“J’espère que vous allez bien.”
Getting no response, Ryan asked in English if she was well.
Still no indication that she’d heard.
“We’d like to discuss Anique.”
Not so much as a blink.
Ryan amped up the decibels and switched back to French. “Perhaps you’ve heard from Anique.”
One hand continued stroking the cat, blue veins snaking like night crawlers beneath the liver-spotted skin.
A full minute passed. Ryan tried again, with the same result.
I signaled that I’d give it a go.
“Madame Pomerleau, we are hoping you can help us locate your daughter.” I spoke loudly but soothingly. “Perhaps you’ve heard from Anique?”
Silence. I noticed that the cat had no whiskers on the left side of its snout.
“Perhaps you have ideas where Anique might have gone following the troubles?”
I may as well have been speaking to the gargoyle in my garden.
I posed several more questions, slowly and forcefully.
No go.
I looked at Ryan. He shook his head.
As I checked my watch, footsteps sounded on the stairs. I tried one last time. “We fear Anique may come to harm if we don’t find her soon.”
It was as though we weren’t there.
Simone appeared in the doorway, a “Told you so” expression dulling the snowy smile. Ryan and I replaced our chairs, then crossed to her.
The voice was raspy and deep. Over a phone, I’d have pegged it as male.
“Avec les saints. Saint-Jean.” Then, in heavily accented English, “Buried.”
Ryan and I turned. The ancient hand had stilled on the ragtag toy.
“Anique is with the saints?” I repeated. “She’s buried with Saint John?”
But the moment had passed. The ancient hand resumed its relentless caressing of the matted fur. The watery eyes remained pointed at a memory no one else could see.
Outside, the sun was filtered by long white fingers of cloud. The air seemed even more frigid than earlier. I glanced up. The old man was gone from the balcony.
“What’s your take?” I asked Ryan as I pulled on my gloves.
“Nurse Smiley tipped her patient that cops were in the house.”
“Does she really think Anique is dead?” Sudden thought. “Marie-Jo?lle Bastien is buried in the cimetière Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Bouctouche. Could Sabine be confusing Anique with Marie-Jo?lle?”
Ryan raised both shoulders and brows.
“Or was she stonewalling?”
“If that was acting, the performance was Oscar-quality.”
“Do you know who pays for her care?”
“A nephew in Mascouche. The money comes from the estate, so he’s not exactly splurging.”
We got into the Jeep. Ryan was turning the key when his mobile buzzed. He picked it up and clicked on. I listened to a lot of ouis, a few one-word questions, then, “Text me the address.”
“The address for who?” I asked as he disconnected.
“Whom.”
“Seriously?” Though I welcomed a glimpse of the old Ryan wit, the two visits we’d paid that day had left me in no mood for humor.
“Tawny McGee.”
CHAPTER 18
AS WE DROVE, Ryan briefed me on what he and his colleague had learned. I was aware of Tawny McGee’s backstory, but not of her movements since 2004.
What I knew: Bernadette Higham lived for five years with a man named Harlan McGee. She worked as a receptionist for a small Maniwaki dental practice. He was a long-haul trucker.
Though unmarried, the couple had two daughters. Sandra was born in 1985, when Bernadette was nineteen and Harlan was twenty-nine. Tawny followed in 1987.
A week after Tawny’s second birthday, Harlan left on a run to Vancouver and never returned. Four months later, Bernadette received a letter stating that he wouldn’t be back. The envelope also contained four hundred dollars.