Summer Snow (36 page)

Tejada was startled. He had some affection for his brother, but he had always assumed that Juan Andrés was a basically self-centered individual. It had not occurred to him that Juan would sense the trouble between him and his father. “Nothing,” he said. “What do you mean?”

“You haven’t said a word to each other for the past three days,” Juan Andrés retorted. “And he’s been eating out every evening to avoid you. What have you done to him?”

“I haven’t done anything,” Tejada snapped, annoyed. “Why shouldn’t he spend the evening with friends? He doesn’t need to dance attendance on me like a guest. I’m family, too, you know.”

“Well, you could start acting like it then!” Juan Andrés said. “You spend all your days at the post, and on the weekend you and Elena disappear for hours together. You even arrange to have mail delivered to you after dinner so you can slip out!” Tejada began an angry retort but his brother cut him off. “I don’t know what you said to Papa, but he’s been looking sick lately. You upset Mother, you treat Papa and me like objects of your investigation and the house like it’s a damn hotel, and then you have the nerve to claim your rights as a family member!”

“I’m here to conduct an investigation,” Tejada reminded his brother. “I have to spend most of my time at the post. And I certainly don’t ‘arrange’ to have letters delivered. My job doesn’t have fixed hours.” With a stab of bitterness, he added, “We can’t all be gentlemen of leisure, like you.”

“Oh, don’t pull that crap on me, Carlito!” His brother was impatient. “You
chose
the Guardia and damn near broke Mother’s heart doing it. The martyr’s role doesn’t work for someone who picked it like a spoiled brat.”

Tejada’s nostrils flared. His brother’s words were too near the truth to debate. “I’m sorry I haven’t been living up to your standards,” he said quietly. “I’ll try to be nicer to Father, if you think I haven’t been.”

Juan Andrés nodded, satisfied. “Good. Try hard.” Seeing his brother’s still face, he punched him lightly in the shoulder and added, “Come on,
hermanito
. I’m just looking out for you. For Papa, too. You’re both too stiff-necked.”

Tejada forced himself to nod and smile. “Thanks, Juan. I— I’m going to go check on Toño.”

Tejada found the door to Toño’s bedroom closed. No light seeped out under it. He opened the door carefully and peered into the darkness. After a few moments, he made out steady breathing. The boy was already asleep. Tejada closed the door softly, wondering with aching sadness if Toño would grow up to avoid his company and think of him with contempt.

The door to his own bedroom was also closed, but the light was on. Elena was sitting up in bed, reading. She put the book aside and smiled at him. “How are you?”

“Tired.”

“Long day?”

“Just a lot of stupidities.” He recounted the scene with his brother and felt his own suppressed anger lessened and diluted by her indignation. By an association of ideas too nebulous even for him to understand, he proceeded to a summary of his day: the departure of Alberto Cordero, Sergeant Rivas’s prolonged absence at the Casa Ordoñez, and the possible motives of the Riosecos. Elena asked questions, exclaimed, shared his unease and amusement. Even her quiet sympathy for Alberto Cordero was a relief. It was an echo of the faintly aggrieved disapproval that hung over him after every successful operation in Potes, when farmers and storekeepers eyed him balefully, knowing that he was only doing his job, but still blaming him for the loss of sons, fathers, and brothers. It tasted like home.

As usual, Tejada was unable to articulate his gratitude to his wife. But it was with a special pleasure that he pulled the half-opened letter Isaura had delivered to him from his pocket. “Corporal Méndez sent me this just after you left,” he said. “It looks like he’s found some information about your friend.”

Elena was grateful but she felt a knot in her throat. Her husband was holding out the envelope but she was afraid to take it. “Could you read it?”

Tejada raised his eyebrows at her. “You wanted to know.”

“Baldo wanted to.”

The lieutenant put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed gently. “If Méndez has bad news, will you tell him?”

Elena closed her eyes. “Yes. I’ve promised to. And not knowing . . .”

The lieutenant nodded without speaking and opened the envelope. There were several papers folded together. He riffled through them and saw that two appeared to be copies of bank statements. The third was a cover letter. He scanned it and felt a sudden bubble of lightness in his chest. Elena heard his sharp indrawn breath. “Well?”

