Joel was greeted with a familiar roasted coffee smell when he crossed the threshold into Starbucks from the hotel lobby. The inviting space, designed to look old, had distressed wooden floors and large square columns clad in rustic wood. Each column held beveled mirrors creating interesting reflections and angles within the space.

The seating area was bigger than most Starbucks he had been in and customers were already tucked away in nooks and corners on leather couches and recliners, their faces bathed in an unflattering blueish white light from their electronic devices.

Pictures hanging on the walls were historic photos of the local area. One large framed sepia tone print behind the counter showed an elevated view of the Delvin Lakes train depot, women along the platform wore long dresses and most men were in suits. The picture looked to be from the early 20^th century when people still dressed up to travel. A cloud of steam could be seen curling up from beneath the locomotive.

Joel’s attention was drawn to another print hanging above a rack of branded coffee mugs. He was surprised to be looking at a scene from his childhood. The picture pre-dated Joel, but the photographer had taken the picture from the lake, just the way Joel and his brothers would have seen it from their small fishing boat.

The scene was of the old Delvin Lakes Ice Works. The Ice Works were not in operation when Joel and his brothers would run their boat onto the sandy shore to explore the grounds 40 years ago. The ruins they had played in apparently bore a close resemblance to the actual operation though, and it looked at the time as if the workers just walked away leaving the operation intact.

The ruins, when Joel was a child, reminded him of a wooden roller-coaster. The tram-way rose from the lake shore at a steep angle to an elevation of 10 to 15 feet and then maintained that elevation spanning several hundred feet across the grounds, ending near the rail lines. Presumably ice blocks would have been loaded into rail-cars bound for distant cities or put onto flatbed trucks and taken to a warehouse and packed in saw-dust.

The Ice Works were an irresistible playground for Joel and his brothers and he could remember climbing the tram-way and exploring the grounds for hours. There were old rusted motors, steel cables and dozens of other mechanical devices of every imaginable configuration strewn about the grounds. It had been a simpler time where kids, their environment and imagination created adventure.

Joel ordered his usual Grande Latte and found a small round table with a bench seat against a side wall. He watched the locals file in from the street shaking off the bitter cold morning while visitors in short sleeve shirts entered from the hotel lobby acting like winter did not exist in their world. Everybody was on the same mission, looking for a caffeine fix.

Somebody had left a copy of the Delvin Lakes Chronical on the far end of the bench and Joel scanned the headlines of the page.

There was an interesting headline in the lower right bottom which read, “Four Local Boys Report Strange Light from Lake.” Joel reached over and picked up the paper to take a closer look.

According to the article, four boys from Delvin Lakes had ventured onto the ice around 5:30 PM from the skating rink warming house located just below his hotel this past Friday night. According to the boy’s they had kept relatively close to the shore-line on their adventure and at some point had encountered a strange blue green light emanating from the ice. In northern climates during December, daylight is gone by 4:30 PM so Joel knew it was dark when they had set out on their adventure.

A boy named Jeff Brody, who was the spokesperson for the group in the article, said “the light was not really shining out of the ice but more like within the ice creating an aura which seemed to float a couple of feet above the ice from a distance.”

When the boys had reached the spot, they had peered into the thick ice and were unable to discern the source of the light but then Derick Shaffer, a 12 year old and the youngest in the group began to yell and point at the ice, I saw a face, I saw a face, he repeated several times and he jumped around in a tight circle above the spot pointing down. The other boys rushed to where he pointed and  were not able to see anything except the strange light.

Officials at the Sheriff’s department dismissed the incident as an attempt by the boys to keep the local “Lady of the Ice” legend alive. Joel had never heard of the legend, but was intrigued by the description written about the light. In Joel’s experience, small details which the boys had recounted were often overlooked when someone was making up a lie.

The last paragraph was about the approximate location of the sighting and the article had a small Google map inset from a screen capture with a hand drawn circle supposedly on the spot. The boys told authorities they were near the warehouse district of town.

The light had apparently faded less shortly after they arrived over it, and when gone, left the boys standing on the vast blackness of the frozen lake.

Joel looked back at the map and decided he would like to take a look at the area for himself.

The warehouse district only encompassed a couple of city blocks and was at the end of town where houses became spread out and more rural as Shore Road moved away from the lake and turned into something else.

It was still early morning and the drive from the hotel was just under two miles. Joel pulled his car which was not yet warm on the inside next to a rusted chain-link fence surrounding a drab metal building and got out.

The cold tumbled from the leaden sky and permeated every inch of his body. The sky was pressing toward the ground and there was a feeling of snow in the crisp air. He looked toward a narrow swath of horizon where pale pink and purple ribbons of light were visible between the metal buildings and it reminded him of better times and warmer days from his past.

He stared for a minute into the light, trying to imagine it was warm sunshine, when a sharp horn from Shore Road brought him back into his cold reality.

The land in between the lakes shoreline and the edge of the road was thin at this location and could not have been more than a few feet in width. Joel crossed the two lane road and navigated the small decline to step onto the ice, he shuffled his feet to keep his balance on the ice and moved several yards out onto the frozen lake.

Joel had no idea what he was looking for, and now that he was completely exposed, a cold wind  cut through his inadequate clothing making his whole body go into an involuntarily shiver. He stared out at the ice and tried to picture what the boys may have seen. His first inclination was a reflection caused by the Aurora Borealis otherwise known as the Northern Lights, but the likelihood of seeing it in the ice and not in the sky while standing in the open on a frozen lake seemed far-fetched.

Joel turned back from the open ice and shuffled back toward the shoreline. He already had plans to visit the Sheriff’s department today, letting them know he was in town investigating the hundred year old missing person case of Mary Benton. He hoped the meeting went well, and that he could count on their cooperation.

He was puzzled about what the boys may have seen on the ice on that dark night, but decided he needed to put it on the back burner and get on with the real investigation which had brought him back to Delvin Lakes after all these years.