Watcher in the Pine (9 page)

“Thank you.” Elena set out for home happier than she had been since her arrival in Potes. The sun was already low behind the mountains, and the path was more uphill than she remembered, but she felt like singing as she hurried along, her breath making little steam puffs in the evening air. Friends, she thought happily. People to talk to. And I’ll find Father Bernardo and ask him about the school. And we’ll have shelves soon.

She came around a curve in the road and saw the familiar silhouette of cloak and tricorn coming toward her. For a moment she was troubled, remembering what she had learned of the late Lieutenant Calero. Then her sense of contentment reappeared. She raised one arm and waved, saw her husband wave back, and hurried forward to meet him and tell him about her afternoon.

Chapter 7

T
ejada relaxed as he came near enough to see Elena clearly. Her face was red with cold, and the wind at her back was whipping little tendrils of hair out from her scarf and plastering them against her cheeks. But her eyes were glowing and there was a laugh in her voice as she hailed him and gave him a quick hug.
She’s settling in
, he thought with relief.
I suppose it
is
an adjustment to come here if you’ve only lived in cities
.

“You look good,” he said, when they had exchanged greetings. “Although I’m not at all sure it’s normal for women in your condition to wander off into the snow.”

“You know I like to travel on my own.” Her voice was teasing.

“A habit I’ve frequently deplored. But in this instance no harm done. What took you to Tama?”

“Furniture. I ordered bookshelves. And a table, and cradle.” Elena hastily summarized the business of the afternoon.

“Sounds like you got a lot done,” Tejada said, guessing that her good humor was as much a result of a productive day as his own. “But it’s after seven. You must have started late.”

Elena shrugged. “I ended up visiting with Señora Santos and her children a bit.”

“Good,” Tejada approved. “I told you it would be a good idea to have some female friends. Although I wish you had found some nearer to home!”

Elena made a noncommittal noise, unhappily reminded of Bárbara Nuñez. “How was your meeting with the mayor?” she asked, to distract him.

Tejada, who had almost lost track of the morning’s meeting in the wake of subsequent events, shook his head. “We didn’t get anything out of him. But I talked to Rosas again.”

“Was he helpful?” Elena asked, conscientiously trying to hope that her husband’s plans for incarcerating their neighbors had been advanced.

“I suppose so. But in the meantime he’s dropped a nice little crisis into our laps.”

“Not another escape?” Elena exclaimed. She was unsure whether to be pleased or worried. She knew that the Guardia was still making an effort to capture the escaped Valencians, but she also guessed that the men were well out of Liébana and on their way home by now, and that Carlos was not wasting too much effort on their case. A more recent escape meant a chance at freedom for more men, but it also meant that Carlos would be instrumental in trying to track them down, and Elena found herself hoping that no strain would be placed on her loyalties.

“I wish!” Tejada shook his head. “Most of the prisoners just head home and the Guardia picks them up when they get there. But Rosas has misplaced a shipment of dynamite.”

“Misplaced?” Elena raised her eyebrows.

“Left totally unguarded in countryside crawling with bandits,” Tejada said with disgust.

Elena winced. “I suppose you’re worried the guerrillas might use it for sabotage?”

“The war’s
over
,” Tejada said, a little annoyed. “So they’re
not
guerrillas. They’re just thugs.”

“Who blow up military targets.”

“They kill innocent people, Elena!”

“All right, all right,” Elena sighed. “You have to get it back. When did it go missing?”

“Just over three weeks ago. That’s the problem.”

