"No. I told you. Fiona has issues. Isn't that a darling little hotel?" She pointed to a small white building across from the marina.

Tired of fighting the traffic, Dinah turned in the palm-bordered entrance and parked under the portico at the front door. "Wait here."

She proceeded into the lobby and went straight to the reception desk. A young woman with long, dark hair and ravishing olive skin looked up from her book. "Yia'sou."

"Yia'sou. I'd like a room with two..." Dinah stopped and reconsidered how much togetherness she could stand. "Two rooms for one night."

"I'm sorry. We are fully booked for the next three days. There is a large conference in town." She indicated a message board in front of the elevator doors.

Dinah read the list of today's meetings. MODELING RARE EVENTS, 9:00, Third Floor, Room C and RISK AND STOCHASTIC CONTROL, 2:00, Third Floor, Room B. "What kind of a conference is it?"

"Actuarial Science."

With murder so fresh in her mind, a conference of people who calculate life expectancy and the probability of disaster struck her as ominous. "Could you recommend another hotel nearby where there might be a vacancy?"

"I think all of the hotels are full. The Greek Council for Refugees is holding its conference in town and there are attendees from all over Europe. There are also several large wedding parties."

Dinah didn't want to spend all afternoon looking for a hotel. Maybe the best thing would be to take K.D. back to Kanaris for the night and hope that Alcina didn't offer her a joint. Reluctantly, she returned to the car. "No luck. They're full up."

K.D. had draped herself across the front fender of the Picanto as if posing for a commercial. "I'm not full up. I'm famishing, Aunt Dinah. Can we at least eat lunch here?"

"Why not?" Dinah had noticed a sign near the reception desk for a terrace cafe. She moved the Picanto to a parking spot at the far end of the hotel and the two of them wended their way along a flower-lined footpath that led behind the building to the terrace. They sat down at a table overlooking the marina, which was chock-a-block with tour boats and yachts, many of which bore German names. Bavaria and Windzerzaust and Wandervogel. Dinah gazed through the polarized lenses of her Wayfarers at the shimmering blue waters of the bay bounded in the distance by low, chalk-white mountains. A double-masted schooner glided across the horizon. She wished she were on it, en route to Troy.

A waiter delivered menus to the table and poured water.

K.D. fawned up at him. "I'll have a pina colada."

"No." Dinah's bark startled the man. "We'll have two glasses of tea, with ice, please."

"Yes, madam." He bowed and withdrew.

Dinah's brows drew together. "Don't test me, K.D."

"I was just kidding."

"I wasn't."

A truce ensued by tacit agreement and they perused the menu. The specialty of the house seemed to be mezes, small plates of stuffed grape leaves or fried vegetables or tomatoes and cheese. When the waiter returned with the tea, they ordered a selection to share. While they waited, Dinah watched the schooner sail out of sight.

"You have to go home tomorrow, K.D. I know you and your mother are frightened about this burglary charge, but it was a mistake to run away. You'll probably get a slap on the wrist and a year's probation. At most. If you pay restitution, a good lawyer can probably get you off scot-free and by the time you graduate from high school, the charge will have been expunged from your record and you can do the debutante thing with the rest of your set."

"I don't want to be like those boring cookie cut-outs. I want to experience everything and live life to the fullest like my daddy did."

Dinah forbore to observe that her daddy was a sociopath. She didn't know how much K.D. had been told about his criminal exploits, but it was clear she still idolized him. "Don't you want to be a writer anymore, K.D.? It's what your father would have wanted you to do."

"I'll write when I'm old. After I've lived. I don't want to waste any more time going to school or dragging around with an ankle bracelet. I thought I'd hang with you for a while and then move on to Sydney. I adored Sydney."

Dinah was about to resort to bullying when out of the tail of her eye, she glimpsed a familiar face. Savas Brakus promenaded along the marina carrying a large shopping bag. He was accompanied by a man with a mustache like Saddam Hussein's and the policeman who'd come to investigate the murder last night. When they reached a concrete walkway that led from the marina to the pool, Brakus said something to the policeman and handed him the bag. There were nods and smiles all around. Brakus shook hands with both men and split off toward the parking lot. The other two continued back along the line of moored yachts, their heads bent in conversation.

