| |
Geri
––––––––
It wouldn’t surprise me if Lake Lodge Retreat once graced the cover of Outdoor Life in the 1970s. The enormous log building has an A-frame entrance with three-story wings on either side. The logs have turned a deep yellow gold from years under layers of shellac, and the double glass-door entrance has a carved wooden sign depicting a black bear beside the lodge’s name. The parking lot runs the length of the building and has about a hundred parking spots, which are sixty percent empty. At the far end of the lot there’s a man lounging in an aluminum speedboat hitched to an old-model pickup truck. Beyond the parking lot, down by the lake, there’s a wide wooden dock with a few outboards tied to it and four tall racks holding canoes and kayaks.
Sean parks beside me, and we exit our respective vehicles at the same time. I look around curiously, and he sucks in a deep breath of fresh air.
A smile lights up his face. “How do you like it?”
Before I can answer, one of the entrance doors opens and a woman walks out. She’s petite, grey hair swept up into a chignon, her face tanned and weathered, and a body that is amazingly fit for her age. “Welcome to Lake Lodge—” She comes to a stop, staring at Sean, and a smile spreads across her face as she puts her hands on her hips. “Sean Eastman, is that you?”
“Hello, Mary.”
Sean goes to her, and I saunter three steps behind, watching them embrace like long-lost relatives. My curiosity is piqued because I’ve never met any of Sean’s family or friends, outside of the cool gang.
“How long has it been?” She pushes him away from her. “Let me look at you. You’ve grown three feet since I saw you last. And ooooh, have you ever gotten some handsome.”
“You’ve been back home for a visit recently, haven’t you?” Sean asks fondly.
“How’d ya know?”
“Your East Coast accent is a little quainter than usual.”
“Oh, you.” She playfully slaps his arm, and she sobers. “You’re right. I just spent a month in Shag Harbour helping my sister Darlene while she recovers from surgery. She’s been on her own since her husband passed away last year.”
I’m hovering close by, quietly listening to their exchange, wondering if there’s a connection or just coincidence that Mary is from Shag Harbour and Lake Lodge is on Shag Lake.
“Is she okay?” Sean asks, concerned.
Mary shrugs while shaking her head. “It’s lung cancer, damn smoking habit of hers. She’s got the fight of her life ahead of her.”
“You know we’ll help any way we can,” Sean says, and I find the use of the word “we” provocative. Is he referring to his mother, whom I’ve never met because she was always in Ottawa at the hospital where she worked?
Mary hugs him again, giving his back a few rubs with both hands. “I know I can count on the East Men. We’ve been there for each other all these years.”
It sounded like she said East Men, not Eastmans, but then again, whatever accent she has going on is thick.
Sean reaches out to me, drawing me into their little circle. “This is Geri McKenna. Geri, this is Mary Ross. The Rosses own and operate Lake Lodge Retreat.”
“Hello, Mary,” I say, shaking her hand. “I couldn’t help but overhear you’re from Shag Harbour. Any connection to Shag Lake?”
She nods. “We bought all the land surrounding the lake—back before the Province put an end to buying park land—and named it Shag Lake after our home.”
“It’s a beautiful spot,” I say.
“Geri McKenna,” Mary repeats. “You called last night and made a reservation.”
“Yes, ma’am, I did.”
She looks at Sean. “Well, you could’ve let me know you were coming with her.”
Sean’s eyebrows go up. “Oh, we didn’t plan to come here together. We just bumped into each other in the woods.”
“Because that doesn’t sound strange,” I say.
Mary pats my arm. “It doesn’t to me, dear.”
“Hopefully, you have a room available for me,” Sean says.
“Always,” Mary says fondly before taking a step back. She looks to the man in the boat at the end of the parking lot, cups her hands around her mouth, and yells, “Joe! Come on over here. It’s Sean Eastman.”
He’s leaning back against the hull, feet up on the seat in front of him. He waves to us from where he sits.
“Don’t be like that, now,” Mary yells at him. “Get out of the boat and come say hello.”
“Jesus, Mary,” he hollers back. “You know I can’t swim.”
