A Murder Most Spanish

by Jefferson Bonar

  Rubbing his eyes, he was met with the sight of Madalena Rodriguez again. Although there was nowhere to go, Miguel still leapt to his feet and pressed himself against the back of the cell.

  “It’s all right, Miguel. It is just me,” Madalena said, holding her hand up. “I brought food. Look.”

  That was when Miguel saw a small basket overflowing with fruit and bread.

  “I felt bad for how things went before. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you. It’s not your fault what happened,” Madalena said. “I am still grieving over losing my beloved Amparo. I was hoping this might allow us to start over.”

  “Do you still think I killed him?” Miguel asked.

  “No.”

  Madalena held the basket aloft and Miguel felt his stomach rumble at the very sight of the fresh oranges piled on top of peppers, cheese, and a loaf of bread still steaming from coming straight from the bakery.

  “I thought we could have a picnic,” Madalena said.

  Miguel was confused. You couldn’t have a picnic inside. Everyone knew that. It would be hard to pretend they were sitting under the shade of some olive tree in the middle of a sunny meadow. The very thought of it seemed funny to Miguel, and he couldn’t help but laugh.

  “What is it?” Madalena asked.

  “That’s silly,” Miguel said. “You can’t have a picnic here.”

  “Of course not. I was thinking we should do it outside.”

  “But I’m in prison.”

  Madalena smiled and gestured to the soldier standing behind her. He approached the cell door, unlocked it, then opened it, gesturing for Miguel to come out.

  “What is this?” Miguel said, beginning to panic. “I’m not supposed to leave. What if the constable comes back?”

  “It’s all right, Miguel. It’s just for a little while. And we can’t leave the castle,” Madalena said. “I was thinking we could go up to the roof and have our picnic. The soldiers said it is fine, especially as I paid them so handsomely.”

  Madalena gave Armada a mischievous grin. “Come on!”

  Miguel leaned against the bars as he stumbled out of the cell and followed Madalena over to the door, behind which was the staircase that led to freedom. He had spent so many hours staring at the door; it felt odd to finally walk through it. His legs tingled and he needed a bit of help getting up to the stairs, but the prospect of fresh air and sunlight drove him on, through the main hall, and finally out a doorway in the back, which led them out on to an open plaza built on top of the main hall of the castle.

  The sunlight splashed on to Miguel’s face and he felt his entire body come alive. The tingling sensations in his legs and arms subsided and he stretched his back, feeling the warmth return with each crack. But what was most welcome was the air—the fresh, sweet, ocean air—that had always been just on the other side of the stone wall of his cell. He’d been so close to it, and yet so far away. And now he could fill his lungs with it. Gone was the stink of sweat and damp and faeces. This air was clean and sweet and made his head feel light, as if he’d had too many ales.

  Madalena giggled. “Feel better?”

  Miguel nodded.

  “The best view is over by the ramparts.”

  Miguel followed Madalena as she led him across the open plaza toward the castle wall, which was rimmed with ramparts that looked out over the ocean. From here, soldiers could fire cannons or crossbows with ease should any Berber pirates be foolish enough to make an attempt to get to shore.

  The ramparts were also an ideal spot to sit in the late afternoon sun and gaze out over the spectacular view while eating a picnic. From this dizzying height, Miguel could see just about all of the delta below, as well as the shoreline, the mighty El Peñon, and beyond that the empty horizon. A few clouds lolled about in the air, but the sky was mostly a brilliant shade of deep blue. The only pollution was the periodic waves of black smoke rising up from the burning cane fields in the east, which the wind generously pushed off toward Motril.

  Miguel watched Madalena unpack the basket while two of the soldiers stood a short distance away, eyeing the food for themselves. If Miguel were here alone, the soldiers would have robbed him by now, taking everything. For some reason, Madalena commanded a respect he didn’t understand, keeping the soldiers at bay with some kind of power. They would be free to enjoy their picnic, if only for a little while.

