YAN WAS PROMPT. AS USUAL.

By nine fifty we were pulling to the curb in front of a U-shaped red-brick building in a neighborhood bordering the U of M campus. Crossing the front courtyard, I noted details.

Grounds litter free. Walks shoveled with square-edged precision. Bushes wrapped with burlap and tied.

Lu Castiglioni was at the door, looking like he’d rather be elsewhere. I suspected he’d just been grilled by Claudel.

As we followed Castiglioni inside, I continued my survey.

Twelve mailboxes, each with a button and speaker plate to announce arrivals. No camera. The security system relied on voice alone.

Claudel had assumed an Armani pose in the lobby. Leather gloves. Tan cashmere coat. Impatient frown. Beside him was a moose of a man bundled like a hunter just in from the Yukon.

Claudel introduced his companion as Otto Keiser. Ryan and I offered condolences to Otto on the loss of his mother.

Otto shook our hands, studied our faces.

Castiglioni led us to an elevator and pushed a lighted brass button. We rode to the third floor in silence.

Keiser’s unit was at the far end of a newly carpeted hallway that smelled of fresh paint. We passed only one other door.

Castiglioni used a master key.

Abandoned homes develop a certain smell. Old food. Dirty laundry. Dead plants. Stale air. The shades were drawn and the heat was lowered, but Keiser’s apartment was wearing that perfume.

We entered directly into the living room. Down a hall shooting right I could see two bedrooms joined by a bath, all entered through doors on the left. Past the bedrooms, straight ahead, the hall ended at a dining room. Beyond that was a kitchen. Through a back-door window, I could see wooden stairs joining a porch.

Ryan and I went left, Claudel and Otto right. Castiglioni stayed in the corridor.

The living room had a bay of wraparound windows at one end. Strung beads covered the glass, annihilating what must have been the architect’s intent.

The room was trimmed with crown moldings, chair rails, and baseboards painted a lime green that couldn’t even have looked good in the can. The floors were wood, covered with rugs that were escapees from an LSD trip. Amateur landscapes and still lifes shared wall space with opera posters and low-quality prints. I recognized Picasso. Modigliani. Chagall. Pollock.

Figurines, vases, photos, snow domes, music boxes, and carved nudes crammed the mantel and shelves to either side of a fireplace whose brick had been painted the same unfortunate green as the trim. All paintings and bric-a-brac were evenly spaced in perfectly straight rows.

I glanced at the framed photos. Otto was recognizable in some older ones, as a toddler, then in scenes reflecting a typical childhood age progression. In many he was with a girl a few years younger, arm draped protectively around her shoulders. I assumed this was the sister, Mona.

The two also appeared repeatedly as teens. Yearbook portraits. Proms. Otto on the hood of an old Chevrolet. Graduation shots of Mona, high school and college.

Obviously Keiser loved her children. I wondered. Was she loved by them? By anyone? Saddened by the thought, I continued my survey.

The assemblage included one formal wedding picture showing a very young Keiser with a very thin man. Clothing and hairstyles suggested the fifties. Was the groom Uri?

A snapshot showed an older Keiser wearing a peasant dress and holding a small bouquet. Beside her was a short, dark man in a boutonnièred brown suit. The two stood outside the Hôtel de Ville, Montreal’s old City Hall.

Ryan came up beside me.

“Think this is Pinsker Senior?” I asked.

“That scans. The guy’s ’burns and lapels scream early eighties. Keiser and Pinsker tied the knot in ’eighty-four. Any Kodak moments of the Adamski nuptials?”

I shook my head. “What’s your take on Otto’s age?”

“Mid- to late thirties.” Ryan did some mental calculation. “Uri and Marilyn were married a long time before they had kids. Interesting.”

I waved an arm at the photo collection. “Another interesting observation. Beaucoup kiddie, teenage, and young adult shots. Nowhere does Otto or his sister look older than twenty-five.”

“You’re guessing an estrangement dating back ten years?” Ryan said.

“That, or every picture from the last decade was lost or destroyed.”

“Seems unlikely. Keiser was a hoarder.”

