But that wasn't preventing me from going into the tattoo place downtown. For work reasons. That's why my job is weirder than yours. (No matter what it is you do for a living, my job is weirder than yours.)
Jazmyn was there. "Hi, Lou! Want to see my new tattoo?"
Jazmyn is a sweet kid, one of my junior paranormal investigators. She was currently home after being away in basic training. I've grown very fond of her. I looked at her tattoo, which showed a design involving compass points.
"Nice," I said. "It gives me sort of a feeling of adventure."
"Does it? That's pretty cool!"
"I'm looking for the owner," I said. "If he's got a moment."
"Lou!" The owner looked up from the back of the room, where he was tattooing a guy. "What's up?"
"I actually wasn't aware you'd recognize me." I've been a local writer for about ten years now, but it's still a surprise when someone knows who I am. There's a significant part of me that feels six years old, scribbling two-sentence pencil articles for my grandmother, who will look at them distractedly and say That's nice.
"Oh, sure. You recently wrote that piece in the Record about the antique chair."
"Chair and Chair Alike. Yeah, that's me."
"So what can I do for you?" he asked.
"Well, I've been told by a couple of people that you think your place is haunted."
He laughed. "Well, I don't, but some of the guys do. They say they've had some stuff happen in the back."
"I wanted to offer a free investigation." I handed him the LHPS business card. "We'll be happy to come in anytime. We don't charge, and we'll keep it as confidential as you like. Of course, me saying this in a roomful of people wasn't the most brilliant plan...."
He laughed. The guy getting the tattoo said,"My lips are sealed, man."
"Cool. Anyway, think it over. We'd be happy to do an investigation for you."
"I'll consider it. Thanks."
I grinned at Jazmyn. "See you at the library, kid."
And that is how we do that.
As there was nothing pressing, it was a while before I got to reading them. I spun in my chair at the Piper Museum, and walked out onto the floor, where there had to be about fifty people.
Stacey, our office manager, was in the gift shop. I said,"How's it going? What can I do?"
"We have a tour at ten," Stacey said. "John will say a few words about the planes, and then you can take the tour. The Fly-In is always busy. Don't forget, you have a board meeting at one."
As a kid, I'd dreamed of an exciting life. Adventures, mysteries, and all sorts of excitement. And I've managed to achieve all that. And, in a supreme effort at balance, the universe also makes me sit through endless committee meetings.
"Got the agenda ready," I said.
Stacey nodded. "The annual Fly-In is always crazy."
The Fly-In is an annual event held on the airport grounds. It's a big deal, and the museum opens for it. Crissy, the office assistant, approached me with a note. "Lou, the airport just called. They want to move your eleven o'clock meeting to the Fly-In grounds; they'll have trouble getting over here."
"Not my problem," I said. "I did not request this meeting."
"We don't have anyone else to take over the tour," said Stacey. "Can you...."
'Yeah. I can handle the tour."
After the tour, I went down to the hangar. I almost always detour through the hangar on my way to board meetings, mostly because I love working in a hangar full of airplanes. Sometimes I go and sit in the Piper Cheyenne just to do paperwork. We'd just gotten a new plane in, a beautiful, bright red Piper Coupe. I admired it for a moment before going into the meeting.
"Okay, around the table," said President John, banging his gavel. "Lou? What do you have?"
"Just one thing," I said. "This week is the one year anniversary of when I first became your curator, and it's been wonderful. Thank you all."
John nodded, banged the gavel again. "Meeting adjourned."
I went out into the hangar, and sat down in the Cheyenne. The two back seats were barely visible from the outside, and I leaned back and closed my eyes. Took a deep breath for a moment.
Then I went upstairs to my office using the secret back staircase. I finally got a chance to check my e-mail.
"A red airplane!" Paul said, pointing up into the air.
I walked through the Fly-In with my family, my wife and son, Paul Matthew, and daughters Tif and Biz. There were planes all over the field, taking turns flying into the air. I love the Fly-In, and being with the museum, I can be right in the middle of it. My wife said,"I'm going to get him some ice cream. Do you want to sit down with the girls?"
I nodded. The girls and I found a spot at the picnic tables, and sat down.
