Against the Wild (8 page)

The microfilm machine whirred. “Here we go.” Mrs. O'Neal hit the button, printing a copy of the earliest documented land ownership record. “On May 2, 1928, the property was deeded to a man named Artemus Carmack.”

“That would fit with what little I know,” Dylan said. “I was told the lodge was built in the late twenties, early thirties.”

Even though they were getting copies, Lane took notes for quick reference, carefully checking the spelling and transaction dates of each sale.

“It looks like Carmack owned the property till September of 1939,” Mrs. O'Neal said. “It was sold to a man name Roland Murray.” She went back to the parcel map records. “After that I don't see anything till the end of the war.”

Lane stacked another document copy on top of her pile.

“I see a couple of transfers in the fifties,” Mrs. O'Neal said. “Looks like it was tied up in an estate for more than fifty years before it sold again in 2008.”

“Jeff Fenton bought it then,” Dylan said. “He did some major repairs and remodeled the family wing. I bought it from him this spring.”

“I think we've got what we need,” Lane said, smiling.

“Thank you, Mrs. O'Neal,” Dylan added. “We appreciate your help.”

Lane gathered up the printed pages, paid a small fee for the copies, and they left the records office.

“I'm starving,” Dylan said. “How about you?”

“Definitely. I seem to have a lot bigger appetite up here.”

“It's the fresh air. Seems to have that effect on people.” They went to lunch at a place on Front Street called Annabelle's Keg and Chowder House, then wandered back along the harbor to the plane.

“So what's your next move, Sherlock?” Dylan teased.

“The newspaper office in Waterside,” Lane said. “The
Sentinel
's been in business since 1902.” She grinned. “I looked it up on the Internet. We need to run down these names, see what turns up.”

“We can stop on the way home if you want.”

“Are you sure? It's getting kind of late.”

“Doesn't get dark for hours.” He grinned. “And it's only fifteen minutes from home.”

Lane laughed. Dylan reached down and caught her hand. She didn't resist when he brought her fingers to his lips. “Time's running out, Lane. I want to take you to bed.”

She moistened her lips. “I want that, too. I just . . .” She glanced away.

“Is it him? Jason? I know you took his death really hard.”

Her eyes clouded. “I loved him. I was going to marry him. But Jason's been gone three years. It's time to move on, take the next step forward.”

“Take that step with me, Lane.”

She stopped on the sidewalk, turned to look up at him. Sliding her arms around his neck, she went up on her toes and very softly kissed him.

Dylan's whole body clenched. Wishing they were somewhere besides the middle of the sidewalk, he kissed her back. “Jesus, I want you.”

When she made no comment, he took her hand. “Let's go find a ghost.”

It was late afternoon when they made an ocean landing and taxied up to the floatplane dock in Waterside. The city was so small everything was in walking distance, and fortunately, the
Sentinel
office was still open when they got there. The smell of newsprint and ink tinged the air as Lane walked ahead of Dylan through the front door.

So far, the day had been lovely. She enjoyed Dylan's company, and just being with him had kept her heart racing with excitement. Every time those amazing blue eyes swung in her direction, her breath hitched. When her nipples tightened, she pretended it was the cold mountain air.

The truth was, the man just stirred her up. She wished she had the nerve to do something about it.
Soon
, she told herself. It had to be soon or she was going to go crazy.

A big, dark-complexioned man with short, straight black hair walked up on the opposite side of the counter. With his strong nose and blunt features, she thought he was at least half Alaska Native.

“Hey, Dylan, nice to see you.”

“Been awhile.” Dylan stuck out his hand. “John Ivanov, this is Lane Bishop. She's here—”

“—to help you decorate the lodge,” the man finished. “Maggie mentioned it the last time I was over at the Grizzly.” He stuck a big meaty hand out to Lane. “Nice to meet you.”

“You, too, John. Ivanov? Is that Russian?”

He nodded. “My father's side. Russian fur traders were the first white people up here. On my mother's side I'm Tlingit.”

He turned his attention to Dylan. “So what brings you here? You aren't thinking of putting something in the classifieds? I didn't think the lodge was ready for guests.”

“We're not there yet. Lane was just curious about the history of the place. We dug up a list of owners. We thought we'd run down the names, see what might have been written about the lodge over the years.”

John's black eyes fixed on Lane's face. “There're lots of stories about the place. I don't know how much is true or if any of it found its way into the paper.”

“Maybe we should have come here first,” she said. “What stories have you heard?”

