“Margot! Margot! Margot! It’s a foot! It’s a whole foot!”
   Harley’s voice was a breathless tumble of words in my ear. I was on my knees outside the front door of Benny’s flower shop doing the shoulder-lift-head-tilt thing to hold my cellphone in place. Benny had managed to break the key off in the lock, so my hands were busy trying to get the door to his flower shop open so he could start his workday.
   “Is that Harley?” Benny asked. He was hovering beside me on the sidewalk and chewing a sesame seed bagel. “Tell her we’re almost out of sea glass.”
   There was a burst of yelps and growls from what sounded like at least a dozen dogs over the phone. “I’ll try,” I said to Benny. “She and the dogs are pretty excited about something.”
   “There’s another order for one of her Glitter Bomb arrangements,” Benny continued. “She likes to put sea glass in the vases for that one. Also, we could use some more of those twiggy driftwood bits she’s been using. Very popular.”
   “Harley!?” I bellowed. “A foot of what? Gold chain? Something better? I’m at Benny’s. He has a door problem. He says you should look for sea glass and driftwood bits.” I squished the phone tighter and strained to listen. There was some intense panting, but it was just a guess if that was from Harley or the dogs. If Harley was following her usual route and schedule, then she and her pack of four-legged clients would be somewhere past Beacon Hill by around now.
   Harley finally answered in a panted staccato. “Margot! Please! Come. I need you!”
   “Why? Harley, what’s up? Is it that heavy? What did you find?”
   The only reply was a fumbling scuffle followed by a sharp, plasticky clatter. I held on, straining to listen. The barks got fainter and fainter until there was nothing at all. “I think Harley dropped her phone. She might be late for work.”
   “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Benny said, nodding absently. “What’s she got going on?”
   “She found a foot of something.”
   Benny had taken a hefty bite of his bagel, but then paused mid-chew. “Like…you mean an actual…foot?”
   “No, I’m sure not,” I said, as I got one of my lockpicks hooked on the upper side of the key stub and began wiggling. “Something that’s a foot long, no doubt. We were watching The Deep last night. Jacqueline Bisset and Nick Nolte swimming around and finding treasure. I think Harley was hoping she’d discover something similar on her dog walk this morning. What would be that size, heavy enough to need a hand to lift and worth getting excited about? I mean… it couldn’t really be a bar of gold or something, could it? Those would be heavy. Did Spanish ships come up here?”
   Benny waved his bagel at me in admonishment. “Spanish ships? What do they teach in school these days? Anything? Of course, they were up here. Where did you think all those Spanish place names around Vancouver Island came from? Quadra, Galiano, Valdés, Cortés, all that. But we’re on the wrong ocean for treasure ships, if that’s what you’re thinking? Still…it’s nice to hear that you kids still use imperial units for some things. Now, don’t get me wrong. The metric system is great and all. But you have to admit that a foot is a handy unit. How often do you need to describe something that is about so big?”
   Benny put the bagel in his mouth and the bag under one arm so he could hold his hands apart as though he were carrying an invisible loaf of bread.
   “See? Like that,” he mumbled over the mouthful. “Very handy. Lots of things are that size! Right? How big is that?”
   “An imperial foot? Thirty point four eight centimetres,” I said automatically. “You know…give or take.”
   Benny’s eyes narrowed to a squint that was nearly lost under the bushy eyebrows. Which said all he needed to about what he thought of my approximation. The key stub finally slid free, and I held it up to Benny in triumph. I dialled Harley’s number and let it ring and ring. Finally, I pulled up the FindMy app. Harley, or at least her phone, was a stationary blue dot on the shore between the cemetery and Clover Point.
   “Looks like she’s at Yo-Yo Beach,” I said and noticed Benny’s eyebrows gave an uncertain wobble. “Harley names all the bits along her walk by the things she finds. There’s Red Hat hook, Glass Buoy Cove, O er Poop Point…all sorts.”
   Benny mouthed ‘o er poop’ a few times and his eyebrows lifted to their maximum. I started to answer, but he cut me off with a wave from a fresh bagel. “Never mind. Tell me later, though something tells me I don’t want to know.” He held out his palm, and I passed him the stub of broken key. Benny is in his eighties, and the door lock—a Yale and Towne—was probably twice as old.
   “Maybe time to think about getting a replacement,” I said. Benny harrumphed and offered me a bagel. “I like old things. And, here, you like blueberry. Have some breakfast. I’ll thank you properly later. Go find Harley and don’t forget to mention the sea glass!”
   I dropped my phone into my shoulder bag, gave Benny a 3 Christopher Courtin half hug and jumped onto my Vespa scooter. It started almost instantaneously. Joe Paczynski, a mechanic friend of Benny’s, had tinkered with it for fun during a recent visit. Whatever Joe had done involved both delicate screwdriver adjustments and, what seemed to me to be, fairly cavalier use of an angle grinder to remove parts he deemed unnecessary. There was no arguing with the results, though. The Vespa now started the first time, every time, and seemed to go farther and faster than it ever had before.
   I put that new upper speed to the test once I was clear of downtown. A green light between the museum and the Legislature had me zooming my way down Government Street and into James Bay. I slowed for the speed bumps, and then slowed even more when I ran into a wall of fog just past Emily Carr’s house. October sometimes brings coastal fog, but this was the thickest I’d ever seen.
