Читать книгу Matador, Mi Amor - William Maltese - Страница 5

CHAPTER ONE

This was Extremadura, east out of Trujillo, southwest from Madrid and hugging the border with Portugal. Rocky. Its very low hills were burned (often by temperatures over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit) by the Iberian sun to various shades of ochre and tan dotted, here and there, with olive groves.

“It’s a man’s land,” Karen Dunlap had told her daughter. “What Lalo was thinking when he left it to you completely escapes me.”

Alyssa’s mother hadn’t found her daughter’s sudden inheritance anything more than a tidy piece of real estate to be quickly dispensed with on the marketplace.

“You go for days on end, out there, without seeing even a bird. Of course, there are the bulls; but, you never really get to see them, either. They’re sequestered off in the countryside, miles away from any man, woman, or child, who might approach them on two legs and spoil them for the bullring.”

Karen had been at the Montego Hacienda for only one month, twenty years ago: the one and only month she’d been Señora Karen Montego, wife of Spain’s chief matador de toros Lalo Montego. It was a month and a marriage she didn’t care to recall, even now. One about which she still very seldom spoke.

“He had to have been crazy,” Karen had decided, “up to the very end. Why else leave the ranch to you when he has a son by that Cartaga Woman.”

The Cartaga Woman was Talia (nee Valéndez) Montego; although, Karen never gave her a Christian name. As far as Karen was concerned, Talia was, and always would be, simply the Cartaga Woman: Lalo Montego’s first and third wife. Talia had preceded, and, then, succeeded Karen in Lalo’s bedroom. The logical explanation was that Lalo had married Karen on the rebound and had had second thoughts when he was given the opportunity to get Talia back. After all, Talia had given Lalo a son, Adriano; and, in the end, she was the only one of Lalo’s six wives (seven marriages) who did. His mistake in marrying Karen became evident when, still on their honeymoon, he had engaged in a sexual relationship with a married lady on an adjoining ranchero. It was that affair which had sent Karen so quickly to divorce court.

Alyssa wasn’t Lalo Montego’s daughter. Her father was Donald Dunlap, Boston socialite, married to Karen for less than two years when he was shot dead in the crossfire of police and three bank robbers. Immediately thereafter, Karen had pretty much abandoned her daughter to a series of nannies, tutors, and private schools, to become an instant member of the international jet set and “café society”, picking up three more husbands in the bargain, one of whom had been Lalo Montego.

Then, after her last divorce (this time from a Swiss banker), Karen had decided to settle down; although, she had long since passed the point of ever really seeming like a “mother” to her daughter, neither having seen much of each other over the years.

Alyssa had met only two of her mother’s four husbands, counting her father. And, Lalo Montego hadn’t been one of them. That Alyssa had been made primary beneficiary of Lalo Montego’s Spanish estate, quite a sizable holding, left her more than a little bewildered.

“Turn it over to all over to lawyers,” Karen had counseled. “Let them sort it out with Adriano’s lawyers, because Adriano won’t stand by and see you get his birthright without a fight.”

But when the lawyers suggested the property be liquidated, Alyssa decided, quite on impulse, that she wanted to see it first.

“It’s no place for a woman,” Karen had persisted. “Take it from someone who has been there, done that, got the T-shirt, burned it, and tossed the ashes. You’ll feel completely cut off from civilization.”

If she’d been more attuned to her daughter, Karen would have realized that it was just that kind of escape for which Alyssa was looking, needing somewhere to where she could escape and re-think her decision to break up with Ty Gordman.

Everyone, her mother included, was sure Alyssa had slipped off the deep end the minute she not only refused Ty’s proposal for marriage but stopped seeing him altogether. Not only was he handsome, but his family connections made him one of the better catches among the always surprisingly few prime bachelors available.

Certainly, Alyssa “liked” Ty. But, liking and loving, at least as far as she was concerned, were not one and the same. She enjoyed his company, because he was polite, well-mannered, danced well, made pleasant conversation, and could make her laugh, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed him so much as to contemplate spending the rest of her life with him.

