Margaret met Ken at the shop the next morning. Her car needed its final touch-ups. “Do you remember if the car had Canadian tags at any point?” He hesitated. “Not when it came to us, no. But sometimes state records are incomplete. If you want to dig, you’ll need a Department of Motorized Vehicles history report. I know a guy.”
That afternoon, she met Ken’s contact, a retired clerk named Howard who enjoyed fishing for gossip as much as trout. He agreed to pull the records “for nostalgia’s sake.” Two days later, he handed her a printout. Her eyes widened: in 1986, the Mercedes had been re-registered in Ontario.