Sons of Sparta: A Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Mystery by Jeffrey Siger Page A

table, and headed out the kitchen door. He didn’t need a maternal lecture, his lesson had been learned through on-the-job experience. Again.
    Kouros walked five paces from the door, closed his eyes, and for a moment did nothing more than concentrate on breathing in the brisk salt air laced with random whiffs of wild herbs. He opened his eyes and stared out across the plateau toward the bare-as-the-moon Saggias Mountains. It was a typical cloudless, brilliant blue-sky day in the Mani. He wondered why he always thought of Mani skies as gray. Maybe it had something to do with the bloody history of the landscape beneath them? Not just from battles against Turks, Franks, Bavarians, Venetians, and so many other would-be conquerors, but in neighbor-against-neighbor savagery as merciless as any World War I trench warfare.
    He shook his head. Hard to imagine all of this ending up as a golf course. Still, these days nothing seemed to remain the same for long where there was money to be made. And it wasn’t as if explorers had come across a lost tribe living a Stone Age existence and, by announcing their find to the world, sealed the doom of their discovery’s ancient ways.
    No, the modern world had always touched the Mani. It just never held on very long, because the Mani had a tendency to burn a dabbler’s fingers. Maybe this time would be different. Kouros sure hoped so. The hard-working strugglers around here could sure use some good luck.
    He wondered how his own life might change if he had money coming in regularly without having to work for it. Make that honest money. He’d never thought about anything like that before. His father raised him to expect to work hard for whatever he wanted. Kouros took a sip of coffee. No reason to start daydreaming about that sort of life now, because it didn’t seem likely the deal would go through, at least not as his uncle had envisioned it. His uncle’s interest in the property had passed to his children, not Kouros. Now it was their call.
    He shook his head, thought of his uncle, and remembered he’d promised Mangas to get the autopsy report off to Athens. He’d noticed a scanner in his uncle’s office. He’d send it as soon as he finished his coffee.
    Coffee . Another memory triggered. The synapses had begun to fire again.
    His uncle’s everyday coffee crew was a bunch of bad guys, no matter how charming and likable they seemed. And whether truly the “council of elders” they fashioned themselves to be, Kouros knew they hadn’t told him anything close to what actually took place in their morning meetings. He might be Uncle’s “favorite” nephew, but he was still a cop and, with Uncle gone, they had little reason to treat him much better than any other Maniot prying into their affairs.
    Still, he had to try. On the surface several had potential motives, most unmistakably Stelios, whose family—maybe even he—once exchanged vendetta killings with Kouros’ family. Yet that seemed too obvious to be likely. But if his uncle had been murdered, everyone was suspect, beginning with those he did business with.
    Kouros finished off the biscuits in two bites and downed his coffee. There would be time for more coffee later, after he’d sent the autopsy report on to Athens and dropped in on his uncle’s crew at the taverna for a more sober chat. Why not? After all, they’d told him he was “always welcome.”
    ***
    It was eleven by the time Kouros walked into the taverna. The only one in the front room was the waitress.
    “May I help you?” she said.
    “Uh, yes, I’m looking for friends of my uncle. They have coffee together here every morning.”
    “Oh, yes, I remember you. You’re the nephew from Athens. They were talking about you this morning.”
    “You mean they’re gone?”
    She nodded. “They’re here every morning at nine and gone by ten-thirty.”
    Wow, he thought. Those old guys drank even more than I did. How did they ever make it out of bed for coffee by