“Listen to me Abigail, this is important. Matt’s going to push for an Amber Alert for Betty. Don’t share this, because he wants to keep his role in this below the radar. He’s afraid it might come back to hurt you. And…”
How could I word this so she wouldn’t rebel? So she’d believe me.
“I know. He wants me to stay home tomorrow because it will be more dangerous. And I know you have a guy--I think he’s your apprentice, Luis?--watching out for me. I know he’ll be in more trouble too.
“But Rachel, if all we ever do when the bad guys come looking for us is run and hide aren’t we encouraging them? Aren’t we giving them permission to attack us? No. You tell your Marine husband I’m not a coward. I’m going back to school.”
Half of me was disappointed, half of me was elated.
She was constantly amazing me with her maturity. Or was this something else? Was she just clinging to her stubborn side?
Then again maybe that was why we had stubborn sides—so we’d stick to our guns.
And off course somewhere lurking in our chromosomes were the genes of a mule, so….
But I was digressing. Big time. Time to hit the rack.
“What about your mom?”
“I haven’t talked to her yet. But it isn’t her decision. It’s mine.”
I spent a few minutes after the call arguing with myself over whether a thirteen year old should be allowed to direct her own life.
I didn’t win.
Chapter 44
Thursday, October 30, 7:30 am
Matt rattled the newspaper while changing pages during breakfast. We don’t often share a sit-down breakfast, but the weather on our deck was particularly mild this morning, so here we were with Wisdom moving anxiously around our almost empty plates.
His excited snuffling made me worry he might begin sneezing. I put my plate down for him to lick.
“Have you been following this Cherry Valley thing?” Matt asked.
“What? Oh, you mean the gang problems where Eddie is. I don’t remember telling you.”
“You didn’t. I’m reading a newspaper article.”
“The article is on Eddie’s gang?”
“No.”
He was giving me that look again. I was lost, so I just reached for his part of the newspaper and began reading.
“Good grief. There’s been a massacre? When did this happen?”
Another look.
“Seventeen seventy-eight. Read it again. Past the first paragraph.”
Sarcasm.
I did. My face reddened. The Cherry Valley Massacre had indeed occurred during the American Revolution. The news headline and first paragraph was about the ironic comparison of events over two hundred years ago and today’s contentious squabble over the planned Seneca Indian casino in Cherry Valley.
“Oh, here it is. Monday night. Sounds like some local gang joined forces with the Seneca Indians casino group and overran the PTA meeting at Fort Alden Elementary. They scared a bunch of women and children. It doesn’t say Eddie was involved.” Me.
Sarcastic stare.
I ignored him and happily continued.
“But the good news is the casino is still going forward. Apparently the Senecas are upset over the local government attempts to block their plans to pilfer seniors’ hard earned social security checks, so they brought in some ex-military types on bikes. Eddie’s one of them. But of course that isn’t mentioned here. In fact, none of them are named. Don’t you wonder why?”
“PTA meetings aren’t high on the list of important topics in Cherry Valley? The newspaper publisher is a part owner of the planned casino? Sloppy reporting?” Dripping sarcasm.
I grinned and continued to paraphrase the article to him.
Then Hannah called, exhibiting her mother’s scary capabilities and interrupting my monologue.
Matt was reading the sports section anyway, which I had been reading before he so cleverly distracted me with the News of the Back Side section.
“Mary just called me and said a hysterical Eddie called her a couple of minutes ago…”
“Hysterical?”
Matt arched his eyebrows. I put her on speakerphone.
“…and she said he was caught in the middle of a fight that wounded dozens. And yes, he was hysterical--Eddie still has a lot of those female drugs he was forced to take in his system. Besides, it wasn’t just fisticuffs. A couple of the so-called Indians—more like drunken bikers--tried exacting revenge in the old fashioned way, by scalping an old geezer who fought back. Apparently a lack of hair saved him. Mary says the papers are concealing the truth. They don’t want anti-Indian sentiment to spread across the country, possibly causing more pro-and anti-casino riots.” That was when she burst into laughter and lost all control.
“Anti-Indian? What…?”
She was laughing too hard to hear me. Finally she came back to the phone.
“It’s all over the internet if you know where to look. Try searching under Cherry Valley messacre—with an e. There are two videos circulating of the event already, and it literally happened hours ago.
Matt quipped. “Is it time to buy stock in this casino?”
That sent Hannah off on another round of giggles. Finally she stopped and told me what I really wanted to hear.
“Anyway, you’ll be happy to hear they’re moving Eddie even farther away. Mary says he’s on his way to Boston soon. Stay tuned for another problem to begin brewing there, maybe tomorrow. Oops! Deborah, what have I said about using that tone of voice with your brother?”
And she was off to tend to a skirmish of her own, leaving me with a head full of questions I never got to voice. She definitely needed to cut back on the coffee. Zen Hannah was turning into Hyper Hannah.
