Beautiful Lie the Dead

by Barbara Fradkin

  Norah frowned. “I can’t see why...”

  Sue improvised. “In case Meredith felt like tracing her roots.

  Feeling sentimental…”

  “There’s nothing sentimental about Montreal—”

  Reg interrupted to supply an address, earning a scowl from Norah. “Anything that helps, Norah,” he said.

  Norah watched Gibbs record the address. “I doubt anyone will remember us there now. Pretty well all our neighbours were leaving too. Probably all French now.”

  Sue tried to sound casual and sympathetic. This Norah was proving a tough nut. “Is Beaconsfield where you two grew up as well?”

  Norah snorted. “I wish! Neither one of our families could afford to own a home. We both grew up in a tougher neighbourhood near downtown.”

  “You know Montreal?” Reg asked.

  Sue shrugged, trying to sound believable. “I have relatives there.”

  “Park Extension, in the top floors of duplexes.” he said. “Hot, airless and cramped. The Irish, the Jews and then the Greeks moved through there, kids grew up tough. Not mean—they had good, hardworking parents—but they learned the value of a dollar early.”

  Sue shifted her stiff body so she could aim her next question at Reg. “Were there English schools around? Could you at least get a good education?”

  “Oh yeah, we both finished high school no problem. There was no money for college, but that never held me back.”

  “College? You mean CEGEP?”

  “Oh, we went to CEGEP. Had to travel halfway across the city to get to the English one back then—”

  “Dawson College?” Sue plucked the only name she knew.

  “Yeah, it was free, and both Norah and me got our start that way—me in small business and her in typing and book-keeping—”

  “Reggie!” Norah snapped. “I don’t see how the detectives could be interested in our life story.”

  He was undaunted. “Norah even got her first job working for the police—”

  “Reggie!”

  “Wow,” Sue said. “Right in the mean streets of Montreal?”

  Norah bolted to her feet, tugging to get her dress in line. “Where are my manners? How about some tea?” She was halfway through to the kitchen when she paused to glance back at her husband. Doubt was written all over her face. She doesn’t want to leave me alone with Mr. Chatterbox, Sue thought.

  Sure enough, she returned and sank back on the sofa with an exaggerated sigh. “Reggie, why don’t you get us tea? I’m dead on my feet.”

  Once he was gone, Sue turned to tackle Norah. “Did you ever meet a woman named Lise Gravelle during your Montreal days?”

  “It was so long ago. I don’t recognize the name.”

  “She’s the woman found frozen in the snowbank in Rockcliffe last week.”

  “Oh! I never heard her name. Poor woman. She was from Montreal?” When Sue nodded, she shrugged. “Montreal’s a big place.”

  “She never phoned here?”

  “Here?” Norah’s tired eyes widened in shock. “Why should she?”

  “To speak to Meredith. She phoned Meredith six times on her cell phone in the week before her death.”

  Norah suppressed a gasp and stared at Sue in bewilderment.

  In the stillness, the only sound was Reg moving around the kitchen, running water and clattering cups. Norah swallowed. “I have no idea why. Maybe Meredith knew her from work?”

  “Meredith never mentioned her? Never asked about her?”

  “No.”

  Sue reached into her folder and drew out a single photocopied page containing the phone records to the Kennedy’s home line obtained through unofficial channels by Sergeant Li. She pretended to study it. “This is a record of Lise Gravelle’s phone calls.”

  Norah recoiled. “What?”

  “The records from her cell phone.”

  “What—what…?” Norah reached for the paper, which Sue deftly moved from view. Luckily Bob didn’t utter a peep, just sat as transfixed as Norah.

  “Sorry, this is confidential information. Part of a murder inquiry.”

  Norah was silent, staring at Sue’s file. For added drama, Sue drew her finger down a column of numbers. “The records show she placed six calls to Meredith’s cell in the past two weeks. However, your home phone number also shows up on her list of calls.”

  Still Norah said nothing. Sue could feel the faint quaking of her body on the sofa beside her. She softened her voice. “Lise Gravelle phoned this house last Monday evening.”

