“Ms. Redmore, my name is Camilla MacPhee. I’m a lawyer with Justice for Victims. I’m doing a bit of research on a somewhat sensitive issue to do with justice for victims and policy implications,” I said. “I am sorry to bother you on the week-end, but I think you’d bring a unique perspective to my research. Could you spare half an hour to discuss it? Over a drink perhaps.” I was prepared to argue the case.
“Sure,” she said. “That sounds very interesting. When would you like to meet?”
“This afternoon?” Almost too good to be true. “Are you okay meeting on a weekend?”
“Better than during the week. It’s hard to get away from the office,” she said.
“Great. Five o’clock okay?” Five would give me plenty of time to catch up with P. J. at Bluesfest.
“Five it is.”
“How about meeting at the Black Tomato in the market? Is that convenient?”
“Sounds good, it’s not far from my place,” she said. “See you on the patio if the weather holds.”
I stared at the phone. Honey Redmore had sounded quite pleasant, although I wasn’t so sure how long that would last.
I found no one who looked like a Honey Redmore in The Black Tomato. I decided maybe something had come up, and maybe I would be cooling my jets for a while. I headed toward the patio and stuck my head outside.
At a table in the shady corner a pretty, dark-haired woman smiled in my direction. I gave her a nod and kept looking.
“Are you Camilla?” she said.
“Yes. Do I know you?”
“I’m Honey Redmore.”
“I don’t know why, but for some reason, I expected a tall blonde.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” she said.
“Who’s disappointed? I have issues with tall blondes. Now I’m in a good mood.”
“I bet there’s a story.”
“Yep. But it would take way too long.”
“I bet I can swap you tall blonde story for tall blonde story.” She had a pale heart-shaped face fringed by very expensive shiny hair the colour of good quality coffee beans. She also had huge almond-shaped eyes with serious eyelashes. She looked great in jeans and aT-shirt.
“Buy you a drink?” I said.
“You bet. Corona and lime,” she said, smiling. I figured somewhere an orthodontist had died rich and happy. Honey Redmore didn’t have much to worry about in the looks department. I had been prepared not to like her. I decided I might have to work at that. It was too bad, because she wouldn’t like me much by the time we were finished our cosy chat.
I stuck with coffee. Didn’t want to lose my advantage. I decided to wait until the drinks came before I got to the point. “How did you guess who I was?” I said, stalling for time.
“Recognized you from your picture in the papers.”
“You got a lot of media coverage last winter.”
This bothered me. “You mean I look like those pictures in the paper? Wet or cold or both?”
“Oh look, here’s our drinks. In the nick of time too,” she said.
My family had videotaped the television coverage of last year’s debacle. “I’m not a vain person, but there are limits,” I said, resisting the urge to dash to the ladies and check my reflection.
She seemed to think this was amusing. She had quite the glint in her eye, or maybe that was the late afternoon sun glancing off the Corona bottle.
It was time to get down to brass tacks. “The reason I wanted to talk to you was about a young man named James Ferguson.”
She put the Corona bottle down with a thump.
“Surprised?” I said.
“Yes. I thought we’d be talking about youth issues and policy implications.”
“This is an issue, but a specific one. You know Jimmy Ferguson?”
“Yes. I know Jimmy.”
“Good. I have a few questions to ask about him.”
She twisted her hands. “Poor Jimmy.”
“What do you mean, poor Jimmy?”
“Well, he is missing, isn’t he?
“Oh, you know about that?”
“Of course, it was all over the news. Police bulletins.”
“Really?” I was surprised. I guess Mombourquette had been on the ball about that, or maybe it was the RCMP. Whatever, it was good news.
“And they haven’t found him yet?” Her lower lip quivered.
“No,” I said. “Not yet.”
“There’s no way he’s going to be all right on his own.”
“You mean because of his medical conditions?”
“I mean, he is too innocent and trusting. It’s like someone wearing a KICK ME sign.”
“You know him well?”
“I used to. When I lived in Sydney.”
“How did you meet him?”
She laughed. “It was Sydney. You don’t have to meet people. You automatically know them. Everyone knew Jimmy. He had his little routes, and you would run into him all the time.”
“Did you have a good relationship with him?”
“I was always glad to see him. He got so excited about things. If someone had sent him a letter. Or whatever video he was about to watch. Sometimes he was excited about school. I’ve been worried sick all week.”
“All week? When did you find out he was missing?”
She stared at me. “Well, you really couldn’t be in town that weekend without knowing something was going on. It was all over the media. The radio was having call-ins about him. The newspaper ran his picture. They ran appeals on television. This is not the sort of thing you get in Sydney.”
“Sydney? You were there?”
“Yes.”
That was a shock. “But I thought your family lived here.”
Another smile. “We are allowed back, you know. My brother wanted to connect with an old school buddy, and my mother and I flew in to meet him. My mother still has friends in Sydney. We hadn’t been back since my father died. Then we left town late in the evening of July 1st and headed for Baddeck. We spent a couple of days going around the trail, then we drove to Halifax and flew home.”
“Did you see Jimmy on Canada Day?”
She shook her head. “No. We were trying to catch up with people. The whole day was taken up racing from house to house. People can’t get enough of you. They want to feed you and make you drink and all that good stuff.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I figured you’d recognize the behaviour.”
“Sure do. Back to Jimmy Ferguson. You’re sure you didn’t see him?”
“Absolutely. I would have loved to have seen Jimmy. When I heard the news, I racked my brain to see if I could remember spotting him. I wasn’t even sure I’d recognize him after all these years. He must be in his twenties now. Even when we were going around the trail, the radio kept broadcasting these appeals for information over and over. It was on every TV station in our accomodation. We were all quite agitated about it, but none of us saw him.”
