Leaning my head against the seat, I closed my eyes and occupied my mind making up phrases to describe the silence in the car.
The silence of a walled tomb. An abandoned library in a Vatican basement. A black hole at the terminus of a spiral galaxy. A startled cockatiel.
Ryan dropped me at my car.
“You on for tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Rose Fisher?”
“What time?”
“I’ll phone after I’ve checked with Bastillo.”
By the time I drove from the lab to Centre-ville, it was seven thirty-five. Anne was dozing, floral glasses on her nose, a paperback on her chest. Birdie was beside her.
Anne had made pot roast. We chatted as she thickened gravy and I tossed a salad.
During dinner, Anne described her book, the subject of which was death. She was finding the author’s perspective enlightening. I found her choice of topic unsettling.
“Why the morbid interest in death?”
“You sound like Annie Hall.”
“You’re acting like Woody Allen.”
Anne thought a moment.
“To move forward it is often necessary to change.”
“Move toward what and change how?”
“In substance.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Cycles.”
As I pondered that enigmatic comment, the phone rang. It was Katy.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, sweetheart. Where are you?”
“Charlottesville, but I’m heading home tomorrow.”
“Exams went well?”
“Of course. I’m checking to make sure you’ll be in Charlotte on the twenty-second.”
The twenty-second?
“Hannah’s shower? You promised you’d help me?”
What demented moron would plan a wedding at Christmas?
“Of course I’ll be there.”
“I’m counting on your years and years of experience.”
“Cute.”
“I sent you a couple of e-mails. Ho! Ho! Ho! ’Tis the season, and all that. I especially crave that sweater from Anthropologie. And the tranquillity fountain would help me chill.”
“What do you need to chill about?”
“Help me study, I mean.”
“Um. Hm.”
“Love you, ma mère. Gotta go.” Katy’s voice sounded strung with mistletoe and holly.
“What are you so bubbly about?”
“’Tis the season.”
“Ho. Ho. Ho.”
“Hold on to that thought.”
When we’d disconnected I went looking for Anne. She’d already retired. No further explanation of fulfillment or substance. I had the sense she’d used the phone call as an escape opportunity.
I undressed, washed my face, brushed and flossed, all the time worrying over my promise to Katy. I’d been so wrapped up in Louise Parent and my pizza basement girls I’d virtually forgotten Christmas. And totally forgotten Hannah’s shower.
Could I resolve the case in a week, or would I be forced to put my lost girls on hold for the holidays?
Back in my room, I reached to set the alarm, stopped. Had Ryan given me a pickup time? I remembered asking, but couldn’t recall his reply.
Ten-thirty. He’d probably be at home.
I hit Ryan’s button on my speed dial. The phone was answered after two rings.
“Yes?” The voice was female.
Something hot-wired through my stomach and lungs.
“Andrew Ryan, please.”
“Who’s calling?” Young and female.
“Dr. Brennan.”
“You.” Young and female and edged like a saw. “Why don’t you leave him alone?”
“Excuse me?”
“Quit screwing with his head.”
“Is this Danielle?”
Long silence.
My mind raced. Was that the right name?
“Is this Detective Ryan’s niece?”
The woman snorted. “Niece? That’s what he told you? And you believed him? You’re dumber than I thought.”
The truth dropped into place like a guillotine blade.
“Just leave him alone.”
I was listening to a dial tone.
24
AFTER LYING AWAKE MOST OF THE NIGHT FEELING more despondent than Anne, I began to sleep in fitful intervals.
Toward morning, I dreamed Ryan and I were in a long, dark tunnel. As we spoke, Ryan receded farther and farther from me, until his body was a hazy silhouette at the tunnel’s mouth.
I tried to follow, but my legs were tar. I shouted again and again, but my mouth was mute.
Something skittered past me in the dark, dry and spidery like the wing of a bat.
I tried to raise my arm. It wouldn’t move.
The thing brushed my cheek.
I flailed at it.
And awoke to find Birdie licking my face.
The tunnel monsieur phoned as I was crunching cornflakes and toast. I’d resolved I would go to Candiac with him as planned. I wanted to talk with Rose Fisher. After that, it was sayonara. Too much heartache. Too many sleepless nights.
Too many prom queens.
I’d considered, but decided against a confrontation concerning the woman at Ryan’s home. I’d been betrayed once. I’d played out that drama. The teary accusations. The hostile denials. The heart-splintering admissions. I wouldn’t go there again.
Birdie supported my decision.
“Sleep well, sunshine?”
“Like igneous rock.”
“Bastillo is taking Fisher to visit her priest at ten. She suggested we swing by the house at eleven.” I heard what sounded like a match, then the exhalation of smoke. “Pick you up around ten-thirty?”
“I’ll be at home.”
Claudel phoned as I was blow-drying my hair.
As usual, there was no greeting, no formulaic query about my health or my day.
“Detective Charbonneau suggested I contact you, though I am uncertain why.” From most tongues, the French language glides like silk. From Claudel’s, it thuds like potatoes down a chute. “I have nothing to report.”
