Authors: Ekaterine Nikas
The
drive home was fast, and, for the most part, silent.
Spiro vented his frustrations on the road, and the
Lamborghini slalomed back down toward the sea at a speed that caused me to
press both hands against the dash board.
Obviously, whatever Spiro had gone to the casino for, he had come away
empty-handed.
When
we reached
Ithaki
, the villa looked dark, but as we rattled noisily down
the gravel drive, lights began springing on, and as we swung past the house toward
the garage, the front door opened and Maria peered anxiously out into the
dark.
Spiro turned off the
ignition with an angry twist, and came round to help me from the car.
As he took my arm to guide me out of
the darkened garage, I struggled to undo the clasp of his sister's necklace.
"Do
not bother with it," he said impatiently.
"It can wait until morning."
"I
don't want your sister to think her jewelry's been stolen."
"She
will not --"
"Help
me, will you?" I interrupted, turning my back to him.
"Very
well," he snapped, pulling aside the hair that obscured the
fastening.
"If that is what
you wish."
With one deft
movement he unclasped it, then holding both ends of the necklace to prevent it
from slipping off, he bent down and kissed my neck.
Somewhere
behind us someone discreetly cleared her throat.
My first instinct was to spin around, but Spiro held me
rigidly in place while he gathered up the necklace, deposited a second kiss
next to my ear, and murmured, "We shall continue this later."
Releasing his hold on me, he slipped
his sister's necklace into his pocket and turned around.
Chagrined, I followed suit.
Maria
stood at the entrance of the garage watching us.
"Forgive the interruption, Kyrie," she said,
addressing Spiro in Greek, "but your sister has telephoned from town.
There has been another accident, and
she is anxious to speak with you."
At
the word "accident", my knees went weak.
I placed a steadying hand on the car and exclaimed tensely,
"Is it Michael?
Is he all
right?"
Maria
nodded and crossed herself.
"Yes, he is fine, thanks be to God!
Poor
poulaki
, he has a few more cuts and bruises, but
he is a boy, he will heal."
Spiro
was staring at me oddly.
Too late
I realized my entire exchange with Maria had taken place in Greek.
I pulled the borrowed combs from my
hair and held them out to Spiro.
"Hadn't you better go talk to your sister?"
He
accepted the combs, but retained my hand when I tried to pull it away.
"Actually, at this moment I would
rather speak with you.
But you are
right, I must go."
He raised
my hand to his lips, while his dark eyes fixed on my face.
"Do you know, I begin to wonder if
I have judged my sister too harshly."
"How
so?" I asked faintly.
"Until
this evening, I thought her fears to be irrational and unjustified."
"And
now?"
Spiro
eyed me with a calculating look.
"Now?" he repeated, abruptly releasing my hand.
"Now I wonder if my sister has
been right all along."
Chapter Eleven
Friday
dawned hot and still.
After
a restless night, I woke late and ate breakfast alone.
Maria informed me Demetra was in bed
with a headache and Spiro had left early for town.
No mention was made of Michael.
After breakfast I looked for him in the garden, but neither
he nor the gardener, Paul, was there.
I went by his room, but the door was opened by Helen.
When I asked her where Michael was, she
simply shook her head and closed the door in my face.
Needing
some outlet for my growing restlessness, I went for a swim, but even the beauty
of the Ionian Sea was insufficient to quiet the thoughts racing through my
head.
Try as I might, I could not
stop thinking about Michael's second "accident".
I
had gleaned the basic facts from Aphrodite at breakfast.
Sometime around eleven-thirty the
previous evening, Michael and Demetra had been standing outside a house in
Benitses, a suburb south of Corfu, saying goodbye to the friends who had
invited them to dinner.
Demetra
had been standing near the hosts' front gate, and Michael had been standing a
little further out in the street keeping a lookout for Paul, who was late
picking them up.
Suddenly
a car without lights had come roaring up the narrow road.
One of the friends had called out a
warning, and Michael -- who was directly in the car's path -- had dived over a
low stone wall and down a small embankment to safety.
The car had hurtled heedlessly on, but another of Demetra's
friends had seen enough of it to give the police a description.
The car had later been found abandoned
near the Achilleon, which was less than a mile up the road.
The car had been stolen from the
Achilleon's own parking lot, and the police theory was that it had been taken
by joy riders and abandoned after the incident with Michael.
I
might have found the theory plausible, had it not been Michael's second
near-fatal accident in three days.
I
kicked the azure blue water.
I had
come to
Ithaki
believing Michael might be in some vague, hypothetical
danger.
Now the threat seemed all
too real, and I was afraid.
After
my swim, I went back to the house, but lunch was another solitary meal.
After lunch I read in my room for a
while, but my attention kept straying from the pages.
