How Tía Lola Ended Up Starting Over (12 page)

“I’d be much obliged,” Margaret says. “You need not
fuss over me. I’m quite self-reliant. I’ve dipped my gourd in the river with the Jivaros in Peru and hunted with the Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert. Only one other thing: I’d be grateful if you kept my visit under wraps.”

“Under what?” Tía Lola asks. Margaret has reverted to English.

“Un secreto,”
Margaret explains more simply, though her request for secrecy only heightens the mystery.

“No hay problema,”
Tía Lola agrees, but without her usual perky confidence. Who exactly is this Margaret Soucy? And why does she need a hotel room when she has family in the area? If Tía Lola were keeping a notebook like Essie, she would jot down every one of these interesting details.

Friday afternoon, as Essie gets off the school bus and heads toward the house, Henny pokes her head out from behind a bush and motions to her. Essie reaches into her pocket for her little notebook. “Put that away,” Henny commands. “I need for you to do me a favor,” she says more nicely. “There’s a guest coming tonight—”

Essie shakes her head. The B&B is closed this weekend. But Henny is certain. “She’s arriving late tonight. When she comes, give her this.” She offers Essie a folded-up note. “Don’t say anything to your aunt about it, okay?”

Essie is feeling increasingly uneasy about all the secrets she is having to keep. It’s one thing to tell white lies in her own detective line of work. Another thing to be spraying white lies wherever she goes, till the world is snowed
under by untruths. “Why can’t you give it to her yourself?”

“Please,” the young woman pleads. “I have to get home or my mother’ll kill me. I’m already late. I need for you to help me, please.”

If Tía Lola’s weakness is helping families in trouble, Essie’s would have to be rescuing people who are about to be murdered. “Okay,” she agrees, taking the note and stuffing it into her pocket.

“And you promise not to tell your aunt?” Henny’s eyes cling to Essie with the look of someone who is going to jump off a cliff unless Essie says yes.

Reluctantly, Essie agrees. But she’s not happy about being pushed into a corner. As she heads into the house through the back door, Essie notices a piece of litter that must have fallen out of the trash can. It’s the flattened box she recalls Henny tossing hurriedly in the trash a few days back. Maybe that’s why Essie even bothers to read the name.
KNOCK-ME-OUT TEA
, the label says.

So intent is Essie on checking out Henny’s story that she hurries off without even bothering to jot down this extremely interesting detail in her notebook.

Inside, Tía Lola is indeed telling the assembled group that a guest is coming. “I know we are officially closed, but this is a special situation. And one more thing, our guest wants to be kept a secret.”

“Why?” Cari asks, wide-eyed. Secrets can be scary unless they’re about birthday parties.

Tía Lola flashes the little girl a reassuring smile. Maybe
Essie is imagining this, but for a split second, Tía Lola looks worried herself. “Our guest wants privacy. I think she might be famous. Do any of you know a Margaret Soucy?”

The colonel, who is just now rousing himself from his nap, sits up. “Margaret Soucy? Of course, I know Margaret.”

No wonder the woman spoke her name as if Tía Lola should know who she is. She’s a friend of Colonel Charlebois’s. “She has some sort of private family crisis.”

“No surprise.” The colonel shakes his head sadly. “But it’s not so private. The whole town knows about it.”

Of course, except for the colonel, all those present are recent newcomers to Bridgeport. None of them has heard the story the old man is about to tell them.

“Margaret Soucy, first of all, is one of
the
best anthropologists of our time. She has lived everywhere and is an authority on any number of curious customs, from child brides in Yemen to cannibalism among the Korowai in New Guinea to snake charmers in Madagascar.”

Essie is amazed. She is wasting her time in detective work. And to think this world-famous authority, who has been to even more interesting places than the colonel, is coming to stay in this very house. But why would a blah teenager like Henny be writing to a dazzling world authority who has done the most amazing things?

“Margaret Soucy left town when she was a young girl, not much older than you.” The colonel nods at Victoria. “Bright as a whistle. Scholarships at Smith, Stanford. But her sister took the opposite route. She stayed in town,
took up with a young fellow who gambled away every last penny she had, then left her with a baby to fend for herself. Unfortunately, this sad turn of events transformed this sister into—sorry to say this about any lady—a bitter, disturbed woman. She and Margaret had a horrible falling-out about, oh, about any number of things.” He waves the whole sad affair away and yawns heartily.

He sure is sleepy, Essie finds herself thinking … And then, because she just saw the empty box with the interesting name, something finally clicks in Essie’s head. Colonel Charlebois has been drinking Knock-Me-Out Tea all day from the thermos Henny prepares for him. No wonder he’s dozing off all the time. But why would Henny want to knock out the colonel?

“I am so glad you made an exception in this case,” Colonel Charlebois is telling Tía Lola. “Maybe we can be of help in mending the rift in the family. So sad to have a falling-out over that sorry old house. Or the raising of that child, who’s now pretty much grown up.”

Tía Lola, meanwhile, has been scratching her head over that last name. She has been here now over a year and a half, and she can’t recall ever meeting a Soucy. But then, her English is not that good, and sometimes she’s not quite sure what she has heard. “Soucy, Soucy,” she mulls over the name.