John looked at Dylan, who gave a resigned shrug. “You might as well tell her. She's determined to dig around, see what she can come up with.”

“I guess if I don't tell you, sooner or later, someone else will. Word around town is the old place is haunted. People have been saying it for years. The owners never stayed long after they bought it, and they always had some tale to tell about ghosts.”

“Fenton didn't say anything,” Dylan said. Lane could hear the annoyance in his voice.

“Not to you,” John said. “He was looking for a buyer. But rumor was, he heard strange noises in the middle of the night. It scared the hell out of his wife. That's the reason he put the lodge on the market.”

Dylan shook his head. “It's all a crock of bull. The house is old and it isn't sealed up as tight as it should be. The wind blows through cracks and crannies and makes spooky sounds. Most of it'll stop once we get the remodel done.”

“Probably. But you know how people are.”

“Yeah, unfortunately, I do.”

“So where do you want to start?” John asked.

Lane moved forward, pulling out the copies of the ownership records she had gotten at the recorder's office. “We might as well start at the beginning.”

“Fenton told me it was built in the late twenties, early thirties,” Dylan said. “According to what we found in Ketchikan, the owner at that time was a guy named Artemus Carmack.”

“What's the date of the purchase?” John asked.

Lane shuffled through the papers. “May 2, 1928,” Lane said.

John led them back behind the counter, into the bowels of the newspaper office. The printing press wasn't twenty-first century, but it wasn't ancient, either. With so many newspapers going out of business these days, it was nice to see the
Sentinel
still selling. But then everything moved at a slower pace up here.

“The newer editions are on the computer,” John said, “but all the old papers are on microfiche. You know how to use the machine?”

“I do,” Lane said. “I dug around in the microfiche doing research for an art history project in college. I'm hoping you have some kind of an index.”

“We do. Eagle Bay is what you need to look under. Or Yeil. That's the closest village to the lodge. Once you know the dates of the articles, you can locate the film in the file drawers.”

“I'll get the index cards,” Dylan said to Lane. “Make a list of the dates, and pull the sheets. You can do the digging.”

“Perfect.”

“All right, then,” John said, “I'll leave you to it. Let me know if you've got any questions.”

He left them in the back room and Dylan went to work on the index cards. As he located the articles that had referenced Eagle Bay over the years, he wrote down the dates and where to find them. The first posting of interest was the sale of the property in 1928. Dylan pulled the sheet of microfiche from the file and handed it to Lane.

She shoved it under the viewer. “Here it is.” She read it on the screen. “The article describes Artemus Carmack as a wealthy entrepreneur from San Francisco. It mentions his plan to build a fishing lodge for the use of his family and friends in the summers.”

Dylan handed her the next sheet of microfiche. “Look for an article on June 4, 1929. That would have been a little over a year later.”

She found it easily, skimmed the information on the screen. “This one talks again about the plans Carmack had for the property. Oh, look! There's a photo of the lodge under construction.”

“That would have been a very big deal up here, especially back then.” Coming to stand behind her, he leaned over her shoulder to look at the photo projected on the viewing screen. Lane had to force herself to concentrate.

“Looks like a beehive of activity going on,” she said, examining the old black-and-white photo. Mule teams pulled wagons loaded with lumber, boats sat in the bay loaded with building supplies, construction workers were everywhere.

“I wonder how long it took them to finish,” Dylan said.

“From the amount of work being done, I'd say it had to be quite awhile.”

“And most of it stopped in the winter.”

“So what's the next date?”

He handed her another sheet of microfiche. “This is two and a half years later. October 21, 1931.”

Lane pulled it up on the screen. “It talks about how the project was encountering problems, taking far longer than anticipated.”

“Figures. Just getting the equipment they needed up here had to have been a helluva job. There were logs to mill, then set in place, stone to haul for the fireplaces, all the finish work. Then they had to bring up the furniture once the lodge was finished. They probably used a lot of Indian labor from the village.”

The next date was May 31, 1933. “The headline reads, ‘Carmack Celebrates Completion of Long-Awaited Eagle Bay Lodge.'”

There was no photo, but the article talked about Carmack bringing his family—his wife, Olivia, and his daughter, Mary—up to enjoy the lodge for the first time. Another article mentioned the names of several San Francisco politicians who had come for a visit that summer. Even one of Roosevelt's vice presidents had spent a week at the lodge.

“Aside from the historical interest,” Lane said, “so far I don't see anything that would account for the ghost stories.”