Alyssa was enough of a romantic to envision marriage as the beginning to an eventual “death do us part” ending. On the other side of the same coin, she was enough of a realist to see that, perhaps, such long-lasting marriages were not usually the rule. Where divorce had once been looked upon as an anathema by the rich, it was now a course of action even they embraced at the drop of a hat.

The driver, Flavio, said something, calling Alyssa from her reverie and back to the present. He was pointing.

Ramón Selene, seated in the seat beside Alyssa, immediately scooted forward for a better look at circling birds in a patch of cloudless blue sky off to one side.

Ramón was the foreman of the ranch Alyssa now owned. He’d met her at the airport in Madrid. They had been driving since morning, except for a short break for lunch.

Never very talkative with his new employer, perhaps logically made ill at ease by the presence of a young American woman who probably didn’t know a bull from a heifer, he had lapsed into complete silence long before the car passed through Toledo en route to Trujillo. He wasn’t silent now, though, even if his animated conversation was with the driver and not with Alyssa.

The birds, obviously the subject of conversation, continued their downward helix over something probably dead.

“…go for days without seeing even a bird,” Karen had said. But, surely, a few buzzards shouldn’t be cause for such excitement.

Alyssa strained to catch segments of the conversation. After all, she did speak the language, forced into it by obligatory foreign language lessons heaped upon her by a long line of tutors and teachers in private schools. But as she had discovered in France, on her first visit, there was usually a period of transition needed, wherein it was necessary to recognize the language spoken by the natives wasn’t the same sterile language taught in classrooms far removed from the countries in question. Flavio and Ramón were simply speaking too fast for her to translate.

The car came to a sudden stop. Ramón opened his door and got out.

Alyssa realized there were several horsemen approaching from one side. Once abreast of Ramón, who was standing beside the car, the horses stopped. Ramón talked several minutes with the riders before getting back into the car.

“Is something wrong?” Alyssa asked as he again joined her. The riders were reigning for a turn-back the way they’d come.

“Some difficulty,” Ramón admitted, obviously reluctant to continue with an explanation. He wished she weren’t around to ask questions. He would have undoubtedly been more at ease if—whatever the present problem—he were able to handle it himself, without having the new owner right there to look over his shoulder.

“Whatever it is, I’m sure you can handle it,” she said, deciding she really wasn’t up to pretending she could even begin to be in charge of the situation. She had come here to escape and think, not become involved in playing enthusiastically at ranching. “I’ve been informed that you continue to do an excellent job in overseeing the property.”

If she had assumed her ready delegation of authority would relieve her of the problem, she was sadly mistaken. As much as Ramón might have preferred relieving her of it, there was no way he would be able to keep any of this from her if she decided to stick around for any length of time.

“Another bull has been killed,” he said finally.

Flavio put the car into gear, and they again started moving.

“Another bull? Killed?” Her curiosity was aroused in spite of herself. “Some disease killed them, you mean?”

“No,” he admitted reluctantly. “Someone killed them. With a gun.”

“A gun? Some one? For heaven’s sake, how many did this someone kill?”

“We’ve found four.”

Outside, there wasn’t a cloud (only buzzards) in the sky. Shimmering bands of heat lifted from the plain. Dust rose with the heat, stirred by God only knew what, since there was hardly a breath of breeze to be had anywhere. Trees, whenever making their occasional appearance, were either the gnarled limbs and trunks of olive, or some other low, squat trees which Alyssa wasn’t able to identify. The latter had dull silver trunks and twisted branches that extended to all sides. She couldn’t help being reminded of pain-distorted souls stretching arms upward for relief from Hell’s blast-furnace heat.

Karen had been right when she described the landscape as “more suited to a man’s tastes”. It definitely lacked the slightest feminine touch—at least at this point in Alyssa’s observations of it.

“Who?” she asked. “I mean, any suspects? After all, who goes around shooting helpless animals?”

“Yes, who?” Ramón echoed, though he, unlike Alyssa, had his suspicions. “Whoever, we’ll find him. The ranch is large, but nowhere is it so big as to hide a person like that forever. That I promise you.”

