Mystery in Mayan Mexico

by Marcia Wells

  Jonah and Eddie,

  I am sorry I did not call today. My father took my phone. I told him everything. I had to. He is angry that we have been investigating. And very angry about the balloon drop.

  There is some good news: the police found birth records of Ghostman in Germany. You were right—he is the son of Pablo Valero, the famous bank robber! I heard my father talking about it on the phone. The police went to Ghostman’s apartment, but it was empty. No mask, no passports, no blueprints. I told my father about the initials MNAM, and he believes it is a good lead. He and his men will be at the museum tonight, setting a trap. They have posted Ghostman’s picture—the one you drew—at all airports and train stations.

  My dad won’t tell me why Ruiz was dressed as a guard. But he did let Moco go, calling it a kid prank.

  We cannot interfere with the investigation. We must call off tonight’s plan.

  I am sorry,

  Julia

  The note shakes in my trembling hand. Ghostman cleaned out his apartment. He knows we’re on to him. Will he show up at the museum tonight? He’s probably long gone by now, vanished like . . . well, a ghost. They won’t catch him leaving the country. He’s far too clever.

  With heavy steps, I walk over to the lobby bench and slump onto the hard wooden seat.

  “What does this even mean?” Jonah demands. He plops down beside me and yanks the letter out of my fingers. He stares and stares at it, as if expecting the words to rearrange themselves into a better message.

  I heave an angry sigh. Angry at the situation, not at him. “It means we’re done,” I say.

  He blinks at me, completely lost.

  I wave my orange cast in the air for emphasis. “It means we’ve been benched for the World Series.” I’m hoping the baseball metaphor will get through to him. Nothing, no response. “We’re done,” I repeat. “We’re out. Kicked off our own case.”

  “But—” He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. I think he’s going to come up with a brilliant plan, a plan that will get us into the museum wearing mustache disguises or ninja suits or whatever else he has stuffed away in his suitcase.

  Instead he throws up on my shoe.

  Chapter 18

  Letters

  TEN MINUTES LATER

  Dinner is about as cheerful as a funeral. Dad is wearing his purple beret—to “lift our spirits,” according to him—but it’s as wilted as he is. He keeps making dumb jokes about how great it will be to be stuck at the hotel indefinitely because he loves the food and the beach and the warm weather. The joke falls flat, and I think my mom’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

  We’re supposed to leave tomorrow. How can we leave without Dad? What will happen if he actually goes to jail?

  During dessert, Mom’s face crumples and she starts to cry. Dad wraps her in a hug, making shooshing noises against her hair.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, even though I know she can’t hear me. I’m sorry she’s upset and I’m sorry that Dad is being framed for a crime he didn’t commit, and most of all I’m sorry that Eddie Red has failed them.

  “It will be all right, honey,” Dad says in a low voice. “Let’s go back to the room. We’ll see if the lawyer emailed us those documents.” She nods and they stand to leave, barely acknowledging us with a halfhearted wave.

  “What now?” Jonah says. He’s been quiet the whole meal. Quiet and pale.

  I shake my head. No plan, no hope.

  We get up and make our way across the dining room. Papi’s standing by the buffet line, frowning at a tray of roast beef. He jabbers some instructions at one of the waiters, then spots us and waves us over. “You have my pictures, Rojito?” he asks with a huge, toothy grin.

  “They’re in my room,” I say. “I can go get them now, if you want.” I might as well do something useful with my time tonight.

  He nods and rubs his mustache, eyeballing Jonah up and down. “What’s wrong with you, Frijol? You sick? Montezuma take a bite out of you?” He chuckles, then points a finger in the air. “Lime and salt, that is the cure. I make you a glass.”

  Jonah lets out a weird whimper, as if the very thought of lime and salt will send him straight to the hospital.

  Papi keeps rubbing his mustache, examining us both now. “I owe you a favor for the pictures. What do you need?”

  I shrug. A miracle is what I need.

  “I know!” he exclaims. “I make you my famous chocolate lava cake.” He claps his hands as if it’s decided. “Go relax by the pool. Enjoy your last night here. Te veo en una hora. I come find you in one hour, yes?”

