Mystery in Arizona (19 page)

Di shook her head. “We know you can fix the turkey dinner tomorrow night, Mrs. Sherman,” she said, “but what about the meals which have to be served between now and then?”

“Breakfast, for instance,” Trixie added with a grin. “We’ve had ours but the guests will be trooping into the dining-room soon for theirs. Uncle Monty has probably been telling everybody to expect fried eggs and
tacos
.”

“So what?” Mrs. Sherman demanded. “With these big skillets I can fry a dozen eggs at a time. And I can make a batch of baking powder biscuits in the twinkling of an eye. Nobody wants one of those red-hot Mexican dishes for breakfast anyway. What are
tacos?
”

Di laughed. “All different kinds of meat wrapped in
tortillas
. The boys, I imagine, were going to use these tiny sausages and omit the chili. I really think you ought to let them go ahead with the menu they planned.” She added tactfully, “You’ll have enough to do getting things ready for the Christmas Eve party.”

“You’re right,” the elderly lady replied. “Call the boys back and tell them I’m sorry.” She chuckled. “I
am
sorry, too. Because I’m going to need their help before I’m through, and that’s a fact.”

Di helped her out of the apron. “But you
will
come back after we’ve cleaned up the breakfast dishes?”

“Just let me know when the coast is clear,” Mrs. Sherman said cheerfully.

She left through the door to the dining-room just as Honey and Jim came in through the other door.

“The kitchen is yours, all yours,” Trixie said hastily. “And Mrs. Sherman is sorry.”

“She’s got nothing to be sorry about,” Jim said sheepishly. “It’s my temper that’s ashamed of itself.”

Brian and Mart returned then and they all set to work preparing breakfast. The boys admitted that they were glad Mrs. Sherman was going to supervise the turkey dinner and promised to help her as much as they could. Then the talk turned back to the Orlandos and the family’s sudden, mysterious departure.

“I was just wondering,” Honey said thoughtfully. “In the book on Mexican customs which I’ve been studying for my theme, I discovered that there is a special
fiesta
called
Día de los Muertos
, the Day of the Dead. The Mexicans bring a sort of picnic lunch to the graveyards and spend the day there feasting. When they go home they leave behind all sorts of delicacies for the dead. They even bake a special sort of sweet bread for the
fiesta
called
pan de los muertos
—bread of the dead.
And candy in the shape of skulls for the children. Maybe,” she finished, “the Orlandos left in order to visit the graves of their ancestors in Mexico. What do you think?”

“That’s a thought,” Mart said. “Maria, being the daughter-in-law, wouldn’t necessarily go to the same graveyard. Her ancestors might be buried right here in Tucson.”

Jim shook his head. “I happen to know that
Día de los Muertos
is on November first.”

“I don’t care,” Trixie interrupted. “Honey’s got something there. I feel pretty sure now that the Orlandos left for some reason which is connected with their ancestors. Maybe their own special family Day of the Dead is today or tomorrow.”

“Could be,” Jim admitted. “That ‘cavelike’ place Petey told you about might be some sort of tomb. And the skeletons he said he was going to eat—he might have been talking about candy skulls.”

“But,” Brian objected, “why didn’t the Orlandos tell Uncle Monty about this special
fiesta?
If they had he could have arranged ahead of time for temporary help while they’re gone.”

“The answer to that,” Trixie told him, “is simple. They probably felt he wouldn’t understand—might
even make fun of them—so they just left.”

“It makes sense,” Mart put in soberly. “Anyway, it explains the mystery of why Maria didn’t go with the others. And why she finally did go when she realized that after all Petey is an Orlando even though
she
isn’t except by marriage.”

“It doesn’t explain the horrible creatures Petey told Trixie about,” Honey said. “I get nightmares just thinking about that huge ape he said was lurking up above, all ready to jump down on him.”

“That,” Trixie said, “must have been a
piñata
. They can be in any shape, you know, and when Petey told me he was going to give it a great big swat and eat it all up he must have been talking about the goodies which would fall out when the
piñata
was broken.”

“How smart you are!” Di cried admiringly. “If there’s a
piñata
mixed up in the mystery we can be sure that the Orlandos did leave to attend some sort of a
fiesta
.”

“The other horrible creatures,” Trixie continued, “fit in, too. A masquerade party could be part of the celebration, and if it took place in the basement of a house where there were no electric lights, it would look like a cave and the ‘creatures’ would of course look even more gruesome by candlelight.”

“All very spooky and shadowy,” Honey agreed with
a little shiver. “Petey was only five years old last year so it’s no wonder he doesn’t remember much of what happened except the events which seemed very exciting to him at the time.”

Jim finished making the last of the
tacos
and said, “You girls are probably right. The Orlandos left to attend some sort of
fiesta
—the birthday of a long-dead ancestor could be the answer.”

“That’s what I think,” Trixie cried excitedly. “Remember? Uncle Monty said the day he met us at the airport that the Orlandos could trace their family tree back to an Aztec noble.”

Honey shivered again. “As part of the research for my theme I’ve been reading Prescott’s
Conquest of Mexico
. Frankly, I don’t want to hear anything more about Aztec rites.”

“I don’t mean that kind of thing,” Trixie said impatiently.

Mart waved a sharp carving knife at her. “What a pretty little human sacrifice you would have made.”

Trixie glared at him. “All right, keep on talking about rites, but I—”

“How pun-ny can you get?” Mart interrupted.

Trixie ignored him. “Oh, don’t you all see? The Orlandos might be celebrating an event which dates
back to the days of Montezuma. Something nobody outside of the family knows anything about.”

Honey shivered for the third time and Di shivered, too. “Oh, please,” they begged Trixie. “Don’t be so mysterious. What do you mean by something?”

