Trapped in the Mayan Tattoo (6 page)

            Abbi ran back inside to
look out the living room window. What she saw alarmed her.

            “We can’t get out that
way,” she shouted. “It’s blocked by their car! Let’s grab the bikes and go.

            “Who are they?” Louise
asked as she and Lowell pulled bikes out of the garage.

            “I don’t know, but my
grandmother sure isn’t one of them,” Abbi said, then quietly whispered, “Remember
to re-set the alarm. Hurry!!! Ready, set, GO!”

With Abbi in the
lead, they hopped on bikes and flew out the back door.

“They’re going to
see us!” Louise said.

“Not if we cut
through yards,” Lowell answered. “Come on!”

The three of them
grazed past houses and a family grilling out. Several people yelled at them,
but they didn’t stop to explain. They were peddling as fast as they could.

“You’re not
supposed to do this in this neighborhood,” Louise said. “It just isn’t done!”

“Sorry!” Abbi
yelled. “When we get there, Louise, can you gather the mail and see if there’s
anything suspicious? Maybe my parents sent a postcard from some wonderful
vacation spot. Maybe they’re just taking a second honeymoon.”

“Yeah, sure,” came
Louise’s voice, strained, breathless, as they went through an arched gateway of
climbing roses. “This is just wrong.”

“Lowell, can you
stand watch? If for any reason we get separated, let’s meet at the slide in
Waterloo Park.”

“Why the slide?”

“Why not? Just
give me some time in the house. I want to look up things on Mom’s computer. I
think I can pick up some clues.”

They were
approaching Abbi’s home.

“On what? Those
drawings?” Louise wheezed, as they pulled their bikes up to the back door.

Abbi grabbed her
bag, unlocked the door and turned off the alarm.

“Yeah, there’s a
link. I just have to find it.”

The guinea hen
came running, making its clucking sound like a loyal watchdog. Louise let out a
wheezing sound that was a feeble attempt at a scream.

“Use the back
door, Louise,” Abbi said. “The guinea won’t hurt you.”

“What’s going on
with that bird?” Lowell asked. “It’s acting all goofy.”

“She keeps an eye
on things. Not bad actually! But you’re on duty now, Lowell.”

“I’m not going to
fight her for it, but I was eying that tree in the front. That’ll be my vantage
point. If I see anything, I’ll speed dial you. But be quick. OK?”

“OK!”

Louise let out another
breathless scream.

“Is that thing
coming after me?” she asked as she parked her bike near a flowerbed.

“It just squawks a
lot. It’s really friendly!”

Abbi re-set the
alarm, and went straight to her mother’s office. She had never opened her
mother’s computer files before but knew that work-related files were probably
password protected.

Her mother had
always believed that Abbi had a gift for sensing things, a way of knowing
beyond explanation. Maybe right now, Abbi could pull from that strength. Maybe
she could use some unseen power to get into her mother’s computer files.

She reasoned that
the password had something to do with her mother’s code name. For starters, she
tried “misshoe”, “miss_shoe” and finally got in on “4miss_shoe”.

A hesitation on
the computer, then the screen changed and Abbi was in.

“Well, alrighty
then!” she said triumphantly.

A quick scan of
recent documents showed a folder named FRED’S BOOTS. Abbi clicked. Inside that
she found various file names, all recently entered, all having to do with human
trafficking. Human trafficking, she thought and wondered. One folder of
pictures labeled MAYAN TATTOOS caught her attention.

“That’s it!” Abbi
whispered. She opened it and scanned the contents, finding captions under each
drawing. She pulled the folder out of her backpack to take notes. Too slow.

She clicked PRINT
and found the file was write-protected. How to get around that? She had to copy
by hand but there were so many. First she picked out designs that had been on
the desk and found them in the file. Each paper drawing seemed to have a
matching computer depiction with a caption. One in particular caught her eye
because of its caption. Leafing through the various designs, she found an exact
match in the file folder.

Just then, her
phone beeped.

“Not now!” she
said.

“Get down, out of
sight. Someone is approaching the house in a dark blue mini-van, the same car
that blocked the garage.”

