The Domingo Armada Mysteries Box Set

by Jefferson Bonar

  “So, what is it, sir?” Lucas asked with a desperation that cracked his voice.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know….”

  Armada turned and began walking back toward the door, signalling he was about to leave. It may well have been one of the last times he would ever see Lucas alive, should things not go well. And there was so much he wished he could say. But the words, they weren’t there. It was all wrong. He was still angry. He needed to be angry. He could hardly get sentimental now. He felt his insides were like a clenched fist, ready to strike. That was no way to say goodbye to a friend. Perhaps he would try to come back later today. Lucas needed him to get through this harrowing time. But it wasn’t in him. He had to solve the case. It’s why he was here, wasn’t it? He didn’t have time. There was no time.

  “Sir…,” he heard Lucas plead from behind him. Armada tried to ignore this.

  “Sir!”

  Armada stopped walking, but did not turn around.

  “They’re going to set off a bomb tonight, sir. San Bartolomé. It was that barrel of powder Julian had. They’re going to set it off inside their own building tonight and blame it on the boys at Arzobispo. They think it will help them win the election.”

  Armada nodded. “Thank you, Lucas.”

  There was nothing left to say, and Armada walked down the lonely corridor and back out of the ayuntamiento, up to the street, and into the fresh air. He waited until he was far enough away from the building and anyone who might know him to finally let his right hand out of his sleeve, watching it shake uncontrollably. There was little he could do to stop it. He was an old man. He was losing control of his body. It happened to old men.

  But this was different. Somehow, his hand knew Lucas’s life was in danger. It knew how little time he had to save the most valuable relationship he’d ever had. It knew that he had said all the wrong things in there and that it might be the last time he saw Lucas alive. It knew once Lucas was gone, there would be no repairing the damage.

  Somehow, it knew all of this and shook so that the rest of him wouldn’t have to.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  There was no better place to start than the beginning. In this case, the night that the real Aurelio Martinez was killed. This involved a trip to Aldeatejada, the tiny pueblo just two hours south, where Aurelio was born and had lived his short, tragic life.

  The trip was short in a mule-pulled cart, but it felt much longer. He had always enjoyed travelling. All the new places and experiences helped to keep the worst of the nightmares from his past under control. He could easily distract himself with meeting new people, new places, new events everywhere he went. He needed the sense that he was always on the move, never letting the ghosts catch up to him. Soon, they would be entirely crowded out of his mind by the new memories he was making, if he made enough of them. At least, that’s what he desperately hoped when he’d taken this job so many years ago.

  But no new experiences could distract his mind today. Being alone with his thoughts for even a moment was agony. It gave him ample time to ponder what would happen if Lucas was to hang. The guilt would crush him, Armada knew. He would never survive it. How had it come to this? He had worked as a constable for years before Lucas had come along and he had gotten along just fine. Now, suddenly his ability to continue in it rested on saving Lucas and somehow repairing their estranged relationship. Although he still had no idea how. Lucas was drifting further and further from him all the time, getting ready to strike out on his own. Armada always knew Lucas wouldn’t stay with him forever, and yet deep in the darkest corner of his mind, where no one else was allowed, the voice he only listened to when sleep would not grant him relief in the dead of the night, he secretly hoped Lucas never would.

  Armada tried to distract himself with the surroundings, but out here there was little to ponder. The terrain was very flat and treeless, the road unnaturally rocky and the mule in no hurry. This land had been devoted to raising livestock, meaning much of the browning fields were dotted with distant herds of grazing cattle and very little else to look at. It was also why the road leading north toward Salamanca, and its lucrative daily market, was in such bad condition, as it was constantly being chewed up by the hooves of heavy animals being herded north to be sold.

  Armada finally reached Aldeatejada in the late afternoon. It was a tiny village, just a handful of white-plastered buildings cobbled around a tiny square, as most villages were. Armada guessed there wouldn’t be more than a few hundred people living here. He moved into the plaza to find a few elderly men sitting by a dry fountain with walking sticks leaning against their knees.