Why did Alyssa shiver? How could she chill in heat so long having penetrated the car, despite the air-conditioner on at full blast? Was it something to do with the revelation that, somewhere, out there, was someone with a gun, who might decide humans were worthier targets than stupid, four-legged beasts?

Or, was she letting her imagination run rampant? Certainly, Ramón had never said anything to insinuate that whoever killed the bulls might soon be looking for two-legged victims. Possibly, it wasn’t all that big of a deal after all. Despite vast economic improvements, Spain still had a moneyed elite and an extensive population of poor; one of the latter possibly just found him or her brought to the point of killing for.…

“Food?” she suggested. It was more than apparent, by the look Ramón gave her, that he hadn’t been anywhere near following her mental conjecture. She hurried to clarify. “The bulls, I mean. Did someone, perhaps, kill them for food?”

“Oh,” he responded, finally getting the gist. “No.”

So, Alyssa left it at that, hoping he would be able to take care of it after all. Frankly, she couldn’t imagine what difference a bull or two made in the long run. She had seen the figures that indicated the presence of over a thousand of them on the Montego Hacienda.

Once again, the conversation jolted to a complete stop. Alyssa pushed herself back into the leather seat and dreamed of arriving at the ranch where she could, hopefully, surrender herself to the unadulterated luxury of a long bath.

At least a dozen more miles were eaten up by the speeding car, and Alyssa began to wonder if she was ever going to see a bathtub before nightfall. She still had no real concept of the size of the ranch she’d inherited and found it hard to register how it had been well over an hour since Ramón had indicated they’d just passed over the eastern edge of her property.

Finally, the car turned right into a lane that bisected a grove of olives. The trees betrayed their age by displaying gaping holes that often formed tunnels from one side of a tree trunk to the other. A novice would have insisted such trees had likely seen their last days. However, the trees’ full canopies of delicate leaves, silvery-gray on the bottom and dark green on top, parenthesizing clusters of small black fruit, proclaimed otherwise.

After the barrenness of the land through which she’d just driven, Alyssa found this bit of visible green decidedly refreshing.

The grove gave way to a coppice of old and impressive oaks, attractive as only those particular trees can somehow be. Suddenly, in amongst them appeared the first evidence of well-manicured lawn, and—yes—water spurting rhythmically from a sprinkler system. Alyssa’s dreams of a bath were suddenly resurrected.

The hacienda sat amongst more oak, olive, and fruit trees. It was a large house, in the Spanish style, with white-washed adobe and red brick, the latter echoing the ferrous content of the soil in the area. The windows, large and overhung by balconies, were lined with lattices of iron grillwork seemingly so insubstantially delicate as to remind Alyssa of a lace mantilla she’d seen in the duty-free shop at the airport in Madrid.

Also, suddenly, there were flowers, complete carpets and tapestry-like cascades of them, gold and red, blue and white, able to survive within the parameters of this small oasis where they would quickly have perished beyond the availability of life-giving water.

When the car door opened, and Alyssa stepped out, the first thing she smelled was how the perfumes, exuded by the many blossoms, hung so heavily—almost palatably—within the air.

“Flavio will see to your things,” Ramón informed, giving Alyssa immediate leave to precede him up the three steps to the entranceway leading to the main door of the hacienda. The whole access area was embraced by a cupping grape arbor that’s intricate weave of vines and wood supports dangled delectable clusters of green grapes and dappled the sunlight.

One of two massive panels, each inset with its own polished bronze bull-head whose metal nose ring acted as a door knocker, came open. Before Ramón could introduce the emerging, heavy-set woman to the new mistress of the house, though, a commotion erupted somewhere around a corner of the building, out of sight.

Ramón glanced at Alyssa, his look one of my-God-what-can-possibly-be-happening-now-?

“Mara!” he yelled, by way of instructing the plump woman just through the door that Alyssa Dunlap was now fully in her charge, with or without formal introductions. He was quickly off and running to find the cause of the to-do.

“Viene…viene!” Mara insisted, coming to shoo Alyssa into the house, much like a mother hen moved to protect her brood from a fox in the hen house.

Alyssa complied, but only because she couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Certainly, she wasn’t yet confident enough in her new position to insist on following Ramón to the source of the continued confusion that sounded very much like men fighting.

