Beautiful Lie the Dead (19 page)

Brandon digested the news with surprise. His father had been an activist. Maybe the two of them were not so different after all. Why had his mother never told him this? Aunt Bea sighed, her eyes shining at the memory. “But in the end, it was his tawdry side that caught up with him. Another Longstreet fine art—dalliances with common girls that have to be hushed up at all costs, while the Longstreet wives keep up the brave front.”

Brandon struggled to hide his surprise, but his aunt was too quick. She squinted at him. “Ah. You didn't know. I'm sorry, I thought you did.”

“Another detail my mother failed to mention.”

“What does it matter, Brandon? It's all a long time ago. He was a handsome, charismatic teacher surrounding by nubile, adoring co-eds. The oldest cliché in the book. It doesn't have anything to do with you, or your mother, both of whom he adored. It doesn't diminish his legacy as an idealist or a human rights lawyer, either.”

“Did my mother know about the affair?”

“Affairs.” She scrutinized him. “She did. Not the specifics of any one, probably, but the concept, yes. She'd been one of those nubile, adoring students herself. She knew his weakness.”

Brandon pushed the revelation around in his mind. His mother had known this seamy side but had continued to paint him as a saint in his son's eyes. Well, what would he have done in her place, he wondered.
Son, your father was a great mind, but as
a man, he was a cheating little shit.

“Did the whole family know this?”

“I'm sure, and if they didn't, the circumstances of his death would have given them a clue. Harvey always had way too much fun with life.”

Brandon studied her discomfort and finally the light dawned.

“You mean it wasn't suicide at all.”

“Harvey was about as depressed and suicidal as a new winner of Lotto 649. But...” She broke off, looking embarrassed. Aunt Bea was his favourite aunt. Among the earnest Ladies Auxiliary types who peopled the older branches of his family tree, she was the one with the heart of a rebel. She used her money and influence to campaign for wildlife conservation and waved her Green Party membership card triumphantly at family functions. Brandon knew she was trying to spare him.

But he'd seen far more bizarre sexual experiments during his years in ER. “Extreme sexual sport was right up his alley?” he said gently.

She flushed. “Obviously it was never proven. But that's the real reason the whole thing was hushed up. The official coroner's verdict was suicide, but really neither he nor the police did a lick of investigation.” She leaned forward to grasp both his hands. “I'm sorry, Brandon. I promised my mother, and yours, that I would never, ever tell you. But honestly, if you're going to see Uncle Cyril, you need to know.”

“Why?”

“Because, of all the Longstreet men, Cyril was the only one who disapproved. He was outraged by your father's behaviour, I think deep down because he himself had been betrayed by infidelity. It made him very unforgiving, another reason why the circumstances of Harvey's death were suppressed. A lot was riding on that lie. Harvey's legacy as a professor and lawyer, his reputation as a father and husband, and of course, a family fortune.”

Brandon frowned. “My mother's never cared about that, never taken a penny she didn't earn.”

Bea's hands tightened spasmodically around his, and for a moment she looked about to speak. Then she released his hands and shook her head as if to dispel the thought. “Of course not. But his reputation and his legacy, she guarded that. She was fiercely loyal.”

That she was, he thought now, as he steeled himself to meet the legendary patriarch who'd spurned her all these years. He was beyond caring whether his father's name was attacked by a bitter, judgmental old man. If she had visited him, Brandon only wanted to know what the old man might have told the woman he loved. Meredith was a thoroughly modern woman who would have been unfazed by this ancient tale of infidelity and sexual misadventure. What else might she have learned?

Given Aunt Bea's description, he expected Cyril's doorbell to be answered by a butler who would usher him into a stifling hot parlour full of antiques and old books. He was surprised when instead, after an interminable wait, the heavy black door swung open to reveal a shrivelled old man. His face was oddly mask-like, and Brandon recognized the telltale rigidity of Parkinson's. As if by force of will, he leaned on a polished wood cane and peered up at Brandon over gold framed glasses perched on his nose.

“You're Brandon,” he said. “Come in, I've been expecting you.”

Brandon's carefully rehearsed introduction flew out the window. First point to Cyril. Had Bea contacted him?

Cyril gave a cold, triumphant little smile. “Even if I didn't have a copy of your graduation photo on my piano, you're the image of your father.”

Brandon struggled to recover from this second surprise as he stepped into the foyer and bent to remove his boots. Who would have sent Cyril a photo? His mother, still trying to curry favour after all? Cyril had turned and headed across the hall without a backwards glance, leaving Brandon to hang up his own coat. The cavernous foyer was spotless, but its decor was yet another surprise. The honey oak floors shone with a simple, timeless elegance, but the walls were hung with vivid abstract expressionist art. Not a sombre ancestral portrait among the lot. Brandon recognized a Jean Paul Riopelle and a Jackson Pollock, both of which would likely command seven figures at Sotheby's.

“Pick one,” Cyril said as he turned to see Brandon staring. “I'll put it in my will for you. A wedding present...or a consolation prize.” He uttered a little snort at his own wit and shuffled through an archway into a sitting room, where the decor was more predictable. A large Victorian fireplace, wing chairs, ornate bookcases and a Persian carpet in jewel hues. The walls were hung with still lifes, with not a human figure among them. However, the baby grand piano sitting in the window bay was covered with family photographs, among them Brandon himself and several cousins.

Cyril was lowering himself carefully into a wing chair by the fire. He waved a gnarled, tremulous hand at the piano. “Might as well put it to some use now that I don't play any more. No point in playing if you can't do it well. Insult to the instrument. Sit. I'll get Armand to bring us something. Sherry? Scotch?”

Brandon's stomach lurched. He'd barely been able to get through Aunt Bea's greasy plate of sausages and eggs an hour earlier. He wondered what response Cyril wanted from him—to accept a drink he didn't want in order to avoid offence, or to stand up for himself.

“I'll have a coffee instead, if it's on offer,” he said.

Cyril's blue eyes flickered. He sat back in his wing chair and clasped his hands together to control their shaking. “So your bride has flown the coop.”

“I don't know, sir. Has she contacted you?”

“Why would she? Checking out the family moneybags, to see if the marriage is worth her while?”

Brandon held his gaze with an effort, hoping his anger didn't show. “I think more likely to check out the family background.”

“Whatever for? Aren't you enough for her? I hear you're a doctor. Plenty of prestige and income potential in that.”

“I don't believe it's about me, sir. I think she may have learned something disturbing about my background.” He hesitated. Steeled himself. “About my father.”

“Afraid depression and suicide might run in the family?”

“I understand there's some doubt it was suicide.”

“Any fool who puts a noose around his neck mustn't hold his life in very high esteem, don't you think?”

A whispering footfall on the Persian carpet startled Brandon. He turned to see a diminutive middle-aged man in a crisp white shirt and perfectly pressed trousers balancing a tray of coffee cups and shortbread biscuits in one hand. Cyril nodded his approval as Armand set the tray with catlike precision on the coffee table between them.

“People give me these biscuits every Christmas, and I never know what to do with the damn things.”

Brandon resisted the distraction. “Wasn't the suicide theory just to protect the family?”

“Protect the family? You think it's better to have a defeatist coward in your midst than a man who pushed the boundaries of sexual experience?”

“Well, to protect my mother, then. It would be a sufficient blow to have lost him—”

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

M
idway 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?”