“We’re doing what we can,” he said. “If we find either of the Grants out there, maybe he’ll have some answers.”
“God, I hope so. I swear, Leon, I can’t help imagining the worst.”
“Don’t think that way,” he said. “You’ll use up your energy. Just stay in the moment.”
Stay in the moment, another Leon-ism. But as usual he was right. The hour passed like slow death, but finally the other plane was ready to leave. A few other people had arrived by then, and we all piled into the little twelve-seater Cessna. The last time I had been in a small plane like that, it had been up in Canada when everything was getting turned inside out. I tried not to think about it. Meeting Natalie had been the only good thing that had come of that whole nightmare.
The little plane took off and banked hard into a stiff wind off the lake. “Another storm coming!” the pilot yelled to us. “Just what we need, right?”
The other passengers looked at each other with good-natured Michigan smiles. I stared out the window and saw a line of trees leading right out onto the lake. I nudged Leon and asked him what they were.
“Those are old Christmas trees,” he said. “They use them for trail markers.”
“What trail?”
“It’s a trail for snowmobiles to get out to the island. I hear guys at the shop talking about it. It’s about a five-mile run. Some riders get really nervous being out on the ice that long.”
Everyone else in the plane was looking out the windows on the other side now, as a ray of sunlight had broken through the clouds. Below us, the great Mackinac Bridge was glowing in shades of green and gold. On another day, it would have been a breathtaking sight and I actually would have enjoyed it.
Within a matter of minutes, we were descending. The pilot put the plane down on a runway that looked no longer than a quarter mile, pulling up next to a building even smaller than the one at St. Ignace. A sign read welcome to mackinac island international airport.
I took a peek inside the building. There were more people trying to get off the island today than trying to get on. It looked like some of them would have to wait until the next plane. I scanned every face in the room. With my luck, Marty would be flying off the island on the same damned plane.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been here,” I said to Leon. “And I don’t think I’ve ever been up here on the airstrip. How far away are we from Huron Street?”
“We’ll take a taxi,” he said. In this case, a taxi was one of the handful of horse-drawn carriages that kept working through the winter. There were two of them waiting by the airport building, and they were both going down to Huron Street. So we hopped aboard one of them with some other passengers and rode into town.
“Where are you gentlemen staying?” the driver asked us. He didn’t have to do much. The horses seemed to know exactly where they were going.
“We’re just poking around, sir,” Leon said.
He looked at us like we weren’t quite sane. “The last flight’s going back in a couple of hours,” he said. “You flew all the way out here, but you’re not spending the night?”
“If we end up staying, are there some rooms available anywhere?”
He looked back and forth between us again. “Yeah, I’m sure there are. A few places stay open during the winter. None of them are very big, but things are pretty quiet right now. Just a few snowmobilers around.”
“Oh good,” I said. “I love snowmobiles.”
“But you don’t have sleds on the island, do you?”
“Never mind. Just drop us off by the Grand Hotel.”
“It’s closed, sir.”
“I know that. We’re just looking for a house up that way.”
“Those houses are all closed, too.”
“I know,” I said. I wanted to take the crop out of his hand and hit him in the head with it. “Just drop us off by the Grand. We’ll be fine.”
He shook his head and turned around. The two horses kept going, moving slowly down the long hill. The trees on either side of the road were thick with snow, like we were riding down through a long white tunnel. The air was cold and wet, with a fine mist of snow sifting down from the branches. The trip ended up taking longer than the plane ride. When we were finally down on Huron Street, the carriage stopped to let out the other passengers at one of the hotels that stayed open in the winter.
“We’ll get off here, too,” I said.
“I thought you wanted the Grand Hotel,” the driver said.
“We want to look around a little bit first,” I said. “Here is fine.”
I paid the man. He drove off, still shaking his head.
The street was quiet. It was like some kind of polar ghost town, with virtually every storefront closed up and sealed over with plastic. Some of them still had Christmas decorations out. It looked like the entire town had been abandoned on December 26. We saw another horse-drawn carriage down the street, this one with a single horse and one rider. Then the whole quiet scene was torn apart by the sudden roar of a motor. Two snowmobiles came around the corner and raced down the empty street.
“What’s with that?” I said. “They can bring those right down the street? I thought this was the island with no motorized vehicles.”
“All bets are off in wintertime,” Leon said.
“Great.”
“You’re thinking they might be down here somewhere? Instead of up at the house?”
“It was just a thought. They’ve gotta come down here to eat once in a while, right?”
We took a look in the one grocery store on the eastern end of the street, then walked down past all the closed fudge shops and ice cream parlors, past another small hotel that was open, another that was closed. Finally, at the end of the street we saw a restaurant with the lights on. It looked warm and inviting. It even had a fireplace like Jackie’s. I took a good look inside.
“Are you ready to go find the house?” Leon said.
“I’m ready.”
We left the restaurant and started up the hill. As long as there weren’t any snowmobiles buzzing around, there was an eerie calm as we walked between the great trees and the unlit streetlamps. The Grand Hotel itself, the granddaddy of all hotels, was a huge white and green monolith at the top of the hill. The walk was tougher than it looked. I had to stop at the top to catch my breath, leaning over with my hands on my knees. Up close the hotel was even more imposing. The world’s largest front porch, which held hundreds of rocking chairs during the summer, was now completely empty except for a thin layer of snow.
We walked its length in silence. From our vantage point we could see all the way out onto the frozen surface of Lake Huron and the Mackinac Bridge in the far distance. A cold wind kicked up and spurred us on. Beyond the hotel there were a string of big Victorian houses, sharing the same magnificent view. But each one of them looked closed up for the season and utterly deserted. The snowmobile tracks on the road were the only sign that anyone had been here since the seasons changed.
We followed the upper road, passing one million-dollar house after another until the road went into the trees. From one house to the next, the view of the lake became obstructed, the property value going down by about three quarters. These were the older, smaller houses that hadn’t been bought up by the people with money to spend on remodeling. The road forked.
“We go right?” I said. “Is that what he told us?”
“Third or fourth house.”
The houses were close to the road, but set back behind trees so thick with snow it felt like we were walking into an ice cave. We couldn’t hear the wind anymore. We walked by the first house, then the second, then the third. All three were locked up tight with plastic sheets on the windows. More important, we couldn’t see any footprints leading up to them in the snow.
“We’re protected from the wind here,” I said. “You’d think we’d see some tracks.”
“You’re right,” Leon said. “Look.”