  They were friendly enough when Armada spoke to them and they directed him to the house of the Martinez family. Despite the vast expanse of space all round, the house was butted up against a narrow lane where many other houses loomed to maximise shade for all of them.

  “Señora Martinez?” Armada asked of the woman who answered the door. She was somewhere in her forties, looking a bit too skinny to be healthy, and wiping her thin, large-knuckled hands on the soiled apron she wore over her black dress.

  “Yes?”

  “I am Domingo Armada, of the Holy Brotherhood. I wanted to talk to you about Aurelio.”

  “A buenas horas…,” the woman mumbled under her breath as he stepped inside.

  The house was very typical of a small Spanish village, with a large wooden table in the middle just in front of a fire pit, where the woman was making a large pot of something that smelled of cabbage. There were a couple of small rooms to the back, both of which seemed to be empty. He was alone with her, for the moment.

  “Is it all right to speak of him now?” Armada asked.

  “Yes, of course! Nobody else wants to speak of him. They don’t want to upset me. Like I’m going to burst into tears at the very mention of his name. But he was my son, I always like talking about him. It’s my husband. Carlos is the one that pretends our boy never existed. That’s his way, I guess. He just works more, drinks more, and pretends everything is fine. But it bothers him. He is mourning, same as me. I can tell. A wife can always tell. He would feel so much better if he just…well…that’s men for you.”

  Armada wasn’t sure how much of that last remark was directed at him. The way the woman spoke, it seemed almost a relief for her to speak, her words somehow shedding some great weight that her soul had borne for so long.

  “Can I ask about the day he disappeared? What happened?”

  The woman took a breath. “I don’t know. I wish I did! He just snuck off in the middle of the night. He didn’t tell any of us where he was going, or why. My Aurelio, he was an angel. He had never done anything like that before. It was just so unusual.”

  “Had he been acting strangely before then? Perhaps upset about something?”

  “No! Quite the opposite. He was excited. It had only been a few weeks since Lady Florentia said she was going to sponsor him for university. He was racing about all over this house trying to get ready. He was always asking me to sew him new clothes, or cobble some new shoes, or make a new canvas bag. My Aurelio just had a mind that wouldn’t quit. He wanted to make sure he didn’t forget anything when he went to school.”

  “So, he went out that night and never came back?”

  “It was so awful that next morning. It took us awhile to even realise he was gone. By that afternoon, the whole town was out in the fields looking for him. We asked all the farmers who live in the sheds up there, even some of the surrounding villages. But no one had seen him. He was just suddenly gone. We never did find out what happened to him. That was the worst part. Not knowing what happened…or why….”

  Señora Martinez put a hand to her mouth to compose herself, then returned to her cooking.

  Armada was sorely tempted to tell her that her boy had been found. But she probably wouldn’t be able to answer any questions after that. The emotions would be too much. He had to wait until the end. He needed his answers first. He had to first make
sure that there wouldn’t be another death like Aurelio’s.

  “Did a lot of other people know that Aurelio was being sponsored by Lady Florentia?”

  “Of course! Everyone in the pueblo knew. We made sure of that. Lady Florentia makes it clear she wants only the best student. My Aurelio worked very hard to get the best marks in the whole village. It was a proud moment when we received the letter from Lady Florentia. Everyone knew.”

  So, jealousy could have played a role, Armada thought. Perhaps one of the other boys didn’t handle their loss well?

  “How many other boys were competing for this sponsorship?”

  “Oh, there were ten or fifteen at least. And they weren’t all from this village. Lady Florentia was looking for students in all the pueblos in this area.”

  Armada’s heart sank. It would take ages to question each family, each boy that competed with Aurelio for that sponsorship. He didn’t have that kind of time.

  “Have you ever heard of the Mendoza family? Juan Mendoza, specifically?”

