I'd expected her to be surly, but in fact she was quite friendly. The girl performed some kind of magic gestures and produced a good-sized paper cup with a travel lid and a small cardboard sleeve to serve as a handhold.

“Taste it,” she urged.

I slurped some up through the little hole in the top. It was exceptional. “Perfect.” I smiled at her.

“Three fifty.” She smiled back.

I handed her a twenty. She rang it in and reached into the register for change. I glanced down and saw the tip cup on the counter—“TIPS NEEDED TO BUY BOOKS FOR CLARKSON NEXT SEMESTER—PLEASE HELP. THANKS! VANESSA.”

“Are you Vanessa?” I asked.

“Sure am.” I had to stop judging people by how they looked. A very high math SAT score was required to get into Clarkson University. I was impressed.

I dropped the change from the twenty into her cup. I remembered all too well what it had been like to be poor and on scholarship. If she was working here for the summer instead of tanning on her daddy's boat, she needed the money.

“Good luck at Clarkson, Vanessa. Come see me at the Bonaparte House if you want to wait tables next summer. I've got a full staff right now, but I'll put you on full-time next summer. You'll make a lot more in tips than you will here, though you can keep this job in the mornings if you can handle both.”

“Wow, thanks.” She beamed.

I carried my steaming cup back outside and headed up the gentle hill on LeRay Street toward Riverfront Park. The park was on the site of one of the huge wooden hotels that had dotted the coast at the turn of the century, every one of which had burned to the ground despite being located right on the water.

I climbed the steps to the pavilion and exited on the other side, passed a few rusty metal trays on poles with grates that served as barbecue grills, sidestepped a few protruding rocks, and plunked myself and my purse down on a bench on a granite bluff overlooking the river. The late-afternoon sun was nearly blinding as it reflected off the surface of the water. I didn't have a lot of time before I had to get back to the restaurant for the lunch rush.

I tasted the coffee. Delicious. A snowy white seagull bobbed up to me looking for food, but I had regrettably forgotten to buy a muffin. “Sorry, fella,” I said to him. I considered giving him the linty mint I'd found in my purse earlier, but decided it might choke him. Better hungry than dead.

I replayed my conversation with Inky as I watched a sailboat go by. I'd have to think about my becoming part of a polygamous multi-gender harem later. His story corroborated what Liza had told me. Having raised a teenager, my truth-o-meter was pretty sensitive. I was fairly sure Inky wasn't lying. He didn't seem to know anything about whatever business Spiro was mixed up in, only that something had to be “taken care of.” He apparently believed that Spiro had found something at the house and that it was valuable. “Hidden in plain sight” wasn't much of a clue, but it was all I had to go on. Maybe it was time to take a look around the house again.

And what was the name of that group of farmers Liza had told me about—the SOBs? Or was it SODs? I'd have to see what I could find out about them as well. They didn't sound like nice people. I would give the state police the information and let them follow up when they got around to calling me. But it would kill Sophie if it came out that Spiro was involved in an organization like that.

A hand touched my shoulder, jerking me out of my thoughts. A little coffee slopped out of the cup and onto my lap. Fortunately the liquid had cooled and I was only damp, not burned.