“Gratis?”
“We need to expand our reference database.”
“What should I send?”
He told me and started to expound on the reasons for needing both bone and tooth specimens. The clock said three-fifty. I cut him off.
“Art, could you explain this when we discuss results? If I want these specimens to go out with today’s FedEx pickup, I have to get back to the skeletons and pull the teeth within the next thirty minutes.”
“Yes, yes. Of course. We’ll talk then. Tempe, this may go nowhere, but, well, you never know.”
Disconnecting, I descended to the morgue, cut another plug of bone from the femur of each set of remains, replaced the bone, removed the jaw, returned to my lab, photographed the jaw, removed the right second molar from each, repacked everything, and returned the parcel to the mound of uncollected mail, thankful that I’d already had dental X-rays made.
By four-thirty, I’d resettled in my office.
Crossing my ankles on the window ledge, I sipped diet soda, nibbled my first doughnut, and forced my thoughts to subjects other than the pizza basement girls.
Katy.
What about Katy? I had no idea what my daughter was doing at that moment. Or even her specific whereabouts. Call? I looked at my watch. She was probably out, studying at the library or in class. Right.
Presumably, Katy was diligently attending classes and planning her future beyond university. I was not being kept advised. Had my little girl slipped into an adulthood in which I would play only minor walk-ons?
That smiley-face thought cranked my mind back to the girls who were now skeletons.
Why no single shred of clothing? Had I missed something? Should I have used a finer mesh screen? Had the owner gathered more than buttons? What could explain three girls buried naked in a basement?
Diet Coke. Mental right turn.
Anne.
Why the unexpected visit? What was behind the funny sound in her voice?
With the second doughnut, my mind took another go at the skeletons.
If all three girls died at the same time, why adipocere only with the third set of remains? OK. The wrapping. But why just that one burial?
Nope. New topic.
A sweater I’d seen in Ogilvy’s window. A ratchety noise in my car’s engine. An odd brown spot on my right shoulder.
At the end of the second doughnut, my mind made another hard run at the skeletons.
The bodies had been less than six inches down. Why so close to the surface? Native burials typically lie much deeper. So do historic graves.
What if Art really could tell me where each of the girls had been born? Would that be helpful? Or would his analysis merely indicate that they were locals?
Maybe LaManche had a point. Maybe I was becoming obsessed. I was jumpy and defensive. I wasn’t sleeping well. The case had even entered my dreams.
My mind veered down another alley.
Could work dissatisfaction be at the root of my problem with Ryan? Were anxiety and frustration transferring to him and firing my own destruction in that arena?
Ryan.
As though triggered by some errant electron escaping that synapse, the phone rang. I swiveled and snatched the receiver, this time nearly upsetting my drink.
“Dr. Brennan.”
Susanne informed me that a detective was on his way to my office.
Claudel. Just what I needed.
Only it wasn’t.
Standing six feet two, wearing khakis, fawn linen, and a tweed jacket, Ryan looked like a cross between Pierce Brosnan and the older guy in an Adidas ad. He shook his head at the Diet Coke in my hand and the sugar powdering my desk blotter.
“The woman is a swirling mass of contradiction.”
“I have eclectic tastes.”
“Your tastes must confuse the hell out of your pancreas.”
“It’s my pancreas.”
Ryan looked surprised at the sharpness of my response.
“Catching you at a bad time, cupcake?”
“I was expecting someone else.” I set down the can. “Honey bun.”
“I’m hearing that a lot lately.”
“Honey bun?”
“That I am other than your expectations.”
“I thought someone might be calling with information on a case.”
“Once more I’ve dashed hopes of which I know nothing.”
“You sound like Winston Churchill,” I said, slumping back in my chair.
“That is nonsense up with which I will not put.”
“A for grammar, D minus for clarity.” I pressed powdered sugar onto the tip of my finger.
“Winnie said it.”
“You repeated it.”
“How are things going with Claudel?” Ryan leaned against the doorjamb and crossed arms and ankles. As usual, I found my eyes drawn to his. No matter how often I experienced it, the intensity of the blue always caught me off guard.
“Claudel’s running on a limited supply of brain cells. The few he has need to e-mail each other regularly to maintain contact.”
“And the system is down?”
“I haven’t heard from Claudel today. Actually, I’m looking forward to sharing something with him.”
I licked sugar from my finger and dipped more from the blotter.
“You going to share it with Honey Bun?”
“LaManche authorized expenditure for a special test I requested.”
“Without passing it by Authier?”
I nodded.
“LaManche can be a rascal. What test?”
“Carbon 14.”
“As in mummies and mastodons?”
I walked Ryan through the short course I’d given LaManche, but decided against mentioning the strontium isotope analysis. Too iffy.
“How far out for results?”
“Hopefully, no more than a week. LaManche suggested I move on to the third skeleton. Basically, he’s telling me to forget about PMI for now.”
“Not bad advice.”
“It’s frustrating.”
“Goes with the job.”
Ryan’s beeper sounded. He checked the number and clipped the gizmo back on his belt.
“Granted, these kids didn’t die last week, or even last month,” I went on. “But I can’t shake the thought that time is being wasted. I just have a bad feeling about this case.”
