Fiesta Moon

by Linda Windsor

  “Well, it is a big sport down here,” the priest concurred, with a playful arch of a woolly-bear brow. Fuzzy and thick like the weather-predicting caterpillars back home, it looked as if any moment it could straighten itself and crawl off his forehead. “Annamaria puts bags with her homemade concoction about, but it only works so well. She hates the smell of the insecticide … unlike her sister Soledad. Corinne has named Soledad ‘the Terminator,’ with her can of bug spray and fly swatter.”

  “Soledad?” Mark asked.

  “Corinne’s maid.”

  “I thought Corinne lived in a bed-and-breakfast.”

  “Soledad works for the bed-and-breakfast part-time, but intends to leave with Corinne as soon as you can make rooms suitable in the Ortiz place. The two have been over there cleaning … and spraying.”

  “She said she wasn’t afraid of the house ghost … Corinne, that is.”

  “I don’t think Corinne is afraid of anything—certainly not of hard work,” Father Menasco said. “She works in the office or with the children in the morning and then goes to the hacienda with her notebook and tools—”

  “Tools?”

  “She wanted to get a head start.”

  Great. All he needed was amateur help. Although—

  “We thought it was wonderful when Edenton managed to purchase the hacienda and Madison Engineering donated its services to design and oversee the project—but Corinne managed to get a grant to fund the renovation.”

  “I can imagine she’s a go-getter.” Not to mention a control freak. “And I’ll do my best to remain on target, budgetwise.”

  “She’ll watch every peso, that’s certain,” the priest reflected with a chuckle. “She used her own money to paint one of the downstairs rooms for herself and is now working on an adjoining one for Soledad.” He snapped the newspaper and folded it neatly into quarters, placing it on the table while Mark poured some coffee from the thermal carafe into the spare mug.

  “Which brings me to an awkward question.”

  “What’s that?” Mark asked as Father Menasco shifted in his seat.

  “I was hoping that you might set up quarters there as well. My sister is coming to spend some time at the end of the month,” he explained in apology. “And besides, I’d feel better knowing a man was there with Corinne and Soledad.”

  “Sure. No problem.” That way he could tell Blaine he was literally living at work. Besides, the hacienda had to be more accommodating than the parsonage digs. And a live-in maid wouldn’t be hard to take …

  “Bueno, sus huevos rancheros están aquí.”

  Edging sideways through the screen door to the kitchen, Annamaria held a large tray pressed against her ample bosom. She crossed the patio and placed the steaming breakfast before them.

  “Gracias, Annamaria,” Father Menasco said.

  “Yes, gracias,” Mark added, as the two eggs—sunny side up— stared up at him, quivering on a tortilla smothered in bean sauce.

  Aware that the cook was waiting for him to try them, he picked up his fork, but Father Menasco interrupted with a short grace.

  “Cristo, pan de vida—Christ, Bread of Life,” he translated for Mark’s benefit, “Ven y bendice esta comida—come and bless this food. Amen.”

  Mark didn’t suppose there was any hope of asking God to turn up the sun enough to harden the eggs.

  Brow raised expectantly, Annamaria wrung the fabric of her apron as if her entire livelihood rested on Mark’s approval.

  He cut up the egg-bean-tortilla mix until the yellow was somewhat disguised and popped a forkful into his mouth. Chewing with a forced enthusiam, he nodded. “Good … muy bueno.” Thankfully, the other ingredients did a good job of disguising the yolks … at least until the cook turned on her worn huaraches and darted back to the house with a titter of delight.

  Mark grabbed a napkin and rid his mouth of the contents. “I’m sorry, Father,” he managed, chasing the taste away with a gulp of coffee. “I have this aversion to runny eggs. I just can’t deal with yolks quivering on the plate.”

  The priest held up his hand, stopping Mark’s apology in its tracks. “No need to explain. Unfortunately, that is the only way Annamaria can fix them. She says she cannot bear to blind the eggs or turn them over on their eyes when they stare at her so. And I won’t go into her boiled egg hang-up.”

  Mark could well imagine, with the yolk-eye connection.

  “Although I have managed to convince her to cook pancakes,” Menasco said, as if that somehow made up for it.