  “Okay,” I say. I really don’t want cake, but it’s better than sitting in the room depressed.

  After heading upstairs to tell my parents that we’ll be by the pool, I grab my sketchpad and Papi’s pictures from the bedside table and try to get Jonah to stay in the room and rest. He insists on coming down with me. Of course.

  We ride the elevator in silence. I hate this. I hate being helpless, hate being kicked off my own case. I hate how upset Mom and Dad are. And most of all, I hate the feeling that’s been scratching at the back of my neck ever since we broke into Ghostman’s apartment, the feeling that we’ve got it all wrong, that we’re missing a major clue. But we’re not. The evidence is clear. The showdown is tonight at the museum. Case closed.

  I glare at the elevator buttons. I hate them too, at the moment.

  “Have you ever noticed how there’s an M here for no good reason?” I gesture to the rows of elevator buttons: LL, L, M, 1 . . . “There’s a lobby and a lower lobby, but there’s no M floor. What is that, anyway? Mezzanine?” I press the M button, but it doesn’t light up. “It’s like the floor doesn’t exist. Why do they even give us the option? It’s a total waste of materials.” I sound like a grumpy version of my father.

  Jonah grunts in response. The side of the elevator seems to be the only thing holding him upright. For a bizarre moment I wonder if his new statue of Ah Puch is causing him these digestive problems. Ah Puch is called The Flatulent One, after all.

  Out on the pool deck, dusk is falling fast. Everyone must be at dinner, because the space is completely quiet and deserted. We grab our usual beach chairs and turn them around so they’re facing the ocean and the island beyond. The clouds are lit with pinks and oranges from the setting sun. One of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen, if I weren’t on the verge of completely freaking out.

  The rumbling purr of Paco finds me, and I manage a small smile. I dig into my pockets and feed him some beef jerky I bought at the gift shop. Don’t think I’ve gone over to the dark side of cat lovers. But he’s just so cool.

  After Paco settles by my feet with his treat, I sigh and pull out my art pad to doodle while we wait for Papi. I’m so unsettled. Ghostman . . . missing letters . . . stolen bank gold . . . I sketch and sketch, random thoughts flickering in and out of my brain. I might finally be losing my mind.

  Looking down at the paper in my hands, I realize I’ve drawn a strange doodle of the supposed Hebrew letter that Jonah saw in the seaweed that first day on the boat. Wait a minute: according to Jonah, Ghostman eats gefilte fish, which means he might be Jewish!

  “Jonah,” I say. I flash him the picture of the seaweed letter.

  Jonah’s eyes bulge out. I think he may throw up again—there’s a patch of sand nearby he can use—but instead he whispers, “The aleph. I totally forgot.” He sits up and grabs my pad. He better not barf on Papi’s pictures.

  “If Ghostman is Jewish, he probably knows some Hebrew, right?” I say. “What if he left the aleph there on the beach as a clue? Does it have special meaning? There has to be a reason. Everything’s intentional with this guy.”

  Jonah scratches his head. “The aleph is the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet.”

  First . . . What does first mean in all of this? The Mayans were here first, so that’s why he marked their temple? Bleh, not likely.

  “Unless . . .” Jonah pauses and brings hi
s eyes to mine. “The aleph can be a silent letter. It’s there in the word but not pronounced.”

  I think of the stupid M elevator button. A letter that means nothing. Is that what the aleph is telling us? That the letter at the pyramid was meant to be passed over? Silent, invisible, meaningless . . .

  Yanking the notepad from Jonah, I flip to a fresh page. “Ghostman left letter clues at all the sites. We thought they stood for Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno.” I draw the letters:

  M N A M

  “But if the letter at the Mayan temple is supposed to be silent, then you pass over it like you would an aleph,” Jonah says.

  I pause. The pounding waves on the beach are distracting me, the constant noise disrupting the images in my head. What was the letter at the Mayan temple? An M? I can only see fragments of the picture. The floor, one wall . . . what was the stupid letter? This has happened to me before, when sounds fracture the pictures in my mind. I hate it.

