Beautiful Lie the Dead (10 page)

Her eyebrows drew together now, like a teacher who'd heard that line before. “What did you hit?”

“I don't know. A sled, maybe? Red shovel? Do you live around here? Did anyone find anything like that?” He wasn't sure why he didn't tell her the real reason. Maybe just because she looked like she could get him in a whole lot of trouble if he even mentioned he might have hit someone.

She was backing away now, her dog tightly leashed at her side. “I think you're wasting your time. Wait till the snow melts in the spring.”

He watched her stride off up the street and knew she didn't believe him for a minute. He took a deep breath. Now what? He hadn't brought a ski pole, and although he had a shovel in the back on the truck, it was a hell of a big snowbank to be digging up.

Nonetheless he took out his snow shovel and tested the mound of snow left by his plow. It was granular now and hard to penetrate. New snow had been blown on top of it by the homeowners clearing their own driveways. It seemed an impossible task. He needed help, but if the dog lady was any indication, the neighbours on this street wouldn't lend a hand. On the other hand, it was too early to call the police.

Up ahead the dog was barking again, and when Frankie looked up, he saw the animal circling a pile of snow by a driveway halfway up the block. The dog was pawing excitedly.

Jesus, Frankie thought. Grabbing his shovel, he headed up the block. The woman glanced towards him, her jaw dropping. She yanked at her dog, dragged it away from the snowbank and set off almost at a run.

I bet she calls the police, Frankie thought. Well, at this point, maybe that's not a bad idea.

* * *

Brandon entered his mother's home office, which was located on the second storey at the back of the house. Her desk was positioned in the bow window and flooded with sunlight. In the summer, the yard would be a paisley print of perennial beds but a blanket of pristine snow hid them all, and even the snow-laden Colorado blue spruce at the rear of the yard could not improve his mood. The Valium was wearing off, leaving him a brain of cotton wool through which thought moved sluggishly.

He knew his mother would be out most of the day. The Superior Court calendar had been booked months in advance and nothing, not even the disappearance of her future daughter-in-law, would keep her from the arcane motion being heard today. She hadn't even tried to send her junior. It was as if she knew there was no great crisis and Meredith was off somewhere for her own selfish reasons, as if the police were poking snowbanks in vain and there would be no gruesome discovery to disrupt her in the middle of her argument.

What the hell did she know?

When the desk itself yielded no answers, he spent an hour meticulously going through the papers in her filing cabinet. Like her life, they were carefully compartmentalized. Her university lectures, course notes and student assignments were all in her faculty office, and her case files, court transcripts and legal research were in her law office downtown. Only her personal papers, and perhaps the occasional work in progress, were kept at home, but even so, thirty years of personal papers presented a daunting challenge. Bank and investment statements, household bills and receipts, tax records, minutes of her charitable and committee work. He was astonished to discover an entire file drawer devoted to him. Not just every report card he'd ever received, but every letter he'd sent from camp, every crayoned art offering and handmade Mother's Day card he'd ever drawn. He knew that as an only child he was important to her, but he'd always thought she had a busy, fulfilling life beyond the home. He remembered her being constantly on the phone, delayed at meetings, and listening with half an ear to his childish chatter while she scanned the latest judge's decision. He remembered a childhood of cleaning ladies, babysitters and even catered meals when she was in the middle of a case.

She'd always seemed slightly aloof, avoiding the mushy cuddling that Meredith's family bestowed at the smallest excuse. He couldn't recall her ever saying “I love you” except in jest, and the unfamiliar words had not come easily to his own lips when Meredith had first demanded them. His reticence had almost cost him the warmest, most exciting woman who had ever come into his life.