  “No. They can’t be from this pueblo. There are no Mendozas here. And to be honest, I’ve rarely travelled anywhere else. Too much to do here. I still have two other children, you know. And they’ll be home soon.”

  It was her subtle way of telling Armada to finish up his interrogation. But he still hadn’t gotten anywhere with it. He was still poking about in the dark, looking for any kind of clue without knowing what it was or what to focus on. Interrogations like these took time.

  “Did Lady Florentia ever meet your son personally? Did he ever travel to her villa?”

  “Oh no. The mad old woman is a hermit. It stated very clearly in the letter we were not to visit. She said she would make all the arrangements herself.”

  “Have you ever met her? Or anyone else in the pueblo that you know of?”

  “No, I don’t think so. At least none that I’ve heard.”

  Armada was starting to get frustrated and felt his temper get short. But he couldn’t let it show to this woman. He wouldn’t find what he was looking for if he got curt with her. Besides, something she’d said was still echoing in his mind.

  He just snuck off in the middle of the night.

  So, what had drawn Aurelio out? At some point between winning Lady Florentia’s sponsorship and the night he died, somebody had given him a reason to leave the house and travel to Salamanca in the middle of the night. Aurelio had been convinced that it was so important, he had told no one.

  And it had to be connected with the school. It was the only major event happening in Aurelio’s life that was connected to where he died. What could someone have told him to convince him to behave so irrationally?

  Was it possible Juan Mendoza’s mother hadn’t told him the whole truth? Did she perhaps make contact with Aurelio, tempting him out in the middle of the night in order to kill him so her son could take his place? She was certainly motivated enough to do so. Most mothers Armada had met would do anything to secure the future of their children. But he had yet to meet one who would kill for them. It was a crazy theory, but if it was true, he had to prove she’d made contact with Aurelio. And where could he find that?

  “Señora Martinez, I’m afraid I have news about…,” Armada began, but he cut himself off.

  A thought had occurred. A memory, really. He had suddenly thought of a time last year, when he’d been on a case with Lucas. They had been camping out under the stars, and although Lucas didn’t know, he had swapped mattresses with the boy, as his own mattress was getting much too thin for his old bones. He hadn’t been able to sleep and had been tossing about when he heard a strange crumpling sound that didn’t fit. Feeling about inside the mattress, he found a small bit of paper. It was a page from a book, but instead of words, it was a drawing of a young, beautiful woman. She was looking off to the left and rather forlorn, her bodice having fallen most of the way down off her bosoms. It wasn’t difficult to figure out why the curious young boy had taken the page and kept it stashed deep within the recesses of his mattress, where he figured Armada would never find it.

  “May I see Aurelio’s room?” Armada asked suddenly.

  The woman stopped, hesitating.

  “I understand it’s sacred,” Armada said. “But it might help me figure out what happened to him. Please.”

  Señora Martinez made no secret of her reluctance, but she still led Armada into a back room separated from the rest of the house by a heavy bit of fabric hanging in the door.

  Armada entered, finding little of interest as he cast his eyes about. The room was tiny and very sparse. Just a simple bed, a table in the corner with a few books Aurelio had been studying, and a pile of carefully folded clothes in the corner where his mother had put them the day before he disappeared.

  Armada could feel the heat of the woman’s eyes on his neck. He knew the unwritten rule was that he wasn’t to touch anything. And he would have loved nothing more than to honour that rule.

  But he didn’t have the time.

  Armada went to the mattress and lifted it up. It was a simple mattress, just two bits of canvas stitched together and stuffed with hay. Armada ran his hand along the seam until he came to a bit where the seam was coming apart. A rip, just large enough for a boy to stuff his hand through.

  Armada grabbed this seam and pulled it apart, breaking the seams and incurring the woman’s wrath.

  “What are you doing? Stop that! I didn’t say you could do that!” the woman screeched, pulling on his arm.

