Beautiful Lie the Dead

by Barbara Fradkin

She’d always seemed slightly aloof, avoiding the mushy cuddling that Meredith’s family bestowed at the smallest excuse. He couldn’t recall her ever saying “I love you” except in jest, and the unfamiliar words had not come easily to his own lips when Meredith had first demanded them. His reticence had almost cost him the warmest, most exciting woman who had ever come into his life.

  He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the open file cabinet, his child’s drawings crackling with age as they filtered through his hands. She had cherished every single artefact of his past, squirrelled it silently away in her own private drawer, never told him how much she loved them or how proud she was of him. In rare moments, uttered only the words “Your father would be so proud.” He had no memory of his father, who had died when he was two months old, but his mother had painted an idealized image. Even as a child he’d suspected no one could be as loving a husband, as devoted a father, as brilliant a lawyer nor as beloved a professor as the Harvey Kent Longstreet of her descriptions. He’d been her professor, thirteen years her senior and light years ahead of all her other suitors in maturity, wisdom and allure. Brandon had once overheard her saying to a friend that, despite plenty of offers, she’d never remarried because a love like Harvey Longstreet came along only once in a lifetime. At the time, he’d been startled, even discomfited, by the tremor of passion in her impeccably modulated voice.

  Now she surprised him again with the strength of her devotion to him. He remembered the urgency in that fragment he’d overheard that morning. “He mustn’t know!” took on a less sinister, more protective meaning. Was she just trying to shield him from something? What? The answer was not on her desk, which was filled with mundane household matters, nor among the drawings and letters of his childhood. He shut the file cabinet and pulled open another one, chock full of carefully labelled file folders. Taxes, telephone, travel, wedding, will... Neither the wedding folder nor the will held anything unusual.

  On a whim, he pulled open an upper drawer for the H’s. Nothing under husband, but thumbing through files in search of Harvey, he came across a file labelled “Hatfield”. Not recognizing the name, he almost skipped by, but its thick, unruly contents gave him pause. He pulled it out, and a jumble of yellowed newspaper clippings from the Montreal Star fell out. He caught the reporter’s name—Cam Hatfield—and a couple of headlines. Tributes pour in for dead professor. The private anguish of a public man. A new brand of teacher.

  His scalp prickled. He picked up one article, unfolded it along its brittle seam, and began to read:

  Confusion continues to surround the death of one of McGill’s most popular professors, who was found dead in his McTavish Street apartment on Monday morning. Harvey Longstreet was a member of the prominent Montreal family that founded the Anglo-Canadian Transportation Company, now known as CanTransco, in 1855. The professor’s young widow and two-month old son are in seclusion at his uncle’s Westmount home and the family is requesting privacy to deal with the tragedy. Colleagues willing to speak to the newspaper expressed shock and disbelief, stating that Longstreet had shown no signs of depression or stress—

  The doorbell rang distantly. Brandon looked up, confusion giving way to fear. Meredith! Quickly he stuffed the articles back into the filing cabinet and kicked the drawer shut as he headed out the door.

  A young woman stood on the doorstep, bundled against the cold in a blue parka, a red tuque with a red and white pompom and matching mittens. Was there a hint of excitement in those blue eyes, he wondered? His hopes stirred.

  Then she held up her badge. “Detective Peters, Ottawa Police,” she said, enunciating carefully as if the label were unfamiliar to her. “Are you Brandon Longstreet?”

  He nodded. “Any news?”

  “We haven’t found her, no sir, but we’re making progress on her movements. May I come in?”

  He invited her in and suppressed his impatience as she removed her boots and coat. She took so long, he wondered whether she was stalling. Settled on the floral living room couch, Peters eyed him gravely. “Did Meredith tell you her plans to go to Montreal?”

  “Montreal?” He was equally incredulous and startled. When Peters said nothing, he shook his head. “Why would she go to Montreal?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you.”

  He felt a flare of annoyance. “We have a wedding in two weeks, she has a million things on her to-do list. Why would she go there!”