Chapter 45
I still had questions I wanted to research about Eddie and his gang activities, but Matt and I needed to prepare for a very long day reorganizing our office. We’d scheduled a meeting with Dom Jacob & Sons weeks ago. Dom is the recognized business expert in reorganizing small businesses in our area, and we were lucky enough to have the man himself coming to work with us. We hoped to be done by noon.
I struggled with the decision whether to wear my neck brace or just try to gut it out, but common sense got the best of me and I put the damn thing on. It would be grueling enough lugging around file folders without stabs of pain in my neck.
Dom was of course fully licensed and bonded. Dom, himself, had been in business for over thirty years without a complaint. But to be certain no confidences were jeopardized, I had spent some of yesterday attaching those heavy duty black file clips to every file in our drawers. Dom would only get to see the title of the file.
Unfortunately most of them were the names of our clients. There was little we could do about this aspect of risk. We just had to assume Dom was only here to reorganize our filing system and our office procedures, and yes, even to move furniture around. Not to spy.
Matt was only partially onboard with what he sometimes considered my insane librarian’s need to organize things, especially information. But he hadn’t said no. I was keeping my fingers crossed that he didn’t just halt the process halfway through.
Dom and a helper, a big strapping guy I could halfway hear Matt’s brain-wheels churning over—he would be an excellent partner to Will Townsend—arrived right on schedule at eight a.m.. In other words, helper guy was huge.
Eight a.m. is an ungodly hour to begin work. I believe it’s half the reason why some people opt out of working for a living all together. My brain was still back in REM land. At least for now I was calm. The anxiety attack would come later in the morning and it would be over Abigail’s safety.
We’d been working hard for several hours, making great progress. Matt had really gotten into the whole thing, and even taken the project over completely from me. I let him. When he did organize, he was really very good at it. Then came a call which stopped us in our tracks. Almost.
The call was from Luis.
; We had decided that Luis should use a less public communication than twitter.com this time. So he was text messaging us by cell. The sound of the phone raised the hairs on my arms--but this message was a simple update telling us lunchtime for Abigail and her ‘friend’ was about to commence.
Interesting thing about this hair-raising activity, if you thought about it in animal terms--like a dog or gorilla--you could see that it was all about making yourself look bigger, more threatening, because you sensed danger nearby. So I suppose the hairs on my back were standing, too. But they’re so small I didn’t notice. In fact, I couldn’t really swear I even have hair on my back. I should probably check.
These are the silly thoughts that sweep through my brain during tense moments.
This would be a second opportunity for trouble to come Abigail’s way, the first having been before classes in the morning. And that had gone fine.
Actually after yesterday we knew anytime she was out of class she was in danger.
I was left wondering who her friend was, but asking him questions wasn’t a good idea. It could take his mind off his job.
So I turned the phone for Matt to see and concentrated on Dom Jacob’s continued stream of directions. I was dutifully taking notes. His helper was shifting files in the background on changes we had already agreed to.
Anyway, I turned the cell phone to vibrate only. The ring was upsetting. Like an alarm.
Seconds later the cell phone vibrated on the wooden desk and I looked down to read, “lunch bell. sub heading out, am right behind her.”
My heart beat a little faster. If anything happened, we’d be an hour getting there. I cursed myself for not thinking about this and having Will stand by somewhere in Pinto Springs. It took a handful of seconds for the next text to arrive.
“sub is stalled. watching another indian girl + pintos. friend is encouraging her to move on. am holding back.”
Matt moved next to me and began reading the texts with me. Dom’s chatter came to a stop. He probably could feel the tension in our home office. Plus we were both staring at the phone.
More vibrations.
“sub has j of a complex. pintos tormenting Indian, teach’s closing doors again!”
Abigail did indeed have a Joan of Arc complex. My heart went out to her. I was capable of that same delusion. My guess—it was in our genes. And the teachers needed to be fired for dereliction of duty.
Then again, gangs were hazardous to deal with.
Then the messages stopped. We tried to return out attention to our project. Had just enough time to get our thoughts into organizing again.
Vibrations.
“indian down! send will. forcing sub from hallway. send willi to follow Pintos and indian.>
Sweet Jesus. Follow them! They were taking the Indian girl away?
My heart leapt into my throat, saving me from an unseemly verbal outburst that would have driven Dom Jacob out the door. My j of a complex was leaping to the fore.
I poked Matt and he read again, pulled out his own phone and sent a message to William Townsend to assist Luis Lewis at Pinto Springs High School. But this was Will’s day off and we didn’t even know where he was.
My neck tightened another notch and I straightened, telling myself to relax. But my eyes constantly flew to the tiny LED screen on our desk.
It was twelve more minutes of now useless instruction from Dom before Luis texted for his last time this day, during which a troop of miniature silverbacks ran offense against my stomach lining. But when it came it only ratcheted up our concern.
“pintos made me. abby safe.”
We still had no idea whether Will had received his text, or what was happening to this second Indian girl, so my heart settled on a fast trot until Dom Jacobs finally left. We needed to get up to Pinto Springs and see what was going on ourselves. The reorganization project would have to be continued another day.
Chapter 46
At noon, we thanked Dom and helper and said our goodbyes.
