“Yes. Thank you.”
“Three, then?”
“Yes.”
“Cream?”
Ryan and I nodded.
We entered the sheriff’s office and everyone sat. Baker tossed his hat onto a bank of file cabinets behind his desk.
“Ivy Lee can be colorful,” he said, smiling. “She did twenty with the Marines, then came home and joined us.” He thought a moment. “That’s about nineteen years now. The lady runs this place with the efficiency of a hydrogen fuel cell. Right now she’s doing some . . .” He searched for a phrase. “. . . fashion experimentation.”
Baker leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. His leather chair wheezed like a bagpipe.
“So, Mr. Ryan, tell me what you need.”
Ryan described the deaths in St-Jovite, and explained the calls to Saint Helena. He had just outlined his conversations with the Beaufort-Jasper Clinic obstetrician and with Heidi Schneider’s parents when Ivy Lee knocked. She placed a mug in front of Baker, set two others on a table between Ryan and me, and left without a word.
I took a sip. Then another.
“Does she make this?” I asked. If not the best coffee I’d ever tasted, it was right near the top of the list.
Baker nodded.
I drank again and tried to identify the flavors. I heard a phone in the outer office, then Ivy Lee’s voice.
“What’s in it?”
“It’s a ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy with regard to Ivy Lee’s coffee. I give her an allowance each month, and she buys the ingredients. She claims no one knows the recipe but her sisters and her mama.”
“Can they be bribed?”
Laughing, Baker lay his forearms on the desk and leaned his weight on them. His shoulders were wider than a cement truck.
“I wouldn’t want to offend Ivy Lee,” he said. “And definitely not her mama.”
“Good policy,” agreed Ryan. “Don’t offend the mamas.” He flipped the elastic from a corrugated brown folder, searched the contents, and withdrew a paper.
“The number phoned from St-Jovite traces to four-three-five Adler Lyons Road.”
“You’re right about that being Saint Helena,” said Baker.
He swiveled to the metal cabinets, slid open a drawer, and pulled a file. Laying the folder on his desk, he perused its one document.
“We ran the address, and there’s no police history. Not a single call in the past five years.”
“Is it a private home?” asked Ryan.
“Probably. That part of the island is pretty much trailers and small homes. I’ve been living here off and on all of my life and I had to use a map to find Adler Lyons. Some of the dirt roads out on the islands are little more than driveways. I might know them to see them, but I don’t always know their names. Or if they even have names.”
“Who owns the property?”
“I don’t have that, but we’ll check it out later. In the meantime, why don’t we just drop in for a friendly visit.”
“Suits me,” said Ryan, replacing his paper and snapping the elastic into place.
“And we can swing by the clinic if you think that would be useful.”
“I don’t want to jam you up with this. I know you’re busy.” Ryan rose. “If you prefer to point us in the right direction, I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
“No, no. I owe Dr. Brennan for yesterday. And I’m sure Baxter Colker isn’t through with her yet. In fact, would you mind waiting while I check something?”
He disappeared into an adjacent office, returned immediately with a message slip.
“As I suspected, Colker called again. He’s sent the bodies up to Charleston, but he wants to talk to Dr. Brennan.” He smiled at me. His cheekbones and brow ridges were so prominent, his skin so shiny black, his face looked ceramic in the fluorescent light.
I looked at Ryan. He shrugged and sat back down. Baker dialed a number, asked for Colker, then handed me the phone. I had a bad feeling.
Colker said exactly what I anticipated. Axel Hardaway would perform the autopsies on the Murtry bodies, but refused to do any skeletal analysis. Dan Jaffer couldn’t be reached. Hardaway would process the remains at the med school facility following any protocol I specified, then Colker would transport the bones to my lab in Charlotte if I would do the examinations.
Reluctantly, I agreed, and promised to speak directly with Hardaway. Colker gave me the number and we hung up.
“
