Beautiful Lie the Dead

by Barbara Fradkin

  “Can I say both?” Magloire laughed. “Just kidding. I’ve got a wife and a beautiful little girl who keep me too busy to get into trouble.” He hesitated. “You want to come meet them? Come for dinner?”

  Green heard the reluctance in his voice and shook his head.

  “Thanks for the offer, but you’ve gone above and beyond today.

  I’m going to make it an early night.” He stood, stretched and nodded to the evidence bins. “I’ll leave those for you to sign in, and I’ll just use the photos I took with my own camera.”

  Stepping out the front door of the major crimes unit five minutes later, he took a deep breath of the bracing winter air and drew in the scent of crisp snow, salt, car fumes and the hint of grilled steak from a nearby restaurant. Cars streamed along Sherbrooke Street East in a blur of red and yellow lights, their engines revving and their tires hissing on the salt-slushed pavement.

  He had already booked a room for the night in an inexpensive boutique hotel on Sherbrooke Street West near McGill University, and once he’d checked in, he connected his laptop to the internet. Thirty years was a long time in the life of a news reporter, and since the Montreal Star had been defunct for decades, Cam Hatfield might be anywhere in Canada, or even abroad. Green was delighted when a simple Google search turned him up as a freelancer writing the occasional political and current events piece for the CanWest chain. Even more delighted when a Canada 411 search found him living on Greene Avenue, less than five kilometres from Green’s hotel.

  * * *

  The old women were lined up along the wall of the sunroom like gargoyles, mouths sagging, empty eyes staring at the TV across the room. Most were propped in wheelchairs, although a few clutched canes or walkers in palsied hands. The two closest to the door did not react when Brandon appeared in the doorway, but a woman with a walker in the middle of the room perked up.

  Eagerness replaced the boredom in her eyes.

  “Well, hello, stranger,” she said, struggling to turn her walker towards him. “Who let you in?”

  Brandon smiled doubtfully. One of the nurses on duty had offered to introduce him to Meredith’s grandmother, but she had looked overworked and harassed. Out of sympathy, he’d declined her offer but confronting this parade of blank faces, he regretted his decision.

  “I’m here to see Mrs. Callaghan,” he said.

  “Oh, pooh. She’s gaga. You won’t get the time of day out of her.” The woman inched towards him across the room, her wraith-like frame hunched over her walker. “You’ll get a lot more out of me.”

  Brandon was acutely aware of the locked doors, the bars on the windows and the bright, washable decor. He tried to picture his mother reduced to this. Geriatrics had been his least favourite medical school rotation because it felt like looking into the abyss. Meredith’s grandmother had once been the glue of her family. She’d left school after Grade Eight to work in a clothing factory to supplement the family income during the Depression, but she’d always had a strong sense of folk wisdom. Nan had an answer for every question and a salve for every hurt. Mostly it consisted of “God has his reasons,” and if that didn’t work, she fell back on “That’s life, get on with it.”

  She had worked in the factory throughout the Second World War but married the first Irish lad to disembark from the troop ship in Montreal harbour afterwards. Her folk wisdom continued to dominate the family throughout the raising of her five children and nine grandchildren. Meredith’s eyes always danced when she talked to Brandon about her Nan, even when the woman was at her most old-fashioned and infuriating. Nan believed in family, church and babies; to fail at those elements was to fail at life.

  A shell was all that was left of the woman now, and the sight would be excruciating for all the children she had nurtured. Had Meredith come to visit her that mysterious Monday afternoon, Brandon wondered. And had something spooked her from taking the next step along her own life path, as if by not getting married, she could stop the clock and prevent her own bodily decay?

  The nurses at the station had no record of such a visit, nor did they remember the young woman in the photo Brandon showed them. That would have been a different shift, the charge nurse said, although usually something as important as an outof-town visit would be charted. Mrs. Callaghan didn’t get too many visitors. Only one daughter still lived in Montreal and she came twice a week. But there hadn’t been an out-of-town family member in at least two months, and they would have noted it because any unfamiliar person could be upsetting to the patient. Families meant well, but they stirred up feelings. Sometimes the patient didn’t remember them or mistook them for someone else, and it triggered unpleasant memories.

