Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (258 page)

With a snort, Cyril snapped a biscuit in two. “Your mother was just as happy to be rid of him. She’d moved on before the grass was even laid on his grave.”

Brandon tightened his grip on his coffee cup to control his outrage. “My mother loved him. She’s never even remarried.”

“Didn’t want all the trouble that came with it, and no doubt she thought it would jeopardize your inheritance. She always was a schemer. Part Gypsy, I’ve always suspected. Harvey suited her very well dead. Gave her a respectable name—not Kerestsy or Kasanova or some damn thing, but Longstreet. She’s done well with that name, without the bother of a reckless, sexually deranged husband.”

Almost too late, Brandon reminded himself of his aunt’s warning that Cyril would try to cut him to the bone. To what purpose, he wondered, other than to relieve his own pent-up venom? He wondered if this was why the man had so readily invited him in. For sport rather than for the pleasure of human interaction.

He took a deep, determined breath. “Do you have any information you can give me that might shed light on my fiancée’s disappearance?”

Cyril picked up his coffee cup in both hands, took a long, careful sip, and then used a linen napkin to wipe his mouth. Brandon resisted the urge to throttle him.

“Son, I have no intention of encouraging your ill-advised obsession with this search. However, I suggest you ask yourself why, if only you mattered to her, she would be digging around in your background in the first place.”

FOURTEEN

Midway through the smoked meat sandwiches, Magloire got a phone call. He talked for a few minutes in flawless French Canadian marked only by the musical cadence and slightly rounded vowels of his Haitian heritage. Then he snapped the phone shut.

“The warrants are ready. A uniform is bringing them over, so we can go straight to the victim’s apartment.” He cocked his head. “Is that okay? I am at your disposal for the day.”

Green glanced at his watch and weighed his options. The day shift hours were flying by. “I prefer to start with the MisPers file and the investigating officer first.” He didn’t ask if that could be arranged. He suspected Chief Inspector Fournier had given orders to assist him in any way. Why else the lunch at Schwartz’s, the car, the expedited search warrants, and the detective sergeant at his beck and call?

Magloire had just paid the bill when an unmarked but unmistakable Impala pulled up outside. Despite the wind whipping down boulevard St-Laurent and the salty slush splashing up from passing cars, the line-up to get into the iconic deli still stretched down the street. On Saturday just before Christmas, tourists jostled with ex-pat Montrealers and local shoppers for a place at the tables.

Magloire retrieved the warrants and headed around to his car. Once again they accelerated out into the traffic with mere millimetres to spare. Lanes were narrowed by the snowbanks, and illegally parked cars cluttered the street still further. He stomped alternatively on the brakes and the gas as he fought his way up town.

“We’re going to PDQ 26 on Decarie,” he said. “That’s in the old northwest part of the city, where there are more languages and cultures packed into one area than anywhere else in the city. The place is full of duplexes and cheap apartments, with good buses and the Metro, and nearby is Côte des Neiges, the major road that takes you over the mountain into downtown.”

In preparation for the trip, Green had studied the map of Montreal and Googled the area where Gravelle lived. It was indeed a United Nations, where new immigrants mingled with students at the nearby University of Montreal in what had decades earlier been the heart of the Anglo-Jewish community. As they’d become more established and prosperous, that community had moved further west, or even out of the province, leaving the low-rent housing for newer groups.

Green caught a glimpse of the wide open slopes of Mount Royal as Magloire accelerated up the hill and entered a residential district of dignified old brick homes. Outremont, Green surmised, home of old French money, Jesuit seminaries and the university. Soon they were crossing raucous, colourful Côte des Neiges, teeming with shops, restaurants and shoppers. Magloire jogged north and continued west along Van Horne Avenue past Chinese take-outs, Korean markets and a Jewish religious school. Beneath tuques and scarves, black, south Asian and oriental faces dominated among the shoppers scurrying along the sidewalks, but every now and then Green spotted an ultra-Orthodox Chassidic family walking home from synagogue.

“I wonder why the victim lived out here,” he mused. “I assume from her name that she’s Francophone.”

“We just learned she had a clerk’s job at St. Mary’s Hospital, which is just up there.” Magloire nodded south towards the mountain.