Chapter Seven.

K.D. yawned and her eyelids drooped. She was probably jet-lagged and she would sound less harebrained after she'd had a nap. At least, Dinah hoped so. She decided to postpone the argument and take her back to Kanaris. At dinner tonight, she would be absolutely clear and implacable. No playing pattycake. No beating about the bush. Under no circumstances would she permit K.D. to "hang with her" for longer than one night. She didn't have to lecture the girl about the importance of staying in school or the rightness of owning up to her mischief. A murder had been committed a mere stone's throw from the house where Dinah lived and, according to Thor, the country was rife with crime. He could help impress upon the kid that Samos wasn't safe and she would save herself and everyone else a lot of grief by going home to Atlanta and turning herself in to the police.

Careful not to say anything that might give her the idea that she had won the battle of wills, Dinah paid the bill and drove back toward Kanaris. K.D. dozed and Dinah's thoughts digressed to Brakus. What was he doing loafing along in the company of a man who was the spitting image of the deceased dictator of Iraq, and the policeman who was investigating the murder of the Iraqi named Fathi? The trio didn't jibe. Brakus didn't even jibe with himself. In his taverna, he was obsequious and confidential. At the murder scene, he was nervous and sullen. But in Pythagorio he swaggered, fairly beaming with self-assurance, as if one of those fancy yachts had his name on it. And what was in that shopping bag he gave the cop? Sandwiches and beer? Contributions to the policeman's ball? Payola? And if so, for what?

As they got closer to the turnoff to Kanaris, piles of garbage began to appear along the sides of the road, bits and pieces strewn by scavenging birds and sea breezes. She'd read about strikes by the sanitation workers in Athens where uncollected garbage piled up in the streets. It had seemed like a big-city problem, but with gas stations on the island charging over ten dollars for a gallon of unleaded, evidently a few Samians had decided that transporting their trash to a disposal facility was too costly. In another two to three centuries, after the detritus had rusted and decayed under layers of soil and rock, archaeologists would dig it up and label the bits as "artifacts," just as Dinah would soon be doing with the remains of Trojan culture. But at the present moment, the drifting plastic sacks and Styrofoam egg cartons depressed her and it was hard to take the long view.

The parking lot for the village sat at the foot of the hill with an unobstructed view across the Aegean to Turkey. She parked and opened the trunk for K.D. "From here, we walk. You can roll Louis up the lane or tote him up the stairs." She pointed to the near-vertical steps that climbed skyward toward the main street of the village.

"Can't you drive to the house and unload?" K.D. sounded dubious.

"Not allowed. It's longer by the lane, but with this much weight to lug, it'll be easier."

"How far is it?"

"A half mile, give or take."

K.D. hefted Louis out of the trunk, yanked up the leather handle and set her heart glasses on her nose. "Whatever." A note of defiance edged into her voice.

Dinah set off at a brisk clip and didn't look back. Maybe the isolation of the village and the lack of conveniences would help to discourage the girl.

K.D. didn't complain, although she was damp from sweat when they topped out near Brakus' taverna and turned onto the cobbled lane toward Marilita's house. Louis racketed and jounced and Dinah heard several labored intakes of breath behind her as K.D. in her T-strap sandals struggled to keep from tripping or stubbing a toe. Dinah stopped at the alley that led to the house. It was blocked by an antique, maroon-colored roadster that looked like a relic from the Roaring Twenties. A plaque in gold letters on the wood dash identified it as an Isotta Fraschini.

"You said cars weren't allowed," crabbed K.D.

"It belongs to the landlady." Instinctively, Dinah knew that this was Zenia's car. She walked around toward the veranda. No one was there. Zenia must be consoling Alcina in Alcina's private room. Or canning her. However many years she and Yannis had worked here, however reliable or devoted they might be, the notoriety of another murder associated with the property probably wouldn't sit well with Zenia.

"I'll show you to your room," said Dinah, not wanting to have to explain the presence of a new lodger. "You can take a shower and rest for a few hours before dinner."