One of the times my gaze wandered, I noticed Demetra
Redfield's purse on the blue chair, where I'd tossed it the night before.
Maria had already discreetly taken
Demetra’s dress off to be cleaned, but had left the purse, perhaps not
realizing it belonged to her mistress.
I
emptied it out and took it next door to Spiro's room, glad of an excuse to ask
him where he'd been the night before when I'd looked for him on the
terrace.
But there was no answer
to my knock.
Presumably he was
still in town.
I returned to my
own room and propped the purse up on the bureau so I’d remember to give it to
him later.
As
I was putting the stuff I'd dumped out of Demetra's purse back into my own, I
came across something that didn't belong: an appointment card that had
obviously been rummaging around in Demetra’s clutch purse for some time.
The corners were bent and the expensive
ivory card stock was smudged.
Curious,
I read the name printed in neat black type:
THE WHITCOMB GROUP
, and
underneath,
Specialists in Infertility
.
The address was in London, and at the bottom of the card was
a date and time written in careful script:
15 March, 11:00 a.m.
Embarrassed
to have intruded on something so personal, I was about to put the card back,
when the significance of the handwritten date stopped me in my tracks.
March 15
.
The day Geoffrey's brother had had his
accident.
It
might just be a coincidence, but I was getting tired of those, so I found a
piece of paper and copied the information.
Then I put the card back into Demetra's purse and slipped
the paper into my wallet behind my driver's license.
I
returned to my book, but it was harder than ever to concentrate.
After rereading a single page three
times, I gave up and decided to go for another swim.
An hour later, I was tramping soggily back up the path to
the villa, when I suddenly heard the sound of two men arguing up ahead, their
lowered voices carrying clearly in the still, warm air.
"I’m
only asking for thirty-thousand!" exclaimed a voice I recognized as
Spiro's.
"And I will pay back
the money by the end of the year."
"Sorry,
I just can't do it," replied Robert Humphreys stiffly.
"A trust is a trust, and I can't
go breaking it --"
"But
the boy is worth millions!"
"True,
but he shan't be for long if I go parceling off his inheritance bit by
bit.
Surely you can get the money
elsewhere?"
"Do
you think I would demean myself to borrow from a child if I had any other
choice?"
"Your
sister?" Robert asked.
"You
know very well her situation!
Redfield left her some property, but her money is tied up almost as
tightly as the boy's.
That husband
of hers was a miser himself, and he expected her to live as one also.
If it were not for --"
Belatedly,
I realized the voices were growing louder and that the two men were headed my
way.
Turning, I ran back down the
path toward the beach.
Unfurling
my beach mat as I went, I threw it down under the trees, tossed my towel on top
of it, and slid as quietly as I could into the water.
I began paddling softly about, my eyes fixed on the place
where the path turned out onto the beach.
For
some minutes, no one appeared.
I
strained my ears for the sound of voices, but all I could hear was my own
thumping heart.
When at last a
single figure made its way out onto the pebbled strand, I was surprised to see
it was Robert who approached, not Spiro, as I'd expected.
"Hello,
Christine," he called to me.
"Enjoying your swim?"
I
nodded and began wading toward him.
I stepped gingerly over the large and somewhat algae-covered stones at
the water's edge, but my left foot slipped slightly, and I jammed my toe into a
jagged rock.
I hopped out of the
water, cursing.
"You've
hurt yourself," Robert commented unnecessarily as he put an arm around my
waist to steady me.
Together -- me
limping, he having his fine linen suit dripped upon -- we made our way to where
my beach mat lay sprawled beneath the pines.
He helped me down onto it, and then he unfurled his
handkerchief, a magnificent square of snowy white linen, over the grey stones
of the shingle, and sat down next to me.
"Well,
Christine, slippery rocks aside, what do you think of
Ithaki
?"
I
hugged my legs and gazed out at the azure sea.
"It's a nice house, and a beautiful stretch of
beach."
He
smiled faintly.
"And what of
the residents?
How have they been
treating you?"
"All
right, I suppose, considering that I'm intruding on their hospitality.
Mrs. Redfield's none too pleased to
have me here, but Spiro seems willing to put up with me. "
"I
must admit,” he said, “I was rather surprised to learn you were
here."
He flashed me a
inquiring look.
"Demetra
claims Geoffrey's been pestering you?"
I
hesitated for a moment, then decided it would be best to tell him the
truth.
"Actually,
I just said that to convince her and
her brother to let me stay."
He
nodded.
"I thought it might
be something like that.
I suppose
you're here to keep an eye on Michael?"
I
shrugged.
"I hoped my being
here might give the kid some kind of protection."
I picked up a smooth grey stone and
flung it angrily into the water.
"But it hasn’t done much good so far."