KATHY REICHS - 206 BONES

“I knew it. She kept it in shoe boxes at the cabin.”

“Not sure about the boxes, but, yes, your cabin theory skews right. And, by the way, Claudel is impressed.”

“He is?”

Ryan was looking for the waitress, who had vanished.

“What did he say?”

“I’m impressed.”

“Seriously.”

“I’ve got to use the men’s.” Ryan slid from the booth. “Order me a beer.”

“What kind?’

“The usual.” He was gone.

The usual? I’d seen the man drink about every brand ever brewed.

Across the room, beer tap handles ran the length of the bar. Round ones, oval ones, wooden ones, green ones. I read the logos.

First the OCD. Then the locked sideboard.

Was it Wednesday and Thursday’s purging? Had clearing my system enabled me to think better? Heightened awareness born of my battle with microbes? A third dot connected with an almost audible click.

Oh, baby, I was on a roll.

I was poking at the idea a second time when Ryan returned.

“This is nutso, Ryan. Wild barking mad.”

“Where’s my beer?”

I could barely sit still.

“Listen to me.” I pointed two palms at Ryan. “Just hear me out before you scoff.”

“I never scoff at you, buttercup.”

“The floral endearment is scoffing.”

Ryan made a give-it-to-me gesture with his hand.

The waitress arrived with our food. Ryan ordered a Sam Adams.

“That’s it!” My palm smacked the table.

The waitress backed off.

“What are Red O’Keefe-Bud Keith’s other aliases?”

“All of them?”

I nodded.

Ryan pulled his spiral from a jacket pocket, flipped pages. “Red O’Keefe. Bud Keith. Sam Caffrey. Alex Carling.”

“He’s using beer brands!”

Two kids at the next table slid glances our way.

I lowered my voice.

“He mixes and matches. Red-Red Stripe. Bud-Budweiser. O’Keefe-O’Keefe’s. Keith and Alex-Alexander Keith’s. Carling- Carling’s Black Label.”

“Sonovabitch.”

“But listen.” Again the stop sign hands. “Listen.”

“I’m listening.”

“Sam Adams.”

Ryan raised his mug.

“Sam Adamski.”

“Keiser’s third husband?”

I nodded.

“He’s dead.”

“What if he’s not?”

The mug halted en route to Ryan’s mouth.

“According to Otto, Adamski’s body was never recovered. What if he’s alive?”

“What if he is?”

“Keiser and Adamski married in ’ninety-eight. What if she talked to him about sewing her money into the bedroom drapes? What if he looked her up this fall to check things out?”

“The drowning was staged?”

“Or the accident was real, but he survived. Maybe he saw his death as an opportunity to be exploited.”

“Where’s he been since 2000?”

“Maybe he changed his identity and hid out, left the country, got busted and did time under another name. Who knows? Adamski reemerges, needs bread, decides to look up his former wife.”

“Why now?”

I ignored Ryan’s question. I was spitting ideas as they came into my head.

“Or maybe the two kept in contact all along. Maybe they met at the cabin. Adamski knew about it. He built it, for God’s sake.”

“Why keep it secret that he’s alive?”

“The kids hated him.”

“They hated him throughout the marriage.”

“OK. Maybe they weren’t in contact. Maybe he shows up, holds her captive, smacks her around until she tells him about the money. Then he kills her.”

“Take a breath.”

I did.

“Otto said something this morning that got my wheels turning.”

“What?” I asked.

“He remembered that Adamski drowned somewhere in La Mauricie.”

“It was a boating accident. Do you suppose Adamski went down in the Saint-Maurice River?”

“I don’t know. I’ll find out. That’s not important. You know what else is right there, not far from Trois Rivières?”

I shook my head.

“A little place called La Tuque.”

It took me a nanosecond to make the connection.

“Bud Keith’s alibi. He wasn’t at L’Auberge des Neiges when Rose Jurmain was killed. He was off bear hunting at La Tuque.”

Things were falling into place.

M. Keith, the Villejoins’ tree removal man.

Bud Keith-Red O’Keefe, Grellier’s bar braggart with knowledge of Christelle’s hidden grave.

Bud Keith, the kitchen worker at Rose Jurmain’s auberge.

Sam Adamski, Marilyn Keiser’s third husband.

For the longest time Ryan and I just stared at each other.

Could Caffrey/Keith/O’Keefe/Carling/Adamski have killed all four women?

Why?

Means and motive didn’t matter for now. We had the common link. The explanation of how the victims’ lives touched.

Ryan reached for his mobile.

BY THE TIME RYAN DROPPED ME AT MY CONDO WE KNEW THAT Caffrey/Keith/O’Keefe/Carling/maybe Adamski was neither at home nor at work.

Ryan issued a BOL. Be On Lookout. I’d barely cleared the Jeep when he roared off, hands tight on the wheel.

He phoned that night around eight.

“He’s slipped the grid.”

“You’ll get him.”

“I had him.” Ryan’s voice was taut with frustration. “I had the sonovabitch.”

“What did the neighbors tell you?”

“They’re not the type to notice. Or to share insights with cops.”

“What about the gas station?”

“No one’s laid eyes on the guy since Wednesday.”

The day Ryan interrogated him. I didn’t say it.

“I faxed Keith/O’Keefe’s mug shot over to Trois Rivières. They ran it out to the camp near La Tuque where Adamski was staying when he had his fatal boating accident in 2000. It’s the same guy. And the same camp.”

“No shit.”

“They’re the outfit that arranged Bud Keith’s bear hunt during his sabbatical from kitchen duty at the auberge.”

“Good work, Detective.”

Ryan snorted in self-derision. “Except for the part where I let the bastard walk away without so much as a backward glance.”

“He won’t get far.”

“He disappeared in 2000 and didn’t resurface until two years ago. We have no friggin’ idea where the prick was all that time.”

Good point. I didn’t say that, either.

“You confirmed that Adamski’s body was never found?”

“Yeah.” Ryan sounded exhausted. “Apparently he went out on the lake early one morning, alone. They found the boat belly-up, Adamski wasn’t in it. They dragged the lake on and off for a week, found his wallet, hat, his fishing gear. No body.”

“The locals didn’t find that odd?”

“Apparently it’s happened before. This lake’s ninety feet deep in places.”

Sudden flash of the Lac Saint-Jean vics abandoned in my lab. I felt my own stab of guilt. Quentin Jacquème had been waiting forty years for an answer concerning his brother-in-law Achille and the rest of the Gouvrard family.

Monday. First thing. No distractions.

“-gotta tell you. I’m beat.”

I pictured Ryan doing that hair-rake thing with his hand. I imagined the clumps shooting in all directions.

I opened my lips.

Hesitated.

What the hell?

“Would you like to come over?”

“Thanks, Tempe. Really. But I promised Lily I’d pick her up early tomorrow. I can’t screw up. I’d better call it a day.”

“I understand.” I didn’t.

“You know where I’d rather be. It’s just … Please. Ask me again?”

“Sure.” My chest burned. I needed to get off the phone.

Birdie and I watched Pretty Woman on the old-movie channel, then crashed.

Sunday was a day to make Alexander Graham Bell proud. Or rich.