Summer Snow (3 page)
“Sorry to disturb you, sir,” said the guardia on duty. “But one of the posts in Granada just put through an emergency call, and the maniac at the other end refuses to speak to anyone but you.”
Tejada relaxed. A call from Granada meant some kind of family business: messy and unpleasant, certainly but no threat to the established order of things. He picked up the phone, hoping that he would be able to end the call quickly enough to get back before Toño went to sleep.
Toño was drowsy enough at the end of the third reading to agree to turn out the lights without further protest. He made a determined effort to stay awake, but it had been a long and productive day. He was warm and bathed and fed and the familiar noises of the Guardia Civil post next door were as soothing as a lullaby. He was fast asleep when his bedroom door finally creaked open and a triangle of yellow light fell across the carpet. He did not stir as a tall figure stepped silently through the room, bent to give him a hug, and withdrew without a sound.
His mother was also in bed, but considerably more alert. “You were a long time. What was the phone call?”
Tejada hesitated. His wife recognized the quality of the pause. He only weighed his words like this when what she had asked about was Guardia business and he was considering how much to tell her, if anything. So she was surprised when he said slowly, “It was from Granada. My great-aunt Rosalia’s dead.”
“Oh.” It was Elena’s turn to be silent. She had met Rosalia de Ordoñez only once, shortly after her marriage. Tejada had felt it necessary to introduce Elena to his family and had taken her south to spend two weeks at his parents’ estate outside Granada on what served as an abbreviated honeymoon. The Tejadas had treated Elena with a painful and condescending politeness. During a rather stilted dinner party, Doña Rosalia had broken the ice with a vengeance, by stating (loudly enough to drown out any other halfhearted attempts at conversation) that it was no wonder Carlos had disgraced the family and married a Red given the way his parents were fool enough to treat him. The memory was not one of Elena’s happier ones, and she felt that the conventional condolences on the death of a loved one would ring false. On the other hand, “Thank God, it’s about time,” was hardly the proper response.
“Shortly before her death, she claimed someone was trying to kill her.”
Elena raised her eyebrows. “She
claimed
? You don’t believe her.”
“Apparently she’d claimed intermittently that people were trying to kill her ever since her husband died.” The lieutenant’s voice was dry. “And I’ll wager that my parents had thought about it years before that. But it’s still a little embarrassing.”
“And what does your family want you to do about it?” Elena asked.
Tejada sighed and shook his head. “It’s not my family. The call was from the post in Granada where she lodged the complaint. From one Guardia Medina.”
“The Guardia in Granada called
you
? Why didn’t they call her family?” Elena knew that of course Carlos
was
family, but he understood what she meant. Why the long distance call?
“Guardia Medina called me,” Tejada explained. “His superiors knew that it might be Guardia business, and that it was sure to involve my family, and Medina suggested that I be brought in on the investigation. We’ve known each other for quite a while. Since childhood, actually. His sergant thought it was an inspiration.”
Elena raised her eyebrows. Her husband had kept in contact with few companions of his childhood; the majority of them would never have dreamed of entering the Guardia Civil. She was somewhat surprised she had not heard of Medina before. “A school friend?” she asked.
Tejada’s mouth twisted. “Hardly. His family are tenants of ours.” He frowned, remembering the overloud, nearly hysterical voice that had said as he picked up the phone, “I need to speak to Lieutenant Carlos Tejada Alonso y León. Urgent Guardia business.” And then, in response to his curt identification, the barely controlled relief in Medina’s voice as he said, “
Señorito
Carlos? Is that you? Oh, thank God.
”
Elena did her best not to let her reaction show. She had (more than once) expressed the opinion that her husband’s family was disgustingly feudal, but she knew that he was thoroughly caught up in their web of privilege and obligation, however much he deplored it. “Someone you were close to?” she asked neutrally, reframing the question.
