“Yes, I’ll tell her,” Niki promised, edging away. Then she disappeared out the door.
George closed the door, then glanced around the room. “What’s her problem?”
“She was acting strange,” Nancy agreed.
Bess was sifting through her open suitcase. “There doesn’t seem to be anything missing, but why was she going through my stuff?”
“That’s exactly what I was wondering,” Nancy said as she sank down onto one of the room’s three beds.
“And why just your stuff, Bess?” George wanted to know. “She didn’t touch ours.”
“Probably because she has excellent taste,” Bess said with a mischievous look.
Nancy groaned and tossed a pillow at Bess, who batted it away with her hands. “This is serious. Aren’t you the least bit suspicious?” Nancy asked.
“Lighten up, Nan,” Bess said. “This is our vacation!” She slipped into the bathroom, calling out, “I’ve got the first shower!”
An hour later, dressed in shorts, T-shirts, and sneakers, Nancy, Bess, and George were ready to hike into Chora. Armed with their guidebook and instructions from Zoe, the girls set off on the mile-long walk to town.
“Did you guys notice the tension between Zoe and that guy Theo before?” Nancy asked as they trudged uphill on a paved road that crossed the rocky hillside.
Bess nodded. “I got the feeling that Zoe resents him. Maybe they didn’t break up on great terms.”
“When we were in Olympia, Zoe did mention something about a guy who broke things off,” George said. “Theo seems like a nice guy, though.”
Bess wiggled her eyebrows suggestively at her cousin. “That’s a rave from you,” she said. “Do I detect the start of a new romance?”
“No way.” George raised her hands defensively. “Kevin’s the only guy on my mind these days.” George really liked her boyfriend, sports commentator Kevin Davis. Even if there had been a lot of strain between them because Kevin’s job required him to travel frequently, Nancy knew that George was serious about their relationship.
“Well, I think Theo’s adorable,” Bess said. She giggled and added, “So’s Dimitri.”
“Face it, Bess,” George said. “You’re in love with love.”
They had just rounded a crest in the road, and Nancy could see Mykonos’s distinctive white windmills in the distance. The five round towers seemed to dominate the harbor from their perch on a hill. Below the windmills, dazzling snow white buildings hugged the shoreline.
As the girls continued, the countryside gave way to meandering alleyways lined with cube-shaped houses. Cars were restricted from the cobblestone streets, but the area was busy with tourists, local merchants, and people leading donkeys with food and supplies strapped to their backs.
“Zoe told me that the buildings are whitewashed to protect them from the sun,” George said as they passed one house.
“She also warned me about the zigzagging streets,” Nancy added. They were just passing a narrow, twisting lane. “They were originally designed to foil pirate raiders, so it’s easy to get lost if you don’t watch where you’re going.”
“Don’t worry,” Bess said. “The maze of streets may have confused pirates, but a determined shopper will always find her way.”
Following Zoe’s directions, the girls turned down Matoyianni, the main street of town. Shops, cafés, and bakeries stretched out in front of them. The Greek alphabet, so different from English, made it impossible for the girls to read the signs and letters painted on shop windows. But Nancy noticed that the vendors managed to get their messages across by displaying their merchandise.
“Oh, wait a minute,” Bess said, stopping in front of a stationery store. “That’s the most adorable statue I’ve ever seen.”
Nancy paused to see what had caught Bess’s eye. In the window of the small shop sat a tiny white replica of one of Mykonos’s windmills. It was surrounded by miniature white houses, fish, boats, and even a pelican. “It is an amazing piece of craftsmanship,” she agreed.
“I’ll bet the sails even move,” Bess said. “I wish I’d cashed some traveler’s checks, but I left them in the safe at the hotel. I don’t have much Greek currency—just a few drachmas.”
“Thank goodness,” George said with an exaggerated sigh. “Otherwise, we’d have to hire a donkey to carry your purchases back to the inn.”
