Summer Snow (37 page)

“No,” Nilo said softly. “The poor lady wasn’t right in her mind after her husband died. I didn’t hate her.” He waited to see if the lieutenant was going to respond and then stretched out one hand, not quite touching Tejada’s elbow. “Why are you raking up the past, kid?”

If his voice had been less gentle, Tejada would not have been angry. But the old man spoke as he would speak to a frightened child, not to a colleague—
and a superior officer!
—Tejada thought, indignant. “My aunt was poisoned,” he said sharply. “You have a good motive. And you questioned me about the case even before we had established a cause of death. You’re a suspect.”

The lieutenant met Nilo’s eyes squarely as he spoke to show that he had no compunction about making such an accusation. So he was able to see the dawning horror on the old man’s face; he remembered the expression for the rest of his life. “Well?” he demanded sharply. “Aren’t you going to deny it?”

Nilo said nothing. He merely looked at Tejada with wide rheumy eyes. The lieutenant saw that he was trembling and did not know if it was from fear or anger or merely old age. “I wanted to speak to you privately,” he said, wishing that Nilo would say something. “Sergeant Rivas is drawing up lists of the Riosecos’ dependents, and I wanted to talk to you before he did.”

“Thank you, Señorito. That’s kind of you.” Nilo’s voice was barely above a whisper. “But Sergeant Rivas knows me.”

“You had no way of tampering with her food,” Tejada said, with the vague feeling that he was carrying both sides of the argument. “And, of course, you were a guardia. That speaks in your favor. But I wanted to be the one to tell you.”

“Sergeant Rivas knows me,” Nilo repeated.

“Oh, well, then. . . .” Tejada felt vaguely ridiculous. It would have been so much better if Nilo had been offended or angry or disbelieving or even frightened.
Anything
rather than hurt. “I’ll try to come back to say hello if I can.”

He raised his hand in a wave, and Nilo gestured vaguely in reply. “You’re always welcome, Señorito.”

Tejada left the Plaza Bib-Rambla shaking with a fury that even he knew was irrational. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Nilo had only been
angry
. Maybe he was just a very calculating murderer who knew that as a former member of the Guardia, with no evidence to link him to Doña Rosalia’s house, he was unlikely to be prosecuted. Tejada clung hopefully to the thought that perhaps Nilo really was a murderer until he reached the post.

Rivas, who had been at work for some while already, greeted him cheerfully. “Here’s the information on the Rioseco girls,” he said, holding out a folder to the lieutenant without bothering to rise from his desk. “And here’s a list of Miguel del Rioseco’s friends, those who are still around and not active members of the Movement.”

Tejada took the second folder automatically. “What about the family’s dependents?” he asked hollowly.

“Bit harder, but we’re working on it. I want the list to be comprehensive,” the sergeant explained.

Tejada took the only free seat in the office. “I can add one,” he said quietly. “An old man from the Alpujarra. He owed the Riosecos everything and made no secret of it. And he knew Doña Rosalia and knew the terms of her will. He knew she’d changed it to disinherit her children, which might give . . . someone else a good motive for her death. And odds are he’d know enough about poisons to manage to obtain cyanide.”

“Great!” The sergeant was enthusiastic. “Could he have slipped cyanide to her somehow?”

“Probably not without the cooperation of someone in her household,” Tejada admitted. “But I don’t think that would have been impossible, do you?”

“No. Whoever did it would have used one of them,” Rivas agreed. “Likely Alberto, since he could be blackmailed. So, who’s our suspect?”

Tejada’s lack of sleep was catching up with him. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “His name is Nilo Fuentes. He’s the porter at the Plaza Bib-Rambla, Number Five.”

“
Nilo
? Nilo Fuentes?” Rivas was incredulous. “Not Nilo the cripple?”

“That’s the one.”

“B-but—” The sergeant frowned, searching for a way to remind Tejada of the obvious. “Nilo’s a
guardia
, sir. He couldn’t—”

“He was stationed in Órgiva until he was wounded,” Tejada interrupted. “Jesús del Rioseco found him work. He knew the family well.
And
knew that Rosalia de Ordoñez had bought up their land in the Alpujarra and had just changed her will.”