Mary huffs a laugh and waves him off. “Never mind him. He spent all morning opening the dock for the summer season and all afternoon getting the boats out of winter storage. The only thing gettin’ him to move out of there is a cold barley smoothie.”
“I’ll take him a beer after I drop my stuff,” Sean says.
“Come on in, and I’ll get you settled.” She starts toward the entrance. “We’ve had quite a few reservations come in last minute, probably something to do with those poor women, bless them. It’s going to be a busy few days around here.”
We walk into the high-ceilinged open reception area of the lodge. A laminated reception counter is to our left, a big sitting area with uncomfortable-looking wood furniture is in the center between two huge log support beams, a wooden staircase leads up to the second-floor balcony, and to our right is an arched doorway with a sign overhead that reads Big Joe’s Grill. The place has that great-outdoors rustic charm. It’s the kind of place one would expect to see the stuffed heads of dead animals hanging on the walls, but there are only framed pictures, most of them old, all of them depicting life in Algonquin.
“It’s beautiful.” I look around, stepping forward to peek into Big Joe’s Grill, where I survey the dining tables—only two are occupied—and the huge stone hearth fireplace dominating the back wall.
“Well, thank you,” Mary says. “It’s not as new and modern as The Park Resort and Spa, but then again, we don’t charge a fortune. We’re an affordable family place that gets kids outdoors. You know, let ’em get acquainted with some of the other creatures we share the world with, fill their lungs with fresh, clean air.”
Mary walks behind the front desk to a vintage key rack affixed to the wall where metal keys dangling from big plastic squares with the room numbers on them. She unhooks two keys then slides one toward me and one toward Sean. “You can have your old room,” Mary says to Sean. “And your friend can have the one next to you.”
“Thanks, Mary.” Sean grabs his key off the counter and looks at me. “Wanna meet for dinner?”
“Sure.” I don’t need to ask where. Joe’s Grill is the only restaurant in a twenty-kilometer radius.
“In about hour?”
“Make it an hour and a half. I have to check my email.” Then something occurs to me, and I turn back to Mary. “Wait. You have Internet, right?”
“Sure do. We even have Wi-Fi in the rooms.”
Sean gives me a thumbs up. “Now I have time for that beer with Joe. See you soon.”
He crosses the reception area and jogs up the wide wooden staircase, lithely taking the treads two at a time, reminding me how easily he vaulted up onto that bluff. He literally flew up and over, thumping a steady landing and going into a threatening crouch that resembled some kind of, I don’t, superhero?
Coyotes, my ass. He knows something. Could any of this have something to do with the classified government project he’s working on?
I watch Sean until he disappears around a corner, thinking I just found the angle to my investigation.
An hour and a half isn’t a lot of time to shower, change into something less huntsman-like, check my emails—still nothing from Derek—and stalk Sean online. I don’t really expect to find anything because, admittedly, I’ve creeped him online before and didn’t find so much as a Facebook account. But I go ahead and try a number of different searches on his name anyway and come up empty. Next, I try the MIT website then do a search on MIT graduates. Sean’s name doesn’t appear, but Dolph Lundgren, the tall, blond, blue-eyed, muscular actor comes up as an MIT scholarship recipient. I take a closer look at his photograph because for one thing he’s hot, and for another I’m kind of struck by his physical similarities to Sean. I’m wondering just how technologically advanced the gym at MIT is to be churning out bodybuilding geniuses.
Short on time, I close the actor’s page and get my head back into my research. Sean Eastman does not have an online presence at all, and MIT doesn’t publicize their graduates, so this is a dead end.
Then I remember that Mary said she could count on the East Men, or at least that’s what it sounded like. The point is Sean and Mary go way back, and she might have some history recorded. It doesn’t take me long to find her on Facebook, but it’s obvious the page was set up years ago and never used. No friends, no pictures, no posts. Another dead end.
I get out of Facebook and do a Google search for Ross in Shag Harbour. My eyes stop on the sixth headline down: Shag Harbour - UFO Evidence.
“Are you kidding me?” I whisper out loud as I click on it.
It’s a short article that discusses the hard evidence proving the 1967 UFO crash in Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia, did in fact occur. The article assumes the reader knows about the crash, so I do a search on the incident and hit a gold mine of information.
