Beautiful Lie the Dead (28 page)

Hatfield laughed. “On my way out of town. Wait,” he shouted, and Springsteen fell silent in mid-note. “That's better. Here's my tip for you. I called in some of my old sources. Lise Gravelle may have been a low-level clerk in later life, but in 1978 she was a second-year law student at McGill. Here's the interesting part.

She never returned for her third year after Longstreet's death.”

Green nearly shouted aloud as he made the same deduction Hatfield obviously had. “Our mystery co-ed?”

“My source couldn't say, but they did say she was as pretty and innocent as a lamb straight off the farm.”

Green's imagination raced even further ahead. “Where did you say she was from?”

“I didn't. But that's tip number two. I tracked that down too, and she's from a two-bit village called St. Dominique, east of Montreal.”

Green thanked him, disconnected, and immediately turned to Magloire. “You got a Quebec map in here?”

Magloire was navigating the winding road up the mountainside in a suicidal tsunami of cars. He nodded at the cell phone in Green's hand. “Don't you have a GPS on that?”

“I do, but I hate it. Fiddling with buttons, peering at a tiny screen and listening to that infuriating voice. I'm a techie dinosaur.”

Magloire chuckled and yanked a very crumpled map from his side pocket. “Welcome to the 1980s.”

“That doesn't sound so long ago,” Green muttered as he unfolded the map in his lap. He found St. Hyacinth quite quickly, but it was the network of small roads running through the sparsely populated countryside around it that drew his interest. Finally he felt a surge of satisfaction. St. Dominique was a tiny dot on a minor back road, barely ten kilometres from St. Hyacinth. Home of Adam Jules.

Green's hand trembled slightly as he refolded the map. With each successive revelation, Adam Jules was being sucked deeper and deeper into the vortex of this case. Fortunately Magloire was too busy fighting across several lanes of traffic to notice, and by the time they were climbing past the breath-taking mansions towards the top of the mountain, Green had wrestled his apprehension under control. The interview with Cyril Longstreet lay ahead, and Green had even more ammunition now with which to challenge him.

The crescent was quiet, and when they pulled into the double drive, Magloire sat in the car a few seconds staring at the house. “A cool three million,” he murmured.

“Or more.”

“When I first came from Haiti as a small child, my mother took me on the bus along The Boulevard. She looked at the old stone houses and said, ‘Someday we're going to live here'.” He laughed, but without regret. “We live in Saint Leonard.”

Green turned his attention to the house. Its façade was still, the curtains drawn and the door to the double detached garage closed tight. He climbed out and walked up the shovelled flagstone walk. Even the door chimes sounded expensive, a few orchestral bars of a classical piece even Green had heard before. Beethoven was his best guess, although most of his musical knowledge ran to Seventies and Eighties rock.

Green rang again. “He has a butler. Someone should answer.”

Two minutes later, both detectives were trudging around the house through the snow, peering in the heavily curtained windows in a futile attempt to spot activity inside. Nothing. They stood on tiptoe to look through the tiny side window of the garage. Inside, the vast space was empty.

Magloire chuckled. “By now I bet a dozen neighbours have called to report intruders, and we've been caught on half a dozen security cameras.”

Green laughed. “How long till you guys respond?”

“Up here? Five, ten minutes. We'll wait out front and give them a nice welcome.”

Magloire was still laughing, but Green had other things on his mind. Cyril Longstreet had disappeared. The eighty-five-year-old man, who was by all accounts too frail to leave the house, was gone.

And Cam Hatfield, the crafty bugger, was “on his way out of town.”

TWENTY

B
oth detectives were on their cell phones, while in front of them their platters of smoked meat and homemade French fries sat untouched. Magloire talked in rapid, animated French, but Green was listening with growing frustration to the endless sound of unanswered rings. When the voice mail clicked on, he hung up in disgust. He drummed his fingers on the table and popped a small morsel of smoked meat into his mouth. Two smoked meat sandwiches in two days! He should be in heaven, especially since this was the first time he'd ever been to Lester's on Fairmont Avenue, the legendary home of the only smoked meat his father deigned to eat. Shipped up to Ottawa in briskets, it was delicious, but here, freshly sliced and piping hot, it was incomparable.

