The Gift Bearer

A 100 foot schooner hosts a diverse group of passengers embarking on a ten-day, Greek island seminar at sea. Five days later, the tour is over and the ship surrounded by a flotilla of Greek police and hospital boats. What happened? That's the assignment given to thirty year old Alexa Drakos, a just-the-facts-please, bulldog, female investigator for the Greek police

As she recreates the events though interviews with the passengers and crew, we learn their first stop was an uninhabited island, where they rescued a stunningly beautiful woman, chained in a box, inside a sealed cave, holding an intricately carved clay jar.

Charming, witty, talented; surely Hope cannot be the cause of the suddenly rotted food or the cook's fevers and convulsions. The first mate, Adie, previously immune to female charms, certainly doesn't think so. Nor does Lauren, the bubbly, young activities director on board. But then why is the normally adventuresome Art, Hector's husband, now paranoid and agoraphobic? Only a day earlier, he was unfazed by the shark and lion fish they encountered during the group's scuba/snorkeling excursion.

As Alexa probes deeper, she has more questions than answers. Where is Hope? She's certainly no longer on the ship. She was still on board when the others returned from the tour of Crete, given by fellow passenger Robert, the Berkeley classic professor. And she participated along with the others at the lively folk dancing held on board.

But it was after that evening, when things started to unravel. Maureen, the young, destined-to-be single, would-be novelist, suddenly started coming on to anyone with a penis; stopping only when she contracted syphilis. Sally, the Nigerian manager/lover of fellow passenger and world-renowned DJ Chill, contracted something even worse, leprosy, after the group's tour of Spinalonga. Chill, an outspoken, black South African, believes Hope is the source of all this. Either her or that mysterious jar she brought with her from the island.

What about that jar, Alexa asks just about everyone. Did you open it? Sally did, Maureen did. And so did Lauren, before she leapt to her death from a cliff on Spinalonga. But both David, our Silicon Valley genius and his legal shark of a wife Barbara snuck looks inside, and they seemed fine. At least until Alexa determines that Barbara sliced off renowned robotics surgeon Yang Lu's thumb, in order to punish him for his one night stand mistreatment of Lauren. And that Robert's mild-mannered, subservient wife Joyce can no longer stand her husband, threatening him with an ancient sword found alongside Hope.

David suggests the solution to Alexa: Hope has somehow acquired the jar given to Pandora centuries ago. Opening it has released the worst in everyone. No, I'm afraid not, responds Alexa. The jar is empty. It is Hope -- or should I say her real name, Pandora -- who brings out the evil, wickedness, or obsessions inside others. And, Alexa adds, that is why you must all be arrested, as I know she is no longer here because you threw her overboard, hoping to put an end to your misfortunes.

Not so fast. Barbara reminds Alexa that any crimes, if they were indeed committed, happened on a non-Greek registered ship in international waters. So, if you don't mind, we're all leaving.

But Alexa has a parting gift of her own, a reminder of something they forgot, something that will haunt them far more than the threat of a trial.