Summer Snow (9 page)

“Of course not!” Oddly, the lieutenant’s suggestion about murder seemed to make Don Pablo more calm. “No one killed her, Carlos. It’s just that, well, you know what she was like. It was inevitable that she’d quarrel a bit with her children, and some of the bequests are a bit . . . inequitable. I’m just afraid that Daniela and Felipe will feel that their portions are unjust. I don’t want you to get caught up in a family squabble.”

“Her children inherited her gift for quarreling?” Tejada suggested dryly.

“Don’t speak ill of your elders.” The lawyer’s response was mechanical, but his voice was friendly. “Trust me, Carlito. I’ve been in this business since before you were born, and I’ve seen how even close families can become enemies over estates. You don’t want to stir up a hornet’s nest.”

Tejada nodded.
He doesn’t see the Guardia when he talks to me,
he thought.
Just Carlito, who can’t be trusted not to start a family squabble
.
I should have worn a uniform. And Nilo would have liked it
. “All right,” he said aloud. “I’ll try to avoid upsetting anyone. But if my aunt was killed—”

Don Pablo laughed. His godson would have sworn that the laughter was genuine. “She wasn’t. Believe me. Ask your father about the bequests tonight, and likely he’ll explain the whole thing to you.”

Tejada made his farewells, wondering why Don Pablo was so certain that his father did not believe Doña Rosalia had been murdered.
Maybe Elena was wrong
, he thought, as he left the office.
Maybe no one actually thinks Rosalia was murdered. But then,
why all the trouble to get me here to investigate? And why pester Rivas?
But if Father and Don Pablo are saying two different things, maybe they
don’t trust each other. Why?
With a sinking feeling Tejada realized he had committed himself to cross-examining his father, exactly the course of action he had hoped to avoid by interviewing Don Pablo. When he reached the ground floor, Nilo emerged from under the stairs to wish him well and remind him of their evening engagement. Tejada answered affectionately, if a little absently, and regained some of his good humor.

The day was cool and windy, and he enjoyed the brief walk back to the toy store. Elena and Toño were not there, but when he asked the proprietor about the whereabouts of a little boy who liked trains, the man nodded immediately. “With the lady in the gray suit, Señor? You just missed them. They said they were going to get ice creams at the Suizo.”

Tejada thanked the man and sought out his family at the place they had arranged to meet. He found them at a table by the window, with three seats arranged around it. Elena and Toño occupied two of the seats. The third, the lieutenant saw when he attempted to sit down, was taken by a stuffed lion half the size of Toño.

“That’s Rodrigo’s seat,” the little boy informed him. “But you can share with him. He doesn’t mind.”

Tejada raised his eyebrows at his wife. “Rodrigo?” he asked as he sat down, obediently placing the stuffed animal in his lap.

“First I was going to get trains,” Toño explained. “But then Mama said we didn’t have room to take home enough to be fun.”

“He wanted the deluxe set with enough track to reproduce the entire RENFE network,” Elena murmured. “We would have had to ship it separately, or get another trunk.”

“And
then
I was going to get toy soldiers,” Toño continued, oblivious of the interruption. “But they were expensive and heavy and I thought that maybe Quico could make wooden ones for me when I got home, so I got Rodrigo instead.” He indicated the big cat fondly. “But the man said I could go back tomorrow to play with the trains again.”

“I see.” Tejada scratched Rodrigo’s ears. He caught his wife’s eye and murmured, “
Combien coute?
”

“
Quarante-cinq pessetes
.”

“
Pour un amant si chere!
”

“Talk Spanish!” Toño commanded.

Tejada smiled at his son. “Sorry. Rodrigo’s name reminded me of a silly play in French. How did he come to be named that, by the way?”

“The man in the store said I should call him after El Cid,” Toño explained. “You know about El Cid?” His father nodded, and he continued cheerfully. “Well, the man said that El Cid was so brave that lions kneeled before him, so I should call my lion Rodrigo like El Cid, since I was brave to play with him.”

