Little Boy Blues (18 page)

“What? Driving the car? Can Jimmy drive?”

“I don’t mean that. Camilla. What if it was Jimmy that got hit?”

I stared at him. “That’s crazy. Snap out of it, Alvin. And don’t go slumping and humming either. Jimmy needs you conscious and thinking clearly.”

“It could have been him.”

I took the plunge and asked around. “Did anyone notice what the victim was wearing?”

“Jeans and a
T
-shirt.”

“And a baseball cap.”

“That’s what Jimmy had on. But who identified the victim as a tourist?” Alvin was hyperventilating by this time.

“Half the world is dressed like that. I’m dressed liked that, except for the cap.”

“It could have been him. Vince didn’t go to the cops until after ten. Maybe they’d already got the wrong name, and they didn’t even think about Jimmy.”

“Let’s not indulge in egregious speculations, Alvin. We can talk to the cops and find out what happened.”

Alvin is not a fan of talking to the cops. Even so, he said, “Yeah. You’re right.”

“I’ll call Ray Deveau and tell him it’s an emergency. I hate breaking in new police officers.”

Ray Deveau picked up the phone at his desk. Life is full of surprises.

• • •

Deveau didn’t yell at us when we met him at the police station. Turned out when the investigating was over for the day, the paperwork began. It was starting to tell on him, judging by the bags under his pale blue eyes. “You’ve been busy,” he said with
a ghost of a smile.

“Alvin wants to ask some questions about his brother’s disappearance.”

Ray Deveau glanced over at Alvin, who was leaning against the wall, looking limper than usual. “You all right, Alvin?”

“What do you think? His brother’s missing. He’s upset.”

“Tell him, Camilla. About the hit and run.”

“Alvin wants to know how you established the victim of the hit and run was an unknown tourist and not Jimmy.”

Deveau ran his hands through his pale hair. “Oh, boy,” he said.

“Save it. This is a legitimate question.”

“We confirmed his identity without question. You want to sit down, Alvin?”

“Because,” I said, with remarkable reasonableness, “when this man was hit, Jimmy was seen in the same vicinity. When you identified the victim, you didn’t know Jimmy was missing. No one is blaming you, Sergeant.”

He chuckled. “Well, that’s good. But I can assure you both, Jimmy was not the victim.”

“Are you one hundred per cent certain?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know? He was a tourist. A stranger.”

“The victim’s name was Greg Hornyk. He was a young teacher from New Brunswick here on his honeymoon. Day two.”

“How can you be sure since no one knew him?”

“His wife knew him.”

“His wife?”

“She identified the body.”

“They said his face was destroyed by the impact.”

“She was standing right beside him. She witnessed the
accident. She saw the whole thing happen.”

“Oh. But why didn’t you have the name earlier?”

“She had to be restrained after the hit and run. She collapsed and hit her head, on top of everything else. The boys hauled her off to the hospital. It was a while before we could make any sense out of her. Then we needed to contact family members.”

“They didn’t have
ID
?” This was Alvin.

“As a matter of fact, they didn’t. They’d left their valuables back at the hotel desk and their room keys too. They took a few dollars and went for a stroll on the boardwalk to see the Canada Day stuff. Then they decided to get fries. The girl at the hotel desk told them about Fuzzy’s. She feels terrible now.”

“Wrong place, wrong time,” I said.

Ray Deveau said, “It was a tragedy, Alvin, but it wasn’t Jimmy.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Alvin walked ahead of me, loping towards the front door of the station. I turned back to say something to Deveau.

He beat me to the punch. “You two look beat. I’m leaving now. You need a lift?”

“Sure, if you take dogs too.”

“Can’t do much to my car.”

His Taurus was cluttered with kids’ toys, paper and a stack of stuff from the dry cleaners, which I managed to keep Gussie from lying on.

As we pulled onto Crescent Street, Deveau said, “Mrs. Hornyk is still pretty distraught. She’s gone back to New Brunswick, but she’s in a bad way.”

“I’ve been in that situation.”

“Right, I gave Lennie a call. He mentioned that,” he said. “I know what it’s like to lose somebody. So we both realize it’s
not a good idea to get in touch with her unless it’s absolutely necessary. That right?”

“No need now,” I said.

“Good.”

“By the way, speaking of leaving town, did your guys talk to Reefer Keefer?”

