Domingo Armada series Omnibus

by Jefferson Bonar

  Armada let his eyes drift around the room and saw no sign of any relics.

  “Where is Luis? Is he here?” Armada asked.

  The woman shook her head, staring at him with fearful eyes. What was she so worried about?

  “It’s all right. You are not in trouble. I was just worried something was wrong.”

  Armada tried to keep his voice soothing and calm. “Esteban Marañón, the soldier who was killed. He was here. He had a fight with Luis, who I’m assuming is your husband. Can you tell me about it?”

  “No. We don’t know him. We don’t know anybody,” the woman said in a thick Galician accent.

  Armada walked round the room, searching the darker corners of the house for any sign of unusual relics and keeping one eye on the back bedroom.

  “I just want to know if—”

  There was a crack in the back of the house. A door had been broken open. Then the footsteps of someone running.

  Armada dashed towards a back door just in time to see a man running off into the open countryside beyond. As the man ran, Armada caught the briefest glimpse of something shiny in his hand.

  Armada took up the chase but found it difficult to catch up. They were running up a steep slope carved out by centuries of goat herds and covered in the signature tiny balls of dung. Armada figured the man had been born here and had been scaling these slopes his whole life. Armada knew he was slow but could be unrelenting when he wished. So he kept his pace steady, his breathing under control, and let the man increase his distance before disappearing over a ridge.

  As soon as Armada came over the ridge, he was shocked to find he’d caught up. He found the man in the midst of throwing the object over a steep cliff that led to violent, crashing waves below.

  “No! Stop!” Armada called.

  But he was still a few paces away. He watched as the man threw the item over his head. It arced high over the edge of the cliff before beginning its inevitable plunge into the sea below.

  Armada grabbed the man by the arm. “What have you done? What was that?”

  The man took a few breaths before speaking. “It’s over. It’s over…”

  “What is over?” Armada asked.

  The man smiled at him.

  “What is your name?” Armada demanded. “Is it Luis?”

  The man nodded. “Yes, Constable. Luis Aguilar.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Luis Aguilar stared at Armada, the folds of his face looking as though they were carved from granite. A few minutes had gone by without either man speaking, the only noise being the occasional footsteps of passersby outside the door. They were back in the room of the ayuntamiento, but it was empty now. Lucas was posted just outside the door to ensure no one could come in, not even the new acting alcalde. Not until Armada had the answers he wanted.

  “If you can’t answer my question, Señor Aguilar, then at least you can tell me why. What is it you’re afraid of? I might be able to help.”

  “You can’t help,” Luis grumbled.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you can’t protect my whole family.”

  “From what?”

  Luis looked away to the front door. “It doesn’t matter. It’s gone.”

  “What is gone?” Armada shouted but calmed himself. He was growing weary of Luis’s evasions.

  Armada sighed and stood, pacing around the table to help control his temper.

  “So someone in town threatened to harm your entire family if…what? If you showed your relic to anyone? Is that it?”

  Luis stared straight ahead.

  “No…not just showing it to anyone,” Armada said, thinking it through. “Showing it to Esteban. This is about Esteban Marañón. It was him they didn’t want to see the relic, wasn’t it?”

  Luis glanced at Armada, then went back to staring at the door. A confirmation. Armada was getting closer to the truth.

  “That must have been why you were so angry to find Esteban breaking into your house the night of the raid. The poor boy didn’t know it, but he was threatening the very lives of your entire family. It’s why you fought him so viciously.”

  Luis said nothing, but his veneer was breaking down. Fear seeped into his eyes. He kept glancing at the door, as if worried someone in the road outside would overhear.

  “But I don’t understand. What is the power of this relic to make someone so nervous as to threaten your entire family? I beseech you, Señor Aguilar. Tell me what the secret is of the object you threw.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s on the bottom of the ocean now. It’s gone.”

