Dinah watched her drive away in the maroon Isotta. Zenia Stephanadis might be physically frail. She might be spiteful and eccentric and unpopular with the villagers. But she was the dead opposite of senile.

Chapter Eight.

Dinah had run across the evil eye superstition in her studies of several ancient cultures. Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians-at one time or another, they all held the belief that certain individuals could bestow bad luck, sickness, or even death by focusing their malevolent gaze upon a victim. There were variations among the different cultures, but most people believed that the evil eye sprang from envy, which could be intentional or unintentional. She thought she detected a tinge of envy in Zenia, but it was envy of Marilita, not Alcina. Strange that Alcina would be so eclectic in her choice of protective icons, wearing both the evil-eye fetish and the Greek Orthodox cross. Dinah put it on her mental to-do list to read up on the Aegean variant of the curse and discover how it was that black magic and Christianity could co-exist so easily on Alcina's ample bosom.

At the moment, it was the story of Narcissus that occupied her mind. It hadn't occurred to her that she and Thor looked alike and Zenia's gibe had piqued her vanity. She lay across the bed on her stomach, propped on her elbows, thumbing through her book of myths. When she found the chapter on Narcissus, she flattened the book wide open and read.

Narcissus was the son of a river god, Cephisus, and a water nymph, Lirope. After the birth of her baby, Lirope sought out the prophet, Tiresias, and asked, "Will he live a long life?" In the typically cryptic style of prophets, Tiresias answered, "If ever he knows himself, he will die." Apparently, this warning flummoxed Lirope and she failed to get the memo to Narcissus. Meanwhile, he grew up to be the handsomest of men and the heartthrob of all the nymphs, but none of them could win his heart.

Back on Olympus, Zeus prevailed on pretty Echo to keep Hera distracted with a shaggy dog story while he sneaked off for a frolic with one of the other nymphs. Echo did as she was told, but when Hera tumbled to the trick, she punished her by taking away her ability to speak her own thoughts. She could only repeat the last few words that others had spoken, using their voices and their accents. Thus handicapped, she was at a disadvantage when she tried to win Narcissus' heart. She smothered him in kisses, but he was cold as ice. And then one day he saw his own face reflected in a forest pool and, like a Capuchin monkey, he thought it was a separate being. Incapable of self-recognition and too infatuated to tear himself away, he pined away beside the pool until he died-spurned by his own reflection.

Dinah closed the book. If that was what Tiresias meant by 'knowing himself,' the prophet had a cracked concept of self-knowledge. She got up and assessed her reflection in the dresser mirror, turning from side to side. Her jaw was square like Thor's. But his face was broader and his cheekbones more chiseled, which lent an exotic, slightly Ghengis Khan aspect. Apart from having dark eyes and dark hair, she looked nothing like him.

Where was he? What was he doing? It was three o'clock. In another couple of hours, K.D. would start clamoring to be fed and Dinah didn't want to go to the taverna without an escort. Besides, she was itching to tell him where she'd seen Brakus and with whom and to break the news that Alcina was Marilita's daughter. It dawned on her that she'd forgotten to let him know that she wasn't spending the night in Pythagorio after all. She took out her phone and dialed his number.

"Hallo."

"Hi. The hotels in Pythagorio were all full and I'm back in Kanaris with K.D. Where are you?"

"Near Karlovassi on the northwest coast."

"What's there?"

"Nothing much. I'm walking on a beach called Megalo Seitani."

"Can you meet us for dinner at the taverna?"

"Sure." It was a tardy "sure," as if he had to think how to rejigger other plans. "Around six?"

"See you there."

She had told him she wouldn't be around tonight and he had every right to make alternate plans, but still...

She moseyed over to his bedside table and debated with her better angel. Mousing around in your lover's personal belongings is deplorable and unbecoming in the extreme, argued the hypothetical angel. Guns are a special case, countered her tough-minded side. She opened the drawer. His service pistol was gone. He had said he would carry it in his coat pocket. She felt a touch of sympathy. For someone who hated the heat as much as he did, wearing a coat while walking on the beach would be torment.

There was a soft knock at the door. "Dinah, would it be all right for me to take a walk?"

K.D. asking permission? Dinah compartmentalized one set of suspicions and opened the door on another.

The princess had lost the eye make-up and changed into cropped jeans, a white tee with a modest pink overshirt, and sneakers. She smiled angelically. "It's such a nice afternoon. I won't go far."

