Family Matters - Chapter 8
Family Matters by Nina Lavoie
Intermediate Level English. All in the present for transposition exercises.
China has secrets. That much is obvious. When she travels to Paraguay to visit her family, she wants to hear the whole story about Wenasclao and finding the Simon Bertoni treasure. Everyone is happy to see China. But something is amiss.
When goons dressed up as the secret police come storming into the house to arrest her, even the Bertoni family is surprised that she has vanished. Then Johnny, a new teacher from school, finds listening devices in the house. Things are starting to get out of hand.
Apparently, some people think that China killed General Stroessner twenty years ago and may still know where he buried the Stroessner fortune. Whoever controls that fortune, controls the future of Paraguay. Serious stuff, indeed.
Family Matters is the second in a series of three books (Family Secrets, Family Matters and Family Ties) about the Bertoni Family and their adventures in Paraguay.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“So, China was a spy?” Jeremy asks.
“China is a spy,” Johnny counters. “Not was.”
“I don’t believe it,” Arnold says. “It doesn’t make any sense. I would have noticed something.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you noticed nothing out of the ordinary with your mother,” Johnny asks. “No strange trips at the last minute. No secrecy. No unexplained visitors showing up at all hours of the night.”
“We just thought she was eccentric,” Annie says. “Strange is as strange does.”
“Well, let me prove it to you,” Johnny says. “No doubt she will have something in her rooms above the garage in your house in Chicago. You told me that she never allowed anyone up there.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Arnold says.
“If you give me permission, I will have my people check her rooms for evidence of her secret life. We won’t disturb anything. She won’t even notice that we were there.”
“If China is a living legend in your spy craft world, I hardly think she would not notice that someone had looked through her stuff,” Jeremy says.
“Who cares?” Annie says. “We need to know for sure. Right now, I’m not sure that China will ever make it back to Chicago. She said she came here to die.”
“She said that?” Johnny asks. Now he looks worried.
Jane is still in San Ber with the Montoya family, but they have decided not to wait for her to get back.
“Look, this is what I suggest,” Johnny says. “First, give me permission to check out her rooms in Chicago. Then we should notify the State Department that she is missing. After all, she is an American citizen. Maybe they can help.”
“Those are good ideas,” Arnold says. “I will talk to my cousin, Charlie. He is staying in the house.”
“I will send you the contact information of my associates who will check out the house,” Johnny says. “In the meantime, you should contact the State Department and let them know what’s going on.”
“What are you going to do?” Jeremy asks.
“I’m going to find China.”
It only takes a day for China’s disappearance to hit the news cycle on TV. Someone at the State Department has spoken to the media and someone else has dug up the history of her involvement in the 1989 revolution. So far that’s as much as they know.
There are vans parked haphazardly on the road outside of their house and cameramen trying to capture them on video. It starts late Sunday afternoon and it doesn’t look like it is going away any time soon.
They want to find China. Now everybody is looking for her. Jane isn’t sure if it is a good thing or not. She has gotten back home late Saturday night and slept in on Sunday morning. The family has filled her in on what she has missed, and she gives them what she has learnt from Juan Carlos Montoya.
Now they have to deal with the media.
“Perhaps we should go out there and make an appeal for the safe return of China?” Annie says. “We need to make it look like a normal disappearance, don’t we?”
“There’s nothing normal about it,” Arnold says. “It might do more harm than good.”
“Where’s Johnny?” Jane asks. “Maybe he can tell us what to do.”
“He’s gone,” Jeremy says. “He said he was going to find China.”
“How was he going to do that?” Jane says.
“He was going to track down those two German looking goons who came to our house last week,” Jeremy says. “He said that they were unusual people and should stand out. His people might be able to identify them.”
“If he can get some photos, he will bring them back here for us to identify,” Annie says. “And then the police can pick them up.”
“The police are probably in on it,” Jeremy says.
“Maybe not all of them,” Arnold says. “But what else can we do.”
“Well, we certainly are stirring things up,” Jane says. “Now everybody is looking for her at least.”
“Yes, we need to keep up appearances,” Arnold says. “This is just about a missing grandmother as far as the media is concerned. Someone might see something.”
“You need to go out there and give a statement, dad,” Jane says.
“All of us need to go,” Arnold says. “As a family.”
Johnny never comes back. Which is strange.
And Miguel Angel and his father stay in San Ber longer than they have planned. Nothing seems to be happening and the media circus finally goes away. China is still gone. No news is bad news in this case.
Jane isn’t sure what to think of it all. She is still confused about so many things. It is about the money, Miguel’s father has said. But that is all twenty years ago. What does it matter today? Miguel Angel doesn’t know the codes. That should be the end of it.
But then the phone rings.
It is the police. Two bodies have been found in a burnt-out car back in the jungle two hours outside the city. They are sure that it is China and her ex-husband, Moises.
Jane remembers hearing about Moises. Another political activist that has died twenty-five years ago. How can he be dead in a burnt-out car with China? Jane is in shock. Her dad goes to identify the bodies but there isn’t much to identify other than a shoe that he is sure belongs to his mother.
The secret service have given the police the information about Moises. Apparently, he has been undercover for a long time and has resurfaced recently. Technically, he is in retirement and the Paraguayan government disavowed any direct relationship with him. They say he is unstable.
He is the one who has kidnapped China and keeps her at an abandoned training site called The Farm. He has poisoned her with something in her tea. They found the kitchen with a cup of tea half drunk and a cup of coffee as well. Both have the remnants of poison in them.
Both?
What was it? A suicide pack? Did Moises kill China and then kill himself? Who put them in the car and lit it on fire? Why would he do such a thing? The media has a field day of course. They swarm the house for two straight weeks. Conspiracy theories come out of the woodwork. It is all very confusing.
There are too many questions and it hurt Jane’s head to think about it all.
So, she sleeps.
For days, the family sleep and eat and live in silence. For days, no one says anything more about it, just the bare minimum needed to exist. They ignore the media and the police post some men outside their house to keep an eye on them.
Finally, even they leave.
Jane and Jeremy have to go back to school. They go through the motions, and everybody leaves them alone. Miguel Angel is her shadow and tends to her every need. But there is nothing to be said. Nothing to be done. China is gone.
And then Johnny comes back.
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