by Katie Berry
“I think the odds of us both having a tumour at the same time is a bit of a longshot.” She sniffed again, then added, “And I think I smell bacon, too!”
Arriving on the main floor, Lively said, “I concur,” as he sniffed the air. He spied the doors to the main dining room across the lobby next to the lounge and popped his head through, taking a deep breath. He was disappointed to only smell dust and stale, uncirculated air.
“Lively!” Minerva called from across the lobby.
“What is it, Sis?”
“The toast smell is coming from the basement,” she said, pointing down a utility staircase located off to one side of the front desk.
“That’s right, the kitchen is located down there.”
“So, someone cooked us breakfast? Who else is here?” Side by side, they slowly descended the stairs to the basement.
“No one, we’re the first people to have entered this building in almost forty years.” Lively replied.
Minerva nodded and added, “Or, maybe there’s somebody around here who never left.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
January 2nd, 1982, 0115 hours
The single fifteen-watt bulb over the stovetop spotlighted a piece of notepaper, tented in the middle, sitting beneath. John’s name was written on the front in a graceful feminine hand. He read the note and smiled, a single tear tracing down one cheek as he did. Another chance to have a holiday together with his wife was now gone because of work, like so many holidays, over so many years before. He longed for them to have the time together, but his job took priority. Fortunately, Helen understood that though his duties took him away from her, she was always in his heart.
A foil-wrapped plate waited patiently inside the oven for him. John didn’t realise how hungry he was until he began eating. The scalloped potatoes were drying at the edges, and the ham had started approaching jerky territory, but he didn’t care, he was starving. On a second plate in the middle of the kitchen table, Helen had left a large slice of caramel pecan pie covered in plastic wrap. Grabbing the dinner fork from his plate, he retreated with his plasticised pie to the den. He needed to do some research.
Through the miracle of modern technology, the 300 baud dial-up modem on John Harder’s brand-new Texas Instruments TI-99/4A personal computer allowed him remote access to the recently formed RCMP informational database. Though it cut into sleep he sorely needed, he wanted to know more about the Sinclair empire.
The hotel had been named after the man that built it, Thomas Sinclair. A transplanted Scotsman, he’d moved to Canada in the early 1890s, making his fortune in land, lumber and other people’s vices. He’d made nothing but money for the next five decades, becoming one of the wealthiest men in Canada and also the world. Unfortunately, he attained the latter lofty title only just a few months before he passed away.
Sinclair’s fortune had gotten its start in a remote West-Kootenay community that had built up around a small trading post. When gold was struck in the area, the settlement mushroomed into a bustling burg of almost twelve-thousand souls within less than one year. Affectionately nicknamed for what the area became after the gold strike, the name stuck and the town of Lawless, BC, was born. A rough and tumble town where, if you didn’t keep one hand on your gold and the other on a loaded gun, you’d be apt to lose both if you weren’t careful.
Thomas Sinclair fit right into the mayhem. He was a mean Scottish drunk with a keen business sense, and also a man proud of his heritage. Whenever someone called him ‘Scotch’, he was purported to have loudly corrected the misinformed soul and say, “Scotch is a drink! Not a goddamned people!”
The Sinclair name became synonymous with posh digs. Any miner who struck the motherlode could afford to stay at one of Sinclair’s luxurious establishments, but not for long, thanks to their exorbitant rates. Fine food and finer drink were only part of what was offered, however. In conjunction with bars and inns, another money-making aspect of Sinclair Enterprises had been its brothels, which sprang up wherever there was a gold strike. Company of the softer and curvier variety was something that many a lonely miner desired, and Sinclair was more than happy to provide it. The wiley Scotsman, it was said, could provide your most intimate desire, no matter what it was, but chances were you wouldn’t like some of the long-term strings attached.
The opportunities for a man that provided vices like Sinclair was immense. For default on payment for services rendered or gambling debts incurred, he’d acquired vast tracts of land along with the deeds to many mines over the years.
John was stunned by the amounts of money that a man could squander, and the depths to which another man, Sinclair, would go to swindle the first man by charging inflated prices for his products and services.
At the height of the Yukon’s rush in 1896, it was reported that one wayward gold miner had spent almost thirty-thousand dollars in a single evening at one of Sinclair’s hotels (which would be somewhere in the vicinity of a quarter-million dollars in 1982, John calculated). A single sixty-dollar magnum of champagne back then would cost the equivalent of five-hundred dollars today. So, it wasn’t hard for a miner to blow through six months worth of hard gold-mining labour in a single evening, with Thomas Sinclair standing by, ready to collect. When a miner ran out of gold, and found themselves in dire straits, to settle their debt, most opted to hand over the deed to their land, house, or both. Those who needed some persuasion got to speak directly to Sinclair’s right (and left) hand men. And for those that would not listen to reason, or refused to pay, they were rumoured to have paid the ultimate price.
Sinclair married Margarethe Hoffman in 1901, and they settled down in Vancouver, British Columbia. Margarethe gave birth to two sons, Edward in 1907 and Matthew in 1913. Both attended Vancouver’s finest schools, and both had significant behavioural problems, not unlike their father.