  “What’s in Montreal? A dressmaker? A friend?”

  “Nobody,” he said, fighting off the absurdity of the idea.

  Belatedly, reason penetrated the cotton wool in his brain. “You have evidence she went to Montreal?”

  The detective nodded. “She took a bus there Monday morning and returned here Monday evening.”

  He stared at her. That made no sense! He’d last seen Meredith on Sunday evening. They’d had dinner together and tried to finalize the table seating for the dinner. She hadn’t mentioned a thing about Montreal. Brandon closed his eyes, recalling the unpleasant memory for the hundredth time. She’d been furious with him, frustrated at all the Longstreet guests who needed places of importance, resentful that their parents would share the head table with them instead of their friends. In fact, she hadn’t wanted a head table. She’d wanted a series of round tables that made everyone feel equal and included.

  It was such a modern, Meredith idea, and he loved her for it. But his mother was paying for the dinner, and she naturally expected a clear gesture of respect in return.

  Meredith had stormed off in a huff. He hadn’t told the police about it because he wanted them to take her disappearance seriously. He’d seen their cynical, world-weary attitude towards victims too often in the emergency room waiting rooms, and he didn’t want them to think that Meredith was just another immature, spiteful girlfriend looking for payback. She was a fiery, impassioned woman, but she would never go to this extreme. Surely, no matter how angry or doubtful she became, she would never put him and her family through this anguish.

  Yet now, in the cold light of reflection, how well did he actually know her? The sense of connection had been instantaneous, the romance and passion breathtaking, but his long hours at the hospital kept them from actually spending as much time together as they wished. He still didn’t know much of her past, nor of her friendships beyond their shared circle.

  But Montreal? What did Montreal have to do with anything? What was so urgent in Montreal that she would drop her entire to-do list and travel four hours through a snowstorm on a cramped, noisy bus to deal with it?

  “I don’t know,” he said, trying to control the alarm in his voice. “She has some family there, and friends from her Haiti posting.”

  “Anyone she might visit? Anyone she stayed close to?”

  “Just a few work colleagues and some obscure cousins.”

  “Can I have names and contact numbers?”

  “We’ve called them all. No one’s seen or heard from her.”

  “All the same, we have to follow up. They may know things.”

  “I only have a few names, from the wedding guest list.” He rose to fetch the list from the kitchen and waited in silence as she laboriously copied the names down. She seemed to do everything in slow motion. He toyed briefly with a diagnosis of MS before noticing the fine scars at her hairline and another just above her brow, camouflaged by hair. The woman was fighting back from a catastrophic head trauma. He felt a wave of respect and sympathy. It was on the tip of his tongue to comment when she raised her head.

  “No one else?” she demanded, as if daring him to say a word. He shook his head. “Her parents would know more of the relatives down there.”

  “What about grandparents? Any in Montreal?”

  “Her grandmother’s alive, but she’s in a nursing home.

  Advanced Alzheimer’s. In the past couple of years she’s barely recognized Meredith. Meredith used to visit often but recently she’s found it hard.”

  The detective stopped takin
g notes and leaned forward, her eyes drilling his. “But she could have gone to see her. With her wedding coming up, maybe she felt sentimental. Did the grandmother come up in conversation recently?”

  Brandon shook his head. He felt the detective pressing against the secret fault lines of their relationship and felt himself resisting. But the grandmother hadn’t come up. Not really. “We discussed whether she should come to the wedding or not, and everyone else—especially Meredith’s mother—thought it would be a bad idea. She can’t really travel. She gets confused and agitated, she wouldn’t know what’s going on.”

  “Maybe Meredith got to feeling guilty?”

  Brandon tried to fit that idea with Meredith’s mood on Sunday night. She had struggled, but maybe more with regret than guilt. Was it possible she went to Montreal to visit Nan?

  Nan had been a force when Meredith was growing up, always ready with a big hug, a plate of oat cakes, and a listening ear. He knew it hurt Meredith to see the old lady so diminished.

