*The last few weeks had been alive with news stories, and the Hog was always first on the scene. The radicals and anarchists, the rallies and explosives were doing wonders to inflate Ray’s meager salary.
?The astute reader may wonder as to this unconventional matrimonial setup, but with Jem’s attentiveness to Merinda’s cases and so much of Ray’s salary supporting his sister, it stands to reason that theirs would always be a union fortified by two incomes.
CHAPTER FOUR
Deep in the Canadian wilderness, when winter is first beginning to roar in, a lantern swings, and your bedroll of scratched wool is stretched under canvas, secured by four pegs, barely covering the ice-hard terrain. Near, the smell of pine and the barrels of smoke. Cold, sure, but the landscape full of indescribable smell of promise and light and fresh, cold air. A campfire by which to remember stories or sing a few ballads of years past.
Benfield Citrone and Jonathan Arnasson, Guide to the Canadian Wilderness
Benfield Citrone would rather have been tracking a wounded moose. At least then he’d have a chance of finding it. Benny could use the constellations as a map, the sunlight on his cheek to signal his next turn. But Toronto was smoke and sparks, steel and progress. He preferred the rainbow fringe of the northern lights, the sound of ice crinkling under snowscapes, refreezing after a tease of thaw through the frozen span of winter. Snow was a pillow and the stars were bright, bold, frigidly clear sentinels throughout the unending sky. The rattle of the stove, the wind whining through the crevices of the cabin. The friction of his snowshoes crunching through the hills, and the unexpected beauty of a lynx or an owl, his only company, while he ate beans and drank watered coffee and remembered the past.
Here the neon lights of overhead billboards and the pinging tunes from a nearby nickelodeon backed horns and sirens and squeals and laughter. Every sound battled for seniority, and its symphony was a dissonant clang. Benny watched the moon creep over the tall buildings and settle above the rising skyline. The day had been warm, but the evening air bit him with a sudden chill. He shoved his hands deep in his pockets as he mounted the steps to the Empire Hotel.
Money exchanged hands—neatly folded bills and a few coins. The matron pressed a key into Benny’s outstretched palm. “Dinner is at eight, breakfast at seven. You see to your own noonday meal.”
Once inside his small room, he scooped water trickling from the faucet and splashed it over his face, grateful he had brought his own towel. A mirror hung above the basin, and he inspected the purple circles around his eyes and the soot and dust from the moated gutters on either side of Yonge Street darkening his blond hair.
Benfield Citrone might have been handsome had his cousin Jonathan not broken his nose with a hockey puck when he was ten. Now his chiseled features were offset by a nose that had borne the brunt of a slapdash swoosh of a stick and a puck ricocheting through the frosty air.
He settled on the creaky bed, watching the lights of the city through the blinds. Good, sturdy springs. This was an old, worn—but clean—establishment. He’d been in worse. He reached into the pocket of his trousers and removed a creased photograph. He placed it in the edge of the mirror, and Jonathan’s handsome, open face stared out at him.
The lads in Regina told him the best place to find investigators was in the advertisements at the back of newspapers. He’d bought one from a newsie on Yonge Street, and now he spread it open on his bed.
The Hogtown Herald. The front page was emblazoned with theories about the trolley explosion. The headline and ensuing article brought up the possibility that the tragedy was planned and not a result of faulty wiring.
It all seemed too familiar to Benny. He wouldn’t dwell on it. Instead, he flipped to the back and set to looking for any advertisement that might lead him to a private investigation firm.
There—
HERRINGFORD AND WATTS
DETECTIVES FOR CONSULTATION AND HIRE
REASONABLE RATES
NO PROBLEM TOO BIG OR SMALL
CONSULT 395 KING STREET WEST
He tore out the ad, placed it beside the basin, and fell onto the unturned blanket, still in cotton shirt, suspenders, and pants.