A double murder, and why not, two for one,she thinks, and the thought is mad, but then again, she must be a madwoman to do what she has done. She ought to be carted out in a straitjacket, shouldn’t she?
The girl lets go of her doll and stares at Perla with tear-filled eyes and Perla stares back at her. She embraces the child, and she cries.
14
She was carefully laying downthe white sheets, folding them in half lengthwise, hemmed edges close to the line, letting the fabric sag and create a breeze-catching opening. Inés snapped closed a couple of wooden clothespins to hold the sheet in place and kept walking down the line. He followed behind her with the laundry basket in his arms.
The bedsheets and laundry provided a convenient cover. Little could be seen of their faces or bodies, should someone poke their head out the window, and if Perla spied them in conversation Ulises could say he’d been helping the girl with a tiresome household chore.
“I got rid of it, of course. Poured the sherry down the drain after the police and the doctor left,” Inés told him. “Not that there was muchleft. He spilled most of it on the floor. I think he collapsed and kicked the bottle away. Or he fell asleep and…anyway, it’s gone now.”
“Thank God. We got lucky. It was a stupid idea using poison anyway.”
She grabbed another sheet from the basket and frowned. “It wasn’t stupid. It would have worked. You know, if he hadn’t…it was bad timing, that’s all.” She let out a sigh. Her lips trembled. “I miss him terribly.” Then she paused. “Of course, it figures the old coot would kill himself,” she added, and snorted. “He probably thought he was emulating Socrates.”
He wanted to put his arms around her, but caution reined him in, and he set a hand upon her shoulder. At his touch, she stiffened for a moment but then turned her head to look at him with something that seemed close to gratitude.
“Perla said he left you something in his letter.”
“His books and his pocket watch. But my aunt took the watch and she’s going to sell it off to recoup the rent he didn’t pay. She’d sell the books if she could, but they’re worthless, so I can keep those, at least until another lodger moves in and they want the bookcases for their own things. You know what she said about his dog? That I should get rid of it, that now that he’s dead it’s not our responsibility. She’s a horror, she really is.”
She hurried down the line, and her eyes were bright, but she shed no tears and he knew if he touched her again, if he attempted to rest his hand against her shoulder, this time she’d shove it away.
Inés paused, holding a clothespin in midair, and looked straight at the house. “We’ll have to find another way to kill her. How about a car accident?”
“What do you mean?”
“This region is full of ravines. You’ve seen it. We’re in the middle of the Sierra Madre Oriental. You take one wrong turn, a car can end up smashed to bits. You could go with her for a drive, hit her in the back of the head with something heavy, then toss the car down a cliff.Ball bearings! You can put ball bearings in a sock and whack her with it.”
“Ball bearings? Where the hell do you get these ideas?”
She shrugged; the motion was almost innocent.
“It won’t work. She has Fito drive her everywhere.”
“She’s always complaining about him, and I suspect she wants to fire him and have you as her new chauffeur.”
“Even if that were to happen, I wouldn’t be able to do it. How am I going to explain that I left with my wife and she fell down a ravine while I escaped unscathed? Even an idiot like Beto would pin it on me. It’s hopeless.”
“Are you going to give up at the first tiny obstacle?”
“It’s not the first tiny obstacle, this is a colossal problem,” he said, and set the basket down.
“I’m sure the car accident could work.”
“Why don’t you slide into the car with her, then, and beat her on the back of the head and deal with the police officers when they knock at the door? Hmm?”
“Fine, then you think of something.”
Inés fished for the clothespins tucked inside a banged-up coffee can. One of her curls fell across her brow, and she brushed it aside with an irritated grunt.
“What if it’s a fall? She slips in the bathtub and bangs her head on the floor?” he proposed.
Inés dropped the clothespins, which scattered on the ground. He knelt to help her gather them and noticed she was trembling.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“That’s how my mother died. She fell,” she whispered.