  Mexicalli was becoming more like the Twilight Zone introduction by introduction. “Well, I hope to move into the hacienda this week … I’ll hope Soledad is a more versatile cook. That way, I can free up your guest room.” And let the bugs have their own place.

  By the time Annamaria returned to collect their dishes, Mark’s plate was licked clean—literally. Monty had been more than happy to help with the egg dilemma. Delighted that she’d pleased her guest, the cook left with the dog at her heels, promising him a special treat in the kitchen.

  “You have no idea how much face that dog has saved me with Annamaria. Fortunately, he likes everything she makes. Not that she’s a bad cook, by any means,” the priest quickly added. “And my tastes are simple.”

  At that moment, a bell rang at the gated entrance to the courtyard. Father Menasco glanced at his watch. “That would be Doña Violeta.”

  “The lady with the decked-out donkey cart?”

  The priest nodded and smiled. “Every day except Sunday, she buys all the day-old sweets from the bakery and brings them to the orphanage. It’s her way of helping.”

  Mark envisioned a donkey cart filled with Entenmann’s. Now, that would be a promo picture.

  “Of course, Rosaria and Raul make certain there is enough left over for her to buy.” At Mark’s quizzical expression, he explained, “They own the bakery. It is their contribution to the niños … and, I suppose, to Doña Violeta’s kindness. She gets a great joy out of being called Doña de los Dulces.”

  “Lady of the sweets,” Mark translated to himself as he followed Father Menasco to the gate.

  There was the wizened old lady, dressed in dark purple, which was also the color of the band around the donkey’s hat. The entire interior of the cart was filled with white boxes and plastic bags, so that there was barely room for the driver, who held the reins in one hand and an open parasol in the other.

  She smiled at Father Menasco, but upon seeing Mark, she brightened even more.

  “Buenos días, Señor Madison.” She extended a delicate gloved hand with all the majesty of a queen in her court.

  “Mucho gusto, señora,” Mark answered.

  The glove was made of the same fancy lace that festooned her hat. It reminded him of an old-time stewardess cap, just large enough to cover the very top of her head. Beneath the lace that cascaded from it, he could see the tortoiseshell combs in the back, pulling the rest of her steel-gray hair into some sort of plaited knot.

  “Will you come with Father Menasco and me to deliver the children’s pastries?”

  Her English was heavily accented, but perfect. More surprising to Mark was the pale blue gaze that peered out of the pleasant folds of her eyes. The milky covering of cataracts could not hide the life behind it. Come to think of it, she’d been pretty feisty yesterday, when Corinne pulled her up from the bottom of the cart, but Mark had been so taken by the señorita that he hadn’t paid much attention.

  “No, but thank you, señora. I need to get to work.”

  Disappointment grazed the elderly lady’s expression only for a moment before her enthusiasm returned. “Then you must know that I have not forgotten my gallant rescuer when Chiquita got ahead of herself on the hill.” She puzzled for a moment. “I did introduce you to Chiquita, did I not? I was so shaken, I may have forgotten my manners.”

  “Chiquita and I have met, haven’t we, girl?” Mark rubbed the whisker-bristled nose of the donkey as Doña Violeta nodded in
approval.

  “Indeed, Mr. Madison, you will hear from me soon.”

  “You don’t have to do anything special—”

  She stopped him by raising a gloved finger. “You are in Mexicalli, and here we have our ways. An invitation will be forthcoming.”

  Her voice of authority left no room for argument. Beside, Mark couldn’t argue that Mexicalli had its ways. He’d never been anywhere else where he was on a first-name basis with a donkey.

  The rickety ladder beneath Corinne wobbled as she reached overhead with her paintbrush, causing her to catch her breath—and not for the first time. She’d even dubbed the ladder with a name— Squeaky.

  “Caray! Qué pasa?” Soledad gasped from the adjoining kitchen. Before Corinne could steady herself, the housekeeper appeared in the doorway, her dark brown eyes wide with alarm.

  “The same thing. I stretched a little too far, and Squeaky reminded me pronto,” Corinne admitted with a sheepish smile. It was hard to decide if the climb down and back up the ten feet of the old wooden ladder was more unsettling than the teeter when she overreached herself. Unfortunately, it was the only ladder the orphanage had.

