Feta Attraction (9 page)

“Yes, I have it.”

“Good. What's the name on the card?”

“Captain Jack Conway, U.S. Coast Guard.” I read him the phone number.

“I don't recognize that name at all. I'm going to see what I can find out. As I said before, he would have no reason to be looking into Big Dom's death.”

“He wasn't wearing a uniform when he came in.” I almost added, “Ask him about the cell phone he somehow stole from my desk,” but thought better of it. I wasn't ready to confide in anyone yet about Spiro being taken unless it was the state police, who still hadn't called me back. I didn't want Spiro to be hurt, but I didn't see how I could get him back without professional assistance.

“That might not mean anything. He might have been off duty, although if he was part of some official investigation, you'd think he would have been in uniform.”

“That's what I thought too.”

The intercom buzzed again. “Georgie!” The voice was shrill and angry.

“I guess that's my cue to go,” Keith said.

“I've been avoiding Sophie, but I guess I'm going to have to respond sooner or later, so I may as well get it over with.”

There was a slight pause. “Georgie, would you like to come over for a nightcap or a decaf after the restaurant closes tonight?”

“Uh, I'll have to see how things go. Can I call you later and let you know?”

“Sure.” He sounded hopeful. “Please say yes.”

“I'll call you later. Bye, Keith.”

“Bye, honey.”

The intercom buzzed for a full three seconds. “Georgie, I'm coming in there right now!”

EIGHT

I slurped down the rest of the wine and stowed the glass under the desk just as Sophie came barging in the door.

“Why you no answer me?” she asked indignantly.

“I was on the phone.”
None of your business,
I wanted to add, but refrained. I'd found over the years that the best way to deal with her when her feathers were ruffled was to stay calm, and she would eventually settle down.

“I know,” she said blackly. “And I know who you been on the phone with too!”

Something in me snapped. I was tired and it had been one hell of a day. I felt a flash of anger at the thought that she'd been listening in on the kitchen phone.

“I saw his name on that ID caller.” That would explain her knowing who I was speaking to, but I still wouldn't put it past her to listen in.

“Are you sleeping with him?” Her hazel eyes flashed.

I took a deep breath to calm myself. I knew this conversation would come someday. “Sophie, I love you. You know that. I've done everything you asked of me and more since I've known you, and I've been happy to do it. Spiro and I loved each other once and we produced a beautiful daughter. But we haven't had a real marriage in years. Callista is a grown woman and understands the . . . situation with her father. If I am having an affair with Keith, or anybody else, it's my business. Okay?” I didn't stand up to her often, and it felt good.

She looked deflated and sighed. “Georgie, I love you too.” She dropped the subject of Keith. “Have you heard anything about Spiro yet?”

“I checked the bank statements. He withdrew twenty-three thousand dollars from your account a few days ago, his car is gone, and nobody has seen him since. But you knew that.”

She squirmed, almost imperceptibly, but I'd known her long enough to recognize the signs. She was holding something back.

“What else, Sophie?”

She fidgeted for a moment and then said, “There's more money missing.”

I thought so. “From where?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I already knew.

“From the cash box.”

She kept a metal box full of bundles of cash under some loose floorboards beneath her ornate four-poster bed upstairs. As far as I knew, only Sophie, Spiro, and I were aware of it.

“How much is gone?”

“All of it.” She sighed and sank down in the goose down armchair next to the desk. “All of it,” she repeated. “Fifty-six thousand dollars. I don't know what we will live on this winter.”

For crying out loud. The woman had piles of money both in U.S. currency and in various bank accounts in Switzerland and Greece, where the cost of living was much, much lower. The—how much would that be?—seventy-nine thousand dollars wouldn't even be a drop in the bucket compared to her net worth. It was of course a considerable amount of money, but she would hardly be eating cat food out of cans next winter as she looked out over the Aegean Sea from her veranda.

“We'll manage.” I patted her arm.