“Soucy is the maiden name. Margaret never got married. Running around the face of creation, how could she?” The colonel sighs, perhaps thinking about his own life. “But her sister, Odette, married a Beauregard. As a matter of fact, the very child in question is Henriette,
whom you know as my cleaning girl, Henny. Another reason I kept her on. It’s no secret her mother has had many difficulties, and she has the temper to show for it. She might not kill the young lady, but she could certainly make her life miserable.”

Essie can’t help noticing the startled look on Tía Lola’s face.
Aquí hay problema
, her expression seems to be saying. There is a problem here.

Essie herself is feeling so torn. She wants to share the note in her pocket with her fellow detectives. But she promised Henny. Still, Essie knows it is okay to break a promise when keeping a secret might endanger somebody’s well-being. But Henny said her mother would kill her. What if something should happen to Henny because Essie betrayed her? Essie would feel terrible. But she remembers a little loophole: Essie promised not to tell her aunt, but she didn’t say anything about not telling Miguel.

So after the gathering breaks up, Essie follows Miguel to the baseball bedroom, where he is staying this weekend. “I’ve got to talk to you,” she begins. And then Essie spills the full contents of her overloaded mind to Miguel: how she caught Henny making tea for the colonel and sneakily throwing away the telltale box; how Essie found out what kind of tea was in that box (Knock-Me-Out Tea, get it?); the colonel’s always being sleepy these days. Then Essie goes on to relate the encounter with Henny this afternoon in the yard, how the young woman begged her to deliver this secret note to their guest tonight. Essie’s hand is shaking so bad, she is glad to hand the note over to Miguel to read out loud:

“Wow,” Miguel says when he finishes reading.

“You said it.” Essie is feeling relieved that she has a friend like Miguel to confide in. “Should we tell Tía Lola, you think?”

Miguel looks up at the ceiling as if the answer were written there. Then he takes a deep breath before shaking his head. “I think we should solve this mystery ourselves. Because if we tell, you know what is going to happen?”

“What?”

“Mami and your father will worry that a B&B is too dangerous. Tía Lola will feel that she made a big mistake exposing us and the colonel to this danger. Tía Lola’s B&B will close forever. We will all go back to our boring lives.”

Boring lives
. The words fall like heavy stones to the bottom of Essie’s heart. The cold is setting in. The dead of
winter is coming. Month upon month of being cooped up doing homework, uninteresting chores. Miguel is right. Better to solve the mystery themselves than to end up in a boring life.

“So, what do you say?” Miguel is looking Essie straight in the eye, as if daring her to prove she’s not a baby who believes in ghosts.

Essie would not turn down a dare if her life depended on it, which she sincerely hopes doesn’t.
“No hay problema,”
she bluffs in her best imitation of a brave detective in South America.

As the two children shake on solving the B&B mystery all by themselves, Miguel can’t help noticing that Essie’s hand is ice cold. He half hopes that she will back down and insist they tell Tía Lola. What if they are in way over their heads and something scary happens?

It doesn’t help that it’s almost Halloween—that spooky time of year. As they await Margaret Soucy’s arrival this windy Friday night, the two children jump at the creepy sounds the old house is making. Miguel glances at the maple tree out the window, and his heart stops. The bare branches look like gnarled fingers reaching in to grab him.

It’s way after supper when they hear the front-door knocker. Miguel and Essie exchange a long, hopeless look. Miguel’s stomach is doing flip-flops. But every time he feels himself slipping into doubts, he repeats the word
“Booooooooring,” drawing it out to make it even more unappealing. Anything to avoid the B&B closing.

At the bottom of the stairs, the two children join Tía Lola and Colonel Charlebois, who are coming into the mudroom from the parlor. It’s like there’s a welcome committee at this B&B.

“Bienvenida,”
Tía Lola says, throwing open the door. But the spookiest thing, there’s no one out there to receive her welcome. Only leaves blowing about in the howling wind.

“Well, I’ll be!” Colonel Charlebois exclaims. “I could have sworn—”

Just then,
wham!
Out from the darkness leaps a gorilla. They all cry out, even the colonel, although almost immediately, he steps forward to protect the ladies. If only Essie had brought her samurai sword along. But the very next moment, Miguel is glad she didn’t. Off comes the gorilla mask, and there’s a tall, big-boned woman laughing in front of them.

“Margaret Soucy,” the colonel scolds. “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

“Just a harmless seasonal joke.” The woman is still laughing, a hee-haw laugh that makes Miguel think of a donkey. “But I had no idea when I called that this would be your B&B, Uncle Charlie.”
Uncle
Charlie?! Colonel Charlebois didn’t say anything about being related to Margaret Soucy.

“First off, there’s nothing harmless about giving an old man a heart attack. And second of all, this isn’t my B&B, but Tía Lola’s here, along with her friends.”

Poor Tía Lola still has her hand on her heart, trying to calm herself after her fright.
“Bienvenida,”
she manages again, but this welcome is a lot less bouncy than her first one.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Margaret Soucy pumps each of their hands so forcefully, Miguel can feel his whole body shaking. When she gets to Colonel Charlebois, she throws her arms around him. In her big, puffy parka, she could be mistaken for a gorilla from the back, dressed up as a human being.