What was going on, here?

If she were expecting answers from Mara, she was disappointed.

“What’s happening?” she asked finally, having yet to discover that Mara’s realm was the house, and anything beyond its walls was usually of no concern of hers.

“Men!” Mara said, by way of all-encompassing summation and flashed a wide and welcoming smile.

“Fighting?” Alyssa asked, uncertain whether she asked a question or made a statement. It made no difference, since Mara paid no mind, on either account.

“I’ll show you to your room,” the portly woman said instead. Her English was good, albeit with a decidedly sing-song cadence that seemed almost Oriental. “We’ll get you a nice bath, and I’ll bet you’re ready for some fresh clothes, now, aren’t you?”

“Indeed,” Alyssa admitted. Since she doubted any access to the continuing brawl outside, even if she wanted it, which she didn’t, she decided to let it run its course. If Mara wasn’t concerned, why should Alyssa be? Most likely, Mara’s insinuation that men were simply men was apropos for even this particular occasion.

“This way,” Mara instructed and led the way through a large living room and up a wide flight of stairs.

The second floor had rooms that opened up from a balcony that overlooked the living room. Alyssa’s suite offered access to a second balcony that overlooked the inner courtyard of the hacienda.

“Beautiful!” she exclaimed, looking down on the tranquil loveliness of palm trees, cacti, flower beds, well-trimmed shrubs, geometric walkways, benches, and a central splashing fountain. For the first time, Alyssa had some comprehension of just how truly large the hacienda was.

“Sí, muy hermosa,” Mara admitted before disappearing into the bathroom. There was the inviting sound of hot and cold water blasting to mingle within a white-porcelain tub.

There was as rap on the door, and Alyssa moved automatically to open it. Mara beat her to the punch, though, emerging from the bathroom with surprising speed. Alyssa wondered at the keen sense of hearing which had allowed Mara to hear the knock over the bath water.

The opened door revealed a young boy, probably in his early teens. He had a head of dark curly hair, dark black eyes, and clear, dark-complexion. He was dressed all in white, except for his sandals, which were made of twisted yellow hemp fiber. He carried a wood-and-tile tray on which was a frosted silver pitcher of liquid, a glass, and a plate tented by a linen napkin,

Mara plucked off the napkin, critically eyeing the arrangement of small sandwiches she’d uncovered. When everything under her scrutiny apparently passed her inspection, she silently nodded the youth her permission for him to enter the room and place the tray on one of the available small tables. His job complete, he beat a hasty retreat, punctuated by a shy smile when Alyssa, for a brief moment, managed to catch his eye.

“Something light to eat,” Mara said, “and some lemonade, from freshly squeezed lemons, to hold you over until later.” She poured the latter.

“Yes, please” Alyssa accepted the glass, appreciating its coolness against her fingers and palm. Although a slight breeze somehow managed to enter over the balcony, the heat of the progressing afternoon, out-of-doors, was still evident within the room.

“Fresh lemonade, a bite to eat, a nice bath, followed by a brief siesta, and you’ll be feeling yourself, again, in no time,” Mara promised, as if she were a doctor prescribing the ultimate cure. “You’ll see.”

“Yes,” Alyssa said, more than ready to agree. She found it enjoyable to be in the company of this friendly servant, more so than with the obviously ill-at-ease Ramón. At least, Alyssa had sensed intuitively Ramón had been made ill-at-ease—likely by her. She knew just enough about Spain to suspect its men were still so steeped in their false illusions of “macho” as not to appreciate being placed completely under a woman’s authority.

Why had Lalo Montego, Spain’s most macho of macho, left his bulls and his estate to Alyssa, instead of to, Adriano, his own son? No one had yet been able to answer that question to Alyssa’s satisfaction—and certainly not to the satisfaction of her mother.

“Lalo always was screwing up his loyalties,” Karen had said to her daughter. “But, then, he ever only professed to have had but one true friend: Joaquín Hidalgo. And, he showed just what he really thought of that, didn’t he?”

As much as Alyssa had pressed for more details, Karen hadn’t obliged.

