Mystery in Arizona Page 15

  “I agree with Trix,” Di said staunchly, and Honey nodded vehemently.

  “The girls are right,” Uncle Monty added. “Your father is down by the pool. Don’t you want to go to him now?” He started off toward the door to the west patio.

  Sally’s cheeks were even redder than Trixie’s. “Yes, we do,” she almost shouted, and grabbing her brothers’ hands she raced off after Uncle Monty.

  When the glass doors were closed behind them, Trixie said with satisfaction, “Well, that’s that. If only we could solve Rosita’s problems as easily!”

  Chapter 21

  A Dream Come True

  The Christmas Eve party turned out to be, as everyone agreed, the best party imaginable. The supper which Mrs. Sherman produced with the help of the boys was a delicious mixture of American and Mexican cooking.

  Afterward they all trooped into the living-room where the piñata, in the shape of a reindeer, hung from the ceiling. One by one the guests were blindfolded and given a chance to break the piñata. Most came nowhere near it, wandering, helpless with laughter, in exactly the opposite direction.

  And then to the amazement of everyone, little Miss Jane Brown walked straight across to a spot directly under the reindeer, raised the stick and with one whack broke it. Down came a shower of little presents, each one labeled with the name of a guest. Even Sally Wellington and her brothers were included, because Uncle Monty had made a special last-minute trip to town in order to buy gifts for the three of them.

  Sally’s present was a tiny silver bobsled to put on her charm bracelet.

  “It’s lovely,” she cried delightedly. “And just what I needed. I’ve got something to represent all of the other outdoor sports already. See?” She held out her graceful arm so that Trixie, Di, and Honey could look at the charms as she pointed to them one at a time. “Golf clubs, a tennis racket, sailboat, hockey stick, croquet mallet, polo mallet, bowling ball, skis, boxing gloves, surfboard—”

  “Whoa,” her brother Billy interrupted with a shout. “Listing your charms could go on forever.”

  “Thank you,” Sally said with a little curtsy. “I knew that other boys thought I was charming, but I didn’t realize my own dear brothers appreciated me so much.”

  “Ugh,” Bob groaned. “She got us that time, Billy. And we’ll never hear the end of it.” He turned to Trixie and confided in a loud whisper, “Sally was born vain and we’ve been trying to cure her of it ever since she was in the playpen stage.”

  Sally, who was very pretty, blushed. She had Honey’s coloring—hazel eyes and golden-brown hair—and Trixie thought she had a perfect right to be vain.

  She’s nice, too, Trixie told herself. All of the Wellingtons are nice and lots of fun. We’ll have grand times together during the rest of the holidays.

  “I am not vain,” Sally was saying. “Oh, isn’t it awful, Trixie, to have two brothers who do nothing but tease you from morning to night?”

  “It is,” Trixie agreed. “Actually, I am blessed with three brothers, and all of them are awful nuisances.”

  Mart and Brian hooted in unison with Bob and Billy Wellington.

  “Could anything be worse than having a sister?” they asked one another in loud voices, and replied to their own questions immediately, “Nothing except having two sisters.”

  Trixie and Sally pretended to ignore them, and Sally said pointedly, “Good heavens, don’t tell me you have another one of the awful creatures at home? Is he older or younger?”

  “Younger,” said Trixie. “He’s Petey’s age.”

  Sally frowned. “Petey? Who’s he?”

  Trixie tried to explain about the Orlandos and their mysterious disappearances, but all of the other Bob-Whites insisted upon joining in so nobody made much sense. At last Bob Wellington held up his hand for silence.

  “Enough, enough,” he begged. “This is Christmas Eve, not Halloween. Let there be no more talk of skeletons and giant apes and men with green faces and red horns.”

  “I agree,” said Billy heartily. “But one thing is certain: If you kids are working to take their places here at the ranch, we’re going to help you.”

  “We certainly are,” Sally added. “And with all of us working, there should be plenty of free time for riding and sight-seeing.”

  “Great!” the Bob-Whites shouted.

