Bones to Ashes Part 24

"I'll get some ziplocks."

When I returned from the kitchen, Harry was sitting cross-legged on my bed. Reversing each baggie over my hand, I removed the can, then the tissues from Harry's purse.

"You've done some doggie-p.o.o.p scooping," Harry observed.

"I'm mult.i.talented."

"I've got something else."

Reclaiming her purse, Harry pulled an object from the side pocket and laid it on the bed.

The significance didn't register at first. I picked the thing up.

And felt a buzz of excitement.

"Where did you get this?"

"Obeline's bedside table."

19.

I WAS HOLDING A SMALL BOOK WITH A DELICATE GREEN RIBBON WAS HOLDING A SMALL BOOK WITH A DELICATE GREEN RIBBON curling from the binding. The cover was red. The lettering was black. curling from the binding. The cover was red. The lettering was black.

Bones to Ashes: An Exultation of Poems.

"Looks like one of those sixties things quoting Mao," Harry said.

"You stole this?"

"I liberated it." Sanctimonious. "Mao would approve."

I turned back the cover. The pages were grainy and yellow, the same cheap paper used in comic books. The print was faded and fuzzy.

No author. No date. No ISBN number. Besides the t.i.tle, the volume's only identifier was the name of the publisher. O'Connor House.

I flipped to the last page. Sixty-eight. Blank.

I opened to the ribbon. It was marking a poem t.i.tled 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. Evangeline 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 Obeline's bed."

"What's your point?"

"One lonely little English paperback? Right there at her bedside?"

"That hardly means-"

"Maybe Obeline rounded up Evangeline'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 Evangeline. 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. Sidestepping back and forth on his perch.

"Buddy Guy." The cornflower eyes swiveled to me. "Charlie's a blues man."

"Charlie's a c.o.c.katiel 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."

Embarra.s.sed 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.

Pus.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sumed, 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 a.s.sessment, 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 c.r.a.p 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?