Trapped in the Mayan Tattoo

by Ronda Pauley

  “I need to run home to take care of the chickens,” Abbi said.

  “Maybe Lowell can do that for you,” Mrs. Pelletier said and poked her head back into the house. “No need to put yourself out there! Now’s the time to keep a low profile.”

  There was that phrase again. It wasn’t far to Abbi’s house, and she’d always taken care of things before, so why did that “low profile” thing keep cropping up? The idea made her cringe. If she went home, she could get some answers from her mother’s computer.

  Mrs. Pelletier left for work. As she was leaving, she stopped to look again at Abbi’s work.

  “That’s going to look good! I can hardly wait to see it tonight when I get home! And you, young lady, take care of yourself. I don’t even want you on the computer. Internet just isn’t safe anymore. Bye now!”

  Abbi stood up to watch Mrs. Pelletier leave and wondered what she knew. Everyone seemed to be warning her, but the warnings that were most direct and the ones she heeded the most came from a source that defied scientific explanation—from what she called her spiritual guide. It was nudging her now to act, to delve into the meanings of the drawings and their connection to her mother.

  Suddenly Abbi stiffened, jolted out of her thoughts. A car skidded almost to a stop and then continued very slowly past the house. The face of a girl peered out curiously. Something about that face! Abbi gathered the rest of the flowers up quickly, and moved into the back yard. She started looking for a place that needed flowers and settled for a spot next to the back steps.

  While she planted, she thought, Something’s not right. Determined, she began planting the flowers quickly and mindlessly so that she could check on things at home.

  Louise came out while the washing machine hummed inside.

  “Abbi, those flowers don’t go there. They go in front,” Louise said. “Look at Mom’s design.”

  “They go here now. I’m going to finish up pretty fast, Louise,” Abbi said. “There are some things I need to check out at home, on Mom’s computer. Did you notice the car that just went by?”

  “Not really,” Louise said. “I heard the screech.”

  Lowell had noticed and shut off the mower.

  “Who was that, Abbi?” he yelled.

  “I don’t know,” Abbi said, “but I’m going to find out if I can. I’m going home.”

  “I’m not sure you should go alone,” Louise said. “Not exactly ‘laying low’.”

  “Weezy’s right, Abbi. Think about risk reduction. We should go there together. I’m stopping for now. You can too. You’re not our slave, and it’s getting hot.”

  He bent down to help. Louise joined in.

  “You know what?” Abbi said. “I really don’t feel like planting flowers right now.”

  “So it’s a plan?” Lowell asked. “We’ll go with you?”

  “Good thinking! Let’s gather this stuff up,” Louise said. “We can do it later when it’s not so hot.”

  Abbi hesitated.

  “Thanks, but I don’t really need your help. It might take time. There are some things I want to check out. See if I can learn something.”

  “We’ll talk about it,” Lowell said.

  Abbi didn’t want to talk. She wanted action.

  They quickly gathered up the tools and took them to the shed. The flowers and mulch could wait for another time. Lowell put the mower away while Abbi and Louise trudged back into the house through the back door.

  “Really, I’ll be fine,” Abbi said, wiping away her sweat with a shop towel.

  The message machine was beeping.

  While Louise played the message, Abbi stayed in the mud room and took off her gloves, listening intently. It sounded like a woman, possibly the woman who identified herself as Abbi’s grandmother. She said she was coming to see her the next day and hoped it wouldn’t be too inconvenient but that the “urgency of the matter” meant acting immediately.

  Abbi put the gardening gloves into Lowell’s hand as he was coming in.

  “If that’s my grandmother, how did she even find me?” she asked. “No one invited her, and I haven’t seen her since I was a little girl.”

  Abbi rushed toward the caller I.D.

  Lowell said, “If she could find you, who else can?”

  “She says it’s urgent,” Louise looked worried.

  “Be cautious. It’s probably fine but it could be a set-up, Weezy,” Lowell said.

  “What was that number?” Abbi asked, and punched a button. Then she reached into her pocket and compared that phone number to the number that Louise had given her. The numbers didn’t match.

