Part Six: The Calls
He made the first call from the greenhouse, after Valeria had gone back into the house and the man in the expensive shirt had left through the side gate that opened onto the staff road.
His lawyer, Cristóbal Fuentes, answered on the third ring. Santiago spoke for six minutes, concisely, covering what Abril had told him, what she had recorded, what he had seen. Cristóbal, who had known Santiago for twelve years and had the manner of someone who had heard many things and retained the capacity for surprise, was quiet for a moment.
“Don’t speak to her,” he said. “Don’t confront her. Don’t indicate that you know anything.”
“I understand.”
“The recording is valuable but needs to be handled carefully. Where is the girl?”
“With me.”
“Keep her with you for now. We’ll need her formal account.” A pause. “Santiago. The car at the gate. I’d like you to have someone run the plates discreetly before we do anything else.”
He called a contact — a man he had used for security assessments on properties in the past, a former federal police investigator who now worked private consulting. He gave the plate number. The response came in eleven minutes.
The car was registered to a company that had been incorporated fourteen months ago. The company’s listed director was a man named Hector Villanueva. The company had no operational history, no employees, no verifiable address beyond a mail forwarding service in Naucalpan.
Santiago wrote down the name Hector Villanueva.
He called Cristóbal back.
“Get me a private investigator you trust,” he said. “Today.”
“I have someone. What specifically—”
“The man in the expensive shirt. I’ll describe him. I want a name.”
He described what he had seen through the bougainvillea. Cristóbal listened.
“And Valeria,” Santiago said. “I need to know when this started. I need to know how much she knows about the company finances. Whatever she has access to.”
“That will take several days.”
“I know. Start today.”
Then he made the third call, the one he had been delaying.
He called his assistant in Monterrey and rescheduled the meeting for the following week, citing an unexpected development that required his presence in the city. His assistant, who was professionally incurious about the reasons for such changes, said she would handle it.
The sedan at the gate waited for another twenty minutes before the driver apparently received some communication, because the car eventually pulled away without Santiago ever having approached it.
From the window of the estate’s library, Santiago watched it leave.
Abril sat in a chair nearby, her old phone in her lap, waiting to be told what was needed.
“You should call your father,” Santiago said. “He doesn’t know where you are.”
“I told him I had something to do,” she said. “He’ll be worried by now.”
“I’ll speak to him. Tell him you’ve done something — ” He paused. “Tell him you’ve done something that required courage. It’s the most accurate thing I can say.”