Trixie narrowed her blue eyes. “Something,” she finished in a whisper, “so secret and sacred that nobody outside of the Orlando family ever
will
know anything about it!”

After delivering that ominous statement, Trixie raced out of the kitchen, and all the rest of the day whenever Di or Honey asked her what she meant, she refused to reply. The truth of the matter was that Trixie didn’t exactly know what she
did
mean, at least not so she could express her meaning in words.

The guests, as Jim had predicted, did not object at all when Uncle Monty told them the meals would be served buffet style from then on. In fact, they seemed to like the informality of having the boys and Mrs. Sherman cook, and many of them offered to help the group prepare the meals.

“I wish they’d offer to help with the housework,” Trixie said sourly to Di when they met between chores before lunch. “I mean, why can’t we just make it a rule as of now that all of the guests have to make their own beds?”

Di laughed because she knew Trixie wasn’t really serious. “I got several letters from home,” she said, changing the subject. “A long one from Mother, some
crayon scrawls from the twins, and a note from Dad with a big fat check. He told me to buy presents for everyone and especially for the Bob-Whites.”

“That’s nice,” Trixie said, grinning. “I got lots of mail this morning, too. A long letter from Moms, a note from Dad with a check so I can buy little presents in the dime store for everyone, and, wonder of wonders, a letter from Bobby.”

“How marvelous!” Di cried. “He only started school this fall. Can he write well enough to read?”

Trixie sighed. “As usual, you’re not making much sense, Di. How well he writes has nothing to do with how well he reads.”

Di pretended to sulk. “I meant, was his writing good enough so you could read it?”

Trixie giggled. “Just about. The illustrations helped, although I can’t say that his chickens look much like ours.” She took a grimy piece of paper from her skirt pocket and unfolded it. “Here, read it yourself.”

Taking the note and gurgling with laughter, Di read:

ROBERT BELDEN”

“My goodness,” Di gasped, “if nothing else he knows how to spell his own name.”

“He learned how to print it out in kindergarten last year,” Trixie explained. “Isn’t it a riot the way he covered this whole huge sheet of paper with those few words and those scratches which I guess are supposed to be chickens?”

“We were just as bad when we were in kindergarten,” Di reminded her. “I remember that my writing slanted downhill while yours slanted uphill.”

They separated then to go on to the cabins on their list.

After lunch when Trixie was finishing her homework, Uncle Monty tapped on the door. At Trixie’s “Come in,” he poked his head inside.

“I’m going to finish my Christmas shopping this afternoon,” he told her. “Taking the suburban. Want to come along?”

“I’d love to,” Trixie cried. “I hate to miss the ride, but since we’re going to have a steak fry on the desert this evening I guess the riding we’ll do then will be enough.”

He nodded. “The others plan to go along. I’ve bought most of the presents for the
piñata
already, but I thought it would be best if you kids picked out little
jokes for one another. What I mean is this: You and Jim might pick out something for Honey while Honey and Mart pick a gift that seems just right for you.”

“That would be great fun,” Trixie replied enthusiastically. “We’ll divide up in teams and go to different ten-cent stores to make sure there’ll be no peeking.”

Uncle Monty nodded. “Jane Brown and Mrs. Sherman are going to wrap the gifts for me this evening. They insist that they’d rather do that than attend the steak fry.” He chuckled. “Mrs. Sherman says the boys can broil and fry steaks as well as she can and that the last time she cooked on a desert she came a little too close to a rattlesnake for her comfort. That’s all Jane Brown needed to know about the hazards of the desert.”

Trixie smiled. “She enjoyed the steak fry we had last week on the desert and didn’t seem at all nervous when Tenny told some of his tall tales about rattlesnakes as big as his arm.”

“That’s right,” Uncle Monty said. “She’s probably staying home from the party tonight just to be a good sport. A great gal is my Jane Brown—and to think we used to call her Calamity Jane!”

“I know,” Trixie said, “and isn’t it nice the way Mr. Wellington turned out to be such a wonderful soft-drinks
waiter? He seems so much happier since he started working.”

“Things are working out very satisfactorily,” Uncle Monty said. “Well, see you on the front patio in about ten minutes.”

The boys and girls had a wonderful afternoon shopping in Tucson. They bought inexpensive presents for one another and also little gifts to take back home.

The steak fry on the desert that evening was lots of fun, too. After they had eaten until they couldn’t swallow another morsel, they sat around the fire singing cowboy songs until almost midnight.

“It’s as though we’re all one big family,” Mr. Wellington kept saying happily.

But Trixie knew that he wasn’t really as happy as he would have been if his children had joined him at the ranch.

“I wish there was some way we could make his kids come out here,” she told Honey the next morning. “It would be such a wonderful Christmas present for him.”

It was the day before Christmas and they were watching the boys put the lights on the tree. “The star is still crooked,” Honey told Jim for the fourth time.

He glared down at her from the top of the stepladder.

“Would you like to climb up here and try to wire it in place yourself?” he demanded.

Honey giggled. “Heavens, no! The very thought makes me dizzy.”

“The sight of these bubble lights makes me dizzy,” Mart said. “What’s the matter with them, Brian? They don’t work.”

“Of course they won’t work, silly,” Trixie said with a sniff. “The trouble is that you’ve put them on the branches upside down.”

“Oh, let’s stop arguing,” Di said. “I can’t wait to start putting on the ornaments. The tree has more lights than it really needs now and the star is perfectly straight, Honey.”

“It is now,” Honey admitted, staring up at it critically. “But we can’t all trim the tree at once. If we try to, we’ll get in each other’s way and break more than we hang up.”

Mart chuckled. “That’s the way Bobby trims a tree. Last year he sat on one box of balls and fell into another one before he settled down to breaking them by hand.”