  She listened to the message again. Her grandmother had named her Abeni. The woman who called sounded very young, maybe using a disguised voice, and mispronounced the name to make it sound like the Spanish word for grandmother, abuela. No matter what kind of person her grandmother was, she would not mispronounce the name she had given Abbi! That meant only one thing.

  “That’s no one I know!” Abbi said.

  “Maybe it’s your other grandmother,” Louise suggested.

  “She runs a restaurant in Colorado, and is very business-like,” Abbi said. “I see her twice a year and I know it’s not her. By the way, she also knows my name!”

  Abbi shook her head.

  “Everything is recorded,” Lowell said. “I’m calling back.”

  Lowell picked up the phone and placed the call.

  A person, probably a woman who was using a false voice, answered.

  “Hello? Abueli?”

  “The person you’re trying to reach is not at this number,” Lowell said to the person on the other end of the phone.

  “Keep talking, Lowell,” Abbi whispered.

  “Are you trying to reach your grandmother? Hello? Hello? Can I help you find someone? Hello?”

  Abbi went to her computer, got online and tracked the call. The number went to a private messaging system, probably a cell phone, but no name was listed.

  “No use. Whoever that was hung up,” Lowell said.

  Louise said, “At least it’s been recorded. The FBI will have the voice and GPS tracking info.”

  And, Abbi thought, Lowell had successfully cancelled the visit. Good job, Lowell!

  Next Abbi called Shoe Clerk, her “guardian agent”, to alert him as promised that someone had found her. Someone was trying to get to her.

  “And this car came to a screeching halt, right in front of the Pelletiers’ house where I was planting flowers!” Abbi said excitedly.

  Shoe Clerk, her secret agent, stayed cool.

  “Apparently they know where you are. Lock the house down, turn on the security system, stay inside, and stay put,” he said. “Nobody can get in without our knowing it. I’ll get on that call.”

  “I’d be a sitting duck. Bye!” she said.

  Abbi thought about the advice and then looked at both Lowell and Louise.

  “I have a plan. You’re both coming with me.”

  SEVEN

  Tina looked up to see a security guard in position with his gun drawn. She wondered if he saw what she had seen. The nice man who had come to the cantina to rescue her had approached Miss Shoe’s car in the parking lot. Tina wondered if he was there to help her get through the border patrol. Suddenly, before he could reach Miss Shoe, he slumped to the pavement. Tina watched as Miss Shoe left her car and ran to bend over him. That’s when this guard had pushed Tina down. When she tried again to see what happened, the guard kept his hand on her head and said, “Stay down!”

  Whether he knew who she was or not, that guard stayed right by her side. Someone said they thought there must have been an attempted illegal re-entry. Tina heard more shots.

  Immediately, someone called out, “A man is down! They kidnapped the woman and they’re getting away! Alert ICE!”

  After several minutes of being on the floor, border officials seemed anxious to move people through the line again. The small crowd was told both in English and in Spanish that
they could get up. Tina’s guard helped her pass through with minimal questioning. No one seemed to connect her to the woman, and she wasn’t telling. No one asked what she saw of the scene outside. No one questioned her lack of luggage. And no one seemed to notice how uncontrollably her hands shook.

  Amazingly, she remembered both what to say and what not to say. She gave her new birthdate and her fabricated reason for traveling. Feeling like a stand-in actress in a B-movie, she just went through her lines.

  Tina approached a taxi, gave the man her address and quickly made her lone escape, fighting back tears for Miss Shoe and the nice man, aware of how much they had helped her and feeling powerless. She could do nothing, yet, to help them or the girls she left behind.

  EIGHT

  “This is getting serious. Let’s get in the car,” Lowell said.

  “I need to grab something first,” Abbi said, taking steps up to the bedroom two at a time. She came back with her backpack, still heavy with rappelling gear.

  Then Lowell, Louise and Abbi rushed to the garage that was attached at the kitchen. Suddenly, a thump on the garage door caught their attention.

  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

  NINE

  “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?”