  “I don’t understand. Maybe she was looking for Meredith?”

  “Meredith wasn’t home. She never came home, remember?”

  “But perhaps this woman called looking for her.”

  “This call to your house was placed at 8:54 p.m. Just after she’d spoken to Meredith on her cell.”

  “There was no call. I don’t remember a call.”

  A footfall sounded in the hall and Reg appeared. “There was a wrong number, you remember, honey? While we were watching Little Mosque.”

  Norah swung around to stare at him. She looked the colour of death. “What are you talking about?”

  “I answered it, remember? A woman mumbled something and hung up.”

  “Oh!” Colour rushed back into Norah’s face. She made a funny hiccupping sound. “Of course. So much has happened that I never gave it a moment’s thought. We get telemarketers all the time.”

  “And you spoke to her for how long?”

  “Oh...” Reg blew out a breath. “Seconds.”

  Norah was still the colour of a corpse. Sue leaned towards her. “The records show the call lasted four minutes.”

  “Nonsense.” Norah hiccupped again.

  Again Reg stepped in. “I must have forgot to press the ‘off ’ button. I do that all the time.”

  * * *

  Brandon trudged through the snow, trying to match his aunt’s description to the blurry white landscape that lay all around him. Gravestones were strewn across the gentle slopes of the mountainside as far as the eye could see. Bea had mentioned a big pine tree, but the cemetery seemed to be full of trees as old and majestic as Mount Royal itself. Thick oaks, pale, arching poplars, maples that spread their lacy crowns wide over the tombstones below. Brittle morning sunshine bleached the snow, and wind tugged at his dishevelled hair. He hunched his shoulders and turned up the collar of his jacket.

  Brandon had always thought Ottawa’s Beechwood Cemetery was a stunning resting place, with its dappled shade, terraced gardens and meandering paths. But it could not rival the location of the hundred-and-sixty-year-old Mount Royal Cemetery nestled on the northern slope of the mountain. The spectacular domes of the university and St. Joseph’s Oratory peeked over the distant trees, and the northern cityscape faded into the pale horizon beyond. Here the snow seemed whiter and the air crisper. Against the grandeur of the natural setting, even the mausoleums and obelisks of the wealthy old Montreal families looked humble.

  His aunt had told him the section of the cemetery where generations of Longstreets had been laid to rest, and he trekked in the snow from grave to grave, studying the names with detached bemusement. These were his relatives. Why had he never heard of them, met them, or heard the stories of their lives? His mother had never even brought him to visit his father’s grave. When he’d thought about it, which was rare, he’d assumed she was trying to spare him the stark reminder of his father’s absence. Or trying to spare herself. Now he wondered just how false her devotion and grief had been. Had she instead been trying to blot the man out of her mind and erase all reminders of his betrayal?

  Brandon found himself on unfamiliar, shifting ground, the illusions of his childhood destroyed amid questions about who his mother and father really were. After leaving Meredith’s grandmother the day before, he’d spent the day poring over the old newspaper files he’d taken from his mother’s office and surfing the internet in vain for further details. Bea had been no help, suddenly changing he
r tune after his visit to Cyril and suggesting that he should let the past rest.

  “Your father was fundamentally a good man, with more ideals and ethics than the rest of the Longstreet men put together, and your mother was right to preserve that in your mind. Not his one weakness. Sexual appetite can bring down great men, but it shouldn’t be the only yardstick by which they are judged.”

  She must have seen the dismissal on his face, for she pressed further. “You were the centre of your mother’s world after he died. Everything she said, every choice she made, including leaving Montreal, was for your wellbeing. I don’t think it hurt you to have an idealized father to live up to.”

  She made him feel childish and petty, like a small boy who’d believed in Superman and now pouted at the truth as if he’d been personally betrayed. He wanted to tell her this was not about his father’s sexual appetite nor even his mother’s lies, but about the corrosive effect of those secrets thirty years later. A woman was dead, and Meredith had disappeared.

