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:
Dear Aunt Margaret,
Things have gotten even more horrible than when I last wrote you. Momma is making me do things I don’t think are right. I don’t dare write too much. Please meet me tomorrow morning at seven sharp in the backyard of Colonel Charlebois’s house. Momma won’t suspect anything, as I usually take off then to go clean there. Thank you so much for coming to the rescue. But please don’t let anyone see you, as Momma might suspect why you’ve come.
Your eternally grateful niece,
Henriette
“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.
How the Mystery of the B&B Mishaps Was Solved
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.
Despite his initial scare, the colonel seems truly delighted to see her. It’s not every day that a famous native daughter returns for a visit. “What’s it been, over ten years?”
“Good question.” Margaret Soucy looks off as if the answer were a wildebeest grazing in the distance. Was it before her MacArthur genius grant or after her book on child brides? “Oh, whatever.” She dismisses these achievements with a wave of her hand. “I’m just so glad to see you, Uncle Charlie. I was sure by now you’d be six feet under.” What a thing to say to the old man!
Essie has been searching for a resemblance between their tall, boisterous guest and the stooped old man. Nothing matches up. “So, are you guys really related?”
“Only in temperament,” Margaret Soucy says, hee-
hawing all over again. When she laughs, her upper lip peels back, exposing her prominent teeth. It must take her twice the amount of time of a normal person to brush them.
After a cup of ginger tea, Miguel and Essie escort their guest upstairs to her tropical bedroom. “I’ll be right at home!” she exclaims, and launches into one of her amazing Amazonian adventures. This woman has not known a boring moment in her adult life, Miguel can see that. It’s a full twenty minutes before there’s a break for Miguel to hand over the note from Henny.
“And what’s this?” Margaret Soucy asks, intrigued. For a moment, Miguel can see the curiosity that has made this woman a successful anthropologist. It’s as if he has handed over a bone from the first human being. “Mmm,” she keeps saying, as if savoring the contents of the note. Recalling how the colonel mentioned that Margaret Soucy once lived among cannibals, Miguel wonders if Margaret Soucy has ever eaten a human being herself. Maybe when he gets to know her better, he can ask her.
When Margaret finally looks up, she seems surprised to find Miguel and Essie still standing before her. “I think it’s time to say oyasumi, allin tuta, and gudnaet—that’s Japanese, Quechuan, and Solomon Island pidgin for ‘good night.’ May you live to see the morning light,” she adds eerily. The next moment, she’s laughing her toothy hee-haw laughter again. “That’s how the Itabo say good night. By the way, either of you youngsters interested in a used gorilla mask?”
Of course, Essie snatches it up. As the two children exit the room, Margaret Soucy calls after them, “You children sleep tight.” And then Miguel could swear he hears her add, “Don’t let the cannibals bite!”
Miguel spends the night running away from cannibals in his dreams. Next thing he knows, Essie is shaking him awake. Last night before turning in, they agreed to meet downstairs in the backyard by a quarter to seven. Just in time to hide and spy on the secret meeting between aunt and niece.
“Come on, Miguel! I already hear her in the bathroom.”
Thank goodness Miguel slept in his clothes as a precaution. In no time, the two children are bounding downstairs and through the kitchen on their way to the backyard. One thing they should have anticipated: Tía Lola is already awake, standing by the stove, frying up some bacon. “Buenos días. ¡Qué sorpresa!” What a surprise to see the kids up this early on a Saturday morning!
“Um … uh … um,” Essie begins. It’s as if she just learned a tribal language from Margaret Soucy, full of grunts and onomatopoetic sounds.
Esperanza Espada at a loss for words? You bet this makes Tía Lola suspicious. “Okay. ¿Qué pasa?” What’s up?
At last, Essie finds her tongue. “We’re just going out to get some exercise before breakfast, Tía Lola.” For proof, she whacks the air with her samurai sword, which she thought to bring along this time, just in case.
Tía Lola cocks her head, unconvinced. But she is soon distracted by the sound of their guest coming down the stairs, calling out good morning in several languages. The children slip out the back door and head for the woodpile. They crouch down just in time, as here comes Henny, rounding the side of the house, looking over her shoulder. The back door opens again, and Margaret Soucy steps out.
It takes a moment for the long-absent aunt to recognize her grown-up niece. “Henriette! Is that you?” she calls out. Henny swivels around and runs toward her aunt, looking like a shipwreck victim who has finally sighted land. She collapses, sobbing, in Margaret’s arms.
“There, there.” Margaret keeps patting her niece’s back as if she were burping a baby. After a while, Henny calms down and leads her aunt to a bench in the back of the yard. “Let’s talk here. Any other place in town, well, I’m just afraid it might get back to Momma.”
At the mention of her sister, Margaret Soucy’s face tightens. “How is Odette?”
The question unstoppers Henny’s bottled-up feelings. Before they’ve even sat down, Henny is pouring her heart out to her aunt. How her mother got so furious about the competition from Tía Lola’s B&B. How she was especially upset about this “foreign woman” putting her out of business.
