As one of the men got up to look in the kitchen, the new arrival extended a hand. "My name's Don Huff."
CHAPTER ONE
Seville, Spain
Calle Colon 27
9:21 (the present)
The patio seemed an odd place for what was happening. The enclosure was murky, the morning's sun not having yet scaled the enclosing stucco walls. Flashing lights from police cars gave bright hues to water from the thirteenth century Moorish fountain, and words from crackling radios ricocheted off handmade bricks. In fact, anything modern seemed anachronistic along the narrow streets only a few blocks from the Moorish Mudejar alcazar, where a young sailor from Genoa, according to legend, had convinced a queen to pawn her jewels to finance a voyage. There was nothing merely legendary about the columned and canopied sarcophagus that held the remains of that sailor in the massive cathedral north across the cobblestone Piazza de la Virgen los Reyes.
The huge bells of that cathedral had just chimed the hour, as they had done for centuries, when the young woman had stopped in front of the ornate ironwork of the gate, inserted a key, and entered to begin her day's work. Inside a wall impressive only because of its height, she crossed a patio still cool from the shadows of the previous night. The fragrance of orange blossoms came from trees lining the street outside, leaves still wet with the morning's dew.
Another key opened a modern dead bolt set into a massive and ornately carved set of double doors. Her rubber sales squeaked on ceramic tile as she made her way across a three-story entrance hall. To her right was a stone staircase that doubled back on itself as it climbed to twin galleries of living quarters. Ahead of her was a massive dining room, its table separating twelve chairs on each side. It was at the end of the table that she stopped, scenting the air like a wary doe in an open meadow.
She did not smell coffee.
Strange.
Every morning for nearly two years now, the American had been in the kitchen drinking freshly brewed coffee when she arrived. Every morning he was in Seville, that is. Many times she would come to work to be greeted only by a note that set forth tasks to be performed in his absence: research some phase of the Franco government, find the address of some aged Falangist he wanted to interview, reduce whatever she had done to a three-by-five card that went into an endless series of filing boxes. It was as if the American did not trust the computers on which they worked.
The American, Donald Huff, or Senor Don, as she called him, had doubled the wage she had been making as an English teacher when he hired her eighteen months ago. There had been other things, too: Wonderful clothes that had arrived from America with the name of the store only, no sender. Of course, had she known her anonymous donor, custom and her reputation would have demanded she return such expensive gifts, presents no single woman could accept from someone not of her family. And the huge American turkey that had crowned last Christmas dinner. Her previously modest salary plus her mother's widow's pension could never have produced such a bird, a monster-sized creature that provided meals for a week. Nor could the two incomes have purchased the train tickets and hotel rooms on the Costa del Sol, a gift Senor Don made to her mother for her birthday.
And now Senor Don would be leaving this magnificent dwelling in a few months, his book all but finished. She would miss him, both as friend and benefactor.
Why wasn't he making his morning coffee?
She pushed the swinging door to the kitchen open. The two fireplaces, one for cooking, the other for baking, were as spotless as ever. As they should be, since they probably hadn't been used for over a hundred years. The actual food preparation was done in a pantry-sized room crammed with the most modern appliances, gas range and oven, refrigerator large enough to hold almost a week's groceries, very large by European standards, and a microwave, the first she had ever seen. A door could be closed, removing these marvels from view and allowing Senor Don to insist to his dinner guests that she had prepared everything bending over the ancient stone hearth.
The coffeemaker had sat where she had left it the day before, empty, silent, and, for some reason, foreboding. She set her purse down beside it.
She retraced her steps and climbed the stairs, walking along the open gallery to the suite of rooms she and Senor Don used as office, research library, filing room, and whatever other purpose needed to be served at the moment.
The door was cracked open.
Senor Don never left the door open. Terrified the cleaning staff would inadvertently toss some irreplaceable bit of research, misplace one of the index cards, or commit some other of what he called Capital Crimes of Negligence, he locked up when work was finished each day.
She opened the door further, just enough to stick her head into the room. "Senor Don?"
No answer.
She felt a chill despite the building's lack of air conditioning. She forced herself to push the door wider until it bumped against something on the floor. Squeezing between door and frame, she slid fully into the room, looked down to see what was against the door.
Senor Don.
Lifeless eyes. seemed to look right through her. His face held an expression of surprise, as though questioning whatever event had taken his life. His head rested in a small pool of blood and a gray jelly she instinctively knew was brains.
From somewhere came screams. It took her a full minute to realize they were hers.
"Senorita?"
Her mind came back to the present and the police cars in the patio like some vibrant nightmare. She was seated at a small, three-legged table in the kitchen, her hands clasped around a long, cold cup of coffee she had brewed because she needed to give herself something to do while the police went through the house.
She looked up into the craggy face of the chief inspector, a man she guessed to be in his mid-fifties. His most prominent feature was a pair of doleful brown eyes that resembled those of a basset hound. It was as though the violence and cruelty he witnessed in his job had given him a permanently sorrowful expression.
"Si? I can go gather up the papers now?"
He shook his head slowly, as though regretting being the bearer of even more bad news. "I am sorry, no. As you saw, papers are scattered everywhere, as though someone, perhaps the killer, were looking for something. We must examine everything."
He sat beside her and shook a cigarette out of a pack, looking for an ashtray. She brought him a small dish, and he raised his eyebrows in a question.
"Go ahead," she said.
He lit up, shaking out a wooden match, and looked at her through a haze of blue smoke before placing a small tape recorder on the table beside a notepad. ''You are Sonia Escobia Riveria?"
She nodded, supposing he was asking for the benefit of the recorder. She had given her name as soon as he and the other police had arrived.
He asked her address, employment history, and educational background, questions that, as far as she could tell, had no bearing on the matter at hand.
After asking how long she had worked for Senor Don, he asked, "Any idea why someone would want him dead?"
She shook her head and felt the tears she had-given up on brushing away spread across her face. "No."
The inspector stubbed out his cigarette, staring at the ashtray as though ideas for his next question might be there. "This writing he was doing, what was it about?"
She shrugged, aware how silly her answer was going to sound. "I'm not sure. I did specific research for him, most related to Franco or World War Two, but he did the actual writing himself."
"You never asked?" There was a definite note of incredulity in the inspector's voice.
"Of course I did. At first, anyway. He would laugh and say it was nothing I would care about. Then he seemed to get annoyed when I asked, so I quit. I suppose you could access his computer easily enough."