“Meaning?”
“No smoking gun on Cyr’s list of renters. No hits with CPIC. No hits with NCIC. No hits in Vermont or California.”
“Not a single missing person even came close?”
“One kid in California. Broken right wrist. Tickled the lower end of your height range.”
“How tall?”
“Five-four.”
I felt a buzz of electricity.
“Close enough. When was she reported missing?”
“Eighty-five.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Kid was fourteen.”
The current fizzled.
“The skeleton with the fractured radius had to be closer to twenty.” I pictured the bones of the girl in the leather shroud, the molar root closure on her dental X-rays. “Maybe as young as eighteen, but there’s no way she was fifteen.”
“My point precisely.”
“Of course date of disappearance need not be the date of death. Did you learn anything else?”
“Battalions of girls go missing each year.”
Hang up, a voice warned. Hang up now or Claudel’s going to suffer another direct hit.
My doorbell doesn’t ring. It twitters. At that moment, it did so.
“I’d like a printout of every female aged fifteen to twenty-two reported missing in Quebec over the past twenty years.”
“You’re talking dozens. Most’ll turn out to be runaways who eventually slunk back to Mommy or Daddy when they got tired of eating Beanie Weenies and sleeping on the floor.”
Easy.
“It would be helpful to me to know which ones didn’t.”
More twittering.
“Madame, th—”
“Detective Ryan is here. I have to go.”
“Andrew Ryan?”
/> “We are going to interview Louise Parent’s sister.”
“The DOA in Candiac?”
“Yes.”
“The old lady that was burning up your phone line?”
“She called me.”
“Wanting what?”
“That is exactly what I intend to find out.”
“When did the sister surface?”
“Yesterday.”
“Where?”
“At her home.”
“Where was the old biddy hiding out?”
“Pointe-aux-Pics.” Icy. “I’d like that printout as soon as it’s ready.”
“Sacrifice.”
“Merci.” Asshole.
I shot to the bathroom. One side of my hair was fine. The other hung in damp spirals. I reached for the dryer.
Twittering. With talons.
“Terrific.”
Birdie was watching from the doorway. At the sound of my voice he rose, stretched one leg backward, and moved on. No time to leave a note for Anne.
I jammed the dryer into its holder, pulled on a tuque, and headed out.
Ryan was waiting in the outer lobby, face ruddy from the cold. Brown-tinted shades. Bomber jacket.
Libido liftoff.
Though the previous night’s call still held a stranglehold on my emotions, apparently lust had pulled a Houdini.
“Did I wake you, cupcake?” Big Ryan grin.
“You did not wake me.” I tried to keep the hostility from my voice.
“Are we testy this morning?”
“Are we smoking this morning?”
“Minor setback.” Ryan jammed his cigarette into an urn of sand beside the door.
Outside, the cold hit me like an icy explosion. Sun roared down from a clear blue sky.
Ryan’s car was idling at the curb.
I got in and buckled my seat belt.
Ryan got in, turned to me, and raised the shades up onto his head. A dark crescent hung below each azure eye.
“Something’s on your mind.”
I said nothing.
“It’s obvious you’re upset.”
I said nothing, louder this time.
“I suspect you’re unhappy with me.” Though he smiled, there was tension in his jaw and around his eyes.
“I know you consider yourself a hot property, Ryan, but I have other things to think about besides you.”
And your niece. I felt like one raw nerve.
“Do you want to talk?” Ryan asked.
“I want to drive,” I said, not trusting my voice with anything more.
We did.
In brittle silence.
* * *
Claudia Bastillo answered the bell at the Candiac house. Slapping on a fraudulent smile, I greeted her warmly.
Rose Fisher was sitting alone, staring at the venetian blinds. She wore a green rayon dress dotted with poppies. The orange hair was pushed up in back with a plastic clip-comb. If possible, the makeup was more extravagant than on the previous evening.
’Tit Ange was on a roll with “Frère Jacques.”
Fisher didn’t stir when we entered the living room. Hearing her daughter’s voice, she turned and looked at us, puzzled, as if trying to figure out who we might be.
“It’s the cop. And the coroner.”
With that less-than-accurate introduction, Bastillo withdrew.
Ryan and I assumed our positions flanking Fisher. “The cop” gestured to “the coroner” to proceed.
“I hope you’re feeling better today, ma’am.”
Fisher nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Mrs. Fisher, I’m wondering about some calls your sister placed to me at my lab.”
The garish eyes dropped.
“When?”
“Last week.”
“About what?” Fisher’s focus remained downwardly fixed.
“Mrs. Parent—”
“Louise never married.”
“Miss Parent spoke of a building on rue Ste-Catherine.”
The sausage fingers closed and opened.
“She said she was bothered by events that had taken place there.”
Fisher’s fidgeting intensified.
“Your sister stated that she felt morally obligated to share certain information with the authorities.”
“She called you?” Fisher looked up, eyes wide in the artlessly re-created face.
“Twice. Do you know why?”
“I didn’t think she’d actually do it.”
