“Just saw the will?” Rivas repeated. “You don’t think that Doña Rosalia kept her important documents locked up? She was a”—he coughed and rephrased his comment out of respect for the lieutenant’s relationship to the dead woman—“a very careful woman.”
Long experience had taught him that complaining about subordinates to their officers often backfired, so Tejada resisted the urge to tell Rivas that Medina and Soler had made such a mess of Doña Rosalia’s apartment during their initial search that it was impossible to tell whether Doña Rosalia had kept her important documents in any sort of order at all. “It is just a theory,” he repeated patiently. “But according to the reports, Doña Rosalia saw Felipe on Friday, changed her will on Saturday, and saw Amparo that Sunday.” The lieutenant took a deep breath and forced himself to speak openly about one of the more painful pieces of the puzzle. “Nilo—Guardia Fuentes—said she was so angry that she was fuming to him about Felipe after she changed her will. And Amparo was her confidante, practically the only person she trusted. Don’t you think Doña Rosalia might have mentioned her will—or even shown it—to Amparo when she visited the next day?”
Rivas was unwillingly impressed. The lieutenant’s theory made sense. On the other hand, it was sure to make powerful enemies for the Guardia, and it did not bring them perceptibly closer to Doña Rosalia’s murderer. “It doesn’t tell us who killed her,” he reminded Tejada.
“Maybe not,” the lieutenant agreed. “But it’s one less thing to worry about.” He did not admit to Rivas that he wanted to find the will because he wished to have something concrete to present to his father. He did not even admit to himself that his father would probably care more for the recovery of the will than the capture of his aunt’s killer.
Rivas thought for a moment. He had no desire to offend the Villalobos family. But if the lieutenant was set on his course then Rivas might as well try to make sure they were the only family offended. “Do you think Doña Rosalia could have found out that Señorita Villalobos stole her will?” he asked. “If she confronted the girl, it might be a motive for murder.”
Tejada blinked. “It’s a possibility,” he said. “But I can’t really see Señorita Villalobos committing murder. She’d have to find poison and a way to administer it.”
“She was a frequent visitor,” Rivas pointed out. “She must have known Doña Rosalia’s habits as well as anyone.” He hesitated and then added, “And she might have had an accomplice.”
“I don’t think so.” Rivas took the words as a reproof, which was a mistake. Tejada was genuinely thoughtful. “She doesn’t strike me as the sort of girl who gets along well with the servants.”
Because he liked Tejada, the sergeant took a risk. “I didn’t mean in the house. But if you’re right, Lieutenant, she and Señor Ordoñez had a shared interest.”
Tejada opened his mouth to deny that Felipe would ever collude with Amparo, and then shut it again. He had not told the sergeant about Felipe’s plans to marry Lili because he felt that it was not Rivas’s business. But without that crucial piece of information, Amparo and Felipe seemed to be obvious allies. “My Tío Felipe will never marry Amparo,” he said quietly. “So he wouldn’t hatch this kind of a scheme with her.”
Rivas sighed. The lieutenant apparently still had a blind spot where his cousin was concerned. “Señor Villalobos is likely to be very offended if we search his house,” he said instead.
Tejada nodded. “I know. But I doubt a very thorough search will be necessary. I don’t think I showed too much interest in the will this morning. We will probably find it if we just look in her room.”
Rivas made a face. “Oh, great. I’m sure the gentleman will be less offended if we leave the public rooms alone and just go through his daughter’s private possessions.”
Tejada thought about going back to Amparo’s house and demanding to search her room. He winced mentally. “Tell Señor Villalobos that he can be present the entire time,” he said.
“What do you mean, tell him?” Rivas’s amused grimace turned to an expression of horror. “You’re the ranking officer, sir!”
“I know,” Tejada said dryly. “And I’m pulling rank. I’ve interviewed Señorita Villalobos twice, and spoken to the Ordoñez and Tejada families. I don’t need to do everything. You take four men and go find that will.”
“But why?” Rivas was aghast.