  “We don’t need any more cooks,” Jim added. “Too many would spoil the broth. Mrs. Sherman’s broth,” he explained in a whisper. “But the girls could probably use some help in the housekeeping department.”

  “We certainly could,” Trixie announced crisply. “Who is the best bed-maker in the Wellington family?”

  “I am,” Sally said dismally when her brothers, instead of replying, stared up at the ceiling, whistling and tapping their feet. “But I don’t like to make beds and I’m not much better than the boys.”

  “That settles it,” said Trixie. “I hereby appoint Bob Wellington to take my place.”

  Bob groaned, covering his face with his hands and cringing elaborately.

  “And to think,” he moaned, “that like Mark Twain said when he got seasick, I got myself into this of my own free will.”

  “Trixie needs someone to take her place,” Honey said quickly. “She has to study for a while every day, you know. And Jim and Brian do give her such dreadfully hard problems.”

  “Oh?” Billy and Bob gave Trixie inquiring glances.

  Trixie’s cheeks flamed. “I’m being tutored,” she confessed ashamedly.

  “That’s something,” Sally said quickly and cheerfully, “that ought to be happening to me. That is, if I hope to pass the midyears.”

  “Let’s don’t talk about such unpleasant subjects,” Di begged. “Not on Christmas Eve anyway. I’m not being tutored and I probably won’t pass the midyears, but I don’t want to think about it now.”

  “Suits me,” said Billy. “Anyway, all kidding aside, you kids can count on us to help with anything you need us for as of now. You know that goes without saying, don’t you?” His brother and sister smiled in agreement.

  The Bob-Whites nodded. The Wellingtons are swell kids, Trixie thought. Why, it’s almost as though they are Bob-Whites. Maybe some day they will become members.

  As though she had been reading her mind, Sally tucked her hand through Trixie’s arm and said, “And let’s don’t say good-by at the end of the holidays. Our schools aren’t far from where you live in the Hudson River Valley. Maybe you’ll invite us to spend a weekend with you and maybe next summer you’ll come and spend some time with us in our home.”

  “Oh, that would be just wonderful,” Honey cried. “We have lots of room at our house for all of you.”

  “There’s lots of room at my house, too,” Di put in. “Mother and Daddy would love to have you.”

  “But haven’t you two sets of twins for kid brothers and sisters?” Sally asked. “Your uncle told us you did. So you couldn’t have enough room for us, too.”

  “Di’s place is enormous,” Trixie said, “and so is the Manor House where Honey and Jim live. Our place is small, but we could double up so you could stay with us, though not as comfortably as you would with either Honey or Di.”

  “Your place must be enormous, too,” Brian said to Bob, “if you’re inviting all of us to visit you. But we accept.”

  “Yes, yes, you can count on us, old things,” said Mart, making a monocle out of his thumb and forefinger. Peering through it he added, “However, you can also count on our arriving bag and baggage which means we’ll supply our own pup tents and sleeping bags.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Sally said with a giggle. “We have plenty of room and Daddy would love to have you. He’s so fond of you all and we think it was simply swell of you to adopt him until we arrived.” Again she blushed. “We’re all awfully ashamed of ourselves now for having let him down before. It was very thoughtless of us.” Her voice died away.

  Honey said with her usual quick tact, “We all do thoughtless t
hings like that without really meaning to hurt anyone.” She opened her own little present and cried out with joy. “Did you ever see anything so cute in all your life?”

  It was a tiny sewing basket complete with minute spools of thread and even a strawberry pincushion. Jim and Trixie had discovered it in a little gift shop and had immediately thought of Honey and how much she enjoyed mending.

  “The strawberry,” Honey said excitedly, “reminds me of that larger one in your mother’s sewing basket and how we hid that diamond in it once. Remember?”

  Trixie nodded. Sally, in a mystified tone of voice, asked, “You hid a diamond in a pincushion? Why on earth would anybody do such a thing?”

  Her brothers looked equally mystified, so the Bob-Whites explained that Trixie and Honey had accidentally discovered a diamond in the gatehouse on the Wheeler estate. While trying to find the owner they had solved an exciting mystery.