  Another nurse who was nearby had pitched in. “The last time Meredith’s mother visited, it was like that. Mrs. Callaghan accused her of hiding things, keeping secrets and lying.”

  “Lying?” Brandon’s interest was piqued. “About what?”

  The nurse shook her head sympathetically. “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t mean anything. When the mind gets confused and no longer remembers connections, it’s easy to think people are lying and keeping secrets. It’s a very scary place to be. Please remember that when you speak to Mrs. Callaghan. When she gets upset, it’s hard to calm her down again.”

  Brandon was still holding Meredith’s photo when he entered the sunroom. He was just debating how to proceed when the woman with the walker reached his side. Her whole frame shook with the effort, but her eyes were bright as she spied the photo.

  “I remember that girl! She came to see the old bat. Not that it did her any good.”

  Brandon assessed the woman dubiously. She had two round circles of rouge on her cheeks and a matching bow of red lipstick. Pearls encircled her thin neck. She looked about four feet tall and a hundred years old, but she smiled like a young girl and her gaze was shrewd. His hopes lifted. “Do you remember when?”

  “Of course I do. Nothing wrong with my mind. Or my eyes,” she added with a slow smile. “Just last week.”

  He sucked in his breath. “Did you hear their conversation?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You can’t talk to her! Nothing but gibberish. She shooed the poor girl away. Said she wasn’t part of the family and shouldn’t try to trick her.”

  Poor Meredith, Brandon thought. To come all this way and be forgotten. “What did her granddaughter say?”

  “She kept telling her to remember when she was little and such. The old bat just screamed at her to go away until the girl gave up.”

  “How was she? Upset?”

  “Mad as hell.” The woman mouthed a flirtatious “Oh” and pressed her fingertips to her lips. “Not supposed to say that.

  Perhaps you’ll have more luck with the old bat than the girl did, although she’s not having a very good day.”

  She edged her walker out of the way and gestured towards an elderly woman in the corner. Meredith’s grandmother was slumped in her wheelchair with her large bony knees protruding from her nightgown and her hands hanging like claws over the arms of her chair. Her pure white hair clung to her pink scalp in strands like a thin cirrus cloud, and spittle collected at the corner of her mouth. Her pale blue eyes were fixed on the television.

  Brandon slowed midway in his approach, struck by the futility of his quest. Struck too by the voices on the television. A woman reporter was standing in the snow outside an aging brick apartment building.

  “The police are not yet releasing any details about the dead woman, pending notification of next of kin, but neighbours have confirmed that she is fifty-four-year-old Lise Gravelle, an employee of St. Mary’s Hospital, who lived alone in this apartment building with her pet dog.” Briefly the Missing Persons photo filled the screen. “This afternoon, detectives from both Montreal and Ottawa searched the apartment and removed two large boxes of evidence.”

  The camera panned through the dark and caught a brief glimpse of three people climbing into cars at the curb. Brandon squinted. Shock raced throug
h him as he recognized Inspector Green. What was he doing in Montreal?

  “Keep away from her!”

  The screech jolted him back. He swung around just in time to see a cane flying through the air towards him. It clipped him on the shoulder before he could duck. The grandmother’s eyes were bulging as she looked wildly at him.

  “Stay away! You think I don’t know who that is? Devil’s child!

  Devil’s child!” A slipper flew across the room.

  The staff moved quickly to whisk her away to her room, leaving the rest of the patients muttering in annoyance. And leaving Brandon open-mouthed in the middle of the room, wondering what the hell all that was about.

  “Well, you sure made an impression,” said the little old lady, reappearing at his side.

  SIXTEEN

  Green stood outside the old Montreal Forum building, looking up at its modern metal cladding with dismay. A Futureshop and an AMC theatre now occupied most of the building, their gaudy red lettering replacing the sturdy brown brick of the original façade. He recalled the only other time he’d been inside. His father, the timid immigrant tailor from Poland, had never watched a hockey game in his life but had believed his twelve-year-old son should share the quintessentially Canadian father-son dream of watching the Montreal Canadiens during their legendary Stanley Cup run.