“He’s skipped. Must have been right after you left. Thanks for that tip, though. Reefer’s not swift enough to stay lost for long. But if you’re suggesting him for the hit and run, he doesn’t match the description of the driver.”

“Reefer?” Alvin snorted. “Way too mellow.”

“Get some sleep,” Deveau said, as we climbed out of the car.

“You too,” Alvin said.

I said, “You told us the hit and run driver didn’t look like Reefer. Does that mean you got a good description? I haven’t heard one.”

“We sure did. And we’re on it. Just a matter of time, step by step.”

“If you say so,” I said.

We were not permitted to drag our weary butts to bed without bringing Mrs. Parnell, Donald Donnie and Loretta up to date on everything that had happened. That seemed to take as long in the retelling as it had in real time. Maybe I rambled a tad because of the generous pair of rum and cokes Donald Donnie pressed on me. Whatever, there’s something about having a small, intense crowd hang on your every word.

Alvin had already crashed. Ditto Gussie.

When I had finished the litany of events, the phone call to Brandon, Reefer’s departure, Jimmy’s peculiar behaviour in the video store and later at Fuzzy’s and the odd coincidence of the hit and run, Mrs. Parnell leaned back.

“Well done, Ms. MacPhee. You have covered a lot of territory.”

“Yes, in every sense.”

“I have less to report,” she said, “but I think you will find it interesting, all the same.”

“Indeed,” Donald Donnie said.

“You found out something? Where?”

“Right here, Ms. MacPhee. Another piece of the puzzle.”

“That’s true enough, isn’t it, Dad?”

“I waited until young Ferguson was asleep in case he was troubled by it.”

“Troubled by what?” I sometimes wish Miss Manners would permit one to scream “get to the point.”

“Something else Donald Donnie mentioned about Jimmy’s accident.” Mrs. Parnell blew a pair of triumphant smoke rings.

“And that was?”

“Why don’t you tell it, Donald Donnie?”

“
I’ll
tell it,” Loretta said. “Violet thinks it might explain Allie’s reactions.”

“Tell it soon,” I said.

“What Violet got excited about is what we remember.”

“Although, indeed, it was a long time ago,” Donald Donnie said.

“Sixteen years. I remember like it was yesterday, whether you do or not, Dad.”

I cleared my throat.

Loretta said, “You’re getting a bit of a cold there, Camilla. Anyway, Allie came running up the hill, hollering for help and, of course, as you know, no one came out except Tracy, who couldn’t have been more than nine. What could she do?”

“Here’s the part,” Mrs. Parnell said.

“And he was screaming and crying that the big boys were after Jimmy.”

“The big boys? What big boys?”

“We don’t know.”

“And when you got down to the park, did you see any boys?”

Donald Donnie’s voice cracked. “All I saw was little Jimmy’s face down in the dirty water. I didn’t even look for boys. I gave him mouth-to-mouth, and Mum called for the ambulance.”

“What about afterwards? What did Alvin say then?”

“Well, that’s it, he never said a thing, did he, Dad?”

“Indeed he didn’t. Jimmy was in intensive care for a long
time. We knew he had brain damage, and the doctors believed he would die. Allie took to his bed. When they questioned him, he couldn’t remember a damn thing.”

“Of course, you told the police this at the time? Or did they ask?”

“Indeed, we told them. I don’t think they believed a word. We didn’t see any boys. Allie didn’t remember anything. No one else was around.”

“And the Fergusons?”

“They were too busy blaming Allie and absolving themselves. They thought he said it to get himself off the hook for leaving his little brother, right, Dad?”

I said, “Well, it’s probably not connected with Jimmy’s disappearance, but if it’s true, it sure explains a lot about Alvin’s reactions.”

“Right you are, Ms. MacPhee. It’s typical of these boys to forget some terrible event and then suffer from flashbacks.”

“It might be even worse for Alvin if some other children caused Jimmy’s brain injury. But if we know for sure, we can help him deal with it.”

“Perhaps,” Mrs. P. said. “Perhaps.”

At that point I woke up Gussie, and we hiked back to the Fergusons’ and the pink ruffled room next to Vince. None of the small pack of Fergusons I encountered inquired about Alvin. They had no word on Jimmy, and at the end of day four that was very bad news.

• • •

It was hard to believe the next morning that I’d had any sleep. My dreams were full of tearing metal, body impacts, videos and vile smelling French fries.

