Beautiful Lie the Dead (34 page)

Elena shook her head.

“She managed to locate Meredith's cell phone number and her parents' home line, and she obviously knew where you lived. You're telling me she never phoned you?”

“That's what I'm telling you.”

“You're aware I can check phone records.”

“I'm well aware of that. With a warrant.”

“What were you doing last Monday evening, between six p.m. and midnight?”

“Oh my. I need an alibi.” Her lips twitched as she fought a smile. Green found it interesting that the discussion of her husband's lover had distressed her more than suspicion of murder. “I arrived home at about eight o'clock. The storm was dreadful, so I cut short a Christmas dinner with friends and came home to read by the fire. Brandon was on night shift so I had the house to myself. I went to bed around eleven. And no, I did not hear or see anything unusual.”

“Was Brandon at the hospital all night?”

“Presumably, but I don't keep tabs on my thirty-two year old son. He's asleep upstairs if you want to ask him.”

“Where is Adam Jules?” He dropped the name as quietly and unexpectedly as he could, but she showed no surprise. She's been waiting for this, he thought.

She arched her eyebrows. “He's here in Ottawa. You should know, he's your boss.”

“I mean, where is he right now?”

The eyebrows arched further. “I have no idea. His office, I assume.”

“Adam Jules hasn't been seen or heard from in four days.” She blinked, and a spasm of bewilderment crossed her face. Green swung on Cyril. “Correction, sir. I saw him myself on Saturday when he almost ran me over up on Summit Circle as he was leaving your place.”

Cyril smiled. “If you're looking for a conspiracy, son, you're missing the mark. Neither Elena nor I kept up any contact with Jules, although we watched his career success with some satisfaction. He'd been smart when smart was called for, and he'd always kept his word with us.”

“He kept in touch with Lise and the baby.”

Cyril nodded. “Well, he would. He was an honourable man. We didn't want to have any further contact with her, but we did ask him to keep an eye on her. For the child's sake.”

Green felt the interview slipping from his control. He was venturing into emotional territory that didn't seem to faze the old man one bit. Surreptitiously he tightened his fists to fortify himself. “Why did he visit you on Saturday?”

“It's simple. He wanted to ask me what I knew about Lise Gravelle's death. He knew who she was and he knew she'd died only a couple of blocks—”

“Murdered.”

“Murdered. Ah.” Here at last Cyril paused and took out a linen handkerchief to wipe some spittle from his mouth. Green thought his hand shook more than earlier. As the silence echoed through the house, Green heard a floorboard creak overhead. Finally Cyril resumed. “I hadn't realized. Elena told me she'd been hit by a snowplow.”

“No,” Green said, looking from one to the other, noting the hidden tension in their faces. “She was killed by a blow to the back of the head from something blunt and hard.”

Cyril recovered first. “Well, then that explains why Jules was so upset when he visited me. He wanted to know whether Lise Gravelle had been in touch with me, whether she'd told me anything about the baby, and whether I'd told—” He broke off as if he'd only just seen the implications of the question. He pressed his handkerchief to his mouth again.

“Whether you'd told Elena?” Green prompted. “What? About Lise's search for her baby?”

“Well, Lise hadn't been in touch with me, so it's all moot. We hadn't heard from her in years, and neither Elena nor I had the least idea she was searching for the child.”

“Her name was Amélie. What happened to her?”

“We have no idea. Jules told us later she'd been adopted—”

“Sh-h.” Elena held up her hand. She looked alarmed, and Green realized how quiet the house had become.

When she resumed, her tone was hushed. “We knew nothing about the baby by choice. I know that sounds cruel, and in retrospect, it's a decision I've come to regret, but at the time I was a young mother myself, trying to deal with some dreadful blows. I've thought about her often and wondered what became of the baby. Brandon's sister, after all.”

“But never enough to contact Lise to find out how she was doing?”

“No.” She dropped her gaze. “We left all that to Adam.”

