The Shores of Spain (25 page)

The young man’s mouth opened. It was fortunate he wasn’t a spy, because he’d be terrible as one. “I didn’t say that,” Pinter protested.

Joaquim glanced at Marina, who was politely paying attention whether she understood them or not. In Portuguese, he told her, “I think our American ambassador left something out.”

“Are you surprised?” she asked in turn.

“No, I suppose not.” Privately, Duilio had expressed some doubts about Madam Norton. Not that her aid hadn’t been vital so far. Instead Duilio questioned her motives. Mere curiosity about the fate of a former employee didn’t seem a strong enough motive to help them as much as she had. Joaquim turned back to Pinter, wondering how much Pinter had caught of what he’d said. Portuguese wasn’t all that distant a cousin of Catalan and Spanish. “So, what role are your people taking in this now? Now you’ve misplaced my quarry and inserted one of your own people into the situation.”

“I’ll give you what I do have,” Pinter said, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. “But until I hear from the other agent involved, I can’t tell you any more.”

Joaquim watched him closely. “And will you do so when you hear?”

“Madam Norton asked us to cooperate, Inspector,” Pinter insisted. “I
am
trying to do so.”

The poor man was caught between two of his superiors, an uncomfortable position that Joaquim had been in himself from time to time. “Very well. We’re at the Hotel Colón, on the Plaça de Catalunya. You can leave word for me there.” Joaquim rose, noting that Marina was giving him a speaking look. He took her hand and set it on his arm to lead her out of the office. But he stopped on the threshold and turned about. “What about the boy?”

Pinter seemed surprised. “We were only told to follow the woman. Once she’d gotten rid of him, we didn’t worry about him any longer.”

Joaquim’s mouth went dry. “Got rid of him?”

“I assumed she’d rented him or had a similar arrangement, because she left him where she stayed the very night she arrived. Where he went from there, I can’t tell you.”

The boy was
webless
, half sereia, no ordinary boy off the street, but Pinter clearly didn’t know that. Madam Norton must have neglected to forward that information.

No, Joaquim doubted the omission was a matter of neglect. The woman was too crafty to forget a pertinent detail like that, so it had been intentional. “Where exactly did Leandra Rocha go that first night?”

“To a den of thieves within the old city’s walls, a place I certainly would not have been able to enter. The boy didn’t leave with her, though. Children like that run rampant in the poorer parts of the city.”

There were poor children everywhere, in every city. They very often fell into a life of theft and begging, if not worse, often working to fill someone else’s pockets. But this boy was
important
. Duilio had told him so.

“We’ll find the boy, then, and if you figure out what your man has done with Leandra Rocha, please send word.”

*   *   *

M
arina kept one eye on Joaquim as he sat on a bench in the midst of the crowded walkways. In his hands he held an undershirt taken from the luggage in which the boy had hidden back on the islands. An odd thing to carry about, so he’d concealed it in a paper bag borrowed from the hotel’s concierge.

They’d followed Joaquim’s sense of the boy to an area in the old part of town, inside the ancient walls, and had ended up on a wide bricked walkway lined with plane trees. Pedestrians milled about, shopping and visiting cafés for coffee and a late breakfast of bread rubbed with olive oil and tomatoes, even though it was nearer time for lunch in her opinion.

Joaquim had warned her this was a place where tourists abounded, even this early in the year, so she should guard her handbag against pickpockets. That had, however, only increased his certainty that they would find the boy here. One thing they
did
know about the boy was that he was a thief, and this was exactly the sort of place where they could count on finding one—the Rambla. So Marina waited near a stand where an old crone sold flowers, once again watching other people stream by.

Joaquim’s head turned toward the harbor, almost as if the boy was in his sight. Then, eyes wide with surprise, he turned to look over his shoulder at
her
.

What?
Marina glanced down and saw that a boy stood against the wall, right next to her. She stifled a gasp. She recognized that shirt and cap from the photograph Joaquim had in his keeping.

The boy swept off his cap and pressed it into her free hand. Marina clutched the thing without thinking; there was something hard within. Without so much as a glance up at her, the boy settled at her side, one foot propped against the wall. His face was downcast, as if he were sulking.

