Summer Snow (42 page)

“Please.” Tejada sat quietly until the door swung shut behind María José and then stood up and roamed around the room. It was a space with many doors. One opened onto the courtyard and another onto the alley behind the house, which stank strongly of rotten vegetables. The third led into the interior of the house, via a dark winding hallway to the rooms more cherished by the Ordoñez family. He wandered into the pantry, a long narrow strip of space barely more than a closet, wondering if the poison that had killed the mistress of the house had been stored here, among the gleaming glass jars of spices. It seemed likely. He returned to the kitchen and scanned the wine racks below the cabinets on one wall. They were dusty and half empty. The sort of wine rack that would make Felipe—or Fernando, to whom they now belonged—wrinkle his nose in disgust.

The squeaking of a door alerted Tejada, and he hurried back to his place on the stool as Luisa Cabrera entered the room. “You wanted to see me, sir?” She bobbed a little curtsy as she spoke.

“Yes.” Tejada hesitated a moment, inspecting her. She was pretty, taller than average, soft haired, and copper skinned. Had she been lively or even self-assured, she would have been beautiful. But something in her soft voice and downcast eyes reminded the lieutenant of Alejandra. Perhaps it was the downward tilt of her lips, not a seductive pout but an unconscious gravity that sat oddly on such young features. He tried to think of a way to frame his question so that she would give him the answer he wanted. “I wonder if you could describe your duties here? When Doña Rosalia was alive?” He deliberately kept his voice gentle, speaking as he would have spoken to a daughter. She was only a few years older than Alejandra, after all.

She nodded and spoke without looking up. “Mostly I was Fulgencio’s assistant. I would have liked to learn to cook really well. But I also cleaned the house and helped with the laundry. Whatever was necessary, really. I’ve only started helping Fulgencio lately.”

“You didn’t receive special training as a cook at the orphanage?”

She looked up, startled, and blushed painfully. “No, sir. I was hired as a maid. It’s just that Fulgencio’s been very good to me. He says I might make a good cook.” Her blush deepened and spread across her neck as she added wistfully, “I studied chemistry in school once. I was good at it. Cooking’s like that.”

For a moment, Tejada wished irrelevantly that Alejandra was present to hear the girl’s words. Then he returned to the matter at hand. Luisa’s tone when she spoke of Fulgencio had given him an idea. “You know we haven’t found the source of the poison that killed Doña Rosalia yet,” he said. “But it’s logical to suppose that it was in something she ate. Do you have any idea how the cook might have tampered with her food?”

Her eyes went wide with fear. “Fulgencio wouldn’t do that! He’s a good man. Besides, I ate everything she did that night. She asked me to! I told the sergeant that! You can’t think Fulgencio would—”

“What about what she drank?” Tejada interrupted.

Luisa, brought up short, frowned slightly. “She drank wine. María José told me I could put it away after . . . after the sergeant told her it was all right.”

Tejada nodded. “We’ve analyzed the bottle. There was nothing in it but wine.”

“It can’t be that either then.” Luisa gave a little sigh of relief.

“But you know, I started wondering this afternoon why we had assumed that the wine bottle we analyzed was the same as the bottle Doña Rosalia drank from. The room was cleaned up afterward. And nobody took an inventory for over a week after she died. It would have been perfectly simple for someone to open another bottle, dump half of it down the sink, and then replace the old bottle with it. No one would know. You see what I mean?”

“I guess so.” The girl’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“Can you remember what kind of wine Doña Rosalia was drinking that evening?” Tejada asked gently.

“I-I don’t remember.” Luisa looked troubled. She waited for him to continue and then added, “I’m sorry, sir.”

“It’s all right.” Tejada was soothing. “Perhaps Fulgencio will know. When he returns, I’ll ask him.” He waited a moment to allow the full import of the words to sink in and then said, “Tell me about the orphanage.”

The girl forgot her shyness and stared at him. “The orphanage?” she repeated, in a tone that suggested he was insane.

“How much time did you spend there?”

“Just a year.”

“Long enough to study chemistry, though?”

“No.” The girl’s face went still. “That was . . . before. In another school. We just learned sewing and catechism in the orphanage.”

“You must have been grateful to find a place here,” Tejada suggested.

“Yes, sir,” she answered dully.