"Will your boyfriend eat dinner with us?"

"I don't know. He's kind of busy." Dinah hurried her up the stairs, wincing with each thunk of the heavy suitcase on the uncarpeted marble staircase. At the end of the hall, she opened the guestroom door and ushered K.D. inside. "The bathroom's next door and there are fresh towels in the cupboard under the sink. Try to sleep for a few hours and I'll knock on your door around five." She turned to leave.

"Aunt Dinah?"

"Just call me Dinah, okay?"

K.D. flopped down on the bed and looked up at her with moist eyes. "Dinah, my daddy was a drug lord, my mother is totally self-involved, my brother is a head case, and I don't have one friend in the whole wide world."

K.D. was intentionally strumming on her heartstrings, but Dinah felt a twinge of empathy nevertheless. Her own family could be characterized in almost the same words. Her father had died running drugs when she was ten years old; her mother was a serial bride; and her beloved brother had lately taken to dabbling in art forgery. She did have a few friends, but they were scattered across the world and, generally speaking, they weren't people she could call at three o'clock in the morning for solace or advice.

"Your mother's overwhelmed just now, K.D. She's trying to pick up the pieces and start a new life now that your father's gone and you and your brother aren't making it any too easy. Give her a break, why don't you? You're smarter and stronger than she is and you know it. You're a survivor, like me. You'll come through the turbulence all right and when you look back some day, you'll have plenty of material for a bestselling novel. Novels about dysfunctional families are all the rage."

"If only you let me stay here until you leave to go on your dig, that will give mother a break and it will totally save my life. I won't be a nuisance, I swear I won't. Please, Dinah?"

"Let me think about it." Dinah couldn't believe she was letting this teenage manipulatrix get to her. "Keep out of my hair for a few hours and I'll get back to you at dinner."

"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! You are so good."

Dinah laced into herself on the way downstairs. What an idiot I am! I shouldn't have said anything that left open the possibility. Now I've shown weakness. If I'm not hard as nails, K.D. will twist "let me think about it" into an ironclad promise. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

"You're the Pelerin woman. Ramberg told me you'd be staying here, too."

She looked up into a wizened face riveted by eyes as round and alert as a bird's and as black as squid ink. The eyes were surmounted by high, penciled black brows and between the brows hung a topaz pendant. "Yes, ma'am. I'm Dinah. And you must be Mrs. Stephanadis."

"Of course, I am." Thor's wax-museum description wasn't far off the mark. A dusting of white powder coated her crinkled cheeks and a cupid's bow of magenta lipstick overtopped her pleated lip line. Thor had neglected to mention that she dressed like an avatar of high fashion, circa 1926. Her head was encapsulated in a tight-fitting turquoise cap from which the topaz had been suspended by a silver fob. She wore a beaded, dropped-waist black overdress tied in a sash around her hips and a gauzy turquoise skirt flagged around her ankles. The silver, funnel-shaped earhorn she clutched in one blue-veined hand bespoke an even earlier era.

She cocked her head and gave Dinah an appraising look. "You're darker than I thought you'd be. Gallic, I'd guess. Pelerin. French, isn't it?"

"Yes, ma'am. It means pilgrim. My father was a descendant of French Huguenots. My mother is Native American. Seminole."

"I didn't ask for your biography, although I suppose it accounts in part for the bone structure. You look a lot like your young man. More fine-boned. Prettier in a prosaic way. But the same eyes. I daresay Ramberg's fallen in love with his own reflection. Like Narcissus. Let's hope you don't suffer the same fate as Echo, the nymph who loved him."

Dinah knew the crux of the myth, but Zenia seemed keen to expound. "What happened to Echo?"

"Narcissus spurned her and she died of a broken heart."

Dinah got why Zenia was not well liked.

"Al-ci-na!" The old biddy called down the hallway in a clarion voice. "Bring a pot of tea and two cups. I'll be in the parlor with the Pelerin woman." She held out her arm to Dinah. "I'll want steadying."