But Green's mind was elsewhere. The damn reporter was not answering his cell, but Green was absolutely positive he was chasing down a lead in the case and wanted to keep it all to himself. Green suspected he'd been doing it all along, feeding Green only what he felt like, starting with the mysterious flowers on Longstreet's grave. That second set of prints Green had detected at the graveside had probably been made by Hatfield, checking out the story Brandon Longstreet had told him and noticing the extra detail the surprised young man had missed—the small satin heart pinned to the bouquet. Like Green, Cam had realized the significance of the heart and, armed now with the name Lise Gravelle, had set out to uncover who that faithful lover was.

What else was the bugger keeping from him? “On my way out of town,” he'd said. Where? East to St. Dominique to see if Lise's family knew anything about the affair or the circumstances of her death? Or west to Ottawa to confront Elena Longstreet in the hope that a surprise attack would pry crucial secrets out of her.

Fuck, Green thought with alarm. Cam mustn't get to her first. Green had been saving that interview until he returned from Montreal with all the ammunition he could muster. If Cam Hatfield tipped her off, he might ruin it all.

With Magloire still on the phone, apparently climbing the chain of command in the Sûreté du Québec, Green turned on his phone again to call the Major Crimes Unit in Ottawa. In the middle of Sunday afternoon, not surprisingly, voice mail picked up. The skeleton staff would be out in the field. Green hung up and dialled Marie Claire Levesque's cell phone. He knew he shouldn't bother her during her family time, but this could not wait until tomorrow. When her phone also went directly to voice mail, he suppressed the urge to hang up in frustration. Goddamn voice mail was a scourge! After suffering through her bilingual announcement, he left a terse message.

“Marie Claire, an urgent situation has arisen regarding Elena Longstreet. Call me ASAP.”

After hanging up, he dialled Bob Gibbs. Ever faithful, Gibbs answered right away. Green winced when he heard soft, romantic music in the background. “Sorry to disturb you, Bob.”

A second's hesitation. The music clicked off. “It- it's all right, sir. We're not busy.”

“Hey!” Green heard Sue's shout in the background.

“I wouldn't call if it weren't important. I need two things done. First, I need an alert on the vehicle owned by Cameron Hatfield of Greene Avenue in Montreal. I don't know the plate or make, but look it up. Don't intercept, just record the whereabouts— unless he shows up at Elena Longstreet's premises, in which case detain him and call me.”

“Yes, sir? Do you think he... I mean, is he armed and dangerous?”

Green chuckled at the picture of the grizzled old reporter wielding an assault rife. “Not unless you count loose cannons. He's a freelance reporter horning in on the investigation.”

“What should I do with him once I detain him?”

“Call me. Secondly I want someone to keep a discreet watch on the Longstreet house.”

“You-you want me to do this personally, sir?”

Green could hear the dismay in Gibbs's voice. “No, pass the word on to patrol. Frequent drive-bys will do, but nothing that would arouse her suspicions. Make sure I'm called the minute anyone spots Hatfield, especially if he goes near the Longstreet house.”

“Are you still in Montreal?”

“Yes, but not for long. I may be...” He glanced at Magloire questioningly. The big detective gave him the thumbs-up signal. “Making a quick trip to St. Dominique.”

“Oh.”

“What's in St. Dominique?” Sue burst in, presumably on the other line.

“Lise Gravelle's family, I hope. Whatever there is of it.”

“We could only find a cousin,” Sue said. “And there's no point going to St. Dominique. He's on his way here to Ottawa to claim her body.”

“Then I'm on my way too.” That solves my dilemma, Green thought after he hung up. Even if Cam Hatfield did go to St. Dominique, he was not likely to find anyone useful to interview. Back in Ottawa, the list of interview subjects was growing every minute.

Magloire was digging into his smoked meat with alacrity. He looked up between mouthfuls and patted his stomach, which was as firm and flat as a pro athlete's. “If you stay longer, I'll be in trouble even before my wife's Christmas baking.”

