A Deadly Twist by Jeffrey Siger (free novel reading sites .txt) 📕

Yianni exhaled, shook his head, and took out his phone. “By chance, is this the man who tipped you?” Yianni showed him a photo of one of Nikoletta’s sketches.

“Yeah, that’s him. Is he someone famous or something?”

“You could say that.” Yianni skimmed through until he came to another photograph. “Have you ever seen this guy in here?”

The bartender stared at the photo. “No, can’t say that I have.”

“That night, Stelios, or whatever his name is, told me when he was at the table with the woman, this man sat at the bar practically the whole time, watching them in the mirror.”

“No way he’d have been here that long and I wouldn’t have noticed. That was a very slow night, not like tonight. I’d have noticed him for sure. Is he famous too?”

“In some circles, yes.”

“Who is he?”

“Peter Zagori.”

“Never heard of him.”

Yianni nodded, took ten euros out of his pocket, and handed it to the bartender.

“What’s this for?”

“I should have tipped you for dinner the night I was in here. I thought Stelios had taken care of me.”

Come to think of it, he did, and quite effectively.

* * *

Yianni sat outside the bar, telling Tassos and Andreas of his conversation with the bartender.

“What a con artist that guy is,” said Tassos.

“Smooth as they come,” said Yianni. “He had me thinking I was suckering him into giving up information, when all the while he was picking my brain and doing what he could to throw me off the scent. Peter Zagori wasn’t even in Greece the night Nikoletta first met Soter, and though he never directly said the guy at the bar was Zagori, he tossed out just enough cop catnip to get me thinking there might be a new angle to what went down. He made it all up about the man in the mirror just to slow us down.”

“Well, I think it’s safe to say we’re no longer slowed down,” said Tassos. “We’re at what I’d call a dead stop.”

“There’s another way to look at why Soter mentioned Zagori,” said Andreas. “He might have made all that up to steer us toward investigating Zagori. Soter knew that Zagori wasn’t in Greece the night he met Nikoletta, but he also knew that sometime after her article about Soter was published Zagori was hired to kill her. Investigating Zagori might have led us to who wanted her dead.”

“That Soter guy grows more impressive every moment,” said Tassos.

“But how did he know I was a cop investigating Nikoletta’s disappearance?”

“You didn’t exactly arrive undercover,” said Andreas. “The morning after her disappearance, you were met at the airport by the chief of police and driven by him straight to where a body had been found on the rocks below Nikoletta’s hotel. You questioned the hotel’s night manager about her disappearance and spent time searching her room. The island gossip mill wouldn’t have had to churn too hard to figure out there’s a new cop in town. He might have started tailing you at the hotel, or just waited around the bar until you showed up. After all, the logical thing for police to do in a kidnapping is retrace the victim’s steps, and for sure you’d be expected to check out the bar where she first met Soter.”

“Damn. Four dead, two kill contracts still out there, and us without a clue as to who’s behind them,” muttered Tassos, slapping the table.

“We do know who killed Zagori,” said Yianni.

“Only because the killer admitted that to a reporter,” said Andreas.

“But we did find the reporter,” insisted Yianni.

“Correction. Maggie, Lila, and Toni found the reporter.” Andreas shook his head. “All we’ve found are a bunch of phony beehives, broken pottery, and an alphabet soup of initials.”

“There has to be an explanation, a key we’re missing that ties everything together,” said Tassos.

“And what is everything?” asked Yianni.

“I don’t know if it’s a network, a pyramid, a sewing circle, or a lone crazy, but something’s triggered a rash of violence unlike anything this island’s seen in modern times. And whatever that trigger is, Nikoletta pulled it.”

“Agreed,” said Andreas. “I also agree with Nikoletta’s point that anyone afraid of what Soter might have told her had to know it would do no good to eliminate her while he remained alive to tell his tales to others. Bottom line, I don’t see her story as the trigger.”

“Then what is?”

“My money’s on something connected to that sixth notebook and those damn initials.”

* * *

Andreas’s phone rang at nine a.m. He struggled to find it on the nightstand next to the bed. “Hello.”

“Good morning, my love.”

“Morning. How’s it going up in the tower?”

“You make it sound like I’m a Greek version of Anne Boleyn. Actually, it’s lovely. We had breakfast on the terrace. Sofia joined us. She brought a nice young policeman from Filoti to watch over us.”

“Terrific. When are you coming back to the beach house?”

“I thought you were busy.”

“That’s a relative term.”

“I assume that means no luck at finding Soter.”

“Or figuring out anything, really. Plus, we didn’t get to bed until after three.”

“I’m just calling to make sure you saw my email.”

“The only email I saw before going to sleep was a two-word response from the minister to my selfie with Nikoletta. ‘Got it,’ was all he wrote. I’m not sure if he was disappointed or elated.”

“A true politician.”

“At least he’s not corrupt; otherwise he’d have gotten rid of me long ago. So, what’s your email to me about?”

“The policeman brought a letter with him. The minister faxed it to his office in Filoti for delivery to you. It’s from Nikoletta’s publisher, addressed to the minister.”

“What’s the letter say?”

“I took a photo of it and emailed it to you. It’s demanding that you be fired by midnight yesterday.”

“Oh, I know what’s in that letter. I never bothered to pick it up in Filoti, but it’s what triggered my race to find Nikoletta by midnight. Thanks anyway. Let me know once you and your