“A very neat hoarder. Check out the shelves. The stuff ’s arranged with the precision of a Presbyterian choir.”

“Ten years.” Ryan was thinking out loud. “About the time Keiser married Adamski.” I pointed out the obvious. Two killer blue eyes swung my way. “Dr. Brennan. Perhaps you should apply for the detective’s exam.”

“Perhaps I should.”

“I wouldn’t feel threatened.”

“Claudel might. Shall we join him?”

In the hall, I noted the security panel, a simple speaker with a buzzer button. Hardly state of the art.

I also noted a wall cabinet with a tiny gold key. I looked inside. Books.

Claudel and Otto were in the kitchen. While Ryan spoke to them, I slipped into the bedroom.

Another overdose of color. More paintings, knickknacks, curios, and photos. I checked the images but found no Adamski candidate.

A Chinese lacquered box was centered on the bureau. I lifted the lid. Jewelry sealed in individual plastic bags.

I opened the closet. Dresses, skirts, and slacks in eye-watering colors, all hanging from the rod at two-inch intervals.

Keiser’s approach to storage was the polar opposite of mine. Shelved boxes were stacked by descending size. Clothing was separated by category, then color. Shoes were snugged into racks, again organized by shade and style.

Marilyn Keiser was one tidy lady.

The bathroom and guest bedroom showed similar attention to order and placement.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder? Making a mental note to inquire, I moved on to the kitchen.

Ryan was querying Otto on his mother’s third husband. Otto’s eyes were on his shoes.

“What did Adamski do?”

“Beats me.”

“You never asked?”

“Yeah, I asked. You couldn’t pin the guy down.”

“Did he have his own income?”

“Who knows?”

I looked around. The kitchen was turquoise and tangerine, another victim of stuff overload. Baskets, ceramic pots, china plates, cookie molds, glass containers, silk flowers, framed cross-stitch masterpieces. You name the kitsch, Keiser hung it or placed it on a counter or shelf.

“You didn’t like him, did you?” Ryan.

Otto looked up, face filled with disgust. “He was forty-seven. My mother was sixty-one. Would you?”

“That was it? The age difference?”

“The guy was smooth, always with an answer, you know? But underneath, there was this …” Otto spread his fingers, grasping for a descriptor. The palms were tough and calloused. “… hardness. I can’t describe it. I’m a mechanic, good with engines, not words.”

“Did Adamski take advantage of your mother financially?”

“Who knows?”

“Did she complain?”

“No.”

“Were they happy?”

“Mona and I live out West.” Shoulder shrug. “You go where the jobs are, you know? After marrying Adamski, Mom pretty much quit writing and phoning.” Otto sighed deeply. “Look, my mother was flaky as piecrust. Thought of herself as bohemian. Do you know what she named us?”

Ryan and I waited.

“Othello and Desdemona. Can you imagine growing up with names like that? And a mother who wore tights and braids and sang opera to your friends? One time I brought a kid home, Mom’s posing nude for some wack-job artist.” Otto snorted mirthlessly. “As soon as I moved West I changed my name. Added a t and got the ‘hell’ out.” Otto finger-hooked quotation marks. “Get it? Othello? Got the”—more hooked fingers—“hell out?”

I could only guess the number of times he’d told that joke.

“Mona did the same.”

“Did you and your sister try contacting your mother?”

“When we called, she was always busy. I assumed she didn’t need us anymore. She was happy and had a new life.”

Claudel cleared his throat.

Ryan forged on. “What about Pinsker? You like him?”

“He was a nerd, but an OK guy.”

I peeked inside a cabinet. The plates sat in evenly spaced stacks. The cups hung at identical angles on equidistant hooks.

“You know his son?”

“Not really. I was a kid when Mom married his father. Myron was already off on his own.”

I closed the cabinet, opened another. Shipshape.

“He’s in your mother’s will.”

“That’s cool. Mom was married to Pinsker for twelve years. Besides”— Otto snorted again—“she didn’t leave much.”

“That strike you as odd?”