“Makes sense to me.”

Elena shrugged. “By that logic you should call the lion Carmencita. Look at all those newsreels of Carmencita Franco playing with a lion cub.”

“It’s a
boy
lion.” Toño looked reproachful. He could not understand why Papa was laughing so hard. He was distracted by the arrival of the waiter, bearing Elena’s coffee and a large, intriguing-looking ice-cream creation. Ignoring his mother’s warnings about not spoiling his appetite for lunch, Toño settled down to enjoy himself. His parents seized the opportunity to talk while he ate.

“Did you see your godfather?” Elena asked.

“Yes. You were right. There’s something funny going on with the will.”

“Funny?”

“He wouldn’t tell me what.” Tejada summarized his conversation with the lawyer. “So it looks like I’ll have to talk to my father this afternoon,” he finished with a sigh.

“So you’ll stay home after lunch?” The depth of pleasure and gratitude in Elena’s voice startled her husband. So did her suddenly sharp tone as she said, “Toño! Chocolate on your good shirt! Be careful!”

“It’s just a shirt,” Tejada defended his son as Elena scrubbed the boy’s face with a napkin.

Elena turned on the lieutenant. “We missed Toño’s fitting with your mother’s seamstress this morning,” she informed him, “because
you
wanted to go shopping. But your mother says Toño doesn’t have decent clothes as it is, and if he gets stains on this one . . .”

Tejada winced. “Sorry. I’ll try not to abandon you this afternoon.”

“You have to speak with your father,” she reminded him acidly.

“I’m not exactly looking forward to it,” he retorted.

Elena suppressed another sharp comment and said instead, “Maybe we can go out for a walk this evening then.”

He nodded, relieved. “As a matter of fact, we have a date this evening for eight-thirty.”

“Oh, who with?” Elena felt another flash of irritation at Carlos’s high-handed way of arranging their schedule without consulting her.

“An old—” Tejada hesitated, searching for the right word. “Friend” was too strong and “mentor” implied a formal relationship that had never existed. “Colleague,” he finished, and stumblingly explained about Nilo.

Elena’s annoyance died away as the lieutenant fumbled for words to explain why he had accepted the doorman’s invitation. He had obviously been fond of the old man, for whatever reason, and even if he had not been, decency demanded that he sacrifice a few hours to someone who had been kind to him as a child. But it was not merely Tejada’s awkward assurances that she would like Nilo, that reconciled his wife. It was the drawn look on his face and an odd echo in his voice.
He’s been seeing
ghosts ever since we got here
, Elena thought.
At least I don’t have to
worry about
that.
Poor Carlos
.

She held her husband’s hand on the way home, since Toño’s desire to hold Rodrigo left him with only one hand free, making it impossible for him to walk between them as was his custom. Elena was glad that Toño had chosen to cling to his father’s other hand so that he was thoroughly surrounded by his present and shielded from his past.
We won’t let ghosts get him
, Elena thought protectively, unaware that she was about to meet a ghost of her own.

Chapter 7

C
onsuela Alonso de Tejada had grown up both rich and beautiful. This combination of traits had naturally led to an indulged taste for fine clothing, which had survived Consuela’s youth and middle age. As a girl, Doña Consuela had hated submitting to the judgment of her mother or her
modista
, when she was positive that she could have designed far finer dresses. By the time Consuela became a matriarch, no mere seamstress dared to cross her judgment. The spiteful whispered that Señora de Tejada hired humbler sewing women because she was too stingy to pay the fees of Granada’s fashionable
modistas
, but the fact was that Doña Consuela preferred to design her own clothing without reference to professional opinion, and therefore saw no need to pay for advice she had no intention of taking. (She had, in fact, a talent for drawing that she had developed copying and altering sketches from fashion magazines.) One of her secret griefs was that she had not raised a daughter with whom she could have shared her interest in fashion.

