Kathy Reichs - Bones to Ashes

“Think I’m ready for the Texas State Hospital? ’Course I remember. I was nine, you were twelve. They disappeared from Pawleys Island and clean off the face of planet Earth. We spent three years trying to get a bead on them. Burned a busload of coins calling Canada.”

“This sounds a little far-fetched, but there’s a remote possibility Hippo’s girl could actually be Évangéline.”

“Hippo’s girl?”

“The Jouns-O’Driscoll-Whalen-Tiquet-Gaston-Hippo skeleton.”

“How remote?”

“Very.”

I told Harry about Laurette and Obéline. And David Bastarache.

“Miserable sonovabitch. Give me a clear shot at his pecker, and that asshole won’t be setting any more fires.”

Harry could mix metaphors like no one I knew. I didn’t point out that this one redefined human anatomy.

Silence hummed across the continent. Then Harry said what I knew Harry would say.

“I’m coming up there.”

“What about selling your house?”

“You think I’m going to stay here diddlin’ with real estate? You’re a smart woman, Tempe, but sometimes I wonder how you pull your undies up in the morning.”

“What are you saying?”

“You’ve got Obéline’s address and telephone number?”

“Yes.”

“Do you need a giant finger pointing down at burning shrubbery?”

I let her go on.

“I’ll get my heinie on a plane to la Belle Province . You book us tickets to New Brunswick.”

“You’re suggesting we visit Obéline?”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, Hippo will be pissed.”

“Don’t tell him.”

“That would be unprofessional, and potentially dangerous. I’m not a cop, you know. I rely on them.”

“We’ll text him from the forest primeval.”

16

HARRY’S PLANE WAS DUE IN AT TEN. I’D BOOKED A NOON FLIGHT to Moncton. Our plan was to meet at the departure gate.

Montreal’s main airport is situated in the west island suburb of Dorval. For years it was simply called Dorval. Made sense to me. Nope. Effective January 1, 2004, YUL was rechristened Pierre Elliott Trudeau International. Locals still call it Dorval.

By ten, I was parked, checked in, and through security. Harry wasn’t yet at gate 12-C. I wasn’t concerned. Dorval’s “welcome to Canada” immigration line usually makes Disney World’s snake-back-and-forth-through-the-ribbon-maze queue look short.

Ten forty-five. Still no Harry. I checked the board. Her flight had landed at 10:07.

At eleven I began to get antsy. I tried reading, but my eyes kept drifting to the tide of faces passing by.

At eleven-fifteen, I started running possibilities.

No passport. Maybe Harry didn’t know that a government-issued photo ID was no longer sufficient to enter Canada by plane.

Missing luggage. Maybe Harry was filling out forms in triplicate and quintuplicate. From previous visits I knew she didn’t travel light.

Smuggling. Maybe Harry was batting her lashes at some steely faced customs agent. Right. That works.

I went back to reading my Jasper Fforde novel.

The man to my right was beefy, wiry-haired, and overflowed a polyester sports jacket several sizes too small. He kept bouncing one knee up and down while tapping his boarding pass on the armrest between us.

Montreal is not Toronto. Unlike its stodgy Anglo neighbor to the west, the island city celebrates gender and sex. Nightly, bars and bistros host the pheromone ball into the wee, small hours. Billboards proclaim upcoming events with risqué double entendre. Along the highways, half-naked models hawk beer, face cream, watches, and jeans. The town pulses with hot blood and sweat.

But the Big Easy North is never prepared for my sister.

When wire-hair went motionless, I knew Harry had arrived.

She did so with her usual flamboyance, standing in the cart, arms spread like Kate Winslet on the Titanic bow. The driver was laughing, tugging her waistband to reconnect her rump with the seat.

The cart slowed, and Harry hopped out. In jeans tight enough to be mistaken for skin, rose and turquoise boots, and a pink Stetson. Spotting me, she whipped off and waved the hat. Blond hair cascaded to her waist.

I stood.

Behind me, wire-hair remained frozen. I knew others were sharing his sight line. Others with a Y in each of their cells.

Harry bore down. The driver followed, a Sherpa pack-muling Neiman Marcus and Louis Vuitton.

“Tem-pee-roo-nee!”

“I was starting to wonder if you’d gotten lost.” Spoken from the con-fines of a spine-crushing hug.

Releasing me, Harry arm-draped the Sherpa. “We were parlay-vooing, weren’t we, An-dray?”

André smiled, clearly at a loss.

As though choreographed, a microphone voice announced the boarding of our flight.

The Sherpa combined two of Harry’s carry-ons and handed them to her, along with a saddlebag shoulder purse. The Neiman Marcus bag was offered to me. I took it.

Harry gave the Sherpa a twenty, a high-beam smile, and a big “mer-cee.”

André zoomed off, a man with a story.

The rental car I’d booked at the Moncton airport was somehow unavailable. An upgrade was offered at the same price.

What type of vehicle?

Spacious. You’ll like it.

Do I have a choice?

No.

While I signed the rental agreement, Harry learned the following.

The agent’s name was George. He was forty-three, divorced, with a ten-year-old son who still wet the bed. Tracadie was a straight shot up Highway 11. Gas was cheap at the Irving station just past Kouchibouguac. Le Coin du pêcheur in Escuminac served a mean lobster roll. The trip would take about two hours.

The spacious upgrade turned out to be a shiny new Cadillac Escalade EXT. Black. Harry was pumped.

“Would you look at this bad buggy. Kickass engine, four-wheel drive, and a trailer hitch. We can boogie this iron pony uphill, downhill, and off the road.”

“I’ll stay on the pavement, thanks. Don’t want to get lost.”

“We won’t.” Harry patted her purse. “I’ve got GPS on my phone.”

We climbed in. The iron pony had that new car smell and an odometer showing forty-five miles. I felt like I was driving a troop carrier.

Though dead on about the sandwich, George had been wildly optimistic on the drive time north.

When we pulled into Tracadie my watch said seven-twenty. Eight-twenty local. Why so long? You guessed it. Harry.

The upside? We’d made friends with an RCMP constable named Kevin Martel, and with most of the residents of Escuminac. We also had snaps of ourselves arm in arm before Le plus gros homard du monde. Shediac was a detour, but how often can one pose in front of the world’s biggest lobster?

At check-in, the nice motel lady told Harry of a restaurant with traditional Acadian food and an outdoor deck. I waited while Harry blow-dried her bangs, then we headed to the waterfront.

Plastic tables. Plastic chairs. Plastic menus.

Nice atmosphere, though. We shared it with men in ball caps hauling on long-necked beers.

The air was cool and smelled of fish and salty mud. The water was dark and restless, flecked by white from a rising moon. Now and then an insomniac gull cried out, stopped, as though surprised by its own voice.

Harry ordered spaghetti. I went for the cod and potatoes. When the waitress left, Harry pointed to a newspaper abandoned on the adjacent table. L’Acadie Nouvelle .

“OK, chief. Background. Starting with where the hell we are.”

“Tracadie-Sheila.” I pronounced it Shy-la, like the locals.

“That much I know.”

“In the belly of L’Acadie, homeland to the distinctive, four-century-old Acadian culture.”