The Julian Secret (Lang Reilly Thrillers) (4 page)

The American, Donald Huff, or Señor 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 Señor Don made to her mother for her birthday.

And now Señor 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 Señor 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 Señor Don used as office, research library, filing room,
and whatever other purpose needed to be served at the moment.

The door was cracked open.

Señor 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. “Señor 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.

Señor 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.

“Señorita?”

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.

“Sí?
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 Señor 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.”

The inspector’s eyes narrowed, no longer looking sorrowful. “That would be a good idea had not someone taken it apart and removed the hard drive.”

She stared at him in shock, realized her mouth was open, and shut it before speaking. “He was careful about making backups.”

He was groping for another cigarette. “On what—disks, CDs? We found none. Apparently, our killer was meticulous in removing whatever research and writing Señor Huff had done.”

Sonia stood on legs that did not feel like they wanted to hold her. “Not all of them.”

She retrieved her purse. “I have one here, a CD.”

The inspector’s eyebrows came together. “Why would you have it? The man was so secretive in what he was doing.”

She handed it to him. “It was perfectly safe with me. I have no computer at home. Anyway, there are pictures on it, digital pictures he wanted me to take by a photography store and ask if they could lighten some up, enhance others. I was running late, so I planned to take them by this afternoon after the siesta.”

He held out his hand. “We will return it when we finish.”

Sonia wondered when, if ever, that would be.

Atlanta, Georgia

Park Place; 2660 Peachtree Road

The next evening

A warm spring breeze gave only a slight hint of the heat and humidity a month or so away. To the two men standing on the twenty-fourth-floor deck, the city below was a handful of jewels stretching to the southern horizon, where aircraft departing and arriving at the airport resembled distant fireflies. Both men took in the scene in silence, each puffing gently on a cigar.

The shorter of the two, a black man wearing a sports shirt open at the neck to display a golden crucifix, rubbed his stomach appreciatively.
“Deorum cibus!”

The other, also informally dressed, chuckled. “Food for the gods, indeed, Francis. At least you appreciate my cooking. After all,
Ieunus raro stomachus vulgaria temnit
.”

“Horace does tell us that an empty stomach rarely declines ordinary food, but that dinner was awesome, anything but ordinary.” Father Francis Narumba wrinkled his eyebrows in mock suspicion. “But then, the quality of food around here has improved dramatically since Gurt came along. I don’t mean to preach, Lang, but . . .”

Langford Reilly contemplated the ash of his cigar. “Then don’t, Francis,” he said good-naturedly. “We heretics don’t take the same view of living in sin as you papists. Ever heard of
capistrum maritale?”

It was Francis’s turn to chuckle, the sound of a breeze across dry leaves. “As a priest, I’ve escaped Juvenal’s marital muzzle. But your first marriage was a good one. Had Dawn lived . . .”

Realizing he might well have touched a place still raw, Francis puffed on his cigar. Dawn, Lang’s wife, had suffered a lingering death from cancer years ago, long before the priest had known his friend.

Francis broke the silence that was threatening to lengthen. “Gurt going to be here indefinitely?”

Judging by Lang’s scowl, the priest had made another conversational misstep. “Ask her.”

Francis sighed and turned to face his friend. “Look, Lang, everything I say tonight seems to upset you. Maybe it would be better if I—”

Lang moved to put an arm around the priest’s shoulder.
“Amicus est tanquam alter idem
, a friend is just like a second self, Francis. I guess I’m a little touchy tonight.”

Reassured, Francis smiled, the white teeth doubly brilliant against the dark face. A native of a country among the worst of Africa’s pestilential and violent West coast, Francis had gone to seminary and been appointed to minister to the growing numbers of Africans in Atlanta.

Though white, Lang’s sister, Janet, had converted to Catholicism and become one of his parishioners.

Lang embraced no particular religion, but he and the black priest had become good friends with more in common than most white Americans and black Africans. Lang described himself as a victim of a liberal arts education, bored by the usual business degree. Ancient history and its languages had been his passion, a neat fit with the priest’s knowledge of Latin and medieval history. Swapping Latin aphorisms had begun as a game and become a habit.