"I'll walk with you. The village is small, but there are lots of confusing little alleyways. I wouldn't want you to get lost."

"Has your boyfriend gotten home yet?"

"No. He'll meet us at the taverna later on for dinner."

"I can't keep calling him your boyfriend. What's his name?"

"Thor. Thor Ramberg."

"Thor. That's the name of the Norse god of thunder and lightning. Chris Hemsworth played Thor in the movie. Does Thor look as fabulous as Chris?"

"I don't know what Chris looks like." Reading about Echo had given Dinah an idea. She hadn't yet explored the gorge that separated Kanaris from the next mountain over. Based on the map in her Samos guide book, the trail started at the western edge of the village. A couple of hours of exercise and fresh air would settle her nerves and maybe if she yelled "Go home" and Echo repeated it a few times, K.D. would get the message. "I know just the place for a walk."

She swapped her sandals for her walking shoes, put on her Wayfarers, and the two of them set out. The lane back toward the village was beginning to feel routine except for the spot where Fathi's body had lain. The police hadn't marked it, but a rabbit ran over Dinah's grave as they passed. She saw stains where blood had seeped between the cobbles and hoped that K.D. didn't notice. She walked fast, but when they had passed through the shadowy bower of overhanging trees, the terrain opened and she relaxed and slowed down. The same ginger cat lazed on the same sun-warmed tiles. The sun set the bougainvillea aflame, turning it into a near-psychedelic experience, and the fragrance of wild thyme spiced the air. She'd read somewhere that the ancient Egyptians used thyme as an embalming agent and the Greeks used it as a fumigant. Certainly, this part of Samos was well fumigated.

As they passed the rear of the taverna and cut through the alley to the main street, Dinah darted a look toward the terrace. There was no sign of Brakus. A few customers, mostly tourists, refreshed themselves with iced drinks and frosty mugs of beer. They all had daypacks stacked around their feet and water bottles. Water! She kicked herself. Well, it was too late now. But they wouldn't hike far and, from what she'd read, the trail was mostly shaded until they reached the gorge overlook.

From the center of the village, they walked down a steep hill in the direction from which Yannis had come yesterday evening. Was it less than twenty-four hours ago? It seemed like a lifetime. Where had he gotten those wine bottles? She didn't recall them having labels. Maybe the winery that processed the grapes grown in Zenia's vineyard was located along this road and he'd tapped a barrel for his private consumption.

K.D. barged into her thoughts. "Have you made up your mind about me staying? I didn't do anything that anybody should go to jail for. If you don't believe me, you can call Fiona and ask her if I stole anything. She'll tell you it was all a mistake."

"She needs to tell that to the police."

"What if you were to call up your ex-boyfriend, that policeman in Seattle, and ask him to talk to somebody in the Atlanta Police Department? Aren't all policemen sort of like a fraternity or a club or something? They scratch each other's backs, right?"

Dinah hadn't thought about the unspeakable Detective Nick Isparta in months and she had no desire to speak of him now. "I don't think that's the solution to your problem, K.D."

The cobbled street dead-ended in front of a low, rectangular building with three green, garage-type metal doors, all closed. A sun-bleached mural above the center door featured a black-bearded satyr tipping a horn of wine into his open mouth. An old-fashioned wine press with a wood-stave tank and a rusty iron screw for crushing the grapes rested on a square concrete platform in front of the building. Security cameras had been mounted above each door and the man with the Saddam Hussein mustache was sitting on a cinder block in front of the center door tossing two strands of worry beads with one hand. As the first strand hit the second, they made a sharp, clacking noise. From under lowering black brows, his eyes seemed to frisk them.

"What a skeeve," said K.D.

If skeeve meant scary, Dinah agreed in spades. She put her arm around K.D.'s shoulders and steered her toward a yellow sign to the right of the winery with a stick figure of a hiker. From there, the trail branched off through the forest. Dinah forged ahead. It was curious that a tiny winery in a tiny village would invest in modern security cameras and post a guard to protect its outdated equipment. And there was something diabolical about that man. He might be a Greek, or even a Turk. But in her mind she had classified him as an Iraqi and not an attractive one. Whoever he was, he knew Brakus and the policeman who investigated Fathi's murder. If he was guarding the winery when Yannis dropped by yesterday, he probably knew him, as well.