“He'd better not be spending it on his—his . . . mimbos!”

Male bimbos. I stifled a laugh. “Is there anything else you haven't told me?”

“No.”

That may or may not have been true. She could be secretive when it suited her.

“Have you gotten any letters, or messages, or strange phone calls lately, Sophie?”

Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Just wondering. Anything that might help us find Spiro.”

“No.”

I thought about my interview with the NYPI team. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“What did those guys find?” she asked, her voice rising. Was she afraid of the supernatural, or was there something else she didn't want them to uncover?

I tried to be noncommittal, though I had no idea how she'd react to the news of our being haunted. “Oh, they picked up some noises with their equipment—they couldn't explain it.”

“They ate a lot of food and drank a lot of booze,” she said petulantly. “That skinny one drank five martinis.”

“They brought in a lot of business.”

“Maybe, but the show won't be on until after we close for the season, and what good will that do us?”

“Sophie, I should get back to the kitchen. Why don't you go upstairs and lie down for a bit? You look tired.” I checked my watch. “I recorded
The Desperate and the Defiant.
”

“You know I don't watch that trash,” she admonished. I happened to know that she did, most every day, and had figured out how to run the DVR by herself so she wouldn't miss her favorite soap opera. She rose and I stood up to hug her, kicking over my wineglass, which rolled out between us.

She looked down and then back up at me disapprovingly. “Georgie.” She shook her head.

*   *   *

Everything seemed to be under control in the kitchen. Our perma-specials, prime rib and lobster, would be joined tonight by my version of Chicken Marengo, said to be Napoleon's favorite dish, now simmering away in a giant pot on the big commercial burners lining the back wall. We Greeked it up by substituting olive oil for the butter, Kalamatas for the traditional black olives, and Metaxa 7 Star for the cognac, and served it with a side of fragrant rice pilaf to soak up the savory tomato-based sauce. Napoleon's original dish featured fried eggs and crayfish in the stew. We made the eggs optional for our guests and added shrimp at the last minute.

I dipped a clean spoon into the clam chowder pot for a quality control test. It was delicious, as always, creamy and full of chunky clams and potatoes. We served New England style here, none of that red Manhattan stuff. Even though it was the middle of summer, evenings got chilly here and the chowder was always a good seller.

I pulled the big latch, opened the walk-in refrigerator, and was greeted by a blast of cold air. Russ started and nearly choked on the fluffy cloud of whipped cream he was spraying from a can into his mouth.

“Russ, I hope you weren't planning to use that for tonight's desserts.” We kept the canned stuff for making fancy chocolate milks for children but made hand-whipped heavy cream topping for our desserts.

He swallowed and cleared his throat. “Uh, no. I keep this one aside special. See, I put my name on it.” He showed me where he'd conscientiously marked the side with “Russ.”

“You're not doing whip-its in here, are you?”

“No, the can's full, see?” He shook it and I could hear the liquid sloshing around inside.

“Keep it that way. And put that can someplace where people aren't going to grab it by mistake.”

I realized that I was starving, so I left the walk-in and scooped myself a bowl of the chowder, topped it with a sprinkle of oyster crackers, and went down to the bar for a Diet Coke and a slice of lemon. I carried my small meal into my office and sat down at the desk, arming aside papers to clear a space big enough to set down the tray. I would need to be quick to get back out to the dinner service, since Sophie was still upstairs. I moved my laptop over to the desk's return and swiveled my chair to face it as I booted up.

I called up my e-mail and saw that there was yet another message from my anonymous correspondent. I double-clicked and found the same message as the written note I'd received earlier, still with no identifying information.

I STILL HAVE HIM. FIND IT AND BRING IT TOMOROW NIGHT TO THE DEVIL'S OVEN. PUT IT IN THE BASKIT HANGING INSIDE THE DOOR. COME ALONE. DON'T TELL ANYONE OR I WILL KILL HIM.