He shook his head. “Not by choice. Medina’s always been an obnoxious little bully. The sort who hangs around the sidelines giving advice during the game and then takes a lot of credit at the victory celebrations.”
“Or explains how if his advice had been followed his team would have won?” suggested Elena.
The lieutenant snorted. “Usually he manages to end up on the winning side.”
Elena winced. “Sometimes by denouncing old comrades?”
Tejada shrugged. “I hate people who call me
señorito
.”
His wife correctly read this non sequitur as an acknowledgment that Medina probably
had
been responsible for some of the denunciations that had cost thousands of lives in Granada at the outbreak of the Civil War. She knew that her husband would be unwilling to condemn a fellow Falangist outright, even if he found the individual personally distasteful. She shuddered, remembering the executions that had shaken Salamanca and Madrid. Tejada, who had sunk onto the bed to pull off his shoes, gave her a quick affectionate glance. “What does he want you to do about your aunt?” she asked, dropping the subject of the unpleasant Medina with relief.
“Make sure he doesn’t get into trouble over it,” Tejada said, beginning to undress. “Unfortunately, the way he thinks he’s least likely to get into trouble is if the Guardia conduct a full investigation to show their diligence, and if I’m involved in it, to show their respect for my family.”
“He doesn’t seriously think the Guardia will transfer you at your own request to investigate your aunt’s death?” Elena protested.
“No, but his sergeant asked me if I’d be willing to put in for a leave.”
“Are you willing?”
Tejada leaned back and wriggled his shoulders into the pillow in a gesture so reminiscent of Toño’s that his wife smiled involuntarily. “I don’t think Colonel Suárez would approve a request anyway,” he said. “That’s what I told this Sergeant Rivas.”
Elena nodded, grateful for once for the state of perpetual crisis that existed here in the Picos de Europa. “If he thought you wouldn’t enjoy it, he’d be happy to,” she predicted.
The lieutenant laughed. “Obviously, I’ll have to feign great enthusiasm for seeing my family again.”
Elena smiled also, but her voice was cautious as she said, “Seriously. Will you ask for leave?”
Tejada stared at the pattern of lamplight on the ceiling. “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. Why don’t we sleep on it?”
“It’s probably all a mare’s nest anyway,” Elena comforted, as she reached over to turn out the light.
“I know,” the lieutenant agreed. He sighed in the darkness. “I might have known Aunt Rosalia would still be making trouble even after she was dead!”
“I
’m sorry, Señor Tejada.” Pablo Almeida had shared a carefree childhood and a wild youth with Andrés Tejada León and had remained a close friend in the intervening fifty years, but Almeida was naturally a formal man, and he had found that a little formality never hurt when breaking bad news. “But Señora de Ordoñez’s will appears to be missing.”
Andrés Tejada saw no similar need to stand on ceremony. He made an annoyed noise that was at odds with his sixty-five years and dignified appearance. “I might have known the old cat would die intestate! I suppose now we’ll have the entire family squabbling over what they can get.” He leaned back in his desk chair and closed his eyes with a shudder.
The lawyer coughed apologetically. “Not exactly intestate.” Almeida risked a smile at his friend. “That is to say, I know that there
is
a will. I’m just not exactly sure where it is.”
Andrés Tejada sat up. “If that’s a joke, Pablo, it’s in poor taste.”
“When do I ever make tasteless jokes about money, Andrés?” Now that the worst was over, Almeida allowed himself to relax slightly. “You know Doña Rosalia changed her will every three months after her husband died. And she came to my office trying to change it an average of every six weeks. She was always very particular about there being an extra copy. One always had to stay in my office, and one went with her, to be put in her safe at home. At least that was where I assume she put it. She always just said that she wanted it in ‘a safe place.’ You know she never felt secure after what happened to poor Javier and Ramón.”
