Little Boy Blues (15 page)

Fine. I moved a stack of comics and plunked myself on the floor. “We are retracing Jimmy’s movements on the day he disappeared. So we wanted to speak to you,” I said as primly as I could from my lowly position. Gussie licked my ear.

“Ah, shit, man. I feel so bad. Ripped up.”

“So Jimmy was here?” I said, feeling tricky.

“Sure was. He’s here every Sunday. You could count on him. You could use him to set a clock.”

“And he was here this past Sunday too? Canada Day? On time?”

Reefer squinted. “On time?”

I wondered how many grey cells were intact behind those heavenly blue eyes. “Yes,” I said, “on time.”

Reefer scratched his beard. “Hard to say.”

“Why?”

“My clock’s not working.”

I felt a throb in my temple. The type Alvin usually triggers. But Alvin appeared to be asleep. I decided this time thing was an unnecessary detour. “Did it seem like he was on time?”

“Oh, yeah, man. Well, you know.”

“So he came here from Thomas’s?”

“Must have.”

“How do you know?”

The eyes got bluer. And blanker. “What? Oh, yeah, he had that borrowed comic Thomas didn’t want to trade. He was excited about it.”

“Okay, so after four then. Do you think he went anywhere
before he came here?” I don’t know why I said this. The whole situation was pretty surreal.

“Well, hey, man. I don’t think so. Jimmy didn’t like change. He wouldn’t mess with his routine without a good reason. He was on his way to Brandon’s. They were going to have some kind of party.”

“For Canada Day.”

“He was looking forward to that party. A barbecue.”

“Did he mention seeing someone he was afraid of?”

Reefer actually blinked. “What would he be afraid of? This is Sydney, man. In the afternoon. And it was, like, Jimmy Ferguson.”

“Perhaps if the police show up, you might remember,” I said from out of the blue.

Reefer blanched.

Alvin’s eyes popped open. “What?” he said.

“What about the seal of confidentiality?” Reefer bleated.

“Oh yes, I forgot about that. So, Reefer, the Ferguson family didn’t mention you were on Jimmy’s route, and neither did the cops. Why is that?”

A shifty look crept over the Christlike features. “That’s weird, man.”

“He wouldn’t have been allowed to visit you if the Fergusons knew.”

Reefer shrugged. “No harm in it.”

Alvin stood and swayed. “You didn’t give him anything, did you?”

“Aw, come on, Allie. I would never’ve done that, man.”

“You supplied it to everyone else.” His tone was calm, but behind the cat’s-eye glasses, Alvin’s eyes narrowed.

“No way, Allie. Not little Jimmy.”

“You better be telling the truth this time.”

Reefer crossed his heart. “I never gave him weed or nothing.”

Alvin continued to stare, eyes narrowed. A little band of sweat broke out on Reefer’s saintly forehead. I had started thinking about this guy as someone who might provide drugs to a child while looking like an illustration from
The Golden Book of Bible Stories
.

“Jimmy came by to see me. He liked to talk. About plans.”

In a cartoon, the light would have gone on over my head.

“What plans?” I said.

“Plans?” Reefer said.

“You just said plans.”

Reefer looked from me to Alvin and back again. “This was Jimmy. He wasn’t too smart about making plans.”

Like Reefer could talk about smart. “But you just said plans. What plans?”

“I don’t think he could’ve made plans. Serious ones.” Reefer looked imploringly at Alvin. “He would have needed help with plans. Don’t you think, Allie? And he’d talk about them. Now that’s the God’s truth. Jimmy couldn’t keep plans a secret from his friends.”

I massaged my temple. “Did he make any calls from here?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. The phone’s cut off, eh. That’s the truth too. You can check.”

I wanted to explore what Reefer might have said that hadn’t been the God’s truth. But it turned out Reefer had a standing date with his parole officer coming up shortly, and he didn’t like to be late.

We left Reefer’s personal time warp not much wiser.

Jimmy didn’t talk much. Jimmy talked a lot. Jimmy was a good boy who always did what he was told. Jimmy would
keep secrets, and Jimmy would hide. Jimmy would sneak off to visit everyone’s favourite source of cannabis.

Jimmy had plans. Jimmy didn’t have plans. Take your pick.

• • •

“What do you think?” I asked Alvin as we set out again.

“You never know with Reefer. He probably doesn’t know himself. Not that much of his original brain is intact, if you get my drift.”

“I definitely do. You think he’s dangerous?”

“No way. And I think we’re wasting time.”

“We know Jimmy wasn’t frightened when he left, if we can believe Reefer. And we know it was after he saw Thomas because Jimmy had the X-Men comic. Do you trust Reefer, Alvin?”

“As far as I could throw the Buick. But I believe he was telling the truth, as he would understand it.”

“So that means that Jimmy saw whoever frightened him somewhere between Reefer’s apartment and Brandon’s place. Let’s figure out who and how. We’ll start with the phone. Where could Jimmy have phoned from between Reefer’s and Brandon’s?”

“Hard to say.”

“But let’s be strategic. It would most likely be in some kind of corner store or at a phone booth. He probably didn’t make the call from one of the big houses near Brandon’s.”

“Makes sense.”

“So let’s walk around this area and see if anyone remembers him making a call. It’s not like we have anything better to do. What time is it?”

Alvin checked his watch. “Almost six.”

“Wait a minute. Six? What kind of parole officer has appointments at six? Son of a gun. Alvin, we’ve been had.”

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.”