The Devil Takes Half (9 page)

“
I don't know.” He gently set the bull down among the shards. “Maybe.”

* * *

After the American left, Patronas' assistant, Evangelos Demos, showed Marina Papoulis into the refectory.
She's still a handsome woman,
Patronas thought, watching her as she walked toward him. Her thick hair was streaked with gray now, pinned up at the back of her neck, but she'd kept her shape and her brown eyes were as he remembered them, the irises flecked with gold. He'd heard she'd married a farmer from Campos and had three children. After her children had entered school, she'd taken a part-time job with a travel agency in Chora to supplement her husband's income, in addition to her volunteer work at Profitis Ilias.

Vassilis Korres followed Marina Papoulis into the room. A young man, he was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, both neatly pressed and tight. His hair was gelled and spiky, his cologne nearly overwhelming. He laid his cellphone down on the table and kept looking at it while the three of them talked.

Although Patronas questioned them at length, neither had seen anything. Marina Papoulis had been at the monastery most of the morning, cleaning the chapel and preparing lunch. She'd seen no one. No, she had not gone down to the dig site. Why would she? Her work was here. Yes, she had witnesses who could verify her whereabouts at all times.

“
Why are you asking me this, Yiannis? Didn't we go to grade school together? Copy off each other's papers and walk home side by side? You've known me all my life. I'm your old friend, Marina. Remember?” She laughed as she said this, not taking him seriously. “Do want me to take a lie detector test, too?”

“
That won't be necessary,” he answered, embarrassed.

Even after all these years, her presence still unsettled him, made him tongue-tied and awkward.

Vassilis Korres had spent the morning leading a caravan of mules up to Profitis Ilias. The American had commissioned him to supply the mules and lead him there. It had taken them a long time, and when he arrived he'd been tired. After taking Alcott out to the site, he returned to the refectory and spent the afternoon drinking coffee and visiting with Papa Michalis.

“
Check with the priest,” Korres told him. “He'll verify everything I said.”

“
Did you see anyone?”

Korres shook his head.

“
When did you leave?”

“
After you came. Kyria Papoulis took me and Alcott back to town in her car.”

“
What happened to the mules?”

“
Papa Michalis pastured them out on the hill.”

“
How many were there?”

“
Four. We rode two and loaded the other two with supplies. My uncle called yesterday. He wants them back, said he needs them to help with the harvest. I don't know how I'm going to do that on my own.”

* * *

Patronas ordered his men to help Vassilis Korres take the mules back. But someone—his second in command, Evangelos Demos, would have been his guess—let the rope slip halfway down the hill and the mules broke loose and ran off in all directions. His assistant and the others went thundering after them, yelling and waving their nightsticks like the Keystone Cops.

Patronas shouted directions from the steps of the monastery. He was afraid one of his men would trip and plunge to his death, or worse, get trampled underfoot by a mule. The round-up went on for a long time. It was like watching a rodeo conducted by the Marx Brothers.

Hearing the commotion, Papa Michalis came out to watch. “No offense,” he told Patronas. “But I most fervently hope the Sicilians never find out what passes for law enforcement here on Chios.”

Day sees the deeds of night and laughs.

—
Greek proverb

“
C
ome on, Chryssoula.” Patronas led the horse out of the police stable, climbed into the saddle, and started up the path. Chryssoula was an elderly mare and moved like a sleepwalker, pausing now and then to snack on the bushes that lined the path. Patronas checked his watch. After learning of Alcott's affair with Eleni Argentis, he'd decided to take a closer look at him and was timing the ride, seeking to verify that it had taken as long as Alcott had said to travel from the farm to Profitis Ilias on horseback.

How do Vassilis Korres and his mother and father survive?
he wondered, looking down at the farm. The soil was poor here, the rocks as brittle as bone.

When he reached the monastery, he tethered the mare to a tree outside the walls and checked his watch. Close enough. Alcott had been telling the truth. He opened the gate. Tembelos had come by car and was already waiting for him. They carefully went over the area where they'd found the boy's body, looking for clues, Patronas thinking the answer to the puzzle must lie somewhere here. But they found nothing, only a few bottle caps and a broken ballpoint pen.

“
Funny thing happened while I was waiting for you,” Tembelos told him. “I was walking the perimeter like you told me to and I smelled this funny smell.”

“
What was it like, this ‘funny smell'?” Patronas asked.

“
Reminded me of that corpse we exhumed. Remember? It was a year or two ago. The kids thought their stepmother had poisoned their father and we had to dig him up. Smelled the same way he did. Not so pretty.”

“
I remember. All for nothing, that was.” He'd never gotten over those kids, willing to destroy an innocent woman for a greater share of their father's estate. He would have liked to lock them up, but there was no statute against malice, no law on the books concerning greed.

He turned back to Tembelos. “Did you notice where the smell was coming from?”

“
I tried, but it was impossible. It was in the air, is all.”

* * *

After sending Tembelos back to the station, Patronas rechecked the dig site. It took the rest of the day and the sun was down by the time he finished, the sky suffused with pink light. Bats were flitting over Profitis Ilias, darting in and out of the walls, seeking insects in the growing darkness. Patronas watched the bats' antics for a moment, wondering where they'd come from, remembering he'd seen them the first night he'd been here, the night after Eleni and Petros had died. The bats seemed to be coming from an isolated crag on the far side of the dig.