The millions of acres acquired legally, and sometimes illegally by the Sinclair Corporation was a definite boon to a person like Matthew Sinclair. Straight out of business school, he began to manage the dozens of Sinclair owned saw and pulp mills up and down the West Coast. And he embezzled millions upon millions of dollars from them in the process. Matthew was also a gambler, womaniser and raging alcoholic — not a good combination. Late one October night in 1938, an estranged husband of a woman with whom he was having an affair put five bullet holes in his chest.
Edward Sinclair was a brilliant engineer and architect. He took over the family construction business once he’d completed university at UBC. Several landmark hotel and office buildings around Vancouver in the late 1930s and early 1940s were designed by him and built by the Sinclair Construction Group. Unlike his brother, he was a very private man who, though never married, had been linked to several high-profile Hollywood actresses in the 1940s and 1950s.
Thomas Sinclair’s health began fading near the end of World War II, and it was at this time he decided he needed to build something that would stand as a monument to himself. Something magnificent, iconic, and grand that would survive the test of time, like the Pyramids of Giza or Mount Rushmore. Harnessing Edward’s architectural genius, Thomas crafted plans for a massive resort in the interior of British Columbia, something grand, yet remote. A place where the rich and elite of the world could come to relax and get away from it all.
On October 31st, 1945, construction broke ground at the Sinclair Resort Hotel. Despite his vast fortune, there was one thing of which Thomas Sinclair could not buy any more — time. He was eighty-five years old when the construction began, and the practical Scotsman knew that his own remaining time was short. So, with money no object, the construction of the resort had been expedited.
Numerous shipping containers were delivered to the site on a regular basis from Sinclair’s native Scotland. Inside them, pieces of a family castle were brought over stone by stone for almost fourteen months. Over fifty percent of the resort’s main building consisted of various bits and pieces of the dismembered castle.
Forever in the shadow of the Sincl
air’s mountaintop perch, Entwistle, BC, languished, the victim of a silver rush gone bust many years before. A work camp was set up on the town’s outskirts, where the workers stayed and lived for the next year as the resort was constructed. In rotating twelve-hour shifts, the men were shuttled up and down the mountain, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Though a canteen was provided on the camp’s site, when a man happened to get a day off, hungry and thirsty, they inevitably came into Entwistle. The small town responded to them, embracing the new business opportunities the worker’s appetites brought with them.
For the final few months, as the resort’s interior was being completed, they had all been laid off. A large group of Freemasons, of which Sinclair was a member, had come to the resort. For the final three months of construction, they worked around the clock, finishing off the interior. Local carpenters, plumbers and stonemasons had also been involved in the initial build, but they had been laid off as well. No one was able to say for sure what sort of interior construction had occurred in that time. Then, mysteriously as they arrived, the Freemasons left all at once, just before the hotel started to bring in the furnishings, decorations and appliances.
The last stone was set in place just before Christmas, 1946. A week later, on December 31st, the Sinclair Resort opened to the world and held an inaugural New Year’s Eve party. It was a resounding success with celebrities and royalty attending from all over North America and Europe. That night, the grand ballroom and both of the secondary ballrooms were filled to capacity. Over five-hundred guests flocked to the resort to drink, dine and dance the night away at the party of the century.
Thomas Sinclair passed away the next morning, on New Year’s day, 1947. Edward was said to have found his lifeless body sprawled atop the bed in the hotel’s royal suite. It appeared as if he’d come upstairs, too tired to undress, then lay down fully clothed on the bed and proceeded to die. Some thought it happened then because he knew he could finally rest, knowing he was memorialised forever by the hotel, while others said it was due to exhaustion. Whatever the cause, he was eventually buried in a mausoleum rumoured to be located somewhere on the resort property.
Much like Entwistle in the shadow of Overseer Mountain, Edward had struggled against his father’s domination for many, many years. But after Thomas’s death, he had been able to invest his time in other pursuits, some more legally questionable than others. In addition to these new pursuits, he’d continued to run the Sinclair Corporation quite successfully, with the resort being his personal pride and joy, just like it had been for his father.
It was said that Edward ‘took care of things’ up on the Hill, as the resort was known down in town. Palms were greased when they needed it, and any little ‘embarrassments’ at the resort were covered up or disposed of as quickly as possible. Though his father had some powerful friends in high places throughout the world, Edward, on the other hand, had equally powerful and dangerous friends in low places. Over the years, he had been personally connected to several high-profile members of the Gambino crime family in New York along with other questionable acquaintances from Las Vegas.
Throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s, the hotel was the site of many high-profile dinners and balls for royalty, political dignitaries, and the entertainment industry. The West Coast Movie and Television Award Dinner and Dance was, in fact, the longest-running event at the resort since being first held there on December 31st, 1963. John found it exceedingly strange that the first and last events held for that group also had tragedy attached to them with the suicide of one of the staff that same evening, along with one of the hotel’s first missing person cases. Harder had been new to the Entwistle detachment at the time and had only been peripherally involved in the investigation. But even that case involved many unanswered questions even now after all these years.