  “It was the A,” Jonah says quietly. If he knows I’m struggling, he doesn’t comment. “The A is silent. It shouldn’t be there.” He leans over and draws the new group of letters:

  M N M

  “The A. Right.” I try to tune out the roar of the surf, my mind practically smoking out my ears as I strain to think of where I’ve seen the letters MNM before. I stare out at the island. “There’s a museum,” I say, “at the bottom of that pyramid out there. Museo Maya del Niño. MMN. But they mostly had educational posters up. Nothing worth robbing.”

  Jonah leaps to his feet and starts pacing. “Ghostman is copying his father’s crime from thirty years ago. He’s distracting the police at the museum while he goes after the real treasure. We did it, we solved the case!” He lets out an excited whoop. Paco hisses beneath my chair.

  The real treasure? Now I’m lost. “Is he going to rob a bank like his father did?” I say.

  “No!” He points wildly to the island. “El oro está con mi niño. Niño means ‘son’ and ‘boy’ in Spanish. We’ve been looking for the wrong niño. It’s not his son, it’s his boy, as in Boy Island. The treasure is buried out there, in the tomb beneath the temple. That’s why Ghostman smashed the temple floor. He was looking for the treasure site!”

  Yes! This all makes perfect sense.

  “It’s a huge job,” I add. “He needs to work without interruption, so he’s distracting the police, sending them on a wild-goose chase to the museum in town.”

  Jonah smiles while he paces, his stomach troubles clearly forgotten. “We’ve done it,” he keeps repeating. “We’ve done it. We figured it out!” He stops suddenly, gaping at the island with his mouth open in awe. No doubt visions of tombs and snakes and poisonous blow darts are dancing in his imagination.

  “We need to get out there,” he says. “We need a boat.”

  I agree completely, but how? There’s a rather large stretch of ocean between us and the island, an ocean that I, for one, am not going to attempt to swim at night. In the dark. With a cast. And a sick Frijol.

  And then it comes to me, the perfect solution. “We have a new mission,” I announce. Julia may not be able to help us, but I have Nacho’s cell number. And I have Papi. I stand up and grab my art supplies. “You go back to our room. We’re going to need your spy gear. I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.”

  “And what will you be doing?” he asks. His hand twitches wildly by his side.

  I push my glasses up on my nose. “I’m getting us that favor from Papi,” I say. “And we’re going to need more than one.”

  Chapter 19

  Steps

  TWENTY-ONE MINUTES LATER

  “ROLP!”

  I return to our room just in time to hear Jonah barfing again. Poor kid. How can he can go on the mission we have planned? But I know I won’t be able to talk him out of it. Plus I really need him. I can’t do this alone.

  The conversation with Papi went as well as expected. I remembered Julia saying that he helps his brother sometimes in the marketplace, selling fried dough. So after I gave him the pictures of his daughters—which he loved—I asked him if Jonah and I could help out at the market tonight, part of a cultural learning experience. I also asked for his phone number in case my parents want to verify where we’ll be. They won’t call. They’re way too distracted to check up on us. Papi didn’t seem thrilled about any of it, and he made me swear on a jar of hot peppers that we—i.e., El Frijol—would be calm and quiet while we were helping out. I felt bad for asking so much of him, but what other choice do we have?

  I knock on the bathroom door. “You okay?” I ask Jonah through the wood.

  “I’ll be right out,” he shouts a little too loudly.

  I walk over to my bed and find his old Darth Vader costume perfectly folded and waiting for me. It’s a one-piece body suit with sticker decals on the front that are supposed to look like Darth’s machine buttons. He wore it two Halloweens ago and it doesn’t fit him anymore, but I’m shorter than he is and it will fit me just fine. Over my dead body am I going to wear this.

  Jonah comes out, wiping his mouth. He’s dressed in black sweatpants, a black turtleneck, and a black winter hat. The perfect outfit for nighttime spying.

  “What’s this?” I say, gesturing at the Darth suit.

