The Summer Snow

by Rebecca Pawel

  “I knew there was a reason we kept you around,” Felipe said. “Listen. Your cousin is going to have lunch with us. Can you set another place all by yourself or do you need Amayita to help you?”

  “I can do it!” Felipe set Pepín down, and the boy scurried back into the kitchen, intent on proving himself useful.

  “Maya, put the baby in her chair before she gets out of her playpen again,” Felipe ordered. He smiled at Lili, slid an arm around her, and murmured, “Give us ten minutes.”

  “It’ll take that long to make salad anyway,” she answered.

  When Lili and the children had returned to the kitchen, Felipe turned back to his guest. “Questions, Lieutenant?” he asked sardonically, gesturing toward the couch.

  Tejada sank down gratefully, and then immediately started up. He removed the square block caught between the cushions, put it on the floor, and seated himself again more carefully. He was silent for a moment, unsure what to ask first. This cluttered apartment certainly explained the empty rooms on the Gran Vía, and Felipe’s dismissal of his valet made sense in the light of the expenses of three children, but Lili’s existence raised almost more questions than it answered. “Tío Fernando said you were having an affair with a flamenco dancer,” he said finally.

  Felipe smiled and sat beside his cousin. “He’s right in a way. Lili was one of the best dancers in Granada. She could really dance, you know. She didn’t just look pretty and shake her ass. Although with a body like hers . . .” He trailed off, contemplating a fond memory.

  Tejada blinked, trying to reconcile the image of the matronly figure he had just seen with Felipe’s warm praise. He was unable to manage it until he considered that Maya might resemble her mother. He mentally aged Felipe’s daughter ten years and discovered that Lili had probably been beautiful. “She doesn’t . . . er, dance now?” he hazarded. It was a measure of his confusion that he was genuinely uncertain of the answer.

  “Oh, no. She says she’s out of practice. She still sings, and sometimes we’ll do a little sevillanas when her people come over and there’s a decent guitarist. But it’s hard for us to go out in the evenings because of the kids.”

  “Her people come over?” Tejada said faintly, wondering what kind of affair Felipe was conducting. It was unlike him to socialize with his mistresses’ families, and Lili had seemed uncommonly well informed about the Tejada and Ordoñez families as well.

  “Her cousins and their husbands. Lili’s an orphan, actually, but the Gypsies take care of their own, you know, so she’s never lacked for family.”

  Tejada swallowed. “She’s a Gypsy?”

  “Of course. The best flamenco artists always are.”

  “And how long have you been . . . involved with her?” Tejada asked, longing to demand what exactly the involvement consisted of, and why Felipe was so positive that the children were his own.

  “You don’t need to use that tone of voice,” Felipe said mildly. “It got serious a little before Maya was born. I found Lili a room near a doctor when she was pregnant, and she wasn’t used to being alone so I ended up spending a lot of time with her and one thing sort of led to another.”

  “How old is Maya?” Tejada asked, dazed.

  “She’ll be ten at Christmas.”

  Pepín appeared in the doorway. “Papa! Lunch is ready.”

  “Coming.” Felipe rose, and Tejada followed him into the kitchen.

  The room was warm and lit by electric bulbs. A long narrow table against one wall held five plates, and Marianita was wriggling in a high chair in the corner. Lili and Maya passed around slices of tortilla and pieces of bread. Felipe opened wine and offered a glass to the lieutenant. Tejada drank and noticed with amusement that the wine was good, a vintage Cáceres, that seemed out of place with the setting. The drink was a faint reminder of the expensive tastes of the young Felipe whom Tejada remembered. Conversation was stilted at first, made awkward by the stranger’s presence. Tejada complimented Lili on the meal, and she thanked him politely, but with reserve. “Have you been settled here long?” he asked, remembering the end of his chat with Felipe.

  “Since just after the war ended,” Lili answered. “It’s a miracle we found it when housing was so short.”

  “San Miguel found it for us,” Maya interjected, smiling mischievously.

