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  Goatly Goings On

  Book 4 in The Greek Meze Series

  KATERINA NIKOLAS

  GOATLY GOINGS ON

  Copyright © 2018 Katerina Nikolas

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Many Thanks to Brenda and George for Edits

  Cover Design by Yuse Art Works

  Interior Formatting by The Book Khaleesi

  Other Books in the Greek Meze Series

  Book 1: Goat in the Meze

  Book 2: Rampaging Roosters

  Book 3: Olive Virgins

  Contents

  Other Books in the Greek Meze Series

  Chapter 1

  Quentin and Deirdre Suffer Unwelcome Greek Guests

  Chapter 2

  Glow In The Dark Undies And Cuddly Syphilis

  Chapter 3

  Granny’s Greek Gyros

  Chapter 4

  There’s The Time Difference To Consider

  Chapter 5

  Sickly Sweet Cravings

  Chapter 6

  Headless Grannies Blowing In The Wind

  Chapter 7

  We Grow ‘Em Big In Idaho

  Chapter 8

  Left On The Shelf

  Chapter 9

  Strip Searched By A Suma Wrestler

  Chapter 10

  Bald Yannis Pregnant And Scamming

  Chapter 11

  The Cat Gets A Bath

  Chapter 12

  Masha Is Exposed As A Binging Glutton

  Chapter 13

  Pappa Iraklis Questions His Celibate Calling

  Chapter 14

  A Creepy Shrine

  Chapter 15

  No Stray Husbands

  Chapter 16

  The Parrot Masters Fifteen Languages

  Chapter 17

  Prosperous Pedros Attracts An Admirer

  Chapter 18

  Don’t Call Me Pappas

  Chapter 19

  Credulous Cretins Believe Any Old Codswallop

  Chapter 20

  Horny Goats And Christmas Tinners

  Chapter 21

  Spreading The Tzatziki

  Chapter 22

  Cycling Goat

  Chapter 23

  Slick City Types

  Chapter 24

  Sleep Tight, Sweet Pedro

  Chapter 25

  Steaming Up The Car Windows

  Chapter 26

  A Matter Of Life And Death

  Chapter 27

  Deirdre Flashes A Randy Old Goat Herder

  Chapter 28

  Goat To The Boat

  Chapter 29

  Glamping For The Gullible

  Chapter 30

  Frightful Bed Companions

  Chapter 31

  Quentin And Deirdre Get Lumbered

  Chapter 32

  The Pious Malaproper Arrives

  Chapter 33

  Goatly Goings On

  Chapter 34

  Goat Is Off The Menu

  Chapter 35

  Gloria Gets Deflated

  Chapter 36

  Quentin Quivers

  Chapter 37

  Handcuffed To The Altar

  Chapter 38

  A Bag Of Cheese And Onion In A Damp Tent

  Chapter 39

  Kyria Sisyphean Suffers A Nasty Shock

  Chapter 40

  Furry Handcuffs Point The Finger Of Suspicion

  Chapter 41

  Imagined Affairs

  Chapter 42

  Prosperous Pedros To The Rescue

  Chapter 43

  Blood and Borscht

  Chapter 44

  Rappelling Away

  Chapter 1

  Quentin and Deirdre Suffer Unwelcome Greek Guests

  Deirdre rolled her eyes in exasperation as her ears were assaulted by a constant stream of choice Greek expletives and a cacophonous clatter of pans drifting up from the kitchen. Nightmare images of her home devastated by unwanted house guests were not enough to tempt her from the self-imposed exile of her Idaho bedroom, even though she desperately craved a potato fix. The sudden silence descending over the house was more sinister than welcoming.

  “What do you suppose the old crone is up to now?” Deirdre asked Quentin, forcing herself up from the Valium strewn bed to peer cautiously out of the window. Her line of vision was partially obscured by the row of hideous old lady dresses frozen solid to the washing line in a ghoulish display.

  “With any luck she has electrocuted herself or stuffed so much confectionary down her gullet she’s fallen into a sugar coma,” Quentin sighed hopefully.