  “Exciting is right,” said Sally enviously when they had finished telling the story. “Do you kids always get involved in such thrilling mysteries?”

  “Trixie does,” said Di. “And Honey usually helps her solve them because, if you know Trixie, you get involved, too, and so there’s nothing else to do but try to solve mysteries.” She smiled. “My father’s red trailer disappeared very mysteriously once and they were the ones who finally found it.”

  “That’s when we found Jim,” Honey put in.

  “Found him?” Bob asked incredulously. “Did he disappear or something? What goes on anyway?” He scratched his head and crossed his eyes.

  Honey giggled. “He disappeared twice. The first time we found him he was hiding in an old mansion. He’d run away from his mean old stepfather and—”

  “Hey,” Jim interrupted, grinning. “Stop talking about me as though I were an inanimate object.”

  “And that same red trailer,” Di went on just as though she had never been interrupted, “was the one Trixie and Mart got kidnaped in when they were trying to prove that this mysterious stranger was really—”

  “Sh-h,” Honey cautioned. “Let’s not go into all of that adventure now, Di. Your uncle might hear us and you know how upset he gets when anybody mentions what a narrow escape Trixie and Mart had.”

  Sally sighed. “I’m beginning to guess that you kids belong to some sort of secret society.”

  “We do,” Trixie admitted. “Some day we’ll tell you all about it and maybe you’ll become member.” She opened her own present and everyone burst into loud laughter. It was a miniature magnifying glass.

  “We tried to find a Hawkshaw cap to go with it,” Mart said, “but no such luck.” He grinned at his sister.

  Di, who so often got words mixed up, received a tiny dictionary. She looked hurt for a second, then laughed with the others.

  Jim received a plastic puppy that looked so much like his springer spaniel, Patch, that he was amazed. Brian, the embryo doctor, found that his package contained a miniature stethoscope. Mart, whose current ambition was to attend an agricultural college, received a set of tiny garden tools.

  Mrs. Sherman joined them then. “Look at what I got,” she shouted gleefully. “A skillet, no less, the size of my thumbnail.”

  In a few minutes Jane Brown, Mr. Wellington, and Tenny became the center of the group. They had all received plastic toys and were enjoying them immensely. Jane’s little cowgirl seemed made to order for riding Tenny’s bucking bronco. Mr. Wellington, who would play Santa Claus on Christmas Day, had been presented with a miniature of the jolly old elf.

  “That reminds me,” he said, “I must try on my costume to make sure it fits perfectly. Who will volunteer to help me get into it?”

  “We all will,” Sally and her brothers replied, and they hurried off to their cabin.

  The cowboy orchestra began to tune up for dancing, and soon Jane and Tenny were waltzing together. Foreman Howie chose Mrs. Sherman for his partner while Uncle Monty danced with Rosita.

  “Rosita looks very happy,” Trixie whispered to Honey, “but you can tell she’s only pretending. She’s such a good sport she wouldn’t let her worries spoil the Christmas Eve party.”

  “We’ve just got to do something about her,” Honey whispered back.

  When the music stopped, Rosita slipped away and Uncle Monty came over to where the Bob-Whites were standing beside the tree. He took a large white envelope from his pocket and said mysteriously, “This fell out of the piñata but nobody seemed to notice. It’s got the name Bob-Whites on it.” With a grin he presented it to Trixie and Jim, the co-presidents of the club.

  “You open it, Jim,” Trixie whispered excitedly. “I can’t slit the flap of the envelope.”

  Jim obeyed and pulled out a check. “Four hundred dollars!” he yelled. “Wow! But we don’t deserve it, Uncle Monty. Our two weeks won’t be up until next Monday.” The surprised Bob-Whites looked at their host.

  Uncle Monty chuckled. “Felt I ought to give you a little extra in place of notice,” he said. “Because as of midnight you’re fired.”

  “Fired?” Trixie gasped. “Why?” And then she knew the answer. “Oh, oh, the Orlandos have come back!”

