Chapter Six Mrs. Janeiro
Over coffee for the ladies and an umbrella-topped lemonade for Mary, Janina Janeiro and Althea Tweedlebare chatted.
"As usual, Maria, delicious coffee," Mrs. Tweedlebare said.
"No, Juan Valdez in this house, Althea," Mrs. Janeiro replied.
Mary made a questioning gesture with outstretched hands and a shrug.
"Oh, you know, Mary," Mrs. Janeiro said. "The guy in the supermarket with the burro loaded with sacks of coffee. What an ass!"
"The guy or the burro?" Mary asked.
"The guy that made the commercial," Mrs. Janeiro replied. "He should disappear, not the burro."
Mrs. Tweedlebare would have preferred to sip her coffee and enjoy the crackling fire. One part of her wanted to get at it and find out what she could. The other part was unwilling to think about what might possibly be happening to Uncle Herman at this very moment.
Mrs. Tweedlebare stirred from the fire and set up her tape player on Mrs. Janeiro’s new dining room table. She placed her steno pad beside it. She laid two sharpened pencils on top of the pad, just so. It was one of her little idiosyncrasies. Before she began taking notes or developing her material, everything had to be just so. She smiled when she thought of how often she had over-organized so that she could procrastinate a little while longer.
Through the glass of the French door, the fire in the living room fireplace cheered but did not intrude. The crackling was as silent as lightning on the horizon.
Mrs. Tweedlebare pressed play.
Mrs. Janeiro tapped the table. "Freddie Fudge is suggesting that someone is to be killed. Let me rephrase that. The words that Freddie Fudge utters suggest that someone has been killed or could be killed. If the killing has not taken place already, it could happen on Christmas Day or just during the Christmas season. These words could be of real significance."
“Can you translate the words for us?" Mary asked.
"Freddie says three words in a string. The first word is Matanza, which can mean an act of killing. The second one is Quemarse that means to burn, as you know. The third sounds like Navidad, our word for Christmas. It’s a bit garbled but I’m not surprised. Little kids have trouble with it so Freddie would not likely pronounce it correctly either."
"Just like Amazing," Mary said and rolled her eyes.
"What does this all add up to?" Mrs. Tweedlebare asked.
"I can tell you this," Mrs. Janeiro said. She paused for a moment and Mrs. Tweedlebare, expecting the worst, looked alarmed. "A terrorist group operates in the jungles of Peru. Sometimes they come down-river into Brazil. This group uses the first two words in their rhetoric.
"The third word, Navidad, or Nav-dad as Freddie Fudge says it, means Christmas or the Christmas season as I’ve already told you.
"My father is going to be really disappointed," Mary said laughing.
"Why?" the ladies asked in unison.
"He thought that Freddie Fudge was calling him Dad. Parents are something aren't they?"