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"You want aisle or window?"

Because you know Vinnie's coming, too.

She does. She learned long before the two of them were married that trying to stop her now-husband from accompanying her into 'mysterious circumstances' was moot.

"Window, please. Are you even going to ask what has caused this need to return?" Especially so soon after their last visit?

"Do I need to?"

"Need to? No. Want to? You should probably at least want to." Moving towards his closet (for let's be real, Isabella had her own walk-in version), she grabbed two of the suitcases, laying them on the bed.

"Monsieur Bertin has died."

Vinnie briefly considered intercepting -- he could pack his own suitcase, thank you very much -- but he sensed that his wife needed the inertia of keeping her hands busy. He folded himself onto the edge of their bed.

"Bertin --" he searched his memory for the name "-- your old tutor? Iz, I'm sorry." His brow furrowed in concern. "What happened?"

She wouldn't say she needed the inertia, but she also wouldn't deny that it was helping -- giving her something to focus on until she got to New Orleans and could inspect the body for herself.

"We're not entirely sure as of yet." Back in the closet, she pulled a black suit for Vinnie and laid it on the bed before diving into her own. "There are theories, of course. And yes, natural death is among them. Bertin was not young, after all."

Vinnie glanced at the suit beside him. It had been hand-tailored -- "bespoke," as Isabella had put it -- to Vinnie's exact measurements by Pendergast's famous Italian atelier. He was pretty sure it cost as much as half of his yearly salary from the force.

He picked up on the plural pronoun. "We?" he asked, arching a brow.

"Daddy called shortly after receiving the death notice; he wanted to see if I had received one as well and invite us to join him at the funeral if we had not. Naturally, we began talking of Monsieur Bertin -- the last time we had seen him, or talked to him...how he sounded...the usual. Neither one of us had heard anything about him being sick, but well..." Bertin had not always been the most forthcoming about his personal life.

Vinnie got up and went over to his dresser, opening a drawer to root around for a few pairs of socks. "Mounsier Bertin was your dad's tutor too, wasn't he?"

"He was." Since Vinnie was handling the socks, Isabella went to find shoes -- both for him and for her. "His and my uncle's. He was with the family right up until the fire...and then even potentially after. We didn't, by the way...get a death notice. Which, in and of itself, is rather strange."

She knew Bertin about as well as anyone. It made no sense why she wouldn't have been sent the same sort of card her father received.

"Maybe it was a mistake," Vinnie offered. "Did he have any family? Something like this, sudden or not, it spins your head around. Things get dropped. Maybe they just forgot to send you a notice."

"It's possible. I don't remember him having much family, but it has been quite a while. Even since his last trip here." And the case that had robbed them all of a dear friend.

Shoes, dress for the funeral, suit...she'd pack a few more clothes as she was not under any delusion that they would be going strictly for the funeral. Their life never worked like that.

"You should call the station...let them know you're taking bereavement leave..."

"Sure." He didn't think it'd be a problem to get time off. The city had actually seemed more peaceful lately, if such a thing was possible. Probably the extreme heatwave that had recently gripped the boroughs had made everyone living there a little more lenient with one another.

A little divot of concern appeared between his eyes.

"Are you okay?" He should have asked earlier.

"I am. The loss of Monsieur Bertin will be felt deeply, but as I said before, he was not a young man. Perhaps, simply, his time had come." Her former tutor -- the former tutor of her father and uncle had lived his life. Strange and fascinating as it was. It made his death easier to accept than say...Smithback's or Decker's.

Of course, were his death to end up not being the result of natural causes...well, ask her again then.

"I think that's everything."