  “No such luck,” Deirdre exhaled wearily, dragging Quentin to the window and pointing to Fotini attempting to clamber clumsily over the wall into the neighbouring garden whilst clinging on desperately to a pair of purloined skis.

  “We’ll be stuck with her forever if she breaks a leg on those skis. Why do you suppose she is filling a carrier bag with poisonous dogbane?” Quentin queried.

  “She could be planning to cook horta and mistook Mrs Jones’ prize flowers for weeds. Quentin you must go and grab Fotini before the neighbours have her arrested for trespassing, I cannot face yet another afternoon at the police station.”

  “Must I? The blasted parrot was sick in my boots and I will have to traipse through the snow in my slippers.” One look at Deirdre’s face assured Quentin his wife meant business. Having no wish to provoke yet another argument over their Greek visitors he flounced meekly out of the bedroom to follow his wife’s bidding.

  It was all Hattie’s fault that Nitsa, Fotini and her parrot were holidaying in their Idaho home. When Quentin had suggested Fat Christos, Tassia and baby Andromeda extend their honeymoon trip to the Big Apple with a visit to Idaho, he hadn’t reckoned with Hattie’s insistence that her two new best friends be included too. In the end Hattie had nagged him into submission and their usually orderly and quiet Idaho home was now bursting at the seams with rowdy Greeks. The honeymooners were horrified their romantic Idaho interlude had been invaded by Hattie’s interlopers. Only Andromeda’s adoration of the parrot had prevented them taking the first flight out as Fat Christos could not deny his daughter anything.

  Quentin snapped out of his reverie as Mr Jones demanded to know “Does this trespassing creature belong to you?” Quentin’s neighbour was frogmarching an irate Fotini across the snow by the scruff of her neck. Fortunately he had no idea the wily old woman was cursing him since Quentin managed to convince him ‘malaka’ was the Greek word for snow.

  “It’s all new to her you see, she has only ever seen snow once before in her eighty odd years. In her quaint Greek village it is the custom to climb over garden walls for a neighbourly visit.”

  “And is it the custom to steal the neighbour’s plants too?”

  “She apologises profusely,” Quentin fibbed, twisting Fotini’s ear painfully. “Old Greek ladies often forage for food and Fotini was planning to boil up your dogbane for dinner with a traditional lemon and olive oil dressing. Of course she wishes to invite you to join us.”

  Mr Jones thawed visibly, concluding he had perhaps been a tad hasty in presuming Quentin’s houseguest
was a pilfering nuisance without taking into account cultural differences. He readily accepted Quentin’s invitation to dinner that evening when his neighbour assured him there would be no poisonous boiled up dogbane on the menu. Wrapping his arms around his body in an exaggerated gesture Mr Jones smiled at Fotini, saying “brrr, this malaka sure is cold.”

  Fotini raised her arm to slap this fool across the face for his impertinence in calling her a malaka, but her intention was thwarted by Quentin yanking her sharply by the ear. Fotini lost her balance and slid precariously off down the garden slope on one ski; tumbling into a frozen embrace with the snowman Nitsa had spent all morning building for Andromeda’s amusement.

  “Get yous ‘ands off me yous pervert,” she screeched at the snowman.

  “How nice that your foreign house guest is enjoying this new experience in the ‘malaka,’” Mr Jones sociably observed, testing out this novel Greek word.

  “K-Went-In, get ‘ere now and rescue the parrot,” Fotini screeched, yanking herself upright with the snowman’s scarf. “I suppose Nitsa thought it was funny to dress this ice sculpture in my best bloomers and use the parrot as an ‘at, but the blasted bird is frozen in place.”

  Quentin was busily pretending he couldn’t hear Fotini’s plaintive plea to de-ice the parrot’s posterior from the frozen head until Mr Jones suggested telephoning an animal welfare group to release it. Quentin had endured enough run-ins with the authorities over the last week and the very mention of the word ‘telephone’ sent him into a panic since he had discovered Nitsa making endless long distance phone calls to her boyfriend Fotis back in Greece, at Quentin’s expense.

  “I’ll go and get Deirdre’s crème brulee blow torch,” Quentin offered. The prospect of singeing the parrot’s feathers made him momentarily smile and forget all about the slush in his now soggy slippers.

