“I tell the police nothing,” the proprietress said in a voice that made Carla wonder how she ever saw this woman as soft. “I will wait. And then I will sell the Manoel Beleza de Andrade Port.” She laughed again, a loud laugh this time that sounded half strangled.
“The bottle that was in the case?” Carla sat back, trying to wrap her head around what the proprietress had just said. “The 1812 bottle?” New realization seeped into her mind like a stain. The welt on his forehead. He didn’t die when he fell.
A knowing look came into Senhora Gonzaga’s eyes, as if she read Carla’s mind.
“You are too smart for your own good, Senhora,” she said. “I see you know. It was not accident. I came to kill him. When he fall, I hear him moan. I smash the case and take the bottle, and I hit him hard to make sure. And then he is quiet.”
Into the stunned silence that followed, she took a deep breath, looking from one to the other. “I am sorry, but you both must have accident.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven – The Best Laid Plans
Carla closed her eyes. After serving cookies? After applying make-up? Really? She opened her eyes again and saw Senhora Gonzaga's wild expression. Yeah. Really.
Maria squared her shoulders. “There are two of us, and only one of you.”
“Is no matter.”
“And I have this!” Maria reached down, rolled up her cuff, and whipped out the small, thin knife she had shown Carla at the museum. “There will be no accident,” she said to Senhora Gonzaga, then broke into Portuguese.
To Carla, Maria said, “I have told her she must come with us to the police.”
She fixed her gaze on Senhora Gonzaga again. “I know how to use this.”
The older woman took a small, snub-nosed revolver from her pocket. “And I know how to use this. Is my husband’s,” she added, as if that information might interest them.
In the ensuing silence, Carla thought of the cliché that in moments like this your heart stops beating. Hers kept right on going. She could feel the pulse beating away in her throat and ears. She could hear it, too—ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk.
“You can’t shoot us,” she heard herself say in a calm voice that surely must be someone else’s. “How will you explain it to the police?”
“Yes, I am thinking about this in the kitchen when I make café. Roberto’s niece is crazy from her uncle death. She comes to my home while you and I are having conversation.”
“Why?” asked Carla in as calm a voice as she could muster. “Why would she come?” Keep her talking.
“Because I get her boyfriend in trouble with police for kill her uncle. She try to attack me and I shoot.” Eyeing Maria’s knife, she smirked. “You making it easy for me.”
“You’d better put it down,” Carla said to Maria.
After a moment’s hesitation, Maria laid the knife on the table.
“Won’t shooting her be worse than killing Senhor Costa by accident?” Carla asked.
“No. Because I defend myself. Nobody know about Roberto and me. Nobody will.”
Senhor Torres seemed to. Should I say that?
“What about me?” Carla asked instead.
“You try to help me, but you get in way.”
Great. “What are we supposed to be having our conversation about?”
Senhora Gonzaga pursed her lips. “Maybe you are coming here to ask me to teach you Portuguese.” She laughed a mirthless laugh.
“Do you really think I would tell them that?” Carla asked.
“You don’t say nothing. Is so sad. You try to defend me from this crazy girl, and my gun go off. I can make story they believe!”
After O Lobo had grabbed her throat, Carla had thought nothing could ever scare her so much again. She was right. Instead of fear, she felt a slow, steady anger building. This pathetic woman who might have aroused sympathy was willing to kill two innocent people because her affair hadn’t worked out? Because she had killed him in a fit of anger or jealousy or whatever? Because she had messed up? And I’m supposed to be okay with that?
“You mean . . . like I was trying to push you away from her?” Carla asked.
“Sim,” Senhora Gonzaga nodded eagerly. “Like that.”
“Away from her knife, right?”
Senhora Gonzaga frowned, as if perplexed by Carla’s willingness to help her alibi.
“I don’t think that will work.” Carla pushed her chair back and stood up.
Senhora Gonzaga rose, too, her knuckles turning white as she tightened her grasp on the gun. Anxiety had wiped the sneer off her face. “Sit down, senhora.”
Instead, Carla turned, walked past Maria, and marched over to the far wall, picking up the vase with plastic daisies and examining it. “My back is to you,” she said over her shoulder. “I don’t think you can convince the police I got in the way of the bullet you meant for Maria.”
