Death of an Aegean Queen by Maria Hudgins

the main number, asking them how I might get a message to a member of the staff. “For Sophie Antonakos. I don’t know her room, but she’s a dancer.”
    “I’ll give her a message for you, Mrs. Lamb.”
    “Tell her to call or come see me as soon as possible.

 
    Chapter Nine
     
    The lounge was jammed. As I edged my way around the room in search of Marco, bits of conversation flew past me and they all seemed to be about the twin tragedies. The disappearance of a guest from America and the chilling murder of the photographer. Of the two, it seemed the latter concerned them more. Quite natural, since the photographer was the one who had greeted and photographed every one of them. They had all heard his cheery “Say tsatziki!” at least once.
    “He was stabbed! In the alley!”
    “I can’t believe no one noticed a man running around with a bloody knife.”
    “They said there was blood all over the deck back there.”
    “I, for one, am about ready to ask for my money back.”
    Marco, I saw, had been buttonholed by a dough-faced woman shaped like a butternut squash. She had him by the arm and was blinking something like Morse code at him with her eyelashes. Beside her was a younger woman, rather plain and wispy-looking. I got close enough to hear the older one twitter, “You simply must help them solve these cases. A Carabinieri captain! You simply must!”
    Oh, barf.
    At the far end of the lounge, Luc Girard and a man in a white dinner jacket held a large book between them while Girard ran his finger across the page. I turned sideways and ran a gauntlet of arms holding cocktails. Girard closed the book and handed it to the other man when he saw me coming his way.
    “I left a message for Sophie to call me,” I said. “Remember? The girl who dropped the lekythos?”
    “Of course, I remember.” He introduced me to the man holding the book. “We’ve been discussing the return of the Euphronios vase to Italy.”
    “A Greek vase? To Italy?”
    “It was dug up from an Etruscan tomb somewhere north of Rome so it belongs to Italy.”
    “Of course.” Being something of an Etruscan enthusiast myself I was surprised I didn’t already know about it. “The Etruscans seem to have been enamored of Greek art and philosophy,” I said.
    The dinner jacket man raised one eyebrow as if he was surprised to hear such a comment from a woman with an American accent.
    “Quite right.” Luc Girard went on. “It was traded under false pretenses and purchased by the Metropolitan Museum in New York where it has remained for some years. Its return to Italy is the result of an agreement between Italy and the Metropolitan Museum.”
    “Perhaps this will set a pattern for the return of other antiquities,” the dinner jacket man said, nodding to me. Taking the book with him, he turned and left.
    Girard told me the Greek red-figure vase—signed by the painter, Euphronios, and unearthed 2,500 years later—was a masterpiece and in pristine condition.
    “I don’t understand,” I said. “How is this buying and selling done? Surely the Metropolitan Museum wouldn’t have bought the vase with no provenance, no paper to prove where it came from.”
    “These antiquities dealers have a hundred ways to falsify provenance. In this particular case, the vase came with papers that actually described a similar but much less valuable piece. This other piece has miraculously disappeared.” His mouth turned up a little on one side. “You dig?”
    Sophie Antonakos appeared at the door to the lounge and waved at me. I made come-here motions with my own hand, but she shook her head.
    “I see our little fumblefingers now,” I told Girard. “Shall I try to get her to come in?”
    Girard shook his head. “Could we both meet with her in the library? It’s too noisy in here. How about after dinner? Are you free?”
    I made my way to the door, glancing toward Marco as I went. He caught my eye and made a desperate sort of throat-cutting motion