After a few minutes he reached Decarie Boulevard, turned with a flourish and shot backwards up the one-way street. He screeched to a stop in front of a glass and concrete box that Green had taken for a bank until he saw the police logo and the big blue sign indicating Poste de Quartier 26 Ouest.

Magloire waved and was buzzed through the glass door into the brightly lit interior painted a cheery blue and yellow. A uniformed officer rose behind the counter. He was obviously expecting them, for he smiled in welcome. “Sergeant? Inspector?”

Magloire flashed his dazzling smile. “Guilty,” he said in English. “Are you the lucky officer assigned to review the file with us?”

“No,”the man replied in near-perfect English. “The investigator from St. Laurent station is off-duty, but one of our patrol officers will assist you. She took the original MisPers call and has been active on follow-up.”

Green wondered how high up the order to cooperate had originated, and why. On the other hand, perhaps the neighbourhood patrol constable was just eager to see a high-level homicide investigation in action. The latter, he decided when Agent Yvette Tessier came bouncing through a door at the back. She looked impossibly young and impossibly tall, matching Magloire inch for inch in height, although half his girth. Her short black hair was spiked, almost as if to add even more height, and her expression radiated focus. She pumped Green’s hand with enthusiasm.

“Any assistance we can offer, Inspector, any witness you want to interview, Detective Sergeant Giotti has authorized me to provide.”

“Merci.”
Green rescued his hand. Tessier’s English was heavily accented, but he decided it was better than his French. “I’d like to review what your missing persons investigation has uncovered so far.”

“Certainly! I have all that prepared for you.” Tessier led the way into a large, immaculate conference room. A file folder sat in the centre of the table and a coffee maker gurgled in the corner. The smell of over-brewed coffee overpowered all else. Tessier reached for the carafe. “Coffee?”

When both detectives demurred in hasty unison, Tessier’s face fell. Recovering quickly, she flipped open the folder. “Lise Gravelle,” she began, reading from the top page. “Fifty-four year old white single female, reported missing by her neighbour in the next apartment on December 15 at 16:30 hours. Mme Gravelle asked her to take care of her dog for Monday night, but when she not return by Tuesday, she get worried. After she keep the dog a day, she call us. The neighbour did not know the missing individual before she move there and did not know her family or associates. However, I interviewed the building property manager. He said that Mme Gravelle is living there since one year and work at St. Mary’s Hospital as a clerk. He had no complaints about her, and she always pay her rent on time. No next of kin is listed on the rent form.”

Tessier pulled out a sheaf of papers that looked like an action log. “We check hospitals, clinics, ambulance, other police, no reports. I interview her employer and colleagues at St. Mary’s. She quit work—” She shook her head sharply. “
Non
, left work at noon last Monday, she said because of the storm, but a colleague say she seemed upset—”

“Upset in what way?” Green interjected.

“
Distraite
is what the colleague said. Like something was on her mind.”

“You mean scared, worried, sad?”

Tessier paused a moment, frowning into space as if trying to replay the interview. “My English is not one hundred per cent, but I think maybe nervous.”

Nervous, Green thought. Rather different from frightened or sad. “Did this colleague know why, or offer any theory?”

“No, sir.” Tessier shifted uncomfortably. “Nobody seem to know Lise very well, not even her colleague and neighbours. After one year, normally people make some friends, but Lise didn’t mix. Never go out with the girls after work, always say she has to go home because of her dog. I have the impression she’s a solitary person.”

“What about the neighbour who reported her missing? Had she any information on what happened or why Lise was upset?”

Tessier referred to the file. “The last time she talk to Lise, it was Monday when she ask her to care for her dog. Lise didn’t appear upset at this moment, on the contrary she was happy. Said she was celebrating.”

“Why?”

“That’s all she said.”

“What time was this?”

“Sixteen hours—four o’clock. Just after.”

Interesting, Green thought. On Monday she left work early, looking nervous, but by four o’clock she was celebrating. A few hours later she phoned Meredith Kennedy, they argued, and a few hours later still, she was dead on a street in Ottawa, not five minutes from Meredith’s fiancé’s home.

He glanced at Magloire. “Let’s take a look at her apartment, see what she was up to.”

