“I don’t understand how Dimitri can still be a suspect,” Bess said as she toweled off her hair.
After a walk down the beach to check up on Dimitri’s whereabouts, the girls had returned to their room to shower before lunch.
“She’s right,” George added. “Those British tourists said that Dimitri spent the entire morning with them, so he couldn’t have been the guy with the spear gun.”
“That proves he didn’t attack us,” Nancy said, “but Dimitri could still be the forger.” Nancy slipped on a royal blue tank top and tucked it into her white denim miniskirt.
“What about Theo?” George asked. “Didn’t you believe his explanation?”
Nancy let out a sigh. “I want to believe him,” she said, pushing back her hair with a blue cloth headband. “But we can’t be sure until we have proof—not just his word.” She opened the wooden shutters to the balcony, and sunlight streamed into the room.
“I wish we knew who we were up against,” Bess said.
“It’s a dangerous situation for all of . . .” Nancy’s voice trailed off. She was standing with her back to the balcony doorway. The sunlight that streamed in hit the top of the dresser, illuminating Bess’s gift-wrapped package.
“Wait a minute,” Nancy said, stepping over to the dresser. Because of the sunlight directly hitting the package, she could see tiny, squiggly blue lines on the wrapping paper.
“What’s wrong?” George asked, standing up.
The intricately patterned blue-green wrapping paper looked familiar to Nancy. She picked up the package and looked more closely. She could make out an eagle in the center of the page. “That’s it!”
She whirled toward Bess and George, who had paused in the middle of dressing to gaze at her. “The answer has been sitting right in this room for days.”
“What are you talking about?” Bess asked.
Nancy waved the package in the air. “See the wrapping paper on this gift? When Dimitri wrapped it in Spiros’s shop, he must have used the wrong paper. This is engraved with an eagle—just like the pages of a U.S. passport.”
George hurried over to Nancy and grabbed the package. Bess moved in close to study it.
“That means Spiros could be the one who’s forging the passports!” George exclaimed, looking up at Nancy in awe.
Nancy nodded. “Exactly.”
Chapter Fourteen
“I can’t believe that clue was in our room all along—right under our noses,” Bess said.
After she, Nancy, and George had shared their revelation with their friends, the group decided to talk over the case at lunch. Now they were at a small waterfront sandwich shop on the harbor in Chora.
“I am disappointed that my father’s friend would steal from our hotel,” Zoe said as a waitress brought a tray of iced lemonade to their table. “But if Spiros is the forger, the police should know about it.”
Nancy took a long drink of lemonade. She was glad that Zoe understood the need to follow through on their suspecting Spiros.
“I don’t get it,” Kevin said. “How could Spiros be so stupid as to wrap a gift in a fake passport page?”
“Spiros didn’t do it,” George explained. “Dimitri wrapped the gift while Spiros was out of the room.”
“Which proves that Dimitri isn’t involved in the passport forgery,” Nancy added. “He would never have used that paper if he knew what it was intended for.”
“I’ll bet Spiros will be steaming mad when he figures out Dimitri’s mistake,” Mick said.
Nancy nodded. “I just wish I could figure out how Spiros got his hands on those stolen passports.”
“I think he stole them himself—right from our safe,” Zoe said grimly. Seeing Nancy’s surprised expression, Zoe explained that Spiros had been visiting her father at the inn the morning the thefts occurred. “I forgot that he was there, since I never considered him a suspect.”
“If you were opening and closing the safe as often as you said, it would have been easy enough for Spiros to see what the combination was. Then he probably opened it when you or your father were at the front desk,” Nancy said.
Picking up on Nancy’s thoughts, Mick said, “And since your father is so close to Spiros, he never suspected him, either.”