A second later Marina realized why. A large man in a blue and red uniform with brass buttons, a tall black hat atop his head, came jogging down the street, his dark eyes scanning the people that crowded the stalls and shop fronts and cafés. Marina surreptitiously opened her handbag and stuffed the boy’s cap inside, praying that it didn’t contain lice.
Thank heavens Ana packed my largest bag.
She reached out her hand to the boy. “Come along.”

The boy huffed out a long-suffering breath. But he slipped a small, dirty hand into her gloved one. She led him to the flower seller’s stall and made a show of perusing the lady’s wares. Taking her lead, Joaquim came and joined them. As the uniformed man approached, Joaquim purchased a bunch of pink roses, turned to the boy, and said, “Carry these for your mother.”

“Flowers?” the boy complained in Portuguese, the pronunciation only slightly different from the Spanish, but noticeable.

Apparently the boy spoke their language. Marina held his hand and thanked him fulsomely. He let out another dramatic groan, but clutched the flowers close anyway.

The man in red and blue was almost on them, so Marina tugged her handkerchief out of her sleeve and knelt down to make a show of dabbing dirt from the boy’s nose. Hopefully that would prevent the man from getting a good look at him.

But that was when she got
her
first look at the boy’s face. Her heart nearly stopped.

CHAPTER 23

                   I
LHAS
DAS
S
EREIAS                   

D
uilio dressed in his shortest
pareu
, the one that came only to midthigh. It was one he wore only when going down to the beach to swim, although it was early in the morning for that. But the wife of the Spanish ambassador had come to call and she was notoriously prudish. If anything would put her off her guard and provoke her to make mistakes, it was a display of bare skin. Unfortunately, that meant he had to leave his revolver in the bedroom.

He double-checked the paint about his eyes and made sure his overlong hair wasn’t too disordered, then turned to Oriana. “Good enough?”

She ran a hand across his tattooed chest. “You look lovely.”

He rolled his eyes. She always told him that. “Let’s get this over with.”

They had returned to the house on the beach the previous evening, Costa and Inês Guerra with them. The lovers were now settled in the guest quarters, and Duilio’s best guess was that Vas Neves had spent a couple of hours giving the lieutenant a severe dressing-down.

Since Inês’ information confirmed that Madam Davila was neck-deep in this chaos, the woman’s visit was timely. So Duilio followed
Oriana along the hallways to the courtyard where the ambassador’s wife waited for them.

Grandmother Monteiro hadn’t dignified the woman’s presence by joining them; thus only two of the guards were there, the captain out of deference to the
office
of the Spanish ambassador. A rare smile lifted one corner of Captain Vas Neves’ lips when she spotted Duilio. She knew exactly why he was dressed as he was. Costa stood at her side, back in his Portuguese uniform. Reddish bruising marked his jaw, but most of the swelling had passed. Since they’d both been there for the incident in the market, Duilio wasn’t shocking either of the guards with his attire.

Madam Davila waited in the center of the sunny courtyard. She must be baking alive in all the layers of fabric she wore. She had on a dark blue suit with beige lace showing on her high collar and spilling from the cuffs of her sleeves. She cast a startled glance at Duilio’s mostly bared legs and quickly averted her face.

She glanced up again when Oriana entered the courtyard, and vexation flickered across her features. Oriana had chosen to eschew any vest. Apparently the ambassador’s wife was no more comfortable being confronted with Oriana’s bare breasts than she was with Duilio’s thighs. As long as her husband had been ambassador here, Duilio would have thought she’d become accustomed to near nudity by now.

Ignoring the woman’s reaction, Oriana ran through the customary greetings and inquired politely after Ambassador Davila. The ambassador was suffering from gout, his wife claimed, which Duilio considered just as good an excuse as any other. For all intents and purposes, Madam Davila
was
the Spanish ambassador in his stead.

The woman’s dark eyes flicked downward, taking in Duilio’s legs again, and returned to Oriana’s face. Madam Davila lifted her narrow nose in the air. “I see that you’re still playing at being a native, Madam Ambassador.”