Nancy and George followed as Bess went into the shop. The small room was jammed with floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with international newspapers, magazines, postcards, and writing paper. An elderly man with white hair and a wooden pipe clenched between his teeth sat next to a counter against one wall.
When Bess pointed out the windmill to the shopkeeper, he handed it to her so she could have a closer look. “I make,” he said, pointing to his chest.
“You did?” Bess said. “Oh, I love it. This is the perfect birthday gift for my mother.” Her blue eyes sparkled—until she saw the price. “I guess I’ll have to come back after I change more money,” she told the elderly shopkeeper.
After thanking him for his help, the girls left the shop. “I wish he hadn’t put it back on display,” Bess said, pausing outside the shop as the shopkeeper reached down and replaced the statue in the window. “What if someone else buys it?”
“Relax, Bess,” Nancy assured her. “Why don’t you cash a traveler’s check at the hotel? If there’s time, we can make a quick trip back here before dinner—”
“The gorgeous American girls!” a familiar voice interrupted Nancy.
Nancy turned and immediately recognized Dimitri, the photographer from the beach. His dark curls glistened in the sunlight.
“That’s us!” Bess said, grinning at him.
“Would you like a photo here in Chora?” Dimitri asked, raising his camera.
“No, thanks,” Nancy replied. “We were just doing some shopping.”
“Ah, in the shop of my good friend Spiros,” Dimitri said, nodding at the stationery store. “That is my studio, just above.” He pointed to a narrow white stone staircase along the side of the building that led to a room just above the shop.
Bess brightened. “You have your own studio?”
“Of course,” Dimitri boasted, never taking his eyes off Bess. “I need a darkroom for my business. I have all the latest equipment.”
“I’d love to see the studio,” Bess told him. “Could you give us a little tour?”
“Now?” Dimitri hesitated. “I’ve been very busy today. It’s a mess.” A group of Japanese tourists caught Dimitri’s eye, and he excused himself to snap a few photographs. “I will see you later, I hope,” he told Bess.
Nancy was surprised at Dimitri’s abrupt switch. One minute the guy was melting, over Bess, the next minute he seemed to freeze. Bess had noticed his behavior, too. “I can’t decide if he was trying to get a date or give me the brush-off,” she said. Shrugging, she added, “Well, I’m not going to let it ruin my day. Come on, guys.”
The main street ended at a busy waterfront strip. The crescent-shaped harbor was ringed by hotels, cafés, and tavernas. Small fishing boats skimmed along the water. It all looked tempting. Nancy wasn’t quite sure which way to turn first.
Bess persuaded Nancy and George to go into a pastry shop. “After all,” she reminded them as they walked inside and peered into a glass case full of cakes and honey pastries, “we won’t be eating dinner for a few more hours.”
After buying honeyed pastries called baklava, the girls turned back up the main street, retracing their steps through the maze of narrow lanes toward the hotel.
“We might as well go straight to the office,” Bess said when they reached the hotel half an hour later. “I can get my traveler’s checks and passport for ID.” For security reasons, the hotel requested that all valuables, including passports, be left in the office safe.
The three girls entered the arched double doors of the main building and went to the lobby desk, which was a crescent-shaped cutaway in one
of the stucco walls. Zoe was behind the tiled counter, bent over the registration book.
When Bess told her about the miniature she had found in Chora, Zoe smiled and closed the registration book. “You should probably take your passports with you when you leave the hotel grounds,” Zoe told them. “But I’ll be happy to cash your traveler’s checks. Let me get your envelope from the safe.” She disappeared through a doorway behind the front desk.
Zoe returned a few minutes later, a grim frown on her face.
“What’s the matter?” Nancy asked.
“It’s the safe,” Zoe told her. “Someone has broken into it!”
Chapter Three
“OH, NO!” Bess cried. She and George exchanged a look of alarm.
“I don’t know how it happened,” Zoe said. “We always keep that safe locked, but when I went to dial the combination, the door just swung open.”
George shot Nancy and Bess a worried look. “Our passports were in there,” she pointed out. “And our traveler’s checks.”