  Both her parents and Pepín laughed, as at a familiar joke, and Lili explained. “We were living in a tiny studio, and Maya desperately wanted her own room. When she was four we took her up to San Miguel Alto during the pilgrimage, and she insisted on lighting her very own candle to the saint. We had been talking for a while about having another baby, and we thought maybe she had decided to pray for a baby brother or sister. But when her papa asked her, she said she had prayed for her own room.”

  “We found an apartment right after that,” Maya pointed out, triumphant. “And I had my own room until Mariana was born, so San Miguel listened.”

  “A skeptic would also say that I knew the landlord,” Felipe added.

  Tejada laughed. “My wife and I have lived in temporary quarters since our son was born, and I’ve been promised a new barracks for the last six months. Maybe we should start lighting candles also.”

  “It couldn’t hurt,” Maya said.

  “How old is your son?” Felipe asked at the same moment.

  “Four and a half.”

  “Close to Pepín’s age,” Lili commented.

  “No, it’s not,” Pepín interjected with disgust. “I’m almost six.”

  “Practically ancient,” his father agreed with a smile.

  The conversation continued—aimless, casual, and friendly. Tejada found himself more relaxed than he had been since arriving in Granada. He spared a moment to feel guilty about abandoning Elena, and then reflected uneasily that it would be awkward to explain his cousin’s domestic arrangements to her. When the meal had been cleared away, Pepín was shooed off to nap, grumbling, and Maya disappeared into her room, murmuring something about a book she wanted to finish. Felipe took his guest back into the living room, and Lili picked up Mariana and carried the baby into the master bedroom. Within a few moments, the sound of a flamenco lament rearranged into a lullaby emerged from the bedroom. Felipe looked smugly at Tejada. “Doesn’t she have a great voice?”

  “I suppose,” Tejada said, a little embarrassed.

  Felipe leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and spoke seriously. “You understand now why I’m not down on the Gran Vía much, and why I don’t have much spare cash, don’t you?”

  “I guess so,” Tejada nodded slowly. “But . . . I’m sorry, Tío, I still don’t know why Doña Rosalia was so angry with you, or what you went to see her about.”

  Felipe sighed. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask about that.”

  Chapter 16

  “You know I have to ask.” Tejada regarded his cousin steadily. “I know, I know. You always did take yourself too seriously.” Felipe smiled wryly. “Look, Carlito, I was hoping you’d understand after you met Lili and the kids, and saw all this.” He waved one arm, an expansive gesture that took in the battered furniture, the abandoned playpen, the faint smells from the kitchen, and the song from the bedroom. “That this is important, you know? That I’m not just—” He paused and his mouth twisted. “Not just being irresponsible and self-indulgent. I didn’t mean to get this involved with Lili, but I am, and nothing can change that now and I’m not sorry for it!” he finished defiantly.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Tejada pointed out.

  “I know.” Felipe let out a breath and smiled. “But Mother and Dani have said more than enough. Even Nando thinks I should get married and settle down, and not spend all my time and money on my mistress.”

  “They know about Lili?” Tejada asked, surprised.

  Felipe shrugged. “Nando knows in a general sort of way that I have a couple of kids to provide for. I haven’t told him that I’m basically living here. I never told Dani or Mother details, of course. They
just assume that I’m out with a different girl every night of the week, and that it’s high time I got married.” He grimaced.

  “Was that what your mother called you about?” Tejada guessed. “Getting married?”

  “Got it in one,” Felipe nodded. “She and Nando had hatched this ridiculous scheme for me to marry that little girl Jaime was engaged to.”

  “Amparo Villalobos,” Tejada said. “Tía Bernarda mentioned it to me.”

  “Then I imagine you’ve heard all the arguments,” Felipe said dryly. “She’s beautiful, virtuous, and not so young that she wouldn’t look at me. And since Rioseco flitted, her father’s rich as Croesus.”

  “Flitted?” Tejada repeated, momentarily distracted. “What do you mean?”

  “You haven’t ferreted that out yet?” Felipe laughed. “You should listen more to old gossip. One of the Rioseco boys— Miguel, I think—was arrested at the beginning of the war. One of the ones who disappeared ‘without official news,’ as you people say. Don Ramiro sold out the business at a loss, and the rest of the family moved to Cuba.”