On the night of October 4, 1967, several people in southern Nova Scotia observed the strange orange lights of an unknown aircraft hovering in the night sky. The aircraft took a steep nosedive right into Shag Harbour, startling residents and prompting them to report an airplane crash. The RCMP were the first responders, and they supported the claim that there was indeed a crash, which gave the green light to the Rescue Coordination Center to conduct a search. Officially, the RCC reported that they found “a strange yellow foam” floating on the surface of the harbour, enough evidence for them to say that something of unknown origin had indeed struck the water.
However, according to unofficial claims by military personnel involved in the incident, a classified search took place about twenty-five miles away from the crash site. The story goes that Canadian and US forces tracked an unidentified object traveling through the water to an area off Shelburne, Nova Scotia, near a submarine detection base. Both countries dispatched naval vessels to investigate, and the flotilla stayed on top of the submerged UFO for about a week, during which time, they observed another UFO joining the first and apparently rendering aid. The situation took a turn when a Russian submarine crossed the international line, heading toward the flotilla, and Canada and the US sent a portion of their fleet to deal with the uninvited intruder. Both UFOs took advantage of the situation, using the Cold War distraction to make their getaway, breaking through the ocean’s surface in the Gulf of Maine and giving rise to a host of new UFO sighting reports on October 11, 1967.
I go through dozens of reports, all of them giving the same evidence, including unsubstantiated reports from military and police personnel.
Goose bumps crawl up my arms and neck, making my hair stand on end, as puzzle pieces seemingly begin to fall into place. First, there’s the Shag Harbor connection to the Rosses. Second, analyzing the alien metal of a UFO would indeed fall under the category of a classified government project. I mean, it fits, doesn’t it? Sean’s an alloy specialist, the Rosses are from Shag Harbour, and they’re all well acquainted.
A heavy, sinking feeling presses down on my chest. If there were a UFO cover-up going on here, how far would the government go to keep it a secret? And if Sean is working for them, is his loyalty to his employer strong enough to make a witness disappear?
I stand up and back away from the laptop, dragging both my hands through my hair. “There’s no way,” I whisper. “It’s just too crazy.”
I know Sean. He wouldn’t hurt anybody.
But how well do I know him?
It never made sense that in a small town like Pembroke, we never met his family, not once. He told us his mom was an administrator at a hospital in Ottawa, an hour-and-forty-minute drive from Pembroke, and the three-and-a-half-hour daily commute was the reason she was rarely home. It’s not unusual for city workers to settle in the country, where housing costs are significantly lower, but what didn’t make sense was that in all the time Sean spent at our place, his mom never contacted us. Not even to check up on him to make sure his homework was done, or that he’d eaten dinner, or just to say, Hi, son, I’m thinking about you. And that didn’t go unnoticed. I once overheard my mom voicing her concern to my dad that she thought Sean might be homeless and lying about having a parent. But my dad pointed out how well dressed Sean was and that he always had money. He even loaned Mark quite a bit during high school, and homeless kids weren’t usually rich.
Sean also had an address—a quaint Cape Cod on four acres of land out in the boonies. I was there myself three times with my mom. Each visit was a trumped-up errand by my mom, usually because she had made too much casserole and wanted to drop some off so Sean’s mom didn’t have to cook after a long day. But it was always Sean who answered the door, and he always apologized that his mom wasn’t home from work yet, even on Sunday nights. That was as close to prying as my mom ever came because she was a firm believer in not trying to fix what wasn’t broken. She knew that if she called the authorities there was a chance Sean would end up in the foster care system, and nobody wanted that. He was a happy kid who was better off in his own home, so she made sure he knew that he always had a place in our home and a casserole in his fridge.
So, yeah, he was always a bit of an enigma, but evil? No. He dragged Mark’s ass through high school, helping him achieve a grade point average high enough for a sports scholarship.
On the other hand, according to the psychology elective I took in university, neglected children often grew up to be emotionally detached adults.
Taking a few deep breaths, I will myself to calm down and think rationally. Jumping to the conclusion that Sean could actually hurt another human being because he’s covering up the existence of a UFO is ludicrous.
