Spider Bones

“Where’s your dad?” I asked Lily.

“In the kitchen.”

“Serving breakfast?”

She nodded.

“Let’s eat,” I said.

We were finishing Ryan’s coconut-mango pancakes when the landline rang.

“I’ll get it.” Lily fired from her chair.

“Who’s taken possession of Lily?” I asked.

“What? She’s decided she likes it here,” Katy said.

I looked at Ryan. His eyes were fixed on his daughter. In them I saw love. And something else. Hope? Suspicion? Fear?

“It’s some guy named LaManche.” Lily held the handset pressed to her chest.

“I’ll take it,” I said, surprised.

Ryan raised questioning brows. Why would the chief be calling from Montreal? I raised mine in reply. No idea.

“Thanks for breakfast. Before you take off, there’s something I’d like to ask you about.”

“I’m not taking off,” Ryan said.

Lily handed me the phone.

“Bonjour.” I rose and moved outside to the lanai. “Comment ca va?”

“Sacrifice, she lives. Temperance, you no longer return my calls?”

“I lost my BlackBerry.”

I told LaManche about the wreck.

“You are unharmed?”

“I’m good.”

“Bon. Then you have learned a valuable lesson.”

“Don’t drive too close to shoulders hugging the sea?”

“An SUV trumps a Cobalt every time.”

“Noted. What’s up?”

“Bad news.”

“I hate it when people open a conversation with that.”

“I did not. I complained about you going incommunicado.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“I received results from the DNA section on the gentleman found floating in the Hemmingford pond.”

“John Lowery. Spider.”

“Apparently not.”

“What?”

“According to the report, it is not Monsieur Lowery.”

“What?” I was hearing LaManche’s words, but their meaning was not sinking in.

“The sequencing did not match.”

“The sample was too degraded?”

“The sample was degraded, but the technicians were able to amplify. The results were exclusionary.”

“How did the LSJML get a comparative sample? Plato Lowery refused to submit a swab.”

“Local law enforcement in North Carolina was very cooperative. A sheriff whose name eludes me was particularly accommodating.”

“Beasley?” Of course. I knew this. I was in denial.

“Oui. C’est ca. Sheriff Beasley recalled that John Lowery’s mother was hospitalized for a short period before her death. He found that the hospital had retained pathology slides. One specimen was sent to AFDIL. At our request, another was sent to the LSJML DNA section. Extraction was successful, and testing shows that the Hemmingford victim is not Harriet Lowery’s son.”

“But the sample was degraded.”

“Temperance, they have confidence in the results. The sequencing does not match.”

The naughty-nurse floater was not Spider Lowery? How was that possible? Then who was he?