Death Du Jour tb-2

by Reichs, Kathy

  * * *

  I was toweling off when I heard the beep of the security alarm. I dug out a flannel Disney nightshirt Harry had given me one Christmas, and pulled it over my head.

  I found her standing in the living room, still wearing her jacket, gloves, and hat, her eyes fixed on something a million miles away.

  “Long day, I’d say.”

  “Yeah.” She refocused on the present, and gave me a half smile.

  “Hungry?”

  “I guess. Just let me have a few minutes.” She threw her pack onto the couch and flopped down beside it.

  “Sure. Take your coat off and stay awhile.”

  “Right. Damn, it gets cold here. I feel like a Popsicle just walking from the metro.”

  A few minutes later I heard her in the guest room, then she joined me in the kitchen. I grilled the salmon and tossed the salad while she set the table.

  When we sat down to eat I asked about her day.

  “It was fine.” She cut her potato, squeezed it, and added sour cream.

  “Fine?” I encouraged.

  “Yeah. We covered a lot.”

  “You look like you covered forty miles of bad road.”

  “Yeah. I’m pretty beat.” She didn’t smile at my use of her expression.

  “So what did you do?”

  “Lots of lectures, exercises.” She spooned sauce onto her fish. “What are these little green threads?”

  “Dill. What kinds of exercises?”

  “Meditation. Games.”

  “Games?”

  “Storytelling. Calisthenics. Whatever they tell us to do.”

  “You just do whatever they say?”

  “I do it because I choose to do it,” she snapped.

  I was taken aback. Harry rarely barked at me like that.

  “Sorry. I’m just tired.”

  For a while we ate in silence. I didn’t really want to hear about her touchy-feely therapy, but after a few minutes I tried again.

  “How many people are there?”

  “Quite a few.”

  “Are they interesting?”

  “I’m not doing this to make new friends, Tempe. I’m learning to be accountable. To be responsible. My life sucks, and I’m trying to figure out how to make it work.”

  She stabbed at her salad. I couldn’t remember when I’d seen her so down.

  “And these exercises help?”

  “Tempe, you just have to try it for yourself. I can’t tell you exactly what we do or how it works.”

  She scraped off the dill sauce and picked at her salmon.

  I said nothing.

  “I don’t think you’d get it anyway. You’re too frozen.”

  She picked up her plate and carried it to the kitchen. So much for my resolve to be interested.

  I joined her at the sink.

  “I think I’m just going to turn in,” she said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “I’m leaving in the afternoon.”

  “Oh. I’ll call you.”

  In bed, I replayed the conversation. I’d never seen Harry so listless, or so snappish when approached. She must have been exhausted. Or maybe it was the thing with Ryan. Or her breakup with Striker.

  Later, I’d wonder why I hadn’t seen the signs. It might have changed so much.

  13

  ON MONDAY I GOT UP AT DAWN, PLANNING TO MAKE BREAKFAST for Harry and myself. She declined, saying it was a fast day. She left before seven, wearing sweats and no makeup, a sight I had never expected to experience.

  There are records identifying the coldest spot on earth, the driest, the lowest. The gloomiest is without doubt the serials and microform department of McGill’s McLennan Library. It is a long narrow room on the second floor done in poured cement and fluorescent lighting, set off smartly by a bloodred floor.

  Following the librarian’s instructions, I worked my way past the stacks of serials and newspapers to rows of metal shelves holding tiny cardboard boxes and round metal tins. I found the ones I wanted and took them to the reading room. Deciding to start with the English press, I withdrew a roll of microfilm and wound it onto the reading machine.

  In 1846 the Montreal Gazette was published triweekly, with a format like today’s New York Times. Narrow columns, few pictures, numerous ads. My viewer was bad and so was the film. It was like trying to read under water. The print kept moving in and out of focus, and hairs and particles of debris migrated across the screen.

