LITMIR.BIZ

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hardly a secret that escapes somebody’s notice. Though whether they’re respected or revealed is anybody’s guess, but no — she wouldn’t bury her husband on the grounds. I can almost guarantee it.”

      “You said ‘almost.’”

      Saylor shot Dan a look. “Give me a break, buddy. She would never do it.”

      “Okay, what about the lake?”

      Saylor still looked doubtful. “Let me get this straight. You think she poisoned her husband, then dumped him in the trunk of her car and drove his body across on the ferry up to Lake on the Mountain? And she then dragged him across the road and dropped him into a lake frequented by tourists…?” Saylor stared at him. “Do you see how flimsy this is?”

      Dan sighed. He was right. It sounded crazy coming from Saylor’s mouth.

      “You can’t file a murder charge against someone without a body or at least some major evidence pointing to murder. You don’t have either, and you may never have.” Saylor paused to listen to a radio report. When it was over, he looked at Dan again. “In the meantime, don’t be surprised if I have to serve you with a restraining order. Burgess is going to be all over me the second he hears about this. You’ll be lucky if she doesn’t charge you with attempted murder if she figures out what those flowers were.”

      Dan started to protest. Pete wagged a stubby white finger under Dan’s nose. “I don’t want to hear you’ve gone back there again. I know you mean well, but I’ve got a job to do. Please — don’t get in my way again.”

      Twenty-Four

      Terminal

      “Mr. Dan Sharp?”

      The voice tugged at him like a rusty razor blade.

      “Yes?”

      “This is Magnus Ferguson.”

      Dan felt a bottomless space open under him. He listened, ears glued to every inflection, as Magnus described how the note Dan tucked into his mailbox had been forwarded to his current address.

      “Anyway,” he said, finally getting around to the heart of the matter. “I understand you have some questions for me.”

      “Yes, I do. I’m looking into a disappearance that took place some years ago. Did you once work for a man named Craig Killingworth?”

      Ten, fifteen seconds evaporated. Dan thought Magnus wasn’t going to answer or was scouring the storeroom of memory to retrieve a lost file. Then he said, “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a very long time.”

      “Then you did work for him?”

      “What is this about?” came Magnus’s savaged rasp.

      “I’m a missing persons investigator.”

      “So your card said.”

      “I’ve been hired to find Craig Killingworth.”

      “Who are you working for? Is it Lucille?” the man asked suspiciously.

      “If I told you I don’t know who I’m working for, you might find that difficult to believe or understand, but I can tell you I’m definitely not working for Lucille Killingworth. I had a rather unpleasant call from Lucille’s lawyer last week warning me not to pursue the matter.”

      Dan heard Magnus chuckling on the other end. “Oh, she can be persuasive, all right!”

      “Do you know where Mr. Killingworth is now, by any chance?”

      Magnus snorted. “He’s dead.”

      “Do you know that for a fact?”

      “Oh, I know it all right.”

      “May I ask how you…?”

      “No, sir — I will not discuss this over the phone. I don’t trust the phone.” Dan waited. “You come here and I’ll give you proof.”

      Magnus agreed to meet with Dan on the island. “I haven’t been back out to my trailer for a long time,” he said. “I think it’s time I paid a visit.”

      Anywhere else, and at the very least they would have been hookers. In some parts of the world their dress would have got them killed. Here, they were schoolgirls having a lark — fishnet stockings, high-heels, pert fresh-cut hair, trim buffed nails, and pretty, chirpy smiles.

      Dan and Donny navigated the narrow aisle leading to the back of the Walnut Café. With its Korean décor and mostly Korean clientele, the place was known mainly for one thing: a menu consisting of walnut-shaped nuggets of nougat-filled delight, with side orders of sugar-coated berry or seaweed pancakes, and lacy, tongue-shrinkingly sweet cookies. Make that two things: it also had the worst coffee Dan had ever tasted. It was Donny’s favourite café.

      In the back room, they found a chipped table among the coat racks and stacked take-out boxes. Inflected Korean syllables filled the air. On TV and in newspapers, reporters bemoaned once-liberal Canada’s growing racism, as evidenced in the polls and statistics revealing a negative attitude toward the country’s burgeoning immigrant population. Are we no longer the tolerant, accepting land we once were? I doubt it, Dan thought, looking around him. The question was wrongly put. Canadians were what they’d always been, but they’d grown wary on realizing a noticeable number of the new arrivals crowding their shores and cities in search of a better life had come intolerant themselves, or had at least come ignorant of the ideals of liberal humanism that allowed them to be here.

      He looked over at the table of teenage girls trembling with laughter as they ate their treats and gossiped in Korean. Chances were some of their fellow immigrants would have sent them packing rather than allow them access to these same shores, given half a chance. Dan also knew that men like him and Donny would quickly have been refused entry or denied their rights by many of these same new citizens. That is, if they weren’t imprisoned or killed outright. You didn’t overturn positive human values and replace them with weaker, intolerant ones. That was not the Canadian way.

      Donny was nearly over his gloom-and-doom act about the lost job, no longer convinced his life was at an end if he never sniffed another vial of overpriced skunk gland reduction. He was even considering taking time off before embarking on a search for the next phase of his existence. Still, he’d come in reflective, on the down-turned side.

      Dan turned his attention to what Donny’d been saying.

      “… and you start to wonder, you know, are the good things still ahead of you or have they already passed you by? And did you even notice?”

      Dan listened as a sailor might eye heavy, low-lying clouds in a rising wind — concerned, but not overly. And then it was his turn. He described his confrontation with Lucille Killingworth outside her estate.

      Donny paused, walnut cake halfway to his mouth. “As if I don’t have enough to worry about! First the incident on the boat with the Brazilian boy, and now attempted murder. Is there nothing you won’t stop at? I think you’re becoming unhinged. And nice shiner, by the way. I assume you’ll let me in on that one eventually?”

      “Nothing to tell — I got mugged in Sudbury.”

      Donny looked at Dan for a long while before speaking. “Why are you doing this?”

      “Doing what?”

      “This!” He waved his hands about, oblivious to the Korean family sitting next to them warily evading his reach. “All of this crazy man stuff.”

      “It’s my job.”

      “Your job is not to run amok at weddings and attack rich heiresses whose families comprise the bedrock of the Canadian establishment.”

      “True.”

      Donny slowly shook his head and looked away, a monk contemplating life’s greater mysteries. Finally, he turned back. “Who were your heroes, man? And don’t give

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