Patronas found a lantern, untethered Chryssoula, and rode in the direction of the crag. It was farther than he thought, the passage difficult in the dying light. Swinging the light in an arc around him, he urged the horse forward, moving beyond the dig site and on up the hill. There was little vegetation on the slope, and the rocks were riddled with fissures where the lava had folded in on itself. The soil was thin and the color of unfired clay. Patronas dismounted frequently, checking the ground beneath him. He was sure there was a cave here. The bats had to be coming from somewhere, and there were few trees, no place for them to roost in this wasteland, nothing but tortured shafts of blackened stone. Caves were worshipped in ancient times, he remembered. Zeus had been born in one, the Diktaian Cave, located on Crete, and the Minoans had sought refuge there after the volcano erupted on Thera and the resulting tidal wave engulfed their island.

“
Probably had something to do with female anatomy, the cave thing,” he told himself. In Athens, there was the Cave of Pan. God knows what went on there in the old days, given the lascivious nature of the god, whose image with its enormous phallus was a favorite of young tourists. Later, the Christians had taken over some of these sites. His mother had brought him to one when he was a boy, the monastery of
Panayia Spiliani
, the Madonna of the Cave, on Samos. He still remembered the total darkness, the endlessly dripping water. He wasn't looking forward to exploring a cave tonight.

He spurred Chryssoula forward. Goats were living somewhere on the hillside, and he could hear their bells jingling faintly in the darkness. So someone had been here, a shepherd perhaps. There was a rough trail leading farther up the crag, and he followed it with his horse, wondering where it led. A few minutes later, he came to the corral where the goats were housed. It was fashioned out of twigs and brush, as was the crude lean-to in the back, shelter for the animals when it rained. A raised table of rock—broad and flat—formed the rear wall of the corral. A furrow ran along the base of this rock, but Patronas saw nothing there when he inspected it, only a thin cleft in the earth filled with spiders. For a moment he watched the goats milling around inside the corral. When he raised the lantern, their eyes reflected back at him and they shied away. Evidence of the animals was everywhere; he could see hoof marks in the trampled soil, the ground marked by droppings.

He smelled something wafting on the night air, something besides goat, but he couldn't tell where it was coming from. Patronas hoisted himself back up on the horse and rode farther. Near the top of the hill, it looked like someone had been excavating with a shovel, the dirt overturned in an orderly way. The heat of the day had broken and the stars were bright overhead. He inspected the area as carefully as he could but found no opening, nothing that led underground. He wasn't even sure it was a dig site he was looking at. It might have been some peasant's vegetable garden. Those without land often worked a borrowed plot to supplement their meager income without the owner's knowledge or consent. Whenever possible, they would lay claim to the land outright over time. Perhaps it was the Communist in him, but he was always sympathetic to these outlaw farmers. Better for those who cared for the land to possess it than some absentee landlord in Bayswater or Astoria.

He circled the area on horseback, but saw nothing and started back down, guided by the distant lights of the monastery. He was about halfway down the hill when he noticed the smell again. It was stronger here, more pungent. With a snort, Chryssoula reared up, pawing the ground and breathing heavily. Patronas patted her neck, trying to soothe her. “What is it, girl? What's the matter?”

The horse neighed loudly and jerked her head. Afraid of being thrown, he dismounted, took the reins and led the mare away on foot. He had gone about a hundred yards when he heard the noise. It was a metallic creak, the sound the monastery doors occasionally made, piercing, grating. At first he thought it was the mare's hooves clattering against the stones, but when he looked down he saw they were on soft ground. He walked in the direction of the sound but found nothing, only a stunted olive tree, creaking in the wind. A few minutes later he heard the sound again, closer this time. Raising his lantern, Patronas examined the area. All he saw were outcroppings of volcanic rock, overgrown with thistles and prickly pear. Behind him loomed the shadowy mass of the crag. It was as if the hill itself had made the sound. Patronas shivered, afraid now, in spite of himself.

Cabbage twice over is death.

—
Greek proverb

“
Y
ou remember when I asked you who Eleni was involved with?” Patronas asked. “It was Professor Alcott.”

“
Her adviser?” The priest put down his spoon. “You think he killed Petros?”

“
Could be. I don't know.”

“
Eleni never said anything about him except as an archeologist. She told me many personal things. I'm surprised she didn't say something. At least give me a hint that they were ….” The priest fumbled around, seeking the right word before settling on, “paramours.”

“
She might have been too ashamed to tell you. He's married. And if they'd gotten caught, it would have been professional suicide. It's very risky for a professor to be involved with a student. A man could lose his job over a thing like that.”

The priest broke off a piece of bread. “Still, I don't think he did it. Killed them, I mean. I saw him after he found the hand. No one is that good an actor.”

He ladled up some more lentils and added them to Patronas' bowl. It was two weeks before August Fifteenth, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, and all Orthodox Christians were expected to abstain from meat, fish, cheese, eggs, and oil during this time. As a priest he must, of course, comply.

Looking down at his plate, Patronas wished he'd remembered Papa Michalis would be fasting and declined his invitation to dinner. “
A lentil boils against its will
,” Patronas' mother always said. So did the eater of the lentil, in his opinion.

The priest was slurping down his meal has if it was ice cream. “The timing is also off,” he said. “Petros was killed long before Alcott got here.” He cut off more bread and began to mop his plate.

Patronas stirred the lentils in his bowl, disheartened by their brackish color. “Cooked these in water, did you, Father?”

Papa Michalis nodded. “I have some Lenten cake, too, if you'd like. One of my sisters sent it to me.”

“
The kind with raisins, sort of heavy?” His grandmother had made that same sort of cake in the weeks before Easter. It did not, if his memory served him right, deserve the title ‘cake.' No matter, it had to be better than lentils.

It wasn't. “Where does your sister live, Father? Chios?”

“
Oh, no. She's never left the village. She's in Mani.”

That explained the terrible dryness. The cake had probably been on the road for a month.