  “But the threat remains, doesn’t it?” Armada said. “You still know the secret the killer was trying to conceal. All he has to do now is kill you, and anyone else who knows, and his secret is safe. As long as the relic was out there, all the killer could do was threaten you to keep it safe. But by throwing it away, you’ve also thrown away the only reason the killer had to keep you and your family alive.”

  Luis glared at Armada, but he could no longer hide the fear.

  “Tell me who threatened you, Señor Aguilar. Give me a chance to bring them to justice.”

  “I can’t,” Luis whispered, glancing at the door again.

  “Why not?”

  “I…I never saw his face.”

  “There is still a lot you can tell me. Was he tall or short? What did his voice sound like? Did he have an accent? What kind of clothes did he wear?”

  “I don’t know. He came at me from behind in the alley by the tavern one night. All I could see was the blade he held to my neck. And the scar it left…”

  Luis pulled the collar of his tunic aside to show where a long red mark had been etched into his skin by the tip of a sword.

  “What was the relic?” Armada asked.

  Luis sat back in his chair.

  “Helping me is the only way to protect your family, Señor Aguilar.”

  A smile spread across Luis’s face, one that suggested he knew something Armada didn’t.

  “Do you know what we were doing the day you barged into our lives, Constable? Packing. We were supposed to be on our way by now to a small finca outside Castell del Ferro. I helped a friend build it a few years ago, and he said we could stay there until all of this was over. Now the longer I sit here talking to you, the longer the killer has to make good on his threat.”

  “The quicker you answer my questions, Señor Aguilar, the quicker you can leave,” Armada said.

  Luis slammed his fists on the table in anger, but Armada was unmoved. He gave Luis a moment to compose himself before continuing.

  “What is the relic you threw over the cliff?”

  “A baby’s rattle,” Luis said.

  “Was there anything special about it?”

  “No,” Luis said, folding his arms.

  “Can you describe it in more detail?”

  “No.”

  Luis made it clear he was finished talking, and Armada found himself growing weary of the game. He knew there was little chance he would get anything more from the man today. What Luis Aguilar needed now was time to ponder his situation.

  Armada escorted Luis out of the ayuntamiento and into the jail next door, placing him in the cell with Captain Salinas. Little was said as he locked Luis Aguilar in, even as Armada made a promise to watch over his family.

  Armada then had Lucas dash them over to the Aguilar home to discover the front door was left open. Armada rushed inside, fearing the worst, and found the house had been cleaned out and packed away.

  The Aguilar family was gone.

  “I can’t believe they left without Luis Aguilar,” Lucas said.

  “I suspect Luis told them to just before I came in. It was good thinking, really. I hope they’ll be safer in Castell del Ferro.”

  “I don’t understand, sir. All this over a baby rattle?” Lucas asked.

  Armada raised his eyebrows at Lucas.

  Lucas grimaced. “Sorry, sir. I was listening through the doo
r at the ayuntamiento.”

  “A bad habit you’ve picked up recently. People deserve their privacy,” Armada said, but it was half-hearted. He was glad Lucas had been listening. It showed the boy was learning to use his cleverness to indulge his enthusiasm, a trait that would take him far in this world.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Besides, we shouldn’t get too focused on the rattle itself. What’s important is what it means to everyone involved. I sensed Luis Aguilar wasn’t telling us the whole story of where it came from or how it was passed down.”

  “I just wish we could get a look at it, sir. It might give us clues.”

  “You’ve been reading more of that Italian book again, haven’t you?”

  Lucas looked at the ground. The Italian book, so named because Armada didn’t want to lend its author more importance than he deserved by speaking his name. It was hundreds of pages of nonsense about how scientific methods could be used in crime investigations. To Armada, it was a bit like using the methods of making a good cabbage stew to dye a shirt.

  “How many times have I told you, Lucas? Murders are always about people, and it is by studying them that we find our answer. Obsessing about the useless bits and pieces of life, like baby rattles, will get us nowhere,” Armada said.