  Chapter 2

  Glow In The Dark Undies And Cuddly Syphilis

  “We can’t possibly have the neighbours round for dinner, what on earth will they think?” Deirdre asked in dismay, surveying the destructive chaos Fotini had created in the kitchen.

  Every surface was cluttered with the debris of exploded Idaho Spud Bars following Fotini’s failed experiment concocting a new dish in the new-fangled microwave. Fotini, with her voraciously sweet tooth, had become addicted to this local chocolate marshmallow treat but had failed to remove the chocolates from their metallic wrappers before turning the microwave on. Her attempts to wash her bloomers in the new-fangled dishwasher had caused a flood and the kitchen walls were still blackened from her efforts to cook a pork chop in the new-fangled toaster. The kettle was still clogged up with sprigs and twigs after Fotini had put the Greek mountain tea, smuggled in her suitcase, directly into the electric appliance.

  “Let’s go to ‘Granny’s Greek Gyros’ for dinner,” Quentin suggested, eager to keep Nitsa away from the telephone. “I’m sure everyone would love a taste of Greece and it would spare you the embarrassment of the Jones’ seeing what Fotini has done to the kitchen.”

  “What a wonderful idea, dear. I’d never live it down if the Jones’ see what the two old crones have done to the downstairs toilet,” Deirdre agreed. She shuddered each time she recalled how Fotini and Nitsa had been fascinated by the novelty of being able to flush paper down the toilet and had experimented by feeding the contents of the kitchen waste bin into the porcelain receptacle, and then terrorised Andromeda by flushing away her cuddly stuffed goat. The local plumber had extorted an extortionate fee to unblock the toilet of potato peelings and incinerated pork chops, though Andy had rewarded him with a big sloppy kiss when he salvaged her soggy goat.

  “We can go out for dinner as soon as the others get back from the Potato Museum. Let’s just hope baby Andromeda can coax the parrot off your head before we set off,” Deirdre added, looking in dismay at the singed parrot clamped tightly to Quentin’s scalp as he furtively hid a bottle of brandy inside Deirdre’s wellingtons to keep it out of Fotini’s clutches.

  Their moment of relative peace was interrupted by the return of Hattie and Nitsa, Fat Christos, Tassia and the wailing baby.

  “Did you have fun at the Potato Museum?” Quentin asked.

  “We got lost and couldn’t find it, all the roads looked the same buried under so much snow,” Hattie exclaimed. “You should have come with us Quentin, you know the way.”

  “We couldn’t have left Fotini home alone, she would probably have burned the house down,” Quentin said defensively.

  “But we ‘ad a wonderful day out at the Oasis Bordello Museum in Wallace. Look what a treat I ‘ave for Fotis,” Nitsa said, brandishing a pair of glow in the dark panties she had bought at the bordello gift shop. “I got a pair for you too Did-Rees,” Nitsa said with a saucy wink, waving a fluorescent green throng in the air, “these are a bit more likely to turn K-Went-In’s ‘ead than those serviceable things frozen to yous washing line.”

  “I hardly think a bordello is a suitable place to take an impressionable baby,” Deirdre sniffed while wondering if she dare wear the luminous underwear.

  “Nonsense, it is ‘istorical,” Nitsa insisted. “The ‘ole place was preserved as it was when the ladies of the night fled before an FBI raid in 1988. It must ‘ave been so exciting.”

  Andromeda clapped in agreement and threw a pair of glow in the dark red satin panties at the parrot. They landed in its beak and dangled provocatively over Quentin’s forehead.

  “It wasn’t all bordellos,” Hattie interjected. “We took the baby to the very educational Museum of Clean as well, though I had a bit of a hard time explaining the concept of a vacuum cleaner to our guests.”

  Tassia glared at Hattie in silence as she was the proud owner of a new-fangled vacuum cleaner, which she found very useful for hovering up spiders, ever since coming into her late uncle’s inheritance.

  “It was boring,” Nitsa interrupted. “Fancy charging good money for people to look at brooms. I must tell Bald Yannis, it could give ‘im ideas.”

