Island Casualty (Andy Veracruz Mystery Book 2) Read online

  Island Casualty

  An Andy Veracruz Mystery Book 2

  by

  D. R. Ransdell

  Island Casualty

  The much-anticipated sequel to Mariachi Meddler

  Copyright 2017 by D. R. Ransdell, all rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations for use in articles and reviews.

  Aakenbaaken & Kent [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance of the characters to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-938436-30-7

  Cover Art by Peter O’Connor at Bespoke Book Covers

  Dedication

  To my brother John,

  for the love of brothers everywhere

  Chapter One

  Spread open over my bed, my bag was suspiciously empty. I folded another long-sleeved shirt and put it in, but then I took it back out. I hated packing, and I was especially bad at it when I was almost out of time.

  I couldn’t turn off my inner voice. Take an extra shirt because you might need it. Andy, it’s going to be hot, so why take things you won’t need? I kept asking myself the same unimportant questions. I wasn’t indecisive; I was dazed.

  I went out to the balcony. We’d been in such close contact lately that it had become a friend, a loyal retreat whenever I needed to think things through. During the late afternoon, the view was especially fruitful. Scores of tourists ambled through St. Michael’s Square, stopping to enjoy their soft drinks or ice cream cones. Locals hurried through, using the square to take a shortcut between their jobs and their residences.

  I appreciated having a balcony. I could watch down on the world and feel protected from it at the same time. When I was a child, I’d done the same thing from a balcony at my grandparents’ house. Without drawing attention to myself, I’d spent hours watching the neighborhood, part of it yet not part of it. If fit my nature as a Gemini. It was the same as having one foot on the threshold, stepping onto a plane, enjoying the moment the lights came down in a theatre. It was that in-between space, which meant anything could happen.

  In the adjoining balcony, my seventy-something neighbor endeavored to read her cinema magazine, but I kept annoying her with questions. She was of Greek origin and had often travelled to the country, so I trusted her judgment.

  “Mrs. Sfirakis, should I pack two formal shirts?”

  “Not unless you’re planning to attend several funerals, Andy.”

  “I don’t want to be inappropriate.”

  “You’re headed for the Dodecanese beaches, not the Athenian nightclubs. Island life is casual. It’s like having one big family.”

  “Right.” I returned to my bedroom and hung the second shirt in the closet before returning to the balcony.

  “Did I ask you to collect my mail?”

  She didn’t look up. Her face was bent near the page. She had several pairs of reading glasses, but she couldn’t see well enough to find them when they went missing. “Three times.”

  “You’ve got the extra key to my apartment?”

  She flicked her wrist. My key dangled on her chain along with several others. She closed the magazine. “My boy, you really do need a vacation.”

  She knew how much I’d struggled. Because she had insomnia, she was often awake at three and four in the morning, which was when I most often felt the need for an audience. I’d appointed her my confidante. Since she was stuck next door, she automatically accepted the position. She was old enough that I could tell her anything without worrying that she would be shocked by my immoral conduct or try to judge it. In times of crisis I was abusive. Over the last weeks, she would fall asleep in her plastic chair while I rambled on and on. Because I needed to think someone was listening, I would pretend I didn’t notice. I told myself I was doing her a service. I was helping her fall back asleep.

  Mrs. Sfirakis’ cat followed me back inside the apartment and watched while I zipped my bag. When the phone rang, it startled both of us.

  By the fourth ring I found the receiver, which had fallen between the bed and the wall.

  “All set, Veracruz?” my brother asked.

  “Joey, I’m having second thoughts.”

  “What are you worried about? You said Rachel sounded enthusiastic about your visit.”

  “We barely know each other.”

  “You enjoyed meeting her. You said she was a breath of fresh air. Or maybe that’s what I said.”

  “It was you, although I concurred.”

  “Listen,” he continued, “your gut reaction was positive. So was mine. Stop worrying and go discover more about her.”

  I hated arguing with my brother because he could outguess my counterarguments. His position always seemed more rational than mine because his life was more rational: successful professional job, steady marriage, loving children, enviable house in a safe part of town. Another problem was that since we looked so much alike, both tall, dark-haired Hispanics, whenever I caught myself arguing with him, I felt as if I were arguing with my better self. He may have only been thirteen months younger, but he was at least thirteen years wiser. I wasn’t sure where all I had gone wrong.

  I cleared my throat. “If you were to combine my brief meeting with Rachel and our phone conversations, so far we’ve spoken for a total of an hour. What if things don’t work out?”

  “You mean, what if she decides she doesn’t want to sleep with you?”

  I didn’t need to answer. He already knew what I was thinking.

  “You’re thirty-nine and you’re single,” he continued. “An attractive woman invited you for a vacation. Worst-case scenario? Go lie on the beach. Watch the other women walking by and pretend you’re in a PG porno movie.”

  “There’s no such thing.”

  “I’m kidding, bro’! Lighten up.”

  “You keep forgetting, Joey. A woman was killed because of me.”