“Come back and sit down,” Senhora Gonzaga’s voice trembled.
“And for another thing,” Carla said. “I’m way over here. Maria’s way over there. Your bullets will be all at the wrong angles.” She hoped that was true. In the mysteries she read, angles sounded important.
“You will come here!” Senhora Gonzaga’s voice was closer. If Carla could get her past Maria, Maria could jump her from behind.
“Come and get me,” Carla said.
A moment later, she felt Senhora Gonzaga’s hand on her arm, surprisingly strong. As the proprietress spun her around, Carla grabbed her wrist and shoved her arm toward the ceiling, dropping the vase to get a good hold with both hands. For good measure, she kicked Senhora Gonzaga. The force of it made her right shoe come off, but the proprietress merely cursed in Portuguese and hung on to the revolver, her finger on the trigger as they stumbled across the rug. The crash of the vase was accompanied by the crack of a bullet from the revolver and tinkling shards of glass from the shattered lamp overhead. From somewhere else, Carla heard the sound of more breaking glass. Something huge, from the smash and crash of it. She tightened her hold on Senhora Gonzaga’s wrist.
Maria came from behind, grabbing Senhora Gonzaga’s hand, but still the woman wouldn’t let go and yanked her arm free. The gun went off again. This time the print on the far wall shattered. Carla lunged, and the three of them went down, scuffling on the dingy rug. She tried to pry Senhora Gonzaga’s fingers loose, but the proprietress thrashed from side to side, her legs kicking, while her free hand scrabbled until she managed to grab Carla’s hair and pull hard.
“Damn!” Carla nearly let go at the painful yank. Luckily, Maria had a good grasp on Senhora Gonzaga’s wrist. Carla tightened her own handhold, grimacing from the pain in her scalp. Maria banged Senhora Gonzaga’s hand against the floor. Still holding the gun, the woman let loose a stream of Portuguese that sounded like pure invective. She let go of Carla’s hair with her free hand and reached for Maria’s throat. Carla elbowed her in the stomach, while Maria managed to kneel on the woman’s other arm, grinding her weight into her elbow.
“Ai!”
“Let go,” Carla said, through panted breaths. All of them were panting, she realized. Senhora Gonzaga had finally stopped struggling, but Carla was afraid to let her up, since she still hung onto the gun. And now there was a rattle of a door knob, a loud thump against the hall door, another thump—a kicking kind of thump, Carla thought dizzily, followed by the splintering crash of wood.
A moment later, a flowered ballet flat came down on Senhora Gonzaga’s hand.
“Ai!” Senhora Gonzaga cried again, and her fingers loosened. Pointing her own gun at the woman, Tiffany, no longer wearing sunglasses, reached over and picked up Senhora Gonzaga’s revolver. A stray piece of glass fell from her sleeve.
Tiffany? An undercover agent? Working for the Braga police? Without her sunglasses, she looked a little older than Carla had pegged her for. Late twenties, maybe. Her large, expressive brown eyes and regretful half-smile seemed at odds with the two guns she held.
Fernandes quietly walked in through the remai
ns of the door, followed by Chefe Esteves, both holding Berettas. Esteves turned, twisted the lock, and opened the broken door wide to allow Agente Cunha to walk comfortably through. Esteves brushed a fragment of glass from his lapel.
A surreal image popped into Carla’s mind of a gesticulating crowd gathering outside the café’s shattered plate glass window . . . Torres holding his palms out, explaining, “You see . . .”
Get a grip, Carla.
She pushed herself off the proprietress, scrambled to her feet, one shoe on, one shoe off, and smoothed her skirt. She ran her fingers through her hair, wincing, and noticed a few blonde hairs in her would-be killer’s hand. Fernandes helped Senhora Gonzaga to her feet and Esteves handcuffed her. Tiffany pocketed her own gun, handing Senhora Gonzaga’s to Fernandes.
All the fight had gone out of the proprietress. One sleeve was torn. Her bun had come undone, and her hair lay in gray-streaked waves over her shoulders. Her mouth drooped at the corners. Despite that, Carla could see she once had been pretty. For a moment, she felt sad for the woman until she flashed on the snub-nosed revolver Gonzaga had trained on her and Maria.