“Best not stir up that cesspool at the moment,” had been her mother’s concluding comment.

Alyssa now placed her glass back on the tray, picked up one of the remaining sandwiches and followed Mara into the bathroom.

As Mara helped Alyssa out of her clothes, Alyssa took stock of herself in the un-steamed segments of the mirror. She decided, as she always did when she took the time for cool analysis of herself, that she was neither all that good nor all that bad in the looks department.

Actually, she was being modest, as any man would have gladly told her, had he but been given the chance. Alyssa had spent a good deal of her life behind mansion walls, and within all-girl schools, relatively sheltered from men and their compliments.

Actually, Ty Gordman had been the only real boyfriend she’d ever had. Although he told her often enough that she was beautiful, she wasn’t prone to believe him, especially since he was so obviously too smitten to be truly candid.

“Where else, my dear, do you plan to find another man so handsome, so socially well-connected, and so head-over-heels in love with you?” Karen had frankly wanted to know.

Alyssa had been tempted to ask just what made her mother any great authority on what did, or didn’t, constitute a good marriage prospect, since none of Karen’s marriages had turned out any great success story. Often, Alyssa found herself wondering if even her mother’s marriage to Alyssa’s father would have survived if forced to stand the real test of time.

Mara’s eyes were less critical than were Alyssa’s of the young woman’s obvious charms. Mara knew a real beauty when she saw one and could appreciate that Alyssa had somehow managed to arrive at young womanhood without being obnoxiously aware of her physical perfection. Mara had seen more than her share of attractive young women paraded through that very house by Lalo Montego when he was alive. The majority of those great beauties had been so aware of their physical attributes that their knowledge had made them less appealing than they might otherwise have been.

“Is the water too hot?” Mara asked, watching Alyssa tentatively begin her descent into it.

Actually, the “tub” was a small pool built into the floor, lined with the same sunburst-centered deep blue tiles that covered the walls, floor, and ceiling.

“The water’s fine,” Alyssa answered, taking one more small step down into the glaze of steaming liquid heaped, here and there, with fluffy mounds of bubble-bath-spawned suds.

In the mirror, her duplicate reflected back: blonde hair, smooth skin, exquisitely long legs, slim waist, ample breasts, and sensuous shoulders and neck.

She sat, letting the water cover all of her except her neck and face, as Mara moved quickly to pile Alyssa’s mane of hair atop the young woman’s head and wrap it securely into place with a heavy towel.

Mara, who only vaguely remembered Alyssa’s mother, was quite convinced Alyssa could lay claim to most of the mother’s remembered good looks. That said, from what Mara could divine, on such short notice, the daughter’s disposition was far better than the mother’s had ever been. Then, again, Lalo Montego had something about him that eventually made all of his women less than lovable. There had been something decidedly destructive about Lalo’s relationships with women—and men. Any woman. Any man, except, maybe, for Joaquín Hidalgo. Mara conjectured that Lalo had never loved any of them. All he had ever loved, up until his bitter end, had been his precious bulls and the times he spent in the corridas with them. At least Alyssa had been spared Lalo Montego.

Lalo had been the victim of a bull-horn thrust which should never have caught him in the belly. He’d been way too old to be fighting bulls in the bullring at the time. Yet, he couldn’t stay away; and, despite what some people had thought, it had nothing whatsoever to do with the large sum of money the promoters had paid him for his come-back. Lalo Montego always had plenty of money, even before he ever stepped into his first bullring as a boy of thirteen.

For some reason, he had simply been drawn to the corrida, even at the very end. Apparently, it had made no difference that his coordination wasn’t what it had once been, nor that the bulls were no the less dangerous.

No matter what all the bleeding liberals said, the bulls were not always destined to be bested on every Sunday afternoon. Ask Lalo Montego, wherever he was—in heaven or, more than likely, in hell.

Kneeling to wash Alyssa’s back, Mara didn’t like to think of Lalo actually in hell; although it was suspicions of his presence there that saw her praying for his soul each and every night. He had destroyed and mangled a lot of lives, even if he had always been kind to her. But, then, he had never really loved her. If he had, she, too, might have come to have a different impression of him. Strangely, it was the ones Lalo seemed to love the most (if he loved at all), who had ended up suffering the most at this hands.