Tessier looked up from her file, a worried frown on her face. “I hope that it was permitted, sir. Yesterday when I learn she died, I take her photo and I ask on the streets close to her apartment, and the shop and restaurant. Many people recognize her, see her walk with her dog, but no one talk to her except for ‘nice day’. She appeared very ordinary and was taking very good care of her dog.”

“Good work. Anyone seem especially curious or worried about her?”

Tessier took out her notebook and busied herself flipping slowly through it, as if trying to recapture each encounter. Her excitement faded. “No, sir. But there was many neighbours absent, because of the work day. I can go back today if you like.

Maybe I find more people at their home on Saturday.”

Green glanced at Magloire again. “Do you have officers to assist in a street canvass?”

“I can get whatever you need,” Magloire said.

“But I can do it,” Tessier said. “I know the neighbourhood very well, and not everyone is trusting the police.”

Her initiative and enthusiasm were palpable. “Okay,” Green said and turned to Magloire. “If you can get two more officers assigned to help her, that should be enough.”

Once Magloire had dealt with that, they secured some evidence bins and the three set off in convoy with Tessier leading the way. Lise Gravelle’s apartment was on the third floor of a brown brick low-rise that probably dated from the period between the wars. Identical brick buildings lined either side of the street for the entire block. A lot of neighbours to canvass, Green thought, revising his estimate of the officers required. But an easy place to get lost in if one wanted to be anonymous.

They parked at the curb outside, and Green sent the eager, efficient Agent Tessier in search of the building super while he leaned against the Impala and surveyed the street. Cars were parked all along the curb, competing for road space with the snowbanks. Some cars were still covered in snow, indicating they hadn’t been moved all week, whereas others were hemmed in by the latest snowplow pass. The cars were a motley collection of old American gas guzzlers, cheap Korean subcompacts, and aging Toyotas and Hondas that had probably been recycled through several owners.

Green scanned the windows of the apartment building directly across the street and caught the faint flicker of a curtain falling into place. Smiling, he counted windows to pinpoint the apartment. This was his favourite kind of neighbour, the nosy kind with too much time on their hands.

When Tessier returned with the key, he pointed out the window across the street and told her to interview all the second-floor residents on this side of the building first. Drawing her long, lean frame to attention, she set off across the street almost at a run.

Green and Magloire took the ancient elevator that rumbled slow motion through the floors until it jolted to a stop on the third. The two detectives stepped into a narrow, dimly lit hall carpeted in brown some time in the past century. The air was thick with the smell of damp wool, fried oil and diapers. On the positive side, Green noted the walls were clean and graffiti free, and all the hallway lights worked. The building was modest, but proud.

Apartment 307 had a peephole, an extra dead bolt, and a chain lock dangling on the inside. Both detectives snapped on latex gloves out of habit before stepping into the room. The stench of feces and urine hit them full force, reminding them the dog had been abandoned for some time.

“Shall I clean up?” Magloire asked, holding his nose. Green nodded and the big detective headed into the kitchen. Left alone, Green stood just inside the door to gather his first impressions of the dead woman.

She was neat, but either poor or indifferent to material possessions. The living room was small, sparse, and furnished with a Seventies-style orange sofa that she had probably picked up at the Salvation Army. A small TV, teak coffee table and gold shag carpet completed the secondhand look. But a newer IKEA desk and filing cabinet sat in the corner by the archway to the kitchen. Amazingly, the desk was uncluttered, and not a single magazine or discarded newspaper marred the order of the room. Two teacups were knocked over on the coffee table, however, and a brown stain blotched the carpet below.

In contrast to the shabby furniture, the walls were covered with stunning photographs. Some were landscapes and cityscapes, but most were black and white portraits that played with light, shadow and mood. There was a whole wall dedicated to dogs and another to small children. Green was drawn to a black and white portrait of a girl, younger than his own son but with the same luminous eyes and impish smile. She was gazing, not at the camera, but at her hand, which was reaching up towards a much larger, adult hand. She seemed to be both touching and drawing away, a study in connection and resistance that Green found fascinating. Wistfulness, yearning and connection were themes of many of the photos. Even the landscapes were exquisite but lonely—snow on gravestones, moonlight on barren trees.