Because he was still nervous about the missing dynamite, Tejada ended up rehashing most of his day with his wife. He did his best to talk about other subjects during dinner, because he felt that it was inconsiderate to inflict too much of his work on Elena. He tried to listen attentively to his wife’s description of her afternoon, but he was preoccupied, and it was a relief when the plates were cleared away and Elena settled into an armchair, dug out the baby sweater she had been knitting, and let silence fall. Tejada stretched, and lit a cigarette. He inhaled deeply, and some of the frustrations of the day began to seep out of him with the smoke. It was good to be warm and fed and home. He glanced over at Elena, and saw that she looked happy and maternal and domestic. He leaned back comfortably in his chair, and closed his eyes. “The thing is,” he said meditatively. “We’re so shorthanded. I
have
to keep sending Ortíz and Carvallo out on routine patrols or we’d have no one covering the entire district. And really Battista and Torres should be out also. And Márquez and I should do patrol duty once every two weeks at a minimum. But if I do that, then we have no one who can investigate the thefts from Devastated Regions, or do surveillance. And if I divert men into surveillance or investigation, then we lose the information we pick up through routine patrols.”

“You could ask for reinforcements,” Elena suggested.

“I won’t get them. And anyway, where would we put them?” her husband said sardonically. “Besides, it’s a question of shutting stable doors. Rosas claims that the dynamite was always under lock and key or heavily guarded. But it disappeared over a Sunday, and I’ll bet Rosas wasn’t in to check then. And probably those clowns in the Policía Armada took the day off, too.”

“The prisoners hear mass Sunday, don’t they?” Elena pointed out. “So if the dynamite disappeared then, they have an alibi for part of the day.”

Tejada nodded, and took a thoughtful drag on the cigarette. “There’s a chaplain who comes down from the monastery to hear confessions and then give the service. But it’s over by four. And so is the mass at San Vicente, in town.”

“You think someone from town made contact with a prisoner Sunday afternoon then?” Elena asked.

“No.” Tejada shook his head. “The prisoners are all from other provinces. They don’t have local visitors. And according to Rosas’s assistant none of them had any visits that Sunday.” He made an annoyed noise. “None of them even went
out
that Sunday. It was cold, and they kept to their rooms.”

Elena reflected that the prisoners’ barracks were probably cold in the best of circumstances. “Then you don’t think they helped steal the dynamite,” she said, glad that the guardias would not have a chance to vent their frustration on a captive.

“No. I think the key time is Sunday morning, when everyone is in church. If they knew what they were looking for, a small group of men could have easily gotten into the Devastated Regions compound, taken what they wanted, and been up in the hills before anyone knew they’d been there.”

“Wouldn’t they have been missed in church?” Elena asked.

Tejada smiled. “Not if they’ve been up in the hills for the last six months. I went through the files with Márquez. We have a number of local boys playing hide-and-seek.”

“For six months?” Elena protested.

“Longer than that, in some cases. A couple are going on two years now. And then there are the more recent ones. Our landlord, for instance.” Elena’s knitting needles froze in midair. The lieutenant looked at her with concern. “What’s the matter?”

Elena paused before replying, and deliberately resumed her work. “You think Anselmo Montalbán has taken to the hills then?”

Tejada shrugged. “Face the facts, Elena. He’s not here. It’s been a week since we asked that he report to the post. He’s a wanted man.”

“And you think we should still stay here?” Elena’s voice was troubled.

Tejada considered his sense of well-being. “I don’t think we’re in any danger from Montalbán. The contrary, actually, since he’d be doubly responsible if anything happened to us here. And I’m sick of moving. Aren’t you? Once we get furniture we’ll be nicely settled.”

Elena came to the end of a row. “What about Montalbán’s wife?” She pretended to count stitches so that she could look down.

Tejada sighed. “I’m sorry if she’s been giving you the cold shoulder. But you mustn’t let her bother you.”

“What about
us
bothering
her?
” Elena demanded, furious. “How do you think she feels about having a guardia in her home?”

“We’re paying her,” Tejada said. “And times are hard. I’d think she’d be glad of the extra cash. And I don’t think we’re difficult tenants.”

“But how do you think she’ll feel about having to share her house with a man who’s declared her husband a bandit?” To her dismay, Elena heard a treacherous crack in her voice. “How do you think it feels to see the uniform of the Guardia every day and be reminded of the man who murdered her son?”

