ATY AND I RETURNED TO CHARLOTTE ON DECEMBER 28, BRONZED and gorgeous. Or so we told ourselves. Pounds up and peeling was closer to the truth.

On the 29th, my daughter called for a late family Christmas. We met at Pete’s house. My old house. It’s easier now. Used to be a bitch.

Pete played chef. Standing rib roast for us. New York strip for Boyd, a very Ho Ho Ho kind of dog. Especially with a bellyful of steak.

Pete gave Katy a racing bike, the chow a rawhide bone, and me a gold David Yurman bracelet.

I was stunned, said it was way too much. Pete waved off my objections.

I wondered. Was my gift the reason for the surprising but delightful absence of the lovely and exceedingly busty young Summer?

Whatever. I kept the jewelry.

I spent New Year’s Eve with Charlie Hunt. Dinner at the Palm, noise-makers, hats, slow dancing. After midnight we shook hands and went our separate ways.

Well, not exactly a handshake. But we each slept solo. Or at least I did.

Andrew Ryan: Tall, Nova Scotia Irish, sandy-going-gray hair, corn-flower eyes.

Charlie Hunt: Very tall, exotically mélangé, black hair, jade eyes.

What was right with this picture?

What was wrong was serious history. And baggage roomy enough to swallow a Walmart.

Evenings, Ryan and I talked on the phone, but not as we had in the past. Our conversations stayed outside the guardrail, prudently distant from the dangerous ground of feelings and future.

We discussed LaManche. The chief had suffered a setback, an infection that would delay his return to work.

We hashed over the Keiser, Oka, and Villejoin investigations, everything we knew. Not much to hash.

Ryan had revisited those living on the Villejoin’s block in Pointe-Calumet. Claudel had canvassed Keiser’s building on Édouard-Montpetit. They’d learned which neighbors were neat, which drank, which were churchgoers, which were stoners.

Claudel had reinterviewed Keiser’s stepson, Myron Pinsker, and again contacted her son and daughter in Alberta. Ryan had tracked down Yves Renaud, the nurse who’d discovered Anne-Isabelle Villejoin.

Everyone checked out. No one provided new facts.

Ryan had also reinterrogated Florian Grellier, the snitch who’d led them to the Oka grave, hoping to shake something loose. Grellier’s story remained disappointingly consistent. He’d scored his info from an anonymous bar buddy. Beyond that, he knew jackshit.

On January 12, Le Journal de Montréal ran a short piece backgrounding Marilyn Keiser’s disappearance and reminding readers about Christelle Villejoin. A flood of confessions and sightings followed. Stories ranged from “I killed them for their livers” to “I saw them in Key West with a tall black man.” Apparently the guy was a snappy dresser.

A psychic swore Villejoin was still in Quebec, in a small, dark space. She’d seen no sign of Keiser.

Winter is my slow season up north. Waterways freeze and snow hides the land. Kids are in school. Campers and sportsmen stow their gear and grab their remotes.

Corpses miraculously found outdoors arrive solid as deer carcasses hung in a freezer. In those cases, the pathologist rules. Defrost. Y-incision.

Still, the wind-chill days generate plenty for the anthropologist. Folks die and putrefy in their beds. Folks crank up heaters or build fires that burn down the house. Folks off themselves in barns, bathtubs, and basements.

Perhaps Hubert still had a hard-on over the missing phalanges. Perhaps the tundra was atypically calm. Early January passed with no call from Montreal for my services.

While enjoying the sixty-degree sunshine in Charlotte, I examined three cases for the Mecklenburg County ME, worked on a research grant, cleaned closets, plastered and painted a cracked wall I’d been looking at for years.

In between professional and domestic chores, I spent time with my daughter. Unhappy with her job in the Public Defender’s Office, Katy was considering a change, perhaps graduate or law school. I listened to her complaints and ponderings, murmured sympathy at appropriate points, rendered opinions when asked.

I also saw quite a bit of Charlie Hunt. He and I shared dinners, attended a few movies and a Bobcats game, played tennis twice. Though the kettle was racing toward a boil, I kept the lid on. A little neckin’, as we say in the South, then home to bed with my cat.

Weeks passed.

The Oka woman remained inconnue. Unknown.

Marilyn Keiser remained disparue. Unfound.

On the 25th, as I was trimming Birdie’s claws, my mobile rang.