Abbi read the
caption, turned off the computer, then slid under the desk, dragging her
backpack, folder and a pen. Under the grotesque drawing of an especially ominous
jaguar, she wrote the caption she found on the computer:

Powerful
Ruler of the Underworld holding Internal Captive

            “Stay down!” Lowell
said on the phone.

            “Where’s Louise?” Abbi
asked.

            “She ducked behind a
bush across the street. Can’t talk now.”

            Surveillance cameras
would pick up any motion in the driveway but Abbi could not see the monitor.
She never thought about why employees of Fred’s Boots Incorporated would have
such high tech security systems. For some reason, it just seemed natural, like
everyone did.

            Abbi heard rustling at
the windows. Someone must be at the bushes and peering in the window. She
didn’t dare breathe. She heard the guinea hen outside, protesting unhappily at
this intrusion. From the sound of it, the fowl must have flown up into the same
tree as Lowell. Abbi smiled as she pictured the scene.

            Suddenly, she wasn’t
smiling. What if the guinea hen drew attention to Lowell?

At that moment, a
window crashed somewhere in the back of the house and the alarm system sounded.
Someone was coming in! Where was Louise?

Abbi’s heart was
thumping up into her throat. She slipped the strap of the backpack over her
shoulder and crawled out of the office, pulling the weight of her backpack
along, regretting that she hadn’t unpacked her climbing gear.

With the alarm
still signaling, she peeked out a front window to see that the driver had
stayed at the car. Abbi couldn’t leave. She made her way to the living room
where she wedged herself and her pack in behind the couch. Lying on dusty
carpet made her nose itch.

Oh, no! Abbi
thought. I’m going to…

She buried her
face in her pack to stifle the sneeze, but it was one of those loud sneezes. Instantly,
Abbi heard heavy footsteps in the house.

            I’ll be found if I stay
here, she thought.

She got up,
quickly sneaked to the door, ran out and skidded away on her bike, leaving her
friends to stay hidden, and not looking back at the driver in the car.

            Peddling as fast as she
could, she made her way through backyards and alleys on her way to Waterloo
Park. She didn’t dare try to call the police, yet. The alarm system would take
car of that. If Lowell and Louise were there when police arrived, they could
deal with it.

            The park had installed
more slides since last year. The one she chose was a down spiral tunnel that
attached to a walking plank. They could hide inside the tunnel if they needed
to. She pulled her bike under a tree and situated herself under the walking
plank, out of the sun but in plain sight if her friends came.

By now, she was
glad she also had not unpacked snacks. She pulled out a beef stick, a juice
pack, and the folder with drawings.

Abbi studied the
drawings and ate her snack in the shade provided by the overhead plank. She
reached mindlessly into the pack to get seconds when it occurred to her that
her friends had to be hot and thirsty too. Abbi withdrew her hand and turned
her full attention back to the drawings.

There were clues
here, she was certain of that. If she laid them out in order of their
characteristics, she had some prints that depicted a sun-like shape, some that
showed a face, and some that looked like the harmles glyphs on the Mayan
calendar. But the ones that seemed threatening, that made her sense that evil
had driven their design, were the drawings depicting animals. Although the
calendar glyphs looked child-like and innocent, the animals looked menacing and
cruel, especially the leopard.

Abbi was muttering
about the drawings, wondering their significance, when Lowell and Louise
pedaled up to her.

“You look comfy!”
Lowell said.

Abbi gathered her
drawings and placed the folder in her lap. Then she reached into the backpack
for more snacks.

“Here. You two can
get comfy too while we talk.”

“Thank you, thank
you, thank you! I’ve been out in the hot sun all this time!” Louise said as she
reached for the snack then moved into the spiral tunnel. “It’s actually breezy
in here!”

“The guy went into
the house and left with something, not sure what,” Lowell said. “The alarm
sounded the entire time. He has to be hard of hearing by now. Did you call the
police?”

“No,” Abbi said. “I
was going to, if I had to, but the surveillance company does that. We’ll just
stay out of it. Think hard. What did he take?”

“A plain manila folder,”
Louise said. “Yeah, definitely a folder. But it wasn’t a guy.”

Abbi hadn’t even
thought to check the folders! What could that have been, she wondered and
buried her face in her hands. Her mother kept most things on files in the
computer.