I shuddered and took a deep breath. Should I respond to this e-mail somehow? What would I say?
All right, Georgie, think calmly,
I told myself.
What do I know?
According to Inky, Spiro had found the treasure, whatever it was, somewhere in the house. But it could be pretty much anywhere on the grounds. To keep this simple, I'd start by assuming that it was in the house. “Hidden in plain sight.” I guessed that would rule out any secret hiding spots like the loose floorboards under Sophie's bed, or hidden wall safes. I looked around my office, which had been Basil's long before I came on the scene.

I scanned the perimeter: bookshelves lined one wall, but I had cleaned and reorganized those shelves of mostly cookbooks and mystery novels—I couldn't get enough of either genre and considered myself a junkie—last fall after Sophie and Spiro had left for Greece. There had been nothing out of the ordinary, and I didn't see anything unusual now. A large window on another wall looked out on what was now the employee parking lot but what had been formal gardens in days gone by. Nothing remarkable, just a large philodendron in a blue-and-white Chinese pot atop an antique oak side table. The third wall contained a credenza and filing cabinet with my desk in front of it facing the center of the room. The fourth housed the large door flanked by another dark oak table, which I had managed, uncharacteristically, to keep clear of clutter. I just liked its shape and size and the wooden curlicues gracing each end.

I swiveled back to my laptop and punched in “SODs.” Nothing came up except a bunch of ads for fertilizer and some other acronymous organizations that didn't look right. What had Liza said SOD stood for, the group that Spiro was supposedly involved with, the loan sharks? Sons of . . . Demeter, that was it. Being Greek-in-law, I knew that Demeter was the goddess of agriculture. I keyed in “Sons of Demeter” in quotes and was rewarded with nothing, not even a Wikipedia entry. This appeared to be a dead end—not that I'd expected to find the information this easily, but still, it was worth a try. Liza had said she would call me if she learned anything, and I trusted she would. I didn't know anything about loan sharks, other than what I saw on television, but I felt I should be cautious and not ask too many questions myself around town since I had no idea who might be involved with this group.

I shut down the computer and took my now empty bowl and glass back out the kitchen, depositing the dirty dishes into the sink for Russ. Wiping my hands on a clean dinner napkin, I processed some credit card payments and nodded to Dolly, who was now cooking away.

This mysterious treasure seemed to be the crux of the whole mess. If I could find that, maybe I could use it to lure out the bad guy, or guys, get Spiro back, and perhaps by then the police would see fit to contact me. Tomorrow morning I would put in a missing persons report and see whether that sparked any action.

I searched the Victorian sideboard waitress station as I pretended to reorganize its many drawers. I took a turn around the two side dining rooms, nodding to customers and the waitstaff. I was in the front room feeling around inside a large pale green vase when somebody came up behind me.

“Georgie.”

I jumped but managed to extricate my arm and steady the teetering vase without breaking either.

“Oh, hi, Sophie.” God, how guilty did I sound? And how did she do that, anyway? Normal people cannot move that silently. Vampires or cat-people, maybe, but not humans.

“What are you doing?”

I thought fast. “Somebody called a few minutes ago and said that his son had accidentally dropped a toy car into the vase at lunch today, and just confessed to it now. I thought I'd look for it and return the call. Maybe they'll come back for dinner.” That was either inspired or lame; I didn't know which.

She seemed to buy it. “Georgie, I was upstairs and I hear a noise.”

“What kind of noise, Sophie?”

“I was in my room resting.” Resting while watching her soap.

“And?”

“I hear a noise, like something heavy moving across the floor. Then I heard a—a—” She was frustrated because she couldn't think of the English word. “A groan, like a ghost!”

I pulled out a chair from one of the tables and sat her down. This was getting worse and worse.

“You were lying on your bed when this happened?”

“Yes.”

“Where did the noises come from? Both from the same place? Were the noises in your room?”

“Both from the same direction. Not in the room with me. It came from Spiro's room.”