“What took you so long,” she asked Fernandes. “Why didn’t you just—I don’t know—shoot the lock off the door?”
He lifted his brows. “And perhaps hit one of you, if you were by the door? We don’t like to shoot the wrong person.”
Carla took a deep breath. “No. Of course not.” She spied her shoe near an end table and hobbled over to it. When she looked up again, he was eyeing her.
“Any injuries?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not really. My scalp stings a little. That’s about it.”
“By the way,” he added, “your friend Paulo finally turned himself in.”
“Really?” she asked, slipping on the shoe. “Will that help him at this late date?”
Fernandes lifted his shoulders. “It might.” He turned his attention to the sofa, where Agent Esteves had led Senhora Gonzaga. Her cuffed hands in her lap, she rocked back and forth, weeping.
Cunha went through the bedroom door, then came back quickly, walking over to Fernandes. He muttered something in a low tone.
Maria had retrieved her knife from the table. She sat and rolled up her jeans cuff, returning the knife to its ankle sheath, which elicited a sharp question from Tiffany in Portuguese.
“Não,” Maria said. “She asked me if it was a switchblade,” she explained to Carla, “They are illegal.”
“Wait.” Carla stared at Tiffany. “You speak Portuguese?”
Tiffany looked amused. “Sure.”
“But you’re from Reno.”
“I’ve never been outside of Portugal in my life.”
“And your name probably isn’t Tiffany.”
“Nope.”
“You sound so authentic,” Carla marveled. “No accent at all. How . . .?”
Tiffany-who-was-not-Tiffany laughed. “Television. I’ve watched American programs ever since I was a kid. I love American TV.”
Maria stood up, her bag slung over her shoulder. “You fooled even me.”
Senhora Gonzaga rubbed her shin and unloosed a new stream of Portuguese Carla was sure she didn’t want to understand.
“You kicked her?” Fernandes asked. “You seem to find ever new uses for shoes.”
Esteves helped the proprietress to her feet and led her out the door, no doubt to a police car waiting below.
Detetive Fernandes gave the woman Carla now thought of as Not-Tiffany a nod. “Bem feito,” he said, which Carla decided was a congratulation. “A team is coming to collect more evidence,” he added. “I understand there is a rare 1812 Port in Senhora Gonzaga’s bedroom.”
“Sorry if I complicated things,” Carla told him.
He shrugged. “There are always complications. It worked to our advantage.”
Her contrition vanished. She turned to Not-Tiffany.
“What made you sure Senhora Gonzaga was the one who killed Costa?”
“Fingerprints.”
“Fingerprints!” Carla thought back to her phone conversation with Fernandes, when he had said matching prints on the wrappers were only useful if the same prints were already in the system. “So Senhora Gonzaga has a record?”
“The prints on a spoon matched the ones on both wrappers,” said the agent. “The spoon Senhora Gonzaga handled when I ordered coffee yesterday afternoon. You might say you inspired me when you took Senhor Vitore’s spoon.”
“When I took . . . what!” Carla put her hands on her hips. “You’re the one who stole my purse.”
Not-Tiffany looked pained. “‘Stole’ is a harsh word. You could say I relieved you of the chore of delivering it.” She grinned at Fernandes, who returned the barest hint of a smile.
To Carla he said, “Agente Alcides downstairs will take you and Senhorita Santos home.”
“My aunt’s house is in the hills,” Maria protested. “I can take a bus.”
“It is no problem for Agente Alcides to take you,” Fernandes said firmly. “He can drop Senhora Bass off first.”
“Yes, please!” Carla nodded. Time to pull herself together before meeting Owen for lunch. A cup of coffee. A hot bath. A change of clothes. Carla checked her watch and blinked—not even ten-thirty! How could so much have happened in such a short time? And just how am I going to explain all of this to Owen?
“After lunch, I would appreciate it if you both return to the station to give your testimony,” Fernandes told Carla and Maria.
So there goes the trip to Bom Jesus.
“I will be glad to testify against this woman,” said Maria. “My cousins can bring me.”
