Close Encounters Read online

  When he spotted us, he waved his cane in our direction. “My dog’s gone missing,” he shouted. “He’s been dognapped!” He paused. “By those blasted aliens!”

  “Dognapped?” I repeated, not sure I’d heard right.

  “By aliens?” Bess’s eyes widened. The beginnings of a smile tugged at her lips.

  The distress on the man’s face was so obvious that I knew we shouldn’t laugh. I shot a warning glance at Bess. She cleared her throat and turned her face away.

  “Don’t just stand there, girl!” he snapped at us. “Do something!”

  “Like what?” Bess exclaimed.

  “Like use one of those portable phone gizmos. . . . My phone’s out, and so is half the electricity in the house. They zapped everything,” he said.

  “‘They?’” I tried to sound serious. “Aliens stole your dog? Are you sure he didn’t just run away?”

  The man waved off my comment. “I may be old, missy, but I’m no fool. Of course I’m sure. I wouldn’t stand here saying Sherlock was dognapped if I thought he’d escaped on his own.” He tucked his cane under his arm and pulled his wool cap down over his ears. “So are you going to use your phone or not? Every young’un has one. I’m assuming that thing on your belt is a phone, right?”

  I unclipped my cell phone from the waistband of my jeans, but I was reluctant to call the police. The dog had probably just run off, and the man was probably caught up in the general local hysteria about the UFOs. “Um, who should I say needs help?”

  The man rolled his eyes. He gestured to the sign. “Nichols. Aldwin Nichols, that’s who. Just Aldwin will do. And no need to bother with directions. Everyone knows the Nichols farm. And they all know Sherlock, too. He’s the best tracker in the county. The sheriff and the mountain rescue crew use him all the time,” Aldwin added, sounding rather proud.

  Suddenly he looked past my shoulder. “Not them again!” he blurted.

  As I turned to follow the direction of his gaze, the Reel TV van pulled up in front of the vegetable stand. As the wheels crunched across the gravel, the sound of baying hounds started up from the kennel.

  “You were right,” Bess murmured.

  Without warning Aldwin barged past me. “I told you people to stay off my land.” He went right up to the van’s front door and planted himself in front of it, barring the driver from getting out.

  A guy wearing a baseball cap rolled down the window. He poked his head out, and I recognized him as one of Izzy’s crew members who was staying at the inn, but I didn’t know his name. Of course, he knew mine. “Nancy, tell him we’re here because we’re filming you.”

  Aldwin turned on me. “You brought them?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t bring them. They’re following us. I’m not sure why exactly, yet.”

  The guy reached beside him on the seat, then held a sheet of paper out the window of the van. “Because you signed releases, that’s why.”

  “But Mr. Nichols didn’t,” Bess said sweetly.

  Aldwin just glowered at the van. “Get out of here now. You’re trespassing, and I’m calling the police.” He reached out for my cell phone, grabbed it, and dialed 911. Once he got someone on the other end of the line, he barked the details of the emergency, then hung up.

  The driver of the van ducked his head back in, rolled up the window, and shifted the van into reverse. His partner in the passenger seat was punching numbers into his cell. I watched as they turned around and sped down the road.

  “What do you girls want?” Aldwin growled, handing me back my phone.

  “Maple syrup?” Bess answered in a small voice.

  I jumped in quickly. “And maybe while we’re here we can help you find your dog.”

  He gave me a long hard look, then grunted. “What’s your relationship to that bunch?” He gestured toward the van. It was already some distance down the road, rounding the bend and moving out of sight.

  “The producer wants to document our reaction to the UFO sightings. Because,” I quickly added, “I think they’re hoaxes.”

  “You do, do you?” He snorted. He passed through the gate to the front yard and waited for us to follow him. Then he looked at Bess. “And you, blondie—what do you think?”

  I cringed. Bess hated being called “blondie.” I could feel her tense up—but she surprised me by smiling at Aldwin.

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “What do you think?”