  He felt uneasy. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe he’d misread the depths of her distress. Maybe she was feeling the absence of her grandmother at her wedding and the overwhelming force of two dozen Longstreet guests while a key person from her side was missing. Maybe that, along with his stupid blunder about the head table, had made her second-guess her desire to join her life to his.

  The detective was waiting for an answer, with that challenging look in her eyes again. He forced a shrug. “It’s possible. But you said she came back to Ottawa afterwards, so I don’t see what difference it makes?”

  “Because she disappeared almost immediately afterwards, as if something happened on that trip to make her take off. That’s more than some simple family visit.”

  He turned the idea over slowly. None of this made any sense. It didn’t fit with the Meredith he knew. She loved him, she wanted to change her whole life course to go with him to Ethiopia. She could have—no, would have—just said, “The hell with it all, let’s elope.”

  * * *

  When Sue Peters came out the front door of the Longstreet house, Detective Bob Gibbs was leaning against her car with his arms folded. She could tell he was trying to look fierce, but he couldn’t hide the delight in his eyes. He had pulled his hat down low and turned the collar of his parka up over his ears, but even so he looked frozen. Adorably so.

  That was the trouble with Bob. She wanted to be mad at him for checking up on her and not believing she could do anything by herself. For hovering like a mom on the first day of kindergarten. She’d even gone so far as to wonder, during their pricklier moments, if he really wanted her to get well. But then she’d see his goofy face at moments like this one, and she knew he just plain loved her and was terrified to let her out of his sight. Terrified she’d discover a life without him, or terrified someone would jump out of a dark alley and beat her up again, this time for good.

  She knew he was watching her as she negotiated the slippery path to the road. Watching for a limp or a slight stumble that would betray her fatigue. She drew herself rigidly upright and summoned every ounce of will to force her muscles to obey. The truth was, she was dead on her feet. She’d felt it during the interview, when she could barely persuade her fingers to write and her brain to form words. She’d been at work more than seven hours now, much of it in the field. She’d forgotten lunch and had had no time for a ten-minute power nap to refresh her.

  She smiled up at him as he welcomed her into his arms. “You weren’t supposed to do this,” he said.

  Ignoring his attempt to look fierce, she punched him playfully.

  “We have a lead.”

  He kissed her. She loved his kisses. They weren’t very smooth, but they were all quivery with passion he didn’t know what to do with. Who needed slick when you had real?

  “You’re bad,” he whispered when they came up for air. He headed towards his own car, an identical beige Impala parked behind hers.

  “You can tell me all about it while I drive you home.”

  “No, you don’t. What about my car?” She wasn’t sure she even had the strength to turn the key, but he wasn’t to know that. “What about the Kennedys? We have to ask them about Montreal. And about the ATM.”

  He opened his passenger door. “Someone can pick up your car. And I’ll handle the Kennedys.”

  She sank into the seat, finally letting her muscles go and feeling the last vestige of energy drain from them. She opened one eye. “Only if you let me come with you, so I can tell you what questions to ask.”

  “But Inspector Green—”

  “Inspector Green knows. And he didn’t exactly say no, did he.” He sighed as he navigated the snowy street, and after a while he glanced over at her. “You learned something useful?”

  She smiled inwardly. She felt too tired to make sense of the nagging suspicion in her brain, but there was something... If the person I loved went missing, she thought, I’d be excited to learn about the trip to Montreal. It signalled hope, a possibility that the person had gone off on some secret quest. Why had Brandon seemed determined to downplay the importance of the whole thing?

  The Kennedys displayed no such ambivalence. Norah Kennedy came alive as soon as the Montreal trip was mentioned.

  For the first time, Sue Peters saw a hint of warmth in the woman’s haggard face.

  “That means she’s alive!” she exclaimed. “Maybe she realized it would never work if she married into that family. Brandon’s a lovely boy, I’m not saying he’s not, but she’d be taking on that mother too. He’s all she’s got and don’t think she wants to share him, no matter what she says. I bet she said something to Meredith to scare her off.”