  “It is like I have said before: this is a job for a man. You should have this—” She held up a scrub rag rank with ammonia and pointed to Corinne’s paintbrush with disdain. “Not that.” She considered the room for a moment. “Perhaps you should just paint without the ladder.”

  “Now, that would look nice, if I left the top four feet dingy white,” Corinne drawled as she progressed one rung at a time to the tiled floor of what had been the dining room. With louvered double doors to seal it off, it would serve her well enough as a bedroom and office.

  Soledad was impervious to the sarcasm. “You are a lady. Ladies do not do such things,” she chastised. “What if your leg breaks itself? Then what will you do? And that can, it shakes like an old woman’s legs.”

  Corinne steadied the lopsided paint rack. Her duct-tape repair had slipped. “I’m almost finished with this wall. What do you think of the color?” Perhaps distracting the mother hen would silence her clucking.

  It worked. Soledad’s face lit up as bright as the sunshine yellow on the wall. “Who would know? It is just the color that I want.”

  When Soledad accompanied Corinne to Cuernavaca to purchase paint supplies, she’d been skeptical. The can didn’t match the color.

  “I’m doing the trim first. Then I’ll roll the walls the way we did last week in my room.”

  Corinne’s room was a soft apricot and would have to be painted again when the project was done. But at least she’d have a place of her own before the bed-and-breakfast regulars and Father Menasco’s sister arrived at the end of the month.

  And since Mark Madison would be displaced too, Corinne already had a room picked out for his office and quarters—the salon just across the grand entrance from her and Soledad. Not that she believed in the rumored ghost, but a man’s presence would make her feel better about being alone with Soledad in the big house.

  “Then you use the long stick, not that ladder?” the housekeeper challenged.

  “Yes. No more ladder … after this one section,” Corinne added softly, to avoid Soledad’s keen hearing.

  Just one more section next to the door, and she’d be finished with the trim. The rolling would go much faster. Maybe next week, once the room was cleaned, they could even move in some of the secondhand furniture that Corinne had found here and there.

  Scratching her nose with the back of her paint-spattered hand, she walked over to an old radio and found some music that might step up her speed. The lyrics of the songs were in Spanish, but it was the beat Corinne was after. When she couldn’t sing all the words, she just bebopped along with the tune.

  “Ba, bada, bada …”

  The ladder wrinkled the drop cloth over the wooden floor as she lined it up with the next section of wall in need of paint. Kicking the wrinkles into submission, she steadied the paint can on the cockeyed rack and began her climb. As a precaution, she braced one hand on the open door to the foyer.

  “La, la-la, la, la-la—oops!” She caught the paint can just as it tipped toward the wall. Since there was only a quarter or so of sunshine yellow left, it didn’t spill. God was so good.

  Braced against the last few of the top rungs, Corinne considered the tipsy rack and dismissed trusting it. But if she held the can in one hand, brush in the other, her steadying hand was gone, unless …

  Carefully, she balanced the can on the top edge of the door, while leaning it at a right angle against the frame. With Squeaky leaning against it, the arrangement would work fine—as long as she didn’t hit the can with her elbow.

  Just fine, she assured herself, after testing its stability with a dip of her brush. Taking care not to get any yellow on the white ceiling that she’d rolled the week before, Corinne angled the bristles just so, dragging them along with focused precision. When the paint gave out, she leaned back to examine her handiwork. Perfect. Not a smidgeon of sunshine on the ceiling. Replenishing the brush with a second dip, she eased it up to pick up where she left off.

  “Ba, bada, bada bada—”

  “Anybody home?”

  The male voice hardly registered before the door bumped against the ladder. Squeaky lunged sideways, taking Corinne with it. Dropping her brush, she somehow managed to hang on to the ladder and gain footing on the floor in time to catch the ladder from crashing. Instead it folded, mashing her hand. With a pain-induced dance, she let the ladder fend for itself.

  “Ow-wow-wow-wow-wow!”

  “What the—?” Mark exclaimed.