Señor Tejada winced. The deaths of his cousins at the hands of enraged mobs of their own cane cutters, at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936, still triggered unpleasant memories of fear and fury, even after nearly ten years. The Tejadas, like the Ordoñez family, had been surprised at the outbreak of the war, not in orderly Granada, but at their country house, in territory that had quickly aligned itself with the Communists. He remembered standing guard over the manor house with his oldest son, the two of them armed only with hunting rifles, his wife on her knees before the Virgin in the bedroom upstairs. He remembered his uncle’s frantic telephone call, and then the drive through the summer night to Granada, his foot glued to the accelerator in spite of the darkness and the treacherous curves of the mountain passes, determined not to stop, no matter what got in his way. He remembered the long wait for news in Granada and Doña Rosalia’s hysterical screams when the Guardia had finally brought her official notice of the deaths of two of her sons. It was the one time his wife had forgotten her dislike of his aunt, and the two women had prayed together, at least until his wife had been insulted by the old lady’s monopoly on grief and had tried to argue that her maternal feelings for her younger son (whose whereabouts were still unknown) were as acute as Doña Rosalia’s anguish.
“I suppose you can’t blame her for that,” Señor Tejada said shortly.
“Of course not,” Almeida agreed. “That was why I put up with all the nonsense about doing everything in duplicate. The thing is, the last time she changed her will was just a few days before she died. She was very urgent about it, peremptory even. It was a Saturday morning, and since she hadn’t formally made an appointment we were rather busy. We typed out a fair copy, but—” Almeida shifted uncomfortably.—“well, I’d promised Asunción I’d be home in time to meet our guests, and my secretary had specifically asked for the afternoon off as he’s getting married in a few weeks, and since I didn’t know Doña Rosalia was coming I’d promised him and—well, the long and the short of it is that after we’d done one copy I told Doña Rosalia that we didn’t have time to prepare the duplicate original and that she could come back on Monday morning and we’d have it finished.”
Doña Rosalia’s nephew whistled. “You told her that? You’re a brave man.”
Almeida looked miserable. “She didn’t take it very well,” he admitted. “She was a bit abusive. I wish to heaven now that I’d stayed late and made the extra copy as usual but I didn’t
know
.” He looked pleadingly at his friend, and then sighed and finished his story. “She said if I couldn’t be bothered to make a copy I couldn’t be trusted to hold onto the one I had made. And then she insisted on having the copy that had been typed properly signed and witnessed—and by the time
that
was done with I was late for lunch. I thought she’d be in again to change its provisions in a few weeks anyway, so she took the only copy home with her. The problem
now
is that it’s nowhere to be found.”
Señor Tejada sighed. “You must have notes on what the changes were,” he suggested. “It can’t be that different from all the previous drafts.”
Almeida shook his head. “I don’t need notes to remember the changes. There were only two important ones. You’re still the executor, there are still a few minor bequests to the church and a few charities, and the jewels still go to Daniela, of course.”
“And the bulk of the estate?” Andrés Tejada asked with exaggerated casualness.
The lawyer swallowed nervously. “Well, the land has legally belonged to Fernando as the older son ever since his father died. Doña Rosalia was just the beneficiary of a trust that left her its use and income. So it’s just her liquid assets and her own property that she could dispose of. She kept dividing it up between you and Daniela and Felipe differently, depending on how she felt at the moment.”
“I suppose she finally cut one of us out completely?” Señor Tejada spoke with a heartiness that he did not entirely feel.
Almeida avoided his friend’s eyes. “Daniela got nothing but the jewels; Felipe was completely disinherited,” he said quietly, “‘as a token of their undutiful behavior to their mother and their betrayal of the ideals of their father.’ You and Fernando are the sole heirs.”
Andrés Tejada made a sound like a balloon being rapidly deflated. Pablo Almeida waited to see if he would make any comment and then said anxiously, “Fernando gets the sugar refinery as well as the farm free and clear now. But you stand to inherit just shy of four hundred thousand pesetas, less taxes. The thing is, the will wasn’t in her safe, and I have no idea where it might be. And since it’s disappeared, and you’re the executor . . .”