“Because,” said Tejada, remembering Elena’s estimation of Amparo, “if my wife finds out that I went through Amparo Villalobos’s bedroom, my marriage will not survive the strain.”
Rivas was eighty percent certain that the lieutenant was joking, but he could not think of a way to contest the order. Lieutenant Tejada had been very obliging about interviewing the more difficult suspects in the Ordoñez case, and the sergeant could not blame him for wanting to avoid a confrontation with Señor Villalobos. “Yes, sir,” he said miserably, wondering if his superiors would accept the argument that the entire thing had been the lieutenant’s idea if Señor Villalobos lodged a complaint.
“You might take Medina with you,” Tejada suggested generously. “He’s always struck me as a very tactful man.”
Rivas, who was by this time thoroughly damning Medina’s bright idea of calling in Lieutenant Tejada, kept his face blank with a skill that showed his own tact. “Perhaps you’d like to go through the reports on all the Riosecos’ connections while we’re out, sir,” he suggested woodenly.
“I’ll do that,” Tejada agreed. Something in his tone suggested that the sergeant was dismissed. Rivas left the post with the picture of Tejada comfortably appropriating the sergeant’s desk.
Rivas would have been somewhat relieved to learn that Tejada’s apparent ease was an illusion. The lieutenant was unable to keep his mind completely off what was happening at the Villaloboses’ mansion. He dutifully reviewed the files of the Riosecos’ old servants and dependents and the surviving friends of Miguel del Rioseco. They were extensive and dull. He found the servants pathetic and the young men who had been Miguel’s friends annoying. It took him an hour to work through the first pile of folders. He had to suppress a groan as he turned to the second. He reached the end of the Riosecos’ dependents’ dossiers after reviewing three and half piles. The last half of the fourth pile was composed of members of Doña Rosalia’s household. Alberto’s—by far the fattest—had been transferred with him to the Axarquía. Because there was nothing else to do, Tejada began working through the remaining folders.
The topmost file belonged to Luisa Cabrera. It was thin, containing nothing more than copies of a birth and baptismal certificate, a blurry carbon copy of the admission form to the Orphanage of Granada, dated in April of 1939, and a form letter addressed to Doña Rosalia from the father confessor of the orphanage stating that Luisa Cabrera was of good moral character and well qualified to be a maidservant. Tejada flipped through it and then picked up Fulgencio Lujo’s file.
The cook’s folder was substantially heavier, providing evidence of a longer and more eventful life. According to Fulgencio’s birth certificate, he was a native Granadino, born in 1904, the sixth son of a trolley-car driver. He had finished primary school and begun an apprenticeship in the kitchens of the Guzmán Vega family. He had been issued a passport and a visa to France in the summer of 1923. The visa had been renewed over the following six months and the occupation given was “student.” Fulgencio had applied for a new identity card on his return to Spain, and along with his application was a letter on heavy stationery embossed with the double-headed Hapsburg eagle that was the symbol of the Hotel Alhambra Palace, confirming that Fulgencio Lujo was gainfully employed as a sous-chef at the Palace. The Palace had provided Fulgencio with references five years later when Don Antonio Ordoñez Guzmán hired him. He had worked at the Casa Ordoñez ever since. It was possible, Tejada thought, that Fulgencio still had connections among the Guzmán family’s far-flung web of dependents, but he could not see any reason why any of the descendants of Doña Rosalia’
s in-laws should have wanted to kill her. He remembered Doña Rosalia’s son-in-law saying, “Poison is a cook’s weapon” and wondered if any of Fulgencio’s culinary studies had included helpful information about why cooking crushed apricot pits was highly inadvisable.
Tejada closed Fulgencio’s folder with a sigh and picked up María José García’s. Although the maid was older than the other servants, the file on her was brief. He skimmed through the information about her date of birth, her family, and her few employers. She had never left Granada and had never been in trouble of any sort with the law. He flipped over the last page and saw, puzzled, that a prison record for someone named Luis Romero had been slipped into the maid’s file. He read it for a few minutes and discovered that Romero had been charged with church burning and murder connected with service in the Red army during the war. He had been sentenced to twenty years’ hard labor outside Madrid in the spring of 1939. For a moment, Tejada thought that the record had simply been misfiled. Then he looked back at María José’s family information. She had married Luis Romero on June 12, 1905. A daughter, Catalina, had been born the following year.