  Madalena handed Miguel some jamon slices and a loaf of bread, which he stuffed into his mouth. Anything different from the scraps and salty brine he was usually served tasted of nothing short of heaven.

  But there was still one question—why? What did this woman want? She was so beautiful, especially now that he could see her properly in the sunshine. Why was she being so nice to him? She still hadn’t said, and he worried that if he asked her, somehow the spell would be broken.

  “Is your head feeling any better?” Madalena asked.

  “A bit,” Miguel said with a mouth full of bread. He realised the constant pulsating ache that normally sat in the back of his skull had disappeared.

  “Can you remember anything yet?”

  “Not really. Sorry.”

  “No, don’t be sorry, Miguel. It’s not your fault,” Madalena said as she put her hand on his knee.

  Miguel felt a tingle shoot through his entire body. He couldn’t remember a woman ever touching him this way before. It was probably innocent. She didn’t mean anything by it. But it was still exciting, especially as the only other human touch he’d experienced in a while had been beatings.

  “But I won’t lie to you, Miguel. I do wish I knew whose fault it was that my husband was murdered. I can’t sleep at night these days, worrying about it.”

  “That constable seems smart. If anybody can figure it out, he can,” Miguel said.

  “Maybe you’re right. I hope so. Because if he can’t…”

  Madalena put a hand to her mouth. She was upset, Miguel could tell. He wondered if she was about to cry. He hoped it wouldn’t be considered wrong of him to put his hand on her shoulder. It seemed the right thing to do.

  Madalena responded by leaning her whole body into his, burying her head into his shoulder. It was a move he hadn’t been expecting and he could see the soldiers that were watching him flinch. Then they smiled at him, whispering to each other and pointing, probably making crude comments which Miguel didn’t want to think about.

  Instead, Miguel focused on Madalena, whose body he could feel was convulsing on his chest. He was a bit nervous, not knowing what to do next.

  “I just worry,” Madalena said between the sobs. “That maybe my Amparo’s killer is still out there. What if he comes after me?”

  Miguel hadn’t considered that. He suddenly felt angry at Amparo’s killer, whomever he was. Did he not consider what the effect would be on such a beautiful creature as Madalena?

  “I just want this whole thing to be over with,” Madalena said as she sat up on her own again. She wiped her eyes with a little kerchief. “No more secrets. No more hiding. Once everything is out there, then I might feel safe again. But only then.”

  “You…you deserve that…” Miguel said. “Once that constable Armada does his job, maybe…”

  “Oh, that constable! I’m tired of hearing about him. It’s all anyone can talk about in town. Some of the mothers are even asking around if he is single so he can marry one of their daughters. Because he has a government post they think he’s rich. That sort of thing is all anyone in this town can think of, it seems.”

  “Really? He seems nice…” Miguel said and instantly regretted it.

  “He seems nice now, but I know those Brotherhood men. It won’t be long before he starts hanging people. Then we’ll see how nice he is. No, I don’t trust him. I think he’s just waiting for someone to pay him a bribe, and then he’ll hang the first person he sees and be on his way. If we want the truth, we’ll have to find it ourselves. That’s what I think.”

  “What are you saying?”

  M
adalena shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I just want to know the truth. And it has something to do with that digging job you and Amparo did for Jose. Can you remember anything about it?”

  Miguel felt a chill down his spine. This was twice now that Madalena had asked him about the murder. He wondered if that was normal. All he knew was that his own instincts were telling him she seemed overly interested. Could he trust her?

  “It was dark…that’s all…” Miguel said, trying to remain vague.

  Say nothing. Not even to her.

  “Jose was worried about something,” Miguel said. “But it’s all so unclear. I can’t remember much more than that. I’m sorry.”

  “No, don’t be sorry. Just try to remember. I think it’s important,” Madalena said as she cast a sideways glance to the soldiers. They were becoming edgy. Madalena knew her time here was coming to an end. “How about where it was? It might help to remember that first.”