Dinah took her arm and walked her into the front room. She gave off a strong odor of lilies, reminiscent of a funeral home.

"This will do." She perched ruler straight on a French provincial chair under a painting of a Spanish knight. "Sit down across from me so I can see you."

Dinah took that as a license to stare, which was fortunate because she couldn't take her eyes off the woman. "You speak excellent English. Hardly any accent at all."

"I can mimic any accent. That's what actors are taught to do."

"You were an actress, too?"

"I am an actress."

"I didn't mean..."

"What?" She raised her silver earhorn to her ear.

"I assumed you were retired."

"I can no longer play Antigone. But there are still a few roles suitable to my years. I attended the Stella Adler Studio in New York. And if that 'too' I heard is a reference to my late sister, I have always had the greater talent and the wider range. 'In your choices lies your talent.' That was Stella's mantra. Marilita's carnality reduced her to vulgar, third-rate choices." She spoke in a dispassionate, matter-of-fact way, as if carnality were neither good nor bad, but merely a limiting factor in the matter of acting roles.

"Have you acted in any films?" asked Dinah.

"I despise films. I'm a stage actress."

Alcina stole into the room on cat feet and set a tray on the table between them.

"Thank you, Alcina." Zenia lifted the teapot and poured two steaming cups. "I'm not foolish enough to believe that a hot drink is cooling. I drink hot tea because I'm old and old people are always cold even in warm weather. I'm accustomed to being indulged. I take for granted that you'll have a cup with me?"

"Of course."

"Cream and sugar?"

"No. Thank you."

She handed Dinah a brimming cup. Her hand was as steady as a sniper's and she didn't need eyeglasses to tong three tiny sugar cubes into her own cup. "What do you think of our island?"

"I haven't done much sightseeing yet, but what I've seen is lovely."

"Ramberg said you're an archaeologist."

"Cultural anthropologist, actually. I don't have a full-time position with a university or a museum, but occasionally I'm asked to assist an archaeology team. I'll be working with a team near Troy in a few weeks."

"There's an archaeological excavation underway right here on Samos at the Temple of Hera. Do you know your Greek myths?"

"I know that Hera was the wife of Zeus and queen of the Greek gods. She was famous for being jealous and vengeful to mortals who displeased her."

Zenia stirred her tea and pursed her lips. "She was temperamental, but she's ours. She was born on Samos. All Samian women have something of Hera in their blood. Some more than others, isn't that right, Alcina?"

Dinah looked behind her. She hadn't realized that Alcina was still lurking.

Alcina said something in Greek.

"What did you say?" Zenia raised her earhorn. "Speak up, child. Don't mumble."

"You shouldn't make sport of the dead."

"Make sport? You mustn't be so prickly, Alcina. Your mother's lack of self-control is a lesson to the rest of us to hold strong."

Dinah did the math and made an intuitive leap. "Marilita Stephan was your mother, Alcina?"

"And she was not vulgar. The Athens News calls her a martyr to the junta resistance movement and a Greek Joan of Arc." She gave Zenia a stormy look, caressed her glass blue-eye fetish, and scudded back into the house.

A drop of perspiration trickled from under Zenia's cap, rolled past the topaz pendant on her forehead, and followed the curve of a penciled eyebrow down her cheek. She dabbed it away with her napkin. "You must excuse my niece. A mousy creature with a head full of ghosts and old wives' tales. Of course, she's anxious about her husband's plight."

"She seemed more anxious to defend her mother," said Dinah.

"She has little enough cause for that. She was born...What is it the English say? On the wrong side of the blanket. Marilita scorned marriage the way she scorned every other proper institution. If there were such a thing as the curse of the evil eye, Marilita drew it onto herself with her outrageous behavior."

Dinah couldn't think of a response, but Zenia was already pushing herself up from her chair and smoothing her skirt. She had delivered her best lines and the performance was over. "I have to be at a rehearsal in Pythagorio at four. An adaptation of a lesser comedy, but it keeps me from withering on the vine. You must come to my house for tea tomorrow afternoon. Bring Ramberg and that raffish young woman in the harem pants. She looks like a natural actress."