THE NEXT MORNING, they returned to Santomera. The first thing they did was ask the townspeople about the maid who worked occasionally at the architect's property. At a downtown café, they were advised to go to the Caritas office, located behind the old church, and ask for a certain Casilda, Barrica's daughter.
According to their information, she was a penniless gypsy woman who earned her living cleaning offices, public buildings, and bank branches. Her integrity in her work was attested to by several letters of recommendation written by the village priest. One of her commitments was to go every Thursday to Umbert Monroe's house, a day on which she dedicated herself exclusively to cleaning the house, as it took about seven or eight hours to dust all the furniture in the various rooms, in addition to sweeping and scrubbing the more than six hundred square meters of floor.
Without wasting time, they went to the place they had been told about.
There, a pleasant-looking lady greeted them with parochial courtesy. Noticing Gregory Evans's urgency in finding the cleaning lady, as he seemed deeply distressed by her disappearance, she rushed to their aid, giving them the address where they could find her at 1:30 p.m., when she returned home for lunch.
There were only a few minutes left, so they thanked them for their help and left quickly, in order to approach the cleaning lady before she entered their home.
Casilda lived in a shack at the end of Virgen de los Desamparados Street, in a suburban area with a notorious reputation for being frequented by drug addicts and criminals. It was a sad shack, its roof visibly crumbling as the wooden support beams rotted from the humidity, making them unable to support the weight of the tiles. The glass in the exterior windows had been smashed with stones. As for the facade, the walls were cracked from end to end, causing the numerous layers of whitewash applied over the years to peel off at the same rate.
AS SOON AS THEY ARRIVED, they tried to check if she was already home. They knocked on the wooden door several times, but received no response. So, they decided to wait as long as necessary right there, near the entrance.
A few minutes passed before they saw a gypsy woman approaching, wearing a pink sweatshirt and heavily made-up. She frowned as she saw the strangers waiting impatiently for her return. She took her keys out of her purse, hoping they wouldn't detain her for long. Her children were with their mother, as they were every day, and she still had to prepare food before one of her brothers came to pick them up in the car.
— Good morning! — Colmenares, being the best person to speak to, approached for a first meeting, flashing his most sincere smile. — Are you Casilda, the lady who cleans the architect's house?
The woman liked the mature and attractive gentleman's polite tone. She immediately realized they were neither police officers nor labor inspectors.
— Myself — he replied with equal cordiality. — May I ask what you want?
The detective then came forward to introduce himself.
— My name is Gregory Evans and I'm looking for a friend who came to visit her uncle... Umbert Monroe, the owner of the property on the outskirts of the village, a few days ago.
— I didn't know my master had a niece — the gypsy woman replied with a puzzled expression. — Actually, he never talks about his family.
— The truth is that she spent this weekend with him.
— And…? — he added defensively. He didn't know what the man was getting at.
— Well, you'll see... — Greg hesitated, before continuing — We came from Madrid with the intention of paying them a visit, but what a surprise to discover that there was no one at home!
— And what do you want to know?
Casilda began to distrust them all, sensing that they could well be a well-organized gang of thieves intent on obtaining information from her.
— Our only objective is to find them, nothing more — the lawyer added, realizing that the fear of this woman, whose ethnicity was prone to silence unless she obtained substantial benefits, could negatively influence the conversation.
— If you could at least tell us if there's a way to communicate with Umbert Monroe, our trip won't have been in vain. Furthermore, we're willing to bear the financial burden of the time you're wasting with us.
It was Antônia's first sentence and it was also the decisive one, thanks to the twenty-euro note that she secretly slipped into the pocket of the woman's sweatshirt, who let her guard down after the interrogation, and thanks to the redhead's spontaneous naturalness, whom she mentally classified as the most intelligent of the group.
— The boss will not return for the entire current season.
— What do you mean by that?
For a moment, Gregory Evans considered the possibility that the gypsy woman was an accomplice of the Widow's Sons. For this reason, his question was asked in a rather harsh tone. The woman didn't seem to care, but responded in kind.
— The boss got tired of living in Murcia and returned to Barcelona! — he said, provoking his inquisitor.
— That's not possible! How can you know? — the detective insisted.
Tired of wasting her time, the gypsy told them what they wanted to know, to see if they would leave her alone.
— He told me himself on the phone yesterday... are you listening to me...? — His face contorted into an ironic grimace. — He called from the airport. He didn't mention if he was leaving with anyone...
— Thank you — he knew from experience that he would not take anything more from that woman.