Emily Santangelo.

Laying down the clippers, I hit speaker with one hand while pressing the cat to my chest with the other. Already peeved, Birdie began vigorous twist-and-push maneuvers.

“What’s up?” I asked, tightening my arms.

Birdie meowed indignation.

“Am I catching you at a bad time?” Santangelo asked.

“Not at all.”

Birdie started gnawing my knuckle.

“Stop that.” Sharp.

“You all right?”

“Fine. Coroner got a stinker for me?”

“I’m not calling about a case.”

Surprised, I thought for a moment.

“Have my DNA results come back?”

“No.”

“Have Villejoin relatives been located up in the Beauce?”

“Not that I know of.”

My blood turned to ice.

“LaManche?”

“No, no. The chief ’s fine. Well, relatively fine. He’s responding to antibiotics, but will be out another six weeks.”

Unconsciously, I relaxed my arms. Birdie wriggled free, launched himself, and shot from the room.

“Things just aren’t the same without the old boy.” Relief made me babble. “Did you ever glance over your shoulder and LaManche was just there? How does someone that big move so quietly?”

Santangelo ignored my blathering.

“Did Hubert contact you yesterday?”

“No.” Brushing fur from my shirt. “Why?”

A click of hesitation in her throat.

“Emily?”

“This call is unofficial.”

A tiny alarm pinged in my head.

“O-kaay.”

“Come to Montreal, Tempe.”

“You said no one needs me right now.” I laughed. “Must be some flukey planetary alignment. Maybe Jupiter’s getting it on with Venus and all of Quebec is awash in brotherly love. This has to be the longest stretch—”

“Fly up here.”

Ping.

I clicked off speaker and placed the phone to my ear.

“Is Hubert still in a funk over those phalanges?”

A long, long silence rolled down from the north.

“Tell me,” I prompted. “I can handle Hubert.”

“He has them.”

“What?” The fur-brushing hand froze on my chest.

“He has the phalanges.”

“How?”

“Joe went back out to Oka. With Briel.”

“How did that come about?”

“Briel offered to do it for the experience. Said she’d work Saturday to make up for any time missed.” Santangelo’s voice was flat, masking something under the words. “She argued that Joe would know what to do since he’d been present at the initial recovery. Hubert bought it. One of them spotted the phalanges while screening.”

“When was this?”

“Friday.”

“What the hell was a pathologist doing disinterring bones?”

“Apparently she took a course in forensic anthropology while on a postdoc in France.”

I considered crushing or tossing the phone. Switched it to my left hand instead.

“Was Hubert planning to tell me?”

“He may not know. They finished late. I only found out because I was writing reports in my office when they got back to the lab.”

A nonexpert crossing the line.

I took a deep, calming breath.

Exhaled.

“I’ll be there Monday morning.”

That night I saw Charlie again. Sushi. Sayonara.

Charlie knew I’d been burned by Ryan. And Pete. As on our previous nondates, he didn’t press for more. I liked that.

So why the distance?

I didn’t want to repeat last October’s booty blunder. Or the embarrassing backseat high school romp.

But was that really it? I was free, so was Charlie. We weren’t kids fighting hormones in Daddy’s Buick. I thought of the statement that had so irritated Vecamamma. Women have needs.

Right on, Cukura Kundze.

So why the Puritan routine?

Was it Ryan?

Who knew?

What I did know was this. If I was keeping Ryan at arm’s length, I was keeping Charlie somewhere on the edge of the Milky Way.

Monday morning. January 26. Back in Montreal and, thanks to Birdie, I was running late.

Still pissed over being ambushed by Dramamine, kitty carrier, and airplane the night before, the little drip fired through the open door when I turned to set the alarm. It took ten minutes of lobby searching and furniture moving to find him.

My neighbor Sparky Monteil happened in as I was scooping the escapee from behind the lobby sofa. Seeing the cat, he began ranting about filth and disease and the sucking of breath from babies.

Knowing I would miss the beginning of the Monday-morning meeting, and annoyed with Birdie, I failed to handle the situation with the finesse it required. Barbs were exchanged. Sparky swore he’d have me evicted, threatened that one day my pet might simply vanish.

Good thing Sparky’s an Anglophone. Perhaps not. I can cuss like a sailor in my mother tongue.

