“What’s that?”
“A vanity press charges the author for printing and binding.”
Harry looked confused.
“A commercial publisher’s intended market is the general public. A vanity press’s intended market is the author him-or herself.”
The heavily mascaraed eyes widened.
“OK. That computes. Evangeline wanted to be a poet, right?”
“Right.”
“What if she’s the author?”
I looked at Harry’s excited face.
“We have absolutely no reason to believe that’s so,” I said, knowing I was about to hear one of my sister’s imaginative but virtually baseless hypotheses.
“Any guess why I snitched this particular little volume?”
I shook my head.
“Did you notice the books in that parlor?” She didn’t wait for my answer. “’Course not. You were parlay-voo- ing. But I did. There were dozens. Scores. Every last one in French. Same in the bedroom. Which, don’t get your gizzard twirling, I had to traverse to get to the loo. The one and only English book in that whole place was this one. And it was lying right by Obeline’s bed.”
“What’s your point?”
“One lonely little English paperback? Right there at her bedside?”
“That hardly means—”
“Maybe Obeline rounded up Evangeline’s poetry and had it printed. Like a memorial. You know? Her sister’s dream made real?”
“I suppose it’s a possibility. In that case it was very wrong of us to take it from her.”
Harry leaned forward, eager. “We’ll return it. It’s a clue. We run this publisher to ground, maybe we learn something about Evangeline. Maybe we tank. So what? It won’t hurt the book.”
I couldn’t argue with her reasoning.
“My thinking, it’s worth a look-see.”
“I have to help Ryan tomorrow. And I need to reexamine the skeleton.”
Harry scrambled from the bed, tossed her hair over her shoulders.
“Leave it all to baby sister.”
Ryan arrived at seven-forty. I buzzed him in, suspecting the early landing was geared toward a glimpse of Harry.
Sorry, buckaroo. The Starlet of Slumber won’t rise for four hours.
I pointed Ryan to the coffee, then finished my morning toilette, wondering if he and Harriet Lee actually had “hooked up” during her previous visit. Katy lingo. My prurient curiosity.
When I emerged from the bathroom, Ryan was deep in conversation with Charlie. Birdie was observing from the sofa back.
“Buddy Guy.” The cornflower eyes swiveled to me. “Charlie’s a blues man.”
“Charlie’s a cockatiel with a bawdy beak.” I forced my voice stern. “Are you using his training CD’s?”
“Religiously.” All innocence. “Aren’t we, pal?”
As though complicit, Charlie whistled a line from “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
“He’s picked up Korn lyrics,” I said.
“I told you. I’m not into Korn.”
“Someone is.”
Embarrassed realization. Pulling on his nose, Ryan looked away.
Something clicked in my mind.
New CD’s. New musical taste. Lutetia had already moved in with Ryan. I wondered how long it had been.
“Let’s go,” I said, unhappiness settling in my stomach like lead.
Cormier’s studio was in a redbrick three-flat near the intersection of Saint-Laurent and Rachel. The building’s first floor was rented by a dentist named Brigault. The occupant of the third offered something that required a reading knowledge of Chinese.
Ryan noticed me studying the nameplate.
“Ho. Does acupuncture and Tui Na.”