Doña Consuela’s dormant talents had been recently revived by the pleasant task of dressing her grandchildren, but her daughter-in-law Rosa was a regrettably strong-minded woman, who had—in Doña Consuela’s opinion—an unreasonable aversion to “interference” with her children. Since Rosa slavishly followed the fashions of
Blanco y Negro
, and Rosa’s husband (to his mother’s disgust) slavishly followed Rosa, Doña Consuela’s skills had been unfortunately superfluous. So Doña Consuela was delighted when Toño arrived. The fact that he was dressed like an impoverished peasant brat and had a tendency to grubbiness did not distress her at all. She enjoyed a challenge.

Toño’s paternal grandmother had quickly discovered that he was a good-natured, biddable child, and she had been annoyed when Carlos had snatched him away immediately after breakfast, muttering something about a family outing. Carlos, his mother thought, would not understand the meaning of the word
family
if he stumbled across it in the dictionary, and as for that wife of his . . . ! She’s
done him no good,
Doña Consuela thought grimly.
Of course, poor Carlos was used to living in a barracks before he married,
so he probably hardly notices her housekeeping, but he might see that she’s
practically keeping the child in sackcloth! What can she find to
do
with
her time up in the mountains? Probably no better than she should be.

Doña Consuela had pondered the mystery of her younger son’s marriage for some while that morning and had finally decided that this daughter-in-law would have to be endured for Toño’s sake, at least during the visit. She comforted herself by thinking that perhaps she would just drop a word of advice in Carlos’s ear before he left, about keeping a close eye on his wife. Of course, Carlos was always ridiculously sensitive about such things, but he could hardly object to a friendly caution from his own mother.

Doña Consuela was waiting with a seamstress when Toño and his parents returned from their toy shopping. She dismissed her son with the assurance that he would only be in the way and pounced on Toño. The boy was perfectly willing to spend time with the person he thought of as his
new
grandmother, although he was a little disappointed that she was not more interested in meeting Rodrigo. He submitted amiably enough to being measured, but was at first puzzled, and then annoyed, at being expected to stand still while his grandmother paced around him holding up fabrics. His mother always let him go play after she measured him. He explained this to his grandmother, and she laughed and patted him on the head. Then she made him keep standing still. She did not seem interested when he tried to tell her about the toy store and the ice-cream parlor. He tried telling her about the train ride, and how Private Ramos had taken him to see the locomotive. (He had learned many interesting facts about the locomotive and would have been happy to share them.) She ignored him and talked over his head to the seamstress. Toño began to fidget. She kissed him and told him to stand still.

“He should have something for church,” his grandmother commented. “The black wool would do for that, maybe with a matching hat.”

“Father Bernardo says it’s very important for boys to get exercise,” Toño hinted, inspired by the mention of church.

“And a sailor suit, for other occasions,” Doña Consuela continued, as if her grandson had not spoken. She smiled and spoke with conscious sweetness. “Wouldn’t you like a sailor suit, Carlos Antonio? You could play you were a sea captain.”

“No,” Toño said with disgust. “I don’t want to be a sea captain. I want overalls like a railroad engineer.”

For a moment Doña Consuela looked as if she had bitten a lemon. “No, you don’t, dear,” she said, with a venomous glance in Elena’s direction. “Only Reds wear overalls. You’ll have a lovely little sailor suit, and then you’ll see.”

Toño’s clothes were a matter of total indifference to him, but he was tired of standing still and tired of being ignored. “I want overalls,” he insisted.

His grandmother turned away from him and began sketching something for the seamstress. “Like this,” she said. “You can tack the bow
here
and
here
, with a matching belt.”

“I don’t
want
a sailor suit!”

“Very good, Señora.”

“I
want
overalls!”

“And when will it be ready?”

“
Overalls!
”

Elena, who had been sitting like a statue in one corner of the room, intervened sharply. “Toño! That’s enough. Thank your grandmother!”