“What did your sister want to discuss with me?”
At that moment Bastillo arrived and took the chair opposite the couch. The cockatiel shifted from chirping to shrilling short, strident notes.
“’Tit Ange!” Bastillo barked.
The cockatiel did another series of power shrills.
“Cut it out!”
The cockatiel said “pretty bird” in English and French, then began investigating the contents of its seed basin.
“He’s mimicking the smoke detector,” Bastillo explained. “Little cretin picked it up when he was alone one weekend and the batteries failed.”
“He’s very talented,” I said. “And bilingual.”
“He’s a pip.” Bastillo was clearly not fond of the bird.
“Trilingual.”
We all looked at Fisher.
“English, French, and Cockatiel. Louise used to laugh about that.” Fisher’s voice made abrupt stops and starts as her chest clutched. “She was a translator, you know.”
“No, ma’am. I didn’t.”
Fisher nodded and the chins joined hands.
“Translated books from French to English. And the other way round.”
“That’s very difficult work,” I said, then turned to Bastillo.
“We were asking your mother about calls your aunt placed to my lab shortly before she died.”
“There’s a connection?”
“We’re not sure.”
“Are you suggesting my aunt’s death may not have been natural?”
“We want to investigate every possibility,” Ryan said.
“Do you suspect us?” Shrill as the bird.
“Of course not.” Ryan’s voice was reassurance itself. “We’d simply like to know what was on your aunt’s mind.”
Ryan addressed Fisher.
“Do you know what Miss Parent intended to tell Dr. Brennan?”
When Fisher nodded, lattice bands of sunlight slid over her cheek.
’Tit Ange whistled a line from Camelot.
Rose Fisher drew a deep breath.
“Louise lived on Ste-Catherine for almost seventeen years. When my husband passed away in ninety-four, I persuaded her to move in with me. Her building was one of those big things, with businesses on the street level and people living on the floors above. Too noisy for me, but Louise liked it. She had a two-bedroom apartment overlooking the street, loved looking out the window as she worked at her desk. Called herself the neighborhood snoop.”
“What kind of businesses occupied the building?” I urged gently.
“There was a whole string. A luggage lady. A butcher. Then this guy opened a pawnshop.”
Fisher looked down.
“Louise didn’t like him. Really didn’t like him.”
“What was his name?”
“Started with an M. Maynard? Martin? Louise might have said he was American. I don’t remember. This was years ago.”
Stéphane Ménard. The guy on Cyr’s list. The guy who’d rented space in Cyr’s building from eighty-nine to ninety-eight.
“Why did your sister dislike this man?”
“Don’t get me wrong. Louise usually liked everybody. But she had a bad feeling about this guy.”
“Do you know why?”
Fisher looked at Bastillo. Bastillo nodded.
“She saw him carry a sleeping girl into his shop one night. Louise said he was kinda cradling her, like a baby.”
“A child?”
“Teenager.”
/> “His daughter?”
“Louise said he’d told her he regretted never marrying and having kids. My sister had a real knack for getting people to open up. Five minutes and Louise knew your whole life story.”
“Anything else?” My heart was picking up extra beats.
“There was this other time Louise saw a girl run out of the shop. This pawnbroker fellow shot into the street and dragged her back inside.”
“When was this?”
Fisher misunderstood my question. “Late at night.”
I looked at Ryan. He looked as keyed up as I felt.
“Louise kept it to herself until she moved here, then her conscience began bothering her and she told me what she’d seen.”
“Did your sister ever speak to the pawnbroker about these incidents?”
Fisher nodded. “Louise said she asked about the girls several times, you know, not right out, but kinda subtle. She said this pawnbroker always sidestepped her questions, eventually got pretty hostile over the whole thing. So she dropped it.”
Fisher’s eyes came up and fastened on mine.
“Louise kept agonizing over whether she should call the cops. You know, so someone could check it out. I told her to mind her own business. Not get involved.”
“These incidents took place before 1994?”
Fisher nodded. “Do you think I gave my sister bad advice?”
’Tit Ange chirped and rang his bell.
25
RYAN CONTINUED HIS INTERROGATION OF ROSE Fisher. Bastillo hovered nearby. I slipped outside and dialed Claudel.
Astoundingly, he picked up on the second ring.
I repeated Fisher’s story.
“I’ve already run him while working Cyr’s list of tenants. Ménard’s a saint.”
“No record at all?”
“Officially, the guy never even spit on the street.”
“Is he still in Montreal?”
“Owns a house in Pointe-St-Charles.”
“What does he do now?”
“Nothing, as far as I can tell.”
“Ménard operated the pawnshop from eighty-nine until ninety-eight. What was he into before that?”
Slight pause.
“The record is unclear.”
“Unclear?”
“It stops in eighty-nine.”
“What do you mean, it stops?”
“There is nothing on Stéphane Ménard before 1989.”
“No birth certificate, tax return, credit report, medical record? Nothing?”
Silence.
“Rose Fisher thought her sister said Ménard was American. Did you send the name south?”