Plus, there’s one big dot that doesn’t connect in this whole thing: The UFOs were last spotted in the Gulf of Maine, not Algonquin Park, so the location is all wrong. Although I can’t ignore that the Ross’ have a connection to Shag Harbour.
I need to question Mary.
I lock my laptop and close it, smear on some of the red lipstick Nina insists is my aesthetic, give myself one last check in the mirror, and head down to the reception area. Mary is behind the front desk, writing in a big black ledger.
“Hi, Mary.” I hope she mistakes the breathless sound in my voice for having just walked down the stairs.
She looks up from her book and gives me a warm smile. “How’s the room?”
“Perfect. Home away from home,” I say, and she looks proudly pleased.
“Sean’s out having a beer with Joe.” She flicks her head toward the doors. “He couldn’t convince Joe to get out of the boat, so now they’re both in it.” She laughs softly and goes back to her task.
“Sounds like you two are close to Sean. He must’ve spent a lot of time here when he was young.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Mary nods. “Since he was old enough to talk.”
“So he and his mom must’ve come up here for summer vacations?” I ask.
“Um.” Mary looks a little confused. “Yeah. His mom.”
“You don’t look too sure.”
“I’ve been running this place going on forty-eight years. It’s hard to keep track of everyone,” she says with a rueful smile.
I wonder to myself how it is she’s close to Sean but doesn’t remember his mother, but I’m not sure how to point that out without looking as though I’m interrogating her. So I let it go and change gears. “Forty-eight years!” I blow out a whistle. “Wow, so that means you’ve been here since, ah, let’s see, 1967?”
She shakes her head, setting her book aside. “We bought the property in late ’67, but it took a few months before the first cabin was built and we had ourselves a place to live. We started building the main lodge the summer of ’68.” She looks around the place, a wistful expression on her face. “We were in our heyday back then. Joe was quite a woodsman in his youth—tall, muscular, with endless energy.” She takes a moment to fan herself. “He ran adventure tours, you know, hiking and canoeing in the summer, snowshoeing and cross-country skiing in the winter. We were always booked solid, all year round.” Her smile turns a little sad. “It’s been a few years since he’s been able to do the adventure tours, though.”
I’m getting a vision, a real sense of Mary and Joe Ross, two young newlyweds, crazy in love, moving to Algonquin and building their dream life together. It’s so far removed from UFOs and aliens that I don’t want to ask her any more questions. I’m touched by the nostalgic smile lingering on her face as her mind, I think, travels back to her younger years.
“We’ve had a good life,” she finally says with a satisfied nod.
“It sounds like you have a beautiful story to tell,” I say. “Have you ever thought of writing it down?”
Mary waves a dismissive hand at me. “Who has time for that?”
The front door opens, and Sean walks in with an older man of medium height with balding gray hair who I assume is Joe. Except for a pronounced limp, Joe looks fit for his age, which I would ballpark to be close to seventy.
“Well, it’s about time,” Mary says to the men. “I was thinking you were going to stay all night in the boat, drinking beer.”
“Oh, go on with you, woman,” Joe says. “We were working hard. Sean helped me put the last two boats in the water.”
“That’s nice of you, Sean,” Mary says.
“Happy to help,” Sean says. “Let me know if you need me for anything else while I’m here.”
Joe looks at me. “This must be Geri.”
“Geri McKenna.” I hold out my hand. “Nice to meet you.”
As Joe shakes my hand, he glances at Sean and winks. “She’s a looker.”
“Yeah, she’s not bad,” Sean says with a lopsided grin.
I close my eyes for a moment and shake my head, the heat of a blush warming my face, suddenly feeling ashamed for even entertaining the thought that Sean could’ve had something to do with Hornsby’s disappearance. As I watch Joe walk behind the front desk and give Mary a kiss, the idea that they might be aiding in a cover-up goes up in a puff of smoke. They’re good, honest people.
“I’m starving, Eastman,” I say. “Did you make a reservation for us?”
“Oh, I had them hold a table for you,” Mary says. “It’s going to be a busy night.” She looks around, and then says in a low voice, “Those Bigfoot hunters arrived about an hour ago.”
My eyes practically pop out of my head because I can’t believe my luck.