He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the open file cabinet, his child's drawings crackling with age as they filtered through his hands. She had cherished every single artefact of his past, squirrelled it silently away in her own private drawer, never told him how much she loved them or how proud she was of him. In rare moments, uttered only the words “Your father would be so proud.” He had no memory of his father, who had died when he was two months old, but his mother had painted an idealized image. Even as a child he'd suspected no one could be as loving a husband, as devoted a father, as brilliant a lawyer nor as beloved a professor as the Harvey Kent Longstreet of her descriptions. He'd been her professor, thirteen years her senior and light years ahead of all her other suitors in maturity, wisdom and allure. Brandon had once overheard her saying to a friend that, despite plenty of offers, she'd never remarried because a love like Harvey Longstreet came along only once in a lifetime. At the time, he'd been startled, even discomfited, by the tremor of passion in her impeccably modulated voice.

Now she surprised him again with the strength of her devotion to him. He remembered the urgency in that fragment he'd overheard that morning.
“He mustn't know!”
took on a less sinister, more protective meaning. Was she just trying to shield him from something? What? The answer was not on her desk, which was filled with mundane household matters, nor among the drawings and letters of his childhood. He shut the file cabinet and pulled open another one, chock full of carefully labelled file folders. Taxes, telephone, travel, wedding, will... Neither the wedding folder nor the will held anything unusual.

On a whim, he pulled open an upper drawer for the H's. Nothing under husband, but thumbing through files in search of Harvey, he came across a file labelled “Hatfield”. Not recognizing the name, he almost skipped by, but its thick, unruly contents gave him pause. He pulled it out, and a jumble of yellowed newspaper clippings from the
Montreal Star
fell out. He caught the reporter's name—Cam Hatfield—and a couple of headlines.
Tributes pour in for dead professor. The private anguish of a public
man. A new brand of teacher.

His scalp prickled. He picked up one article, unfolded it along its brittle seam, and began to read:

Confusion continues to surround the death of one of McGill's
most popular professors, who was found dead in his McTavish
Street apartment on Monday morning. Harvey Longstreet was a
member of the prominent Montreal family that founded the Anglo-
Canadian Transportation Company, now known as CanTransco,
in 1855. The professor's young widow and two-month old son
are in seclusion at his uncle's Westmount home and the family is
requesting privacy to deal with the tragedy. Colleagues willing to
speak to the newspaper expressed shock and disbelief, stating that
Longstreet had shown no signs of depression or stress—

The doorbell rang distantly. Brandon looked up, confusion giving way to fear. Meredith! Quickly he stuffed the articles back into the filing cabinet and kicked the drawer shut as he headed out the door.

A young woman stood on the doorstep, bundled against the cold in a blue parka, a red tuque with a red and white pompom and matching mittens. Was there a hint of excitement in those blue eyes, he wondered? His hopes stirred.

Then she held up her badge. “Detective Peters, Ottawa Police,” she said, enunciating carefully as if the label were unfamiliar to her. “Are you Brandon Longstreet?”

He nodded. “Any news?”

“We haven't found her, no sir, but we're making progress on her movements. May I come in?”

He invited her in and suppressed his impatience as she removed her boots and coat. She took so long, he wondered whether she was stalling. Settled on the floral living room couch, Peters eyed him gravely. “Did Meredith tell you her plans to go to Montreal?”

“Montreal?” He was equally incredulous and startled. When Peters said nothing, he shook his head. “Why would she go to Montreal?”

“That's what I'm asking you.”

He felt a flare of annoyance. “We have a wedding in two weeks, she has a million things on her to-do list. Why would she go there!”

“What's in Montreal? A dressmaker? A friend?”

“Nobody,” he said, fighting off the absurdity of the idea.

Belatedly, reason penetrated the cotton wool in his brain. “You have evidence she went to Montreal?”

The detective nodded. “She took a bus there Monday morning and returned here Monday evening.”

He stared at her. That made no sense! He'd last seen Meredith on Sunday evening. They'd had dinner together and tried to finalize the table seating for the dinner. She hadn't mentioned a thing about Montreal. Brandon closed his eyes, recalling the unpleasant memory for the hundredth time. She'd been furious with him, frustrated at all the Longstreet guests who needed places of importance, resentful that their parents would share the head table with them instead of their friends. In fact, she hadn't wanted a head table. She'd wanted a series of round tables that made everyone feel equal and included.

