Bones to Ashes

“What do you do now, Mr. Whalen?”

There was a pause. I thought I could hear a television in the background.

“Work security.” Defensive. “Nights at the high school.”

“And your brother?”

“Archie’s a fucking junkie.” The macho tone now sounded whiny. “Do us both a favor. Arrest his ass and get him out of this shithole.”

I had one last question.

“Do you remember the pawnbroker’s name?”

“’Course I remember that dickhead. Jerry O’Driscoll.”

I’d barely disconnected when my cell phone rang.

Hippo.

His news rocked my world.

12

“L AURETTE PHILOMÈNE SAULNIER LANDRY. DOB MAY 22, 1938. DOD June 17, 1972.”

Death at age thirty-four? How sad.

I pictured Laurette in Euphémie’s Pawleys Island kitchen. My child’s mind had never slotted her age. She was simply adult, younger than Gran, more wrinkled than Mama.

“She died so young. From what?”

“Death certificate lists natural causes, but doesn’t elaborate.”

“You’re sure it’s the right Laurette Landry?”

“Laurette Philomène Saulnier married Philippe Grégoire Landry on November 20, 1955. Union produced two kids. Évangéline Anastasie, DOB August 12, 1956. Obéline Flavie, DOB February 16, 1964.”

“Jesus. I can’t believe you found this so fast.” In addition to my early telephone probes, I’d periodically tried the New Brunswick Bureau of Vital Statistics. Never had a hit.

“Used my Acadian charm.”

Hippo’s charm and a token would get him on the subway. I waited.

“Back in the sixties, the church handled most of the vital stats record keeping. Some parts of New Brunswick, babies were still being birthed at home, especially in rural areas and smaller towns. Lot of Acadians had no time for government or its institutions. Still don’t.”

I heard a soft whop, pictured Hippo downing several Tums.

“Got a church-lady niece at St. John the Baptist in Tracadie. Knows the archives like I know the size of my dick.”

I definitely did not want to hear about that.

“You found baptismal and marriage certificates through your niece?” I guessed.

“Bingo. Since I’m a homeboy, I started dialing for dollars. We Acadians identify ourselves by ancestral names. Take me, for example. I’m Hippolyte à Hervé à Isaïe à Calixte—”

“What did you learn?”

“Like I warned you, forty years is a long time. But the Acadian National Memory Bank’s got a whopper of a vault. Found a few locals remembered Laurette and her kids. No one would talk much, respecting privacy and all. But I got the drift.

“When Laurette got too sick to work, hubby’s kin took her in. The Landrys lived outside of town. Kept mostly to themselves. One old-timer called them morpions. Trailer trash. Said they were mostly illiterate.”

“Laurette had a driver’s license.”

“No. Laurette had a car.”

“She must have been licensed. She drove across the border.”

“OK. Maybe someone got paid off. Or maybe she was smart enough to read a little and to memorize road signs. Anyway, Philippe took off while Laurette was pregnant with Obéline, leaving her to support the two little girls. She managed for five or six years, then had to quit working. Eventually died of some sort of chronic condition. Sounded like TB to me. This guy thought she’d moved out toward Saint-Isidore sometime in the mid-sixties. Might have had family living that way.”

“What about Philippe?”

“Nothing. May have left the country. Probably dead somewhere.”

“And the girls?” My heart was thumping my rib cage.

“Obéline Landry married a guy named David Bastarache in eighty. I’m running him now. And following the Saint-Isidore lead.”

“What about Évangéline?”

“I’ll be straight. I ask about Laurette or Obéline, I get cooperation. Or at least what sounds like cooperation. I ask about the older sister, people go iceberg.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I’ve been at this awhile. I got antennae. I ask about this kid, the answers come too quick, too consistent.”

I waited.

“No one knows shit.”

“Hiding something?” My grip on the handset was raising the cords in my wrist.

“I’d bet money on it.”

I told Hippo what I’d learned from Trick Whalen. The Miramichi pawnshop. The mojo sculpture. The Indian cemetery.

“You want I should call this guy O’Driscoll?”

“No. If you can get contact information, I’ll follow the bone trail while you chase the leads in Tracadie.”

“Don’t go ’way.”

Hippo put me on hold for a good ten minutes.

“Place is called Oh O! Pawn. Catchy name. Says we care.” He supplied a phone number and an address on the King George Highway.

Cellophane crinkled. Then, “You said you found something wrong with the kid’s skeleton.”

“Yes.”

“You figure that out?”

“Not yet.”

“You willing to work on Saturday?”

The 82nd Airborne couldn’t have kept me from those bones.

By eight-thirty I was at Wilfrid-Derome. Contrary to reports, there’d been no rain and the weather hadn’t cooled. Already the mercury was pushing eighty.

I rode the elevator alone, passed no one in the LSJML lobby or corridors. I was pleased that I’d have no disruptions.

I was wrong. One of several misjudgments I’d make that day.

First off, I dialed O’Driscoll. The phone went unanswered.