  “Like what?” Sue leaned forward. She’d promised Gibbsie he could do the interview while she kept quiet and observed reactions. It had been either that or he’d take her home, and she’d been too wiped out to argue. But a short snooze in the car on the way over had revived her, and she couldn’t restrain herself.

  Norah’s gaze flicked from Gibbs to Sue, probably trying to figure out who was running the show. She shrugged. “Maybe she sent Meredith to talk to that great-uncle. Lives all alone in a big house on the Circle with a creepy servant with a black belt in karate. He’s sitting on the Longstreet family fortune, and he’s scared off more than a few kids who wanted to marry into it.” Gibbs scribbled in his notebook at top speed so he could get back in the conversation. “Has anyone contacted him about your daughter’s disappearance?”

  “That would be up to Elena. Not too many people are on speaking terms with the old goat.”

  “Meredith’s not going to be scared off by a crazy old man,” the father said. He’d been fidgeting, building up a head of steam.

  “No matter how nasty he is. Brandon’s the one she’s marrying.”

  His wife swung on him. “Well then, maybe the old man threatened to disinherit Brandon and the boy got cold feet. That would be like our Meredith, to go charging in to set the old man right.”

  “Norah, Brandon would never do that. These are modern kids out to save the world, for Pete’s sake.”

  Believing love conquers all, Sue thought, suddenly aware of the nagging twinge in her shoulder that was held together by pins. “What about her grandmother?” she asked.

  Norah’s eyes widened. She shot her husband a look of alarm.

  “What about her?”

  “Could Meredith have gone to see her?”

  “Unlikely. My mother’s in a home. Most of the time she doesn’t even recognize Meredith. Even me she confuses with her sister, who’s been dead twenty years.”

  “But she might still have gone to see her. Maybe she felt a duty. Were they close while she was growing up?”

  “I’ve told Meredith not to go. Mom gets agitated and upset at the sight of her because she thinks she’s a stranger out to trick her with lies. It’s not worth it to get the poor old lady upset.”

  That didn’t mean anything, Sue decided. Meredith might have paid a secret v
isit despite her mother’s wishes. Weddings could make people act all mushy inside. If the visit had gone badly, it would explain Meredith’s mood on her return. “Maybe we should call the nursing home, just to doublecheck.”

  “I did,” the father said. Seeing the flicker of surprise on Norah’s face, he mustered a sheepish smile. “I was trying to spare you, dear.

  They didn’t think anyone’s been to see her in a month.”

  “We’d like to follow up anyway,” Sue said.

  Norah flushed. “I don’t want my mother upset.”

  “How will speaking to the nurses upset your mother?”

  “Because the nurses will ask her, remind her, maybe even tell her that Meredith is missing!”

  Sue felt Gibbs’s hand on her arm. He leaned forward, an envelope in his hand. “Can you describe M-Meredith’s winter clothing? Her coat, gloves, hat?”

  Norah blinked, the flush slowly receding from her face. “Why?

  We’ve already told you people that. Over and over.”

  “All the same. To s-save me having to search all the notes.”

  Norah described the red suede jacket and leather boots. “I don’t know what kind of hat she might be wearing. She doesn’t like hats.” Hope crept into her face. “Has someone seen her?”

  “Does her coat have a hood?”

  The hope grew. “Yes. Why?”

  Gibbs withdrew two photos from the envelope. Sue guessed they were probably the best images he was able to glean from the shadowy ATM video. “Do you recognize this person?”

  The photos trembled slightly at the edges in Reg’s hand as he and Norah bent over them. The silence was broken only by their breathing. Slowly Sue saw their hope fade, until finally Norah shook her head. She looked questioningly at her husband. “Do you think it’s her?”

  “Do y-you recognize any of the clothing?” Gibbs pressed when Reg shrugged.

  “No. She doesn’t have a parka like that. But—” Norah raised her head. “She could have bought one, right? I mean, if she is trying to hide? She’d know everyone would be on the lookout for a red suede jacket. It’s pretty distinctive. Whereas this parka—it could be anybody in there! Where was it taken? When!”