Онлайн-библиотека книг
Pushing back from the table, he moved off down the hall.
As I cleared dishes I could hear the rhythm of the conversation. The words were muffled, but the cadence suggested agitation.
In moments, he was back.
“Sorry, babe. I’ve got to go.”
“You’re leaving?” I was stunned.
“It’s a thankless business.”
“We haven’t eaten your pastry.”
The Irish blues would not meet mine.
“I’m sorry.”
A peck on the cheek.
The chef was alone with her uneaten surprise.
4
I AWOKE FEELING DOWN AND NOT KNOWING WHY.
Because I was alone? Because my only bed partner was a big white cat? I hadn’t planned my life that way.
Then my forever-hubby shared Mr. Happy with a real estate agent.
And I enjoyed my own little fling with the bottle.
Whatever, as Katy would say. Life marches.
Outside, the weather was gray, blustery, and uninviting. The clock said seven-ten. Birdie was nowhere to be seen.
Pulling off my nightshirt, I took a hot shower, then blow-dried my hair.
Then I remembered.
Ryan’s hasty retreat. The look in his eyes.
Jamming my toothbrush back into its charger, I wandered to the bedroom and stared at the frosted window. Crystalline spirals and snowflake geometrics. So delicate. So fragile.
Like the fantasy I’d constructed of a life with Ryan?
I wondered again what was going on.
And why I was acting the featured ditz in a Doris Day comedy.
“Screw this, Doris,” I said aloud.
Birdie looked up, but kept his thoughts to himself.
“And screw you, Andrew Ryan.”
Returning to the bathroom, I layered on the Revlon.
The Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale occupies the top two floors of the Édifice Wilfrid-Derome, a T-shaped building in the Hochelaga-Maissoneuve district, just east of Centre-ville. The Bureau du Coroner is on the eleventh floor, the morgue is in the basement.
At eight-fifteen the twelfth floor was filling with white-coated men and women. Several greeted me as I swiped my security pass, first at the lobby entrance, then at the glass doors separating the medicolegal wing from the rest of the T. I returned their “bonjour”s and continued to my office, not in the mood to chat. I was still upset from last night’s encounter with Ryan. Make that nonencounter.
