Chapter 17: Wedding Day

Serafina's POV

I found the gas can at seven in the morning, behind the orchard wall.

It was a red plastic can, empty, with its cap off and the mouth still wet.

The smell hit me from three feet away.

I stood in the long grass in my robe, with dew soaking the hem, and looked down the slope at the chapel.

It was a quarter mile off, small and grey and peaceful.

By noon my sister would marry the baker in it.

"Tadeo," I said into the phone. "Come to the orchard door. Bring Ines. Bring men."

He came in his shirtsleeves, with his arm in a sling and half the household behind him.

He took one breath of the can and his face went flat.

"Sweep the chapel," he told the captains. "Under the floor, in the bell tower, the crypt. Every inch."

"Today?" Ines said. "She's getting married in five hours."

"Then you'd better be fast."

They swept it for three hours.

They found nothing.

No wires, no cans, no smell, only wax and old stone and the flowers a florist had delivered at nine.

Tadeo stood at the chapel door with his jaw tight.

"He wants us to see the can," he said. "So we'll look inside, find nothing, and relax."

"Or he dropped it on his way past," said Ines.

"Ramiro doesn't drop things."

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