Monday Mourning

“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.

“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.

“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.