Ray Deveau was at his desk, still in a good mood. “Reefer Keefer? I’ll be damned.”
“You better hurry up, because I think he’s on his way out of town. It must really piss you off when people try to do your job, but I had to tell you.”
After I hung up, I turned to Alvin. “All he said was thanks. That’s pretty weird, don’t you think?”
“It’s different down here.”
“Maybe. Hard to believe he’s related to Mombourquette.”
We painstakingly worked our way up and down Charlotte Street and all of its cross streets, asking everyone we saw if they’d seen Jimmy Ferguson make a phone call on July 1st. More than one person mentioned to us that if they had seen him, they wouldn’t have been too stupid to call the police, since nobody could live in that town and not know Jimmy Ferguson was missing.
Others squeezed Alvin’s hand in sympathy. We were batting zero by the time we passed Fuzzy’s Fries.
Alvin said, “Jimmy loves these fries. They’re the best in the world, but Fuzzy only opens when it starts to get dark.”
“Do you think he might have called Brandon from here?”
“You can’t make a phone call from a chip wagon, so that doesn’t make sense.”
“You know something? We only asked people who are around here in the day. Let’s come back when Fuzzy’s is open and try again. I bet we’ll get different answers.”
“All right.” Alvin looked like a poster boy for discouragement.
“We need to check something out in the meantime,” I said. “Let’s go. It’s not like we have time to waste.”
“Where are we going?” Alvin said.
“Where we should have started.”
I didn’t spot Vince when we trooped through the Ferguson front door. Some Fergusons were finishing up a dinner of homemade lasagna, salad and rolls.
“Vince is back from Mira,” Mrs. Ferguson said. She lifted a fresh stack of sugar cookies from a cookie tray onto a rack to cool.
I didn’t ask where he was.
“I should be searching too,” Alvin said.
I said, “No, we’re doing something useful.”
Mrs. Ferguson looked up in surprise. “Are you, Allie? What?”
Frances Ann glanced up from her list and actually snorted. They might as well have whacked him with the cookie tray. Alvin opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
I said, “We’re retracing Jimmy’s steps and talking to his friends. We’re looking for something the police might have overlooked.”
“But the police are trained to do that.”
“They’re stretched to the limit on this with the hit and run too. It would be easy for them to miss something.”
“Oh, I can’t believe that. That Ray Deveau knows his stuff. He’s extremely intelligent and cooperative.”
I stared Frances Ann down. “That and a quarter won’t get you a cup of coffee. Criminal lawyers make a good living out of demonstrating what the police overlook or misinterpret or just plain screw up. Drop into court some day and see for yourself.”
Frances Ann gasped.
I steamed ahead. “Alvin has excellent judgement and the best knowledge of the community. And he’s more intelligent than anyone I’ve encountered here. In fact, as a result, we’ve given the police two new leads. And might I add, Ray Deveau was grateful.”
Alvin gawked at me, slack-jawed, which didn’t help to bolster the case about his intelligence.
I said, “Let’s go, Alvin. Upstairs first.”
Of course, if I’d been smart I would have had some lasagna and salad before insulting everyone in the kitchen.
“What do you want to pick up?” Alvin said when we reached the second floor.
“Nothing. I don’t want people interfering with our strategy.”
“We have a strategy?”
“We do now. Our next step is the one we should have taken first. We have been retracing Jimmy’s steps on Sunday. And we’ve found out some very interesting stuff.”
“We have?”
“Were you not with me all afternoon? We know he visited Reefer Keefer regularly, and your family would never have permitted that.”
“Right.”
“So what else don’t we know? And why?”
Alvin said, “I hate it when you ask questions like that. How can we know what we don’t know?”
“Don’t be defeatist, Alvin. Disregard everything we’ve heard, and start at the beginning.”
“But you said we were getting useful information.”