The most recent dinner and dance last night was also a celebration of the continued success of the entertainment industry over the previous year, as well as a look ahead to the future. Word had spread at the resort that a special surprise was also being planned by Edward Sinclair for the midnight celebration. Unfortunately, he was the only person who knew what it was, and he had vanished, along with everyone else in that room, when the clock struck midnight on December 31st.
“Hmmph,” John muttered to himself quietly, “I wonder if the surprise was the disappearance of everyone in the ballroom?”
John clicked off his computer and rubbed his eyes. It was four minutes past two in the morning, and he was officially exhausted. He stumbled sleepily to bed and crawled in next to Helen, who was snoring lightly. His mind was awhirl with images of construction, corruption, and celebration. When he finally tumbled into sleep, it was dark and troubled, the Sinclair Hotel now haunting his nights as well as his days.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
December 24th, 2021, 0755 hours
The scent of freshly ground coffee lingered in the air of the kitchen, blending with the aroma of toasted bread. Industrial stainless-steel countertops dotted the gleaming room. Along the far wall sat three equally stainless-steel stovetops with large ovens beneath. And in keeping with the resort’s overarching theme, all the equipment appeared to be electrical, which was rare in an industrial kitchen, especially one in a hotel.
“What the hell?” Lively said, entering the room first. It was spotless, without a trace of dust anywhere, and everything gleamed as if freshly polished. He turned around in a circle taking it all in. “You can always judge a joint by the cleanliness of its kitchen, they say.”
“They also say it’s the heart of a home, but I don’t know if that applies to this place,” Minerva added, entering the room behind Lively.
“Yeah, I think it could use a cardiac bypass with all the bizarre stuff that happened around here.”
“Well, it looks like the last forty years have bypassed this room, that’s for sure.” Minerva looked down at the shiny, industrial grey floor and added, “You could eat off the linoleum in here!” She shook her head in amazement.
In the middle of the room sat a large gleaming island covered with enticing looking food items. On one end sat two stacks of buttered toast, one white and one whole wheat. Beside them, sitting on a small hotplate, was a glass pot that read ‘Bunn’ on the side. It was filled with hot coffee, steam swirling from its top. A silver serving dish filled with back bacon that looked crispy and chewy in all the right spots sat beside a large crock of strawberry jam. Nearby, two small bears relaxed on the label of a clear glass jar. Next to the counter, a row of stainless-steel stools sat empty, pulled out just a little as if waiting for someone to occupy them.
With a deep inhale, Lively savoured the heady scent of coffee, bacon and toast all blending together. “It smells amazing in here!” He scanned what was on the table for a moment, then grabbed two slices of toast from the white stack. One piece was slathered with a gooey knifeful of peanut butter, the other with a liberal dollop of jam. With a satisfied nod, Lively slapped the two sandwich halves together and took a large bite.
“Lively! What are you doing? We don’t know that this stuff is safe!” Minerva said, surprised to see him being so bold.
Munching on his mouthful of toast for a moment, Lively held up his right index finger and said, “Well, first of all, I’m starving.” He took another large bite of sandwich. After another couple of powerful chews, he made a large swallow and held up his middle finger, forming the peace sign. “And second of all, this is delicious.” He paused and chewed for several more seconds, apparently having not quite worked his way through all of the peanut butter yet. Then he continued, “The way I see it, if the Sinclair wanted us dead, it would have killed us already.” Lively picked up the coffee pot as he spoke and poured two cups of steaming coffee. He placed one in front of Minerva, black just like she liked it. “I mean, why go to all the trouble to have this appear for us if it could have done away with me last night and finished you off as soon as you stepped through the front doors this morning?”
/> “So, you think the hotel was only playing with me in the lobby? Sort of trying to test my mettle, huh?” Minerva blew on her cup and took a tentative sip of the hot coffee.
“To see what we’re made of. Yeah, for the moment I think that’s what it’s doing. Kind of testing us, looking for our weaknesses, but that might be subject to change at any time, so be on your guard,” Lively said, pouring cream from a tall silver decanter into his coffee. It was so thick compared to the half and half he used back home and the colour much more golden, like pouring liquid butter. On his first sip of the hot brew, his taste buds came alive, and they pronounced it ‘delicious’. He made a pleasurable, “Ah!” then took another sip. Smacking his lips together, Lively added, “I can’t remember the last time I had a cup of coffee that tasted so fresh and full-bodied.” He half-expected to see Mrs. Olson pop out of a pantry door across the room, grinning brightly, a jar of Folger’s finest proudly displayed in one hand.
As that thought entered his head, a flashback to last night suddenly played on the 8K widescreen behind Lively’s eyes. He remembered looking into the mirror in the royal suite, but that had been it, until now. Now, he remembered something more — not a lot, but more. A sudden series of images flashed through his mind: the lobby, blackness, shining metal everywhere, and finally, a reflection of himself again, standing next to a series of glass shelves in front of a large mirror somewhere inside the hotel. In the mirror, his likeness still grinned like all of its oars weren’t paddling in the same direction, followed by more blackness.