Tejada felt his muscles tense for a moment, the way they did when something was on the verge of being worked out. He searched for Guardia Girón’s notes on Rivas’s interview with María José. The sergeant had put them in his desk drawer, and it took Tejada nearly twenty frustrating minutes to find them. As far as the lieutenant could tell, María José had not mentioned a husband during the interview. But at the end of Girón’s notes were the scribbled words: “May go live with daughter now (daughter lives on Recogidas, married).”
The lieutenant considered for a moment. He still thought it would be impossible to completely cut out of civic life all the people who had family ties to Reds. But that didn’t mean people with close family ties who were involved in a murder investigation shouldn’t be carefully watched. He stood up and went in search of the post’s archives. An identity card had been issued for Catalina Romero García, married to one Arturo Perea three years previously. The address given was Recogidas 28. Tejada copied the address and then left word for Sergeant Rivas that he would return shortly.
Stores were just starting to close for the siesta when he reached Recogidas 28. It was at the outskirts of the city—a tall, narrow building, sandwiched in between similarly characterless neighbors. A boy of about fifteen was rolling down the shutters of a store with a sign that read: ARTURO PEREA. SHOES REPAIRED. Tejada stood on the sidewalk and watched the boy close the store. The boy cast a few nervous glances at him, but said nothing. When the shutters were closed, Tejada spoke up. “You work for Arturo Perea?”
“Y-yes, sir.” The boy turned white.
“He lives here?”
“Y-yes, sir.”
“Can you take me to him?”
The adolescent’s Adam’s apple bobbed desperately as he attempted a reply. Tejada waited for the youngster to stutter out an affirmative and then silently followed him through the nar- row doorway beside the shuttered store and up a dark flight of stairs. The boy stopped on the first landing. Tejada could hear a babble of voices and a radio turned up loudly enough to sound clearly in the dim hallway. The boy knocked hesitantly. Nothing happened. He turned back to Tejada apologetically. The lieutenant raised his eyebrows. The boy turned miserably back to the door, and hammered on it.
“Coming!” The radio was turned down and the door swung open, revealing a woman of perhaps forty with a baby on her hip and a child clinging to her skirts. “What is it, Paco?” she demanded impatiently. “Arturo told you—” She stopped, taking in the silent shape behind the boy.
“He wants to speak to Señor Perea,” Paco muttered, jerking his head toward the lieutenant.
“Oh.” The woman went still.
Paco, taking advantage of the little silence, slid between the lieutenant and his employer’s wife and scuttled down the stairs and out into the street. Tejada advanced on the woman. “Señora Romero?”
“Yes?” She backed up, effectively allowing him into the apartment.
“Who is it, Catalina?” a male voice called. They reached the living room, and a prematurely bald man, obviously the head of the household, stood to greet them. He looked somewhat alarmed at the sight of the lieutenant.
“Señor Perea?”
“Yes, Señor Guardia. Can I help you?”
“I’d like to speak to your wife actually. About her parents.”
Catalina looked distressed, but Arturo Perea was just annoyed. “Oh, for God’s sake. We’ve been through all this a dozen times. Catalina’s never had anything to do with her father. Hasn’t even seen him since she was a baby.”
“Arturo—” Catalina stretched out one hand toward her husband but he waved it away.
“No, I’m sick of it. We’re law-abiding people. Why should my wife be persecuted because a no-good scumbag ran out on her and her mother when she was a kid? My wife’s papers are in order and so are mine, Señor Guardia. And we don’t know anything about that man. There’s nothing to say.”
“I actually wanted to ask about your mother-in-law,” Tejada said mildly.
“Oh.” Perea looked embarrassed. “Well. That’s different then.”
The living room was cramped, and the only place to sit was a stained sofa. Tejada took the seat, although it had not been offered. He looked up at Catalina Romero, pointedly ignoring her husband. “Your mother and her husband are not close then?”
