Beautiful Lie the Dead
BEAUTIFUL
LIE
THE
DEAD
Barbara
FRADKIN
Text © 2010 Barbara Fradkin
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, digital, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior consent of the publisher.
Cover design by Emma Dolan
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RendezVous Crime
an imprint of Napoleon & Company
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
www.napoleonandcompany.com
Printed in Canada
14 13 12 11 10Â Â Â 5 4 3 2 1
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Fradkin, Barbara Fraser, date-
Beautiful lie the dead / Barbara Fradkin.
(An Inspector Green mystery)
ISBN 978-1-926607-08-5
I.     Title. II. Series: Fradkin, Barbara Fraser, 1947- . An Inspector
Green mystery
PS8561.R233B42 2010 Â Â Â Â C813'.6Â Â Â Â Â C2010-904966-7
The Inspector Green Series
Do or Die
Once Upon a Time
Mist Walker
Fifth Son
Honour Among Men
Dream Chasers
This Thing of Darkness
Beautiful Lie the Dead
Table of Contents
T
o Hannah Green, the Number 2 bus was the lifeblood of the city, belching oily fumes as it rumbled along the narrow streets of the inner city. On Ottawa's transit planning chart, it was supposed to provide a link between two major shopping malls, the Rideau Centre at the heart of downtown and Bayshore Shopping Centre in the west. But it was the whacky journey in between that Hannah loved, first passing the gingerbread Victorian renos of Centretown, then the spice-laden clamour of Chinatown and the thrift shops of Hintonburg before it skulked like a smelly, overweight bag lady into the trendy kitsch of Westboro.
On Monday night the weather was working itself up into one mother of a snowstorm, adding to the fun. Hannah loved watching the people as they clambered aboard in a swirl of snow, juggling Christmas shopping bags and yanking their mittens off with their teeth so they could fish into their pockets for change or a bus pass. She loved reading the clues they gave away, a weird habit she'd probably gotten from her father, the bigshot detective. The student with the three-hundred dollar Goretex jacket and the swagger in his step would probably get off in Westboro, or worse in her own neighbourhood of Highland Park just to the west of it. The old Chinese lady wearing a long woollen coat, a thousand mismatched scarves and a huge brown vinyl sac was going shopping at the Asian grocery store, and the teenage mother with the neon green ski jacket would wrestle her second-hand stroller and her sleeping baby down the steps into a snowbank outside the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store.
Sometimes the people surprised her. Sometimes the tall, classy African family would not get off at the Ethiopian restaurant but at the library nearby. Sometimes the boozy trio of loudmouths whom she had pegged for the Royal Oak would head off instead to the stone church that hogged an entire block among the funky old stores of Hintonburg.
And sometimes, like the young woman who flopped down in the seat across from her, they confounded her. The woman had boarded the bus at the corner of Bank and Laurier Streets, in the middle of the business district. She looked like a fashion natural. Long tumbling hair a shade of burnt red that you couldn't buy in a bottle, perfect nails buffed to a natural shine. No make-up, but with cheekbones like that, who needed it?
Hannah would have guessed high-end civil servant, except that it was eight thirty in the evening, too late for even the keenest government workers, and the woman was dressed in skinny jeans, high boots and a red suede jacket with awesome beadwork around the hood and hem. She was put together like a woman who knew what she was doing and had the money to do it.
But her expression suggested a different story. She leaped aboard, wide-eyed and jumpy like someone high on coke. Her fingers didn't work; she couldn't open her purse, couldn't pick up change. Hannah had been there enough times to recognize the signs. Even when the woman yanked her leather gloves off with her teeth, she took forever to snag the toonie at the bottom of her purse. And then it flew from her fingers and skittered across the floor.
“Oh fuckety fuck shit!” she wailed, shocking even Hannah, who said much worse herself before she even got out of bed in the morning. The suede jacket and the high boots went better with a ladylike “oh pooh!”
A dozen fingers groped on the floor to retrieve the coin for her, but among them Hannah noticed only the woman's. There was a rock the size of Gibraltar on her fourth finger that caught every ray of feeble lighting inside the bus. She looked at the woman again. As rich as she might be, she had obviously snagged someone way richer.
