The Stirlings and the Missing Statue

Chapter Three: Los Stirlings de Vacaciones!

"Who chose this?" Declan whined without bothering to take off the expensive set of headphones that he'd earned the previous year with a passing grade in world history. His voice was therefore louder than it needed to be but was nonetheless nasal and grating on the nerves of each of his siblings. His parents, oblivious to most things outside of the recent rise or fall of the stock market or the recent innovations in dental hygiene, responded to their middle son as they did always—with indifference.
They'd all been advised of the plans for their Spring Break vacation a few months before, when the weather was cool and the leaves were beginning to fall. The flight had been booked, their housing for the week was chosen, and their destinations for no less than three all-day trips in the area were selected. The host of the four-bedroom villa they had rented left a welcoming note in both English and Spanish along with a selection of tamarind candies, cinnamon dusted cookies, and bottles of room-temperature Coke. The villa's southern view of the attached agave fields only partially obstructed by an extraordinary pergola patio framed with stringy hanging branches from many-seasoned cypress trees, the amenity the family had settled on was far from ordinary. The aroma of hundreds of fine and deliciously prepared meals wafted from a blackened chimenea alongside a contemporary outdoor kitchen with a gas-fed barbecue on the left side of the patio while on the right, a set of chairs with thick cushions around a wrought-iron and glass table beckoned the family to dine and relax in the cool of the evening.
"This? As in this is not awesome?" Ez scoffed at her twin. By the time she'd rounded on him to glare at his impudence, he'd bypassed the Bienvenidos! in the foyer, completely ignored the bank of three open in-swing doors that took up the entire southwest wall of the family room, and had flopped down onto the leather loveseat in front of the fireplace on the west wall. He couldn't hear his sister mock his complaints but, after many years of practice, he rolled his eyes and huffed through his nose in response.
The other two siblings had crossed over the threshold and immediately adopted a more sullen attitude than either had shown on the journey so far. Mitchell, the youngest, had at least surreptitiously slipped two of the cookies and one of the bottles out of the basket and into the pockets of his cargo shorts, but remained quiet and visibly homesick for his gaming chair and computer back home. Callum all but stormed past the main room and deserted the rest of the family for the first bedroom he found down the west hallway. His plans to remain at home to continue his studies and enjoy his vacation alone had been dismissed by both parents, given that it would likely be the last Spring Break the family spent together. Furthermore, the family decision to pair him and Mitchell in the same room had caused a near riot on the final leg of the trip to the villa, only contained within the SUV itself.
"This is lovely," their mother said as she wheeled in her overstuffed hardshell case. They'd had to pay the heavy extra fees to the small airline company for the weight of her bag, but the hardcover books she insisted upon bringing with her were, in her words, worth it. She paid no mind to the fact that each of her children had a tablet that could have each carried thousands of books. Nor did she admit that she would likely crack open only one of the ten novels she paid to bring. "Esmeralda, however did you find this?"
"She just looked up boring and educational and this was the only thing that came up," Declan declared. He'd apparently turned down the heavy metal he usually blasted into his poor eardrums just to plague his sister with an insult.
"You know they make mezcal here on the neighboring farm, right? And offer free tastings?" Ez sang out what she'd learned on the villa's listing when she'd booked it with her mother's credit card.
"What's that, some kind of taco? Burrito?" Declan pronounced even the simplest of food terms with the nasally voice his siblings hated and with an accent like he was someone who hadn't taken two years of Spanish already.
"The drinking age in Mexico is eighteen," Mitchell almost whispered.
"Since when do you drink a burrito, Michelle?"
Their mother instantly scolded him for calling his brother Michelle, although none of the siblings could assume that their mother knew that Declan always tried to demean his little brother in that way. Mitchell didn't mind either way. He just wanted to be left alone. Ez covered the obvious shyness of the youngest of the Stirling siblings with an over-zealous laugh at her twin and by loudly calling him an idiot.
"And Esmeralda," their mother returned to the room from the patio where she'd stepped out to take in the view, "don't call your brother names either."
Their father had been parking their rental car since they'd arrived, only allowing the family members to retrieve a belonging or two when he'd stalled it in his efforts to reverse the large SUV into the garage attached to the side of the house. There was enough space for three cars, nearly one for every bedroom, but unaccustomed to both the standard transmission and the size of the vehicle, their father had to take his time to get it just right. Entering the house from the front door, since the door into the house from the garage was locked and took an unknown key, his face was flushed and his clothes ruffled from a long fight with the car.
"You're driving tomorrow," he announced to their mother as he crossed the threshold and headed for what he thought was the kitchen but what ended up being a small office across from the master bedroom. "Mitch, you could bunk in here, bud. If there was a bed, I guess." He beckoned to his youngest and Mitchell shuffled across the terracotta to meet him at the study. It had French paneled doors with glass painted in vibrant colors that would obscure the inside when the doors were closed. "There's a little couch in there."
He phrased it with the inflection of a question but the boy wasn't fooled. Always the peacemaker of the two parents, their father was trying to resolve the room arrangement to cool the temper of his oldest.
"Yeah," Mitchell said in his softest voice. He wanted to say that Callum would be very comfortable there, but he didn't have the arrogance of his older brother. His father took his response as confirmation and retrieved Mitchell's duffel bag from the pile of belongings that had been set in the foyer. Instead of handing the bag to the boy, he proudly carried it into the study and left it sitting on the leather sofa that very clearly did not fold into a bed or in any way promote a good night's sleep for anyone, even a fifteen-year-old.
Finally making his way to the kitchen on the opposite side of the house, the family could hear the man, pudgy around the middle and sweaty from the simple exertion of maneuvering the car and carrying in the last of the two bags, gulp down three glasses of water from the tap. A satisfied groan followed and then, of course, a hearty slap with both hands on the bulk of his own belly.
"Who's hungry?" He called from the kitchen. "I know I am!"
The rest of the family called out their own hunger, except for the secluded oldest sibling, although their father suspected that he'd been heard by the grumpy teenager. Emerging from the kitchen, the man lit his face with a mischievous smile and feigned an intense level of thought, complete with his hand pinching around his chin, his forefinger pointing up toward his cheek.
"Where, do you think, is the nearest Taco Bell?"
Disgusted and horrified, his only daughter at once launched upon him, scathing insults directed his way about ignorance and the abominable idea of eating at Taco Bell in, of all places, Oaxaca, known for its food. Then, catching herself, she returned the smirk.
"Fine. But that means we have to drive. How long did it take you to park, daddy?"