Dylan pulled another section of microfiche. “Check this one out. It's a year later, July 1934.”

She took the slide, slid it under the viewer. The headline jumped out at her. “Oh, God, Dylan.”

“What is it?”

“‘Massacre at Eagle Bay.'” A chill ran up her arms.

“Massacre? What the hell?” He moved closer to study the screen.

Lane read the article out loud. “‘Olivia Carmack and her eight-year-old daughter, Mary, were killed on Monday in a violent attack at the Eagle Bay Lodge. San Francisco entrepreneur, Artemus Carmack, is said to have barely escaped with his life.'”

“So that's what happened.”

Lane turned to look at him over her shoulder. “Caleb said people had died. That's who it was. Olivia Carmack and her daughter, Mary.”

“Keep reading.”

She skimmed the printed page. “It says they were killed with a shotgun when intruders entered the home in the middle of the night. “‘So far no arrests have been made.'” A lump swelled in her throat. “Mary was the same age as Emily. God, Dylan, who would murder an innocent woman and child?”

He handed her the next slice of microfiche, his mouth thin, his jaw set in a grim line. Lane's hand shook as she slid it under the viewer, forced herself to read.

“‘Two men, members of the Bitter Water Tribe from nearby Yeil, were arrested for the murders committed at the Eagle Bay Lodge.'”

Standing behind her, Dylan took up the reading when her throat felt too tight to go on. “It says Will Seeks and Thomas Shaekley were taken into custody by the foreman of the lodge, Tully Winston, and several men from Carmack's personal staff. Justice was dispensed at the site.”

She looked up at Dylan, a knot forming in the pit of her stomach. “Justice was dispensed? What . . . what does that mean?”

He just shook his head and handed her another piece of microfiche, which she forced herself to slide into the machine.

“It's a follow-up article,” Dylan said, reading over her shoulder. “Printed in the
Sentinel
a week later. 'Before their deaths, the two men arrested admitted their guilt in committing the murders. Unverified reports say that harsh working conditions and too little pay may have been the motive for the shooting. Justice was swift and severe. The assailants where hanged, then buried in the nearby cemetery.'”

Lane trembled. “That's . . . that's the one up on the hill behind the lodge.”

Dylan made no reply, just flipped to the next date on the index, slid another section of microfiche into the viewer. “‘Lodge abandoned,'” he read. “‘Harsh memories of the painful murders of his family make it impossible for owner Artemus Carmack to revisit his beloved Eagle Bay Lodge.'”

Feeling sick, Lane looked down at the ownership notes she had made. “Carmack sold it to a man named Roland Murray five years later, in 1939.”

Dylan found an article printed a few weeks after the sale. “It just says the lodge has a new owner who plans to make repairs on the structure and use it for family vacations.”

He went back to the index. “There's nothing here until Murray sells the place after the war. That's the end of the microfiche. From then on, everything's on the computer.”

Lane looked down at the transfer documents. “There were two sales in the 1950s, then nothing for almost sixty years, not until Jeff Fenton bought it in an estate sale in 2008.”

“We know how that went,” Dylan grumbled. “Fenton heard noises, his wife got scared, and he sold the place to me.”

Lane leaned back in her seat, exhausted.

“Well, now you know,” Dylan said darkly.

“Yes.”

“Doesn't mean the place is haunted. Hell, I don't even believe in ghosts.”

“I don't, either. Didn't, at any rate.”

Dylan paced away, stopped, and turned, paced back to where she still sat in front of the viewer. “So what do you want me to do? There are enough rumors about the place already. You tell people what happened out there, my fishing business will never get off the ground. The Eagle Bay Lodge will fail before it ever gets started. Is that what you want?”

Lane came up out of her chair. “No, of course not.”

“What then?”

Her heart went out to him. Dylan loved the lodge. It was his dream to make it into a successful business. Aside from that, he wanted to make a home for himself and his daughter.

She reached up and touched his cheek, felt the roughness of his afternoon beard. “We won't say anything, okay? So far all that's happened is we've heard some odd noises in the night. The clanking might actually have been the pipes. It hasn't happened again.”

“And the crying? The footsteps?”

“If it keeps happening after you have guests, you'll just explain that the lodge has a resident ghost. You'll tell them he's harmless. People love that kind of thing.”

Some of the tension went out of his shoulders. Dylan rubbed a hand over his face. “All right, that's it then. We keep quiet and hope for the best.”

Lane just nodded. She could handle noises in the night.

She just prayed she didn't see an actual ghost in her bedroom.