“Perhaps you are now ready for dessert and coffee?”

Gurt was silhouetted against the interior of the condominium. Even half in shadow, she could have graced the cover of any number of men’s magazines. Or a bottle of St. Pauli Girl beer from her native Germany. Her height, nearly six feet, accentuated a perfectly proportioned figure she seemed to maintain without effort. Sky-blue eyes and shoulder-length hair the color of recently harvested hay could have come straight off a German travel poster. In public, she got more attention than a joint chief of staff on a military base.

“We have also strudel freshly baked,” she added with just enough accent to make the mundane sexy.

Francis rolled his eyes at Lang. “Appreciate
your
cooking?”

“Well, I did make the salad,” he grunted defensively.

Inside, a small square table occupied that part of the living/dining area of the one-bedroom unit. Before Gurt’s arrival, Lang had taken his meals on the open bar that separated the cramped kitchen. The table had been her addition, something she had found in one of the junk shops she haunted. It was one of several additions she had made to the home Lang had bought after Dawn’s death.

Under the table, tail wagging furiously, was Grumps, the large, black, and otherwise nondescript mongrel that had belonged to Lang’s nephew, Jeff. The dog was the only tangible thing left of the little boy, and Lang had every intention of keeping him despite the regular bribes to the building’s concierge staff to ignore the limitations on pet size specified in the condominium’s rules.

Gurt’s mention of strudel had awakened Grumps, and he was waiting for the handout he knew would be coming from Francis despite Lang’s protest that the animal needed no additional food. Lang supposed that had he a child, the priest would be equally ruthless in spoiling the infant, too.

Francis leaned over the table, sniffing appreciatively. “Peach, you’ve made a peach strudel?”

Gurt nodded. “And why not? In Germany, plentiful are apples, not so much peaches. Here there more peaches than I shake a stick at.”

“Can
shake a stick at,” Lang corrected.

She shrugged, despairing of ever really understanding English. “And why would I shake sticks at peaches, anyway?”

Lang rolled his eyes while Francis made no effort to hide a smile.

“If supply’s the criterion, I suppose peanut strudel is next,” Lang finally quipped, drawing an elbow in the ribs from Gurt.

Ever the diplomat, Francis changed the subject as adroitly as an NFL running back avoiding a linebacker. “You got your work permit?”

Gurt looked up from cutting the pastry. “Yesterday came what you call the green card.” A look of puzzlement flickered across her face. “But it was not green.”

“It used to be. The name stuck,” Francis offered. “So now . . .”

Gurt twisted her face into an expression that told Lang that she was having trouble with the idiom of a name adhering like some sort of glue. The literal nature of her native language made American slang difficult.

“Now,” she continued, “I will teach German at the school, Westminster.”

Francis gave an appreciative whistle as he accepted a slice that could have been a meal itself. “You started at the top. That’s the ritziest prep school in the city.”

There was a sudden silence, the interruption of conversation as each person looked into their own thoughts.

Lang spoke. “So the Braves going to do it again?”

Both Lang and the priest were ardent baseball fans.

“If anyone can, Bobby Cox can,” Francis said, referring to the manager of the Atlanta team. “Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral, in a single moment? No man.”

Lang thought for a second. “Shakespeare,
Macbeth?”

“You got it.”

“We’ll see. It’s only April. ‘The end crowns all and that old common arbitrator, Time, will one day end it.’ ”

Francis wrinkled his brow. “Shakespeare?”

“Troilus and Cressida.”

Both men were delighted with the new game: Shakespeare on baseball. The possibilities were endless. Lang was thinking of the Roberto Alomar incident of a few years ago, the umpire asking in the words from
King Richard III
, “Why dost thou spit at me?” Francis had in mind the ubiquitous beer ads around the park and
King Henry VI
, Part II, “Make my image but an alehouse sign.”