The trail hadn't been maintained and the farther they went, the denser the foliage became and the more closed-in she felt. Jackals and wolves were nocturnal, but murderers weren't. She remembered Thor's warning about human trafficking. She pictured herself and K.D. being waylaid and bundled off to a brothel in Burkina Faso or Kiribati or to some hideous laboratory where their organs would be harvested for sale. Thor had a quirky affinity for TV detectives, but he was no flake. He was practical and prudent and his decision to carry a gun began to seem more reasonable, prescient even. Maybe she shouldn't have ventured off without him. She stopped and waited for K.D.

"I have another idea, Dinah. You could withdraw a few thousand dollars from my daddy's account, I mean it is my inheritance, and I could go traveling on my own. I'm old enough to take care of myself and you know what a fanatic Daddy was about people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and making their own way in the world. He'd be so for this plan. You wouldn't have to tell my mother that I ever arrived on Samos. She could think I'd vanished into thin air. It would be our secret, yours and mine, and I would be eternally grateful. Later on, of course, when all this burglary business has blown over, I'll call her and explain that I just had to grow and move on. She'll understand."

"Your mother would not understand, K.D., and she would not feel eternally grateful. She would have me jailed for interference with parental custody or contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Whatever the charge, I'd have lots of time to regret it. That much is sure. What's gotten into you?" Dinah almost laughed. She was echoing Thor asking her what had gotten into her. Samos seemed to infect everyone with the germ of anarchy.

The canopy overhead thinned, letting in more sunlight. Her jitters passed and she decided to keep walking, staying far enough ahead of K.D. so she wouldn't have to hear any more of her schemes, at least not until dinner. The trail forked. One branch appeared wider, well trodden, and less densely forested. Shafts of sunlight slanted through the trees picking out flecks of mica in the sandy soil and making them glitter like sequins.

"This way." She motioned to K.D. and started down the wider trail. She hadn't gone a hundred yards when she encountered a tall, wide-bodied monk in a long, dirty cassock. She gave him a perfunctory smile and attempted to sidle past. He stretched out a gigantic arm and blocked her. His countenance, while not overtly hostile, was daunting. His eyes were black as jet and a bristly black beard splayed wildly down his chest.

"Let us by, please. Me sinkhorite."

He stood like a wall, arm out. Even if he didn't understand English, he understood that she wanted to go past. And if he understood that and still didn't yield the right of way, then he must be some kind of a crazo. Dinah had few rules that she lived by, but one of the top three was don't mess with crazy people. She whirled around, gripped K.D. by the elbow, and hissed, "Let's beat feet."

"Are you looking for the footpath down into the lagkadi? I will guide you."

"No, no." Dinah kept her feet moving forward. "That won't be necessary. We'll just retrace our steps."

"I can show you a beehive near the overlook." He scuffed along close on her heels, kicking sand into her shoes and breathing his dragon's breath of garlic and stale beer down her neck. "Nothing like Samian honey to cure the ills of the flesh and sublimate the baser hungers of the soul."

Dinah didn't want to find out what this bird's baser hungers might be. She stepped up her gait, pushing K.D. ahead of her.

"I am Brother Constantine. What are your names?"

"I'm Katarina," said K.D., swiveling her head. "And this is Dinah Pel..."

Dinah jabbed her in the ribs.

"Dinah Pelerin. Yes. I know who you are. You're staying in Marilita Stephan's house with the Norwegian policeman."

The back of Dinah's neck tingled. She felt exposed, vulnerable. How did this filthy, feral monk know where she lived or that Thor was a policeman?

"I can tell your fortunes if you like," said Constantine. "This mouth is a portal through which the goddess Hera speaks. Will you hear her?"

They reached the fork. Dinah prodded K.D. in the back. "Hurry up." She threw a glance behind her, saw Constantine stumble, and felt a heavy punch as he pitched head-first into her back.

She twisted as she went down, landed hard on her right hip, and yelped as more than two hundred pounds of malodorous monk flumped down on top of her. Grunting and flailing and pawing, Constantine seemed deliberately slow in rolling off of her.

With a cry of disgust, she wriggled out from under him and clambered to her feet, fear displaced by anger. "That better have been an accident, mister." She dusted herself off and started back to the village, looking behind her to make sure he didn't follow.

Brother Constantine sat up splay-legged and roared with laughter. "Give my regards to Inspector Ramberg, Miss Pelerin. And congratulations to Zenia. She has poked Kanaris in the eye but good this time."

Chapter Nine.

