“Can’t do it. Katy’s coming home next week. Besides, Beaufort is perhaps my favorite spot on the planet. If I ever do give you a tour, which I probably won’t, it will not be while you’re taking care of business.”
“Or why.”
“Why what?”
“Why anyone would eat grits.”
“Ask Martha Stewart.”
“Think about it.”
No need. I had as much intention of meeting Ryan in Beaufort as I did of registering myself as an available single person in the People Meeting People section of my local paper.
“What about the two charred bodies upstairs?” Back to St-Jovite.
“We’re still working on it.”
“Has Anna Goyette turned up?”
“No idea.”
“Any developments on Claudel’s homicide?”
“Which one?”
“The scalded pregnant girl.”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“You’ve been a fountain of information. Let me know what you find in Texas.”
I hung up and got myself a Diet Coke. I didn’t know at that point, but it was going to be a phone-intensive day.
All afternoon I worked on a paper I planned to present at the American Association of Physical Anthropology meetings in early April. I felt the usual stress from having left too much until the last minute.
At three-thirty, as I was sorting photos of CAT scans, the phone rang again.
“You ought to get out more.”
“Some of us work, Ryan.”
“The address in Texas is the Schneider home. According to the parents, who, by the way, aren’t ever going to win Final Jeopardy, Heidi and Brian showed up sometime in August and stayed until the babies were born. Heidi refused prenatal care and delivered at home with a midwife. Easy birth. No problems. Happy grandparents. Then a man visited the couple in early December, and a week later an old lady drove up in a van and they split.”
“Where did they go?”
“The parents have no idea. There was no contact after that.”
“Who was the man?”
“No clue, but they say this guy scared the crap out of Heidi and Brian. After he left they hid the babies and refused to go out of the house until the old lady got there. Papa Schneider didn’t like him much either.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t like his looks. Said he brought to mind a . . . Let me get this exactly.” I could picture Ryan flipping pages in his notebook. “. . . ‘goddam skunk.’ Kinda poetic, don’t you think?”
“Dad’s a regular Yeats. Anything else?”
“Talking to these folks is like talking to my parakeet, but there was one other thing.”
“You have a bird?”
“Mama said Heidi and Brian had been members of some sort of group. That they’d all been living together. Ready for this?”
“I just swallowed four Valium. Hit me.”
“In Beaufort, South Carolina.”
“That fits.”
“Like O.J.’s Bruno Maglis.”
“What else did they say?”
“Nothing useful.”
“What about Brian Gilbert?”
“He and Heidi met at college two years ago, both dropped out shortly after that. Mama Schneider thought he came from Ohio. She said he talked funny. We’re checking it out. ”
“Did you tell them?”
“Yes.”
For a moment neither of us spoke. Breaking the news of a murder is the worst part of a detective’s job, the one they all dread the most.
“I still could use you in Beaufort.”