Not long after, Luis made a live call to calm some of our fears. Abigail was unharmed and Rosalia Fousat, the second Indian girl, had returned to class after briefly disappearing down a hall with two Pintos. Though scared out of her wits, she appeared to be unharmed.
Maybe one of those teachers I’d been thinking bad thoughts about had taken action before the Pintos could spirit her away. Maybe those same Pintos would try ripping her away from campus again later. My sense of urgency was not allayed. We needed to get up the mountain.
Will was still unreachable. We were hoping he was now disguised as a guard/janitor somewhere on campus but Luis hadn’t seen him, nor had we heard from him. I was beginning to think he was out of town. Maybe on Mars, where they didn’t get text messages.
By the time Matt and I had somewhat straightened our office so we could at least continue to work from it, grabbed a bite of lunch, changed our clothes and driven up the mountainside, it was almost three--long after school had let out in Pinto Springs High.
We still didn’t know what went down at the end of the school day, as we’d been traversing mountain turns in and out of cell phone dead spots when the final bell rang. But even after we’d arrived, calls to Luis’ phone went unanswered. So we were thinking it would be best to stay in the area in case Luis asked for help again.
We were thinking worse things as well, but trying to stay positive.
All of this is how we came to be walking down Main Street, Pinto Springs in an effort to control our anxieties. I spent a lot of the time stealing peeks at the sky, wondering when the clouds’ dark swollen bellies would open.
Still possessing a certain village charm about it, Pinto Springs was especially interesting this late afternoon because there were young artists about everywhere. They were decorating the shop windows with Halloween scenes.
These were high school artists, of course. Abigail had told me somewhere in all of this that it was a Pinto Springs tradition for the junior and senior year art students to compete for the honor of decorating a shop window, both on Halloween and on Christmas.
Each window had two artists working on it, so another lesson of this crafty contest was cooperation.
A chill wind reminded me how close to winter Cleveland County was. Down the mountain, off of the mile-high plateau, it was barely fall. But the regular rains up here would soon be turning to snow, and this Southern California village would don a fur-lined parka and morph into a winter playground.
The threat of rain must make these students wonder why they were bothering, I mused. They were working with poster paint which would streak and run with the first drops of rain.
I held hot tea, Matt held hot chocolate, and we were silent in our strolling observations, listening as we went to the conversations, which were largely about every day teen things.
They spoke nothing about the recent deaths of the six local boys and nothing about the weather that was making me think I was in Maine. And more importantly, nothing about another kidnapped girl.
But then a few words caught our ears. “…she doesn’t stop making trouble with those gang boys we’ll all be in for it…”
We stopped in our tracks, pretending to look at a nearby Halloween effort. But they must have noticed us because the two girls who’d spoken those words said nothing more.
Then I truly took note of the window at which we’d paused.
“Look at this one Matt.”
I had to prompt him, I think because his mind was still back at the office reorganization. No. Of course his mind was with Luis, and our inability to connect with either of our apprentices. Or on to the next assignment for our small private investigations firm.
“Umm. Not bad.” He stopped and turned to take it all in. “Actually, pretty good. Grandma Moses.”
It was Grandma Moses in Halloween dress. Dozens of scary little scenes spread across a blanket of yellow-green grass.
Every symbol of Halloween seemed hidden somewhere among the leaves and gravestone
s. Spooky mansions, demons with pitchforks, even a Freddy Krueger mask. More enchanting than scary, and very well painted.
I turned to who I took to be the best of the two artists, a lithe teen with auburn hair down to the middle of her back, thinking it was her project and that the other girl was a second place winner just there to help complete the complicated mural.
“This is wonderfully imaginative. Have you a list of the items people should look for? You know, like an I-spy puzzle they can solve?”
Auburn Girl froze, tensing up as if I’d growled at her. The other painter, a rather homely little thing with oversized facial features turned and answered.
“Yes, I made one up and ran it off at the school yesterday.”
And she pointed to a piece of paper hanging on the wall next to her, and a small supply of identical sheets anyone could take.
I was thinking she had more paint on herself than on the window, but her enthusiasm made me smile. I still didn’t catch that this was her work until Auburn Girl suddenly packed her paints and brushes and huffed away.
Stunned, I watched her go, unsure what to say.
“Willa. Wait, we haven’t finished.”
I watched a pained expression cross Messy Girl’s face. Then saw it slide into a bit of anger, and lastly resolution. She would finish her work of art alone if necessary.
Maybe art didn’t lend itself well to committee work, I mused. Matt pulled on my elbow, but I had to make this better somehow.
“Well, you’re almost finished. It really is a wonderful painting.”
“Thanks.”
Then I wondered why I’d assumed the auburn-haired girl had been the lead artist. I decided it was because her work was cleaner, her brush strokes more exacting. So perhaps they’d been paired to learn from each other. Perhaps the teacher saw that one of them was gifted in her painting and execution, while the other had an expansive and multileveled imagination. Perhaps the teacher was thinking that together they would make an excellent artist, but alone they each lacked an important ingredient.
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