  “Meshugas,” he had announced after three hours of plugging his ears and trying to watch the tiny black disc ping-pong around the rink. Craziness. Green had never been to a game since, although Tony was beginning to wheedle, and he knew he’d have to give in. History had a way of racing ahead, leaving nothing but regret in its wake. He pushed aside the twinge of nostalgia as he reached for the door of Guido and Angelino’s.

  Once a news hound, always a news hound, he thought as he walked into the bar and caught sight of the rumpled figure perched on a barstool at the very end of the bar. The man was facing the door, keeping an eye on the action as he nursed a drink. Not much got by him, Green suspected, meeting the man’s gaze. Without a flicker of acknowledgment Cam Hatfield picked up his drink, slid off his barstool and moved to a table in the corner. He was a stubby man, and in his yellow parka, he reminded Green of a fire hydrant. His feet were encased in massive boots that clumped as he walked and he had to shove the table out nearly a foot further to accommodate his gut. Dirt and age had faded his clothing, and his greying hair stood in unkempt spikes. He looked as if he’d spent the previous night under a railway bridge, but his blue eyes, set deep in his leathery face, were keen.

  He grinned as he appraised Green. “You don’t look much like an inspector.”

  To avoid the intimidating inspector persona, Green had dressed in his favourite jeans and faded sweatshirt for his night on the town and had tossed on his battered suede jacket. He knew that with his slight build and boyish freckled face, he didn’t look very inspectorish. The reporter was good.

  He returned the man’s grin. “But you knew it was me.”

  “Cops have an aura. The way you scan a room, always aware of your surroundings. We’re not so unalike, you know.”

  “Thanks for meeting me.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t go all Pollyanna. I’m intrigued. You know what that means.”

  Green nodded, suspecting the man needed a big story more than he let on. “I’ll do what I can. For now, this is just background.”

  “To do with the Lise Gravelle murder, I assume?”

  Green kept his face blank. Cam Hatfield was no fool. Why else would a high-ranking Ottawa police detective be in the city in the first place? “I’m exploring leads.”

  “Right,” Hatfield said drily. He signalled the barman for a refill. “So what leads did you uncover in Lise Gravelle’s apartment that bring you back to the thirty-year-old Longstreet case?”

  “When I know, Cam, you’ll be among the first to know.” The barman approached and Green ordered a local St. Ambroise pale ale. Catching Hatfield’s scowl of disgust, he held up a cautionary hand. “I know that sounds like bullshit, but the truth is, I’m flying blind right now, and I can’t afford to jeopardize the investigation. I have a feeling you knew there was more to the Longstreet case than was reported. If you can help me get to the truth, you have my word you can be in on the Gravelle story when it’s safe to break it.”

  Hatfield studied him in silence, twirling his Scotch glass on the beer coaster before him. Despite his rumpled, down-on-his-luck looks, his gaze was astute. Finally he picked up his glass and took an appreciative sip. “Well, my sources in Ottawa tell me I should stick to you like glue, so I’m in.”

  Green laughed. “Don’t tell me. Corelli.” He and the Sun reporter had a chequered history of cooperation.

  Hatfield shrugged, giving nothing away. “So, for some reason that you will at some future date reveal to me, you want to know about the Longstreet clan and most specifically about the peculiar death of Harvey Longstreet thirty-two years ago.”

  “You remember it?”

  “Oh, I remember it. I quit my job over it. Mind you, I knew the Star was about to fold, so it was no big loss.” He chuckled.

  “I couldn’t stand my new boss, or the direction the paper was taking under the new management, so it felt great to stand in the news editor’s office and say ‘That’s it. This is my line in the sand, and I quit.’ Of course, I had a lead on a much better job with Canadian Press wire service before I did my grande geste.”

  “I had a look at the press clippings from both the Star and the Gazette. It looks as if the story just died.”