  Nilo’s voice echoed in the lieutenant’s memory. “Folk guilty of nothing more than belonging to the wrong party. . . . He was like his father. A real gentleman.” For a moment he had the obscure feeling that the Rioseco family’s misfortune was tied to something in Alberto Cordero’s statement, but he could not think what. He regretfully dismissed the possible connection. It would be too easy to pin everything on Cordero. He wondered when Amparo and Jaime had announced their engagement. “So now Amparo’s father is looking to become Villalobos and Ordoñez?” he asked.

  “And Nando wouldn’t mind being Ordoñez and Villalobos.” Felipe nodded. He became more serious as he added, “I don’t mean that Amparo’s part of all that. She’s a nice kid, and she was damn near crazy when Jaime died. But I can’t marry her.”

  Tejada remembered Amparo gravely crossing herself and wondered what she would think of a husband who lived with a mistress and three bastard children. “No, I don’t think you could. Is that what you told your mother?”

  Felipe shrugged. “More or less. I tried to put it down to the age difference, and then to my liking my freedom, but she was more persistent than usual and—” He broke off, looking uncomfortable. “I mean, God rest her soul, Carlos, she was my mother and I shouldn’t speak ill of her, but she got me so irritated. Talking to me as if I were five years old and telling me that she wanted grandchildren before she died! I tried to tell her that my sister and brother had already provided her with enough grandchildren to field a soccer team, but she wanted grandchildren from me! And then—well, she was my mother, and I shouldn’t have done it. But I’d just come from registering Pepín for school next year, and when she started going on about it I just—” He stood abruptly and crossed the room. “I had a copy of this in my wallet,” he said, his back to Tejada, and his voice muffled as he opened a writing desk and rummaged in one of the drawers. “I finally took it out and told her to stop worrying about grandchildren.”

  He held out a creased paper to the lieutenant. Tejada unfolded it and read a declaration by the parish priest of San Nicolás certifying that the firstborn son of Felipe Ordoñez Tejada and Liliana Soto had been baptized into the Christian faith with the name José Felipe on December 4, 1939. Tejada considered how Doña Rosalia was likely to have reacted to such an announcement. “She was upset?” he guessed.

  Felipe, who had been pacing nervously in front of the lieutenant, stopped walking and snorted. “There’s an understatement! She told me I was crazy to give my name to another man’s bastard. I told her that Pepín was neither a bastard nor another man’s. She wanted to know how I knew, and I ended up explaining about Maya and Mariana.”

  “Explaining?” Tejada raised his eyebrows.

  Felipe gave a reluctant smile. “Well, throwing them in her face maybe. But I was pretty angry by then.”

  “She threatened to disinherit you?”

  Felipe nodded and resumed his pacing. “And said some things about Lili that I’d rather not repeat. I . . .” He trailed off. The lieutenant waited. “I was pretty angry.”

  Tejada looked at his cousin’s face and wanted to let the matter rest. But one thing was still unexplained. “I don’t see what she could have threatened to go to the Guardia with,” he said honestly. “You’re not the first man to have a—a friend like Lili. Or the last.”

  Felipe took a deep breath. “There was more to it than that. She said that until I told her I was ready to marry Amparo, Nando was her only son, and that I could forget about any inheritance of hers ever going to . . . to the illegitimate children of a woman like Lili.” He winced, and Tejada guessed that Doña Rosalia’s original phrasing had been something along the lines of “to a Gypsy whore’s bastards.” Felipe kept speaking in a low rapid monotone, as if anxious to finish his confession. “I yelled at her that I didn’t want a penny of her money, and that I’d marry Lili before I let anyone speak about her or my children like that. She said I wasn’t serious, and when I told her I was, she—” Felipe glanced toward the bedroom and lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “She said she would lodge a denunciation against Lili for lewd public behavior and have her arrested as a streetwalker.”

  “Did you think she would actually do it?” Tejada asked, privately thinking that Rivas would have been unlikely to waste time and money tracking down anyone accused by Doña Rosalia.