  He nodded. “They’ll be back tomorrow morning. I got a letter from them today explaining the whole mysterious departure. You were right, Trixie, they didn’t dare tell me why they wanted to go for fear I wouldn’t understand. As a matter of fact, they liked working here so much that they almost didn’t go this year, but at the last minute Señor Orlando’s brother arrived and convinced them that they would be very wrong to stay away.”

  “The dark stranger,” Trixie muttered. “No wonder Petey called him Tio—he’s his great-uncle.”

  “Stop mumbling to yourself,” Mart whispered.

  “Trixie was right about another thing,” Uncle Monty continued, “but perhaps I’d better begin at the beginning. Come along.”

  He led the way to his own suite of rooms and, when he and the girls were settled comfortably on the huge divan with the boys curled up on the bright rug at their feet, he began:

  “It all dates back to the middle of the sixteenth century when the founder of the Orlando family set off with Coronado to find the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola. He was a lad of eighteen, the son of an Aztec noble who had been a member of the great Montezuma’s court. The boy’s mother was Doña Isabella of a royal Spanish family, so when the child was baptized he was given the name Pedro and her illustrious last name, Orlando.

  “At any rate, when the lad returned with the other remnants of Coronado’s band, he was only twenty and so was not too disheartened by the failure of the expedition. He went into the business of raising cattle, built an enormous hacienda, married, and had a large family. It is his birthday which his descendants celebrate every year in the ruins of the ancestral home.”

  “We guessed that it had something to do with a birthday,” Trixie murmured, “but from what Petey said, it sounded as though the Orlandos might have been visiting an ancestral tomb.”

  “That’s right,” Uncle Monty said, taking a letter from his pocket. Consulting it, he continued, “Traditionally the fiesta lasts a week, and the final day is in commemoration of the first Pedro’s death. Maria and Petey arrived in time for that, so I imagine she has been forgiven for not going with her in-laws earlier. I can understand why she, a widow with a child to support, hesitated for so long. In fact, they are all still afraid that I may not understand and will not take them back. At least they were,” he corrected himself. “I sent them a wire pronto, saying that I would welcome them with open arms if they would return immediately by plane.”

  Trixie sighed contentedly. “I’m glad now that they did leave. It gave us the chance to earn the exact amount of money that Rosita needs.”

  “True,” said Mart, elevating his sandy eyebrows. “But what good does that do Rosita? She wouldn’t have it as a gift.”

  “I’m not so sure of that,” Trixie said thoughtfully. “At any other time of the year she probably would refuse it, b
ut if we give it to her as a Christmas present she can’t possibly refuse.”

  Honey clapped her hands joyfully. “You’re right, Trix. Since Mr. Wellington is going to play Santa Claus tomorrow we’ll have him give the money to her. Everyone else will be receiving presents at the same time, so she won’t have any excuse for refusing to accept hers.”

  “She’ll have to accept it,” Uncle Monty agreed emphatically. “But are you kids sure you don’t want to keep the money for yourselves? You worked awfully hard and you deserve every penny of it. Are you absolutely sure you want to make this generous gesture?”

  It was Jim who answered the question. “We’d much rather that Rosita had it, sir. And we really didn’t work hard. It was fun, wasn’t it, gang?”

  “Yes,” they chorused.

  Jim took Trixie’s hand in his. “You did work hard at your assignments and I hereby give you a double E for Excellent Effort. Right, Brian?”

  “Right,” said Brian. “I also vote that we give her a holiday from now until next Monday morning.”

  “I agree,” said Jim.

  “Gee, thanks.” Trixie tried to make her voice sound sarcastic but she couldn’t. She was truly grateful to the boys for the help they had given her, and she knew now that she would pass the midyears with flying colors. Furthermore, if it hadn’t been for the boys she wouldn’t have been allowed to fly out to this wonderful place.

  The old clock on the mantel began to strike. Christmas in Arizona was no longer a dream. It was happening right now.

  “Merry Christmas!” Trixie shouted. “Merry Christmas!”