  “Killed.” Hatfield made a slicing motion through the air. “The word just came down from on high. ‘There’s nothing there but prurient curiosity that is damaging the reputation of an honourable man, so the Star is no longer participating’.”

  “Who was putting on the pressure?”

  “Oh, the Longstreet family, without a doubt, through one of their Westmount lawyers who played footsie with the Star’s owners over drinks at the St. James Club. Old English money in Montreal is completely incestuous. Everybody who’s anybody is married to someone or related to someone who’s somebody, and the Longstreets, from their castle on top of Westmount, are right in the thick of it. It’s a dying class now, with most of the power brokers moved on to Toronto or Calgary, but thirty years ago they were still a force.”

  Hatfield took another sip of his Scotch, nursing it and relishing his soap box. Green was silent, happy to let him fill in the context. “You have to understand, thirty years ago the English were under siege. René Levesque and his Parti Québecois had won their first victory in 1976, businesses were deserting the province in droves, real estate values were in the tank. The separatist wolves were at the door, smelling blood. The Anglo elite was circling the wagons to protect its image and honour from the contempt of the Quebec intelligentsia and the resentment of the Quebec masses. During his life Harvey was one of the few to earn their respect, because he took on the English establishment. If the truth about his death came out, it would have been a humiliation, proof of the utterly corrupt and decadent depths to which the great Anglo industrial complex had fallen.”

  At this point Green rolled his eyes. “Back to earth, Cam. I get it; the bigwigs wanted the story suppressed. But who exactly were these bigwigs?”

  Hatfield pouted. “But you have to understand the Anglo-Quebec dance. Nowhere was it more exquisitely executed than right here in this building in 1955. When it was still the Montreal Forum, thousands of Montreal Canadiens fans took to the streets in a riot because their beloved hockey icon, Rocket Richard, had been suspended by the English-speaking rulers of the NHL.”

  Green sighed. “I live in Ottawa. Trust me, I know the English-French dance. But behind the politics, there are always personalities pulling the strings. René Levesque, Pierre Trudeau, Lucien Bouchard... Who were the people pulling the strings in the Longstreet affair? Elena Longstreet? Her father-in-law?”

  Hatfield grunted in dismissal. “Elena Longstreet was a nobody. The
daughter of a Hungarian immigrant who’d fled the communists in 1956 claiming he was a count. Elena had looks, brains and charm, and luckily for her, an infant son with Longstreet blood in his veins. Without that, she’d have been back making goulash.”

  “She’s not a nobody any longer.”

  Hatfield nodded. “So I hear. But in 1978 she was a bewildered, heartbroken young widow barely out of law school.”

  Green raised an eyebrow. “Heartbroken?”

  “That may be an exaggeration. She certainly knew what she wanted—to preserve her husband’s good name and of course by extension, her own.”

  “Was there money involved? Insurance?”

  “A drop in the bucket compared to what Uncle Cyril controlled from his perch at the top of the Circle.”

  Green perked up. Here was a name. “Uncle Cyril?” “The actual man at the helm of the Longstreet fortune. Others had shares and trusts, but these were set up so that Cyril maintained control. Cyril never married and he had no children, but after his brothers died, he decided who among all the nephews, nieces and grandwhatzits got any money.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “Oh, he’ll never die. He’s pretty much housebound now, but too stubborn to relinquish his iron grip on other people’s lives.”

  Green sipped his beer thoughtfully. The picture was taking shape. Realizing he was starving, he signalled the waiter. “So Cyril quashed the story.”

  Hatfield said nothing until the waiter arrived with a menu. “Try the cannelloni, it’s a safe bet if you’re cheap like me.”

  With a grin, Green ordered the meat cannelloni while Hatfield ordered another Scotch. Single malt this time, Green noticed and realized that the Ottawa Police Services would be paying. Once the new Scotch was in front of him, Hatfield closed his eyes in bliss. “Yeah, I always assumed Cyril quashed the story. No big thing for him. He and his pals had been manipulating the news for years.”