“I know where Nilo was stationed,” Rivas protested. “But, sir, he spent nearly twenty years in the Guardia. He had an exemplary record. He—”

“Had means and motive,” Tejada finished.

“Nilo Fuentes is a
guardia
,” Rivas repeated, inarticulate.

Tejada met the sergeant’s eyes and read dislike and contempt and bewildered hurt there. He thought of his father saying, “How dare
you
accuse me of murder?” and of his older brother saying, “You have the nerve to claim your rights as a family
member?
” He thought of an old commanding officer in Madrid saying to him with exasperation, “The man’s an officer, Tejada. I can’t go around making accusations like that against him.” He thought about Nilo Fuentes telling him he had done well for himself. “I’m a guardia, too,” he said. “And I told you to pull my file for investigation also.”

“I know, but—” Rivas made a last desperate attempt. “Well, that was a formality, sir, wasn’t it? And Old Nilo—he’s not like you, sir. He’s never been anything
but
a guardia. It was his whole life.”

Tejada had the odd feeling that this was a variant on an old conversation. A
real
guardia was incapable of murder. A
real
member of the family was incapable of murder. He wondered for an insane instant if somewhere in the mountain cottages where the maquis’ contacts lived, an indignant peasant had ever told the story of a family member’s arrest, exclaiming that a
real
Red didn’t commit murder, and if a wild-eyed bearded anarchist with a machine gun had ever felt an urge to throw back his head and howl at the moon when he heard the words. “I’ve already spoken to him,” he said. “He denies everything. But add him to the list and keep in mind we’re dealing with someone clever who knows the Guardia’s procedures.

“At your orders, Lieutenant. If you’ll excuse me.” Rivas saluted stiffly and left. Tejada propped his forehead on his hands and sat motionless in the silent office and wondered if Nilo would ever believe how sorry he was. He wondered where Rivas had gone. Doubtless he had to attend to lots of other business. Or perhaps he had gone to speak to Nilo, to tell the old man that a crazy señorito who thought he was a guardia had accused him of murder.

Rivas returned half an hour later and handed him a list of the Riosecos’ former employees and servants. The list was long and the annotations brief. Nilo Fuentes’s name had been added in at the bottom by hand. The sergeant had followed orders punctiliously. “Would you wish to investigate these personally, Lieutenant? Or should I detail men to do it?” Rivas was cold and formal.

Tejada stared at the typewritten list and the names swam before his eyes.
Damn Medina to hell
, he thought.
Why did he have
to drag me down here? I don’t know any of these people. I’m supposed to
be on leave
. “I doubt I could efficiently question all of them,” he said. “Why not divide up the list and send a couple of pairs of men to interview them?”

“At your orders, Lieutenant.”

Tejada pushed himself to his feet, disgusted with the sergeant, with Granada, and with himself. “You don’t need me for this, Sergeant,” he said dryly. “An arrest of any of these people would not be likely to upset my family. Why don’t I just get out of your way for the day?”

“You’ve been very helpful, sir.” Rivas was contrite now. “And you’re right about Nilo Fuentes. I was just a bit surprised, but you’re right; he has a motive. We’ll question him.”

“I don’t think he’s guilty,” Tejada said, not at all sure if he was telling the truth.
I hope he’s not
, he thought.
God, I hope he’s not.
And if he’s not, I’d give anything to have everything I said to him this
morning unsaid
. He excused himself in spite of Rivas’s guilt-ridden politeness and left the post.

What’s wrong with me
? he thought, emerging into the sunlight.
I’ve jumped to too many conclusions in this case. I’m flailing around
blindly and with each new hunch I think I’ve uncovered a plot
. Even the thought of returning to Potes within the week depressed him. He did not want to go home with the case unsolved and his father’s angry contempt hanging over him. The idea of returning to his parents’ house empty handed after his boast to his father depressed him, but he had excused himself from Rivas’s presence too firmly to return to work.