Tejada took a deep breath. “And perhaps a few charitably inclined ladies helped you? Came and spoke to you before you went out into the world? Offered you comfort and advice? Congratulated you on your good luck, perhaps?”

“Yes, sir.” There were tears in Luisa’s eyes, but she spoke like an automaton.

Tejada saw her swallow convulsively, and there was nothing feigned about the pity in his voice. “God knows Doña Rosalia wasn’t the easiest woman to live with. And she probably threw her charity in your face whenever she felt like it, didn’t she? No one who knew her could blame you for feeling like killing her. And then Señorita Villalobos asked you to, didn’t she?”

“No,” the girl whispered, but Tejada swept on, gentle and insistent.

“You were fourteen when you came here, weren’t you? And Señorita Villalobos was only a few years older and practically a daughter of the house. And she’d been kind to you when you had nothing, and maybe she was still kind to you. Did she offer you a reward for helping to poison your mistress? Or promise to take you on as a servant afterward?”

“No.” Luisa’s voice was steadier now, and she met the lieutenant’s eyes. “No. Señorita Villalobos never asked me to do anything.”

“Don’t be a heroine,” Tejada said quietly. “It isn’t worth it.”

“She never asked me to kill the señora.”

“I don’t blame you, you know. And if you tell me exactly how she was involved I can protect you.” Tejada knew, to his grief, that the first statement was true and the second one false. If the servant girl had been the only one involved, he would have cheerfully let Doña Rosalia’s murder go unsolved. But she had been a pawn for Amparo Villalobos—or
someone
, Tejada amended, unwilling to name Felipe even as a possibility—and finding the true killer mattered to him. Unfortunately, there was no way one of the great ones of the city would fall without taking Luisa down as well. He could protect her from torture, but she would likely be garroted for her role in her mistress’s death, regardless of any intervention by the Guardia.

“She wasn’t involved.” There was a suggestion of gritted teeth in Luisa’s stubborn reply.

“Who then?”

Silence.

“They’re not worth your loyalty,” said the lieutenant sadly. “Last chance. Before we go back to the Calle Duquesa. So I ask you again. Who paid you off?”

Luisa had quivered like a plucked string at the word “loyalty.”

Now she practically spat the words, “No one paid me off! I don’t take bribes from any of you!”

“You killed her on your own then?” Tejada asked, sarcastic.

Luisa said nothing. The lieutenant sighed and moved forward to take her elbow. “Come on. I’m taking you back to the post. We’ll find out who put you up to it there.”

The young woman stood like a statue as he approached, but when his hand closed around her arm she jerked free, suddenly furious. “No one put me up to it! She deserved it!”

Tejada blinked. He had considered Luisa’s stubbornness the result of one of two possibilities: either she was both loyal and brave or else he had once more been completely wrong. Now it occurred to him that he might be asking the wrong question. He tried a simpler one. “Why?”

“She lied to me.” Luisa faced him, shoulders straight, head raised, eyes blazing. “She let me think my mother was dead. For five years, she let me think that!”

The lieutenant frowned. “You came here as an orphan.”

“Fucking bullshit!” The words were little less than a scream. Tejada’s jaw dropped at the obscenity, and he wondered what had happened to the silent, demure maid who had entered the kitchen only a few minutes ago. Luisa continued before he could speak, “My mother’s alive! And maybe my brother, too! They couldn’t come and get me after the war because they were in prison, but they’re alive!”

“Couldn’t come and get you?” Tejada asked, wishing he had done more research on Luisa’s apparently blank past.

“When I came back. From Almuñécar.” Luisa saw his bewilderment and added, “It’s a town on the coast.”

“I know where it is,” Tejada snapped, annoyed because he disliked feeling incompetent. “What does it have to do with you?”

“There was a children’s camp there.” Luisa’s voice was as hard as his own. “Before the war. When charity was something the government did, instead of leaving it to ladies like Señorita Villalobos. The city sent eighty of us—workers’ children, from the Albaicín mostly—to the seashore for two weeks. You had to have good marks in school, and then it went by lottery. I won. And they sent us”— her voice melted around the edges—“to Almuñécar. On July 17, 1936.”

