The Kumquat Legacy

by Randal Koster

  I watched her face. Something like a smile was forming, though she tried hard to hide it. “You’ll have to ask your sister!” she said finally. “I promised her that I wouldn’t tell you!”

  ****

  As I write this down, I face another difficult decision. On one hand, I want to tell you the whole story and not leave anything out. I want to tell you exactly what happened. On the other hand, if I do tell you what happened next, you will suffer. You will have to read another of Loni’s horrible dollhouse plays.

  Yes, that’s how Loni chose to tell us the answer to the second puzzle. I think I will write it down. If you choose to skip to the next section, I won’t blame you.

  We were back at the same hotel in Columbus – in a different room this time – before Loni would say anything at all about the puzzle. “I need some help explaining the answer,” she said sweetly, as she opened her suitcase and dumped it out on the bed. I was amazed at what I saw. She had packed almost no clothes for the trip: one shirt, one pair of shorts, and – as far as I could tell – one sock. Most of the suitcase had been stuffed with small wooden or felt dolls.

  My mom stared at the dolls with dismay. “I knew I should have helped you pack!” she muttered.

  The dolls that tumbled onto the bed came from all five of Loni’s dollhouse families: the Belchmans, the Snottersons, the Grumpberries, the Gasdudes, and the Druffers. Each of the five families included at least a dozen children, all with precisely the same annoying personality, as far as I could tell. You heard about Gertie in the last dollhouse play. Well, all the dollhouse children are like that.

  “Sit down, please!” Loni said to Brent and my mom. “It’s time for a show! Dave, come over here.”

  I sighed loudly – extra loudly, to show my disgust. There was nothing I could do, though. I had no choice. I wanted the answer to the puzzle, and it would probably take a long time to figure it out myself. Gloomily, I stepped forward and reached out for one of the wooden dolls. As I did, I looked over at Brent. He was laughing into his hands. Obviously, since he wasn’t involved himself this time, he thought the whole thing was pretty funny.

  “You get to be Neighbor Joe,” Loni said happily to me. “He just moved into the house between the Snottersons and the Belchmans. Neighbor Joe must get them to stop fighting!”

  “Loni! What does this have to do with…”

  “Just do it,” she said, interrupting me. I answered with another huge, loud, angry, and impatient sigh. I did sit down next to her, though, and I did hold my doll forward. Loni controlled two other dolls.

  Here is how the play went. As usual, Loni’s characters have ridiculous accents, which I tried to capture here with some unusual spelling.

  Neighbor Joe (me): Good day! I’m your new neighbor, Neighbor Joe. I was wondering… Could you tell me the solution to the second riddle of the Kumquat Legacy?

  Mr. Belchman: Never mind thott! Snotterson called my leettle Weelliam’s peecture a screeble!

  Mr. Snotterson (stepping up): But eet ees a screeble!

  Mr. Belchman: Oh, is thott so?

  (Mr. Belchman jumps on Mr. Snotterson’s head and knocks him down. Mr. Snotterson jumps up and starts kicking Mr. Belchman. They start pounding their heads together.)

  Neighbor Joe (me): Stop it! Don’t fight! Look – I will take the peecture – I mean picture – into my house. Mr. Belchman, I will enjoy Little William’s beautiful artwork every day. Mr. Snotterson, you won’t have to look at it, since it will be in my house. Now, can you two be friends?

  Mr. Belchman: Yase, I gase so.

  Mr. Snotterson: Yase, yase! The baste of frainds agane!

  (They start dancing around, apparently happy.)

  Neighbor Joe (me): Good! Now who will tell me the answer to the second puzzle of the Kumquat Legacy?

  Mr. Belchman: My boy Weelliam weel. He ees een the back, coloring een a coloring book.

  Mr. Snotterson: You mean he makes more screebles?

  Mr. Belchman: Screebles! Screebles! You call them screebles?