When I opened my eyes, I realized it wasn’t the fries. I gave Gussie a push off the bed and crawled out to face the day. Even a shower and shampoo didn’t seem to make much difference.

Alvin and Mrs. P. had already arrived from next door for breakfast. Alvin looked daisy fresh as he bustled about in the kitchen. Mrs. Parnell was also full of pep. Gussie had preceded me to the kitchen by a full fifteen minutes and wolfed the last serving of French toast. I muscled my way to the coffee pot. Mrs. Parnell had news.

“Father Blaise is in Ottawa? You’re kidding me,” I said.

Mrs. Parnell shrugged. “He’s attending a conference at St. Paul’s University. Loretta and Donald Donnie checked their sources. Father Blaise is on the program and couldn’t cancel out. He’ll be in Ottawa for a week. That’s the best I can come up with. Apparently he was not at all happy to go. He wanted to stay with the Fergusons.”

“Well, well, well. Maybe you can find out how to reach him.”

“I’m on it, Ms. MacPhee. I’ll give St. Paul’s a call and see how you can contact him.”

“Ready to roll, Camilla?” Alvin said.

• • •

We were back downtown before Gussie knew we were gone.

Alvin said. “The shifts probably change for holidays. We should check with everyone who works at the video store to see if anyone remembers who else was in the shop when Jimmy was hiding. If Jimmy ran out and ran down the street, it would be because either the person had left, or was in the video store.”

“Or maybe the person walked off in the opposite direction. Or was no longer in view. Or maybe Jimmy panicked.”

“Yeah.”

“You know something, Alvin, let’s pick this stuff off in the order of likelihood. My money’s on someone being in the video shop.”

Too bad no one in the video store remembered anything. We decided to wait for the next shift. Our blue-haired buddy wasn’t working that morning.

I said, “Okay, let’s keep going anyway. The second most likely scenario is the person walked in the opposite direction. No?”

“I guess so.”

“Let’s retrace where Jimmy might have gone.”

“We know he ran down Charlotte Street.”

When we reached the corner by Fuzzy’s, deserted in the daytime, we had three choices. Four if you counted retracing our steps. Alvin couldn’t imagine Jimmy doing that.

“Okay, be Jimmy for a minute, Alvin, where would you go?”

Alvin pursed his lips. “Not down Townsend that way.”

“Why not?”

“Jimmy was scared of a big German Shepherd that used to live on that block. He wouldn’t go past the house.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Look, you told me to be Jimmy. I’m being Jimmy. I’m afraid of the dog that used to live in that house. Accept it.”

“Right. Narrows the field. Let’s try out the remaining two.”

“He was seen on the boardwalk.”

“But he was seen on the boardwalk in the evening. If you were Jimmy, would you stay on the boardwalk all that time?”

Alvin thought for a minute. “No, someone would have seen him.”

“And he used to hide if he was scared.”

“He couldn’t hide on the boardwalk. So where would he hide?”

“Okay, Alvin, let’s keep walking down Charlotte Street toward the park and keep thinking like Jimmy. Maybe he was trying to get home.”

“Jimmy wasn’t crazy about this route either.”

“Why not?”

“Who knows? But he’d never walk all the way to the end.”

We were already part way. “So what would he do? Hide?”

“Maybe. Behind someone’s house perhaps. In a garage.”

“What?”

We stared at each other. Could Jimmy Ferguson be stuck in someone’s garage for more than four days? Accidentally locked in by someone who’d left town?

“If Violet were here, she’d suggest a military strategy,” Alvin said.

“Good thinking. Let’s split up. You take this side, and I’ll take the other.”

Alvin said, “No. We’re working well together. One of us might notice something the other one didn’t.”

“Deal.” We agreed to start again at the top of the street and to knock on every door. If someone was home, we’d explain we were looking for Jimmy and ask if we could search the back yard, garage and basement. We’d ask if they had seen Jimmy on Canada Day. If no one was home, we decided to overlook the finer points of the law in terms of trespassing.

• • •

“Stop looking so down, Alvin.”

“We’ve been at it for an hour, we’re coming up empty and
we’re halfway down the street.”

“We have to keep slogging. We don’t have anything more effective to do.”

“I could be out combing the woods with everyone else.”

“Go do it, Alvin, if it makes you happy. I’ll keep on here.”