  “It was dark. I don’t know the delta very well. I wasn’t sure where we were,” Miguel said.

  Madalena gave a short sigh. Miguel felt he had let her down, and after she’d gone through all the trouble of bringing him a picnic and paying off the soldiers to come up for some fresh air. And now she was disappointed, possibly even regretting ever having come.

  “I want to help…I really do…”

  Madalena leaned over and kissed Miguel on the cheek. “I know you do. You just need a little more time. It’s all right.”

  Miguel was left confused for the rest of that night, even after he was put back in his cell, not sure if she’d ever come back.

  He thought he would dream of that kiss all night, but he didn’t. What he dreamed about was Francesca, and how she never confused him. He wondered where she was that night, or if she would ever come to visit him and pay the guard to have a picnic on the roof. Probably not. In fact, he would probably never see Francesca again.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was dark by the time Armada returned to the inn. It had been a long walk back from Enrique’s cove and he was feeling quite tired. He strode into the room, unsure of what to expect. He came in to find a candle burning on the table next to a meal that had been prepared, with two loaves of barley bread that Lucas had dutifully picked up. The room had been cleaned and tidied, and Lucas was in his own bed now, fast asleep.

  Famished, Armada sat at the table and began eating his dinner. The room was deathly quiet, the only sound the wind whipping past the window, giving off a soft howling sound. Armada got most of the way through his meal before realising something was wrong.

  “Lucas, you might as well rise,” Armada said. “We’ve travelled long enough together for me to know the snoring you make when you are truly asleep. A sound it would be impossible for you to know how to fake.”

  Lucas sat up in his bed and a tension filled the room. “Yes, sir.”

  The tension was too much for Armada. He hated it. It was distracting. There was work to do.

  “You’ve done good work tonight, Lucas. I commend you.”

  Lucas said nothing.

  “You are free to sleep, if you wish, Lucas. But I was hoping you might stay up for a few minutes. I could use your insight. It seems much of this case revolves around a job that Jose Padilla hired Amparo and Miguel to perform for him. Something about digging irrigation canals. I have little experience with such things, as you know. But it seems odd to me that it was done at night. Jose had apparently mentioned something about the soil being softer at night.”

  “Softer?” Lucas said, rising from his bed. “I’ve never heard of that. Hard soil is hard soil, day or night. I would say digging at night would be harder because you can’t see what you’re doing.”

  “Which means the only advantage working at night would offer would be to mask one’s activities.”

  “Sounds like it, sir.”

  “But what could he be digging at night that he didn’t want anyone else to know about?”

  “Maybe he was burying something?”

  “Possibly,” Armada said. “But why hire the other two workers? He’d be risking a lot by bringing them into his confidence. Especially Miguel, who he didn’t know very well. And Amparo was hardly likely to keep his secret. It all seems the act of a desperate man. Jose was in the army—very little can spook him. And yet he is behaving as if he has everything to lose. Unless he was setting Amparo up for a fall, but why? The motivation doesn’t make sense there either.”

  “Farmers can get desperate when there’s a drought, sir.”

  “Yes, perhaps. But Jose is a man who thinks bigger than that. I can’t understand why someone like him would become so spooked as to…Lucas?”

  Armada realised Lucas had stopped listening. He had turned his chair around to stare at his leather shoes, which were sitting in the corner. They were singed black around the edges, with some of the laces burned away. He hadn’t worn them since that day.

  “What is it, Lucas?”

  Lucas didn’t answer, but instead stood up and grabbed one of the shoes. He flipped the shoe over and studied the mud encrusting the bottom of the sole.

  Lucas then took a bit of the mud in his fingers, mashing it about. It was still moist on the inside and turned the tips of his fingers brown.

  Then Lucas popped it in his mouth.

  “Good God!” Armada exclaimed. “What are you doing?”

  Lucas spat out the soil on the floor. “It’s not salty, sir.”

  “What?”