  Armada ignored her and continued ripping Aurelio’s mattress. He then plunged his hand inside the hay, feeling the greasiness that came from absorbing the boy’s sweat for most of his life. He was beginning to regret having been so bold when his fingers floated over the sharp edge of a bit of paper. Armada grabbed it and ripped it out of the mattress.

  It was a letter, and one that he hoped would be from Angeles Mendoza. He prayed God would make this easy for him. Just this one case. For Lucas’s sake, for Señora Martinez’s sake. For Aurelio’s sake.

  Armada unrolled the letter, its sudden appearance having placated Aurelio’s mother for the moment, and read it over.

  As he suspected, it was a letter inviting Aurelio Martinez out on the night he disappeared. He was to report to San Bartolomé, where the boys knew he would be attending in the fall. Before he could start, however, he would need to be initiated, and he was to report to the pupilaje at midnight and tell no one he was coming. The letter was signed Julian de Benaudalla, on behalf of San Bartolomé.

  Armada’s heart seized with rage. But before he could let it entirely consume him, there was one thing he had to do first.

  “Señora Martinez, we found your son’s body. And I think I know what happened to him that night….”

  Señora Martinez listened, her mouth agape, as he told her everything he knew so far.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Armada saw no reason to be nice. He pushed past Ambrosio, who had come to open the door for him, and ignored his pleas to know what was going on and whether that bellaco boy of his was going to return to work.

  “Everybody in the common room!” Armada screamed from the foyer. “Now!”

  It was the middle of the night, with Armada having sped back to Salamanca as fast as he could. As he predicted, Ambrosio’s pupilaje was still intact and not burning. The boys had not gone through with their plan to blow it up the night before the election. Armada knew why—they were too cowardly to do it without Julian. It had been Julian who had secured the serpentine, and he was probably the only one who knew how to ignite it. The other boys had probably only read about serpentine in books, for when would the children of titled nobility ever have gotten their hands dirty in such a way?

  Armada bounded up the stairs to the first door that led to one of the boys’ rooms and pounded on it.

  “Everyone get up! Right now!”

  The door cracked open a little and the sleepy, hungover eyes of a boy who had spent the afternoon drinking too
much peeped out at him.

  Armada reached his hand in and grabbed the boy’s collar, pulling him out of the door. The boy stumbled into the corridor and Armada threw him toward the common room.

  “Common room! Go on!”

  The boy, sensing Armada was not about to take arguments, stumbled awkwardly down toward the common room in the back.

  Armada walked down the hallway, banging loudly on each door as he went. Soon, all the boys and Ambrosio were sitting in the common room, with a couple of candles Ambrosio had thought to light flickering in eyes that gawked at him.

  Armada slapped the letter Aurelio had received down on the table in front of them.

  “Tell me about this.”

  All the boys glanced at it and Armada could see recognition in their eyes. None of them wanted to pick it up.

  “I’m waiting!” Armada screamed.

  Finally, the eldest, the boy Lucas had called Marco, reached down and picked up the letter. He looked it over.

  “It’s…it’s just the letter we sent to Aurelio….”

  “Why?”

  “To initiate him.”

  “Who wrote it?”

  “Julian…I think….”

  “Don’t think! Be sure!”

  “Julian…definitely Julian…,” Marco stammered, unable to hide his fear.

  “What was the plan?” Armada said. “Kill him here? Or ambush him outside of town?”

  “Kill him?” one of the boys said. “We didn’t want to—”

  “We weren’t going to kill him—”

  “So why draw him out in the middle of the night? Because whoever did stuck a dagger in him, and then buried his body under the Roman Bridge. Which means someone in this room is a murderer.”

  Heads quickly swivelled about as the boys looked at each other, not knowing what to do or say. Ambrosio gasped, but said nothing. Armada sensed he was enjoying the fact that one of them was about to get a comeuppance that boys of their status rarely got.