  “Yes, sir,” Lucas said.

  The rest of the afternoon was spent at the ayuntamiento along with much of the town, watching as the viscount argued in front of the new acting alcalde why he should be allowed to exhume his son’s body and take it home. The town priest was there, arguing how Esteban had already been laid to rest and shouldn’t be disturbed. If Esteban’s body were to be removed, the church should be allowed to collect a considerable fee for all the trouble they went through to bury him. The viscount objected to this while the townspeople in attendance offered their views on the matter. The debate raged on until well after sundown.

  That night, Armada pretended to sleep in Esteban’s old shelter. Lucas was snoring away as usual, but it didn’t bother him. Nor did the fact that Pedro and Barros had finished off the last of his sherry barrel and then carved a hole in the bottom with the end of a rusty baton, claiming the sherry was lost to holes eaten by woodworms.

  Armada found his thoughts had drifted back to Luis Aguilar, who was sitting in a jail cell right now, wondering if his family was alive. In the dark of night, listening to the cacophony of frogs and crickets, Armada now felt guilty for having not told Luis his family had fled and were probably safe. But he needed Luis to divulge his secrets. The case hinged on that now.

  Armada reminded himself of this all night, but it didn’t help. And by the time the first rays of dawn began to peek over the horizon, he was exhausted. He almost didn’t notice that Lucas had stopped snoring, which was unusual for so early in the morning.

  Lucas moved deliberately, trying not to wake Armada. Armada kept his eyes closed and listened. He heard Lucas get up and the soft crunch of his footsteps as they headed down the trail leading to the village and then faded away.

  Armada sat up, wondering where the boy was off to. He scrambled to his feet and followed Lucas from a considerable distance. Through the dense cover of pines, he caught occasional glimpses of the boy dashing down a trail that hugged the hillside all the way down to the beach.

  Armada followed Lucas until they were both on the soft sand of the shoreline, then hid himself behind a boulder.

  As he watched, Lucas went right to the water’s edge and towards a large rock pool where waves thrashed against a solid wall of stone. Lucas got as close as he could to the rock pool while glancing up at something on the ridge above his head. Finding a ledge of rock just above the waterline, he skittered his way across, getting battered by sea foam thrown up by the waves and always keeping one eye on the ridge.

  Then Lucas found a small outcropping where he stripped to his underclothes and dove into the water.

  “Lucas!” Armada shouted, coming out from behind the boulder.

  But he was too late. Lucas was already under the water.

  All Armada could do was watch as Lucas popped up above the water for a few brief moments to breathe before diving back under. He did this several times until he stopped appearing at the surface.

  A minute went by and then another. Still Armada saw no sign of Lucas. Armada began to peel off his clothes to dive in after the boy, not sure of how far he’d be able to get. Then a head bobbed above the water on the far side, much too close to a jagged boulder.

  A cry erupted from Lucas as a wave threw him against the boulder and a wave crashed down on top of him, forcing him back under the surface.

  Lucas popped back up, this time with a bit of blood trickling from the side of his head.

  “Help!” Lucas gurgled before the waves crushed him back under the surface.

  Armada dove into the water. The strength of the currents was a shock, as they pushed and shoved him about so much he became disoriented. He tried kicking and flailing his arms in an effort to push his way towards Lucas, but the currents were almost too strong to overcome.

  Somehow Armada reached the other side of the rock pool and found it took all of his strength to keep his head above water long enough to breathe before being shoved back under the surface by the next wave. That was when he felt the boy’s body crash into him. He grabbed Lucas by the forearm with an iron grip. Armada pulled Lucas towards him, and the boy grabbed his shoulder. Now working in concert, they found they could overcome the currents and swim towards the more tranquil waters farther up the beach.

  After what seemed an eternity, Armada felt the soft sand of the beach under his feet, and he pulled an exhausted Lucas out of the water. The two of them fell onto the sand and took a few moments to catch their breath.

