Stork Raving Mad: A Meg Langslow Mystery (A Meg Lanslow Mystery)

preferable,” Blanco began. “It’s near the library?”
    “No, it’s out in the barn,” I said. He blinked in surprise. “I’m a blacksmith,” I explained, “so it makes sense for me to have my office near my forge. But don’t worry; it’s got a space heater.”
    “Well, if—” Blanco began.
    Just then Señor Mendoza erupted from the kitchen. He was managing an impressive speed, especially considering that he was waving his walking stick over his head instead of using it for support. Behind him surged a crowd of students.
    “What’s going on here?” Michael asked, sticking his head out into the hall. His words were lost in the confusion.
    Mendoza stumped over to Wright and Blanco and began shouting at them. In English.
    “Philistines!” he shouted. “Book burners! Assassins of culture! Jackals without souls! Harpies!”
    He kept on in much the same vein, and I found myself thinking that considering English was his second—if not third—language, he really did have quite a gift for fiery, nonobscene invective. I was just considering whether to fish my notebook out of my pocket and jot down a few choice insults when Mendoza stopped and clutched at his chest.

Chapter 5
     
    The students seemed frozen in shock at seeing Señor Mendoza’s distress.
    “Someone help him,” I shouted. “Where’s Dad?”
    “Fetch Dr. Langslow!” Michael said, as he hurried to Mendoza’s side. “He’s out in the yard.”
    Several students scurried to follow his orders. One, more quick-thinking than the rest, grabbed a chair and he and Michael eased the old playwright into it.
    “Someone run to the bathroom and get the aspirin, in case he’s having a heart attack,” I called.
    Several students ran off to follow my orders. Mendoza rattled off something in Spanish that seemed to reassure those who could understand it. Then he reached into his pocket and took out an enormous pill bottle and handed it to one of the students.
    “Apparently he’s not having an attack.” Michael had returned with a chair for me. “His heart fluttered, and it reminded him that he’s not supposed to excite himself and that he had not yet taken his heart pills today.”
    “Probably atrial fibrillation,” I said, as I sank gratefully onto the chair. “Dad should still check him out.”
    “And maybe your father could give him a bottle that doesn’t have a childproof cap,” Michael said. Even the student was having trouble opening the top.
    “Oops!” the student said, as tiny white pills sprayed out like a fountain. About twenty people almost simultaneously dropped to their hands and knees and began scrabbling on the floor, like devotees of a strange religion abasing themselves.
    “No hurry! No hurry!” Mendoza shouted. “See? I caught one!”
    He held up a small white pill. A sublingual nitroglycerin tablet? Digoxin? As a doctor’s daughter, I could hazard a guess what they might be, but I couldn’t see well enough to tell. Whatever it was, he put it into his mouth. Someone put a wineglass into his hand—.
    “Not wine!” I shouted. “Not with heart pills!” But no one appeared to hear me. Señor Mendoza washed the pill down with a healthy slug of red wine, and then leaned back in his chair to watch the pill retrieval. Students were swarming over every inch of the hall floor, looking for and occasionally finding the tiny pills.
    Within seconds, Drs. Blanco and Wright were the only people, apart from Mendoza and me, not on their knees searching for the pills. At least Mendoza and I were interested bystanders—the prunes merely looked on disapprovingly. When one of the students came too close to Dr. Wright, she stepped back, slipped on something—probably a stray pill—and fell. Luckily she fell against one of the coatracks, so her landing was well cushioned.
    “Look what you’ve done!” Blanco snapped, to no one in particular, as he swooped down to help his colleague. A good thing he was so eager because no one else seemed upset at her mishap.
    “I’m fine,” she said. “Stop fussing over me.”
    “Look out!
El perro!
” Mendoza shouted.
    I looked down to see Spike licking the floor.
    “He’s trying to eat Señor Mendoza’s heart pills!” I shouted. “Stop him!”
    For once, I managed to move tolerably fast—or maybe I only beat everyone else because the students had been here long enough to have acquired a healthy fear of the Small Evil One, as we called him. Michael swooped down to grab Spike