At Wilfrid-Derome, I went straight to my office to shed my outerwear and grab pen and paper for the meeting.

Lisa is an autopsy tech with sun-tipped hair and a biblical rack. Cops attending autopsies always hope she will be the one handling their corpse.

As I unlocked my door, I noticed Lisa across the hall in the histo lab, deep in conversation with my assistant, Joe. Neither was smiling.

Spotting me through the window, both techs fell silent.

I waved.

Joe resumed logging organ samples.

Lisa gave a halfhearted flip of one hand.

Sexual tension?

Whatever.

Flinging my parka toward the desk, I dashed to the conference room.

Same green walls. Same table. Same roster of death due to malice, melancholy, folly, or fate.

Morin did the honors.

A dealer, held and punched by two rivals, dropped to the sidewalk and never got up. Probable homicide by rotation and hyperextension of the head.

A man noosed his neck to a tree and hit the gas in his pickup. Probable suicide by self-decapitation.

A meth addict slept naked on his balcony and froze to death. Probable accident by supreme stupidity.

As Morin talked, Briel made short quick strokes on her case list, frown lines going for a new personal best.

Santangelo alternated between drinking from and thumb-scraping the label off a bottle of spring water.

Ayers sat half turned from the table, focus fixed midpoint between the window and the blackboard.

Morin took the homicide, Santangelo the suicide. Ayers got the tweaker, Briel got a pass.

As paperwork was claimed, I studied my colleagues.

Stiff faces. Taut voices. No meeting of eyes.

First Lisa and Joe. Now this.

What the hell?

Sure, the Santas and elves were down, and February and March loomed long and dark. But I was sensing more than simple post-holiday letdown.

Anxiety over LaManche? Maybe. Budget cuts? Maybe.

Was I an issue? I was furious about the second Oka recovery. Were those around me picking up hostile vibes?

Morin turned in my direction.

“I suppose you’ve heard that additional remains were recovered at Oka.”

Briel’s eyes rolled up.

“Yes.” Glacial.

“The coroner wants to know if an ID or exclusion is now possible.”

“I’ll talk to him.” Nothing more. I’d decided to take my complaint directly to Hubert.

I couldn’t help wondering why Joe had agreed to accompany Briel. He knew I’d be furious. Was redigging Oka his way of rebuking me?

When Morin queried new business, Santangelo cleared her throat.

“Actually, there is something.”

We all settled back.

“I’ve taken a position with the Bureau du coroner.” Santangelo’s eyes flitted among Morin, Ayers, and me, resting only seconds before moving on. “I start February first.”

Shocked, we just stared. Santangelo had been with the LSJML for fifteen years.

To my right, Briel paused, then recommenced doodling.

“I know this seems sudden.” Santangelo palmed label scraps into a pile. “It’s not. I’ve been thinking for a while that I need a change.”

Santangelo’s eyes flicked to me. I held them.

Why not mention this when you called me in Charlotte? Is this the reason for urging my return to Montreal? I asked neither question.

Santangelo looked away.

“Wow.” Ayers slumped back.

“I know the timing sucks. You’re still training new staff.” Santangelo’s tone was neutral. Evasive? “I’ll help with the transition as best I can.”

Ayers and Morin exchanged a quick glance. In it I could see a month of conversations.

“Are you sure?” Concern darkened Morin’s already dark eyes. Perhaps weariness. Santangelo’s departure meant another protracted hiring process.

“Yes.” Santangelo dragged an outlier scrap to her pile.

“We’ll miss you,” I said.

“We’ll still see each other.” Santangelo tried to make it sound light. It didn’t really work. “I’ll be one flight down.”

We all filed out. No jokes. No banter.

Coffee, then back to my office. After hanging my parka on the coat tree, I checked phone messages, then returned a few calls.

As I was disconnecting, my gaze fell on a letter that had worked its way out of the mound on my desk. The small white envelope was addressed to me at the LSJML, handwritten and marked personal. Curious, I picked it up and slit the seal.

A single sheet of paper had been scribbled with a one-line message.

Va-t’en chez toi maudite Américaine!!

Go home damn American!!

The writer had included no signature. Big surprise.

I checked the envelope. Local postmark. No return address.

“Thanks for the thought, chickenshit.”

Sailing the note and its envelope back onto the heap, I crossed the hall to my lab.

And stopped dead.