“Odette did that on her very own,” Margaret Soucy remarks. “Her bad character would put the Ritz out of business.”
But what sent Henny’s mother over the top was when another foreign-sounding family, the Espadas, moved in with the colonel, and her own daughter was demoted to part-time cleaning. “She just flipped! Even though I told her Colonel Charlebois was still paying me my full salary. She didn’t care. She wanted revenge … And she made me … oh, Aunt Margaret, I was just so scared.”
“Made you do what, child?”
Henny bursts into sobs again. The story comes out in bits and pieces. How Henny smeared Vaseline all over the water polo team’s equipment. How she steamed open an envelope and changed the address on the groom’s family’s wedding invitation.
Miguel and Essie exchange a look of amazement. So Henny and her mother are the culprits! Essie’s grip tightens on her sword. In case Henny gets out of hand.
“And yesterday, Momma somehow found out that a guest was coming here. No, she doesn’t know it’s you, Aunt Margaret. She ordered me to go in the guest room and put these in your bed.” Henny pulls out a bag of plastic critters: spiders, squiggly worms, and long, rubbery snakes.
Margaret Soucy’s mouth twists scornfully. “I hate to tell sis, but these would not have scared me in the least. Why, I’ve slept in the jungle with crocodiles and scorpions and poisonous snakes. I’ve eaten beetles and tarantulas and three kinds of locusts.”
Miguel and Essie are glad they have not yet had breakfast, otherwise it might come back to haunt them now. Just when they’re on the brink of solving the mystery of the B&B mishaps, they don’t need another mishap.
“But the worst part, the part I’m most ashamed of—on account of Colonel Charlebois is, like, the nicest person to me in the world—is what I’ve been doing to him.” Henny pauses, as if she herself can’t believe what she has done. “Momma made me fill his thermos with Knock-Me-Out Tea.”
“Knock out Uncle Charlie? My sister is trying to kill our old family friend?” Even Margaret Soucy, who has lived among cannibals, is shocked.
“No, no, not kill,” Henny explains. “Just put him to sleep so I can sneak in when everyone else goes out and do all the tricks I told you about that’ll make the B&B have to close down.”
Margaret Soucy looks like she just got pierced with a poisoned spear. “You should have come to me sooner, Henriette,” she says. All her silly feuding with her sister has fallen by the wayside. “And I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to talk to the police. Your mother needs help.” Then after a pause, in an even sadder voice, she adds, “You need help.”
This news, of course, sets off another round of Henny’s tears. “Oh please, Aunt Margaret, I don’t want to go to jail. I don’t want Momma to go to jail. I’ll make it up to the colonel. I’ll clean his house for the rest of my life, for nothing.”
“We’ll have to see,” Margaret Soucy says. She has studied human beings on every continent, and one thing she has learned: in order to ensure justice on this planet, young and old have to be held responsible for their actions. But justice without forgiveness won’t make the world a better place. “People do have to take responsibility for their actions, Henriette. But maybe if your mother confesses, we can get you both into a diversion program.”
“Momma will never confess,” Henny says bleakly. “You know her, Aunt Margaret.”
“But what if we have proof? I don’t mean your word against hers. I mean hard evidence. What if we caught her in the act?”
“But how?” Henny throws up her hands. “She always has me do stuff for her.”
For the first time since Miguel laid eyes on her, Margaret Soucy looks totally stumped. She might know how to eat tarantulas and sleep with cobras and protect herself against cannibals, but she doesn’t know how to catch her own sister red-handed.
They have all been so intent on Henny’s
confession that they’ve missed the figure who slipped out the back door a while ago, wondering where her guest was going and why the children had been exercising so long. When Tía Lola finally speaks up, everyone jumps. Miguel and Essie are flushed out of their hiding place. “I have an idea for how to catch your mother, Henrieta. And I am sure if you cooperate with us, it will go easier for you.”
Henny is already nodding, without yet knowing what Tía Lola is going to suggest.
Before she unveils her plan, Tía Lola turns to Miguel and Essie. “I am disappointed you didn’t tell me the truth. You know Tía Lola would always try to help you.”
“It’s my fault, Tía Lola,” Miguel confesses. Like Margaret Soucy said, people have to take responsibility for their actions. And it was his idea to keep the mystery solving a secret. “We were afraid you might decide to close down your B&B.”
“Close it down?” Tía Lola is shaking her head with her whole body. “And what? Give Odette Beauregard exactly what she wants? ¡No, señor! I know what will make her come around so we can catch her in the act.”
“You do?” It’s as close to a chorus as any four people not in a chorus can be.
“It’s called the Messenger Hasn’t Come Back strategy,” Tía Lola says. Seeing their baffled looks, she goes on to explain: “Henrieta’s mother has sent her on a mission. What if Henrieta doesn’t come back? Her mother will eventually come to find out what happened to her messenger.”