“Do you think it would be all right if I just stayed where I am for awhile and just soak?” Alyssa asked, knowing that Mara had finished on her back and was now merely going through the motions. “It really feels so glorious.”

“You soak, then,” Mara said. “I’ll go unpack your things to makes sure it gets done properly. As you’ll soon find out, some of the girls around here need someone to take a firm hand. I’ve tried my best to keep them in tow; but, any great house needs a master or mistress in residence to take up the slack resulting from most everyone’s natural inclination toward laziness at the first opportunity.”

“You’ll have to help me, Mara,” Alyssa said. “Until I get the rhythm of things, I’m afraid I’m rather out of my element.”

“Don’t you worry, honey,” Mara told her. “You’ll do just fine.”

The servant retreated to the other room where Flavio had unobtrusively deposited Alyssa’s luggage.

Alyssa slipped deeper into the womb-like warmth of the water. She laid her head against the edge of the tub and shut her eyes. She didn’t actually fall asleep; but, she was very close to it when Mara returned to yank a large Turkish towel from the warming rack.

“You don’t want to stay in there so long as to catch a chill,” Mara warned with concerned authority.

Reluctantly, Alyssa obeyed her summons from the bathtub, enjoying the warm towel that quickly wrapped her.

The bed was turned down, revealing its crisp white sheets and providing a welcome invitation, indeed. Alyssa, whose last couple of days seemed filled with plane and car rides, suspected she was beginning to suffer the nemesis of all long-distance travelers: jet lag.

“What you need now is siesta,” Mara informed. “After which, you’ll be in good shape.”

Alyssa exchanged the towel for one of her nightgowns and crawled into the bed.

She must have gone to sleep as soon as she hit the mattress. Though, it didn’t seem all that long before she was being coaxed back to consciousness by a gentle but insistent nudge of her arm.

Pulled drapes had converted the room into twilight; even though, it was still daylight outside.

Alyssa stretched deliciously, enjoying the sensuous pull of her muscles and spine. She recognized Mara by the bed. She didn’t notice the concern etched on the Spanish woman’s face.

“Oh, but that did feel good,” Alyssa said. She added, somewhat guiltily, “I could have slept for hours.”

“I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Señorita,” Mara apologized, but.…”

“No apologies necessary,” Alyssa interrupted, threw back the lone sheet which covered her, and came to a sitting position. Her toes sought out, and found, the slippers that Mara had put beneath the bed earlier. “Certainly, I didn’t come all of this way to spend all of my time in bed.”

Her slippers on, she stood and snatched her robe from the back of the nearby chair. She walked to the windows to throw back the drapes and let in sunshine which, somehow, seemed less hostile than it had during her long drive to get there.

It was only when she turned back to Mara that she realized the Spanish woman was concerned about something.

“Whatever is the matter?” Alyssa asked, moving closer to Mara. Now, there was no mistaking the anxiety written in the expression on Mara’s matronly face.

“Ramón wanted to see you, whenever was convenient,” Mara informed. “I told him you were sleeping; but he now insists that what he has to say really won’t wait.”

And, that sounded more than a little ominous!

“Do you know what he wants?” Alyssa asked. At the same time, she wondered what she should wear, until she realized Mara had already solved that problem by having laid out a white blouse and a light blue skirt.

Mara answered by delivering an exaggerated shrug.

Alyssa suspected the woman knew what Ramón wanted but probably wasn’t talking. Alyssa contemplated giving her the third-degree, but, then, rejected that as being out of hand. Whatever it was Ramón had to tell her, she would find out soon enough.

“Tell Ramón I’ll be down shortly,” Alyssa said.

“I did keep telling him you were still resting,” Mara mumbled under her breath as she exited the bedroom and pulled the door shut behind her.

Alyssa hurriedly dressed and spent a quick few minutes at the vanity table getting her hair and face back into presentable shape. Then, she left the bedroom and headed along the hallway to the stairs that descended to the living room.