“Has anything been stolen?” Nancy asked.
Zoe’s brown eyes were filled with worry. “I don’t know. Many things were left behind. Maybe nothing was stolen at all,” she said hopefully. “I’ll have to check the contents of the safe against our log book.” Reaching under the counter, she pulled out a fat notebook and turned to a page with dozens of entries penciled in.
“Looks as if that will take a while,” George said. “Do you want us to help?”
“Would you mind?” Zoe asked, looking grateful. “The inventory will go faster that way.”
Nancy, Bess, and George joined Zoe behind the check-in counter, then followed her through the doorway and into the back office.
The rosy light of dusk streamed into the room through the slats of a shaded window. On the wall just inside the door was a board with hooks for extra keys to the guest rooms. A metal safe rested on the floor in the far corner, behind a desk covered with stacks of invoices and registration forms.
“First, let me remove everything,” Zoe said. She knelt down beside the square gray safe and pulled out a plastic carton containing stacks of manila envelopes. Nancy, Bess, and George gathered around Zoe as she stood and placed the carton on the desk.
“I can’t stand the suspense,” Bess said, flipping through the envelopes to find the one marked with her name.
“Me, either,” George said. She found her envelope and Nancy’s and pulled both out.
Checking in her pouch, Nancy was relieved to find her passport and traveler’s checks, just as she’d left them. She leafed through the passport, noting the visas stamped on the blue-green pages printed with a bald eagle. “Everything’s here,” she reported.
“Mine checks out, too,” George said.
When Bess said nothing, Nancy looked over at her. Bess’s mouth had fallen open, and there was a look of shock on her face. “My passport’s missing!” she said in a horrified whisper.
“Are you sure?” Nancy asked. She leaned over Bess’s shoulder as Bess looked into the envelope once again. The traveler’s checks were there, Nancy saw, but Bess’s passport was gone.
“Maybe it ended up in someone else’s envelope,” Zoe said hopefully.
George nodded toward the open ledger. “Let’s go over the inventory and see.”
As Zoe read off the names written in Greek in the inventory ledger, George and Bess checked the contents of each envelope. While they worked, Nancy paced the office, looking for a clue as to who might have tampered with the hotel safe.
Kneeling beside the safe, she looked inside and ran her fingers over the walls of the empty interior. Since there was no damage to the safe, Nancy deduced that either someone knew the combination or was an expert at combination locks. Whoever it was must have been in a hurry, she thought, since they hadn’t even closed the safe.
“Who has the combination to the safe?” Nancy asked Zoe.
“Just my father and me,” Zoe answered.
“Do you remember who opened the safe last?”
Zoe frowned. “Not really. Things were so hectic today, with that British tour group checking out and a few families checking in. I must have gone into the safe nearly a dozen times myself. But it’s not like Papa—or me—to forget and leave it unlocked.”
She returned to the inventory with grim determination. “Let’s see if anything else is missing,” she said.
“A diamond necklace!” Bess remarked as a glittering necklace spilled out of one envelope.
“We’ve come across a lot of cash, too,” George added. “It’s hard to believe that a thief would leave all this behind.”
Good point, Nancy thought, checking the area around the safe. A shelf of ledgers seemed undisturbed, as did the wooden file cabinet beside the safe. It looked as if whoever had opened the safe and stolen Bess’s passport knew exactly where to look for it. And it wouldn’t be hard for a staff member to watch Zoe or her father open the safe and remember the combination.
“Who uses this room?” Nancy asked Zoe.
“My father uses it as an office. And sometimes the desk clerks and the cleaning staff come in here,” Zoe explained. “They need extra keys from the board when there aren’t enough master keys to go around.”
Nancy immediately thought of Niki Christofouros. Since she was one of the hotel’s maids, no one would question her appearance in the office. And the girls had caught her going through Bess’s luggage. What if Niki had been trying to steal Bess’s passport? Once she saw that it wasn’t in the room, maybe she had looked in the hotel safe. The question was, why would she do such a thing?
