Kathy Reichs - Bones to Ashes

“Maybe Obéline rounded up Évangéline’s poetry and had it printed. Like a memorial. You know? Her sister’s dream made real?”

“I suppose it’s a possibility. In that case it was very wrong of us to take it from her.”

Harry leaned forward, eager. “We’ll return it. It’s a clue. We run this publisher to ground, maybe we learn something about Évangéline. Maybe we tank. So what? It won’t hurt the book.”

I couldn’t argue with her reasoning.

“My thinking, it’s worth a look-see.”

“I have to help Ryan tomorrow. And I need to reexamine the skeleton.”

Harry scrambled from the bed, tossed her hair over her shoulders.

“Leave it all to baby sister.”

Ryan arrived at seven-forty. I buzzed him in, suspecting the early landing was geared toward a glimpse of Harry.

Sorry, buckaroo. The Starlet of Slumber won’t rise for four hours.

I pointed Ryan to the coffee, then finished my morning toilette, wondering if he and Harriet Lee actually had “hooked up” during her previous visit. Katy lingo. My prurient curiosity.

When I emerged from the bathroom, Ryan was deep in conversation with Charlie. Birdie was observing from the sofa back.

“Cheaper to keep her.” Sidestepping back and forth on his perch.

“Buddy Guy.” The cornflower eyes swiveled to me. “Charlie’s a blues man.”

“Charlie’s a cockatiel with a bawdy beak.” I forced my voice stern. “Are you using his training CD’s?”

“Religiously.” All innocence. “Aren’t we, pal?”

As though complicit, Charlie whistled a line from “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

“He’s picked up Korn lyrics,” I said.

“I told you. I’m not into Korn.”

“Someone is.”

Embarrassed realization. Pulling on his nose, Ryan looked away.

Something clicked in my mind.

New CD’s. New musical taste. Lutetia had already moved in with Ryan. I wondered how long it had been.

“Let’s go,” I said, unhappiness settling in my stomach like lead.

Cormier’s studio was in a redbrick three-flat near the intersection of Saint-Laurent and Rachel. The building’s first floor was rented by a dentist named Brigault. The occupant of the third offered something that required a reading knowledge of Chinese.

Ryan noticed me studying the nameplate.

“Ho. Does acupuncture and Tui Na.”

“What’s Tui Na?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

Hippo was unlocking Cormier’s studio when Ryan and I clomped onto the second-floor landing. At his feet sat a cardboard tray holding a white paper bag and three plastic-lidded cups.

During my brief absence in New Brunswick, Montreal’s heat spell had soldiered on undiminished. The cramped hall was cooking, the air reeking of dust and mildew.

Pushing open the door, Hippo pulled a hanky from his pocket and wiped sweat from his face. Then he looked at me.

“Jet-lagged?” he asked, not kindly.

Not waiting for an answer, he squatted, scooped the tray from the threadbare carpet, and disappeared into the flat.

“What was that all about?” Ryan asked.

I shook my head.

I’d telephoned Hippo from the Moncton airport, but as we were leaving, not when we’d arrived. His displeasure was apparent. He’d asked for detailed descriptions of Cheech and Chong, then rung off abruptly.

Cormier’s apartment was what Montreal realtors call a four-and-a-half. He used the large living-dining room in front for his shoots. Arranged next to the walls were various types of photographic equipment. Lights. Backdrops. Meters. Sheets of colored plastic.

One bedroom functioned as an office, the other was strictly for storage. I estimated the rooms held maybe forty file cabinets between them.

The larger bathroom had been converted to a darkroom. The source, I assumed, of the vaguely acrid odor permeating the flat. Curling irons, blow-dryers, and lighted mirrors suggested the smaller bathroom served as a makeup and changing area.

The tiny kitchen retained its original function. There, we had sticky buns and coffee, and discussed strategy.

“How are the cabinets organized?” I asked.

“They got drawers. Each drawer’s stuffed with folders.”

Ryan’s brows lifted at Hippo’s sarcasm, but he said nothing.

“Are the folders arranged alphabetically by client name? By date? By category?” I spoke patiently, a parent to a derisive teen.

“My best assessment, Cormier’s system went something like this. Done. Paid. Shove it in the drawer.” The rusty voice was cool.

“So he separated paid from unpaid accounts?”

“Convoluted, eh?” Hippo reached for his third sticky bun. “Probably take some air travel to crack this baby.”

Ryan jumped in. “Cormier kept an in-basket on his desk for open accounts. Otherwise, his filing doesn’t seem to follow any pattern.”

“The cabinets should at least reflect a rough chronology, right?”

“They’re not that old,” Ryan said. “At some point, Cormier must have transferred materials from elsewhere. Looks like he just shoved crap into drawers.”

The strategy we settled upon went something like this. Take a cabinet. Work from top to bottom, front to back. Pull any file in which the subject was young and female.

Who says detective work isn’t complex?

Though Ryan opened windows in the parlor and kitchen, little breeze penetrated to the windowless bedrooms in the back of the flat. Four hours into the task, my eyes itched and my shirt was saturated.

Cormier had stored many of his records in large brown or blue envelopes. The rest he’d placed in standard manila jackets, the kind you buy at Staples.

And Ryan was right. The guy was lazy. In some drawers he hadn’t even bothered to set the files upright, choosing instead to dump them flat in piles.

Most envelopes were marked with the client’s name in black felt-tip pen. Most file folders were labeled on their tabs. Both envelopes and folders contained contact sheets and negatives in shiny paper sleeves. Some contact sheets bore dates. Others did not. Some files held photocopies of checks. Others did not.

By early afternoon, I’d stared at hundreds of faces frozen in variations on “I’m so happy” or “I’m so sexy.” Some had caused me to linger, pondering that moment when Cormier clicked the shutter.

Had this woman curled her hair and glossed her lips for a disinterested husband? Was her head filled with hopes of rekindled romance?

Was this child thinking of Harry Potter? Of her puppy? Of the ice cream she’d been promised for cheerful compliance?

Though I’d set several folders aside, solicited the opinion of Hippo or Ryan, in the end, I’d added each to my stack of rejects. Some resemblance, but no match. The girls were not among the cold case MP’s or DOA’s of which I was aware.

Hippo was shuffling paper on the far side of the room. Now and then he’d stop to Dristan a nostril or swallow a Tums. Ryan was across the hall in Cormier’s office. It had been almost an hour since either had sought my opinion.

My lower back ached from lifting armloads of folders, and from leaning at an ergonomically inappropriate angle. Rising from the small stool on which I was balanced, I stretched, then bent and touched my toes.

The shuffling stopped. “Want I should order pizza?”

Pizza sounded good. I started to say so.

“Maybe phone Tracadie?”

“Give it a rest, Hippo.”

I heard the thup of paper hitting wood. Then Hippo’s face rose above the far row of cabinets. It looked parched and cross.

“I told you this Bastarache is a real piece of work. It would have been useful to have some people keep an eye on you from a distance in case things got close.”