“Okay,” Carla said. As if I can refuse. A wave of resentment welled in her. She was tired of being at the mercy of everyone else’s decisions. This week she’d been tricked by Costa, half-throttled by O Lobo, given ominous messages to deliver from Geoffrey Walsh, semi-stalked by Vitore, had her arm yanked by Senhora Gonzaga—who also pulled her hair and, more importantly, pulled a gun on her. She’d been told by Fernandes to spy on Maria, then to keep out of things. He had told her not to leave the country until . . ..
Carla’s thoughts came to an abrupt halt. She smiled at Fernandes.
“What?” he asked, when she didn’t say anything.
“So. Detetive Fernandes, can I assume I’m no longer a suspect?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight – All’s Well That Ends Well—for Some
At the end of their Monday Skype call, Carla told Bethany, “Now that I’m a free woman, let’s plan for Jessica to set up appointments sometime soon with Mrs. Weatherby and the Duartes. I’d like to see their houses. I’d like to see Mrs. Demming again, too. It’ll be nice to actually see the Da Silva Porto paintings on her walls.”
“Stay for a week,” Bethany suggested, scribbling on a notepad. “You can stay at my place a couple of nights and we can go hang out and do girl talk.”
“Nothing before next week, though, okay? Owen and I are going to Ponte de Lima next week-end.”
“Got it,” Bethany said. “So . . . details, please.”
“About Ponte de Lima?" Carla teased. "Lots of old buildings, lots of azulejo tiles, from the pictures. And there’s a platoon of Roman soldier statues on one of the banks. It goes with a legend about the river.”
“You know what I mean,” Bethany said. “The case.”
“The case.” Carla rubbed her eyes. “Long story.”
Bethany tapped her pen against her desk. “I hope I’m not going to have to wait a couple of weeks or so to hear it.”
“It really is a long story,” Carla said. She ran her fingers through a lock of hair—the spot where Senhora Gonzaga had yanked—and winced.
There had been the trip to the police station where Carla and Maria gave their testimony while Owen and one of Maria’s cousins—a handsome young man who resembled Maria—waited. Afterward, Detetive Fernandes had taken all of them into another room and offered them soft drinks from a vending m
achine.
“Things turned out well,” Fernandes told Carla. “You and Senhorita Costa both were lucky. It seems to me I’m always telling you that,” he added, lacing his fingers, tapping his thumbs together, his pale gaze severe.
“What’s going to happen to Vitore and O Lobo? Have they said who the forger is?” she asked.
Owen said, “Carla . . ..”
Ignoring him, she had coaxed, “C’mon, detective. You owe me that much. I did get a confession out of Senhora Gonzaga.”
“The café owner killed Costa,” she told Bethany now. “He was going to dump her, and she lost it. She shoved him way too hard. And then she bonked him with a wine bottle to make sure he was dead.”
“She told you all this? Killers don’t share stuff like that.”
“Yeah, well. She pulled a gun on me and Maria. She’s going to be prosecuted for his death and for trying to kill us.” Not-Tiffany had told her that much. In the station, Senhora Gonzaga had broken down in further tears and confessed the whole story again to Fernandes.
“This woman pulled a gun on you?” Bethany's voice went shrill. Her eyes seemed to double in size. “How’s Owen handling all this? He can’t be too happy.”
“You’re right about that. He’s gone from being upset to relieved, to upset again.”
“Duh. Two people have tried to kill you in the space of a week! I was worried sick about you when you hung up Friday. I knew you were going to do something you shouldn’t.”
“Two people threatened to kill me,” Carla corrected.
“And came pretty close to succeeding, if you ask me.”
Carla didn’t answer, remembering Owen’s distraught face. “I’m just glad everything turned out okay, and they caught her,” Bethany said.
“Yeah, but only because she made two mistakes.”
“There you go, all sleuth-y again! What mistakes?”
“One,” Carla ticked off on her finger, “she shouldn’t have tried to pin the death on Paulo. If she had never lied, it still would seem more likely O Lobo or his boss did it. No one would suspect her. Of course, she wouldn’t know that. But, two, she really didn’t have to confess to Maria and me that she was the one who killed Costa.”
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