I glanced up at the sky. "Got a UFO sighting on this end of town," I said.
"Where?" asked Tif.
"That's the problem, I can't narrow it down geographically much. I get e-mail notifications from a couple of sites, but as you can imagine, some of them aren't exactly professionally run. They lack details. What I know is that somewhere down around here, on a Tuesday night two weeks ago, about ten PM. A light in the sky that moved and stopped several times, heading northeast."
"Who saw it?" Tif asked.
Tif's been listening to me a long time; she asks all the right questions. "Again, don't know. The site's anonymous. But I figure I'll look into it. Drones have upped the UFO sightings by about eighty percent, and this is typical drone behavior they're describing. So I'll check into drones first. It'll give me something to do."
"Yeah, I noticed how you haven't been busy enough lately."
"Got to review a play out at Millbrook tomorrow night," I said. "You available to babysit the little guy?"
"Oh, sure," said Tif. "I'll bring some glow sticks, and he'll have a bath in the dark. He'll love that."
The Fly-In is crazy from start to finish. I walked in at nine AM and immediately got swept into a committee meeting with two other board members about the new kiosk. One of the board members was an old biology professor of mine at Lock Haven University, twenty years ago, and if you don't think it's weird to be serving on a board with your old teacher, you'd better think that one over again.
The meeting was in my office, so I got my computer on and surreptitiously searched for drone operators in the Lock Haven area.
I found one guy who ran drone lessons. His name was Doctor H. Shook, and he gave lessons right on the airport grounds. I scribbled the phone number on a post-it.
"Be right back," I said, and ducked into the secret staircase by my office, and disappeared into the hangar.
I sat down in the back of the Cheyenne. It was quiet in there.
I called City Hall first, for some property research for the museum, and then tried calling the drone guy on my cell.
I got his answering service. "Hi, this is Doctor Shook. I'm not available right now, but---"
I hung up. I could try to get him later. I climbed out of the Cheyenne and walked further into the hangar. President John was sitting near the L-4 Grasshopper.
"Hi, John. Hey, I was thinking yesterday---What if you and I teamed up for a guest speaking event? I do a little Piper history, and you talk about the good old days."
"Sure, we could do that," he said. "A lot of people love that story about how the fiberglass department guys used to use the modeling clay to make fake food." He laughed to himself. A lot of the time, when an old person starts talking about the past, it's time to run. But John is really entertaining. I've been known to get him started deliberately. "It looked realistic enough that people would try to eat it. Old Doc Shook used to get a laugh out of that. He was just telling me today before his program."
I stared at him. "Wait....What? Doctor Shook is here?"
"Oh, sure, he's giving a talk in the conference room."
And here I'd been sitting in the Cheyenne trying to call the guy, and he was right here at Piper, in the next room over.
I asked,"When's the program end?"
I was waiting in the hall outside the conference room when the program let out. Late. I slipped in as the guest speaker was cleaning up.
"Doctor Shook?" I asked. "You may have a call from me on your cell; I've been trying to call you. My name is Lou; I'm on the board here."
He shook my hand. "Yes, that's me."
"You're the drone guy."
"That's right, I am."
"If you have a moment, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about your lessons."
"Too bad you weren't in yesterday. That was the topic of my talk."
"Well, this shouldn't take long. Is there any chance you'd have been flying a drone around here two weeks ago, on a Tuesday evening?"
He shook his head. "Not me, no. My class always ends at four. That sounds like a group from Williamsport who comes in on Tuesdays in the evening. They'd be the ones."
I smiled.
The UFO was a drone.
"That answers what I need to know, then. Thank you."
I stood in the small room near my office, where I had my secret UFO research station. I'd discovered it a few months ago---A small room, reachable only through my office. When considering what would be the best use of the space, I'd immediately decided on UFO research. Maybe the occasionaly flying monster; I'm not a one-trick wonder. But UFOs for sure. I had a dry erase board with the dates and locations of sightings scribbled on it. I looked at 6-6-2017: NE LH PA.
Then I erased it.
I took a file, wrote a label on it, and tucked the paperwork inside: A printout of the original notification, and a note with my conclusions. Then I put it in one of the file cabinets.
Case closed.
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