“What do you want?”
“Working hard fighting crime?”
I refused to be goaded.
“Noble endeavor, that. Protecting the good citizens of this province.”
Down the hall, a phone rang.
“But hazardous.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“That’s one fine-looking sister you’ve got.”
A cold tentacle curled in my gut.
“What’s little sis do while big sis plays cop?”
I didn’t react.
“She’s pretty easy to find, too.”
“Screw you,” I said, and slammed the receiver.
I sat a moment twisting and untwisting the phone cord. Cheech? If so, was he a threat, or merely a yokel with a bad approach and an overblown opinion of his own appeal? No. He was delivering a threat from someone.
Why? Did he work for Bastarache? What did he mean by “this province”? Where was he?
Phone Hippo?
No way.
Fernand Colbert.
Good one, Brennan. Colbert was a techie cop who owed me for bringing him barbecue sauce from North Carolina.
I phoned.
When Colbert answered, I explained the anonymous call. He promised to try a trace.
I was hanging up when my gaze fell on my doodles.
Forget it. Focus on current cases. Ryan’s MP’s: Kelly Sicard. Anne Girardin. Claudine Cloquet. Phoebe Quincy. Ryan’s DOA’s: Riviere des Mille Iles. Dorval. Lac des Deux Montagnes.
The whisper broke through, and jumped all thoughts of MP’s, DOA’s, or Cheech and the threat.
25
H URRYING TO THE LIBRARY, I PULLED OUT THE SAME NEW Brunswick atlas I’d consulted on Saturday, and flipped to the same map. Sheldrake Island lay in the mouth of the Miramichi River.
I checked an English dictionary.
Duck. Shell. Sheldrake.
Duck Island. Sheldrake Island.
A
Could Sheldrake Island be the English equivalent of Ile-aux-Becs-Scies? Was that the short-circuiting message to my cerebrum? Could Jerry O’Driscoll’s drifter, Tom Jouns, a one-time archaeologist, have taken the girl’s skeleton from Sheldrake Island?
Returning to my office, I logged onto the Internet. Before Google opened, my phone rang again. This time it was Harry.
“Did you call the forensic linguist?”
“Not yet.”
Harry used silence to express her disapproval.
“I will.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
