Beautiful Lie the Dead (23 page)

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.”

Determined to divert Hatfield from his favourite political soap box, Green plunged ahead. “Tell me what you do know about the Longstreet case.”

“I know it wasn't suicide.”

Green's eyebrows shot up. “What did the autopsy find?”

“Asphyxiation due to strangulation. That much was released before the hammer came down. But get this.” Hatfield leaned in close, breathing Scotch. “He was naked as a jaybird.”

The penny dropped. “Ah. And the cops knew this?”

“Of course they did! So did the coroner. But they killed it to avoid the scandal. It wasn't that common back then, or at least as openly talked about, but obviously sex was involved. But whether the guy was doing himself, or had an over-enthusiastic partner who miscalculated, the cops never said.”

“But surely the cops would have at least investigated whether there was another person in the room. There was no DNA back then, but they would have looked for fingerprints, a second wine glass, hairs on the sheets...”

“Everything was wiped clean.”

“Everything?” Green leaned forward. “You mean door knobs, toilet seats…?”

“And the dishes in the drainboard. All washed, all whistle clean, according to the investigating cop.”

Green sat back in disbelief. “Didn't that strike anyone as suspicious? If you were about to engage in a little game of autoerotic asphyxiation, you don't wipe all the dishes and surfaces clean. You don't expect to die!”

Hatfield laughed. “You'd think. I asked the cop that, in fact. Some fresh off the farm kid who'd just landed his first case. Not even a detective. The force hadn't even called in the big guns, and when the coroner ruled it suicide, they just left this kid with this stinking political mess in his lap.”

Green sidestepped the political reference. He knew the force wouldn't have left the young officer to his own devices. Someone higher up had pulled the strings. “So what you're saying is there was no investigation. What about witnesses? The landlord, the neighbours?”

Hatfield shrugged. “Suddenly blind and deaf, even after I offered a substantial sum. Never heard a thing. Professor Longstreet was a quiet, considerate neighbour who wasn't there very often, and when he was, he was as helpful and hard-working as you could possibly want. Even offered to help one woman with her restraining order and another with some minor traffic charge. All-round saint.”

Green's cannelloni arrived, smothered in thick sauce and fragrant with basil and garlic. He sank his fork into the cheesy mixture and prepared to take a bite. “Okay, but you know something, I can tell. Something the
Star
wouldn't let you print.”

Hatfield chuckled. “I
had
something, but it vanished between my fingers the minute Cyril Longstreet's minions paid a visit to the apartment building with a chequebook in hand. The tenant in the apartment underneath was a med student working eighteen hours a day at the Montreal General and off-hours as a bartender to pay for her studies. She was upset at all the noise— the parties, the singalongs, the gung-ho student meetings to plan their next protest that always ended with some bed-banging deep into the night. She told me Longstreet had sex every night he spent there, got so she hated to see him arrive because she needed her sleep.”

Green's pulse quickened. “So there was almost certainly a lover present when he hanged himself. Any idea who?”

“Some pretty young thing. The med student, who was anything but, was not very specific.”

“Always the same girl?”

“Well, there were lots to choose from back in those days before all the politically correct sexual harassment crap. And it would be in keeping with the type of sleaze who screws co-eds while his wife is home with a two month-old baby.”

“Co-eds? It was one of his students?”

“That's just a guess, but it was his pattern. Elena herself had been his student, and thirteen years his junior.”

“Did the Montreal Police know this?”

“I told that baby-faced cop, but I doubt he followed up. Too much work. He might even have to investigate. Nobody wanted this case to be anything. They all just wanted it to go away.” Hatfield grinned and drained his glass, rolling the last of the Scotch around on his tongue. “It's kind of poetic justice in a way, that now it's come back to bite everyone in the ass.”

* * *

The aroma of coffee wafted into her dreams and wrapped itself languidly around her naked body. Tickled her nostrils, brushed lips across her forehead.

Lips?

Sue Peters opened her eyes to see the morning sun carving slats of shadow on the wall opposite. Above her, Gibbsie bent his sleep-tousled head, a smile on his face and a cup of coffee in his hand. His other hand roamed her belly, tentative and tender. What a hardship to wake up to on a Sunday morning. Fighting the stiffness of her damaged body, she pushed herself partially upright against the pillows and took the coffee. Strong, black, fabulous. He fetched his own coffee and slipped in beside her.

“I love waking up beside you in the morning,” he said.

“Mmm...” she said, wary. “You make a mean coffee.”

He reddened and his Adam's apple bobbed. A bad sign. “I've been thinking, we'd save money so much faster living together.”

“Money maybe, but not sanity. I told you, I'd drive you nuts in less than a month.”

He leaned over to kiss the little ridge of scar below her breast.

Once she'd been ashamed to let him see her, let alone explore every inch of her.

“You could never drive me crazy, ever,” he murmured. “Except by saying no. You know you're going to marry me someday.”