Green grinned as he picked up his own sandwich. “You're safe. I'm leaving as soon as I finish this. Lise Gravelle's next of kin is on his way to Ottawa.”

“The sister?”

“We haven't been able to track her down. This is a cousin. I didn't get his name.”

Magloire nodded. “Must be Denis. The SQ detachment that covers that area says the Gravelle farm is abandoned now, and Denis is the only family still in the vicinity. Sister left Quebec when she got married, and Lise hasn't returned for years either.”

“Did they say how long?”

“Well, they finally connected me to an old SQ sergeant who used to run that detachment, and he said she'd been estranged from them for years. Didn't want the farm life, wanted the big city and the fancy college degree—the family's words, not the sergeant's. The father used to complain to anyone who'd listen. The final straw was going to McGill instead of the Université de Montréal. A complete
vendue
. Sell-out. Later, the father seemed happy she fell on her face. what did she expect? The old man sounds like a piece of work. High walls, narrow mind.”

No wonder the young woman left, Green thought with a twinge of sympathy. With any luck the cousin would be able to shed more light on what exactly had happened at McGill two years later.

“Had anyone seen or heard from Lise recently? Anyone come looking for her or asking questions about her?”

“I asked them to conduct some inquiries, talk to old school friends and neighbours. It's a very small place, and now the news of her murder is spreading through the community. Everyone will talk about her, and if someone has a piece of gossip, they'll share it. Or they'll make it up.”

Green nodded. In his experience, people in small communities lived in each other's pockets. If there was anything to know about Lise Gravelle in the past half century, it should come out.

* * *

When Brandon walked in, the house echoed like an empty tomb. He shook his head to get rid of the spooky image. The air smelled stale and dusty as if nothing had stirred in days. He knew instinctively that his mother wasn't home, especially since her BMW was missing from the garage, but nonetheless he went from room to room checking. Everything was neat and orderly.

No sign of haste or panic, until he came to her home office on the second floor. Her filing cabinet was wide open and file folders were scattered on the floor as if someone had been searching in a desperate hurry.

Had his mother discovered that her file on his father was missing? Had she realized that he'd taken it? Is that what had precipitated her departure?

She could simply be out for Sunday lunch with friends or at her office downtown, or even out in the Gatineau for her first cross-country ski outing of the season. She loved the crisp exhilaration of the trails and looked forward to the first good snowfall of the winter. After the record storm of last week, the trails would be fabulous.

But even as he considered the possibilities, he knew they were wrong. The house had been empty far longer than a few hours. Perhaps ever since Friday, when he himself had left.

What the hell was she up to? He had a dozen questions to ask her, yet once again she had outmanoeuvred him. Frustrated, he splashed a little medicinal Scotch over ice and went to sit at his computer, hopeful against all odds that there would be a message from Meredith. Nothing. Not on Facebook nor on his private email account. A faint flicker of anger stirred. Behind the worry and the grief, outrage was gathering. She was alive; she'd been running around Montreal meeting strangers and tracking down some secret from the past, all without trusting him enough to confide. Then, without giving a damn about the anguish she was causing, she'd taken off.

On her Facebook page, he stared at her last cheerful posting of a week ago. “Shots for Ethiopia all done. Ugh. What we do for love ever after!”

His fingers shook over the keyboard. He wanted to type “Bitch! Whatever happened to love ever after?” He wanted to type “Where the fuck are you? Answer me!” He wanted to type “You can go to hell!” He sat back instead and took a slow sip of Scotch. Swirling the ice in the glass, he gazed down into the fractured amber light. After a few deep breaths, he wrote, “Meredith, I don't care what's happened or even what our future might be. I just want to know you're okay.”

He exited Facebook and sent the identical message to her email account. He'd already sent dozens over the past week, as had her friends and family, and all had been met with silence.

Why should this one be any different? What could he say that would change her mind? He took another sip of Scotch and typed a new message.

“I know about Montreal. I know about the past. I'd understand if you can't come home, but just tell me you're safe. One little word. Safe.”