Tejada read aloud, not trusting himself to paraphrase.

Esteban Beltrán Monteroso escaped from a transport to Viznar on August 2, 1936, along with two others when a flat tire was being changed. He was presumed to be in the mountains with the bandits. There are no arrest or transfer records available for Cristina Encinas Rosado.
However, three weeks ago, Félix Encinas Rosado’s account received a wire transfer of five hundred pesetas from Credit Lyonnais (see first attachment). Five hundred pesetas were also transferred to the account of Dr. Beltrán’s mother, M. Mercedes Monteroso, from the same Credit Lyonnais account (see second attachment). Said account is held jointly by a married couple M. and Mme. Montrose. This seems like an obvious French form of Dr. Beltrán’s second surname and in light of the suspects’ former association . . .

“Thank you, thank you, Carlos!” Tejada got no further with his reading. Elena sprang at him, laughing and crying at once. He closed his arms around her, savoring her joy. It was rare enough that his job brought tears of happiness.

“Take it easy,” he commanded, smiling. “Baldo’s parents must already know where the money came from. If they haven’t told him yet, there’s a reason.”

“I suppose,” Elena admitted. “But still, I’ll speak to them tomorrow. I have to. Oh, Carlos, thank you.”

“It’s nothing.” Tejada was seized with a sudden burst of articulateness. “I like to make you happy. Because it makes me happy.”

And that was the key to much of his life, he thought a little later after they had turned out the lights. He had married her because he had felt an almost unbearable urge to protect her and would have cheerfully killed or died to make sure that she was safe and happy. And her happiness was still the key to his own. Staying in Granada had been difficult so far partly because she had been so miserable.

It occurred to him that he had asked nothing about her day and that she had volunteered nothing. They had been talking about other things. He wondered uncomfortably if he was really still the one who protected her or if sometime during their marriage their roles had become reversed and she had become the guardian of what might loosely have been called his soul or perhaps simply his sanity. It was a disturbing revelation, and he comforted himself that in times of
real
danger he was still the strong one.

As if to offer confirmation of his shaky self-sufficiency, his memory sweetly offered the name of the little place near Órgiva that Sergeant Rivas had mentioned: Tíjalo. And then suddenly he remembered the name of another little place near Órgiva and why it was significant, and the dual memory had the force of simultaneous thunder and lightning. He shivered and clung to Elena, once more dependent on her half-acknowledged strength. Sleep was a long time in coming.

Chapter 19

T
ejada woke the next morning with a stuffy nose and an ache in his throat that he hoped was an infection but suspected was only unresolved sadness. He was gentle and deferential to his father at breakfast, so much so that Elena looked at him with concern and questioned him with her eyes. He avoided her gaze, unwilling to drag her down into the murky depression that had enveloped him.

Elena wondered how late he had fallen asleep the night before. She was worried when he refused to meet her eyes, and her worry grew into outright alarm when he said softly to his father, “I’d like to go over to the post now if it’s all right with you. I think we’re close to an arrest of Aunt Rosalia’s murderer. Perhaps I’ll be able to make an entire report to you this afternoon.”

“Really?” Andrés Tejada’s tone was one shade short of disbelief. “That’s good news. Who did it?”

Tejada swallowed. “I’m not sure yet. That is, I think I know, but I don’t have proof, and I don’t want to lay blame until I’m positive.”

“This afternoon then.” His father spoke with such good grace that Tejada wondered if Juan Andrés had taken him aside as well.

“Thank you.” The lieutenant’s voice was barely above a whisper.

On other days he had gulped his coffee with barely decent haste and hurried away to the post, determined to escape, but today Elena thought he dawdled. He expressed interest in his mother’s plans for the day and complimented his sister-in-law on her earrings. He asked his brother about land in the Vega and devoted his entire attention to the response. The lieutenant’s nephews and niece had left for school, and his father and brother had departed for work before Tejada finally pushed back his chair, kissed his mother and his wife, and headed for the post.

