tenants, Marilyn Keiser, a seventy-two-year-old widow living alone. Baudry was pissed about unpaid rent.”
“Where’s the apartment?”
“Edouard-Montpetit. The place looked abandoned. Unopened mail. Dead plants. Spoiled food in the refrigerator. The usual. Baudry asked around the building. None of the neighbors had seen or talked to Keiser in months. One suggested she might have gone south for the winter.”
“Was that her pattern?”
“No. Keiser wasn’t a snowbird. She drove, occasionally made short trips. Quebec City. Ottawa. Charlevoix. That was about it.”
“Her car is also missing?”
Ryan nodded.
“Family?”
“Two kids, both married and living in Alberta. The only local relative is a stepson named Myron Pinsker. Baudry phoned Pinsker repeatedly. After a week of no contact and no returned calls he gave up and dialed nine-one-one.
“Claudel caught the case, did some digging, learned that since October Marilyn Keiser has missed medical appointments, book club meetings, a sit-down with her rabbi, and about a zillion other engagements. No apologies, no explanations.”
“That’s out of character?”
“Definitely. The stepson is a forty-four-year-old grounds worker at a West Island golf course. Beaconsfield, I think. Told Claudel he was unaware Keiser was missing.”
“Maybe they aren’t close.”
“Maybe not. But someone cashed Keiser’s last three old age insurance pension checks.”
“Crap.”
“Claudel learned that late yesterday. This morning he hauled Pinsker’s ass to the bag.”
“Detective Claudel thinks Madame Keiser is dead?”
Ryan and I glanced at Briel in surprise. She’d been so still, I think we’d both forgotten she was there.
“Doesn’t look good,” Ryan said.
“He suspects the stepson?”
“Pinsker better have a good explanation for those checks.”
Ryan turned to me.
“Four elderly women in two years.”
Three, yes. But four? I must have looked confused.
“Keiser. Anne-Isabelle Villejoin. This one.” Ryan jabbed a thumb toward the bones behind me. “Jurmain.”
“Rose Jurmain was hardly elderly,” I said.
“But she looked old. Remember Janice Spitz’s photos, the ones taken shortly before Jurmain’s death?”
I nodded understanding. Maybe the drugs. Maybe the booze. Rose had looked decades beyond her fifty-nine years.
Again, Ryan gestured at the table. “Keiser’s disappearance throws a whole new wrinkle into this ID.”
I remembered Hubert’s rhetorical question at graveside. How many grannies go missing around here?
Too many, I thought.
“I’ll know within the hour if it’s Christelle Villejoin,” I said.
“Gotta roll. Claudel’s interrogating Pinsker now.”
With that, Ryan was gone.
A greedy relative? Or an anonymous predator targeting the weak?
I felt the usual riot of emotions. Anger. Outrage. Sorrow.
I needed a break.
Excusing myself to Briel, I stripped off my gloves and headed upstairs.
Thirty minutes later I was back in the basement. Coming down the corridor, I noticed Briel through the little window in the door to the large autopsy suite. She was speaking to Joe Bonnet while removing the brain from one of the Baie-Comeau corpses.
I paused briefly, wondering how the two new hires meshed. Joe was prickly, quick to take offense. Briel was as amiable as a statue in the park.
Briel said something. Joe listened, hair doing a latter-day Ric Flair in the fluorescent light.
Briel touched Joe’s hand. He smiled. Actually laughed.
I continued on to Salle 4.
Taking the envelope that Morin had delivered to me from the Bureau du coroner, I spread the contents on the anteroom desk.
My pessimism was justified. There was little to spread.
Entries only went back to 1987. Nothing sinister there. Space in medical offices is limited, and paperwork is often destroyed when legally permissible.
For the past two decades, Christelle Villejoin had used a GP named Sylvain Rayner. Sparingly.
In 1989 she’d been diagnosed with shingles. In 1994 it was mild bronchitis.
The most recent entries dated to 1997.
On April 24 Christelle had complained of constipation. Rayner prescribed a laxative. On April 26 the problem was diarrhea.
Good job, Doc.
Christelle had no history of any bone-altering disease. No stents, pins, rods, or artificial joints had been placed in her body. She’d suffered no fractures. She’d undergone no surgeries of any kind.
No X-rays.
Nothing dental.
Christelle’s chart was useless to me.
But there was a number for Rayner’s office.
When I phoned, a robotic voice told me to take a hike. I’m paraphrasing.
On a hunch, I returned to the twelfth floor and tried Google on my laptop.
Sylvain Alexandre Rayner had earned his MD at McGill in 1952, retired from practice in 1998. A little more searching and I had a home number and directions to Rayner’s residence in Cote Saint-Luc.
God bless the Internet.
My call went unanswered. I left a message and headed back downstairs.
I’d barely entered Salle 4 when the anteroom phone shrilled.
“Dr. Temperance Brennan,
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“Sylvain Rayner.”
“The Sylvain Rayner who treated Christelle Villejoin?” I spoke loudly and slowly, a well-intentioned reaction based on a common and often false assumption. Rayner is elderly, therefore hard of hearing, perhaps dull-witted.
“