  But the truth was, Bea was partly right. Tramping through the graveyard in search of his father’s tomb, he did feel like a small child, not sure why he’d come and perilously close to weeping at the potent symbolism of the act.

  He pulled himself back to reason with a sharp shake of his head. The grave must be farther over, set apart from the older Longstreets who had lived out the full measure of their lives. There was a tall pine just up the slope, its boughs bent almost to the ground with the weight of snow. The vague indentations of a path wove towards it through the sparkling white quilt crisscrossed with the prints of rabbits and squirrels foraging for food.

  He veered towards the pine, braced against the wind that whistled up the mountain. The cold snow seeped into his thin leather boots. He had less than an hour before his meeting with the reporter, whom he’d managed to track down on the internet the night before. Cameron Hatfield had revealed little over the phone and had grilled him with numerous questions about who he was and what exactly he wanted to know, but he’d finally agreed to meet with Brandon. Noon for brunch—on Brandon’s tab—was the earliest he was willing to face the world. Hatfield warned him it would be a waste of his time. He recalled the case only in the vaguest detail, because there hadn’t been much to it.

  As Brandon trudged closer, he could make out a black shape through the thick branches. Closer, a curious splash of colour. Red. He quickened his pace as the black shape became a tombstone nestled in the hollow beneath the tree. Protected from the snowfall, its polished granite was almost completely bare. He ducked under the pine bough and stepped close enough to read the inscription.

  Harvey Kent Longstreet

  1938-1978

  A beautiful soul, taken before his time

  His brief moment of triumph faded as the scene registered. Propped against the tombstone and partially covered by a light mantle of snow, was a bouquet of red roses. Fresh and crisp, as if they’d been placed only yesterday. Brandon frowned and glanced at the ground at the base of the grave, noting for the first time the delicate footprints half-filled with snow. Footprints came in under the bough, trampled around and then faded out again into the deeper snow of the open field. He bent closer to brush the snow from the petals, looking in vain for a card. Who still cared enough about his father to bring flowers thirty years after his death? Bea had not mentioned it. His mother? She hadn’t left Ottawa all week.

  For one crazy, hopeful moment, he thought of Meredith.

  EIGHTEEN

  Green awoke late Sunday morning, the result of one too many St. Ambroise with Cam Hatfield. Lying in the unfamiliar bed, he felt a wash of loneliness. He phoned Sharon and could hear the staccato chatter of his son in the background.

  She sounded mellow, and he pictured her at the kitchen table, reading the paper and sipping her mug of french roast. Envy seeped into his loneliness.

  “Miss you,” she said with a playful hint in her voice.

  “Miss you too. Did Hannah call?”

  “No, but it was Saturday night and this is Hannah we’re talking about.”

  “I hope she’s not having too much fun. I want her to come home.”

  “She will, because she has the rest of Grade Twelve to finish. After that...”

  She didn’t have to complete the thought. Hannah had spent the past month researching and applying to university programs for next year, and on her short list along with McGill and Ottawa’s Carleton University was the University of British Columbia. The very possibility was unthinkable.

  “They do grow up, Mike,” said Sharon gently.

  He sidestepped the comment, which was laden with too much innuendo for this hour on a Sunday morning. He missed his daughter, he missed his wife and son, he even missed his dog, and in a moment of weakness, he might agree to her wish.

  “I hope to be home tonight,” he said, sitting up on the edge of the bed. “Maybe we’ll call her then.”

  She backed off, as she always did. But for how long, he thought? To be fair to her, he had to face the issue of another child head on sometime. She would be forty next month, and her chance was ebbing away.

  Determinedly, he refocused his thoughts on the day ahead. Interviews with Cyril Longstreet, other relatives, and the old super at Longstreet’s apartment if he was still alive. But before he could do any of that, he had to see what was in the Longstreet police file.

  When he finally arrived at the police station, however, he was greeted by an irritated, apologetic Jean Pierre Magloire. Neither the microfilm nor the original Longstreet file had arrived. He’d been on the phone harassing everyone he could think of, but the only response he’d received was, “We’re trying to locate it.”