  “You know what it is,” he replies. “You need to blend into the shadows. I told you to bring ninja gear on this trip and you didn’t. This is the only backup I have. It will have to do.” His face is a pale green. I never knew the human body could actually be this color.

  His breath catches. He throws a hand over his mouth and sprints back to the bathroom.

  “I’m not wearing this,” I call after him.

  “Of course—rolp—you are.”

  I sigh. Of course I am. He’s right, I need to blend into the night, and all of my clothes are too bright. Why do I have to like the color red so much? Not to mention the neon orange cast on my arm.

  Keeping my T-shirt and shorts on, I slide my legs into the black suit. What is this evil material? It feels like a horrible combination of plastic and nylon and old rubber that should come with a suffocation warning label.

  Next are the arms. Carefully I pull the long sleeve over my cast. I glance in the mirror. Yep, I look like a complete tool. He better not have brought the mask. That’s where I draw the line.

  Jonah shuffles back into the bedroom. Now he has black ninja paint on his nose and across his cheeks, but there are still patches of pale green on his neck and forehead.

  “You’re really sick, huh?”

  He holds up a hand. “I’m cool,” he says in a tough-cop voice. “I missed out on the action in New York because of a sinus infection. It’s not going to happen again because of stupid Montezuma and his stupid germs.” As he speaks, he loads his backpack up with everything ninja: rope, carabiners, a pocketknife, two flashlights, a cell phone, and a camera. Not to mention Mr. Q. Then he pulls a small, white statue out of his pocket. A new statue.

  “What god is that?” I say, dreading the answer.

  He tosses the statue in the bag. “She’s a goddess. Ix Chel, goddess of the moon, among other things. We need moonlight. Flashlights are for backup only.” He pauses and looks up at me. “Papi?” he asks.

  “Done.”

  “Parental units?”

  “Done.” I told my parents that we’re meeting Papi at eight o’clock. I told Papi that we’d meet him at ten. We have a two-hour window to get to the island and catch the bad guy. This had better work.

  “Boat?” he says.

  “Taken care of.” Obviously I couldn’t ask Papi for a boat—he’d tell my parents for sure, being a responsible adult and all—so I called Nacho, praying he knew someone in the area who owns one. It was the shortest, strangest phone conversation I’ve ever had:

  Nacho: ¿Qué?

  Me: Hola. It’s Eddie. El Rojito. I need a boat. Uh . . . Yo necesito un barco.

  Nacho: ¡Un barco!

  Me: Sí.

  Pause . . . pause .
. . pause.

  Nacho: Veinte minutos.

  And that was that. “We’re meeting Nacho in twenty minutes by the docks,” I say. At least, that’s what I’m hoping.

  “Good.” Jonah throws more stuff into the bag. A coil of metal wire, a tube of superglue, a . . . Slinky?

  “How exactly are we going to capture Ghostman?” I ask, suddenly nervous.

  “It’ll be easy,” he says, never slowing his movements. “We spray his eyes with Mace. Then you go for his knees, and I’ll jump on his back. We have rope. And these.” He holds up a pair of shiny handcuffs.

  I rub my neck. It’s dawning on me that maybe this is the worst idea we’ve ever had. “Should we call Julia, let her know where we’re going?” In case we run into trouble, I mentally add.

  He shakes his head hard. “No. Her dad has her cell phone. If we call, he’ll tell your parents. You know he will.” He pauses, scrutinizing me. He looks like a weird pale skunk in his face paint. “We’ll call once we’ve captured Ghostman. We’ve got this, soldier. Let’s roll.”

  I follow him down the hall. We slink into the emergency stairwell, run down four flights of stairs, and open a side door that leads to the pool complex. Total stealth ninjas. Except I’m in a Darth Vader costume, and Jonah’s the color of charred pea soup.

  Nighttime is coming fast, and a huge moon is rising above. I guess Ix Chel is doing her job. Sticking to the shadows, we wind our way around the patio and jump the short fence to get to the beach. It’s dark enough that no one sees us. Not even Paco, which kind of bums me out. My nerves would be soothed by his loud purr at the moment. You know things are bad when you start missing a cat.