  Ads extolled fur caps, British stationery, untanned sheepskins. Dr. Taylor wanted you to buy his balsam liverwort, Dr. Berlin, his antibilious pills. John Bower Lewis promoted himself as a worthy barrister and attorney-at-law. Pierre Grégoire would be pleased to do your hair. I read the ad:

  Gentleman can accommodate respectable male and female clients. Will render hair soft and glossy, however harsh. Will use admirable preparations to produce beautiful curls and do excellent restoration. Reasonable prices. Select clients only.

  And now for the news.

  Antoine Lindsay died when his neighbor hit him in the head with a piece of wood. Coroner’s finding: Willful Murder.

  A young English girl, Maria Nash, lately landed in Montreal, was victim of an abduction and betrayal. She died in a state of madness at the Emigrant Hospital.

  When Bridget Clocone gave birth to a male child at the Women’s Lying-In Hospital, doctors found that the forty-year-old widow had recently delivered another child. Police searched her employer’s home and found the body of a second male infant hidden under clothes in a box. The baby showed “. . . marks of violence as though occasioned by the strong pressure of fingers on the neck.” Coroner’s finding: Willful Murder.

  Jesus. Does anything ever change?

  I shifted gears and scanned a list of ships that had cleared the port, and a list of ocean passengers leaving Montreal for Liverpool. Pretty dry stuff.

  Fares for the steamboat. Stagecoach service to Ontario. Notices of removal. Not many folks moving that week.

  Finally I found it. Births, Marriages, Deaths. In this city on the seventeenth, Mrs. David Mackay, a son. Mrs. Marie-Claire Bisset, a daughter. No mention of Eugénie Nicolet and her baby.

  I noted the position of the birth notices within each paper, and fast-forwarded through the next several weeks, going right to that section. Nothing. I checked every paper on the reel. Through the end of 1846 there was no notice of Élisabeth’s birth.

  I tried the other English papers. Same story. No mention of Eugénie Nicolet. No birth of Élisabeth. I shifted to the French press. Still nothing.

  By ten o’clock my eyes were throbbing and pain had spread throughout my back and shoulders. I leaned back, stretched, and rubbed my temples. Now what?

  Across the room someone at another machine hit the rewind knob. Good idea. Good as anything. I’ll go backward. Élisabeth was born in January. Let’s check the period when the little sperm and egg were introducing themselves to each other.

  I got the boxes and wound a film through the spools. April 1845. Same ads. Same notices of removal. Same passenger lists. English press. French press.

  By the time I got to La Presse my eyes would hardly focus. I looked at my watch. Eleven-thirty. Twenty minutes more.

  I rested my chin on my fist and hit rewind. When the film stopped I was in March. I was advancing manually, stopping here and there to scan down the middle of the screen, when I spotted the Bélanger name.

  I sat up and brought the article into focus. It was brief. Eugénie Bélanger was off to Paris. The noted singer and wife of Alain Nicolet would be traveling with a company of twelve and would return after the season. Except for some verbiage saying how much she’d be missed, that was it.

  So Eugénie had left town. When had she returned? Where was she in April? Did Alain go with her? Did he join her there? I looked at my watch. Shit.

  I checked my wallet, dug into the bottom of my purse, then printed as many pages as my coins would allow. I rewound an
d returned the films and hurried across campus to Birks Hall.

  Jeannotte’s door was closed and locked, so I found the department office. The secretary dragged her eyes from her computer screen long enough to assure me that the journals would be delivered safely. I attached a note of thanks and left.

  Walking back to the condo, my mind was still on history. I imagined the grand old homes I was passing as they’d been a century ago. What had the occupants seen when they looked out across Sherbrooke? Not the Musée des Beaux-Arts or the Ritz-Carlton. Not the latest offerings of Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani, and the atelier of Versace.

  I wondered if they would have liked such trendy neighbors. Surely the boutiques were more uplifting than the smallpox hospital that had reopened not far from their backyards.

  At home I checked the answering machine, afraid that I’d missed Harry’s call. Nothing. I quickly made a sandwich, then drove to the lab to sign reports. When I left I placed a note on LaManche’s desk reminding him of my date of return. As a rule I spend most of April in Charlotte, with the understanding that I’d return to Montreal immediately for court appearances or urgent matters. Come May and the end of spring semester, I’m back for the summer.

