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

“I’ll get Maggie on it.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s the least I can do for you.”

Yianni headed for the door. “You mean the very least.”

* * *

Yianni caught a flight from Athens that had him to Naxos in about the same time as it took to fly to its neighboring island of Mykonos, two islands different in practically every way imaginable. Shaped like a broad granite and marble arrowhead pointing north, Naxos was four times the size of Mykonos, and the largest island in the Cyclades. It also boasted the Cyclades’s two tallest mountains, Zas and Koronos. Naxos had long ago been deforested but was still green, agriculturally blessed, and since antiquity, famous for its marble and emery mines. Though Mykonos had its barite mines and grain windmills, it was a dry, arid, and rocky place, with modest agriculture that in no way rivaled Naxos’s natural riches and virtual self-sufficiency.

But times had changed, and today Mykonos possessed a high-end tourism reputation that was the envy of every Greek island seeking to maximize its own tourist potential. Yianni wondered how long it would be before Naxos embraced the same tourism fervor so many of its island neighbors had.

He stared out the window as the light plane approached Naxos Island National Airport. A relatively modest facility, it stood approximately two and a half miles southwest of Chora, east of a massive salt pond, and surrounded by a patchwork of chocolate, beige, and green open fields. Its short runway kept big international jetliners away, an obvious check on tourism expansion. Yianni wondered if that was intentional and, if so, who wanted it that way.

As Yianni walked across the tarmac toward the tiny terminal building, the final scene from Casablanca popped into his mind—Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains strolling through the fog along a lonely stretch of airstrip on their way to neither knew where.

Naxos’s local police chief stood waiting for Yianni at the gate. They knew each other from Yianni’s time as a cop on Mykonos. Back then, they’d worked together at catching thieves who’d milk one Cycladic island until things got too hot for them there, then jump to another.

“You haven’t changed a bit, Dimitri,” said Yianni, hugging the chief and exchanging cheek kisses.

“Too bad I can’t say the same for you,” smiled Dimitri. “But in your case, you look better than ever.”

“Puh, puh, puh. That’s all I need, you giving me the evil eye with bullshit compliments.” He slapped Dimitri on the back.

“How’s your chief doing?”

“Andreas? Great. You know he’s married now with two kids.”

“I’ve heard, to the only daughter of one of Greece’s wealthiest old-line families.”

“Yeah, that’s what gets played up in cop gossip, but she’s a down-to-earth, no-bullshit lady. In fact, she and my girlfriend created a program to mentor vulnerable young girls.”

“Sounds impressive.”

“It is, but I want to hear all about your family.”

As they made their way to Dimitri’s car, he filled Yianni in on the expanding size of his family and listened to Yianni go on about the state of his own love life.

“Your friend sounds like an interesting woman.”

“She is, but this case is threatening to wreck our plans for the weekend.”

The chief shrugged. “Have her come over. You can stay with us.”

“That’s kind of you, but I was hoping to show her Athens.”

“Well, the offer’s open.” Dimitri pressed a button on his key fob to unlock the doors to his cruiser. “I assume the first thing you’ll want is to see the reporter’s hotel room.”

“Yes,” said Yianni as he slid into the passenger seat, “then the people she talked to.”

“I’ll arrange to have one of my local Naxos cops drive you around the island. Trust me when I say that’ll be a hell of a lot easier than turning you loose with a GPS, a map, and a car. The island’s too big, and the places and people you’ll want to see way too difficult for you to find on your own.”

“Thanks, but how do you know who exactly I’ll want to see?”

“I don’t.” Dimitri pulled out of the airport onto the main road leading back to the heart of Chora. “But from what I’ve heard, your reporter was all over the island, speaking to some of its most interesting characters.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“This island is filled with strong opinions, rooted in a deep pride in Naxos’s historically independent ways. Some show it in words, some in dress, some in actions. I expect every one of them will have an opinion on what happened to her.”

“Are you saying word’s out that she’s missing?”

“We’re trying to keep it quiet and officially have said nothing, but there’s no way this sort of thing stays out of the local gossip mill for long. After all, the story she wrote about meeting up with that cyber guy attracted international attention in a way that gave the island a bit of celebrity. People know who she is. When word gets out that she disappeared the same night that tourist died”—Dimitri waved his right hand in a small circle—“I can only imagine the theories that will be circulating. Each one undoubtedly aimed at implicating someone the teller of the tale despises.”

“Why would locals want to spread that sort of bullshit? It seems sort of self-destructive for the island.”

“The answer to that question, my friend, has been a mystery haunting Greeks for centuries. For example, our illustrious mayor made it clear to me this morning that he’s prepared to turn this into a political issue aimed directly at me. To quote him, ‘Unanswered questions surrounding a dead tourist and missing journalist cannot be allowed to hang over our island.’”

“I take it you two don’t get along.”

“That’s putting it mildly. We have serious disagreements over what he and I see as legally permissible behavior on the part of his political cronies.”

“Hmm.” Yianni changed subjects. “Any evidence of the tourist’s cause of death?”

“Yes, a header off the top of a cliff onto the rocks below.”

“What else do you know about