“The useful part is everyone has a different perspective. People substitute beliefs for facts. Are you with me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Take Reefer, for instance. No one asked him about Jimmy but us. That’s because they believe Jimmy went only to certain places. That belief limited where they thought of looking. Lucky for us Loretta and Donald Donnie like to gossip.”
“But Reefer didn’t tell us anything we can use.”
“Yes, he did. He told us Jimmy talked all the time. So who else might he have talked to? We know Jimmy had the comic, and he hadn’t yet run into whoever scared him. Don’t forget that. We haven’t found anyone who saw Jimmy at that time, but my gut feeling tells me we’ll get lucky tonight.”
“I hope so.”
“The other thing to remember is that everything we have heard so far has been based in emotion. Your family members want to think that Jimmy is good and docile and only goes where he’s supposed to, so that’s what they believe. Now, Alvin, start at the beginning.”
“Where’s that?”
“Jimmy’s room. Where his day began.”
“But the cops and my family must have searched it.”
“Maybe. Remember, we’ll be looking with different beliefs.”
I plunked myself down on the plaid bedspread and glanced around again. The bedside table held an alarm clock, two loonies, a Matthew Good Band CD and a package of Juicy Fruit.
“Alvin, what’s missing?”
He scanned the room. “I don’t know. Jimmy didn’t have a whole lot of stuff.”
“What about videos?”
“What about them?”
“Well, apparently he would take videos to Brandon’s. I don’t see any. Where did he keep them?”
“He didn’t own any. He always wanted to watch new ones.”
“So then he rented them?”
“Of course.”
“No need to look at me like I’m crazy. So he rented them and that means, what, he went to the video store?”
“Where else are you going to rent them?”
“But we didn’t go into a video rental place when we were retracing his steps today.”
“Does that matter? I’m sure the police did.”
“We’re getting our own information. We’re not counting on the police.”
“If you say so, Camilla.”
“I do. Now, here’s the other thing. Where are your postcards?”
“My postcards?”
“Don’t parrot. You kept Jimmy’s. Wouldn’t he have yours?” Alvin looked around the room and scratched his head. “He used to tack them up on the bulletin board.”
“Do you think he hid them because he wasn’t supposed to have them?”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s been suggested that Vince thought your postcards would put ideas into Jimmy’s head.”
“Ideas in his head. What’s wrong with ideas, especially in your head?”
I said, “Don’t even think about getting emotional on me. So where do you think the goddam postcards are? Would he hide them?”
It took a full minute before Alvin got a grip on himself and said, “Come here.”
He headed to the end of the hallway next to the bathroom. He opened a door to reveal a well-stocked linen closet, nicely organized, with simple, flowered sheets and pastel towels. Alvin hopped up on the first shelf and twisted around. He reached behind the top of the door jamb inside the closet and groped around. He emerged with a light coating of dust on his ponytail and a large black cookie tin. Two seconds later, he brought down another one and sneezed.
Alvin held the first box, and we both peered at the contents. What looked like dozens of postcards. A matching set to the ones Jimmy sent Alvin. Except these featured the Peace Tower, Mounties, tulips, skaters, flags, maple leaves. Our Ottawa shtick. The second one held more postcards and a roll of bills that looked like a couple of hundred bucks.
I was surprised, but Alvin obviously wasn’t. “You knew?”
“It’s where Jimmy and I always hid things we didn’t want people to find. Like extra money. I guess you were right. He didn’t want Ma and Vince to read the postcards.”
“What wouldn’t he want us to read?”
Alvin tightened his grip on the box. “Nothing, Vince.”
In my experience, the best defence is a good offence. And offence is my speciality. I stepped forward, tilted my head and looked Vince Ferguson in the eye. “I’m glad you’re here. I want to ask you something. Will you excuse us, Alvin?”
I guess it took Vince by surprise, because he followed me into my room.
“Look,” I said, when the door clicked shut in Alvin’s astonished face. “I don’t like this any more than you do. But Alvin doesn’t know any of the details of the accusation against Jimmy.”
“What accusation?”
