Free Cross Bones by Kathy Reichs

in a coffin-side pit.

    At ten-thirty, I phoned Ryan. He said he’d meet me in the lobby in five. I waited ten. Bored, I slipped into the cafeteria for a Diet Coke roadie. At the counter, I made an impulse buy of Scottish shortbreads. One never knew.

    Ryan was waiting when I returned to the lobby. Popping the soda, I stashed the cookies in my shoulder bag.

    For twenty-seven years Avram Ferris had run his import business out of a light-industrial park off the autoroute des Laurentides, midway between Montreal island and the old Mirabel airport.

    Constructed in the seventies, Mirabel was envisioned as Montreal’s once-and-future aviation jewel. Though thirty miles out, a high speed rail line was to connect the airport with the city center. Lickety-split. You’d be at the gate!

    The rail line never happened.

    By the early nineties the commute was intolerable and getting worse. Sixty-nine bucks for a taxi downtown.

    Frustrated, officials final y threw in the towel and mothbal ed Mirabel in favor of its geographical y friendlier rival. Mirabel now gets cargo and charters. Al other domestic, North American, and international flights arrive and depart Dorval, recently rechristened Pierre El iott Trudeau International.

    Avram Ferris didn’t care. He’d started Les Imports Ashkenazim near Mirabel, and that’s where he’d kept it.

    And that’s where he’d died.

    He’d lived in Côte-des-Neiges, a middle-class residential neighborhood tucked behind the Jewish General Hospital, just northwest of le centre-vil e.

    Ryan took the Décarie expressway, cut east on Van Horne, then north on Plamondon to Vézina. Pul ing to the curb, he pointed to a two-story redbrick box in a row of two-story redbrick boxes.

    I scanned the block.

    Each building was identical, its right side a mirror image of its left. Wood-framed doors jutted in front, balconies hung from upstairs windows. Al walks were shoveled. Al shrubs were wrapped. In the driveways, Chevy and Ford station wagons waited under tubular-framed, plastic-shrouded shelters.

    “Not the Jaguar and SUV set,” I said.

    “Looks like the homeowners held a meeting and banned any trim that ain’t white.”

    Ryan chin-cocked the building directly opposite. “Ferris’s unit is upstairs on the left. His brother’s down, Mama and another brother are in the duplex next door.”

    “Ferris’s commute must have been hel .”

    “Probably stayed here out of love of architectural self-expression.”

    “You said Avram and Miriam had no kids?”

    Ryan nodded. “They married late. The first wife had health problems, died in eighty-nine. Ferris remarried in ninety-seven. So far, no progeny.”

    “Isn’t that against the rules?”

    Ryan gave me a quizzical look.

    “The mitzvot.”

    The look held.

    “Jewish law. You’re supposed to have babies. Not waste your seed.”

    “You’re thinking of the farmer’s almanac.”

    Ryan and I walked to the smal front stoop.

    Ryan stepped up and rang the top bel .

    We waited.

    Ryan rang again.

    We waited some more.

    An old woman trudged by behind us, grocery cart rattling in cadence with her boots.

    “Isn’t the widow supposed to hunker in?” Ryan asked, hitting the bel a third time.

    “Shiva only lasts a week.”

    “And then?”

    “You say daily kaddish, don’t party, don’t shave or snip and clip for a while. But basical y you get on with your life.”

    “How do you know al this?”

    “My first boyfriend was Jewish.”

    “Star-crossed love?”

    “He moved to Altoona.”

    Ryan opened the storm door and pounded.

    The cart woman stopped, turned, and stared unabashedly over her triple-wrapped muffler.

    To the right, a curtain moved. I touched Ryan’s arm and tipped my head. “Dora’s home.”

    Ryan smiled brightly.

    “Avram was a nice Jewish boy who went eight years between marriages. Maybe he and Mama were close.”

    “Maybe he told her stuff.”

    “Or Mama noticed things on her own.”

    I