A Victim Must Be Found Read Online Free

like I was trapped in a computer that had to learn the entire English language before it could tell me “yes” or “no.” I tried to master my irregular breathing.
    “Pambos, can you remember any part of the list that might be important? Can you remember any of the names on it?”
    “I been thinking of that. That’s why I came to see you back at the United. I know you keep half your office hours there.”
    “And?”
    “And, what?”
    “And do you remember names from your list”
    “Yeah. Sure I do. But, like I said, it’s a delicate business. Most of the people on the list wouldn’t want to be brought into this.”
    “Right, Pambos. Maybe I’m the undercover editor of the Grantham Beacon instead of a private investigator. Maybe the word private means I’m a stringer for The Toronto Star . Is that what you think? Either you came here to trust me—I mean apart from helping with the boxes—or you came to shoot the breeze. Which is it?”
    “Benny, don’t get hot at me! I’m just feeling my way through this. If it was somebody on this list that took it, I want to wipe the floor with him!”
    “Good! I recognize the emotion. Tell me, Pambos, do you remember the names on the list?”
    “I remember some of them. There are about twentyfive names in all. All big shots in the Niagara district. I can remember maybe half a dozen of the names. That’s all.”
    “Okay. Have you seen any of the people who appear on the list lately?”
    “I was coming to that.”
    “I’m glad you were coming to something!” Pambos ignored the anxiety he was building in me brick by brick.
    “Three of them were in the hotel shortly before I noticed the list missing.” I rooted through one of the halfemptied boxes and found a scrap of paper and a ballpoint pen.
    “Now we’re getting someplace,” I said. “Who were they?”
    “Jonah Abraham …” The whistle that came out of me was unpremeditated. It represented genuine surprise.
    “I can’t imagine the head of Windermere Distilleries rifling your desk, Pambos.” Pambos looked wounded, like I’d interrupted a vast torrent of information.
    “Will you let me finish? Another name is Peter Mac-Culloch. The other is Alex Favell. They were all at the hotel. Any of them could have taken it.”
    If Pambos had handed me a Who’s Who of the Grantham élite, I couldn’t have found more prestigious names. Abraham, MacCulloch and Favell, while they might never sit at the same table, have graced the best tables in town and beyond. MacCulloch was vice-president of Secord University. He’d come to academia through business. A local boy, he’d made a name for himself in the west, in oil, I think. After more than five years in the job, his face in the paper had become a second logo for Secord. As a fund-raiser, he had no match. He brought into the ivory tower some of the bottom-line philosophy he’d learned in the blitzkrieg of modern business.
    Alex Favell, whose name I’d heard around town over the last few years, wasn’t as well known to me. I remembered at once that he had something to do with the paper mill in Papertown, south of Grantham. I’d read or skipped through pieces about him on the business pages of the Beacon . I couldn’t conjure up a face to fit the name. The best I could do was remember seeing the name connected to some social note about the opening of a paper-mill- endowed floral clock somewhere along the road between Niagara Falls and Queenston. The floral clock must be among the wonders of the world least included on the endangered lists
    Lists. I kept coming back to lists. I tried to imagine what kind of list would include Jonah Abraham, Alex Favell and Peter MacCulloch. Favell and MacCulloch were old Grantham, old Ontario, even old Upper Canadian names. There is no equivalent to the Mayflower in Upper Canada. If you came too early, you were French and not in the pecking-order. If you came too late, you couldn’t qualify as a United Empire Loyalist, which