  Home again, I spent an hour packing and organizing work materials. While I am not exactly a light traveler, clothes are not the problem. After years of commuting between countries, I’ve found it’s easier to keep two sets of everything. I have the world’s largest suitcase on wheels, and I load it with books, files, journals, manuscripts, lecture notes, and anything else on which I’m working. This trip it held several pounds of Xerox copies.

  At three-thirty I took a taxi to the airport. Harry had not called.

  I live in perhaps the most unique apartment in Charlotte. Mine is the smallest unit in a complex known as Sharon Hall, a two-and-a- half-acre property situated in Myers Park. Deeds don’t record the original function of the little structure, and today, for lack of a better label, the residents call it the Coach House Annex, or just the Annex.

  The main house at Sharon Hall was built in 1913 as home for a local timber magnate. On the death of his wife in 1954, the 7,500-square-foot Georgian was donated to Queens College. The buildings housed the college’s music department until the mid-eighties, when the property was sold and the mansion and coach house were converted to condos. At that time wings and annexes with an additional ten town houses were added, all conforming to the style of the original home. Old brick from a courtyard wall was incorporated into the new buildings, and windows, moldings, and hardwood floors were made as similar to the 1913 style as possible.

  In the early sixties a gazebo was built next to the Annex, and the tiny building served as a sort of summer kitchen. It eventually fell into disuse, then served as a storage shed for the next two decades. In 1993 a NationsBank executive bought the Annex and converted it into the world’s smallest town house, incorporating the gazebo as part of the main living area. He was transferred just as my deteriorating marital situation sent me into the market for alternative living arrangements. I have a little over eight hundred square feet on two floors and, though cramped, I love it.

  The only sound in the town house was the slow, steady ticking of my schoolhouse clock. Pete had been there. How like him to wind it for me. I called Birdie’s name, but he didn’t appear. I hung my jacket in the hall closet and muscled the suitcase up the narrow staircase to my bedroom.

  “Bird?”

  No answering meow and no furry white face appearing around a corner.

  Downstairs, I found a note on the kitchen table. Pete still had Birdie, but he was going to Denver on Wednesday for a day or two, and wanted the cat picked up no later than tomorrow. The answering machine was blinking like a hazard light, and appropriately so, I thought.

  I looked at my watch. Ten-thirty. I really didn’t want to go back out.

  I dialed Pete’s number. My number for so many years. I could picture the phone on the kitchen wall, the V-shaped nick in the right-side casing. We’d had good times in that house, especially in that kitchen, with its walk-in fireplace and huge old pine table. Guests always drifted to that room, no matter where I tried to steer them.

  The machine came on and Pete’s voice asked for a short message. I left one. I tried Harry. Same routine, my voice.

  I played my own messages. Pete. My department chair. Two students. A friend inviting me to a party the previous Tuesday. My mother-in-law. Two hang-ups. My best friend, Ann. No land mines. Always a relief when the series of monologues runs its course without describing catastrophies concluded or in the making.

  I’d zapped and eaten a frozen pizza, and was almost finished unpacking when the phone rang.

  “Good trip?”

  “Not bad. Same old.”

  “Bird says he’s bringing suit.”

  “For?”

  “Abandonment.”

  “He may have a case. Will you represent him?”

  “If he can come up with the retainer.”

  “What’s in Denver?”

  “A deposition. Same old.”

  “Could I get Birdie tomorrow? I’ve been up since six and I’m really exhausted.”

  “I understand Harry paid you a visit.”

  “That’s not it,” I snapped. My sister had always been a source of friction with Pete.

  “Hey, hey. Ease down. How is she?”

  “She’s terrific.”

  “Tomorrow is fine. What time?”

  “It’s my first day back, so I know I won’t get away until late. Probably six or seven.”

  “No problem. Come after seven and I’ll feed you.”

  “I—”

  “For Birdie. He needs to see that we’re still friends. I think he feels it’s all his fault.”