   Halloween was closing in and decorations were already out on lawns and balconies. I passed an enormous red-eyed spider lurking in the branches of a tree, and then an oversized skeleton erupting through a collection of broken tombstones on a lawn. While the decorations were mostly plastic, the mist added a level of natural spookiness. The combination didn’t bring me any sense of foreboding— though it should have done.
   The closer I got to the beach, the thicker the fog became and the slower I moved. By the time I reached Dallas Road, I could barely see the road in front of me and I was down to almost a walking pace. Things didn’t improve much the entire way to Clover Point. I saw two cars and a lone hunched figure pushing an impossibly laden shopping cart with a wonky wheel, all heading in the other direction. The usual joggers and walkers were either lost in the fog or had wisely stayed home.
   Clover Point sticks out from the shore like a frying pan. Most of it is flat, low and round, and surrounded by ocean. A single access road angles down from the road above and the fog was so thick that I nearly missed it. I ignored the first empty parking lot at the bottom and hung a left onto the bike path. After some slow speed weaving between the bollards that kept the four-wheeled vehicles at bay, I idled my way past the public toilets. Just beyond, the path flared out into a wide curve. On my left, discreetly built into the bluff, was the sewage pump house. I coasted to a stop and killed the engine. All the recent improvements to the Vespa hadn’t included a new kickstand, so I just propped the scooter against the low wall that marked the edge of the breakwater. When I peered over the side, the ocean was just below, flat grey and as calm as a bathtub.
   I left my helmet perched on the seat and dialled Harley’s number. A moment later, the cheerful whistling of Bobby McFerrin’s Don't Worry, Be Happy cut through the fog from somewhere nearby. A few metres past the pump house, the breakwater ended and huge concrete steps dropped to the beach like seats in a Roman amphitheatre. I had to jump down one by one to reach the cobbles. They squirmed and clattered underfoot as I picked my way around the choke of driftwood logs and weave of kelp fronds. I found Harley’s phone lying face down near a bed of dried kelp.
   “Harley!?” I yelled. “Where are you?” A muffled voice, followed by canine whines and the sharp clinking of dog tags, came from somewhere above me farther along the path. I stumbled my way back up the concrete steps with a phone in each hand.
   I found Harley and the dogs huddled together in an alcove molded into the concrete retaining wall. All of them were looking equally damp and sullen. I had to sidle my way through the spiderweb of dog leashes to reach Harley for a hug.
   “Teeth sweaters,” she said when she’d finally let go.
   “What’s that now?” I asked. She’d pulled her hoodie low over her forehead as if she were trying to hide. The eyes that looked out were wide and blinking constantly.
   “Teeth sweaters,” she said again with a sharp nod.
   Harley often prefers to skip what most people consider the prologue of normal banter and dive right into the middle. Even knowing her as well as I do, it’s sometimes a challenge to keep up. I gave the cluster of dogs a once-over. I recognized a few of her regulars, but the name Teeth Sweaters was new to me. There were half a dozen or more huddled so closely around her that it was hard to link tails to heads. Some of the smaller ones were tucked away so well that only the leashes disappearing gave a clue they were even there.
   “Interesting name,” I said. “Which one is that?”
   “What? No. Me. I have teeth sweaters. You know, that gross feeling when you really need to brush your teeth? That. I have that. Because of your muffins. Which I’m very sorry about.”
   “My muffins?”
   “I forgot about them until this morning. I was looking in the freezer for something else and found two of them in the back.”
   “We had muffins in the freezer?”
   “Ya. Remember when you made a big batch last summer? They were the best ever and so I thought I’d hide a couple to keep as a surprise treat for us. Only it turned out to just be for me because I got distracted and somehow I ate them both. So now I’m, like, doubly sorry because I threw up, because of….” Harley trailed off and then started breathing in short, rapid pants.
   “You were sick?” I tried to calm her hyperventilating with another hug. “It’s okay. Everything is going to be fine. I can make more muffins.” She nodded frantically. “I like the way you add the orange rind—it makes them zippy.”
   “Okay,” I said. “I’ll do that. But for now, can you tell me what is going on?”
   “I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “You’re always be er at this sort of thing.”
   “Harley! What is going on?”
   “Down there.” She shrank deeper into her hoodie as she pointed behind me, back towards the beach. “But…don’t go.”
   I went. Whatever had spooked Harley was something that clearly needed investigation. I assured her I’d be just a minute and then stepped back down the concrete blocks and onto the stony beach. The fog had turned everything into sombre shades of grey. But as I neared the water, there was a single smudge of colour. Something small. Something red… and white. It was vaguely the size of a plastic soda pop bo le, but the shape was all wrong. I took another half step closer. It took a moment for my brain to make sense of what I was looking at. All the blood seemed to drain from my head, and I nearly tripped over myself as I staggered back. The chill that went through me had nothing to do with the damp cold.
   “Holy moly,” I mumbled. Benny was right. It was a foot. An actual, literal, foot. I’ve seen ocean waves wash up the remains of seals, sea lions, birds, otters, and once, even a small whale. But this appendage didn’t belong to any of those.
   I’m no biologist, but as far as I know, there’s only one animal that would choose to wear candy apple red, high heeled pumps.