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snowball fortunes that gathered as it rolled. He inherited several enterprises, was on the boards of several others, but labored about fifteen hours a week, I’d heard. Probably very efficient hours.
    Clair stuck her head in the front door of the suite. I saw Zane behind her. He looked ready to leave. Clair cocked an eye toward the utility office.
    “I have a disinterment in Bayou La Batre, then lunch with Bill Arnett. I’ll be back by three forty-five.” Clair turned my way. “This is the way it operates, Ryder. Everyone doing their jobs, working on schedule. Showing up on time.”
    Not a word of it meant for me.
    The door squeezed shut. Clair was off on schedule and Zane, one suspects, was off for a stiff belt. Which left just me and Evie or something boy and girl alone together in a way-house for the dead. I ambled toward her while detecting on the way: no wedding band. She was filling in lines on a pile of forms.
    “I’m Carson Ryder, Homicide,” I said to the crown of her head. “I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced.”
    She made a few pen scratches before looking up.
    “Ava Davanelle.” She didn’t offer her hand but mine was unavoidable. Her handshake was cool, compulsory, and quickly retrieved.
    “You’re new here, Dr. Davanelle?”
    “If six months seems new to you.” She looked back to her writing.
    “Seems like you’re on the wrong side of Doc Peltier today. You come in late? I was two minutes late for a meeting with her once, and she just about “
    “Ever see a doctor about that nose problem?”
    “Nose problem?”
    “The way it pokes into other people’s business.”
    I watched her fingertips shake slightly as she wrote; the room was cold.
    “I apologize,” I said. “I’ve worked with Clair, uh, Dr. Peltier, for a year now and always feel like I’m on her wrong side. Like maybe she doesn’t have a right side. But if she didn’t have a right side, how could she have a right hand? And if she didn’t have a right hand, how could …” I heard myself babbling inanely but couldn’t stop, my version of small talk.
    Dr. Davanelle gathered her papers and stood.
    “Nice to have met you, Detective Carson, but I “
    “Ryder. It’s Carson Ryder.”
    ” have much to do today. Good-bye.”
    I followed her across the room until she turned like I was a smelly dog sniffing at her legs.
    “Something else I can do for you, Detective Carson?”
    “Ryder. Carson Ryder. I’m here to observe the post on the Nelson body, Dr. Davanelle.”
    “Why don’t you have a seat in the lobby,” she said, punching the word lobby. “Someone will let you know when we’re ready.”

     

CHAPTER 4

    “… rats … rats … rats.”
    D r. Davanelle’s gloved hands pressed aside the victim’s pubic hair as she leaned over the body and finished a slow and precisely enunciated reading of the inscription. “The ink is light lavender and difficult to decipher from a distance. Preliminary findings suggest a writing instrument with a very fine stylus. Slight penetration into the epidermis can be observed. Microphotos are in the case file … “
    Summoned from exile after a half-hour wait, I’d found Dr. Davanelle and the ancient diener, Walter Huddleston, positioning the body. A tall, broad-shouldered black man with the strength of a much younger man, Huddleston had eyes like red torches and never smiled. I pictured Halloween’s children trooping to his house, the door creaking open to Huddleston’s scarlet glare, the kids sprinting away in a melee of screams and flying candy.
    Dr. Davanelle finished the visual inventory. There was no other writing, only a tattoo on the scapula, an Oriental dragon. She pulled her cloth mask tightly into place, picked up the scalpel, and the procedure progressed the Y cut, the revelation of the dark machinery. I was impressed by her economy of motion, gloved hands moving with such floating, independent grace as to suggest each had its own homunculus in the