  “Right.”

  “You don’t want him in veterinary therapy.”

  I smiled. Pete.

  “O.K. But I’ll bring something.”

  “Fine with me.”

  The next day was even more hectic than I’d anticipated. I was up by six, on campus by seven-thirty. By nine I’d checked my e-mail, sorted my snail mail, and reviewed my lecture notes.

  I handed back exams in both my classes, so I had to extend office hours well beyond the normal time. Some students wanted to discuss their grades, others needed clemency for missing the test. Relatives always die during exams, and all manner of personal crises incapacitate the test takers. This midterm had been no exception.

  At four I attended a College Course and Curriculum Committee meeting where we spent ninety minutes discussing whether the philosophy department could change the name of an upper-level course on Thomas Aquinas. I returned to my office to find my phone light blinking. Two messages.

  Another student with a dead aunt. A taped message from campus security warning of break-ins in the Physical Sciences Building.

  Next I turned to collecting diagrams, calipers, casts, and a list of materials I planned to have my assistant lay out for a lab exercise the next day. Then I spent an hour in the lab assuring that the speci-mens I’d chosen were appropriate.

  At six I locked all the cabinets and the outer lab door. The corridors of the Colvard Building were deserted and quiet, but when I turned the corner toward my office I was surprised to see a young woman leaning against my doorway.

  “Can I help you?”

  She jumped at the sound of my voice.

  “I— No. Sorry. I knocked.” She spoke without turning, making it hard to see her face. “I have the wrong office.” With that she bolted around the corner beyond my office and disappeared.

  I suddenly recalled the message about break-ins.

  Chill, Brennan. She was probably just listening to see if someone was inside.

  I turned the handle and the door opened. Damn. I was sure I’d locked it. Or had I? My arms were so full I had pulled the door closed with my foot. Maybe the latch hadn’t caught.

  I did a quick inventory of the room. Nothing looked disturbed. I pu
lled my purse from the bottom file drawer and checked. Money. Keys. Passport. Credit cards. Everything worth taking was there.

  Maybe she had been at the wrong place. Maybe she’d looked in, realized her mistake, and was leaving. I hadn’t actually seen her open the door.

  Whatever.

  I packed my briefcase, turned the key and tested the lock, then headed for the parking deck.

  Charlotte is as different from Montreal as Boston is from Bombay. A city suffering from multiple personality disorder, it is at once the graceful Old South and also the country’s second-largest financial center. It is home to the Charlotte Motor Speedway and to NationsBank and First Union, to Opera Carolina and Coyote Joe’s. It is churches on every corner, with a few titty bars around the corner. Country clubs and barbecue joints, crowded expressways and quiet cul-de-sacs. Billy Graham grew up on a dairy farm where a shopping center now stands, and Jim Bakker had his start in a local church and his finish in a federal courthouse. Charlotte is the place where mandatory busing to achieve racial balance in public schools began, and the home of numerous private academies, some with a religious orientation, others entirely secular.

  Charlotte was a segregated city going into the 1960s, but then an extraordinary group of black and white leaders began to work to integrate restaurants, public lodging, recreation, and transportation. When Judge James B. McMillan handed down the mandatory busing order in 1969, there were no riots. The judge took a lot of personal heat, but his order stood, and the city complied.

  I have always lived in the southeast part of town. Dillworth. Myers Park. Eastover. Foxcroft. Though a long way from the university, these neighborhoods are the oldest and prettiest, labyrinths of winding streets lined with stately homes and large lawns canopied by huge elms and willow oaks older than the pyramids. Most of Charlotte’s streets, like most of Charlotte’s people, are pleasant and graceful.

  I cracked the car window and breathed in the late March evening. It had been one of those transitional days, not quite spring but no longer winter, when you slip your jacket on and off at least a dozen times. Already the crocuses were pushing through the earth, and soon the air would be lush with the smell of dogwoods, redbuds, and azaleas. Forget Paris. In spring, Charlotte is the most beautiful city on the planet.