Dinah put her head down and fumed off toward the village. Her thoughts were churning. What the hell was that old fraud talking about? Did Zenia's eye-poke have something to do with leasing Marilita's house to a policeman, even if the policeman was a Norwegian and on sabbatical? Why would the denizens of a bucolic Greek village that had not a single street light or stop sign care if a cop moved in?

Her mood had curdled. Behind her, K.D. was talking on her cell phone and her giggles grated on Dinah. As if murder weren't enough to think about, she had been saddled with a scheming, self-willed teenager, insulted by the landlady, and mauled by the scuzziest monk she'd ever seen. Her hipbone hurt from the fall and, from what she could see over her shoulder, the seat of her pants had an embarrassing stain.

Someone jostled her. Her heart skipped a beat as she looked up into the probing eyes of the codger who'd ogled her in the taverna.

He touched the side of his fisherman's cap with two fingers. "Me sinkhorite."

"No problem." She stepped aside to let him pass.

"You are staying in Marilita Stephan's house with Inspector Ramberg," he said.

Inwardly, she cringed. It felt as if everybody in Kanaris had been peeping in her bedroom window. She said nothing.

He handed her a business card. "My name is Galen Stavros. I was a great admirer of the lady and a personal friend. I would like to call upon you some afternoon if that would be acceptable. It would be an honor to visit her home."

"You'll have to make an arrangement with Inspector Ramberg. He'll be at the Marc Antony later today."

"Thank you. I have an appointment this evening, but I will call later."

Dinah waited for K.D. to catch up. She had finished her phone call and Dinah looped an arm through hers to show solidarity as they walked past the winery. The man she thought of as Saddam was still there, tossing his worry beads and daring anyone to step foot on the property. She faced him with a skewering stare. She was fed up with the atmosphere of teasing intimidation.

From a distance, she espied Thor-an hour early-in the courtyard of the Marc Antony. He was repositioning a table umbrella to shield himself from the sun.

"Whoa!" said K.D. "That guy with the umbrella is gorgeous."

He really is, thought Dinah. And a lot more besides. He's smart and he's grounded and he never gives me grief for my kinks and shortcomings. He's an island of calm and I'm blowing in like a meltemi. She slowed down, brushed at the stain on her fanny, fluffed her hair, and took a deep breath. Whoa was exactly what she needed to do. She needed a time out and a large quantity of red wine. She would not be setting an example of abstinence tonight for K.D.'s sake.

Thor was still futzing with the umbrella when she and K.D. traipsed into the courtyard.

"Kjaere!" His eyes flickered in a subtle, but decidedly amorous way. "I got back to the village faster than I thought. I've already ordered a bottle of wine."

She felt an instant uptick in attitude and a little shiver of sexual anticipation.

"This is Thor?" K.D. came on full gush. "OMG, he's blazing."

"Thor, this is K.D. Dobbs. She and her brother are..."

"Family," finished K.D., overdoing the drawl. "That's how we think of Dinah. She's the Rock of Gibraltar in our family."

Thor smiled and took her hand. "I'm very glad to meet you, K.D. You're the first member of Dinah's family I've met."

Dinah squeezed out a smile. The less said about her rogues' gallery of a family the better. "Let's sit down and unwind."

Thor pulled out a chair for K.D. and she wilted into it like a Slinky toy. "We have had ourselves such a day. We went for a walk in the woods and this gi-normous monk tried to lure us off to his beehive and Dinah was like, let's scrambola, and we did, but he followed us and knocked Dinah down in the dirt."

Thor shot Dinah a concerned look. "He knocked you down?"

"It was an accident. I think." She wasn't ready to delve into the encounter with Brother Constantine just yet.

Thor's fingers brushed her arm as he pulled out a chair for her. "It sounds as though you have adventures to tell."

"After the wine," she said.

He readjusted the umbrella and sat down. He was wearing an unstructured, tan linen jacket and slacks, more suitable for a business meeting than a walk on the beach. He said, "This morning I went into Samos Town and had a talk with the public prosecutor. He informed me that he had already released Yannis Thoma for insufficient evidence. No gun, no indictment."

"Are you a policeman?" asked K.D.

"In Norway. I am a police inspector in the Svalbard region."

Dinah hoped K.D. wouldn't start in on him to intercede with the Atlanta police on her behalf. "Why did you dodge the question when I asked you last night if the police had found the murder weapon?"

"I knew you wouldn't like the answer. They couldn't search without a warrant. When they returned with a warrant this morning, they came up empty."