two live here?” Dan asked, breaking up the pathetic charade.
The pair looked at one another, as though to get their story straight before answering. “Nah,” said the young man, shaking his head. “We don’t live around here.”
Dan mentioned Magnus Ferguson, but the name drew a blank. “Thanks, then.”
He took the stairs to the third floor. The hallway reeked of urine and years of accumulated neglect. There’d once been carpet laid down, but that had been ripped out and remnants of an adhesive left stuck to the concrete floor. He knocked on a faded blue door that opened almost immediately. A thin woman in a pink sweater stared at him. Stringy hair hung down past her shoulders. Dan would have been hard put to say if she were young or old. The smell of something meaty and slightly sour caught his nose.
She looked at him uncertainly. “Oh, I thought you were Mary,” she said, tucking a brown strand behind one ear. Then, “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for a former tenant, Mr. Magnus Ferguson,” Dan said. “I believe he lived here a number of years ago.”
She scrunched her brow and appeared to be thinking. “Doesn’t sound familiar,” she said, turning back to the room. “Mom? Do you remember a Magnus Ferguson used to live here?”
“Oh, yes,” came the feeble reply. “He used to live down the hall when we first moved here. You were still a kid, though, so you wouldn’t remember him likely.”
“You’re right, I don’t,” the woman called out over her shoulder. She turned back to Dan. “I don’t remember him,” she said with a shrug.
“Who’s asking?” came the mother’s voice.
“My name’s Dan Sharp,” he called over the pink shoulder. “I’m a missing persons investigator. Would you by any chance know where Mr. Ferguson moved to?”
“Let me think. I seem to recall he moved just a few streets away from here. I saw him once or twice after he moved.”
Dan read out the address he’d just visited. “Would that be where he moved?”
“That sounds right,” came the disembodied voice.
“He’s not there now, but thank you.” He wrote Magnus’s name on the back of a card and gave it to the woman in the doorway. “Call me, please, if you or your mother think of anything else.”
She scrutinized it then looked up. “Uh-huh. Okay. Will do.” She smiled sadly and watched till he reached the end of the hallway before closing the door.
On the ground floor, the two derelicts were still lying on the doorstep. They looked up with glazed eyes at Dan’s approach. He seemed to register with them briefly before they turned away again.
The doughy hotel clerk recognized him as he crossed the lobby. He hailed Dan and handed him a note. “I didn’t want to miss you, sir,” he said, as though he’d been waiting anxiously all afternoon for Dan’s return.
“Thank you for being watchful,” Dan said, tipping him. He looked at the note: Call Ahmed Rathnam (“guy in wheelchair”), followed by a phone number.
“Hello, Ahmed, this is Dan Sharp. I got your message.”
“Hello, sir. Good to hear from you. Mr. Sharp, I think I may have some information for you, sir.”
“About Magnus Ferguson?”
“I have indeed, Mr. Sharp. I think you will be pleased. I have an address for you.”
Dan’s ears picked up at that. “Is it recent?”
The man laughed again. “Sir, I know it is recent.”
“I’ll be right over,” Dan said.
He was at the man’s door in fifteen minutes. Ahmed waved at him from the same window. He turned back to the room and Dan heard him call out. A moment later, a small boy opened the door and looked up with wide brown eyes.
“Come in, please.”
Ahmed appeared at the top of the stairs in his wheelchair. “Sir, I think you will be pleased with what I have found for you. It is an address. A current address.” He called out to the boy, who ran nimbly up the stairs and snatched a paper from his hand and back down again, handing it to Dan.
Dan read it over and looked up. “I’m grateful. Will fifty dollars compensate you for your troubles?”
The man bowed his head. “I humbly thank you.”
“If you don’t mind my asking — where did you get this?”
The man laughed. His index finger touched his forehead and pointed up. “I told you, sir, I am all the time having ideas. This woman comes to collect the mail once or twice a month. I sent my grandson Naveen out to find her and he came back with this.”
“And this is where she sends his mail?”
Dan read the rural route and postal box number on Vancouver Island. There was no guarantee Magnus Ferguson would be there, but it merited a try. He might be seeing Trevor sooner rather than later.
“It is, sir. It is.”
Dan handed the boy the reddish bill.
The boy grinned as he held it out before him. “Five-zero. Fifty. That’s a lots of money!” he exclaimed.
“Yes, it is,” Dan said. “Make sure your grandfather buys you something nice with it.”
The boy nodded, smiling. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Oh, yes! No more kurta pyjama. I want Game Boy!”
Out on deck, the engine’s hum filled the air. A blurry moon burned a bone-white path along the darkened strait. Mountains loomed black on either side of the boat, deceptively close. Mayne Island was somewhere ahead. If Trevor sounded welcoming, Victoria could wait a day or two.
He flipped open his cell phone and dialled. Trevor’s reassuring voice answered.
“Hi there, sexy guy.”
There was a pause. “Dan?” The voice was hesitant.
“Correct. How are you?”
“Great! I’m really well, thanks! How are you?”
“I’m doing all right, too. I thought I’d call and say hi.”
“Well, I’m glad you did. It’s good to hear from you. It sounds really windy, by the way. Where are you?”
“Outside on my cell phone.”
“It’s nice to hear your voice.”
“And yours. I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately.”
Trevor laughed softly. “That’s sweet. Though it would be nicer to hear you say it in person. I was serious when I said you could visit any time.”
“I