Ramón was standing, not sitting, as if he were uncomfortable inside the big house and would have far preferred sitting a horse somewhere out on the plain.

“Ramón?” Alyssa greeted as soon as he’d spotted her. “Mara said you have something urgent to tell me.”

“Urgent, yes,” he agreed. He held his hat in both hands, twisting it along its brim.

“Would you like to sit down?” she suggested.

He shook his head, obviously wanting none of that.

She waited while he continued to say nothing and look extremely ill at ease.

“There’s a problem?” she ventured, thinking that the way things were going, the two could very well end up standing there all night.

“The bulls,” Ramón said finally.

Alyssa decided he was quite charming in his nervousness. He was probably younger than she originally suspected. The sun had a capacity for aging people beyond their actual years.

He had shiny black hair that looked as if it would soon need trimming. He had large black eyes, full mouth. His nose looked as if it might have been broken once—even twice; the slight misalignment, though, didn’t detract from his overall good looks.

Consciously, she brought her mind back to whatever the problem at hand. It certainly wasn’t the time to be appraising the help’s physical attractiveness.

“What about the bulls, Ramón?” She wondered how he could be persuaded to just come out with whatever it was he had to say. She was beginning to fear that she might have to extract the information piece by piece, like a dentist pulling a cracked tooth.

“The dead bulls,” he obliged, finally, before stammering to yet another silence.

“The bulls that were shot…by someone, you mean?”

“Yes,” he affirmed.

“Why don’t you simply tell me what you have to say, Ramón?” she suggested, trying to be patient. “At this rate, we’re liable to be spending this day and the next rooted to this very spot.”

“The men,” he said, paused, and then continued, “brought in somebody. He’s out in the barn.”

“Brought in whom? Out in what barn?”

“They were angry,” he explained cryptically. “Understandable, yes?”

“I see,” she said, really not sure she was seeing anything at all but hopeful she was making progress of sorts. Eventually, the pieces of the jigsaw were bound to fall into place.

“It’s the son,” Ramón said so lowly that Alyssa almost missed what he said.

“The son?” she jumped in on the faintly delivered cue. “Whose son?”

“Señor Montego’s—Adriano.”

“Lalo Montego’s son, Adriano? Where?”

“Out in the barn.”

“He’s the someone who has been killing my bulls?”

“I think you should come,” Ramón said. “The men are upset. You understand.”

“Certainly, I understand,” she said, knowing intuitively that, come what may, it was an owner’s position to take the side of employees. Why was Adriano Montego killing her bulls with a gun? And, what was he doing back here, now, in that he had dropped out of sight during the time period in which the will was going through probate, surprising Alyssa’s mother to no end when he hadn’t protested the delivery of the Spanish property into her daughter’s hands? The way Alyssa came to understand it, Adriano would have had every reason to be upset by the share his father had left him, compared to what was left a young woman Adriano had neither met nor seen. For some reason, Lalo and his son were on the outs at the time the elder Montego met his death in the afternoon.

“If you think I should see him, then, of course, I shall see him,” she said. “As a matter of fact, why don’t you take me to him now?”

“Yes,” he agreed, obviously relieved. Had he actually assumed that she, as a woman, would break down and become hysterical?

They headed for the door where Mara magically appeared with a scarf for Alyssa’s head.

“You don’t want to get sunstroke your first day here,” Mara said.

Alyssa thanked her and followed Ramón outside, around the house, and off toward the stables and the barn in the distance.

She looked for indications of her other employees and saw none. It seemed strange that, since her arrival, she had seen only four people: Ramón, the foreman; Flavio, the chauffeur; Mara; and, the young boy who had delivered the tray of sandwiches and lemonade to her bedroom.

After all, the ranch had a permanent payroll of over one-hundred people. And, while some of those undoubtedly spent most of their time out on the range, watching the bulls, some of them had to be in charge of upkeep at the hacienda and its immediate grounds. Possibly, the regulars from around the house were just staying low, waiting to see how Alyssa was going to cope.

“Luís!” Ramón called.