Tejada felt a sudden nausea. The Movement had sounded the call to arms on July 17. A few days later, Granada had been in the hands of the Falange. He remembered Felipe’s story of being stuck in San Sebastián at the outbreak of the war. And San Sebastián had quickly joined the forces under General Franco. But the lands along the coast had remained Republican until the bitter end. And to move a child through a war zone . . . “How long were you trapped with the Reds?” he asked quietly.

“I wasn’t
trapped!
” Once again, Luisa spoke angrily. “The anarchists found foster homes for all of us, after a few months. Sancho and Aurelia are the best people I’ve ever known. They took care of me like their own daughter! Aurelia didn’t want to give me up, even after . . .” She swallowed, before continuing, her voice thick with tears. “They came and took Sancho away. A few days after Almuñécar surrendered. But then the Guardias came and took me away, too. They put me in a truck with a lot of others and drove us back to Granada because they said the city had negotiated for our release. They didn’t even let us say good-bye. And when we got back, the kids who didn’t have family members to pick them up were taken to the orphanage. They told us our parents had been killed by the bombing.”

Unwillingly, Tejada remembered the end of the war and Alejandra as a young child screaming hysterically, “Mama! Mama!” Felipe Ordoñez’s injunction sounded in his ears: “Go take a look at the orphanage on the Cuesta del Chapiz.” He put his arm around Luisa’s shoulders, a gesture of comfort rather than detention. She ignored him, reliving a private nightmare. “I thought they’d all died when the Albaicín was shelled. I met someone at the orphanage who told me he’d
seen
my father killed in street fighting. I thought Mama and Currito must have been killed then, too. I didn’t mind too much. And then I got a job here, and it was all right, except I missed Sancho and Aurelia. But then . . .” She began to cry too hard for further speech.

The lieutenant handed her a handkerchief, oppressed by his own pity. “Then?”

Luisa noisily blew her nose. “Then a few months ago Doña Rosalia got angry with me for some stupid thing and told me that if I didn’t try harder she’d never intercede for my family. I thought it was just her craziness. But she kept saying it. And l-laughing at me. S-saying I thought she was just a crazy old woman but that she knew perfectly well that my mother and brother were still in jail and that I’d better behave if I wanted to see them alive again.”

“She was mad,” the lieutenant said softly. “You must have known that.”

Luisa swallowed. “I get the first Sunday of the month off.” She scrubbed at her eyes angrily. “On my last free day I went to the prison and saw Mama. She’d thought I was dead. And then, when I came back . . . ” She trailed off, but the lieutenant was wise enough to remain silent, listening. “I took the señora her dinner, like always. She asked me where I’d been, and I didn’t want to tell her, so I just said I’d walked around. And she . . . she got angry at me. She said there was no point lying to her, that she knew I’d gone to see my family and asked me what I wanted with those Reds anyway. She asked me if I didn’t think I was better off with her than with the Reds.” Luisa closed her eyes. “She kept asking me and asking me. ‘Can’t you
see
?’ she kept saying. She told me she’d known for years. That the people at the orphanage had known. And they’d never told me. For my own good. And then”—Luisa’s chest heaved with dry sobs—“she made
me
say it. She made me
say
it was for my own good. I wanted to kill her right then and there.”

“But you didn’t,” Tejada said encouragingly, patting her on the back. “There’s no way you could have. You didn’t, did you?”

Luisa pulled away from him and shrugged. “Not then. But a
week later she told me I was a lazy slut, and she’d see to it Sergeant Rivas had Currito taken for a stroll if I didn’t mend my ways.”

Tejada opened his mouth to caution her and Luisa interrupted him. “I know the sergeant wouldn’t have paid her any mind. He never did. But I was sick of it. Red slut this and jailbird’s daughter that. She’d lied to me for five years.” She stopped speaking, and Tejada found himself with nothing to say. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard Amparo’s voice saying lightly, “She was worried about one of the maids slacking off, I think.” He wondered exactly what Doña Rosalia had said to Luisa. “I was just sick of it all,” the girl said, in an almost contemplative tone. “And then I remembered. In Almuñécar my teacher was a botanist, and he showed us all kinds of plants, and I remembered him saying you should never crack cooked peach pits, because they were poison. So the next time I bought peaches I saved the pits and baked them, and then powdered them and put them in Doña Rosalia’s wine.” She smiled a little. “I wasn’t even sure if it would work. But I figured at the least it would make her sick to her stomach. That would almost have been better. To have been able to make her suffer.”