  He gave a tight-lipped smile. “Until today I thought it was all hogwash. But now, after what happened here last night when those lights starting circling up yonder, over the hill—well, I’ve become a believer.” He limped up the stairs onto the porch. “You can see for yourself, though.”

  He led us out to the barnyard. The kennel occupied a large area, out of sight of the road. I noticed it was divided into three parts, two of which had several large individual dog runs. At the sight of us, young bloodhounds raced up to the fencing, their baying shifting into expectant whines and barks.

  “Down, you critters.” Aldwin poked his fingers through the links. The dogs scrambled to lick his fingers. “It’s not feeding time.”

  A smaller third pen held a doghouse. I noticed the gate had been left open. The doghouse and pen were unoccupied.

  Aldwin walked up to the empty pen. “Like I told you, he’s gone missing.”

  “But what makes you think he was abducted?”

  “By aliens,” Bess added, examining the cage. “You said he’s a really good tracker. Is it possible that a hunter stole him?”

  Aldwin snickered. “Do you really think a tough watchdog like Sherlock is going to just head off with some stranger?”

  I wasn’t about to argue—but any dog can be lured by a raw juicy steak. And wasn’t an alien a stranger? “Okay, so he wouldn’t let a stranger take him, but obviously someone—or something—did, Aldwin. What makes you think it had to do with our supposed space visitors?”

  Aldwin leaned against a stump and launched into his story. “Sherlock’s been acting kind of off for about four weeks now. . . . That’s when the first UFOs came to town. He’d been baying at nothing and heading back that way into the woods,” he said, pointing to the area where we’d sighted the supposed UFOs the other night, “anytime he was left off his lead.”

  “That’s unusual?” Bess asked. She was petting one of the dogs through the fence.

  “For him? Absolutely. He’s trained to stay in the barnyard when he’s loose.”

  “When he went into the woods, did he seem to be tracking something or someone?” I asked.

  Aldwin nodded. “Mind you, whatever he was tracking, he never ventured far into the woods. I figured someone was probably camping where they shouldn’t. Illegal campers usually set up just far enough into these woods not to be visible from the house or the road. The forest is deep, and it’s too easy to get lost.

  “Sherlock is pretty protective of the farm and generally stays within its bounds. Occasionally he crosses into the state forest that surrounds and borders us, but not by more than twenty yards or so.”

  I made a mental note to scope out the forest while it was still light today, or tomorrow. Anyone camping would leave some kind of evidence. Sherlock sniffing out campers certainly made more sense to me than his being dognapped by UFOs.

  “But, like I said, Sherlock seldom goes out of the barnyard. But lately he’d started going over there pretty regularly. I didn’t think a whole lot of it, until last night. I was in the middle of my chores when those lights turned up again over the mountain.” Aldwin stopped and pointed at me. “Like you, I thought they were some kind of trick. But Sherlock started howling—set the whole pack baying. I managed to get him inside his pen and tied him up good. All at once there was a big blast of light. Never seen that happen before. Scared me a bit. I raced into the house to call the police. In the middle of dialing, though, the electricity went out, the phone died, and Sherlock stopped howling.”

  “We didn’t lose electricity in town
,” I told him.

  “You didn’t?” He seemed surprised. “Maybe I did because the farm’s closer to those UFOs.”

  Bess nodded. “That makes sense. They probably emitted some sort of electrical interference.”

  Aldwin gaped at Bess. I had to smile. Not only was Bess going along with Aldwin’s story like any good detective would, but she was also showing off her gift for all things mechanical. She adores delving into the mysteries of how things work and is a real Ms. Fix-it.

  Aldwin finally went on. “This morning when I checked the dogs, Sherlock was gone. At first I thought I’d left the pen open, but the latch was still closed, and there were no dig marks beneath the fence. And here, look for yourself—no animal around these parts leaves tracks like this.”

  He showed me into Sherlock’s pen. Tracks crisscrossed the soft ground. Some I recognized as paw prints from a rather large dog, which I assumed were Sherlock’s.