Green leaned forward, forcing her to look up at him. “When did you yourself connect the dots and realize that Meredith and Amélie were the same person? That your son was about to marry his half-sister and that Meredith herself had uncovered the truth.”

“I didn't. Not until just now, when you told us Meredith was adopted. It had never quite made sense to me before, but there was something about the girl that made me uncomfortable—” Elena's answer was cut off by the rush of footsteps on the stairs. Brandon appeared in the doorway, pale with horror and rage.

Elena leaped to her feet. “Darling!”

“What the hell have you done!” he shouted before whirling around, snatching his jacket, and slamming out the door.

Green was on her heels as she raced to the front door and flung it open just in time to see Brandon disappear into the garage. Pushing past Elena, Green rushed out towards the drive, his stocking feet sinking deep into the snow. Just as he reached the garage, a silver Prius shot past him backwards down the drive and slewed into the street. Seconds later it was out of sight.

TWENTY-FIVE

A
s he accelerated down Beechwood Avenue towards the Vanier Parkway, Brandon tried not to think. His sister! It was preposterous. Impossible. Of all the women in all the world, what were the odds? What kind of proof did this Gravelle woman have? Did she have papers? DNA results? Or, as Uncle Cyril had hinted, had she seen the chance to cash in on a little blackmail?

His mother had always warned him to watch out for gold-diggers more interested in his bank balance than in his humanity. Had she been speaking from bitter personal experience?

From his course work and case studies, he was familiar with the power of genes to influence not only a person's physiology and medical history but also their psychology. Temperament, attitudes, values, habits, interests and even choice of career were affected by one's genetic inheritance. Identical twins who'd never met often had more in common than siblings raised together.

Rationally he knew all this, but his emotional side refused to follow. Meredith didn't feel like a sister. He didn't look into her eyes and see hints of himself. He saw the beautiful, fiery young woman he loved. Unique, compelling and powerfully erotic. Reflecting back on her now, he didn't feel the slightest twinge of shame or aversion at that arousal. Didn't that count for something? Surely if there was a blood tie, no matter how hidden, he would have sensed it.

Yet somewhere, his half-sister existed. Cyril and his mother had admitted as much. How could his mother have kept this from him all his life? How could she have written Dad's flesh and blood out of their lives as if the baby were no more than a pawn? All those years he'd spent growing up in the company of a nanny, alone in the playroom creating imaginary friends from his action figures while he waited for his mother to come home. To think that all along, there had been a sister his own age...

Rage and panic bubbled up in equal measure, squeezing off his breath. He forced his thoughts elsewhere, away from the appalling question that rose unbidden in his mind. What had Cyril and his mother done to Lise? And worse, to Meredith? He didn't believe for a minute that they'd had no knowledge of Lise's impending visit. Despite the Valium and the exhaustion, he'd distinctly heard his mother's words—
“That woman...a hundred thousand dollars”
— hours before Lise Gravelle's body had even been found.

He shook his head sharply as he turned onto the Queensway. He couldn't think about any of that now. He had to find Meredith. Whatever the reason, the woman he loved was running scared and afraid to come home. He glanced at the laptop on the seat beside him. There had been no reply to his second message. If she still had access to the internet, she'd chosen not to answer him. Was she on the run? Or holed up in an isolated hotel somewhere?

The germ of a solution had come to him when he'd awakened earlier that day, re-energized for the search. He had the single email from her. Perhaps a clue to her whereabouts lay deep in the coded circuitry of his email program.

He had a rudimentary knowledge of computer software, but the intricate, arcane codes inside the machine had never interested him as much as animate things, so he always brought his technical problems to an IT specialist. As he drove west in the vague direction of Ottawa's IT sector in Kanata, he ran through the various firms he'd used. Most had been manned by an ever-changing parade of near-adolescents. Some were just voices on the other end of the phone, who'd taken over the inner workings of his computer by remote control and fixed the problem in less than fifteen minutes. He wasn't sure he'd even learned their names.