She rolled her eyes. “And you know it's not going to happen until I can keep up my end one hundred per cent.”

“You can! You said you'd marry me when you could walk down the aisle without a cane, and you can!”

“Sometimes. But I'm just as likely to pitch sideways into the pews.”

He didn't answer right away, and she figured he was thinking the same thing she was, that she might never be one hundred percent. After all, it was nearly three years since the assault. Then he touched her hand. “Don't you dream about it sometimes?”

She nodded, took a sip of coffee and silently swore at her shaking hand.

“Then let's do it! Just go for it. Grab it. Holy jumpin', Sue, you of all people understand that we never know what's around the corner. Look at poor Brandon Longstreet—one minute he thinks he's got his dream in the palm of his hand, and the next minute it's ripped from his hand.”

“Meredith's choice, Gibbsie. Obviously not such a perfect dream after all.”

“We don't know that. We only know this Lise Gravelle spooked her and made her take off.”

“But not even telling Brandon where she is? You got to admit, Bob, that's a pretty good kick in the teeth.”

“Oh, Sue, that's not the point!” He shoved himself up in bed.

“The point is, b-bad stuff happens. We can't control that, but we can control what we do. I love you just the way you are. I don't want to wait months or years to be with you—”

He was winding himself up into a rant she'd heard before, but this time she was barely listening. An awful thought had occurred to her, and she wondered why they'd both missed what had been staring them in the face for days.

She clutched his arm. “Bob, why do you suppose she hasn't contacted Brandon?”

He sputtered mid-rant. “What?”

“Think about it. If they loved each other, if they trusted each other, why wouldn't she send him a sign?”

“Because...she's freaked out?”

She whipped her head back and forth. “That might work for a few hours, but not days. She's supposedly an intelligent, levelheaded woman, not some hysterical bimbo.”

“Then because she's mad at him? I don't know! Sue, it's Sunday morning. I haven't even finished my coffee yet, I'm in bed with the woman I love, talking about marriage—”

“This is important, Bob!”

“So's our marriage!”

“Oh, for Pete's sake, I never said I wouldn't marry you—”

“This spring?”

“What?”

He grinned. Still red but no longer sputtering. “This spring. When the tulips are in bloom and the fruit trees are budding.”

“Can we discuss this case?”

“We can have an outdoor wedding, maybe in the arboretum, on the little footbridge.”

She stared at him. He wasn't grinning any more. His cheeks were flushed and his dark eyes sparkled. He was serious.

“Yes or no,” he said. “And I'm not taking no.”

A strange heat raced through her whole body from her toes all the way to her scalp, setting her skin on fire. A laugh bubbled up in her. Relief. Joy. Who the hell knew?

“Is that a yes?”

“I guess it is.”

He dived for her, spilling the dregs of her cold coffee over the blanket. “Finally!” he managed before burying himself in a kiss.

It was a full hour before he turned to her with a puzzled look.

They were both showered and dressed, and the remains of eggs and toast sat on her tiny breakfast table.

“Were you saying something about Meredith Kennedy before I...?”

“Before you dragged me off topic?” She smiled. The brilliance of her insight had dimmed now, but it was still a damn good idea. “I was. I was saying there are only two reasons I can think of why she hasn't sent word to Brandon in all this time, especially if she knows how frantic everyone is.”

“Well, obviously if she's dead...”

She nodded slowly. “That's one.”

“I know you have your doubts about that, since her credit card was used and Lise Gravelle turned up dead, but it's hard to see why else—”

“The other reason is if she's the one who killed her.”

SEVENTEEN

D
on't you think we should tell the sergeant?” Bob asked. He was driving the way he always did, eyes straight ahead, both hands on the wheel. The roads were dry as bleached bone now but still narrowed by icy snowbanks on either side. As the crow flies, it was a short hop from Sue's apartment to the station, but the one-way streets turned the trip into a labyrinth.

The sun, just days from its winter solstice, was barely making it over the rooftops and its pale glare was blinding. No warmth to it, though; the car thermometer read minus fifteen and the exhaust from cars and chimneys billowed white in the bitter air.

Sue suppressed a shiver as she figured out an answer. “We will,” she said, “but Inspector Green assigned us some background checks, so I think we should do those before we tell anyone our theory.” She could see the little smile on his lips, and she knew he didn't want to report in to Marie Claire Levesque any more than she did. This was their case and the inspector had made the requests to them personally, so she was damned if Levesque was going to get all the glory for their work.

Luckily, when they arrived at the station, the sergeant wasn't even there. Murder cases didn't take days off—how many times had Sue seen the inspector work all week without a break—but Levesque was probably off tobogganing with her daughter.

Let's not go there, she chided herself, pulling herself back to the task at hand. Marriage, kids, the impossible Mommy dance—that was getting ahead of herself. It was bad enough she was now staring at a spring wedding!