By now I’m Mr. Confusion. I’m still going with it, but both Grandpa and GL sending me—or us—to Jackfish is too much of a coincidence. And how did the SUV already get here if we shook them yesterday? It’s got to be a script. If it is, it’s awfully complicated though. Who worked it all out? Was the outhouse rigged to blow up? What about the fancy gunshot that put the hole in the windshield? And why would Grandpa want me to go to Jackfish anyway, even without Gloria Lorraine? Was something else planned for up there? Maybe not, if the deal was to film a road and a deserted town and make up my own story. On the other hand, all I was supposed to do was get a kiss on the cheek from an old lady. All this other stuff is way too complicated. But if it’s all for real, it’s too…well, it’s too much like a movie.
We stop for a break in Pointe au Baril Station. I’m still thinking it over as I check for texts, standing in front of Al while he gets us clean shirts again, which is trickier in a small place. The signal isn’t very strong and I keep moving around, which bugs Al, of course. Finally I see there’s one from Deb, one from Jer, and one from Bun. Deb’s gives me the name of a book about film noir that will help with my questions. Sylvia will get me a copy. Jer’s says ok. Bun’s says his tattoo hurts and he’s still hanging with Jaden and the posse and something about guns. Sounds as if he’s making progress with his video game, maybe pulled an all-nighter. I text him back: outhouse exploded tell u later. That will give Bun something to think about when he isn’t blasting aliens or leading a gang war in Parkdale or whatever he’s doing. Suddenly I really wish I’d gotten the outhouse explosion on camera. Damn.
Then we’re driving again and I’m wondering about my own game and how real it is. How can I find out? I turn it over in my mind as we head up Highway 69 to where it meets 17 just south of Sudbury, and then we go west on 17 through Blind River, Thessalon and a bunch of other places, all the way to Sault Sainte Marie, where GL says we’ll stop for the night. If this is all fake, GL is in on it and Al has to be an actor, so they won’t tell me anything. That leaves AmberLea. It’s worth a try; she was more talkative last night at the cottage—at least until I bombed out by asking about her house arrest. After we get checked into a Comfort Inn, GL mixes martinis for herself and Al, and they start talking about Vegas. I say to AmberLea, “We should take Mister Bones for a walk.”
AmberLea doesn’t look any happier than she did this morning, but this might be my only chance. She clips the lead onto Mister Bones’s collar and we start down the street. It feels good to stretch my legs. Mister Bones likes it too, hitting two telephone poles and sniffing up a storm. I make a lame joke about phone poles being safer than outhouses. She laughs, and I wish I looked as if I needed a shave. Girls like scruffy guys. I’ve decided she really is better-looking than I thought at first. I go for it while she’s still in a good mood. “You know last night, when you said, ‘What’s going on?’” Right away she frowns. I keep on anyway. “Well, what is going on? Is this for real, do you think? Like Al being a gangster and bad guys chasing us with GPS and stuff?”
AmberLea pushes her sunglasses up to the top of her head and looks at me, hard. I notice she has green eyes before I look away. “You’re asking me?” she says. “Look, Spinner—”
“Spencer.”
“Sorry. Spencer. Whoever. Sorry, all the names she uses get me confused. You’re asking the wrong person. I mean, I don’t even know who you are. I don’t know where we are. All I know is, you show up yesterday and my gramma drags me off to ‘change my life,’ and I’m gonna be in it so deep when I get back that I’ll need a ladder to get back up to the bottom.” She swears and tugs Mister Bones away from a Big Mac wrapper.
Oh, boy. I tell her about Grandpa’s will and having to get the kiss and going to Erie Estates and what happened before we picked her up. As I do, her eyes go from blank and angry to confused and angry. “That’s weird,” she says. “Gramma called the day before yesterday, said she’d be coming over to our house Friday morning and would Mom be around. I said no, because Mom always golfs on Fridays, and she laughed her cackly little laugh and said, ‘Perfect, see you then,’ and I forgot about it until you all showed up in the Cadillac.”
“Well, it gets weirder,” I say. “Last night she told us we’re going to Jackfish, right? Look at this. It’s from my grandpa, about what I was supposed to do if your grandma wasn’t around.” I give her assignment number two. She reads it and looks at me, even more confused. “So, what’s up with Jackfish?” I say. “What’s it got to do with her?”
AmberLea shrugs. “Who knows? She’s from Kansas. Why did she hide that locket behind a moose head—”
“Deer head.”
“Whatever, in a cabin—”
“Cottage.”
“Whatever—cottage—no one ever knew she had?”
“Well, see, that’s what I mean. Maybe it’s all a setup. Maybe the cottage was rented. Maybe she got somebody to put a locket behind the deer head. Your grandma is rich, right? She could hire somebody to— well, it could be done.”
AmberLea’s chin has been tucking in ever since I started talking. Now she’s shaking her head. “No. No. First, she isn’t rich. My mom says she doesn’t have a dime. Her last husband went bankrupt and wiped her out, and the gangster one before that had everything taken by the government. Nobody knew about the cottage. Second, she told me this morning that the money from selling that cabin or cottage or whatever is going to be mine in her will, if I…”
“If you what?”
“Never mind; it’s not important.” She bends and scratches at her ankle. She seems to do that a lot, I’ve noticed. Mister Bones comes over to investigate. “The point is, it must be hers. She wouldn’t promise me something fake. She’s a pain in the butt, but she’s always straight up. So that means the picture must be real too.”
I’m not convinced. “Okay, then either somebody does know about the cottage, or there’s another mystery, because guess what I saw this morning? That black SUV again. It was hemmed in behind all the volunteer fire guys’ cars back there in Torrance. How did they know where we were going?”
She looks up at me, dead serious. “Maybe there’s another transmitter.” She scoops up Mister Bones and starts feeling around his collar. Mister Bones wriggles and then licks her face. Considering what else he’s been licking in the last few minutes I don’t envy her. “There’s nothing there.” AmberLea puts the dog back down. He trots over to a lamppost. “So, either they knew about the cottage…”
See? I want to yell.
“…or somebody told them where we were going.”
“Who?”
“Not me,” says AmberLea. “Not Gramma; she doesn’t have a phone. Not Al; he couldn’t get a signal last night, remember? That leaves you.”
“Well, I didn’t tell them! I got a signal down on the dock, but I didn’t call them.”
“Did you tell anybody?”
“Only my brother. He was my only call last night. He doesn’t know any mob guys in Buffalo. He’s not even going to tell our parents.” I doubt his Fifteenth Street skateboarders or video posse or whatever will be interested either, so I leave them out of it. Bunny can be hard to explain sometimes.
AmberLea shrugs. “I don’t know then. But the cottage is real. And the picture is real. I caught her looking at it this morning and I thought she was going to cry. Believe me, Gloria Lorraine never cries. She said she had to show me something that nobody else knew. Right now, I guess I have to believe her.”
“But,” I said, “it’s—I don’t know—like a movie or something.”
She shrugs again. “Gramma always says it’s only a movie if you believe. If you don’t, it’s just the pictures. And you know what? Even if it’s all a crock and they hang me by my toes when I get back, it’s still been better than staying home.” She looks away and tugs at Mister Bones’s leash. “Anyway, we should get back.” She pulls down her shades. Then she pulls them up again and looks straight at me. “But promise me something? Promise you’ll swear she forced me to come.”
“Uh, sure. You got it.”
“Thanks, Spencer.”
We turn back for the motel.