  (This time, it’s a big fight. They start throwing each other into the wall and hitting each other over the head with little doll buckets, grunting and shouting at each other. Soon they were fighting on top of my head, bouncing up and down.)

  “LONI!” I cried, batting the dolls off of me and sending one of them clear across the room. “Stop it already! Just tell me – what is the answer to the puzzle?”

  Loni set her dolls down and smiled. “William told you,” she said. “You have to color in a coloring book.”

  “What…”

  Before I could think of anything more intelligent to say, she found a marker pen in the bottom of her suitcase and handed it to me. Then she handed me the map of the United States from the airline magazine. “Color in the states in each list,” she said. “See what happens!”

  Color in the states. Hmmm… Could that really be it? According to my sister, I was first supposed to use the marker to color in Arkansas, New Mexico, Kansas, Louisiana, Texas, Iowa, Wyoming, Missouri, Colorado, and South Dakota. It seemed like a lot of work, but I had to admit that it was better than playing with her dolls. I sat at the desk in the room and got started. Soon I saw what she was getting at.

  With the help of Brent and Loni, we soon colored in the states from the other five lists, on different maps. (Loni had taken several airline magazines with her from the airport.) Finally, the answer to the puzzle stared out at us, plain as day. This is what we saw:

  “Boston!” I cried.

  “That’s right!” said Loni gleefully.

  “Yes, that’s where we’re going,” my mom said. “First thing tomorrow morning!”

  ****

  So, all we had to do was fly to Boston, find the mayor, and present our golden kumquat. The mayor would then hand us the combination to a safe back in California, a safe that contained the Kumquat Legacy. Needless to say, we were excited the next morning as we drove to the airport and boarded an early Boston flight. The flight was short, and we landed in Boston before ten o’clock. We made it out of the airport quickly, stopping only once at a newsstand to get Brent a snack.

  The subway – they call it the “T” – comes straight to the airport in Boston, so we didn’t have to bother with a taxi to go downtown. I enjoyed that subway ride a lot. I liked the idea of traveling through a dark, musty tunnel, far beneath the city. It made me think of the gophers back home, weaving their way through the maze of tunnels that crisscross our backyard. Now I knew what that was like.

  Amazing as it was, though, the subway did not impress my mom. All she did was complain about the smell and the noise. I admit that whenever the subway car came to a stop, the tunnels and underground stations were filled with a terrible screech. Loni covered her ears every time.

  We eventually screeched to a stop at the Government Center station, where we hopped off and climbed some dirty stairs into daylight. I asked a passerby where we could find the mayor’s office, and he pointed to a tall, modern-looking building just beyond a large plaza tiled with red brick. A golden kumquat weighed down my pocket as I followed Loni and Brent through the plaza and into the building. My mom stayed behind on a park bench with our suitcases.

  A quick look at the building directory sent us to the elevator, which took us to the third floor. And there, halfway through the mayor’s reception room, we ran into a wall. It wasn’t a real wall, of course. What we ran into was Hobart Grumly, a man who works for the mayor and helps her figure out her schedule. We knew his name from the shiny brass nametag that was clipped to his dark blue suit, just to the left of his dark blue tie. Beads of sweat were dripping from his bald head into the black hair that covered the stems of his glasses. I wondered how he could be sweating so much in the air-conditioned building.

  “You can’t see the mayor today,” he said sternly, in response to our questions. “She’s tied up – all day – in very important
meetings. Give me your names and your business, and I’ll decide if she should see you. It won’t be before next week.”

  “Next week!” I cried. His words took me by surprise. “We can’t wait a whole week. We have to see her today!”

  Hobart Grumly shook his head grimly. “Sorry!” he said. “Absolutely impossible!”

  Brent tapped my shoulder. “Forget this,” he said. “Let’s just say ‘kumquat’ when she walks by, like we did in Columbus.”