  “Andromeda adored it until she got trapped in the giant display dustbin and had to be rescued by the fire brigade. Fat Christos bought her a giant educational microbe stuffed toy from the gift shop,” Hattie expanded.

  “Want cuddly sip-lly,” Andy cried loudly in a fit of temper tantrum.

  “Cuddly syphilis it not a suitable toy my sweetheart,” Fat Christos cooed. “Play with your nice stuffed typhoid fever instead.”

  “Want cuddly sip-lly,” Andy screamed, hurling the stuffed typhoid bundle across the kitchen, knocking over Deirdre’s wellingtons. The bottle of brandy rolled out of one boot across the kitchen floor and landed at Nitsa’s feet. Sweeping up the bottle she announced “I’ll just make a quick call to Fotis before we go out to eat Greek.”

  Quentin groaned at the thought of the exorbitant telephone bill while Deirdre nagged him about rousing Fotini from her siesta. She was insistent Fotini join them on their gyros jaunt, convinced it wasn’t safe to leave her home alone.

  Fotini’s journey into the Jones’ garden was the furthest she had ventured out in Idaho since landing on Quentin and Deirdre’s doorstep. She found it quite impossible to get her head around the Fahrenheit to Centigrade conversion and had expected the average Idaho February temperature of twenty seven to equate to balmy Greek spring days, having never before confronted a minus symbol on a thermometer.

  This year was proving to be an exceptionally cold ten degrees and Fotini was worried about getting frost bite on her extremities. She insisted on strapping hot water bottles to the exposed flesh on her hairy legs between her pop socks and her garish bloomers, whilst Nitsa had adapted to the cold by dressing in a hooded onesie with floppy rabbit’s ears. She was in her element discovering this new continent and the endless ‘all you can eat buffets’ though the others had to physically restrain her to prevent her making off with any randomly parked taxis.

  Nitsa finally managed to persuade Fotini to join them at ‘Granny’s Greek Gyros’ by convincing her ther
e was nothing left to eat at the house apart from one of Quentin’s self-heating Christmas tinners. “Granny’s Gyros ‘as ‘omemade spanakopita an’ Hattie says yous can borrow ‘er thermal knickers,” Nitsa reasoned, “an’ tomorrow we can get K-Went-In to stop at the supermarket an’ stock up on Spud Bars an’ brandy on the way to the Potato Museum.”

  “Yous is right Nitsa, I cant’s spend one more day in this pigsty,” Fotini agreed, looking contemptuously at Deirdre’s now disgusting kitchen.

  Chapter 3

  Granny’s Greek Gyros

  Flamboyantly moustached ‘call me Mel’ Melecretes, the proud proprietor of ‘Granny’s Greek Gyros,’ was so delighted to have a contingent of genuine Greek customers he shovelled a pathway through the snow and gave Nitsa a fireman’s lift so she wouldn’t slip on the ice in her new stilettos. She had paired her ridiculously unsuitable footwear with the rabbit-eared onesie and groomed her moustache over her lips to stop her teeth from chattering in the cold.

  The sight of Fotini in her hideous old lady dress and pop socks flooded Mel with nostalgia for the old Greek granny he had named his gyros shop for. He sent the two old crones complimentary Metaxas, gushing what a pleasure it was to welcome them to his humble establishment. Cooing and fussing over the baby who was still demanding “cuddly sip-lly” he attempted to oblige by offering a sippy cup. Andromeda immediately hurled it to the floor, forcing Fat Christos to confess his daughter actually wanted cuddly syphilis. Tweaking his moustache ‘call me Mel’ huffed “cook ‘asn’t got syphilis,” before taking the groups order for tzatziki, spanakopita, horiatiki, horta and gyros.

  Mrs Jones was on a diet and ordered an egg white omelette, causing Mel to scoff derisively and practically force-feed her a generous plate of home-made baklava which she had to admit was delicious. He took umbrage when Mr Jones attempted to get into the swing of things by proclaiming “lots of malaka this evening,” and only refrained from punching him due to Quentin’s quick explanation that the expletive had been lost in translation. He was more than happy to liquidise Fat Christos’ gyros and was so charmed by the charmless Fotini he sent one of the waiters out in search of Idaho Spud Bars.