  “Thank you, sir,” Lucas said between gasps.

  “What in God’s name were you doing out there, Lucas?”

  Instead of answering, Lucas showed Armada his left hand and uncurled his fingers. In his palm was a small iron object with a worn leather handle, on top of which was a tiny iron cage with a metal ball inside that bounced about.

  “The Aguilars’ baby rattle…” Armada said. “You foolish boy.”

  Armada looked up and saw that Lucas had been positioning himself just under the spot where Luis Aguilar had thrown the rattle in the water the day before.

  Lucas’s shoulders were beginning to shiver, but he appeared to ignore this and looked the rattle over. “Look, sir.”

  Lucas pointed to where an inscription had been carved into the metal: To my son Federico, Mencía M.

  “This rattle is from Mencía Marañón,” Armada said.

  “Luis Aguilar didn’t mention that part, did he, sir?”

  Armada felt a rush of pride for the boy, but the words didn’t come. He was much better with scolding. It was easier to impersonate a fatherly tone when he was channelling his anger. But with something like this, it felt artificial coming from his mouth. What right did he have to praise or scold this boy anyway? What would a real father say now?

  “You’re shivering, Lucas. Let’s get you back to camp,” Armada said.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Armada always loved it when he was fortunate enough to reach this part of an investigation. The case was beginning to crack wide open, exposing all the hidden secrets everyone had fought so hard to protect. And none of the suspects had any idea how much Armada knew, which gave him a great deal of leverage.

  But there was only one suspect on Armada’s mind now as he crossed the plaza and marched towards the entrance to the inn. The four-wheeled coach was parked in front, as it was much too large to fit in the stables where the two magnificent black steeds had their snouts buried in a trough full of oats and were snorting away at each other.

  Armada entered the inn to find the innkeeper and his cook roasting up a whole pig and arguing about what the viscount would like as a second course. They did not even notice as Armada passed them and went straight up to the viscount’s room.

&nb
sp; “You need to polish these boots again, Gaspar,” the viscount said as Armada entered the room. His back was to the door as he used a brush to rid himself of the bits of fluff all over his overcoat. “I don’t want these campesino rats thinking I’m one of them. I shouldn’t have to show you again—”

  “Good evening, Viscount,” Armada said.

  The viscount turned his head and frowned at Armada.

  “Whatever it is, Constable, I don’t have time. As soon as Gaspar gets back, we’re going to be making preparations to go.”

  “They’re letting you exhume your son’s body, then?” Armada asked, stepping into the room.

  “First thing tomorrow, after which Gaspar and I can finally leave this rathole. It’s amazing what a few ducats can get you in towns like these. These campesinos, they don’t know their own greed. You should have seen their eyes light up when I flashed a bit of silver at them. Ha!”

  Armada couldn’t tell if the viscount’s intention was to upset him or if he was hoping Armada shared his sentiment.

  Armada chose to ignore it. “Congratulations, Viscount. I’m sure Esteban will get a fine burial.”

  “Yes, the one he deserves. They insulted our entire family by plopping him in the ground like that. The indignity! Not even a proper gravestone. I’m considering informing the Inquisition of what’s happened here,” the viscount said.

  “I would recommend against that, Viscount,” Armada said. “For that might also make them aware of the lies you’ve been telling.”

  The viscount stared at Armada. It was the kind of accusation that in the viscount’s world could end in a duel and bloodshed. “What are you talking about?”

  Armada took the baby rattle out of his pocket and held it up for the viscount to see. “Let’s start with why Esteban was here.”

  The viscount took the rattle and looked it over. “What is this?”

  “What your son was killed for.”

  The viscount turned it over in his hand and stopped when he saw Mencía’s inscription.

  “He figured it out, didn’t he?” Armada said. “Just before he died. The fabrication that your entire family history has been built upon. And you tried to stop him.”