Monday Mourning

Minutes later Ryan and I were seated at a Formica-topped table, four weenies and twenty pounds of fries between us.

My cell rang as I was starting my second dog. As usual Claudel wasted no time on greetings.

“Vous avez raison.”

I almost choked. Claudel was admitting I’d been right about something?

Ryan mouthed “Heimlich?” and stretched out his arms. I flapped a hand at him.

“Monsieur Stéphane Ménard was born Stephen Timothy Menard. Parents were Vermonters, Genevieve Rose Corneau and Simon Timothy Menard.”

“Fisher remembered correctly.”

“The Menards were schoolteachers who also owned and operated a small truck farm about fifteen miles outside of St. Johnsbury. Papa died in sixty-seven when the kid was five. Mama died in eighty-two.”

“How did Menard end up in Canada?”

“Legally. Corneau was born in Montreal. After hooking up with Menard she moved to Vermont, married, and became a U.S. citizen. Conveniently, Genevieve Rose was visiting the folks back home when little Stephen signaled his entrance.”

“Menard has dual citizenship.”

“Yes.”

“But he didn’t take up residence in Canada until eighty-nine?”

“When Corneau died in 1982 Menard inherited the truck farm. Three acres and a two-bedroom house.”

I did a quick calculation. “Menard was twenty.”

“Yes.”

Ryan was dousing his fries with vinegar, but listening attentively.

“Did Menard remain in Vermont?”

“Charbonneau is clarifying that with the St. Johnsbury PD. I’ve established that Menard’s grandparents died in an auto crash here in Montreal in 1988.”

“Let me guess. Menard inherited Grand-mère and Grand-père Corneau’s home, said au revoir to Vermont, added accents to his name, and headed north.”

“He took possession of the Corneau home in November 1988.”

“In Pointe-St-Charles.”

Claudel read off an address.

I gestured to Ryan. He handed me a pen and I jotted it on a napkin.

“He a loner?”

“No record of anyone else living there.”

“Does Menard have a jacket in the States?” I asked.

“DWI at age seventeen. Otherwise the young man was a paragon of virtue.”

Claudel’s cavalier attitude was doing its usual number on my disposition.

“Look, up to this point we’ve been focusing on the victims, working the case from the bottom up. It’s time to rethink that, go at it from the top down. Look at who might have put them in that basement.”

“And you think this Menard is your shovel man.”

“Do you have any better ideas, Monsieur Claudel?”

We disconnected simultaneously.

Between bites of my second hot dog, I relayed Claudel’s information. If Ryan had doubts about my suspicions concerning Menard, he kept them to himself.

“Menard must be in his forties now,” he said, crumpling his waxed paper wrappers into the grease-stained carton that had held our food.

“With no obvious means of support for the past several years.”

“But real estate holdings in Vermont and Quebec.”

“And a lot of dead relatives,” I said.

Charbonneau phoned as we were sliding to the curb in front of my condo.

“How’s it hanging, Doc?”

“Good.”

“Did some interesting chin wagging with several of our Green Mountain neighbors. Seems your boy was a college grad.”

“Where?”

“University of Vermont. Class of 1984. Nice lady in the registrar’s office even faxed me a yearbook photo. Kid looks like every mama’s dream. Howdy Doody hair and freckles, Clark Kent glasses, and a Donny Osmond smile.”

“Redhead?”

“Looked like Opie in specs. Oh, and you’re going to love this, Doc. Menard earned a BA in anthropology.”

“You’re kidding.”"

"“Story gets better. Menard went on to graduate school. Enrolled in a master’s program in archaeology at some place called—” Pause. “Wait. I got it. Chico.” My heart rate shot into the stratosphere.

“California State University at Chico?”

Ryan’s head whipped around at the sharpness of my tone.

“Yep. Long way from home for a kid from Vermont.”

I reminded Charbonneau about the strontium isotope testing Art Holliday had done on the skeletons.

“Her dental strontium ratios suggest the girl in the leather shroud may have grown up in north-central California, remember?”

“Right.”

“Chico is in north-central California.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“And remember too, her skeletal strontium ratios suggest she may have lived the last years of her life in Vermont.”

“Sonovabitch.”

“What else did you get?”

“Apparently Menard’s scholarship left something to be desired. He either dropped out or got booted after one year in the program. Hasta la vista. No degree.”

“Where did he go?”

“Showed up at Mama’s farm in Vermont in January eighty-six.”

“If he dropped out of Chico after one academic year, that leaves a gap from the end of spring term in eighty-five until January eighty-six.