Bones to Ashes

I opened to the ribbon. It was marking a poem titled the same as the collection.

“It’s poetry, Tempe.” Harry’s body language told me she was pumped.

“I’ve never heard of O’Connor House. Could be a vanity press.”

“What’s that?”

“A vanity press charges the author for printing and binding.”

Harry looked confused.

“A commercial publisher’s intended market is the general public. A vanity press’s intended market is the author him-or herself.”

The heavily mascaraed eyes widened.

“OK. That computes. Évangéline wanted to be a poet, right?”

“Right.”

“What if she’s the author?”

I looked at Harry’s excited face.

“We have absolutely no reason to believe that’s so,” I said, knowing I was about to hear one of my sister’s imaginative but virtually baseless hypotheses.

“Any guess why I snitched this particular little volume?”

I shook my head.

“Did you notice the books in that parlor?” She didn’t wait for my answer. “’Course not. You were parlay-voo-ing. But I did. There were dozens. Scores. Every last one in French. Same in the bedroom. Which, don’t get your gizzard twirling, I had to traverse to get to the loo. The one and only English book in that whole place was this one. And it was lying right by Obéline’s bed.”

“What’s your point?”

“One lonely little English paperback? Right there at her bedside?”

“That hardly means—”

“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.