“Why?”
I told Ryan about Mrs. Gallant/Ballant/Talent.
“What exactly did she say?”
“That she knew what had gone on in that building.”
“Which was?”
“We didn’t get that far.”
“She could be a crackpot.”
“She could be.”
“You say she sounded old.”
“Yes.”
“It’s possib—”
“I’ve thought of that, Ryan. But what if she is sharp and she is on the level? And she does know something?”
“She’ll ring back.”
“She hasn’t.”
“Are you having her call tracked?”
“Yes.”
“Want me to see what I can find out?”
“I can handle it.”
“What threat could an old lady pose to anybody?”
“This woman knows about our little field trip to the basement. God knows who else read or heard about it. You saw Le Journal. The media were on the thing like cats on a fish wagon.”
“Other than its age, what do you know about this building?”
“Three dead girls were buried in its basement.”
“You can be a pain in the ass, Brennan.”
“I work at it.”
“Have dinner with me tonight?” Ryan asked.
“I’m busy.”
Deafening quiet slipped across the office. Thirty seconds. A full minute.
Uncrossing his ankles, Ryan straightened from the wall. The ice blue eyes looked straight into mine. It was not a happy look.
>
“We need to talk.”
“Yes,” I said.
Adios, cowboy, I thought, watching Ryan disappear through the door.
9
MIDWEEK, LATE AFTERNOON IS NOT A GOOD TIME for motoring in Montreal. Through the Ville-Marie Tunnel and onto the 20, I flew along at a clip that reached thirty-five mph at its peak. At the Turcotte Interchange, my progress could be measured in spastic movements of car lengths.
A bumper sticker glimmered in the taillights ahead of me. The beatings will continue until morale improves. The first reading drew a chuckle. By the tenth, the humor had bled out. Translate: The traffic snarl will continue until impatience subsides.
To ease the boredom, I scanned billboards. Slogans in mangled English and French hawked cell phones and Hondas and sitcoms and hair spray.
With darkness, a hard wind had kicked up. Now and then the car rocked, as though toed at one end by a giant sneaker. A winter city crept by my windshield. Lamplit windows in the high hills of Westmount. The blackened rail yards. Suburban bungalows electric with discount store Christmas schlock.
Past Ville St-Pierre, congestion eased, and I gunned it back up to a blistering thirty. My fingers drummed the wheel. The dashboard clock said five-thirty. Anne’s flight had probably landed.
A full hour after leaving the lab, I entered the terminal at Dorval Airport. Anne had cleared customs and was standing at the end of a chute of people awaiting arrivals.
I did the windmill thing with my arms. Catching sight of me, Anne grasped the pull-handle of a boxcar-sized suitcase and wheeled it in my direction. A laptop hung from one shoulder, an enormous leather purse from the other.
Sudden flashback. My sister, Harry, surrounded by enough Louis Vuitton for a world tour. She’d come for a week. She’d stayed a month.
Oh boy.
Anne is very tall and very blonde. More eyes than mine followed as she muscled her Pullman through the crowd of greeters. Reaching me, she bent and threw both arms around my neck. The laptop slid forward and gouged my ribs.
“Traffic was a nightmare,” I said, relieving Anne of her shoulder gear.
“You’re a darlin’ to come for me.”
“I’m thrilled you’re here.”
“The pilot claimed it was eighteen below. Can that be true?” Anne’s drawl sounded as out of place in the Quebecois hubbub as the Rawhide theme at a PETA benefit.
“That’s Celsius.” I didn’t point out that the reading was only a hair below zero in her worldview.
“I hope there’s a blizzard. Snow would be a kick.”
“Did you bring warm clothing?”
Anne spread both arms in a check-it-out gesture.
My friend wore a cable-knit sweater, suede jacket, green cords, and pink angora muffler with matching hat. I was certain her purse contained fuzzy pink mittens to complete the accessorizing. I knew her thinking. “Winter chic.”
Though Anne was born in Alabama and schooled in Mississippi, she had traveled north, and, like many Southerners, gained a theoretical understanding of the concept of cold. But the mind is an overprotective parent. What it doesn’t care for, it hides. Like many inhabiting the subtropics, Anne had repressed the reality of subzero mercury.
This was Quebec. Anne was dressed for autumn cool in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Exiting the terminal, I heard Ms. Winter Chic suck in her breath. Smiling, I hurried her toward the car. I really couldn’t fault Anne. Though I commute regularly between Charlotte and Montreal, that first winter blast clotheslines even me.
Anne talked around topics on the drive to Centre-ville. Her cats, Regis and Kathie Lee. The twins, Josh and Lola. Her youngest son, Stuart, who’d become a spokesman for gay rights. Between bursts, she’d stop, and a moody silence would fill the small space around us.
Now and then I’d sneak a sideways glance. Anne’s face flickered in a mosaic of neon and brake lights. I could take nothing from it. She uttered not a word about the reason for her visit.
OK, old friend. Tell the tale when you will.
* * *
An hour and a half later Anne began meandering through an explanation. As she talked, I sensed vacillation, as though she were testing ideas as she spoke them.