  “It should be salty, but it isn’t.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Sir,” Lucas said, sitting next to Armada and pointing to the shoe. “This mud. I got stuck in it when I was running from the fire. It was out in the middle of the fallow field to the south of Jose’s field. I just assumed it was seawater. But it isn’t. It’s fresh. And the only way freshwater could pool enough to create mud in the middle of a field like that is if there was a freshwater spring.”

  “And so perhaps Jose was digging irrigation canals. In order to steal water from this spring.”

  “It would explain why he was doing it at night, sir. Stealing irrigation water is a serious crime.”

  “And also one worth performing if one were expecting a drought.”

  “Definitely, sir.”

  Armada stood up from the table, forgetting about the rest of his dinner. His mind was racing again. Food was never possible when the pieces of the puzzle began slotting together. For this, only one thing would do.

  Armada poured himself a glass of sherry.

  “Sir, perhaps I could go down to that field tomorrow. Find that irrigation canal. You know, just to make sure what we suspect is right. I could maybe find out who owns it and—”

  “Lucas, how many times have I told you. You have duties to perform here. I don’t want you going anywhere near…”

  Armada stopped himself. The look on Lucas’ face told him it was pointless to continue. Lucas would go there anyway. He couldn’t be stopped. There was a passion behind Lucas’ eyes that made the boy look older. It was as if Armada were suddenly getting a glimpse of the man Lucas was on the cusp of becoming and Armada wondered how he’d never seen it before. The sad, frightened eleven-year-old boy he’d taken in all those years ago was suddenly, and abruptly, gone.

  Armada could have told Lucas not to go to the field. But it would have been useless. The time for trying to keep the little boy out of trouble was over. Things had changed in an instant. Perhaps they had always been changing, but Armada had refused to see. In a way, he’d never wanted Lucas to grow up. Because then things would get complicated, and eventually Lucas would set off on his own path in life, leaving Armada to fend for himself once again.

  When Armada had first become a constable in the Brotherhood, this had been easy enough. Travelling about the countryside by himself had seemed romantic, allowing him the space to grow into his role, refining his investigative methods and gaining a reputation for finding justice. H
e’d always figured that was how he would work. And now he couldn’t imagine doing this job without Lucas at his side. It just seemed impossible.

  Armada took a long gulp of his sherry.

  “Perhaps you’re right, Lucas. Yes, go over to that fallow field tomorrow. Tell me what you find. But do me a favour—stay well away from the fires this time.”

  A grin spread across Lucas’ face. “Yes, sir.”

  “And after breakfast, of course. You still have your duties.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  That night, Armada found the nightmares from his past that usually haunted him remained at bay, allowing him a restful sleep he rarely knew these days.

  The next morning, Armada awoke at dawn to find Lucas having already been up and returning to the room. He was flush and out of breath, saying he had already gone down to the field and confirmed it—an illegal irrigation canal, diverting water from the fallow field into Jose’s cane crop. It was well hidden with a thick layer of plant debris and weeds and in that hard soil must have taken ages to dig. And there was one strange detail.

  It wasn’t completed. Lucas explained how it went most of the way toward the freshwater spring, but stopped short. One single bit needed to be dug before the water began to flow, about ten paces long, and yet it was never done. The project had stopped before it was finished, which begged the question: what had stopped it? And did it have something to do with Jose’s argument with Amparo and Amparo’s subsequent murder?

  Armada, having been awake for less than two minutes, had trouble taking in the significance of it all. He dressed and went with Lucas down to the tavern for breakfast. His head now cleared, Armada realised it would be useful if Lucas could find out who owned the land, the records of which were kept at the town hall. It was an important job and one that Lucas swore many times he was ready for. Armada secretly suspected Lucas was right—a job like this meant hours of pouring through poorly-written records to pick out the little nuggets of information they needed, and was the kind of detail-heavy work Lucas had always had a penchant for. Armada couldn’t understand Lucas’ enthusiasm for such a task, but was happy not to have to do it himself.