“Not a guy?”

“I didn’t see a
face. From my vantage point it was covered by a gray hoodie, but I did notice the
shape. Yeah, come to think of it—not a guy.”

“Well, I’m tired. We
can’t go home and we can’t stay here,” Louise said. “Got any more juice?”

Abbi handed Louise
another juice pack and beef stick. Then she offered the same to Lowell before trying
to give more to herself and coming back empty handed except for gum.

“Your parents will
be home in a few hours,” Abbi said. “We can wait here that long.”

“I don’t think we
need to do that,” Lowell said while he munched on the beef stick. “It sounds
like they got what they were looking for.”

“We could go to
the library,” Louise said.

“Lowell’s right,”
Abbi said. “We definitely can’t go back to my house. There’s probably a search
going on there by now, but we could go to your house.”

“I vote for the
library. It’s safe.”

“Safety in
numbers? Not necessarily,” Lowell said like something else was on his mind.

In spite of
herself, Abbi looked at Lowell and saw excitement in his eyes. Lowell smiled as
if he knew something, a secret.

“So, Abbi, what’s
that you have in your lap? Did you find something?”

“I don’t really
know, but yeah, I think so. I’d been trying to find meanings to some Mayan
drawings that my mother had on her desk. The meanings were right there in her
computer this whole time! Now, trying to piece it together and figure out where
to go from here, that’s the problem. I just need to think about it.”

“The library!”
Louise said.

“Louise, I think
that’s a great idea! Why don’t you go pedal to the library?” Abbi said, getting
annoyed.

“By myself? I
don’t think so!”

Lowell was looking
pretty pumped up.

“Then let’s move
on,” he said. “I got a text while me and that bird were cozied up in the tree.
I thought I would fall out and die, right there. You know that internship I’ve been
trying for? I got it! Missing persons. First case—some woman. Washington, here
I come! I’ll be working for the FBI.”

“No kidding! Congrats!
Who’s the woman?”

“I can’t say. I
shouldn’t have said that much. Let’s just say I’ll be putting my talents to use
and you’ll know all about it soon enough. The only question is whether I’m too
close to this case to work objectively.”

Abbi drew in her
breath.

“It wouldn’t be
anyone I know,” she said with a hopeful lilt to her voice. She wanted to look down
but kept her eyes intently on Lowell.

“If so, you could call
it a lucky coincidence. Me--not really into coincidence. Maybe some good
spirits are working overtime, lining it all up. Been praying much?”

“Much?! Depends on
what you call ‘much’,” Abbi admitted. “Whatever you’re doing, I hope it works.”

“It should, if Mrs.
Hightower has a hand in it. OOPS! I did it again. Said too much. I wouldn’t
want to be the one to upset her.”

“With the way
you’re giving away secrets, are you sure you’re the best person for this job?”
Louise asked.

“I’ve done pretty
well with Fred’s Boots Incorporated, haven’t I, Weezie?”

Abbi looked at him
hard.

“What?”

Louise shrieked,
“Great! Just tell it all!”

“I’ll be leaving
someday soon. They’re arranging my schedule now.”

Lowell got up to
leave.

“Wait! You’ve got some
talking to do. Fred’s Boots. I want to know what it is.”

“Another time,”
Lowell said. “You’ll just have to trust me. If you need me, I’ll be right
there.”

Lowell got on his
bike and started peddling fast.

“What’s he doing?”
Abbi asked. She gathered up her pack and took off after him.

Louise struggled
to get out of the spiral tunnel and yelled, “Hey! Wait for me!”

When Abbi reached
the house, Lowell had already gone into the house and had begun playing the
trumpet in the basement, slow and quiet at first, mostly scales. Then, after
his warm-up, while Abbi was still outside, she heard the raucous sound of
Dixieland jazz, Lowell’s favorite music.

The music, or
maybe what someone said, lifted her spirits.

Abbi walked into
the mudroom and dropped her backpack on a chair in the kitchen. When everyone
left, they had forgotten to turn off the radio and the D. J. said something
about a dance contest. Lowell was playing his trumpet in the basement, so Abbi
closed the basement door and sat close to the radio to hear more. It excited
her. Dancing was her passion!