“I’ll cover the front, sir.” Saluting, Harry slipped her saddlebag purse from her shoulder. It dropped by her feet with a
Stepping from the porch, I circled to my right.
A stone deck ran almost the full length of the back of the house. A wing paralleled the deck’s far side, tangential to and invisible from out front. It looked newer, its trim brighter than that on the rest of the structure. I wondered if I was looking at the site of the fire.
The deck held a patio set, a barbecue grill, and several lawn chairs, all empty. Climbing to it, I crossed and peered through a set of double glass doors.
Standard kitchen appliances. Pine table and captains chairs. Cat-cuckoo clock with a pendulum tail.
Center island. A paring knife, a paper towel, and a peeled apple skin.
I felt my nerves tingle.
I turned.
Past an expanse of lawn stood a small gazebo-like structure. Past the gazebo, water, rough and gunmetal gray. An inlet of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, I presumed.
Strange columns flanked the gazebo’s entrance, tall, with projections forward and to the sides. Atop each was an unidentifiable shape.
Through the gazebo’s screening I could dimly make out a silhouette. My mind logged detail.
Small, probably female. Hunched. Still.
The maybe-Obeline woman had her back to me. I couldn’t tell if she was reading, dozing, or merely gazing seaward.
I moved forward, senses still logging information. A wind chime tinkling notes. Wet grass. Explosions of froth against a seawall.
Drawing closer, I realized the columns had been carved into stacks of zoomorphic creatures. The projections were beaks and wings. The shapes on top were renderings of stylized birds.
Then, recognition, prompted by anthropology studies of years ago. The gazebo had once been a sweat house, later modified by replacing walls with screening.
The assemblage looked thousands of miles out of place. Totem poles and sweat houses were built by peoples of the Pacific Northwest, the Tlingit, Haida, or Kwakiutl, not by the Micmac or other tribes of the Maritimes.
Ten feet back, I stopped.
“Obeline?”
The woman’s head snapped up.
“Temperance Brennan.”
The woman didn’t reply.
“Tempe. From Pawleys Island.”
Nothing.
“Harry is here, too.”
A hand rose, hovered, as though uncertain of its purpose.
“We were friends. You and Harry. Evangeline and I.”
“I knew Tante Euphemie and Oncle Fidele.”
The hand shot to the woman’s forehead, dropped to her chest, then crossed from shoulder to shoulder.
“I’ve been looking for you for a very long time.”
Pushing to her feet, the woman draped a shawl on her head, hesitated, then shuffled to the door.
A hand reached out.
Hinges squeaked.
The woman stepped into daylight.
17
M EMORY IS CAPRICIOUS, SOMETIMES PLAYING STRAIGHT, SOMETIMES deceiving. It can shield, deny, tantalize, or just plain err.
There was no mistake or dissembling here.
Though I saw only half the woman’s face, I felt I’d taken a body blow. Dark gypsy eye, petulant upper lip swooping down to a diminutive lower. Brown blemish on her cheek in the shape of a leaping frog.