We’d stopped at home to deposit Anne’s things, and were now in the Trattoria Trestevere on lower Crescent. The waiter had just delivered Caesar salads. I was drinking Perrier. Anne was working on her third chardonnay.
And the chardonnay was working on Anne.
“I’m forty-six years old, Tempe. If I don’t search for some meaning now, there’s going to be nothing out there for me to find later.” She tapped a manicured nail to her breast. “Or in here.”
Again, I thought of my sister. Harry had come to Montreal questing for inner peace. She’d hooked up with apocalyptic crazies who were going to take her on a voyage to permanent peace. As in dead. Fortunately, she’d survived. Anne’s discourse sounded like flotsam straight down the same self-help psychobabble pipeline.
“So the kids are all right?”
“Peachy.”
“Tom didn’t do anything to piss you off?”
The nail pointed at me. “Tom didn’t do anything. Ever. Unless you count defending asshole developers who want to rid the world of trees, and spending the rest of the time seeking the grail of a hole in one. Guess it’s my own fault marrying someone with a name like Turnip.”
Tom-Ted’s surname had also been a source of much amusement over the years.
“The tuber is terminated.”
“You’ve left him?” I couldn’t believe it.
“Yes.”
“After twenty-four years and three kids?”
“This does not concern the kids.”
My fork stopped in midair. Anne and I froze eye to eye.
“You know that’s not what I mean,” she said. “The kids are grown. Josh and Lola have graduated college. Stuart’s off doing whatever it is Stuart does.” She jabbed at a lettuce leaf. “They’re moving on with their lives and I’m left with selling real estate and cultivating fucking azaleas.”
Upon completion of my doctorate at Northwestern, Pete joined a Charlotte law firm, and I accepted an appointment at UNCC. I was thrilled to leave Chicago and return to my beloved North Carolina. But the move had its downside.
By day, I was surrounded by academics. Dedicated. Compassionate. Bright. And as socially sophisticated as the Burpee seed catalog. Katy was an infant. My colleagues were childless and clueless concerning the demands of parenthood.
Each evening, I collected my baby at child care and transitioned to a picture perfect ad for country club living. Manicured lawns. Upmarket cars. Stepford wives with stay-at-home mind-sets. Female conversation focused on tennis, golf, and car pools.
I was despairing of ever developing meaningful female friendships when I spotted Anne at a neighborhood charity tea. Or heard her, to be more precise. Steel magnolia meets the drunken sailor.
I zeroed in. Instant connection.
Anne and I have seen each other’s kids through broken bones and broken hearts. Our families have shared two decades of camping and ski trips, Thanksgiving dinners, christenings, and funerals. Until the collapse of my marriage, the Turnips and the Petersonses hadn’t missed a summer at the ocean. Now Anne and I made the beach trips alone.
“What have you told the kids?”
“Nothing. I haven’t actually moved out of the house. I’m on a leave of absence. Traveling.”
“But—”
“Let’s not talk about me, darlin’. Let’s talk about you. What are you working on these days?”
There is no pursuing an issue with Anne when she closes down.
I summarized the pizza basement case, and told her of my frustration with my pal Claudel.
“You’ll bring him around. You always have before. Get to the good stuff. Are you seeing anyone?”
“Sort of.”
The waiter replaced our salads with entrées. Lasagna for Anne. Veal picc
ata for me. Anne ordered another wine, then snatched up the grinder and screwed cheese onto her pasta. I decided to try another run at the Tom thing.
“What exactly is the focus of this new personal outreach program?” I tried to keep the cynicism from my voice.
“Fulfillment. Self-esteem. Appreciation.” She smacked the grinder onto the tabletop. “And don’t even suggest it. I’m not signing up for one more puking course.”
We ate in silence for a few moments. When Anne spoke again, her tone sounded lighter, but forced, somehow.
“I got more attention from the hunk in 3C than I have from Tom Turnip in the past twelve months. Boy’s probably out buying me gardenias right now.” Anne knocked back a swig of wine. “Hell, messages are probably piling up on your answering machine as we speak.”
“What boy in 3C?”
“A sweet little stud I met on the plane.”
“You gave him my phone number?”
“He’s harmless.”
“How do you know he’s harmless?”
“He was in first class.”
“So were the nice lads who torpedoed the Trade Center.”
My friend looked at me as though I’d suggested she cut off a foot.
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch, Tempe. I’m not actually going to see the guy.”
I wasn’t believing this. I use extreme caution in giving out my home number. Anne had blithely shared it with a complete stranger, who might be calling my home looking for her.
“I’d had a couple of Manhattans,” she continued, oblivious to the extent of my annoyance. “We talked. He asked where he could reach me. I jotted the stuff on a napkin—”
“Stuff? Meaning address, too?”
Anne gave an Academy Award orbital roll.
“I’m sure the guy tossed it as he exited the Jetway. How’s your veal?”
In contrast to the conversation, my meat was perfect.
“Good,” I mumbled. So the guy might not call. He could show up on my doorstep.
“Mine is parfait. See what I mean? Already I’m in a different galaxy from Clover, South Carolina.” Anne circled her fork in the air. “Québec! La belle province! C’est magnifique!”