He walked slowly, and the careful serenity he had cultivated for his family blew away in the morning wind. He stopped in the Plaza Bib-Rambla and looked at the
churrería
next to Pablo Almeida’s office. He could stop there and have a coffee before going to the post. Or stop and talk to Nilo once more informally, for old times’ sake. He sighed. Any delay would only make his errand more difficult. But still, Tejada stared at the doorway to Pablo Almeida’s offices for a long time without moving. Finally he rang the bell. Nilo greeted him with a salute and a broad smile. “Come in! Come in! How are you? Are you here to see Don Pablo?”

As soon as the old man spoke, Tejada regretted stopping. It would have been better to go on to the post. Better to have spoken to Sergeant Rivas. But it was too late now. “No.” Years of experience kept his voice even. “I’m here to see you.”

“Really? Again?” Nilo still smiled, but he was a little confused by the grim note in the lieutenant’s voice. “That’s kind of you. I’m afraid I can’t offer you more than a chair. . . .”

He gestured to a wooden seat by the stairs. Tejada ignored the gesture. “I wanted to confirm a few things with you. Jesús del Rioseco found you a place here, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir, that’s ‘correct.’” For a moment, Nilo mimicked Tejada’s formal tone. Then he smiled. “Don’t forget how to speak
andaluz
way up north, son.”

Tejada paid no attention to the old man’s digression. “Your family were tenants of the Riosecos, and you yourself were stationed in Órgiva, correct?”

“Right.” Nilo looked uncertain now. “Why? What’s the matter?”

“Near Tíjalo?”

“That’s right.” Nilo was surprised. “I didn’t know you knew the area.” He shifted on his cane, wishing that he could sit down but unwilling to be impolite, although the lieutenant showed no sign of taking the empty chair.

“Who bought the Rioseco land there when the family went to Cuba?” Tejada rapped out.

The old man shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t been back since I was wounded. And my girls aren’t there either, so I don’t get much news.”

“You knew the Rioseco family had left the country though?”

“Yes.” Nilo was somber.

Tejada took a deep breath. “Why did they leave?”

Nilo shook his head as if to clear it, his eyes on the younger man’s face. “It’s all ancient history,” he said gently. “Don Jesús was a fine man and Don Ramiro as well. He just had some bad luck.”

“What kind of bad luck?” the lieutenant pressed.

Nilo closed his eyes for a moment. “Don Ramiro lost his oldest boy during the war,” he said finally. “They say it broke his heart.”

“Not in combat.” Tejada’s voice was harsh.

“No.” Nilo sighed. “I know you wore a blue shirt before it was fashionable. But not everybody did you know, son. Miguel del Rioseco—”

“Was a Red,” Tejada finished brutally.

Nilo shook his head. “He wasn’t anything. He was just a kid, barely out of university. They say he wanted to be a professor, but his father wouldn’t let him. He—” The old man became aware of Tejada’s scrutiny and broke off. “He wasn’t even arrested by the Guardia,” he finished, his voice shaking. “It was one of the militias. His mother said he recognized two of them.”

“How do you know what his mother said?”

“Because his father came to me to ask if I still knew anyone in the Guardia.” Nilo reached for the chair and then lowered himself into it, sounding very tired. “It was a bit like that revolution the Falange was always talking about. The head of the Riosecos coming to ask an old man like me for help.”

“You felt sorry for him.” Tejada respected Nilo’s need to sit, but regretted that he had not taken the chair earlier when it was offered. He, too, was tired. The ex-guardia nodded without speaking and Tejada continued. “The Riosecos had done everything for you. And you watched them lose everything they had because of an accusation brought by a man whose family bought the land they’d owned in Tíjalo.” He saw Nilo’s eyes widen and guessed that the old man had known who had lodged the denunciation. “Doña Rosalia chatted with you about her will,” the lieutenant continued, his voice relentless, although he was avoiding Nilo’s eyes now. “She must have told you about purchasing lands in the Alpujarra. Lands bought cheaply, because the owners were desperate to sell. You saw her every time she came to change her will; a bitter, cranky, obnoxious old woman who’d gained from the Riosecos’ loss. You must have hated her.”