Tejada sat up straight. When Elena sounded on the verge of tears, there was usually a reason. “Her son was tried and executed by a military court in Santander,” he said, curious to see if he would be contradicted.

“But he was denounced by a guardia!”

“Back up,” the lieutenant commanded. “I don’t know any details. Tell the story from the beginning.”

Elena drew a hiccuping breath, and then poured out what she had learned that afternoon about Lieutenant Calero and Jesulín Montalbán. Tejada was frowning heavily by the time she finished. “You don’t know that’s true,” he said.

“Why would they lie to me?”

Tejada drew his chair next to hers and put one arm around her shoulders. “I didn’t mean they were lying,” he said gently. “But they live in Tama, not Potes. Suppose it was just a story that they’d heard reported thirdhand. They might have
believed
it was true.”

Elena shrugged his arm away. “They live twenty minutes’ walk from here. They’re probably here for the market every week.”

“All right then,” Tejada sighed. “Suppose that Calero was in love with this Laura. Even supposing he knew the Montalbán kid was too, he might still have genuinely believed Montalbán was a Red. What was he supposed to do? Keep silent for the girl’s sake and risk his own career? Give Young Montalbán a chance to take to the hills and pick him off like a sitting duck?”

Elena looked at him, skeptical. “And threatening the girl’s brother?” she demanded. “That was a coincidence?”

Tejada opened his mouth to say that no guardia could let his personal feelings interfere with his job, considered the hideous possibility of his Red brother-in-law returning from Mexico, forcing him to do just that, and shut it again. “You’ve just given Anselmo Montalbán a lovely motive for murder,” he pointed out, hoping to change the subject.

“I know.” Elena sounded unhappy. “I thought of that, too. But surely you can’t blame him.”

Tejada considered. “I can understand why he did it,” he said honestly. “If he did do it. But I don’t think he was justified, if that’s what you mean. And if we catch him and it turns out he killed Calero, I’ll still turn him over for trial.”

Elena made a despairing noise. “And keep living here, all the while?”

“Let’s blow up that bridge when we come to it, shall we?” Tejada grimaced, his mind once more running on saboteurs. “At the moment, we don’t even know why Calero was killed. It could have been because he found something out about the missing dynamite, and the Reds didn’t want him to have a chance to pass it on.”

Elena nodded, and finished another row. “That’s true. And I suppose you’re right, but . . .”

“But?”

Elena folded her knitting and smiled ruefully. “Sometimes I really hate it that you’re a guardia.”

The lieutenant brushed her cheek. “Only sometimes?”

“Well, all the time actually,” she admitted.

Tejada stood up and held out his hands to her, wrists crossed. “Sometimes I wish you were a different person, too,” he said, thinking of Sergeant Márquez’s unfinished comment. “But we’re stuck with each other. Come on.” She grasped his hands and he pulled her to her feet. “Time for the baby to be in bed.”

Elena had a hard time falling asleep. The weight of the baby made her back ache, and her sleeping husband’s encircling arm was smotheringly heavy.
Carlos is a decent man
, she thought, shaping the words of an imaginary dialogue with Marta Santos, and carefully inching her way out from under his arm.
Really, he is
.
It’s just that he only talks to the guardias, so he doesn’t know your side of the story. But if you
talked
to him . . . well, maybe that wouldn’t work, but we have to try. He has to try. I don’t think he’s spoken to anyone in Potes about anything that wasn’t strictly related to Guardia business. Of course, no one
wants
to talk to him, but if he wasn’t being pigheaded he would make the effort. And I think he’d listen to people here. I’m pretty sure. I wish he’d try
. She did not remember the end of the dialogue, but when she woke up sunlight and cold air were streaming through the windows, and Carlos was bending over her fully dressed, saying, “Good morning, Sleeping Beauty. I have a surprise for you.”