Trapped in the Mayan Tattoo by Ronda Pauley Page A

touch
was simply real.
    When she moved the
desk chair over by the window to study the folders, she saw a girl outside on
the sidewalk, a tall, thin, strange-looking girl. The girl stood there and stared
at the Pelletier house.
    “Look here! Is
that a friend of yours, Louise?” she asked when Louise slipped in with bowls of
popcorn.
    “No, I don’t know
her. She might be the new girl, a friend of Lowell’s. I don’t know much about
her,” Louise said. “Here, have some popcorn. I thought it might help you feel
better.”
    “Thanks! Just what
I needed!” Abbi said, grabbing a buttery handful.
    She couldn’t pull
her eyes away from the window. She wondered about the girl who came to stare. She
watched as the girl turned and walked away.
    Abbi said, “That
was weird, gives me the feeling I’ll meet her someday but I’m not sure I feel
good about that.” Abbi made a mental picture of the tall thin girl, maybe not
much older than herself, with a large distinguishing mole under her left eye. “Very
odd behavior.”
    “It is. Makes me
wonder if she’s mentally disturbed.”
    Abbi
absent-mindedly ate handfuls of popcorn, allowing some to fall on the floor,
and then turned on some music and grabbed the folders from her mother’s
briefcase.
    “I’m going to take
a short break and then get onto these folders. I can’t wait to find out what’s
in them. Dance with me, Louise,” she said, seeing that the girl was no longer in
sight. “Just through one song.”
    Abbi turned to
dance.
    “I’m relieved that
you’re not doing that dreadful contest!” Louise said with a dramatic flare.
“Oh, it could be a wonderful dance! But no. Maybe in another life. On the other
hand, if you still want to work on your looks, I would simply love doing your
make-over!” Louise whirled around for emphasis, not really dancing, just being
theatrical.
    Suddenly, Louise saw
something out the window and actually ran downstairs, something Abbi had never
seen her do. She locked the door and called to Abbi, “That blue van is out
front again and going by way too slowly!”
    “Is that girl in
it?” Abbi asked as she peered out the window to see better.
                The land line rang
again. Louise yelled upstairs that she didn’t see the girl and picked up the
phone.
                “It’s Shoe Clerk for
you!” she said and brought the phone up to Abbi. They both peered out the
window.
                Abbi immediately started
gushing to Shoe Clerk, wanting more answers.   
    “You know my
mother’s been kidnapped. Don’t you? [pause] Don’t you!!!?”
                “No one knows that for
sure, but we’re following up on it. We have an excellent team in that area.
This may take time.”
                “Wait. Don’t hang up!
There’s a blue van, and whoever broke into my house is probably in this van! I
saw a face. And…oh, my gosh! There was this girl!!!”
                “Whoa. Stay inside,”
Shoe Clerk interrupted. “We’ve got a lockdown on that vehicle. It’s stolen.
Police are doing surveillance. Call them if it stops again. Continue to keep a
low profile. And, by the way, it’s Mrs. Hightower who will be calling you, just
so you know. I know you want some answers right now, so we’re going to start
pulling you in if that’s what you want.”
                 Abbi tried to ask more,
but Shoe Clerk was already gone. Who was Shoe Clerk really? His voice sounded
somewhat familiar but muffled, like it went through a sort of distortion
chamber. And the woman.
                “Who is Mrs.
Hightower?” Abbi asked after she turned off the phone.
                “I couldn’t say. Lowell
calls her HT. He knows her pretty well,” Louise said.
    Abbi began to
suspect that the Pelletiers, each one of them, knew a whole lot more than they
were willing to tell.
    “I am not going to
enter that dance contest, but go ahead and work on that