It was such a modern, Meredith idea, and he loved her for it. But his mother was paying for the dinner, and she naturally expected a clear gesture of respect in return.

Meredith had stormed off in a huff. He hadn't told the police about it because he wanted them to take her disappearance seriously. He'd seen their cynical, world-weary attitude towards victims too often in the emergency room waiting rooms, and he didn't want them to think that Meredith was just another immature, spiteful girlfriend looking for payback. She was a fiery, impassioned woman, but she would never go to this extreme. Surely, no matter how angry or doubtful she became, she would never put him and her family through this anguish.

Yet now, in the cold light of reflection, how well did he actually know her? The sense of connection had been instantaneous, the romance and passion breathtaking, but his long hours at the hospital kept them from actually spending as much time together as they wished. He still didn't know much of her past, nor of her friendships beyond their shared circle.

But Montreal? What did Montreal have to do with anything? What was so urgent in Montreal that she would drop her entire to-do list and travel four hours through a snowstorm on a cramped, noisy bus to deal with it?

“I don't know,” he said, trying to control the alarm in his voice. “She has some family there, and friends from her Haiti posting.”

“Anyone she might visit? Anyone she stayed close to?”

“Just a few work colleagues and some obscure cousins.”

“Can I have names and contact numbers?”

“We've called them all. No one's seen or heard from her.”

“All the same, we have to follow up. They may know things.”

“I only have a few names, from the wedding guest list.” He rose to fetch the list from the kitchen and waited in silence as she laboriously copied the names down. She seemed to do everything in slow motion. He toyed briefly with a diagnosis of MS before noticing the fine scars at her hairline and another just above her brow, camouflaged by hair. The woman was fighting back from a catastrophic head trauma. He felt a wave of respect and sympathy. It was on the tip of his tongue to comment when she raised her head.

“No one else?” she demanded, as if daring him to say a word. He shook his head. “Her parents would know more of the relatives down there.”

“What about grandparents? Any in Montreal?”

“Her grandmother's alive, but she's in a nursing home.

Advanced Alzheimer's. In the past couple of years she's barely recognized Meredith. Meredith used to visit often but recently she's found it hard.”

The detective stopped taking notes and leaned forward, her eyes drilling his. “But she could have gone to see her. With her wedding coming up, maybe she felt sentimental. Did the grandmother come up in conversation recently?”

Brandon shook his head. He felt the detective pressing against the secret fault lines of their relationship and felt himself resisting. But the grandmother hadn't come up. Not really. “We discussed whether she should come to the wedding or not, and everyone else—especially Meredith's mother—thought it would be a bad idea. She can't really travel. She gets confused and agitated, she wouldn't know what's going on.”

“Maybe Meredith got to feeling guilty?”

Brandon tried to fit that idea with Meredith's mood on Sunday night. She
had
struggled, but maybe more with regret than guilt. Was it possible she went to Montreal to visit Nan?

Nan had been a force when Meredith was growing up, always ready with a big hug, a plate of oat cakes, and a listening ear. He knew it hurt Meredith to see the old lady so diminished.

He felt uneasy. Maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe he'd misread the depths of her distress. Maybe she was feeling the absence of her grandmother at her wedding and the overwhelming force of two dozen Longstreet guests while a key person from her side was missing. Maybe that, along with his stupid blunder about the head table, had made her second-guess her desire to join her life to his.

The detective was waiting for an answer, with that challenging look in her eyes again. He forced a shrug. “It's possible. But you said she came back to Ottawa afterwards, so I don't see what difference it makes?”

“Because she disappeared almost immediately afterwards, as if something happened on that trip to make her take off. That's more than some simple family visit.”

He turned the idea over slowly. None of this made any sense. It didn't fit with the Meredith he knew. She loved him, she wanted to change her whole life course to go with him to Ethiopia. She could have—no,
would have
—just said, “The hell with it all, let's elope.”