  Settling into his temporary work station next to Magloire, Green roused Inspector Fournier at home. This time the chief inspector was far less cordial.

  “The request has been made, Inspector. It’s a very old file and since it’s a closed case, the original may be in one of several warehouses. In order not to inconvenience you further, may I suggest you return to Ottawa and I will send you the microfilm once we locate it.”

  Green had no intention of letting up the pressure. He needed to check the witness statements, the officer’s notes, and other details that had not found their way into the official police press releases.

  He needed most of all to know what everyone was hiding.

  “Thank you for the offer,” he replied in his best French. “I have several leads to follow up here today, and the file is essential to my investigation, so I will wait for it. Please continue to do all you can.”

  When he hung up, he saw Magloire’s dark, watchful eyes upon him. The detective was smiling, but he looked thoughtful. “Why is that file so important?”

  Green wasn’t about to admit he had no idea. Call it a hunch, or maybe his obsessive drive to uncover everything about the cases he investigated. Or just maybe because the Montreal Police seemed reluctant to show it to him. He was saved from providing any answer by the ringing of his cell phone.

  It was Bob Gibbs, sounding excited and out of breath. “I-I hope I’m not disturbing you too early, sir.”

  Green glanced at his watch, which read eleven thirty a.m. Hardly early. He asked what was up.

  “Reporting on the results of our searches, sir. Not much luck on the internet, because the Longstreets and the Kennedys left Montreal too many years ago. Nothing really connected them. But...” Gibbs broke off and Green sensed his hesitancy. He could almost see his flushed face and bobbing Adam’s apple.

  “What, Bob?”

  “Well, maybe we shouldn’t have. I mean, I-I know you didn’t tell us to—”

  “Bob!”

  “Sue thought maybe we should just ask them. I mean, where they lived in Montreal, what schools they went to...”

  Green sucked in his breath. “You talked to Elena Longstreet??”

  “Oh no, sir! N-not her! Just the Kennedys.”

  Green’s pulse settled. “That’s okay. What did you
learn?”

  As Gibbs began to summarize the interview, Green grabbed his notebook to jot down the details of the Kennedy’s past. He hadn’t realized they too were from Montreal. In fact, no deep background had been done on them at all, because it hadn’t seemed relevant.

  Something else to follow up on. “This raises a new—”

  He heard Gibbs suck in his breath. “There’s something else, sir.

  Lise Gravelle placed a four-minute phone call to the Kennedy’s house at 8:54 the night she died.”

  Green bolted up in his seat. “After her call to Meredith’s cell?”

  “Yessir. It’s the only call she made to that line. The thing is, I think the Kennedys are hiding something. They pretended it didn’t happen, then they said it was a telemarketer. The husband seemed to be coaching the wife.”

  Green leaned forward. “What’s your take on it?”

  “Well, Sue thinks—and it makes sense—that they didn’t take that call at all. That Meredith did.”

  “But she wasn’t home.”

  “She could have got home. We know she hung up on Lise twenty minutes earlier, so maybe this time Lise called her on the home line.”

  Green weighed the new possibility. “But the Kennedys said she never came home. You’re saying she came home and went out again without them knowing?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s possible. Maybe the TV was loud or they weren’t even home. But Sue has another theory.”

  He could hear Sue’s voice in the background, arguing. “Bob?” he said. “What?”

  “Um, she thinks they know Meredith took the call but they’re lying about it because...well, because...”

  It hit Green like a flash of light. So simple, so clear. “Because they’re afraid Meredith killed her.”

  * * *

  Green scribbled furiously in his notebook, drawing connecting lines between facts as he tried to make sense of this latest twist. Emotions had run high between the two women when they’d met Monday afternoon at Lise’s Montreal apartment. Meredith had been devastated, Lise triumphant. Was it triumph or determination that had made her follow Meredith to Ottawa and phone her twice in the span of half an hour? Six hours later, en route to the Longstreet house, Lise was dead and Meredith had dropped out of sight. Had they connected during that second phone call? Had Lise told her where she was going? Had Meredith chased her down, desperate to stop her from contacting Elena? Or Brandon.