Page 26 of Footprints in the Sand (Coleman #13)

Chapter Twenty-Two

I t took no longer than twenty minutes to explain to Jean-Paul that Eva and Aphrodite were thinking that Kostos and Nico were dealing drugs together and Kostos had gotten involved with something especially sinister and faked his own death.

“Maybe Nico helped him,” Aphrodite muttered nervously, bobbing around the marble workshop like she didn’t know where to put herself.

Eva sat at the worktable, eyeing Jean-Paul, thinking how remarkable it was that he could remain so stoic and so soft-spoken at a time like this.

Jean-Paul looked at the photograph Eva had taken on Naxos and closed his eyes tight. “That’s Kostos, all right,” he said finally. “I can’t believe it. I always knew he was a snake, but this is something else.”

Eva’s heart cracked at the edges. She remembered how strangely Jean-Paul had initially talked about Kostos when they’d first met.

She asked, “Did you know about the drug ring?”

“I knew they were into bad stuff,” Jean-Paul said. “I don’t think it’s just drugs, either. I think they steal and lie and do whatever they can to manipulate tourists. But I don’t understand why Kostos would still be in the area. If he wanted to bail on Dimitra, why wouldn’t he just divorce her?”

“It’s certainly dramatic,” Aphrodite said.

“Maybe he wanted to leave her with the insurance money?” Eva suggested. “She must have gotten something when he supposedly died. Right?”

Jean-Paul exhaled deeply. “How romantic.”

“I do think, at one time, he loved her,” Aphrodite said with a shrug. “But I also think he was too frightened to tell her what was really going on. Whatever that was.”

“It was easier to fake his own death than to face up to the truth.” Jean-Paul nodded. “Sure. That sounds like Kostos.”

“It sounds like most men,” Eva said, thinking of Finn.

At least Finn had only stolen from her. At least he hadn’t faked his own death. Ha , she thought. What a twisted web this was.

“You really think Dimitra didn’t know about the drug ring?” Eva asked, furrowing her brow. “She lived with him, slept beside him, and knew his schedule. She must have suspected something was up?”

“I see my brother almost every day,” Aphrodite said. “My mother sees him even more. I never once suspected him of being involved in something like this. With love, it’s so easy to turn the other way.”

They discussed whether or not they thought it was a good idea to go to the police. Jean-Paul was quick to dismiss the idea. “It’s possible they’re involved,” he said. “Kostos was friends with numerous island cops. Maybe they even helped him fake his own death?”

“Then we go to Naxos,” Aphrodite suggested. “It’s the last place he was spotted. Maybe we can figure out more about why he faked his death and what he’s doing now.”

“What about Nico?” Eva asked gently.

Aphrodite closed her eyes. “I don’t want to help you put my little brother away.”

“I know that,” Eva assured her.

“But I’d like to understand why this happened. I’d like to understand how far it goes,” Aphrodite said.

Eva nodded and glanced at Jean-Paul. “We’ll discuss what we do with the information when we find it. Maybe there’s a way to handle it without hurting anyone.”

Jean-Paul’s eyes were difficult to read, but Aphrodite spoke for all of them when she said, “I can’t imagine all of us won’t get hurt with something like this. At least you get to go home, Eva. This is where we’re from.”

Eva’s heart thudded. She knew Aphrodite was right. But they were already knee-deep in the metaphorical rushing water of whatever this was. They had to keep going.

The following morning at eight fifteen, Jean-Paul sailed his boat to the Aliki harbor to pick up both Eva and Aphrodite.

Eva hadn’t known that Jean-Paul was a sailor as well.

She’d assumed he spent every spare minute in the marble workshop.

But Jean-Paul was capable on the water, gliding them between Paros and Naxos easily as Aphrodite and Eva discussed their morning strategy.

Because Aphrodite had never spent much time on Naxos, she wouldn’t be immediately recognized as anyone related to Kostos.

She was also the only one fluent in Greek.

Jean-Paul was decent at it, whereas Eva could only pose as a tourist, because that was what she was. Mostly.

It was difficult to know how to approach it.

Aphrodite’s idea was to pretend they wanted to buy drugs.

“But how can we know we’ll get Kostos and not Nico?” Eva asked.