“Did you speak to the police?”
“Why would I speak to the police?” Was it my imagination or was Honey Redmore the slightest bit rattled?
“Didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I am not upset.”
“Sorry.” Like hell I was sorry. Something was not right, and I planned to dig and push and unsettle until I found out what it was.
“It’s okay. I was disturbed about him being missing, that’s all.”
“And yet you didn’t speak to the police.”
She gave me a look that showed the spine she would have needed in that high-powered job with the ear of the Minister of whatever the hell it was.
“I understand there was an incident with you and Jimmy several years ago.”
The bottle slipped from her hand and shattered on the cobble-stoned patio. Corona splashed my bare legs. The little slice of lime skittered under the next table. The smell of beer filled the air.
Every table at the patio was filled, and every person there whipped around to stare at me, it seemed. I figured no one could believe that pretty little Honey could have a clumsy accident.
I lifted my intact mug to set the record straight. The server scurried over to get the broken bottle shards out of the way.
“Don’t worry about it,” she told me. “It happens. Would you like another one?”
It was another five minutes before the patio was swept up and Honey had her replacement Corona. The server gave Honey a sympathetic look. I guess she figured Honey was covering up for klutzy old me, and wasn’t that nice of her.
“Sorry about that,” Honey said. “And the day was going so well up to that point.”
I said, “I’d like to talk about an incident several years ago. Something to do with a situation between Jimmy Ferguson and you.” She shook her head. “In your home.”
“No.”
“Some kind of an attack, I hear.”
“There was no attack.”
“Assault perhaps.”
“No.”
“Look, I am a victims’ rights advocate. I understand how difficult this would have been for you, particularly since you liked Jimmy. I am sure it was traumatic and upsetting, but the fact is Jimmy does not function intellectually as an adult, so he could easily misread situations. I need you to tell me exactly what happened.”
“Nothing happened.”
“Please,” I said. “Work with me here. Jimmy’s out on his own, without his medication, which you will know if you are following the news on him. He’s already most likely done himself more physical damage, and he’ll be dead soon if we don’t find him. If we can understand his behaviour, perhaps it can give us some leads about what he might have done that led to his disappearance.”
Her hand was tight around the Corona. “I wish you’d listen to me. No attack. No assault. Jimmy Ferguson never did a thing wrong to me. Never.”
“But I’ve been told the police took Jimmy into the station after something happened between you and him.”
“Trust me. Nothing happened. Why are you asking about this?”
“But the police did take Jimmy in for questioning. Not that they will talk to me.”
“They took him in for questioning?”
“Yes. For hours. Without legal counsel, I might add.”
“I didn’t know about any of that.”
“Didn’t they take a statement from you?”
“No. They didn’t.”
“But they must have. That doesn’t make sense.”
“Well, they didn’t. And that’s because there was nothing to take a statement about. I repeat. No assault and no attempt at assault and nothing that could have been construed as assault or attempted assault. Am I making myself clear?” Her cheeks blazed.
“Really? And yet they took him in for questioning. Why was that?”
“I don’t know. This is really upsetting,” she said. “I thought I’d put it all behind me.”
“Put what behind you? You just said nothing happened.”
“There were rumours. In a town like Sydney, where it seems there’s only one degree of separation from everyone, gossip can spread like a virus.”
I rubbed my temples. “Do you mind just telling me what might have kick-started the rumours, and then I could stop upsetting you.”
“Okay. The rumour went all over town that Jimmy had attempted to rape me. Some of the rumours went further and said he’d succeeded. Other people said he’d been arrested and charged. I even heard he’d been sent away.”
“What was behind the rumours?”
“Nothing Jimmy did, that’s for sure. How could he have been arrested for attacking me if no one asked me a thing about it?”
“And the police never talked to you?”
“Please believe me.”
“And life went on as before?”
“Not really. I had a lot on my mind at the time. I was very upset when I heard the rumours. Of course, some of them were really nasty.”
“Yes?”
She gripped the new Corona bottle. “Some people suggested I might have teased him, then turned on him when he tried to take it further. Others seemed to believe Jimmy was a ticking time bomb.”
“Jimmy was damaged by these rumours.”
“I’m sure he was. And so was I. Everyone was diminished by them.”
“The police never should have taken Jimmy in. Something’s wrong about this story. Something’s missing,” I said.
“Did you speak to them?”
“I tried, but there are issues with the Young Offenders Act, so they weren’t going to talk. Now I see that even hauling him in was a travesty of justice.”
“The whole thing was a travesty.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. But I can see why they’d have to investigate any accusations.”
“I hope this is the last time I have to repeat this. I did not make any accusations.”
“Even his brother said Jimmy had a crush on you.”
“He often sat outside the house and waited for me. I liked him. And I never led him on. And he never did anything that was out of order. He was very sweet.”
“And you continued to socialize with him?”
“No, I didn’t. My father died quite suddenly, and we moved from Sydney very shortly afterwards. Of course, the rumours were upsetting, so I kept to myself. I didn’t really have any occasion to see him after that time.” I opened my mouth, but she interrupted me. “But I would have had time for Jimmy. You can believe that.”
The funny thing was, I did believe it.
“One more question,” I said. “If you didn’t complain to the police about Jimmy, who did?”
Honey looked like she’d been smacked with a solid right hook. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go now.” She stood up, tossed a twenty onto the table and headed off across the cobbled courtyard at a brisk clip. I figured that was the end of what might have been a beautiful friendship. And I knew I’d hit paydirt.