“Close?” Catalina laughed bitterly. “He took off when I was three. She didn’t hear from him again until the Republic was declared. He wanted a divorce, now that one was legal.”
“Did she grant one?”
“Of course not!”
Tejada considered a tactful way of asking why Catalina’s mother had not accommodated her husband. After a moment’s thought he gave it up as impossible. “Why? Do you think she still had feelings for him?”
Catalina drew herself up and sniffed. Had Tejada known María José, he would have recognized the sniff. “My parents were married in a church, Señor Guardia. My mother is a Christian woman.”
“It must have been very difficult for her when you were young,” Tejada suggested.
Catalina frowned at him, suspicious. Members of the Guardia had come to question her about her father in the past. None of them had ever shown the slightest concern for her mother, except as a possible link to Luis Romero. “She managed fine.”
Tejada said nothing for a long minute. The radio played an incongruous bolero in the background. “It must have been difficult for her to find work. Did her employer know that she was married? And had a child?”
“Of course.” Catalina’s suspicion was giving way to puzzlement. “I lived with my mother, growing up. How could she not have known?”
“Doña Rosalia had no objection?” As he spoke, Tejada realized that he must have visited the Ordoñez house as a child when Catalina Romero had lived there. She was only a few years older than he. He tried to remember her as a girl, but he could not picture any faces from Doña Rosalia’s household. The only childhood memories he had were of furniture at eye level and sad-eyed daguerreotypes that he had secretly found frightening.
“You know about Doña Rosalia?”
“I’m investigating her death.”
Catalina laughed briefly. “Did Mother tell you that my father had something to do with it?”
Tejada, who had by now mentally written off the visit as a waste of time, suddenly focused on Catalina intently. “No. What makes you say that?”
“Because she wouldn’t put anything past him,” Catalina said dryly. “She’s said for years the Reds weren’t to be trusted because of what he did to her. She’s right enough about that, but I don’t think my father would ever come back to Granada. He’s had more than enough of us.” Her lip curled. “He hasn’t even bothered to write since before the war.”
Tejada opened his mouth to say Luis Romero had been in prison for over five years and then c
losed it again, uncertain if telling Romero’s daughter that would be kindness or cruelty. “Thank you for your time,” he said instead.
He left Señor Perea and his wife openmouthed, wondering why the Guardia had come to question them and then departed so gently and quickly. He walked back to the post feeling vaguely depressed once more. The Pereas, with their loud radio and louder denials, had not left a pleasant impression. He thought about Catalina Romero, too angry to know or care if her father was in prison or simply forgetful of her, and about Amparo Villalobos, too well bred to know or remember Miguel del Rioseco or the other young men who had been Reds before the war. He thought about María José, nursing a grudge for years against Reds in the person of the man who had left her and her daughter. If Catalina was telling the truth—and the lieutenant believed she was—María José had good reason to be actively grateful to Doña Rosalia. That made her a bad suspect.
He skirted the Civil Government building and turned onto the Calle Duquesa, deep in thought. One of Doña Rosalia’s servants had to have been at least an accomplice to her murder. Alberto had denied it even under torture. María José had no motive. That left only Fulgencio and Luisa. And neither of them had any visible motive for murder. So they had agreed to help someone else, who did have a motive. Someone who one or both of them trusted. Someone whom they thought could and would give them an ample reward for poisoning their mistress. Tejada was positive that he already had enough information to figure out who the someone was and which of Doña Rosalia’s servants had been suborned. But the information refused to arrange itself into a neat pattern. It was a maddening feeling, like beginning a sentence and then forgetting what you intended to say.
A guardia hailed him as he reached the post. “Sergeant Rivas is waiting for you in his office, sir.”
Tejada abandoned the irritating conundrum and headed for the sergeant’s office, bracing himself for a fresh wave of disappointment and disapproval. Rivas was standing behind his desk when the lieutenant entered. “Sir.” He saluted formally.
The Summer Snow Page 29