Nancy decided not to say anything about Niki for the moment. She didn’t want to implicate the girl without solid evidence, since Niki could lose her job over this. Just to be safe, though, Nancy suggested that Zoe question the entire hotel staff. In the meantime, Nancy would do some of her own checking on Niki.
“Oh, no! Not another one,” Bess groaned a few minutes later. She held up an envelope marked Leo Nelson. “His passport is missing, too,” she told Zoe.
George was frowning into another envelope. “Make that three missing passports,” she said. “Joseph Seidel’s isn’t in his envelope.”
Zoe circled the two names on her inventory sheet. “Two American men—and Bess,” she said wearily.
Luckily, the remaining envelopes contained everything they were supposed to. When the girls were finished, Zoe pushed away the list and leaned back in the desk chair. “So three passports were stolen in all. I can’t believe this is happening. It’s not good for the hotel. If word gets out, we’ll lose customers.”
“Not to mention the fact that three passports are now in the hands of strangers,” George said.
Bess drew her breath in sharply. “I don’t like the idea of someone using my passport illegally,” she said in a shaky voice.
“You’ll need to get a new one,” George advised her.
Leaning over, Zoe squeezed Bess’s hand. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “The police will know the best way to report it to your embassy.”
Just then a tall, husky man with salt-and-pepper hair walked into the room. He assessed the scene, a bewildered expression on his face, then addressed Zoe in rapid-fire Greek. She answered, nodding at Nancy, Bess, and George as she talked.
“This is my father, Kostas Kavalis,” Zoe said, introducing the man to Nancy, Bess, and George.
Mr. Kavalis gave each of the girls a hearty handshake. “I’m very sorry about your passport, Bess. I will report it to the police immediately.” He glanced back at Zoe’s list and frowned. “I must notify those two American men, too.”
Shaking his head, Zoe’s father went into the front office to call the police.
Nancy sat down on the edge of the desk and mulled over the situation. Three passports had been taken, but dozens of others had been left behind. The thief hadn’t touched any of the cash or jewels, either. It didn’t make sense.
“What are you thinking, Nan?” Georg
e asked.
“Just that the thief seemed to know exactly what he or she was looking for and where to find it. I hope the police can tell us why someone would take three passports and leave everything else.”
“I hope so, too,” Zoe said. “This is very upsetting.”
Nancy turned to Zoe. “Please don’t be insulted, Zoe, but under the circumstances, I’d feel a lot better if George and I could keep our passports and traveler’s checks with us.”
“Of course,” Zoe said. “I understand perfectly.” She went through the envelopes and handed Nancy and George theirs.
When an officer finally arrived, Nancy’s questions had to wait until a barrage of Greek questions and answers had flown among Zoe, her father, and the policeman. Zoe introduced the uniformed man as Officer Rossolatos.
At last Officer Rossolatos turned to Bess. He was a heavyset, gray-haired man with a wide, curled mustache. In heavily accented English, he instructed her to report her stolen passport to the U.S. Embassy in Athens. “If you tell them your passport number, there will be no problem to replace it,” he said.
“My passport number!” Bess repeated worriedly. “I was supposed to write it down. I knew there was something I forgot to do before we left River Heights.”
“Why don’t you call the embassy now?” Mr. Kavalis offered. “I will help you.” He grabbed the carton of guests’ valuables. “And these I will put in the safe in our apartment,” he added gravely, “where no one else can get to them.”
Nancy knew this was her chance to question the officer. “Excuse me, but don’t you think it’s odd that the thief left with only three passports?” she asked him.
Officer Rossolatos seemed surprised by Nancy’s question, until Zoe explained that Nancy was a detective in the United States. “A detective, on our island—we are honored,” he said, bowing graciously. He went on to explain, “In the criminal world American passports are prized because they allow access to the United States. They also allow easier passage through Europe.”
“So you think Bess’s passport will be used by a stranger?” George asked, coming over to stand next to Nancy.