Maria’s grave eyes brightened. “Yes, the little girls and I work hard.” She gestured to the window and the corners of the room. “See, I clean it good like Carlitos’s mamá show me.”
Though Miss Prudence had caught from these gestures that Maria was showing how thoroughly she had cleaned the house, she was far from being convinced that it was fit for human habitation. Again she broke into a list of the different kinds of cleansing materials and things that she would need.
“We’ll have to go to the city to get all those things,” put in Peggy. “They won’t have them in the little store in the village.”
Jo Ann’s eyes suddenly began to shine. Here was her chance to get back to the city to find the mystery man. She could stop in the village and find out what those smugglers were doing there. Maybe they were buying baskets and pottery from the villagers. She’d soon find out now.
The first moment she and Peggy were alone she told her of her plans.
Peggy laughed. “I knew that’s what you were planning. You can’t resist a mystery, can you?”
“And you’re almost as eager as I am to have a finger in my mystery pie. You know you’re crazy to go to the city with me.”
“Of course I am.”
CHAPTER IX
MISS PRUDENCE’S CLEANING SPREE
Before dropping to sleep that night Jo Ann decided that as soon as she got up in the morning she would urge Miss Prudence to let her and Peggy go to the city. “I’ll tell her what this house needs worse than another cleaning is some pretty cretonne for curtains and pillows, and some of the lovely Mexican pottery and bright-colored blankets. I could stop at the village and buy the pottery and blankets. There were some pieces of pottery outside that shack near where the smugglers’ car was parked. That’d give me a grand chance to find out from the family in the shack about the smugglers. Then I’d have more to tell the mystery man—if I can find him. Finding him—that’ll be the hard part.”