“Don’t bullshit me, Vince. I’m talking about Honey.”
“That foolishness. There was nothing to any of that.”
“Look, I don’t like you any more than you like me. And I particularly don’t like being in a confined space with you. So what? You have a big problem, and keeping stupid secrets won’t help.”
“Wait a minute, you are an interloper here.”
“No, you wait. I can understand why you might protect the family from whatever. And I even understand why you wouldn’t want people gossiping. But I am not in this for the gossip. You have a missing brother. I have a life on hold. So the sooner you get your head out of your butt the better.”
Vince leaned down and stuck his face into mine. “Don’t let us stop you from going back to Ottawa.”
“Maybe if you knew what you were doing, Jimmy wouldn’t be missing.”
Vince turned grey. He sank onto the bed and buried his face in his hands. It took me by surprise. So perhaps that wasn’t the best way to get the answers I needed.
“Okay, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t imply you were responsible for Jimmy’s disappearance.”
He raised his head. “Maybe you should.” Now it was my turn to keep quiet. “If we’d handled it differently, it might have been better.”
He took a deep breath before he spoke. “Jimmy was wild about that girl. First, we thought it was cute. He followed her everywhere whenever she was in town. He’d never had a girlfriend. Everyone in the family teased him a little bit, but it seemed so harmless. And she was away at Dalhousie University, except for holidays.”
“Teenage boys get crushes.”
“He didn’t always understand the effects of his actions.”
“All right.”
“We should have paid more attention. Anything that’s ever gone wrong has been because one of us wasn’t watching him.”
“What exactly did he do?”
“He’d sit on the bench across from her house. He’d follow her home if he saw her walking.”
“Doesn’t sound too serious to me. He must have been about thirteen. And she was what, nineteen or so?”
“Then he got his hands on her telephone number, and he’d call her whenever she was home from Dal.”
“Did she tell him to stop?”
“I think she liked having him follow her around like a dog.” Vince managed to malign both Jimmy and Honey with one sentence.
“So she wasn’t bothered?”
“Who knows. Her mother called to complain. Ma made Jimmy promise to stop.”
“Then what?”
“Then we didn’t even think much about it until the night the cops arrived to question Jimmy.” It was obvious that Vince was related to Alvin. You had to be prepared to drag everything out of both of them.
“What did they question him about?”
“They said a girl had been attacked. They wanted to know where Jimmy had been that evening.”
“And where had Jimmy been?”
“He was at the parish youth club. Later he went for a walk.”
“He wasn’t doing homework or anything?”
“It was a Friday night. Thanksgiving weekend.”
“So he was out, but people couldn’t say where?”
“After that, we really clamped down on him and made sure we always knew where he was. I’m not sure how seriously the cops took the youth club thing. It was a big crowd, and Jimmy wouldn’t have been the focus of anyone’s attention. Anybody could say they went for a walk.”
“Okay, but the cops followed up on that church thing?”
“Youth club. Yeah. Later on. Father Blaise said they did.”
“But on the night they questioned Jimmy, what happened?”
“They took him to the police station when we were out. Ma and I went over after.”
“Why did they take him in?”
“Why do you think?”
“Cut the shit, Vince. What exactly was he accused of?”
“Someone climbed in through a bedroom window and attempted to sexually assault her. The father heard a noise and knocked on her door asking if everything was all right.”
“The alleged assault took place right in her home?”
“Yes.”
“Her bedroom. Where was it? On the second floor?”
“How should I know? They wouldn’t even say who was attacked. They have to protect the victim. But we could figure it out by what they asked.”
“So they told you the father scared the intruder away?”
“Everyone knew.”
“So once again, I have to ask, why Jimmy? We have a kid who’s never been in any kind of real trouble. All of sudden out of the blue he gets hauled into the cop shop to face serious allegations.”
“It almost killed Ma.”
“I can understand. But why did they come for Jimmy?”
Vince’s voice broke. “Apparently she said our Jimmy tried to rape her.”