“Well, actually no. Just Helen and Gannon.”
“And let me ask you this,” he said. “How was Mr. Gannon acting?”
I thought about it. “Like he was unhappy we were there,” I said. “Like he couldn’t wait to get rid of us.”
“Okay, then.”
“What do you think, Vinnie?” I said.
“We can’t just go back to the lodge and ask them. Is there some other way we can tell if they went out there?”
“Yes,” Guy said. “As a matter of fact, there is.”
“How?”
“I was out at that cabin three weeks ago. I remember how we left it. If we go there now, I’m sure I’ll be able to tell if someone else has been there.”
“Gannon took those two constables out there yesterday,” I said. “They looked all around the place. It sounded like it was a real mess.”
“Maybe it was,” Guy said. “But who knows if those men really made that mess?”
“What, you mean somebody else did?”
“If they can lie about them going out to that cabin, they can certainly take a few minutes to make it look like they were there.”
“So how will you be able to tell?”
“I’ll know,” he said. “If somebody’s really spent some time up there in the last three weeks, I’ll know.”
“Okay, so how do we get out there? Gannon certainly isn’t gonna fly us.”
“He doesn’t have to.”
“Who else has a plane?”
Guy smiled. “I’ll show you.”
Guy led us back outside and down the street to the house next door. If Guy’s house needed a little work, this house needed to be run over by a bulldozer. If you believed what was left of the paint, it looked like one side had been green and the other side red. A thin stream of smoke rose from a metal chimney pipe, set at a crazy angle in the middle of the roof. Someone had put down the black tar paper on that roof, but had never bothered with the shingles.
Guy pushed open the front door. “Grandpere?”
We followed him into the room. The television was on, and a fire glowed red through the glass door of the wood stove.
“Grandpere!” Guy said, a little louder.
A man came in through the back door. He was carrying enough firewood in his arms to keep the house warm all night. He dropped it all in a heap next to the stove and clapped the wood chips off his bare hands.
“You’re back,” he said to Guy. “What’s happening?”
“I want you to meet Alex and Vinnie,” he said. “Vinnie’s brother was one of the men in the hunting party.”
He looked at us carefully. His face was wrinkled, but he had the barrel chest of a circus strongman. His black hair was streaked with gray, and even longer than his grandson’s. A great red flannel shirt hung untucked over his waist.
“Some people call me Maskwa,” he said.
“The bear,” Vinnie said.
“Yes, very good.” He shook my hand. His skin felt as tough as an old catcher’s mitt.
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” I said.
“And you,” he said, shaking Vinnie’s hand. “You’re not Cree, are you?”
“No, I come from the Bay Mills Reservation,” he said. “In Michigan.”
Maskwa nodded at that. “Casinos.”
“Among other things.”
“Casinos and a golf course.”
Vinnie just smiled.
“Grandpere,” Guy said, “Alex and Vinnie were at the police station.”
I wasn’t sure if this was the best way to make an impression, but Maskwa seemed pleased by it. “They have a good jail there,” he said. “It’s all brand-new.”
“We were the lucky guys who found the vehicle in the woods,” I said.
“And this was your reward” Maskwa said. “A fine thing.”
“Grandpere, these men came all the way up here to find out what happened to Vinnie’s brother. We’ve got to help them.”
“Excuse me for saying so,” he said. “Why do we need to do this?”
“Because something’s not right,” Guy said. “And it might end up hurting all of us.”
“That sounds like something your father would have said. Or even me, about forty years ago.”
“We need to fly out to Lake Agawaatese,” Guy said.
Maskwa looked at us all, one by one. “Fly to Lake Agawaatese? Are you making a joke?”
Guy ran down the quick version of what he had told us, and his suspicions that everyone at the lodge had been lying to us. “We have to find out if they were really there,” he said.
Maskwa listened carefully, and when it was over he stood there with a troubled look on his face. He stepped in front of Vinnie and grabbed him by the shoulders. “What’s your real name, young man?”
“Misquogeezhig.”
“That means… red sky, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s your brother’s name?”
“Minoonigeezhig.”
Maskwa hesitated. “Pleasing sky? Where the sun sets?”
“Yes.”
“Those are very old names. You don’t hear them anymore.”
“I know.”
“Where do you think your brother is right now?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Do you think he’s in trouble?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Does your heart tell you he’s in trouble?”
“Yes.”
Maskwa nodded his head. “Okay. So we’ll go to the lake. We’ll see if that tells us anything.”
“Do you have a plane?” I said.
He said a couple of words I couldn’t understand. Guy laughed, and Vinnie apparently understood enough to laugh, too.
“It’s too late to fly now,” Maskwa said, smacking me on the shoulder. “We’d never make it back before dark. So first thing tomorrow morning.”
I looked at Vinnie. I didn’t have to say anything. He knew what this meant.
“You should go home,” he said. “I’ll stay and go out there.”
“I’m not leaving you here,” I said.
“DeMers will kill us if he finds out.”
“He can try,” I said. “I think he’s too old to catch us.”
Vinnie smiled. Without another word, we were both in all the way.
“You’ll stay here,” Maskwa said. “Have you eaten yet? Come, sit down.”
We had dinner with them, all five of us crowded around Maskwa’s little table in the kitchen. Guy’s mother kept sneaking sly looks at Vinnie and me, and then looked quickly away. After dinner Maskwa fixed us up with sleeping bags on the floor of his living room. He went off to his little bedroom behind the kitchen, leaving us alone. We watched the fire through the glass doors of his stove as the wind blew outside.
“Where do you think they really are?” Vinnie finally said. It was another night, just twenty-four hours later, and we were asking ourselves the same questions as we tried to go to sleep. Tonight it all looked a lot worse.
“The police have everybody looking for them,” I said. “They’ll find them.”
“What if Guy’s right? What if they never flew out to that lake?”
“We’ll find them, Vinnie.”
“Do you think they’re alive?”
I didn’t have an answer for that one. I didn’t even try.
Chapter Eleven
Maskwa woke us up with the sun. Guy was already in the kitchen, filling up a big Styrofoam cooler with ice.
“If we’re gonna fly all the way out there,” Maskwa said, “we’ll need some food. Do you want me to throw some beer in there, too?”
“I won’t stop you,” I said. “As long as you’re not drinking it while you fly.”
He laughed. Then he slung a big bag over his shoulder and told us to follow him. “It’s time to show you my plane,” he said.
He led us out the back door and down the path to the lake, the same path I had noticed the day before, leading past Guy’s house into a rough field of rocks and weeds. “I do hunts myself,” he said as we picked our way down the trail. “I take them even farther north.”
“Do you have much business?” Vinnie said.
“Less and less. I used to do them with my son, Guy’s father. We were a good team.”
“Your son’s not around anymore? I’m sorry, is he-”
Maskwa waved his hand at that. “I did a couple with Guy, but he can make a lot more money over at the lodge. I don’t blame him.” He sneaked a look back at his grandson, who was bringing up the rear. I tried to take the heavy cooler from him, but he shook me off.