I noticed a subtle tensing of Otto’s jaw. Quick, then gone. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Are you surprised your mother had so few assets?”

Otto shrugged. He did it a lot. “Looks like she got by OK.”

Impatient, Claudel shifted his feet.

“With so little money, how did your mother live as well as she did? This apartment. The spa trips.”

Otto regarded Ryan as if he’d just dropped from the south end of a pig.

“How the hell would I know? The last time I saw her was 2000.”

“When Adamski died. Were you saddened by his death?”

“What kind of question is that?”

Ryan waited.

Another shrug. Otto was a real charismatic fellow. “Honestly? I hoped the prick would rot in hell.”

“Your mother had income from her old-age pension.” Ryan tried a fast cut.

“I suppose she did.”

“Myron Junior helped her some. Ran errands, that sort of thing.”

“So.” Defensive. Guilt?

“Someone cashed three checks after she died.”

“You suspect Myron?”

“Do you?”

“No. I …” Otto spread his feet. “You’re trying to confuse me.”

“Adamski drowned, didn’t he?” Another quick veer.

“Yes.” Wary.

“Where?”

“Someplace in La Mauricie. Near Trois Rivières, I think. Or Chambord.”

Claudel had had enough.

“We’ve been over this, Detective Ryan.”

“Repetition never hurts.” Ryan’s eyes stayed clamped on Otto’s face.

“Mr. Keiser, you’ve noted nothing amiss in your mother’s apartment?” Claudel asked.

“When are you guys going to listen to me? I haven’t set foot in this place in years.”

“You came to Montreal for Adamski’s funeral?” Ryan ignored Claudel’s interruption.

“There was no funeral.”

“Why not?”

“How the hell would I know? Maybe the guy was an atheist.”

“What was your purpose in coming?”

“To talk my mother into relocating to Alberta. I even offered to pack all her crap.”

“No luck?”

Otto spread his arms to take in the apartment. “Does it look like she moved?”

“OK.” Ryan nodded. “Let’s go to Memphrémagog.”

The cabin was about what I’d pictured, though constructed of logs, not boards. The roof was shingle. There was a metal exhaust pipe in back, I guessed from the woodstove, a crude porch in front.

The word remote doesn’t adequately describe the location. The unpaved road off the blacktop seemed to go on for about ninety miles.

Ryan and I agreed: Keiser’s getaway was not a place one would stumble upon. Either she was targeted and followed, or her killer knew of the cabin’s existence.

The windows were intact. Ditto the door lock. Inside, we saw no signs of a struggle. No overturned chair or lamp. No broken vase. No cockeyed picture or painting.

Had Keiser let her killer in? Did she know him? Or had he overwhelmed her so quickly she’d had no chance to react?

The air was frigid and smelled of ash and kerosene. Other than localized fire damage and fingerprint powder from the crime scene techs, the cabin’s interior looked jarringly normal.

Like the apartment, the place was jammed with paintings, and with what I suspected were local farmers’ market crafts and collectibles. Old milk and soda bottles. Cowbells. Cheese vats. Antique tools.

While Otto and Claudel wandered, I checked the art. Keiser’s initials signed every work.

In the unburned back corner I found her easel and supplies. The techs had been respectful while tossing the place. And foresighted. The upright brushes still formed perfect circles in their holders. The paint tubes still marched in parallel rows. The unused canvases still waited in graduated stacks.

Behind the easel was a small wooden sideboard covered by a handmade afghan. I lifted an edge.

The sideboard had one long drawer above, a pair of doors below that. The brass pulls and lock were tarnished and dented. The wood was over-varnished, gouged and splintered, as though once pried open by force. The piece looked old.

OK. I admit it. Occasionally I get snagged by an episode of Antiques Roadshow.

Vaguely curious, I used a pen to swing one door wide. The cabinet was empty.

I crossed to the bathroom.

And froze.

Psyched, I hurried to the loft and pulled aside a curtain forming a makeshift closet. A dozen garments hung from a rod suspended between twisted coat hangers.

“I’ve got something,” I called out.

Six feet clomped up the stairs.