  Felipe dropped into the chair opposite him and leaned forward. “Yes. Oh, I know, she pestered the life out of the Guardia about all sorts of things, and they might not have done anything, but this wasn’t like one of her Red plots. She had Lili’s name and surname thanks to my stupidity, and—” He choked slightly. “Do you know what they do to the women accused of being prostitutes outside of the licensed brothels? They lock them up in the convent of San Antón and shave their heads and take away their children!”

  “Well, in some cases that might be for the best,” Tejada pointed out.

  Felipe glared at him. “Oh, really? We had a neighbor who used to help Lili with Pepín when he was small. Her husband was killed at the barricades in ’36, damn fool, and left her with two babies. She was mostly a seamstress, but when money wasn’t coming in she worked the streets a little on the side. She was arrested in a sweep one night, and the next day they came and took away her boys and put them in an orphanage because they were ‘of an unknown father and unfit mother.’ She got out six months later, all skin and bone and bald as a baby, and when she found out that her kids were gone—my God, I never want to hear a woman make noises like that again. I swear to you, Carlos, I spent a month carrying all my kids’ birth certificates in my wallet so I could go and get them out of an orphanage if I had to. I was scared every time Lili went out to do the shopping until —” He stopped abruptly, his fists clenched. “I could have killed Mother!”

  “Did you?” Tejada asked softly.

  Felipe looked up at his cousin, startled. “No. No, I didn’t. But, God forgive me, I was glad when I learned she was dead.” He smiled a little crookedly. “I don’t suppose you’d know if she actually changed her will, would you?”

  “You mean you don’t know?” Tejada asked.

  “I was damned if I was going to go to Nando and beg for information,” Felipe retorted. “I didn’t hear anything, so I assume that I’m not one of her heirs. Which is another example of my stupidity, because we could have used the money.”

  “I haven’t actually seen the will,” Tejada said carefully. “But it looks that way.”

  Felipe sighed. “Well, if Nando gets my share maybe he’ll be resigned to my not marrying Amparo.”

  “Maybe.” Tejada glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to four. He would have been happy to drop the subject, but Felipe’s own words—“You’re here as guardia, right? Not just my little cousin”— made him ask, “The last time you saw your mother, did you have anything to eat or drink with her?”

  Felipe stared at his cousin, disco
ncerted by the change of subject. “I don’t remember. She probably offered me a glass of wine. She used to drink this god-awful stuff that had been open so long it was nearly vinegar—” He broke off. “Wait a minute, Nando told me she was poisoned. You think I put something in her wine!”

  “We don’t have a source for the poison yet,” Tejada said.

  Felipe looked at him through narrowed eyes. “What was she poisoned with then?”

  “Cyanide.”

  Felipe put one hand to his face. “Oh, shit. Cyanide’s what they use in gold plating and all that jewelry stuff, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Tejada said, remembering his afternoon in the library, but surprised that Felipe was so well informed.

  “Well, I’m screwed,” Felipe said. “Lili’s brother-in-law is a jeweler. We’ve visited his workshop a couple of times and had to hold onto the kids the whole time for fear they’d go sticking their noses into something poisonous. So I guess that gives me—what do they call it in detective stories?—means, motive, and opportunity.”

  Tejada nodded. “On the other hand, if you were arrested, you’d leave Lili and the children more vulnerable than ever, and I don’t think you’d want that.”

  Felipe smiled. “For a guardia, Carlos, you’re pretty intelligent.”

  “I hear that a lot,” the lieutenant said. He stood up. “Thanks for lunch, Tío. And for answering the questions.”

  “You’re welcome.” Felipe stood also. “I’ll see you out.”

  “Please thank Lili for me as well,” Tejada moved toward the door of the apartment, accompanied by his cousin.

  “I will. I’m sure she’d want to say good-bye, but it’s hard to get Marianita to sleep, and I don’t want to disturb her. Here, the bolt’s tricky.” Felipe stepped in front of the lieutenant and twisted the lock before shoving the door open and ushering him down the stairs.

  In the courtyard, Tejada turned to face his cousin. “Thanks again. And sorry about searching the apartment and, well, everything really. Sorry about everything.”