Aphrodite shrugged. “Can’t we show a photograph to a local dealer?”

“Even if they know who he is, why would they tell us where he is?” Eva asked.

Jean-Paul suggested that they get a hotel in the area and maybe talk to market stall owners and grocery store clerks. “Somebody has seen him,” he said. “And on these islands, everybody talks.”

Eva’s plan was different. She suggested that she pretend to be Kostos’s long-lost daughter, here on the island, looking for him. Jean-Paul and Aphrodite laughed at that but agreed it could be their last-ditch plan if it came to that. They didn’t want to put her in harm’s way.

After tying up the boat in the harbor, the three of them checked into the same hotel where Eva and Jean-Paul had stayed during the marble-carving conference.

Aphrodite and Eva shared a room, while Jean-Paul got another, smaller one down the hall.

Eva couldn’t help but watch him walk away, her chest heavy with longing.

Aphrodite read her like a book. “Why don’t you tell him how you feel?” She opened her suitcase and began tossing clothes on the bed, eager to change.

Eva laughed nervously. “I don’t think I have time for romance anymore.”

“You should have seen Kostos and Dimitra,” Aphrodite said glumly.

“When they first got married, I was maybe ten, and I couldn’t believe how in love they were.

It was the happiest I’d ever seen Aunt Dimitra.

At their wedding, I was allowed to stay up as late as all the adults, and I ate so much dessert that I got sick. ”

Eva laughed sadly.

“It’s just hard to accept that he’d do that to her,” Aphrodite said after a pause, her eyes out the window.

The day was hot, and there was a glossy sheen to her face from sweating on the water.

“I’m so afraid of what Dimitra will say when she finds out.

” She collapsed on the bed and added, “I hope it’s worth it. ”

Eva didn’t know what to say.

They started simply enough by heading to the market to begin Jean-Paul’s plan of asking the local farmers and artisans if they’d seen Kostos around.

Eva had first seen Kostos there, so it was the perfect place to sniff around.

But before long, it felt as though most of the farmers, gardeners, honey-makers, and so on were being willfully obtuse.

“We don’t know him,” they said in a mix of Greek and English. “We’ve never seen him before.”

But sometimes, Eva thought there was a glimmer in their eyes that suggested they really did know him and didn’t want to say. Why would they be hiding him? What did they owe him? Did they know he’d abandoned his wife, thrown her into a world of turmoil, and destroyed her life?

At one, they broke for lunch and a glass of wine in a beautiful square with a view of the winding streets on either side, alleyways filled with tourists and donkeys and locals ladened with groceries.

As she sipped her wine, Eva watched the shadows, daring Kostos to appear among the walkers.

What would she say to him if they ran into him like this? How dare you?

All day long, they looked, asked questions, and dug around.

They even tried to buy drugs from a local dealer who got spooked by them when they started asking too many questions.

It was becoming clearer and clearer, with each passing hour, that they weren’t meant to be private detectives or secret agents or anything like that. Even Jean-Paul looked resigned.

“Let’s head back to the hotel and rest a bit,” he suggested. “We can grab dinner after that and regroup.”

They agreed and walked back through the winding streets, entering the hotel and preparing to go upstairs. But the woman at the front desk in the lobby stopped them with a smile.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said in English. “A man was here looking for you.”

“For me?” Jean-Paul asked.

She shook her head and nodded toward Eva. “I believe he was looking for you. For Eva. That’s your name, isn’t it?” She’d looked at Eva’s passport when they’d checked in.

Eva felt a shiver down her spine. “That’s my name, yes.”

The hotel receptionist didn’t sense anything was wrong. “He said he’s your father,” she said, reaching for a note she’d made. “He said to hang tight in Aliki and he’ll come find you when he’s done.”

Eva’s heart pounded. Her real father was in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

Her real father had no idea where Naxos was on a map, let alone which hotel Eva was staying in.

Jean-Paul and Aphrodite looked at her quizzically until Eva reached for her phone and, with a shaking hand, pulled up the photograph of Kostos.

She showed the receptionist and asked, “Is this what the man who talked to you looked like?”

The woman’s smile melted off her face. “Is that not your father? He said he was. I’m so sorry. I thought he was someone safe. I thought he was someone else.”

Eva thought she was going to faint.