One computer geek stood out in his memory, however. Dylan, a cultural anthropology student and reformed video game junkie, who was now doing his PhD dissertation on gaming cultures. To finance this obscure academic pursuit, he did websites, troubleshooting and software set-ups. He lived in a minuscule apartment on the third floor of a dilapidated old house in the Preston Street area, as close as he could afford to the university. Brandon had been there only once and couldn't even remember the guy's last name. Now, as he cut across three lanes of traffic to the Bronson Avenue exit, Brandon prayed he still lived there.

Guided entirely by instinct and sight memory, Brandon drove up and down the jumbled back streets that spread out in the shadow of St. Anthony's Church. Formerly the working class home of Ottawa's Italian community, the area was now an eclectic mix of multi-national new immigrants, university students, the working poor and the criminals who preyed on them. However, the occasional Volvo and Subaru in the laneways suggested that gentrification was sneaking in.

He stopped in front of a narrow white clapboard house that listed slightly to the right. He'd not called ahead since he had no telephone number nor even a full name, but he hoped Dylan was home. The young man hadn't seemed to have much of a life beyond his computers and his books. On the doorframe, there was a column of four rusty buzzers without identifying names or apartment numbers. Brandon took a guess and pressed the top one. There was no sound from within, no distant buzz or footsteps. He tried again, clutching his laptop and peering up at the top window for signs of life. Still nothing. A slight push opened the front door, however, and he found himself in the same cramped hall he remembered. A door off to the right, a radiator shelf piled high with junk mail on the left, and steep stairs straight ahead.

He climbed up two flights and hammered on the plain white door at the top. Rustling within. He hammered again.

“Who is it?” came a squeaky voice.

“Dylan, it's Dr. Longstreet. Brandon. You did some work for me last year. I need your help.”

The door cracked open and a young man peered out. Dressed only in boxer shorts, he was even thinner than Brandon remembered. His hair hung about his shoulders in lank strands and his chin bristled with patchy stubble. He blinked at Brandon with uncomprehending eyes.

“Sorry, I pulled an all-nighter. Can you come back?”

Brandon pressed his palm against the door. “Please. I have one simple task. You can either do it, or you can't.”

“But I don't—”

“This is important!” Brandon stepped forward then saw the alarm on the young man's face. “Sorry, I know it's an intrusion. If you could just look at this.”

The young man managed a crooked smile and moved aside to let him in. “All right, but you enter at your peril.”

Once he was inside, Brandon saw what he meant. A cloak of hot, rancid air closed around him. The apartment was even worse than he remembered. Food-crusted dishes, bits of computers, tangled cables and splayed books littered every surface, including the floor. Dylan kicked a path through to what had presumably once been a kitchen, although dismantled computers sat on the counters and stove top and the table was covered with papers. Dylan pushed these aside to clear a space for Brandon's laptop.

“I've been pretty much holed up here for the past month,” he chattered, as if to hide his nerves. “My advisor wants the first draft before Christmas! This is my third extension, and I'm not coming this far just to get thrown out on a technicality.”

“It shouldn't take long, and I'll make it worth your while.”

“Yeah, yeah, it's okay. This way, maybe I'll get to eat tonight.” He took Brandon's laptop and with expert fingers booted it up. “So what's the problem?”

“Can you trace the origin of an email?”

“You mean the source computer?”

“No, I mean the physical location of the person.”

Dylan looked surprised. “Depends. Sometimes it's tricky, but I can give it a try this evening.”

“Could you please do it now?”

Dylan grabbed his hank of hair and pulled it back into an elastic. “No, I've got a couple of things in the pipe already. Just leave it with me and I'll call you. I'll have the source ISP number, owner information, whatever you need.”

Brandon glanced at his watch. Three o'clock. He cursed his forced inaction. “How long?”

“Nine o'clock, latest.”

He could have taken the laptop elsewhere, but it might take hours to find someone else to do the job faster. In the end, he booted up his email program and opened Meredith's single email reply. Sitting alone on the screen, surrounded by the clutter and decay of the kitchen, it looked both poignant and sinister. Dylan, however, barely gave the email a second glance as he took down Brandon's passwords and contact information.