  Aldwin saw me staring at some footprints leading from the opening of the pen to the doghouse. He pointed to his own boots. “Those there are mine. But I didn’t want to step over those tracks there. . . . I was hoping the troopers would come and check them out.”

  I hunkered down to examine the ground. Besides the paw prints and boot prints, there were others—the strangest tracks I’d ever seen.

  8

  Proof Positive?

  I noticed the ground was dotted with geometric marks: circles, hexagons, squares, diamond shapes. On closer inspection I noticed there was another kind of print—not paw print, nor geometric mark, nor boot print. These prints were from webbed feet, each one about four inches long.

  The sort of print a duck might make.

  I was about to ask if Aldwin had ducks, wondering why he hadn’t noticed, when something about them caught my eye. Sure they were webbed, but unlike bird prints these had evenly spaced ridges. They looked like something from a factory; they were definitely not the work of Mother Nature.

  “What do you think, Nancy?” Bess asked. I hadn’t noticed her enter the pen behind me. She crouched lower and touched my shoulder. “What made these?”

  “I have no idea,” I answered.

  “Me neither,” Aldwin said. “But maybe these folks do.”

  I looked up in time to see a trooper car pull up to the farm stand.

  Captain Greene climbed out. I was relieved to see him. Maybe he’d have a practical explanation for Sherlock’s disappearance and for the mysterious prints.

  He shoved his hat onto his head and ambled across the yard. “Aldwin, what’s up?”

  “Sherlock,” Aldwin exclaimed. “He’s gone missing.”

  “You called me to look for your dog?” Captain Greene frowned. “That’s not like you.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s not like Sherlock to get dognapped either.”

  “Dognapped?”

  “By aliens,” Aldwin stated.

  “Dognapped? By aliens?” Captain Greene folded his arms over his burly chest and studied Aldwin’s face. I suspected he was waiting for Aldwin to laugh. “Aldwin Nichols, are you trying to pull a fast one?” the captain finally said.

  “Rupert, I know this sounds crazy, but old as I am, I’ve still got all the tools in this shed,” he said, patting his forehead. “You know that.”

  “What I know is that you love practical jokes.” He paused. I imagined he was waiting for Aldwin to admit the dognapping was a prank. Aldwin just kept his lips pursed.

  The captain lifted his eyebrows. “You claim Sherlock is the victim of an alien abduction?” the captain asked, still incredulous.

  “I swear it’s true. Ask the girls here. I showed them evidence.”

  The captain caught my eye. I just shrugged.

  Then Aldwin launched into his story. I watched the captain’s expression shift from amused to confused to downright skeptical. “No one else lost electricity, Aldwin; there’s got to be an explanation.” The captain turned to the other trooper. “Caleb, go check out the phone lines and electric wires going into the house.”

  “I checked already,” Aldwin said. “Nothing’s been cut, if broken lines are what you’d be looking for. I’m happy to show you exactly what I didn’t find!”

  While he and Caleb circled to the back of the house, Captain Greene turned to me. “Nancy, what brought you here?”

  “Shopping, actually,” Bess said, and she introduced herself. I had forgotten that she hadn’t met the captain the night before.

  Captain Greene tipped his hat in an old-fashioned gesture, then turned back to me. “Of course the whole story doesn’t hold water.”

  “You don’t believe him either,” I said.

  “It’s a pretty outrageous claim. Still . . .” The captain rocked back on his heels, then lifted his shoulders. “I’m beginning to wonder. This is the first claim of an abduction. If it weren’t Aldwin making the accusation, I’d say it’s just hysteria. But he’s a pretty down-to-earth fellow. I’ve known him since I was knee-high to a termite. He may be a prankster, but he’s no liar. Besides, he generally likes to stay out of the spotlight.”

  Bess chuckled. “We noticed. He sure chased off that TV crew.”

  “Good for him,” the captain said. “Forget you heard me say that, though. Lots of people in town are thrilled with the idea of Brody’s Junction being the location for a reality TV show.”

  “I’m sure the TV crew will be back when they hear about a dognapping,” I said.