  “You thought she was playing you. And she was.”

  “Not that time.”

  “Anybody would have done the same as you did. Including me.”

  “You can intellectualize it, Joey, but you can’t know what it feels like.”

  Joey sighed. We’d been through this at least twice a day for the last few weeks. My brother had done his best to remind me to stop blaming myself, but I hadn’t started listening.

  “Remember Vegas?”

  “I know, I know.” Some schmuck had died because he’d made a last-minute reservation and landed up in the hotel room that had been picked out for me.

  “And another thing. Don’t trick yourself into thinking you would have had a nice little life together. It wouldn’t have turned out that way. Either you would have been paying all her bills while she was out screwing around, or you would have been the one lying there dead. You did your best to help her. That’s enough.”

  “That’s never enough.”

  “It’s all there is.”

  I locked the apartment and took a bus to LAX. A couple of hours later I boarded a flight to Athens. By the next night I was on a ferry bound for the Dodecanese islands. For twelve hours I watched the waves, imitated the natives by swinging my new plastic worry beads, and mourned a woman nicknamed Butterfly.

  I hadn’t picked out the name myself. One of her previous lovers had seen to that. He’d used the Italian version, Farfalla. Either way the nickname fit. Like all butterflies, she’d been beautiful, ethereal, unique. She’d flit
ted around from one man to the other as a real butterfly skips among flowers. I’d watched her in perfect wonder along with all the other men who came under her control.

  “Enough,” I told myself time and time again. But I never listened. Instead the words kept haunting me. Butterfly, Farfalla, Butterfly, Farfalla. I went back and forth and back again. Fooling around with the dictionary on my phone app, I found that the Greek version was even more sonorous. It was Louloudi. Loo-LOO-dee. I said the syllables over to myself as a mantra. Louloudi, Louloudi, Louloudi.

  By renaming her, I hoped to push her away.

  Chapter Two

  “Mind if I join you?” The man before me had a deep tan that was proof he hadn’t stayed inside all winter. The sun had rewarded him by bleaching the tips of his brown curls.

  “Please do.” I nudged the metal chair towards him. Since only one of the island’s portside cafés had opened early enough to greet the morning ferry, its tables were full.

  The man slid his overnight bag onto an adjoining chair and smoothed out his lightweight jacket. As he sat, he caught the waiter’s attention, pointed to my espresso, and nodded.

  I’d noticed my fellow companion on the Happy Island Ferry. Amidst Greek families coming home to visit their parents, young military men on leave, and clumps of foreigners, we’d both been out of place.

  The man yawned wide. “After a night on the boat, I probably need two coffees.”

  My companion spoke English so easily that I assumed he was Greek-American, but he’d spent more time in Greece than in the States.

  “I didn’t sleep either. Those wooden benches cut into my back.”

  The man arched his. “Mine too. Visiting?”

  I nodded. “Here to see a friend.”

  “Ah. A sex holiday.”

  I hadn’t expected to be so obvious.

  The waiter slid the coffee cup onto the table, unconcerned that it nearly slid off as he brushed past. My companion dumped in the contents of a sugar packet and stirred with quick circles. “Amiros is an island of romance. I have a similar mission, but first I have business.”

  As he spooned the first sip, he glanced at his designer watch. “Of course, no one is here to meet me. Whoever heard of a Greek ferry arriving early? Often they’re half a day late.” His exaggeration was slight; Rachel hadn’t arrived either.

  I tapped my spoon against the saucer. “I only came by boat because I couldn’t get a flight.”

  “Ha! For me it was the same. Such is the price we pay for spontaneity. Even the cabins were sold out. If I could have lain down, I wouldn’t feel so shaky.” He held his arm out straight before him, palm down. It wobbled slightly but visibly. “Never mind. It’s only one night’s sleep. I’ll feel normal by tomorrow.”

  “Why do the tourists come here anyway?” I asked. “You’d think they’d prefer Mykonos or Santorini. The Dodecanese islands are so far away.”

  “The sun worshippers are searching for the ultimate beach. One of the British travel guides swore that Amiros offered it.”

  My agenda was as ill-construed as that of the tourists; I’d come to see if Rachel could extract Louloudi from my head.

  The man yawned again. After gulping the rest of the coffee, he counted out change as he stood. “I might as well get a room.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “There are a couple of pensiones around the corner. These days they cost as much as a hotel, but one can always hope. I’ll nose around and see which one cheats me less!”

  I suddenly worried that I’d gotten into more than I had bargained for. “Are the people on Amiros so dishonest?”

  He straightened his shirt. “Protective of their livelihood, I might say. It’s hard to blame them. Summer is their only chance to make money.” He waved and headed off.

  After a couple of minutes, I wrestled my worry beads from my pocket and started twirling them. The thin chain held a set of green plastic beads. At the top was a small clasp with the word “Greece” and an outline of the country. I didn’t have to be Greek to appreciate having something to do with my hands.

  “You are like a native already!” Rachel’s friend Eleni spotted me from a distance and approached my table.

