I felt a hand on my shoulder.
Palming away wetness, I did an ear-tuck with my hair and raised my head.
Ryan was gazing down at me, the travel-poster eyes filled with concern.
Or pity?
Or what?
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not sure where all that came from.”
“Everyone’s under pressure.”
“Everyone’s not turning into Il Duce.”
I was aware of LaManche before actually seeing him. Movement in my peripheral vision. The smell of pipe tobacco and drugstore cologne.
Throat clearing.
Ryan and I turned. LaManche was in my doorway.
“I thought you both might like to know. The coroner has officially ruled Louise Parent’s death a homicide.”
“She was smothered?” I asked.
“I believe so.”
“Have you gotten the tox results?” Ryan asked.
“Traces of sleeping medication, Ambien, were detected in the blood and urine. Levels were consistent with the ingestion of ten milligrams several hours before death.”
“What about timing?” Ryan asked.
“Did you establish whether Parent ate that soup for lunch or for dinner?”
“Phone records indicate calls were made from the Fisher home at three fifty-five, four-fourteen, and five- nineteen P.M. that Friday. The first was to Parent’s priest, the second to a pharmacy two blocks away. The third was to a cell phone. We’re working on that.”
I shot Ryan a look. No one had told me that.
“So Parent’s last meal must have been dinner.”
“The soup would have been evacuated from the stomach after three hours, the Ambien after two,” LaManche said. “The sleeping aid would have been dissolved in the tea.”
“According to the niece, Parent usually ate around seven. Assuming she did so on Friday, that brings us up to ten P.M.,” Ryan calculated. “Assuming she took the Ambien at bedtime, that brings us up to eleven or midnight. So death must have occurred in the early hours of Saturday morning.”
“That is consistent with the state of decomposition,” LaManche said.
“My offer’s still on the table,” Ryan said, when LaManche had gone.
“When did you learn about the phone calls?” I asked.
“Today. It’s one of the things I was going to tell you. Hurley’s?”
I looked at Ryan a long, long time, then wrenched my lips into a smile.
“With one condition.”
Ryan spread his palms.
“The check’s mine.”
“Hee-haw!” Ryan said.
Hurley’s Irish Pub is on rue Crescent just below rue Ste-Catherine. Driving there, I debated my choices: Park at home and risk hypothermia walking. Die of old age searching for a place to leave the car.
I opted for parking over thermal equilibrium. Scurrying along Ste-Catherine, I questioned the wisdom of that decision.
Ryan was seated in the snug when I arrived, a half-drunk pint on the table in front of him. I ordered lamb stew and a Perrier with lemon. He ordered chicken St-Ambroise.
While awaiting our food, Ryan and I circled each other warily. We both tried jokes. Most fell flat.
Around us swirled the usual Saturday night throng of drinkers. Some looked happy. Others desperate. Others merely blank. I couldn’t imagine their myriad problems and relationships.
Beside us, a young couple sat pressed together closer than socks from a dryer. He wore red felt reindeer antlers. She wore a Christmas sweater.
As I stared, reindeer antlers nuzzled Christmas sweater’s neck. She laughed.
They looked so happy, so comfortable with each other.
Christmas sweater’s eyes met mine. I looked away quickly, to a sign above Ryan’s head.
A girl wormed past our table, moving with the exaggerated care one uses to mask inebriation. She had pale