So why did she look like she'd just witnessed the end of the world?
Having finally plunked the money in the slot and picked up her transfer, the woman stumbled over a stroller, two backpacks and a walker in the aisle, not seeming to see them as she headed for the one empty seat on the bus, across from Hannah. She flounced down, flipped back her snowy hood, and shook her hair loose. Long auburn curls flew past Hannah's face. She seemed to be trying to get herself together. Took a deep breath, shut her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temples.
The drama over, Hannah turned her attention to the next challenge. Where would the woman get off? Not too far west, or she would have taken a transitway bus. If you wanted to get anywhere in this weather and you didn't want the grime and dejection of the masses sticking to your soul, you took the rapid transitway. Hannah was betting on one of the trendy high-rise condos in Centretown, but when the bus trundled west past Bronson Avenue, she switched her bets to the Civic Hospital area. It was full of upscale homes where lawyers and bureaucrats paid for the privilege of being in town. But the bus inched past Holland Avenue and elegant Island Park Drive without a flicker of interest on the woman's part.
A cellphone trilled. After much rummaging in her humungous bag, she pulled out a Blackberry. She stared at the Call Display and seemed to hesitate, but when it rang again, the passengers around her scowled and she punched a button impatiently.
“I don't want to talk to you,” she hissed. She gave the person two seconds to respond before whipping her head back and forth. “I don't care, I don't care!”
Trouble in fiancéland, Hannah thought, vaguely disappointed.
There was no life-shattering crisis, no grand tragedy, just pre-wedding hysterics. Maybe Mr. Rock-of-Gibraltar had hired a photographer without consulting her.
“It's not true! You just want to ruin everything!”
Not the photographer, then, Hannah decided, intrigued by this new mystery. What besides sex could ruin everything?
“How could you do this to me? Oh my God, why?” The woman pressed her hand to her mouth, crying softly. Hannah felt a twinge of pity. Definitely sex. “It makes me sick to... No! Don't! Fuck!” The woman glanced out the window. The bus was just leaving the shopping bustle of Westboro and entering the residential neighbourhood where Hannah lived. Abruptly the woman shoved her Blackberry into her purse, leaped up and dashed to the rear exit. Hannah had one last glimpse of her standing on the street corner, juggling gloves, hat and purse. She was peering through the blowing snow, looking bewildered and lost.
As if she had no idea where she was, or where she was going.
* * *
By four a.m. Tuesday, Frankie Robitaille had been on the job for nearly twelve hours and he was dead tired. His arms throbbed from the constant shifting of levers and gears and from the bone-rattling vibrations of the snowplow on the icy streets. He longed for a hot cup of soup and a warm bed, but that was still a long way off. Still, the overtime was amazing. As an independent operator, he only got paid when it snowed. This blizzard was going to pay for his kids' Christmas presents, and if the forecast was right, maybe even for the trip to Disney World too.
He could always sleep once the snowfall was over and all the streets were cleared in his quadrant. The main arteries had been done, as had the bus routes. He was doing the side streets now, and his big yellow snowplow was the only machine in the quiet residential grid he'd been assigned. Up one street, around the corner and down the next, his massive curved plow spewing the snow up into a neat bank along the side of the road. The monotony was broken only by the occasional car parked by the curb.
It was his favourite time to plow, because no one was out. The quiet was unreal. The wind had eased up and the snow was falling softly through the dim yellow halos of the street lamps, cloaking the ground in a white glitter that was almost magical. Christmas lights lit up the front yards, smudges of red and blue in the soft white snow. The roads dipped and twisted, full of surprise sights. Frankie smiled as he steered the big rig around a corner. His mind drifted.
The curve was sharper than he expected and he had to fight to get the plow around the corner. The bump barely registered. A mere nudge of his steering wheel and a tremor through his floor. He'd hit something buried under the snow, possibly a garbage bin or a kid's sled forgotten outside. He peered in his rear view mirror and at first could distinguish nothing in the unbroken berm of white snow he had banked along the curb. Maybe a flash of something in the feeble street light. Orange or red, like a kid's plastic toy.