  “A cheap trinket from the ferry.”

  “But very Greek!” She took the beads from my hand, made a few expert twirls, and gave them back. “They say that if you start counting your problems on a komboloy, you will realize you do not have so many!”

  Eleni’s knee-long blue dress accentuated her slim figure as did her concise movements. When I stood, she gave me a quick, formal hug. “We are so pleased that you could come to visit us. How was your trip?”

  “Long.” I kept looking around, but Eleni had come alone. “Rachel?”

  “She had to work all night, so she sent me to look for you.”

  Back in Arizona, Rachel played in a mariachi group much like my own, but for the summer she’d gone Hellenic. She had a gig performing in a bouzouki band on Amiros for the length of the summer tourist season. The music may have been different, but everything else, including the late-night schedule, was exactly the same.

  Eleni pointed to the right, and we started down the street.

  “Tell your friend to take his crap,” the waiter yelled after us.

  Eleni frowned. “Do not listen to Castor. He is always in a bad mood for the morning shift.”

  I retraced my steps and peered under the table I’d vacated. A small parcel wrapped in plain brown paper had tumbled to the ground under my chair. I snatched it up.

  “Something important?”

  “I had coffee with a guy from the ferry. It must belong to him.”

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “I have an idea where he’s staying.” I started to retreat. “Wouldn’t it be best to leave the package here at the café? He might realize he’s left it.”

  Eleni studied the bar area. “The owner is not here yet. Anything valuable would probably go home with the waiters, and anything unimportant they’d throw away.”

  “What should I do then?”

  “Take it with you. We can look for your friend this afternoon.”

  “I suppose on an island this small, it’s rather hard to hide.”

  “It’s almost impossible!”

  We walked past the other closed cafés. Now that I was awake, I could appreciate the privileged setting. All the cafés had stunning views of a picture-perfect harbor. In a geometrically accurate semi-circle, the north end of the harbor housed row boats that bobbed gently in the water. The middle section sported a hundred sailboats and a dozen yachts. To the south was a deep harbor where two ferries, including mine, sat waiting for business. The harmonious picture was the epitome of calm. In contrast, the beach closest to my apartment in Squid Bay had palm trees and a white, sandy beach, but it also had so much traffic that not even the roar of the waves could drown out all the engines. There was no illusion of peace because not even the beachgoers could sit still for very long.

  The island was a perfect contrast. I could imagine myself killing the afternoon at any one of the harbor cafés, but the cheeriest sported a red and purple sign that proclaimed “Nikos’ Café.” I paused before it.

  “Is this your place?”

  “Nikos bought it two years ago when he moved here from Athens. We will bring you down after lunch.”

  She had wedged her dusty Toyota into a tiny spot behind their café and deftly eased it back out again. She drove me past the port and onto a two-lane highway that hugged the coast. Houses peeked through the palms and shrubbery. Several buildings looked new, but none reflected new styles. The island had kept an original style by conforming to a forgotten era. I was already disarmed by its pace. As we reached the outskirts of town, Eleni proceeded at a moderate rate yet often passed cars or slowed for pedestrians. No drivers honked.

  We pulled up to a semicircle of simple two-story houses that had recently been repainted white. They were standard editions built u
sing the same basic design, and their picture windows were painted with the usual blue trim that I’d seen on travel posters for other parts of Greece. Eleni’s model boasted a small balcony on the second floor and a shaded porch on the first, complete with plastic chairs.

  Rachel sat on one of the chairs slowly sipping a frappé, which turned out to be Greek iced coffee. She looked good, the kind of good that made me want to rush her into the nearest bedroom without discussing anything first. Rachel was a petite musician seven years my junior. She had short brown hair, matching eyes, and a tan that said “fun in the sun.” Muscles defined her limbs. Instead of makeup, she wore a smile proclaiming that she had shelved any long-term worries and didn’t have short-term ones.

  I towered over her as we shared an awkward embrace. Still, it was a positive sign.

  “Ebrós!” Welcome, she told me with a faint American accent. For an Italian-Mexican from the States, her Greek sounded respectable. After struggling to learn two phrases on the plane, I understood why few foreigners got past yeia sas, which served as hello.

  “Thanks for fetching him, Eleni.”

  Eleni sat beside her friend. “I still cannot believe they paid you to play until dawn.” She taught at the primary school, which had a regular schedule.

  “It was only three hours.”

  “That was after you played all night at the taverna.” Eleni winked. “They must have paid a lot.”

  “They did. They didn’t even get irked when we couldn’t play their requests. Had Vangellis been there—”

  “But of course he was not,” interrupted Eleni.

  “—we would have been okay. As it was, we had to struggle. We don’t have the repertoire.”

  “Anyway,” I said, “they paid you.”

  “They paid for an extra hour. We’ll have to go back.”

  I understood the situation. She was earning a regular salary at the taverna, but extra gigs brought in welcome cash. Night gigs were the most lucrative. Partiers got more and more wound up as the night wore on, and they were often ready to pay for their excesses.