  That was the wrong thing to say. In a flash, Hobart’s face was filled with shock and horror. “You’ll do no such thing!” he said severely. “The mayor is not to be pestered. If you approach her, I’ll throw you out on your ear. Do I make myself clear?”

  I think I stared at him. I don’t remember exactly. In any case, he was staring hard at us, sternness oozing from every pore of his face. “You shouldn’t even be in here without your parents,” he added, frowning. We muttered a few apologies and backed away, toward the hall and the exit. What a grouch! We had to find a place where we could talk in private. We had to figure out what to do.

  Just inside the hall, we passed a gray-haired fellow in a light brown suit. “Is my boss Grumly givin’ you a hard time?” he asked, chuckling softly. I nodded miserably. We were about to walk on past when he spoke again. “That’s Grumly for ya. Always taking his job too seriously. Never willing to bend the rules.” His smile broadened. “Fortunately, he’s not the only one who knows the mayor’s schedule.”

  We turned to face him. “Can you help us find her?” Loni asked quickly. Yes, he was a total stranger to us. We didn’t care. We looked at him eagerly, expectantly.

  “Maybe!” he said. “I may be able to help!” He took a step back and looked through the doorway, I think to make sure that Grumly wasn’t listening. Satisfied, he turned back to us. “What exactly do you want? To talk to her about something?”

  “We have to show her something we found,” I said. “She’ll know what it means. It will only take a few seconds of her time. I’m sure she wants to see us!”

  “Secret business, eh?” He chuckled again. “I love secret business! Fortunately for you kids, you don’t look too dangerous, so I really don’t mind helping you. Grumly and his attitude!” He shook his head, pulled a small book from his vest pocket, and opened it. “Let’s see here… Early this afternoon the mayor’s down at the river for some ceremony on a boat. From there she has to visit with several people – I guess I don’t know exactly where that will be. Your best bet is to try the river. Here are the directions to the dock.” He scribbled something on a blank page, tore it out, and handed it to us. “Mel drove her down there. That’s his license plate number on the paper, at the bottom. Just knock on the window of the car and tell him Roger sent you. He’ll help you out!”

  What tremendous luck! We thanked him again and again. Soon we were outside the building again, back into the brilliant sunlight. To find the mayor, all we had to do now was get to the river and talk to this Mel.

  ****

  We decided to take a cab. We hailed one that was driving by. I just stuck my hand out, and it stopped. My mom, getting in the front seat, asked the cabby to take us to our hotel first, so that we could drop off our bags, and then take us to the dock.

  The city passed by us in a blur as we wove in and out of traffic. At first I thought our cabby was some kind of maniac, the way he was driving, but then I noticed that all of the drivers were driving recklessly, narrowly avoiding collisions as they elbowed their way between other cars and tweaked their way through intersections just as the stoplights were changing. We all breathed a huge sigh of relief when we finally left the cab and stepped onto the banks of the Charles River.

  And what a river! I had never seen one this large before. It was moving so slowly, I couldn’t even tell which direction it was going. A lot of sailboats and a few other larger boats dotted the water in both directions. The banks of the river were mostly bare grass or rock, for the buildings of Boston on our side and Cambridge on the other side stood back from the river, just beyond the highways that sped alongside it. Several large, old-looking bridges spanned the Charles, connecting the two cities. The bridges were full of cars.

  We were standing on a grassy plot not far from a small boathouse and dock. Here, rocks lined the river. I took a look at the water lapping the shore between the rocks. Yikes! The Charles River may seem beautiful and majestic when viewed from a distance, but it sure looks scummy up close. I shuddered at the thought of putting my hand in it.

  “Where are we supposed to go?” Loni asked.

  “Well,” I said, pointing to a parking lot near the boathouse. “Let’s check those cars.”

  I read aloud the license plate number of the car we were looking for, and Brent ran ahead and found it. “You want to do the talking?” he asked, when we caught up to him.