“Playing?” Oriana smiled. “I was raised here, Madam Davila, in this very house, so this garb is quite natural for me. We were about to
go down to the beach for a swim though, so you did catch us in less formal attire.”

It wasn’t a secret, so Madam Davila knew Oriana had been raised here. Instead she was commenting on their clothing to cover her discomfort. Duilio moved behind Oriana and leaned against the wall, crossing one ankle over the other. He folded his arms to display his armbands better.

“To what do we owe the honor of your visit today, Madam Davila?” Oriana asked.

“We don’t usually share information about our native staff, but it’s come to my attention that one of our domestics recently came to this island.”

An interesting tack to take
. The unnamed member of the domestic staff had to be either Leandra Rocha or Inês.

“Why would one of your household come here?” Oriana asked innocently, hands folded.

“We aren’t certain,” Madam Davila said. “But now we can’t find any trace of her.”

“Surely you can replace her,” Oriana noted. “If she wished to leave your employ, that’s her concern, isn’t it?”

Madam Davila plucked at the leaves of one of the plants next to the fountain. Her glove, a delicate netting one, snagged on a leaf and she jerked it away. “If it were that simple, I wouldn’t have troubled you. But when she fled, she took a young boy with her, the son of one of the young women who work in our offices.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t contacted the government on Quitos, then,” Oriana said. “Why would this domestic steal another woman’s child?”

“We’ve speculated that she’s delusional and believes he is her child,” Madam Davila said, waving one lace-obscured hand. “It’s hard to be certain why until we can find her and question her.”

Now that was a hastily concocted story if ever he’d heard one; they’d resorted to claiming madness. Madam Davila’s story was weak.

“I fail to see how
we
can help you,” Oriana observed.

“There is one aspect of this that you should know,” the woman said, her eyes fixing on Oriana’s bare feet. “The boy is almost eight years old. Clever, with dark hair and dark eyes.”

The ambassador’s wife lowered her lovely face then, as if embarrassed. “His mother named him Alejandro Ferrera,” she added, “and his resemblance to you is quite marked, Mr. Ferreira.”

Aha!
So Inês had heard the boy’s name correctly after all. Duilio had given some thought to the probable timing of the boy’s birth. Nine years ago Alexandre Ferreira had been in Spain, selling off the family’s businesses in Barcelona. That would put him in the right place at about the right time.

His bastard uncle, Rafael’s father, Paolo Silva, had once warned Duilio that he had
two
bastard brothers. Duilio’s gift had told him then that he’d eventually learn it was true. He’d been waiting some time for that day to arrive.

“As you can see,” Madam Davila continued with ill-concealed spite, “this does concern you, Madam Ambassador. Or rather it concerns Mr. Ferreira.”

Duilio gave Madam Davila what he hoped was his best smile. “My father’s unfortunate behavior while away from home was known to the whole family, I’m afraid. My mother even raised one of my half brothers alongside me. And now to learn I have another brother? I would love to meet young Alejandro.”

Madam Davila must have expected dismay. She didn’t look pleased. And that made his day all the better. She left shortly after that, with Oriana’s generous promise that should Leandra show up, they would immediately send word. Not a difficult promise to make, since they knew Leandra was in Spain.

“Why would she come all the way out here?” Oriana mused after the woman was gone.

“I’m sure she has spies watching the house,” Duilio said. “I’d bet the watcher recognized Inês and sent off a report immediately.
All of that might have been an attempt to learn what Inês told us.” He glanced at Costa, who shrugged. “Or she could have intended to prompt us to look for Alejandro.”

“He’s in Barcelona, isn’t he?” Oriana pointed out.

“Perhaps . . .” Duilio ran his fingers through his overlong hair. “I’d like to send a message to the Americans. Ask whether they can forward the boy’s name to Joaquim. It may help him locate Alejandro.”

“Do you think the Americans would do that for us?” Oriana asked.

“The ambassador very much wants to find Leandra,” Duilio said, “so I believe she will.”

Benites and Almeida were dispatched within the hour via ferry to Quitos. It would be interesting to find out how long it would take to get news of their new brother to Joaquim.