Alyssa realized her initial surveillance of the emptiness had failed to pick out one man partially shielded by a couple bales of hay. He left his spot and headed in their direction. He had been so positioned as to have Alyssa wonder if he’d been strategically placed to keep people out of the barn, or to keep one particular person in.

Ramón made perfunctory introductions. Luís looked uneasy, almost to the point of embarrassment. Alyssa kept her greeting to a slight nod of her head in his direction.

“Quiet?” Ramón asked Luís.

“Sí,” Luís replied.

“Good.” Ramón continued forward, drawing Alyssa and Luís in his wake. He stopped beside the barn door and turned to Alyssa.

“They were angry with him, you understand?”

“I don’t care who he is,” she said. “He shouldn’t have been killing my bulls, should he?”

“Exactly,” Ramón agreed, hopefully beginning to realize that his new boss did understand, even if she was a woman easily misconstrued to be less likely to comprehend things like loyalty to the land, and to the bulls, and.…

“Shall we go in and see Mr. Montego, then?” she suggested. She was curious to meet the son to whom Lalo Montego had left so little.

They entered the shadows of the barn. It took her several seconds to adjust her vision to where she could even make out shadows within shadows.

The place smelled as only a barn could smell: a not totally unpleasant mingling of hay and straw, of animal and animal dung. There were no animals in immediate evidence, though. Alyssa assumed the horses were kept in the separate stable complex. Whatever animals lived here on a permanent basis (cows?), were obviously now out to pasture.

“Over here,” Ramón guided.

She wasn’t sure of her coordination in strange surroundings and followed slowly. Luís took up the rear.

Ramón led the way to a far stall. At first, Alyssa couldn’t see Adriano Montego at all.

“My God!” she exclaimed when she finally did see him curled up in a battered ball on a compressed pile of hay against the wall.

Ramón and Luís exchanged nervous glances of which Alyssa was intuitively aware.

“But, then, if he was killing bulls, he undoubtedly deserves his present condition, doesn’t he?” she ventured in an attempt to put Ramón and Luís more at ease. In actuality, she wasn’t at all sure that killing a few dumb animals should have really warranted beating Adriano quite so badly. “Still, I suppose the most humane thing would be to get him a doctor.” She turned to Ramón. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Of course,” he said. The last thing he wanted was a dead Adriano Montego in the hacienda barn.

“You know of a doctor who would be discreet?” Alyssa continued, trying to assuage whatever her foreman’s continuing obvious fears. She had knelt by Adriano’s body, afraid he was already dead. Her immediate fears had been somewhat lessened by the pulse evident at the base of his throat seen without her even having to touch it.

“Luís, go get Leandro!” Ramón commanded. He turned to Alyssa and explained, “Leandro isn’t a real doctor, but he knows enough to tell us if we’ll need Dr. Santos from town.”

Alyssa wasn’t at all sure she was willing to risk Adriano’s diagnosis to someone medically unqualified. Still, she had asked for someone discreet, hadn’t she? She didn’t want trouble to come from this, if it could, in any way, be prevented.

“Mr. Montego can’t stay here,” she said, thinking of very little else to say under the circumstances. Luís had already left the barn, en route to fetch Leandro—wherever it was Leandro might be that he hadn’t been summoned already. “Shall we take him to a bedroom in the house?”

“I think it would be best to wait,” Ramón said. He didn’t know how badly Adriano was hurt, but he didn’t want to take any chance of making him worse by moving him. If only he had gotten back to the hacienda earlier, he might well have stopped things from having gone this far.

Damn—Adriano should have known he was playing with dynamite when he killed those bulls! If he knew nothing else, he had to know how these men idolized those animals. Bulls were these men’s lives. To kill one of the bulls, let alone five of them, before even one of them could meet its natural end amid the pomp and circumstance of the corrida de toros, was sacrilege. Adriano Montego was lucky he wasn’t dead. He might well have been if Ramón hadn’t arrived when he did.

“Yes, of course, you’re right. We mustn’t move him,” Alyssa said, wondering whatever had possessed her even to suggest doing so. How many first-aid courses had she taken in her life wherein it had constantly been drilled into her as to just how dangerous it could be to move any victim before qualified medical help arrived on the scene?