He stood watching the pigeons perched on the statue in the Plaza de la Universidad and wondered where Elena and Toño were and what they were doing. Elena, he thought, had actually believed that his father was happy to see him. She had naively believed that her father-in-law was interested in finding his aunt’s killer, rather then engaged in concealing a missing will. That sort of innocence was typical of her. The sort of idealism bordering on idiocy that had made her a Red
.
Tejada stopped, ashamed of his anger at his wife. He had married her of his own free will, knowing that she was a Red. It would have been simpler, perhaps, to marry a girl approved by his parents, but he had chosen Elena, and it was wrong to lament his choice. Still, for a moment, he imagined what it would be like to marry someone like Amparo Villalobos. It would not have been so bad. Amparo was pretty, gentle, submissive . . .
rich
, said a cynical voice in his head.
Not the girl to take well to life at a rural post.
He pictured Amparo in the Monday market in Potes, weaving her way among the cattle driven down from the mountains and bargaining with hardheaded Cantabrian peasants. The vision would have been horrifying if it had not been so irresistibly funny.

Not that Amparo had never dealt with peasants, the lieutenant reminded himself, in fairness. She took an active part in running her father’s household, and she was interested in the orphanage and all sorts of other charities. And she was not unintelligent. It occurred to the lieutenant that Amparo was the one person he knew who was closely connected to both the Ordoñez and Rioseco families. She might well know other people who had been acquainted with both. He thought for a moment and then turned and walked back toward the post and the Calle Tablas. He did not want to see his father or Rivas. Señorita Villalobos might be a useful person to interview instead.

He was a little uncertain of his reception at the Villaloboses’ townhouse, but he was in luck. Amparo was at home and willing to see him alone. She asked after his family with her usual grace and was politely sorry that Elena and Toño had been unable to accompany him. She smiled when he explained that he had come from the post. “You’ve been working too hard,” she remarked. “You only have a little time here. You ought to spend some of it with your family.”

“I’ve had enough chance to catch up,” Tejada said, thinking that his father and brother would probably be more than happy to see the back of him.

“With your parents, perhaps. But I know Fernando and Bernarda are sorry they haven’t seen more of you. And I’m sure Felipe would like to see you as well.”

“Felipe and I have talked,” Tejada answered, thinking ruefully that Felipe might be the one family member who was not actively angry with him at the moment and knowing that Felipe’s goodwill would probably not survive an investigation by Sergeant Rivas.

“How is he?” Amparo frowned gently. “I’ve seen almost nothing of him since his mother’s wake. He looked terrible then, poor man.”

“He seems to be bearing up,” Tejada said vaguely, wondering involuntarily if Felipe’s distressing appearance at his mother’s funeral had been due to a guilty conscience.

“Poor Felipe,” Amparo sighed. “I always think of him laughing, and then to see him like that . . . he was devastated. You know, for all his frivolous ways, I think he was devoted to his mother. And now that she’s gone . . . it wouldn’t surprise me if he settled down and got married.”

Tejada reflected with amusement that Amparo’s instincts about Felipe’s conduct were sound, although her guess as to his motivation was faulty. “I think it’s very likely,” he agreed gravely.

“I wonder whom he’ll pick?” Amparo smiled. “I remember all the girls being wild about him in my young days. I imagine he’ll be a great catch.”

Tejada thought of Lili and was unable to keep a straight face. “I’m sorry,” he apologized when he was once more appropriately sober. “It was you referring to your ‘young days’ like that, as if you were an old matron.”

Amparo looked down, coloring a little. “Thank you, Carlos. I do forget sometimes that . . . that other girls think of time differently. I meant before I met Jaime. Do you know,” her color deepened, “I was half in love with Felipe myself when I was a girl.”

Blushing, her long lashes shading her cheeks, she was very beautiful. The scent of almonds hung around her like a floating veil and reminded the lieutenant of his son’s comment. Remembering Toño, he also remembered Elena and unwillingly heard an acid voice that sounded like his wife’s saying,
Jaime’s
inheritance must have been bigger than Felipe’s. But she’ll take what she
can get, now that Jaime’s gone.
“I’m sure his family would be happy if he brought someone like you home,” he said, and then regretted the comment. He had been thinking of Bernarda and Fernando when he spoke, but as he said the word
family,
he remembered the last time he had seen Felipe and felt guilty, as if the gentle compliment was a betrayal of Lili and her children.