  “I guess so,” I said. Gathering up my courage, I walked up and tapped on the window of the sedan. Immediately the window rolled down, and I found myself facing a short, wiry, black-haired man in a black jacket and a black cap.

  I took a breath. I felt very awkward. “Roger sent us!” I said nervously. “He said that you can help us meet the mayor. We need to discuss something very important with her!”

  “Name’s Mel!” he shouted at me, sticking out his hand. I shook it. “Yeah, I can help you,” he continued, still speaking way too loud. “I got a call from Roger on the cell, and he told me all about your talk with Hobart Grumly. I hate that guy.” Mel opened his car door and hopped out. He headed toward the dock. We followed him.

  “The mayor’s on that boat over there,” he said, pointing to a large tour boat in the middle of the river, about a quarter of a mile away. “She’ll be there for another hour, and then I have to drive her to Newton for something.”

  “Can we go out there?” Brent asked.

  “We’ll wait right here,” my mom answered, before Mel could say anything. “You kids can show the mayor the kumquat when she comes back to her car.”

  Mel shook his head. “Sorry, Ma’am, but I don’t think you want to do that. Hobart Grumly himself is coming down here by taxi to meet with the mayor. They’re supposed to discuss some business in the car while I’m driving her to Newton. He’ll be waiting here when she gets back to shore. From what Roger told me, he won’t be happy to see you.”

  “Well,” said Brent, exasperated, “what can we do then?”

  Mel leaned over and patted a rowboat, which was lying upside-down on the dock. “We can take this!” he said. “I’ll row you out there!”

  My mom started to say something, but Mel spoke up again, interrupting her. “Look – I know what the mayor is doing on that boat. She has to give a five-minute speech at a ceremony that lasts a full two hours. Most of the time she’ll be sitting in a chair along the side of the boat, bored out of her gourd.” He grinned. “It’ll be a cinch to paddle up alongside and quietly get her attention. She’ll probably appreciate the distraction!”

  My mom needed more convincing, but we kids were very persistent. We pointed out that if we didn’t catch the mayor now, we might have to stay in Boston for a whole week. Finally, with a weary and uneasy sigh, she gave in. Mel turned the boat over and plopped it into the river alongside the dock. We crawled in and found places to sit on the planks that spanned the boat.

  “Shouldn’t there be oars in here?” I asked, pointing to the boat’s empty oarlocks.

  Mel, still on the dock, nodded. “Of course! They’re right here!” He reached down and grabbed two oars that had been lying on the dock. And then…

  Well, it still makes me angry to think about what happened next. You’ll never believe it. In a flash, Mel dropped his friendly expression. He also dropped one of the oars back down on the deck and used the other one to push our boat away from the dock, toward the middle of the river! It all happened so fast, we didn’t have t
ime to respond. The push was very hard, and the boat moved quickly away from the shore.

  “Hey!” I shouted toward the dock. “What are you doing!? What did you do that for?”

  “Sorry, kids!” he shouted from the dock. “But a thousand bucks is a thousand bucks!” As we continued drifting into the river, drifting farther away in an oarless boat that we couldn’t steer, we watched in amazement as Mel scurried off the dock, ran to his car, and drove away.

  ****

  “Cyril!” I said after a stunned silence, as we drifted through the scummy water. “He’s behind this! It’s the only thing that makes sense!”

  “But it doesn’t make sense!” Loni argued. “Are you saying that he solved the puzzle and knew to come to Boston? He went on the plane to California!”

  “Did you actually see him get on board?” I asked her. My sister thought for a moment and shook her head. I looked at Brent and my mom. They shook their heads, too.

  Suddenly everything – everything – made sense. “I didn’t see him get on, either,” I said. “I think I have a good guess for what’s been going on, and it’s not good.” Discouraged, I looked to my side. The shore was about 20 yards away, and it was still receding. I gazed down at the scummy water, and I shuddered again at the thought of swimming through it – or of even putting my hand in it, to paddle. The boat was too heavy for that to work, anyway.