  “Yep,” the captain agreed. “Once the grapevine starts buzzing with news of Sherlock’s abduction, they’ll be back for sure. This time, though, they’ll keep off Aldwin’s property. They’ll set up on the road or on state land and use those high-powered cameras. And I won’t be able to stop them. The mayor’s given them pretty broad rights with their permits.”

  We walked with the captain over to the dog pen. He gentled the baying hounds with his voice. “Down boys. It’s just me.” They seemed to know him and paid no attention as he examined Sherlock’s pen. I didn’t know if I felt relieved or disappointed when he declared the prints were nothing like anything he’d come across.

  He walked out of the pen, but didn’t latch it. “I’ll have Caleb cordon off the area, then get some of those Feds to check this out. Maybe they should dust the latch for prints, then photograph the tracks—maybe even make plaster casts.”

  As we headed back to the cars, Caleb and Aldwin were still in conversation on the porch. “Are you still thinking of checking out the meadow where the sighting took place?” the captain asked me.

  “I’d like to. Izzy said if we were going to be filmed, I’d have more access to the area.”

  “Not to the meadow. It’s sealed off like a crime scene,” he said. “You still need official permission.”

  “From you, I bet,” Bess said.

  “Yes, and I’m more than happy to have you look at it, Nancy. I spoke to Winifred about you, and she told me you really are a serious detective back in River Heights. It’ll be good to have an unprejudiced eye look over things.”

  “I don’t know if I’m unprejudiced,” I admitted. “I’m going to need some pretty serious convincing that this whole deal is for real.”

  The captain checked his watch. “You’d better get over there before noon. The weather looks like it’s going to close in quickly. Before long, snow could blanket the area.”

  “What about Izzy’s crew?” Bess reminded me.

  “Trust me, they’ll find us soon enough,” I said, not really in the mood to make Izzy’s life easier.

  Bess picked up three small jugs of syrup at the stand, leaving the money in the coffee tin. Meanwhile, the captain radioed ahead to alert his men. After the call, he told me, “The FBI folks are all so tight-lipped about all this spaceship business, it makes me wonder if there really is something to it.”

  He gave us an alternate route to the meadow, to elude the Reel TV crew, then we left. The trip was short; soon we emerged at a paved county road, blocked off by trooper cars.

>   After checking my ID the officer in charge let us pass. “Oh, you can go through,” he said. “You’re the girls the captain just radioed me about.”

  Half a mile down the road we reached our destination. The perimeter of the meadow was cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape. We parked on the shoulder and got out. Only one of the police cars nearby was occupied. When we pulled up, a trooper got out to check our IDs, but he seemed to have been expecting us.

  As I tucked my driver’s license back into my wallet, he told us we could explore the meadow’s borders and get a pretty good look at burn marks on the grass. But he warned us not to go under the police tape and not to touch anything.

  “The FBI is still collecting evidence,” he said. I looked and saw a black unmarked car parked farther up the road. No agents were in sight.

  “This place gives me the creeps. I’m glad I’m not on night shift,” he said.

  I wondered if the UFO sightings happened only at night, but before I could ask, his radio crackled to life, and he ducked back into the car to answer it.

  “So what exactly are we looking for?” Bess asked as we clambered up the embankment. It was tough work. The meadow had been harvested recently, and sharp stubs of cornstalks jabbed through my jeans. Between the harvested rows, the furrows were deep, and even with hiking boots it was hard to walk. Poor Bess was wearing only thin-soled sneakers.

  “I’m not sure,” I answered. “I want to see those burn marks close up. But I also wonder if anything dropped off those supposed UFOs that might give us a clue as to who made them.”

  Bess laughed. “You refuse to believe they really are from outer space.”

  “Why would UFOs—supposing there are such things—bother coming to an obviously less technologically advanced place like Earth? Tell me that. Also, why would the aliens kidnap a dog?”

  “Because they don’t know enough about us—maybe they think dogs are the dominant species on our planet.”