  Clutching her damaged hand in its partner, Corinne ceased her footwork to stare in astonishment at Mark Madison. Mouth agape and eyelids closed, he stood like a half-human statue. The other half was sunshine yellow.

  Her brain froze at the bombardment of reactive thoughts. What is he doing here? The floor! Paint was getting on the beautiful hardwood floor where the tarp had been shoved aside. How could so little paint spread so far?

  Somehow her body went on automatic pilot. She dropped to her knees and began mopping up the floor with the paint-soaked tarp around Mark’s Rockport deck shoes, but all she managed to do was smear shoes, floor, and all.

  Exasperation boiled over logic, determined to vent or bust. “Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?”

  CHAPTER 5

  The question gave Mark pause as he slogged through confusion to determine what had just happened. With wet paint seeping into his ears, he wasn’t certain he’d heard right. Had he done something wrong?

  Wiping the fresh coat of paint from his eyes with his fingers, he saw a young woman wallowing in the paint that puddled at his feet, her dark ponytail swinging from her frenzied mopping. She was a little paint-spattered, with specks of faded blue and egg-yolk yellow to match his shoes. Had breakfast been an omen of the day to come?

  Gradually the replay took form in his mind. He’d stuck his head in the door to say hello and was whacked promptly … by an open can of paint … that was propped overhead … like an old Boy Scout camp trick. Anger thawed his disbelief.

  “And this is my fault how?”

  Suddenly, the doorway of the adjacent wall was filled with a plump Mexican woman dressed in black and yellow—the same bright shade as the room.

  “Ay de mí, look what has happened!” Hands flying to ample hips, she eyed him from head to toe like a mad bumblebee.

  “Tell me about it.” Mark wiped the paint dribbling off his forehead back into his soaked hair. Instead of attacking, the bumblebee rushed to hand him a dishtowel. It was damp, but damp beat soaked every time. “Gracias, señora.”

  Corinne bobbed up from her paint-smearing delirium. “Soledad, get some more rags. This tarp is soaked, and the floor is going to be ruined.”

  “What am I, burnt toast?” Enough anger rose to Mark’s face and neck to bake on the paint the towel had left behind.

  Corinne glanced up as through s
eeing him for the first time. “What?”

  He pointed to the door. “Did you learn that trick at kiddie camp?”

  She pushed herself up from her knees and winced. “I’m sorry. It’s just that—” She ran a hand through her hair and then jerked it away as she realized that she’d just streaked it yellow. “I couldn’t hold on for balance with the paint can—”

  Soledad rushed back in with rags and began to toss them on the puddles of paint. Saving one, she promptly began to wipe the paint off Mark until he took the rag with a terse “Gracias” and proceeded to get off the worst himself.

  “So what was your paint doing on top of the door?” he asked.

  The minced question brought the bumblebee out of bending down to help Corinne. “It is that old-woman ladder, señor,” she explained. “She makes my Corina to fall.”

  “Wait!” said Corinne. She lowered her head. “It was my fault. The paint rack wouldn’t hold the can, and I only had a few feet to go, so I balanced it on the top of the door.” She stopped her confession long enough to turn off the music. “And I didn’t hear you coming because of the radio.” She lifted her shoulders and dropped them in resignation. “I’m really sorry.”

  The penitent pout that formed on her lips set Mark’s ire back a degree, but as her gaze ran the gamut from his face to his shoe, her penitence turned to humor.

  “Here.” She leaned over to pick up one of the extra rags that Soledad had tossed on the floor, vainly attempting to hide the full tilt of amusement claiming her face. “Let me wipe some of the paint off.”

  Still annoyed, Mark folded his arms across his chest as if her ministrations were his due as she raked the excess paint off his back.

  “It’s just that I’ve been trying to do this job on a next-to-nothing budget and in a bit of a rush …”

  Skipping over his buttocks, she continued her downward swipe to his feet.

  “You missed a spot,” he said, a wicked grin tugging at his mouth.

  With a grimace, she grabbed one of the extra rags and tossed it to him. “In your dreams, Madison.”

  Now he remembered Miss By-the-Book from the wedding—a hot number in a bright pink oriental dress that curved in all the right places. Those had been her exact words when he’d suggested they skip the rest of the reception and continue celebrating on his sailboat.