“There is no Arthur who disappeared in the forests around Chemainus in the time frame Harry’s talking about… At least I can’t find him.”
“You’re sure?” Bernice frowned, looking up from the raised bed, where she’d been forking potatoes out of the ground.
“As certain as I can be,” Buddy replied. “I’ve looked through back issues of all the newspapers from the day, all of ‘em, and I can’t find any references to anyone gone missing in or around Chemainus. There’s no mention of a search, nothing. A case like that would have been front page in the local papers and would have been covered in the Victoria Colonist or the Victoria Times as well. But there’s nothing. Nada.”
Bernice worked her gnarled fingers into the earth, uprooting a plant, coaxing it out of the soil. “Ah!” she murmured approvingly. “They’re prefect.” She pulled off one of the potatoes, wiped it gently with her gloved hand then, using the pitchfork like a cane, levered herself to her feet.
“You know why I like gardening?” she asked abruptly.
“I suspect I’m going to find out.”
“You put a seed in the ground, or in this case, all’s you need is seed potatoes; bury them, water them, keep the bugs off; and after a few months, you dig them out, and guess what?”
“What?”
“You get more potatoes.”
She laughed. Buddy watched. Waited.
“You don’t get watermelons, or grapefruit, you get potatoes every time.”
“I know what you’re saying, Bernice,” Buddy apologized. “Don’t know what to do about it, though.”
“Well,” she pondered. “Let’s make things a bit more plausible. If you did plant a potato and pulled up, say, a turnip, what would you do?” She waited, watching him intently. “Would you just figure, ‘Oh, what the heck,’ and make like there was nothing wrong with a turnip as opposed to a potato, then chop it up for your evening stew?”
“I might,” he waffled.
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“Well, what do you think I’d do?”
“I think, first, you’d ask yourself, ‘Did I really plant a potato here, or was it a turnip?’”
“And if, sure-as-shootin’, it was a potato?”
“I guess you’d have to ask if someone was playing a trick on you, if they’d swapped a turnip in where you’d planted a potato.” She paused, waiting. “Then I’d scratch my head and say to myself, ‘Hmmm. Who might have played this particular prank?’.”
Buddy clamped his jaw shut.
“Harry’s not lying,” she said, firmly. “And this isn’t a prank. That boy Arthur and his dog Gypsy are as real to him as you are, standing here in front of me. So I’m still asking, ‘How does a potato come up a turnip?’”
“Dunno,” Buddy shrugged, exasperated.
“Neither do I,” she said, turning toward the house and doddering off. “But that’s what we have to figure out… and don’t ask me where to begin cause I haven’t got a clue.”
Next: Uninvited